Picnic On Nearside by John VarleyJohn Varley
Picnic On Nearside
formerly titled The Barbie Murders
 



CONTENTS
 
BAGATELLE
THE FUNHOUSE EFFECT
THE BARBIE MURDERS
EQUINOCTIAL
MANIKINS
BEATNIK BAYOU
GOOD-BYE, ROBINSON CRUSOE
LOLLIPOP AND THE TAR BABY
PICNIC ON NEARSIDE
 
AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
 



 
Bagatelle
THERE WAS A BOMB on the Leystrasse, level forty-five, right outside the 
Bagatelle Flower and Gift Shoppe, about a hundred meters down the promenade from 
Prosperity Plaza.
"I am a bomb," the bomb said to passersby. "I will explode in four hours, five 
minutes, and seventeen seconds. I have a force equal to fifty thousand English 
tons of trinitrololuene."
A small knot of people gathered to look at it.
"I will go off in four hours, four minutes, and thirty-seven seconds."
A few people became worried as the bomb talked on. They remembered business 
elsewhere and hurried away, often toward the tube trains to King City. 
Eventually, the trains became overcrowded and there was some pushing and 
shoving.
The bomb was a metal cylinder, a meter high, two meters long, mounted on four 
steerable wheels. There was an array of four television cameras mounted on top 
of the cylinder, slowly scanning through ninety degrees. No one could recall how 
it came to be there. It looked a little like the municipal street-cleaning 
machines; perhaps no one had noticed it because of that.
"I am rated at fifty kilotons," the bomb said, with a trace of pride.
The police were called.
 
"A nuclear bomb, you say?" Municipal Police Chief Anna-Louise Bach felt sourness 
in the pit of her stomach and reached for a box of medicated candy. She was 
overdue for a new stomach, but the rate she went through them on her job coupled 
with the size of her paycheck had caused her to rely more and more on these 
stopgap measures. And the cost of cloned transplants was going up.
"It says fifty kilotons," said the man on the screen. "I don't see what else it 
could be. Unless it's just faking, of course. We're moving in radiation 
detectors."
"You said 'it says.' Are you speaking of a note, or phone call, or what?"
"No. It's talking to us. Seems friendly enough, too, but we haven't gotten 
around to asking it to disarm itself. It could be that its friendliness won't 
extend that far."
"No doubt." She ate another candy. "Call in the bomb squad, of course. Then tell 
them to do nothing until I arrive, other than look the situation over. I'm going 
to make a few calls, then I'll be there. No more than thirty minutes."
"All right. Will do."
There was nothing for it but to look for help. No nuclear bomb had ever been 
used on Luna. Bach had no experience with them, nor did her bomb crew. She 
brought her computer on line.
 
Roger Birkson liked his job. It wasn't so much the working conditions—which were 
appalling—but the fringe benefits. He was on call for thirty days, twenty-four 
hours a day, at a salary that was nearly astronomical. Then he got eleven months 
paid vacation. He was paid for the entire year whether or not he ever had to 
exercise his special talents during his thirty days duty. In that way, he was 
like a firefighter. In a way, he was a firefighter.
He spent his long vacations in Luna. No one had ever asked Birkson why he did 
so; had they asked, he would not have known. But the reason was a subconscious 
conviction that one day the entire planet Earth would blow up in one glorious 
fireball. He didn't want to be there when it happened.
Birkson's job was bomb disarming for the geopolitical administrative unit called 
CommEcon Europe. On a busy shift he might save the lives of twenty million CE 
Europeans.
Of the thirty-five Terran bomb experts vacationing on Luna at the time of the 
Leystrasse bomb scare, Birkson happened to be closest to the projected epicenter 
of the blast. The Central Computer found him twenty-five seconds after Chief 
Bach rang off from her initial report. He was lining up a putt on the 
seventeenth green of the Burning Tree underground golf course, a half kilometer 
from Prosperity Plaza, when his bag of clubs began to ring. Birkson was wealthy. 
He employed a human caddy instead of the mechanical sort. The caddy dropped the 
flag he had been holding and went to answer it. Birkson took a few practice 
swings, but found that his concentration had been broken. He relaxed, and took 
the call.
"I need your advice," Bach said, without preamble. "I'm the Chief of Municipal 
Police for New Dresden, Anna-Louise Bach. I've had a report on a nuclear bomb on 
the Leystrasse, and I don't have anyone with your experience in these matters. 
Could you meet me at the tube station in ten minutes?"
"Are you crazy? I'm shooting for a seventy-five with two holes to go, an easy 
three-footer on seventeen and facing a par five on the last hole, and you expect 
me to go chasing after a hoax?"
"Do you know it to be a hoax?" Bach asked, wishing he would say yes.
"Well, no, I just now heard about it, myself. But ninety percent of them are, 
you know."
"Fine. I suggest you continue your game. And since you're so sure, I'm going to 
have Burning Tree sealed off for the duration of the emergency. I want you right 
there."
Birkson considered this. "About how far away is this 'Leystrasse'?"
"About six hundred meters. Five levels up from you, and one sector over. Don't 
worry. There must be dozens of steel plates between you and the hoax. You just 
sit tight, all right?" Birkson said nothing.
"I'll be at the tube station in ten minutes," Bach said.
"I'll be in a special capsule. It'll be the last one for five hours." She hung 
up.
Birkson contemplated the wall of the underground enclosure. Then he knelt on the 
green and lined up his putt. He addressed the ball, tapped it, and heard the 
satisfying rattle as it sank into the cup.
He looked longingly at the eighteenth tee, then jogged off to the clubhouse.
"I'll be right back," he called over his shoulder.
 
Bach's capsule was two minutes late, but she had to wait another minute for 
Birkson to show up. She fumed, trying not to glance at the timepiece embedded in 
her wrist.
He got in, still carrying his putter, and their heads were jerked back as the 
capsule was launched. They moved for only a short distance, then came to a halt. 
The door didn't open.
"The system's probably tied up," Bach said, squirming. She didn't like to see 
the municipal services fail in the company of this Terran.
"Ah," Birkson said, flashing a grin with an impossible number of square teeth. 
"A panic evacuation, no doubt. You didn't have the tube system closed down, I 
suppose?"
"No," she said. "I... well, I thought there might be a chance to get a large 
number of people away from the area in case this thing does go off."
He shook his head, and grinned again. He put this grin after every sentence he 
spoke, like punctuation.
"You'd better seal off the city. If it's a hoax, you're going to have hundreds 
of dead and injured from the panic. It's a lost cause trying to evacuate. At 
most, you might save a few thousand."
"But..."
"Keep them stationary. If it goes off, it's no use anyway. You'll lose the whole 
city. And no one's going to question your judgment because you'll be dead. If it 
doesn't go off, you'll be sitting pretty for having prevented a panic. Do it. I 
know."
Bach began to really dislike this man right then, but decided to follow his 
advice. And his thinking did have a certain cold logic. She phoned the station 
and had the lid clamped on the city. Now the cars in the cross-tube ahead would 
be cleared, leaving only her priority capsule moving.
They used the few minutes delay while the order was implemented to size each 
other up. Bach saw a blonde, square-jawed young man in a checkered sweater and 
gold knickers. He had a friendly face, and that was what puzzled her. There was 
no trace of worry on his smooth features. His hands were steady, clasped calmly 
around the steel shaft of his putter. She wouldn't have called his manner cocky 
or assured, but he did manage to look cheerful.
She had just realized that he was looking her over, and was wondering what he 
saw, when he put his hand on her knee. He might as well have slapped her. She 
was stunned.
"What are you... get your hand off me you... you groundhog."
Birkson's hand had been moving upward. He was apparently unfazed by the insult. 
He turned in his seat and reached for her hand. His smile was dazzling.
"I just thought that since we're stalled here with nothing else to do, we might 
start getting to know each other. No harm in that, is there? I just hate to 
waste any time, that's all."
She wrenched free of his grasp and assumed a defensive posture, feeling trapped 
in a nightmare. But he relented, having no interest in pursuing the matter when 
he had been rebuffed.
"All right. We'll wait. But I'd like to have a drink with you, or maybe dinner. 
After this thing's wrapped up, of course."
" 'This thing...' How can you think of something like that...?"
"At a time like this. I know. I've heard it. Bombs get me horny, is all. So 
okay, so I'll leave you alone." He grinned again. "But maybe you'll feel 
different when this is over."
For a moment she thought she was going to throw up from a combination of 
revulsion and fear. Fear of the bomb, not this awful man. Her stomach was 
twisted into a pretzel, and here he sat, thinking of sex. What was he, anyway?
The capsule lurched again, and they were on their way.
 
The deserted Leystrasse made a gleaming frame of stainless steel storefronts and 
fluorescent ceiling for the improbable pair hurrying from the tube station in 
the Plaza: Birkson in his anachronistic golf togs, cleats rasping on the 
polished rock floor, and Bach, half a meter taller than him, thin like a 
Lunarian. She wore the regulation uniform of the Municipal Police, which was a 
blue armband and cap with her rank of chief emblazoned on them, a shoulder 
holster, an equipment belt around her waist from which dangled the shining and 
lethal-looking tools of her trade, cloth slippers, and a few scraps of clothing 
in arbitrary places. In the benign environment of Lunar corridors, modesty had 
died out ages ago.
They reached the cordon which had been established around the bomb, and Bach 
conferred with the officer in charge. The hall was echoing with off-key music.
"What's that?" Birkson asked.
Officer Walters, the man to whom Bach had been speaking, looked Birkson over, 
weighing just how far he had to go in deference to this grinning weirdo. He was 
obviously the bomb expert Bach had referred to in an earlier call, but he was a 
Terran, and not a member of the force. Should he be addressed as 'sir'? He 
couldn't decide.
"It's the bomb. It's been singing to us for the last five minutes. Ran out of 
things to say, I guess."
"Interesting." Swinging the putter lazily from side to side, he walked to the 
barrier of painted steel crowd-control sections. He started sliding one of them 
to the side.
"Hold it... ah, sir," Walters said.
"Wait a minute, Birkson," Bach confirmed, running to the man and almost grabbing 
his sleeve. She backed away at the last moment.
"It said no one's to cross that barrier," Walters supplied to Bach's questioning 
glance. "Says it'll blow us all to the Farside."
"What is that damn thing, anyway?" Bach asked, plaintively.
Birkson withdrew from the barrier and took Bach aside with a tactful touch on 
the arm. He spoke to her with his voice just low enough for Walters to hear.
"It's a cyborged human connected to a bomb, probably a uranium device," he said. 
"I've seen the design. It's just like one that went off in Johannesburg three 
years ago. I didn't know they were still making them."
"I heard about it," Bach said, feeling cold and alone. "Then you think it's 
really a bomb? How do you know it's a cyborg? Couldn't it be tape recordings, or 
a computer?"
Birkson rolled his eyes slightly, and Bach reddened. Damn it, they were 
reasonable questions. And to her surprise, he could not defend his opinion 
logically. She wondered what she was stuck with. Was this man really the expert 
she took him to be, or a plaid-sweatered imposter?
"You can call it a hunch. I'm going to talk to this fellow, and I want you to 
roll up an industrial X-ray unit on the level below this while I'm doing it. On 
the level above, photographic film. You get the idea?"
"You want to take a picture of the inside of this thing. Won't that be 
dangerous?"
"Yeah. Are your insurance premiums paid up?"
Bach said nothing, but gave the orders. A million questions were spinning 
through her head, but she didn't want to make a fool of herself by asking a 
stupid one. Such as: how much radiation did a big industrial X-ray machine 
produce when beamed through a rock and steel floor? She had a feeling she 
wouldn't like the answer. She sighed, and decided to let Birkson have his head 
until she felt he couldn't handle it. He was about the only hope she had.
And he was strolling casually around the perimeter, swinging his goddamn putter 
behind him, whistling bad harmony with the tune coming from the bomb. What was a 
career police officer to do? Back him up on the harmonica?
The scanning cameras atop the bomb stopped their back and forth motion. One of 
them began to track Birkson. He grinned his flashiest, and waved to it. The 
music stopped.
"I am a fifty kiloton nuclear bomb of the uranium-235 type," it said. "You must 
stay behind the perimeter I have caused to be erected here. You must not disobey 
this order."
Birkson held up his hands, still grinning, and splayed out his fingers.
"You got me, bud. I won't bother you. I was just admiring your casing. Pretty 
nice job, there. It seems a shame to blow it up."
"Thank you," the bomb said, cordially. "But that is my purpose. You cannot 
divert me from it."
"Never entered my mind. Promise."
"Very well. You may continue to admire me, if you wish, but from a safe 
distance. Do not attempt to rush me. All my vital wiring is safely protected, 
and I have a response time of three milliseconds. I can ignite long before you 
can reach me, but I do not wish to do so until the allotted time has come."
Birkson whistled. "That's pretty fast, brother. Much faster than me, I'm sure. 
It must be nice, being able to move like that after blundering along all your 
life with neural speeds."
"Yes, I find it very gratifying. It was a quite unexpected benefit of becoming a 
bomb."
This was more like it, Bach thought. Her dislike of Birkson had not blinded her 
to the fact that he had been checking out his hunch. And her questions had been 
answered: no tape array could answer questions like that, and the machine had as 
much as admitted that it had been a human being at one time.
Birkson completed a circuit, back to where Bach and Walters were standing. He 
paused, and said in a low voice, "Check out that time."
"What time?"
"What time did you say you were going to explode?" he yelled.
"In three hours, twenty-one minutes, and eighteen seconds," the bomb supplied.
"That time," he whispered. "Get your computers to work on it. See if it's the 
anniversary of any political group, or the time something happened that someone 
might have a grudge about." He started to turn away, then thought of something. 
"But most important, check the birth records."
"May I ask why?"
He seemed to be dreaming, but came back to them. "I'm just feeling this 
character out. I've got a feeling this might be his birthday. Find out who was 
born at that time—it can't be too many, down to the second—and try to locate 
them all. The one you can't find will be our guy. I'm betting on it."
"What are you betting? And how do you know for sure it's a man?"
That look again, and again she blushed. But, damn it, she had to ask questions. 
Why should he make her feel defensive about it?
"Because he's chosen a male voice to put over his speakers. I know that's not 
conclusive, but you get hunches after a while. As to what I'm betting... no, 
it's not my life. I'm sure I can get this one. How about dinner tonight if I'm 
right?" The smile was ingenuous, without the trace of lechery she thought she 
had seen before. But her stomach was still crawling. She turned away without 
answering.
For the next twenty minutes, nothing much happened. Birkson continued his slow 
stroll around the machine, stopping from time to time to shake his head in 
admiration. The thirty men and women of Chief Bach's police detail stood around 
nervously with nothing to do, as far away from the machine as pride would allow. 
There was no sense in taking cover.
Bach herself was kept busy coordinating the behind-the-scenes maneuvering from a 
command post that had been set up around the corner, in the Elysian Travel 
Agency. It had phones and a computer output printer. She sensed the dropping 
morale among her officers, who could see nothing going on. Had they known that 
surveying lasers were poking their noses around trees in the Plaza, taking 
bearings to within a thousandth of a millimeter, they might have felt a little 
better. And on the floor below, the X-ray had arrived.
Ten minutes later, the output began to chatter. Bach could hear it in the 
silent, echoing corridor from her position halfway between the travel agency and 
the bomb. She turned, and met a young officer with the green armband of a 
rookie. The woman's hand was ice-cold as she handed Bach the sheet of yellow 
printout paper. There were three names printed on it, and below that, some dates 
and events listed.
"This bottom information was from the fourth expansion of the problem," the 
officer explained. "Very low probability stuff. The three people were all born 
either on the second or within a three-second margin of error, in three 
different years. Everyone else has been contacted."
"Keep looking for these three, too," Bach said. As she turned away, she noticed 
that the young officer was pregnant, about in her fifth month. She thought 
briefly of sending her away from the scene, but what was the use?
Birkson saw her coming, and broke off his slow circuits of the bomb. He took the 
paper from her and scanned it. He tore off the bottom part without being told it 
was low probability, crumpled it, and let it drop to the floor. Scratching his 
head, he walked slowly back to the bomb.
"Hans?" he called out.
"How did you know my name?" the bomb asked.
"Ah, Hans, my boy, credit us with some sense. You can't have got into this 
without knowing that the MuniPol can do very fast investigations. Unless I've 
been underestimating you. Have I?"
"No," the bomb conceded. "I knew you would find out who I was. But it doesn't 
alter the situation."
"Of course not. But it makes for easier conversation. How has life been treating 
you, my friend?"
"Terrible," mourned the man who had become a fifty kiloton nuclear weapon.
 
Every morning Hans Leiter rolled out of bed and padded into his cozy water 
closet. It was not the standard model for residential apartment modules, but a 
special one he had installed after he moved in. Hans lived alone, and it was the 
one luxury he allowed himself. In his little palace, he sat in a chair that 
massaged him into wakefulness, washed him, shaved him, powdered him, cleaned his 
nails, splashed him with scent, them made love to him with a rubber imitation 
that was a good facsimile of the real thing. Hans was awkward with women.
He would dress, walk down three hundred meters of corridor, and surrender 
himself to a pedestrian slideway which took him as far as the Cross-Crisium 
Tube. There, he allowed himself to be fired like a projectile through a tunnel 
below the Lunar surface.
Hans worked in the Crisium Heavy Machinery Foundry. His job there was repairing 
almost anything that broke down. He was good at it; he was much more comfortable 
with machines than with people.
One day he made a slip and got his leg caught in a massive roller. It was not a 
serious accident, because the failsafe systems turned off the machine before his 
body or head could be damaged, but it hurt terribly and completed ruined the 
leg. It had to be taken off. While he was waiting for the cloned replacement 
limb to be grown, Hans had been fitted with a prosthetic.
It had been a revelation to him. It worked like a dream, as good as his old leg 
and perhaps better. It was connected to his severed leg nerve, but was equipped 
with a threshold cut-off circuit, and one day when he barked his artificial shin 
he saw that it had caused him no pain. He recalled the way that same injury had 
felt with his flesh and blood leg, and again he was impressed. He thought, too, 
of the agony when his leg had been caught in the machine.
When the new leg was ready for transplanting, Hans had elected to retain the 
prosthetic. It was unusual, but not unprecedented.
From that time on, Hans, who had never been known to his co-workers as talkative 
or social, withdrew even more from his fellow humans. He would speak only when 
spoken to. But people had observed him talking to the stamping press, and the 
water cooler, and the robot sweeper.
At night, it was Hans' habit to sit on his vibrating bed and watch the 
holovision until one o'clock. At that time, his kitchen would prepare him a late 
snack, roll it to him in his bed, and he would retire for the night.
For the last three years Hans had been neglecting to turn the set on before 
getting into bed. Nevertheless, he continued to sit quietly on the bed staring 
at the empty screen.
 
When she finished reading the personal data printout, Bach was struck once more 
at the efficiency of the machines in her control. This man was almost a cipher, 
yet there were nine thousand words in storage concerning his uneventful life, 
ready to be called up and printed into an excruciatingly boring biography.
"...so you came to feel that you were being controlled at every step in your 
life by machines," Birkson was saying. He was sitting on one of the barriers, 
swinging his legs back and forth. Bach joined him and offered the long sheet of 
printout. He waved it away. She could hardly blame him.
"But it's true!" the bomb said. "We all are, you know. We're part of this huge 
machine that's called New Dresden. It moves us around like parts on an assembly 
line, washes us, feeds us, puts us to bed and sings us to sleep."
"Ah," Birkson said, agreeably. "Are you a Luddite, Hans?"
"No!" the bomb said in a shocked voice. "Roger, you've missed the whole point. I 
don't want to destroy the machines. I want to serve them better. I wanted to 
become a machine, like my new leg. Don't you see? We're part of the machine, but 
we're the most inefficient part."
The two talked on, and Bach wiped the sweat from her palms. She couldn't see 
where all this was going, unless Birkson seriously hoped to talk Hans Leiter out 
of what he was going to do in—she glanced at the clock—two hours and forty-three 
minutes. It was maddening. On the one hand, she recognized the skill he was 
using in establishing a rapport with the cyborg. They were on a first-name 
basis, and at least the damn machine cared enough to argue its position. On the 
other hand, so what? What good was it doing?
Walters approached and whispered into her ear. She nodded, and tapped Birkson on 
the shoulder.
"They're ready to take the picture whenever you are," she said. He waved her 
off.
"Don't bother me," he said, loudly. "This is getting interesting. So if what you 
say is true," he went on to Hans, getting up and pacing intently back and forth, 
this time inside the line of barriers, "maybe I ought to look into this myself. 
You really like being cyborged better than being human?"
"Infinitely so," the bomb said. He sounded enthusiastic. "I need no sleep now, 
and I no longer have to bother with elimination or eating. I have a tank for 
nutrients, which are fed into the housing where my brain and central nervous 
system are located." He paused. "I tried to eliminate the ups and downs of 
hormone flow and the emotional reactions that followed," he confided.
"No dice, huh?"
"No. Something always distracted me. So when I heard of this place where they 
would cyborg me and get rid of all that, I jumped at the chance."
Inactivity was making Bach impulsive. She had to say or do something.
"Where did you get the work done, Hans?" she ventured. The bomb started to say 
something, but Birkson laughed loudly and slapped Bach hard on the back. "Oh, 
no, Chief. That's pretty tricky, right Hans? She's trying to get you to rat. 
That's not done, Chief. There's a point of honor involved."
"Who is that?" the bomb asked, suspiciously.
"Let me introduce Chief Anna-Louise Bach, of the New Dresden Police. Ann, meet 
Hans."
"Police?" Hans asked, and Bach felt goose-pimples when she detected a note of 
fright in the voice. What was this maniac trying to do, frightening the guy like 
that? She was close to pulling Birkson off the case. She held off because she 
thought she could see a familiar pattern in it, something she could use as a way 
to participate, even if ignominously. It was the good guy-bad guy routine, one 
of the oldest police maneuvers in the book.
"Aw, don't be like that," Birkson said to Hans. "Not all cops are brutes. Ann 
here, she's a nice person. Give her a chance. She's only doing her job."
"Oh, I have no objection to police," the bomb said. "They are necessary to keep 
the social machine functioning. Law and order is a basic precept of the coming 
new Mechanical Society. I'm pleased to meet you, Chief Bach. I wish the 
circumstances didn't make us enemies."
"Pleased to meet you, Hans." She thought carefully before she phrased her next 
question. She wouldn't have to take the hardline approach to contrast herself 
with affable, buddy-buddy Birkson. She needn't be an antagonist, but it wouldn't 
hurt if she asked questions that probed at his motives.
"Tell me, Hans. You say you're not a Luddite. You say you like machines. Do you 
know how many machines you'll destroy if you set yourself off? And even more 
important, what you'll do to this social machine you've been talking about? 
You'll wipe out the whole city."
The bomb seemed to be groping for words. He hesitated, and Bach felt the first 
glimmer of hope since this insanity began.
"You don't understand. You're speaking from an organic viewpoint. Life is 
important to you. A machine is not concerned with life. Damage to a machine, 
even the social machine, is simply something to be repaired. In a way, I hope to 
set an example. I wanted to become a machine—"
"And the best, the very ultimate machine," Birkson put in, "is the atomic bomb. 
It's the end point of all mechanical thinking."
"Exactly," said the bomb, sounding very pleased. It was nice to be understood. 
"I wanted to be the very best machine I could possibly be, and it had to be 
this."
"Beautiful, Hans," Birkson breathed. "I see what you're talking about. So if we 
go on with that line of thought we logically come to the conclusion..." and he 
was off into an exploration of the fine points of the new Mechanistic world 
view.
Bach was trying to decide which was the crazier of the two, when she was handed 
another message. She read it, then tried to find a place to break into the 
conversation. But there was no convenient place. Birkson was more and more 
animated, almost frothing at the mouth as he discovered points of agreement 
between the two of them. Bach noticed her officers standing around nervously, 
following the conversation. It was clear from their expressions that they feared 
they were being sold out, that when zero hour arrived they would still be here 
watching intellectual ping-pong. But long before that, she could have a mutiny 
on her hands. Several of them were fingering their weapons, probably without 
even knowing it.
She touched Birkson on the sleeve, but he waved her away. Damn it, this was too 
much. She grabbed him and nearly pulled him from his feet, swung him around 
until her mouth was close to his ear and growled.
"Listen to me, you idiot, they're going to take the picture. You'll have to 
stand back some. It's better if we're all shielded."
"Leave me alone," he shot back, and pulled from her grasp. But he was still 
smiling. "This is just getting interesting," he said, in a normal tone of voice.
Birkson came near to dying in that moment. Three guns were trained on him from 
the circle of officers, awaiting only the order to fire. They didn't like seeing 
their Chief treated that way.
Bach herself was damn near to giving the order. The only thing that stayed her 
hand was the knowledge that with Birkson dead, the machine might go off ahead of 
schedule. The only thing to do now was to get him out of the way and go on as 
best she could, knowing that she was doomed to failure. No one could say she 
hadn't given the expert a chance.
"But what I was wondering about," Birkson was saying, "was why today? What 
happened today? Is this the day Cyrus McCormick invented the combine harvester, 
or something?"
"It's my birthday," Hans said, somewhat shyly.
"Your birthday?" Birkson managed to look totally amazed to learn what he already 
knew. "Your birthday. That's great, Hans. Many happy returns of the day, my 
friend." He turned and took in all of the officers with an expansive sweep of 
his hands. "Let's sing, people. Come on, it's his birthday, for heaven's sake. 
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Hans..."
He bellowed, he was off-key, he swept his hands in grand circles with no sense 
of rhythm. But so infectious was his mania that several of the officers found 
themselves joining in. He ran around the circle, pulling the words out of them 
with great scooping motions of his hands.
Bach bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep herself steady. She had 
been singing, too. The scene was so ridiculous, so blackly improbable...
She was not the only one who was struck the same way. One of her officers, a 
brave man who she knew personally to have shown courage under fire, fell on his 
face in a dead faint. A woman officer covered her face with her hands and fled 
down the corridor, making helpless coughing sounds. She found an alcove and 
vomited.
And still Birkson capered. Bach had her gun halfway out of the shoulder holster, 
when he shouted.
"What's a birthday without a party?" he asked. "Let's have a big party." He 
looked around, fixed on the flower shop. He started for it, and as he passed 
Bach he whispered, "Take the picture now."
It galvanized her. She desperately wanted to believe he knew what he was doing, 
and just at the moment when his madness seemed total he had shown her the 
method. A distraction. Please, let it be a distraction. She turned and gave the 
prearranged signal to the officer standing at the edge of Prosperity Plaza.
She turned back in time to see Birkson smash in the window of the flower shop 
with his putter. It made a deafening crash.
"Goodness," said Hans, who sounded truly shocked. "Did you have to do that? 
That's private property."
"What does it matter?" Birkson yelled. "Hell, man, you're going to do much worse 
real soon. I'm just getting things started." He reached in and pulled out an 
armload of flowers, signaling to others to give him a hand. The police didn't 
like it, but soon were looting the shop and building a huge wreath just outside 
the line of barriers.
"I guess you're right," said Hans, a little breathlessly. A taste of violence 
had excited him, whetted his appetite for more to come. "But you startled me. I 
felt a real thrill, like I haven't felt since I was human."
"Then let's do it some more." And Birkson ran up and down one side of the 
street, breaking out every window he could reach. He picked up small articles he 
found inside the shops and threw them. Some of them shattered when they hit.
He finally stopped. Leystrasse had been transformed. No longer the scrubbed and 
air-conditioned Lunar environment, it had become as shattered, as chaotic and 
uncertain as the tension-filled emotional atmosphere it contained. Bach 
shuddered and swallowed the rising taste of bile. It was a precursor of things 
to come, she was sure. It hit her deeply to see the staid and respectable 
Leystrasse ravaged.
"A cake," Birkson said. "We have to have a cake. Hold on a minute, I'll be right 
back." He strode quickly toward Bach, took her elbow and turned her, pulled her 
insistently away with him. "You have to get those officers away from here," he 
said, conversationally. "They're tense. They could explode at any minute. In 
fact," and he favored her with his imbecile grin, "they're probably more 
dangerous right now than the bomb."
"You mean you think it's a fake?"
"No. It's for real. I know the psychological pattern. After this much trouble, 
he won't want to be a dud. Other types, they're in it for the attention and 
they'd just as soon fake it. Not Hans. But what I mean is, I have him. I can get 
him. But I can't count on your officers. Pull them back and leave only two or 
three of your most trusted people."
"All right." She had decided again, more from a sense of helpless futility than 
anything else, to trust him. He had pulled a neat diversion with the flower shop 
and the X-ray.
"We may have him already," he went on, as they reached the end of the street and 
turned the corner. "Often, the X-ray is enough. It cooks some of the circuitry 
and makes it unreliable. I'd hope to kill him outright, but he's shielded. Oh, 
he's probably got a lethal dosage, but it'd take him days to die. That doesn't 
do us any good. And if his circuitry is knocked out, the only way to find out is 
to wait. We have to do better than that. Here's what I want you to do."
He stopped abruptly and relaxed, leaning against the wall and gazing out over 
the trees and artificial sunlight of the Plaza. Bach could hear songbirds. They 
had always made her feel good before. Now all she could think of was incinerated 
corpses. Birkson ticked off points on his fingers.
She listened to him carefully. Some of it was strange, but no worse than she had 
already witnessed. And he really did have a plan. He really did. The sense of 
relief was so tremendous that it threatened to create a mood of euphoria in her, 
one not yet justified by the circumstances. She nodded curtly to each of his 
suggestions, then again to the officer who stood beside her, confirming what 
Birkson had said and turning it into orders. The young man rushed off to carry 
them out and Birkson started to return to the bomb. Bach grabbed him.
"Why wouldn't you let Hans answer my question about who did the surgical work on 
him? Was that part of your plan?" The question was half belligerent.
"Oh. Yeah, it was, in a way. I just grabbed the opportunity to make him feel 
closer to me. But it wouldn't have done you any good. He'll have a block against 
telling that, for sure. It could even be set to explode the bomb if he tries to 
answer that question. Hans is a maniac, but don't underestimate the people who 
helped him get where he is now. They'll be protected."
"Who are they?"
Birkson shrugged. It was such a casual, uncaring gesture that Bach was annoyed 
again.
"I have no idea. I'm not political, Ann. I don't know the Antiabortion Movement 
from the Freedom for Mauretania League. They build 'em, I take 'em apart. It's 
as simple as that. Your job is to find out how it happened. I guess you ought to 
get started on that."
"We already have," she conceded. "I just thought that... well, coming from 
Earth, where this sort of thing happens all the time, that you might know... 
damn it, Birkson. Why? Why is this happening?"
He laughed, while Bach turned red and went into a slow boil. Any of her 
officers, seeing her expression, would have headed for the nearest blast 
shelter. But Birkson laughed on. Didn't he give a damn about anything?
"Sorry," he forced out. "I've heard that question before, from other police 
chiefs. It's a good question." He waited, a half-smile on his face. When she 
didn't say anything, he went on. "You don't have the right perspective on this, 
Ann."
"That's Chief Bach to you, damn you."
"Okay," he said, easily. "What you don't see is that this thing is no different 
from a hand grenade tossed into a crowd, or a bomb sent through the mail. It's a 
form of communication. It's just that today, with so many people, you have to 
shout a little louder to get any attention."
"But... who? They haven't even identified themselves. You're saying that Hans is 
a tool of these people. He's been wired into the bomb, with his own motives for 
exploding. Obviously he didn't have the resources to do this himself, I can see 
that."
"Oh, you'll hear from them. I don't think they expect him to be successful. He's 
a warning. If they were really serious they could find the sort of person they 
want, one who's politically committed and will die for the cause. Of course, 
they don't care if the bomb goes off; they'll be pleasantly surprised if it 
does. Then they can stand up and pound their chests for a while. They'll be 
famous."
"But where did they get the uranium? The security is..."
For the first time, Birkson showed a trace of annoyance. "Don't be silly. The 
path leading to today was irrevocably set in 1945. There was never any way to 
avoid it. The presence of a tool implies that it will be used. You can try your 
best to keep it in the hands of what you think of as responsible people, but 
it'll never work. And it's no different, that's what I'm saying. This bomb is 
just another weapon. It's a cherry bomb in an anthill. It's gonna cause one hill 
of ants a hell of a lot of trouble, but it's no threat to the race of ants."
Bach could not see it that way. She tried, but it was still a nightmare of 
entirely new proportions to her. How could he equate the killing of millions of 
people with a random act of violence where three or four might be hurt? She was 
familiar with that. Bombs went off every day in her city, as in every human 
city. People were always dissatisfied.
"I could walk down... no, it's up here, isn't it?" Birkson mused for a moment on 
cultural differences. "Anyway, give me enough money and I'll bet I could go up 
to your slum neighborhoods right this minute and buy you as many kilos of 
uranium or plutonium as you want. Which is something you ought to be doing, by 
the way. Anything can be bought. Anything. For the right price, you could have 
bought weapons-grade material on the black market as early as 1960 or so. It 
would have been very expensive; there wasn't much of it. You'd have had to buy a 
lot of people. But now... well, you think it out." He stopped, and seemed 
embarrassed by his outburst.
"I've read a little about this," he apologized. She did think it out as she 
followed him back to the cordon. What he said was true. When controlled fusion 
proved too costly for wide-scale use, humanity had opted for fast breeder 
reactors. There had been no other choice. And from that moment, nuclear bombs in 
the hands of terrorists had been the price humanity accepted. And the price they 
would continue to pay.
"I wanted to ask you one more question," she said. He stopped and turned to face 
her. His smile was dazzling.
"Ask away. But are you going to take me up on that bet?"
She was momentarily unsure of what he meant. "Oh. Are you saying you'd help us 
locate the underground uranium ring? I'd be grateful..."
"No, no. Oh, I'll help you. I'm sure I can make a contact. I used to do that 
before I got into this game. What I meant was, are you going to bet I can't find 
some? We could bet... say, a dinner together as soon as I've found it. Time 
limit of seven days. How about it?"
She thought she had only two alternatives: walk away from him, or kill him. But 
she found a third.
"You're a betting man. I guess I can see why. But that's what I wanted to ask 
you. How can you stay so calm? Why doesn't this get to you like it does to me 
and my people? You can't tell me it's simply that you're used to it."
He thought about it. "And why not? You can get used to anything, you know. Now 
what about that bet?"
"If you don't stop talking about that," she said, quietly, "I'm going to break 
your arm."
"All right." He said nothing further, and she asked no further questions.
 
The fireball grew in milliseconds into an inferno that could scarcely be 
described in terms comprehensible to humans. Everything in a half-kilometer 
radius simply vanished into super-heated gases and plasma: buttresses, 
plate-glass windows, floors and ceilings, pipes, wires, tanks, machines, gewgaws 
and trinkets by the million, books, tapes, apartments, furniture, household 
pets, men, women, and children. They were the lucky ones. The force of the 
expanding blast compressed two hundred levels below it like a giant sitting on a 
Dagwood sandwich, making holes through plate steel turned to putty by the heat 
as easily as a punch press through tinfoil. Upwards, the surface bulged into the 
soundless Lunar night and split to reveal a white hell beneath. Chunks flew 
away, chunks as large as city sectors, before the center collapsed back on 
itself to leave a crater whose walls were a maze of compartments and ant-tunnels 
that dripped and flowed like warm gelatin. No trace was left of human bodies 
within two kilometers of the explosion. They had died after only the shortest 
period of suffering, their bodies consumed or spread into an invisible layer of 
organic film by the combination of heat and pressure that passed through walls, 
entered rooms where the doors were firmly shut. Further away, the sound was 
enough to congeal the bodies of a million people before the heat roasted them, 
the blast stripped flesh from bones to leave shrunken stick figures. Still the 
effects attenuated as the blast was channeled into corridors that were 
structurally strong enough to remain intact, and that very strength was the 
downfall of the inhabitants of the maze. Twenty kilometers from the epicenter, 
pressure doors popped through steel flanges like squeezed watermelon seeds.
What was left was five million burnt, blasted corpses, and ten million injured 
so hideously that they would die in hours or days. But Bach had been 
miraculously thrown clear by some freak of the explosion. She hurtled through 
the void with fifteen million ghosts following her, and each carried a birthday 
cake. They were singing. She joined in.
"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday..."
"Chief Bach."
"Huh?" She felt a cold chill pass over her body. For a moment she could only 
stare down into the face of Roger Birkson.
"You all right now?" he asked. He looked concerned.
"I'm... what happened?"
He patted her on both arms, then shook her heartily.
"Nothing. You drifted off for a moment." He narrowed his eyes. "I think you were 
daydreaming. I want to be diplomatic about this... ah, what I mean... I've seen 
it happen before. I think you were trying to get away from us."
She rubbed her hands over her face.
"I think I was. But I sure went in the wrong direction. I'm all right now." She 
could remember it now, and knew she had not passed out or become totally 
detached from what was going on. She had watched it all. Her memories of the 
explosion, so raw and real a moment before, were already the stuff of 
nightmares.
Too bad she hadn't come awake into a better world. It was so damn unfair. That 
was the reward at the end of a nightmare, wasn't it? You woke up to find 
everything was all right.
Instead, here was a long line of uniformed officers, bearing birthday cakes to a 
fifty kiloton atomic bomb.
 
Birkson had ordered the lights turned off in the Leystrasse. When his order had 
not been carried out, he broke out the lights with his putter. Soon, he had some 
of the officers helping him.
Now the beautiful Leystrasse, the pride of New Dresden, was a flickering tunnel 
through hell. The light of a thousand tiny birthday candles on five hundred 
cakes turned everything red-orange and made people into shadowed demons. 
Officers kept arriving with hastily wrapped presents, flowers, balloons. Hans, 
the little man who was now nothing but a brain and nerve network floating in a 
lead container; Hans, the cause of all this, the birthday boy himself, watched 
it all in unconcealed delight from his battery of roving television cameras. He 
sang loudly.
"I am a bomb! I am a bomb!" he yelled. He had never had so much fun.
Bach and Birkson retreated from the scene into the darkened recess of the 
Bagatelle Flower Shoppe. There, a stereo viewing tank had been set up.
The X-ray picture had been taken with a moving plate technique that allowed a 
computer to generate a three dimensional model. They leaned over the tank now 
and studied it. They had been joined by Sergeant McCoy, Bach's resident bomb 
expert, and another man from the Lunar Radiation Laboratory.
"This is Hans," said Birkson, moving a red dot in the tank by means of a dial on 
the side. It flicked over and around a vague gray shape that trailed dozens of 
wires. Bach wondered again at the pressures that would allow a man to like 
having his body stripped from him. There was nothing in that lead flask but the 
core of the man, the brain and central nervous system.
"Here's the body of the bomb. The two sub-critical masses. The H.E. charge, the 
timer, the arming barrier, which is now withdrawn. It's an old design, ladies 
and gentlemen. Old, but reliable. As basic as the bow and arrow. It's very much 
like the first one dropped on the Nippon Empire at Hiroshima."
"You're sure it'll go off, then?" Bach put in.
"Sure as taxes. Hell, a kid could build one of these in the bathroom, given only 
the uranium and some shielding equipment. Now let me see." He pored over the 
phantom in the tank, tracing out wiring paths with the experts. They debated 
possibilities, lines of attack, drawbacks. At last they seemed to reach a 
consensus.
"As I see it, we have only one option," Birkson said. "We have to go for his 
volitional control over the bomb. I'm pretty sure we've isolated the main cable 
that goes from him to the detonator. Knock that out, and he can't do a thing. We 
can pry that tin can open by conventional means and disarm that way. McCoy?"
"I agree," said McCoy. "We'd have a full hour, and I'm sure we can get in there 
with no trouble. When they cyborged this one, they put all their cards on the 
human operator. They didn't bother with entry blocks, since Hans could 
presumably blow it up before we could get close enough to do anything. With his 
control out, we only have to open it up with a torch and drop the damper into 
place.
The LRL man nodded his agreement. "Though I'm not quite as convinced as Mr. 
Birkson that he's got the right cable in mind for what he wants to do. If we had 
more time..."
"We've wasted enough time already," Bach said, decisively. She had swung rapidly 
from near terror of Roger Birkson to total trust. It was her only defense. She 
knew she could do nothing at all about the bomb, and had to trust someone.
"Then we go for it. Is your crew in place? Do they know what to do? And above 
all, are they good? Really good? There won't be a second chance."
"Yes, yes, and yes," Bach said. "They'll do it. We know how to cut rock on 
Luna."
"Then give them the coordinates, and go." Birkson seemed to relax a bit. Bach 
saw that he had been under some form of tension, even if it was only excitement 
at the challenge. He had just given his last order. It was no longer in his 
hands. His fatalistic gambler's instinct came into play and the restless, 
churning energy he had brought to the enterprise vanished. There was nothing to 
do about it but wait. Birkson was good at waiting. He had lived through 
twenty-one of these final countdowns.
He faced Bach and started to say something to her, then thought better of it. 
She saw doubt in his face for the first time, and it made her skin crawl. Damn 
it, she had thought he was sure.
"Chief," he said, quietly, "I want to apologize for the way I treated you these 
last few hours. It's not something I can control when I'm on the job. I..."
This time it was Bach's turn to laugh, and the release of tension it brought 
with it was almost orgasmic. She felt like she hadn't laughed for a million 
years.
"Forgive me," she said. "I saw you were worried, and thought it was about the 
bomb. It was just such a relief."
"Oh, yeah," he said, dismissing it. "No point in worrying now. Either your 
people hit it or they don't. We won't know if they don't. What I was saying, it 
just sort of comes over me. Honestly. I get horny, I get manic, I totally forget 
about other people except as objects to be manipulated. So I just wanted to say 
I like you. I'm glad you put up with me. And I won't pester you anymore."
She came over and put her hand on his shoulder. "Can I call you Roger? Thanks. 
Listen, if this thing works, I'll have dinner with you. I'll give you the key to 
the city, a ticker tape parade, and a huge bonus for a consultant fee... and my 
eternal friendship. We've been tense, okay? Let's forget about these last few 
hours."
"All right." His smile was quite different this time.
Outside, it happened very quickly. The crew on the laser drill were positioned 
beneath the bomb, working from ranging reports and calculations to aim their 
brute at precisely the right spot.
The beam took less than a tenth of a second to eat through the layer of rock in 
the ceiling and emerge in the air above the Leystrasse. It ate through the metal 
sheath of the bomb's underside, the critical wire, the other side of the bomb, 
and part of the ceiling like they weren't even there. It had penetrated into the 
level above before it could be shut off.
There was a shower of sparks, a quick sliding sound, then a muffled thud. The 
whole structure of the bomb trembled, and smoke screeched from the two drilled 
holes in the top and bottom. Bach didn't understand it, but could see that she 
was alive and assumed it was over. She turned to Birkson, and the shock of 
seeing him nearly stopped her heart.
His face was a gray mask, drained of blood. His mouth hung open. He swayed, and 
almost fell over. Bach caught him and eased him to the floor.
"Roger... what is it? Is it still... will it go off? Answer me, answer me. What 
should I so?"
He waved weakly, pawed at her hands. She realized he was trying to give her a 
reassuring pat. It was feeble indeed.
"No danger," he wheezed, trying to get his breath back. "No danger. The wrong 
wire. We hit the wrong wire. Just luck, is all, nothing but luck."
She remembered. They had been trying to remove Hans' control over the bomb. Was 
he still in control? Birkson answered before she could speak.
"He's dead. That explosion. That was the detonator going off. He reacted just 
too late. We hit the disarming switch. The shield dropped into place so the 
masses couldn't come together even if the bomb was set off. Which he did. He set 
it off. That sound, that mmmmmmwooooph!" He was not with her. His eyes stared 
back into a time and place that held horror for him.
"I heard that sound—the detonator—once before, over the telephone. I was 
coaching this woman, no more than twenty-five, because I couldn't get there in 
time. She had only three more minutes. I heard that sound, then nothing, 
nothing."
She sat near him on the floor as her crew began to sort out the mess, haul the 
bomb away for disposal, laugh and joke in hysterical relief. At last Birkson 
regained control of himself. There was no trace of the bomb except a distant 
hollowness in his eyes.
"Come on," he said, getting to his feet with a little help from her. "You're 
going on twenty-four-hour leave. You've earned it. We're going back to Burning 
Tree and you're going to watch me make a par five on the eighteenth. Then we've 
got a date for dinner. What place is nice?"
 
The Funhouse Effect
"DID YOU SEE WHAT'S playing at the theater tonight, Mr. Quester?" The stewardess 
was holding a printed program in her hand.
"No, and I haven't the time now. Where's the captain? There are some things he 
should—"
"Two old flat movies," she went on, oblivious to his protests. "Have you ever 
seen one? They're very interesting and entertaining. A Night to Remember and The 
Poseidon Adventure. I'll make a reservation for you."
Quester called out to her as she was leaving.
"I'm trying to tell you, there's something badly wrong on this ship. Won't 
anybody listen?"
But she was gone, vanished into the crowd of merrymakers. She was busy enough 
without taking time to listen to the wild tales of a nervous passenger.
Quester was not quite right in thinking of Hell's Snowball as a ship. The 
official welcoming pamphlet referred to it as an asterite, but that was 
advertising jargon. Anyone else would have called it a comet.
Icarus Lines, Inc., the owners, had found it drifting along at a distance of 500 
AU. It had been sixty kilometers in diameter, weighing in at about one hundred 
trillion tons.
Fortunately, it was made up of frozen liquids rich in hydrogen. Moving it was 
only a matter of installing a very large fusion motor, then sitting back for 
five years until it was time to slow it down for orbit in the umbra of Mercury.
The company knew they would not get many passengers on a bare snowball. They 
tunneled into the comet, digging out staterooms and pantries and crew's quarters 
as they went. The ship-fitters went in and paneled the bare ice walls in metal 
and plastic, then filled the rooms with furniture. There was room to spare, 
power to spare. They worked on a grand scale, and they had a grand vision. They 
intended to use the captive comet for sightseeing excursions to the sun.
Things went well for fifty years. The engine would shove the Snowball out of the 
protective shadow and, with the expenditure of ten million tons of ice and 
ammonia for reaction mass, inject it into a hyperbolic orbit that would actually 
brush the fringes of the solar corona. Business was good. Hell's Snowball became 
the vacation bonanza of the system, more popular than Saturn's Rings. But it had 
to end. This was to be the last trip. Huge as it is, there comes a time when a 
comet has boiled off too much of its mass to remain stable in a close approach 
to the sun. Hell's Snowball was robbed of a hundred million tons with each trip. 
The engineers had calculated it was good for only one more pass before it 
cracked apart from internal heating. But Quester was beginning to wonder. There 
was the matter of the engines. Early on the fourth day of the excursion, Quester 
had gone on a guided tour of the farside of the comet to see the fusion engines. 
The guide had quoted statistics all the way through the tunnel, priming the 
tourists for the mind-wrenching sight of them. They were the largest rocket 
engines ever constructed. Quester and everyone else had been prepared to be 
impressed.
He had been impressed; first at the size of the pits that showed where the 
engines had been, then at the look of utter amazement on the face of the tour 
guide. Also impressive had been the speed with which the expression had been 
masked. The guide sputtered for only a moment, then quickly filled in with a 
story that almost sounded logical.
"I wish they'd tell me these things," he laughed. Did the laugh sound hollow? 
Quester couldn't tell for sure. "The engines weren't due for removal until 
tomorrow. It's part of our accelerated salvage program, you see, whereby we 
remove everything that can be of use in fitting-out the Icarus, which you all 
saw near Mercury when you boarded. It's been decided not to slow Hell's Snowball 
when we complete this pass, but to let it coast on out where it came from. 
Naturally, we need to strip it as fast as possible. So equipment not actually 
needed for this trip has been removed already. The rest of it will be taken off 
on the other side of the sun, along with the passengers. I'm not a physicist, 
but evidently there is a saving in fuel. No need to worry about it; our course 
is set and we'll have no further need of the engines." He quickly shepherded the 
buzzing group of passengers back into the tunnel.
Quester was no physicist, either, but he could work simple equations. He was 
unable to find a way whereby Icarus Lines would save anything by removing the 
engines. The fuel was free; by their own admission whatever was left on the 
comet was to be discarded anyway. So why did it matter if they burned some more? 
Further, ships removing passengers and furnishings from the Snowball on the 
other side would have to match with its considerably velocity, then expend even 
more to slow down to solar system speeds. It sounded wasteful.
He managed to put this out of his mind. He was along for the ride, to have fun, 
and he wasn't a worrier. He had probably dropped a decimal point somewhere in 
his calculations, or was forgetting a little-known fact of ballistics. Certainly 
no one else seemed worried.
When he discovered that the lifeboats were missing, he was more angry than 
frightened.
"What are they doing to us?" he asked the steward who had come when he pressed 
the service bell. "Just because this is the last trip, does that mean we're not 
entitled to full protection? I'd like to know what's going on."
The steward, who was an affable man, scratched his head in bewilderment as he 
once more examined the empty lifeboat cradle.
"Beats me," he said, with a friendly grin. "Part of the salvage operation, I 
guess. But we've never had a spot of trouble in over fifty years. I hear the 
Icarus won't even carry lifeboats."
Quester fumed. If, sometime in the past, an engineer had decided Hell's Snowball 
needed lifeboats, he'd have felt a damn sight better if the ship still had 
lifeboats.
"I'd like to talk to someone who knows something about it."
"You might try the purser," the steward ventured, then quickly shook his head. 
"No, I forgot. The purser didn't make this trip. The first mate... no, she's... 
I guess that leaves the captain. You might talk to him."
Quester grumbled as he swam down the corridor toward the bridge. The company had 
no right to strip the ship before its final cruise. On the way there, he heard 
an announcement over the public address system.
"Attention. All passengers are to report to A Deck at 1300 hours for lifeboat 
drill. The purser... correction, the second officer will call the roll. 
Attendance is required of all passengers. That is all."
The announcement failed to mollify him, though he was puzzled.
The door to the bridge was ajar. There was a string spanning the open doorway 
with a hand-lettered sign hanging from it.
"The captain can be found at the temporary bridge," it read, "located on F Deck 
aft of the dispensary." Inside the room, a work crew was removing the last of 
the electronic equipment. There was the smell of ozone and oil, and the purple 
crackle of sparks. The room was little more than an ice-walled shell.
"What...?" Quester began.
"See the captain," the boss said tiredly, pulling out one of the last memory 
banks in a shower of shorting wires. "I just work here. Salvage crew."
Quester was reminded more of a wrecking crew. He started back toward F Deck.
"Correction on that last announcement," the PA said. "Lifeboat drill has been 
cancelled. The social director wishes to announce that he is no longer taking 
reservations for tours of the engine room. The second officer... correction, the 
third officer has requested all personnel to stay clear of the reactor room. 
There has been a slight spillage during the salvage program. Passengers are not 
to worry; this incident presents no danger to them. The power requirements of 
the ship are being taken over by the auxiliary reactor. The social director 
wishes to announce that tours of the auxiliary reactor are suspended. That is 
all."
"Is it just me?" Quester asked himself as he drifted by the groups of other 
passengers, none of whom seemed upset by any of this.
He located the temporary bridge, at the end of a little-used corridor that was 
stacked high with plastic crates marked "Immediate Removal—Rush, Urgent, Highest 
Priority." He insinuated his way past them with difficulty and was about to 
knock on the door when he was stopped by the sound of voices on the other side. 
The voices were angry.
"I tell you, we should abort this trip at once. I've lost the capability to 
maneuver the ship in the event of an emergency. I told you I wanted the attitude 
thrusters to remain in place until after perihelenion."
"Captain, there is no use protesting now," said another voice. "Maybe I agree 
with you; maybe I don't. In any case, the engines are gone now, and there's no 
chance of installing them again. There is to be no argument with these orders. 
The company's in bad shape, what with outfitting the new asterite. Can you 
picture what it would cost to abort this trip and refund the fares to seven 
thousand passengers?"
"Hang the company!" the captain exploded. "This ship is unsafe! What about those 
new calculations I gave you—the ones from Lewiston? Have you looked them over?"
The other voice was conciliatory. "Captain, Captain, you're wasting energy 
worrying about that crackpot. He's been laughed out of the Lunar Academy; his 
equations simply do not work."
"They look sound enough to me."
"Take it from me, Captain, the best minds in the system have assured us that the 
Snowball will hold together. Why, this old hunk of junk is good for a dozen more 
trips, and you know it. We've erred, if at all, on the conservative side."
"Well, maybe," the captain grumbled. "I still don't like that lifeboat 
situation, though. How many did you say we had left?"
"Twenty-eight," the other soothed.
Quester felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He peeked into the room, 
not knowing what he would say. But there was no one there. The voices were 
coming from a speaker on the wall. Evidently the captain was in another part of 
the ship. He considered going to his cabin and getting drunk, then decided it 
was a bad idea. He would go to the casino and get drunk. On the way he passed a 
lifeboat cradle that was not empty. It was the site of bustling activity, with 
crews hurrying up and down ramps into the ship. He stuck his head in, saw that 
the seats had been stripped and the interior was piled high with plastic crates. 
More were being added every minute.
He stopped one of the workers and asked her what was going on.
"Ask the captain," she shrugged. "They told me to stack these boxes in here, 
that's all I know."
He stood back and watched until the loading was complete, then was told to stand 
clear as the nullfield was turned off to allow the boat to drift clear of the 
Snowball. At a distance of two kilometers, the engines fired and the boat was 
away, blasting back toward the inner planets.
"Twenty-seven," Quester mumbled to himself and headed for the casino.
"Twenty-seven?" the woman asked.
"Probably less by now," Quester said with a broad shrug. "And they only hold 
fifty people."
They were sitting together at the roulette table, pressed into close company by 
the random currents of humanity that ebbed and flowed through the room. Quester 
was not gambling; his legs had just happened to give out, and the nearest place 
to collapse had been the chair he was sitting in. The woman had materialized out 
of his alcoholic mist.
It was nice to get back to gravity after the weightless levels of the Snowball. 
But, he discovered, getting drunk in a weightless state was less hazardous. One 
needn't worry about one's balance. Here in the casino there was the problem of 
standing. It was too much of a problem for Quester.
The casino was located at one end of a slowly rotating arm, which was mounted 
horizontally on a pivoted mast that extended straight up from Hell's Snowball. 
On the other end of the arm were the restaurants that served the passengers. 
Both modules were spherical; the structure resembled an anemometer with silver 
balls instead of cups on the ends. The view was tremendous. Overhead was the 
silver sphere that contained the restaurants. To one side was the slowly moving 
surface of the comet, a dirty gray even in the searing sunlight. To the other 
side were the stars and the main attraction: Sol itself, blemished with a choice 
collection of spots. The viewing was going to be good this trip. If anyone was 
alive to view it, Quester added to himself.
"Twenty-seven, you say?" the woman asked again.
"That's right, twenty-seven."
"One hundred Marks on number twenty-seven," she said and placed her bet. Quester 
looked up, wondering how many times he would have to repeat himself before she 
understood him.
The ball clattered to a stop, on number twenty-seven, and the croupier shoveled 
a tottering stack of chips to the woman. Quester looked around him again at the 
huge edifice he was sitting in, the incalculable tonnage of the spinning 
structure, and laughed.
"I wondered why they built this place," he said. "Who needs gravity?"
"Why did they build it?" she asked him, picking up the chips.
"For him," he said, pointing to the croupier. "That little ball would just hang 
there on the rim without gravity." He felt himself being lifted to his feet, and 
stood in precarious balance. He threw his arms wide.
"For that matter, that's what all the gravity in the system's for. To bring 
those little balls down to the number, the old wheel of fortune; and when 
they've got your number, there's nothing you can do because your number's up, 
that's all there is, twenty-seven, that's all..."
He was sobbing and mumbling philosophical truths as she led him from the room.
The ride in the elevator to the hub of the rotating structure sobered Quester 
considerably. The gradually decreasing weight combined with the Coriolis effect 
that tended to push him against one wall was more than an abused stomach could 
take. The management knew that and had provided facilities for it. Quester 
vomited until his legs were shaky. Luckily, by then he was weightless and didn't 
need them.
The woman towed him down the passageway like a toy balloon. They ended up in the 
grand ballroom.
The ballroom was a hemisphere of nullfield sitting on the surface of the 
Snowball. From inside it was invisible. The dance area was crowded with couples 
trying out free-fall dances. Most of them had the easy grace of a somersaulting 
giraffe.
Quester sobered a bit in the near-zero gee. Part of it was the effect of the 
antinausea drugs he had taken for free-fall; they also tended to reduce the 
effects of alcohol.
"What's your name?" he asked the woman.
"Solace. You?"
"I'm Quester. From Tharsis, Mars. I'm... I'm confused about a lot of things."
She floated over to a table, still towing Quester, and fastened him to one of 
the chairs. He turned his attention from the twisting bodies in the dance area 
to his companion.
Solace was tall, much taller than a man or a woman would naturally grow. He 
estimated she was two and a half meters from head to toe, though she had no 
toes. Her feet had been replaced with peds, oversized hands popular with 
spacers. They were useful in free-fall, and for other things, as he discovered 
when she reached across the table with one slender leg and cupped his cheek with 
her ped. Her legs were as limber and flexible as her arms.
"Thanks," she said, with a smile. "For the luck, I mean."
"Hmmm? Oh, you mean the bet." Quester had to drag his attention back from the 
delightful sensation on his cheek. She was beautiful. "But I wasn't advising you 
on a bet. I was trying to tell you..."
"I know. You were saying something about the lifeboats."
"Yes. It's astounding, I..." He stopped, realizing that he couldn't remember 
what was astounding. He was having trouble focusing on her. She was wearing a 
kaleidoholo suit, which meant she was naked but for a constantly shifting 
pattern of projections. There seemed to be fifty or sixty different suits 
contained in it, none persisting for longer than a few seconds. It would melt 
smoothly from a silver sheath dress to an almost military uniform with gold 
braid and buttons to a garland of flowers to Lady Godiva. He rubbed his eyes and 
went on.
"They're salvaging the ship," he said. "The last I heard there were only 
twenty-seven lifeboats left. And more are leaving every hour. They're taking the 
electronic equipment with them. And the furnishings and the machinery and who 
knows what else. I overheard the captain talking to a company representative. 
He's worried, the captain! But no one else seems to be. Am I worrying over 
nothing, or what?"
Solace looked down at her folded hands for a moment, then brought her eyes back 
up to his.
"I've been uneasy, too," she said in a low voice. She leaned closer to him. 
"I've shared my apprehensions with a group of friends. We... get together and 
share what we have learned. Our friends laugh at us when we tell them of our 
suspicions, but..." She paused and looked suspiciously around her.
Even in his befuddled state Quester had to smile. "Go on," he said.
She seemed to make up her mind about him and leaned even closer.
"We'll be meeting again soon. Several of us have been scouting around—I was 
covering the casino when we met—and we'll share our findings and try to come to 
a consensus on what to do. Are you with us?"
Quester fought off the feeling, quite strong since his suspicions began to haunt 
him, that he was somehow trapped in an adventure movie. But if he was, he was 
just getting to the good part. "You can count me in."
With no further ado, she grabbed his arm in one of her peds and began towing him 
along, using her hands to grab onto whatever was handy. He thought of objecting, 
but she was much better than he at weightless maneuvering. "May I have your 
attention, please?"
Quester looked around and spotted the captain standing in the center of the 
stage, in front of the band. He was not alone. On each side of him were women 
dressed in black jumpsuits, their eyes alertly scanning the audience. They were 
armed.
"Please, please." The captain held up his arms for quiet and eventually got it. 
He wiped his brow with a handkerchief.
"There is no cause for alarm. No matter what you may have been hearing, the ship 
is in no danger. The stories about the main engines having been removed are 
lies, pure and simple. We are looking for the people who planted these rumors 
and will soon have all of them in custody. The chief engineer wishes to announce 
that tours of the engine room will be resumed—"
One of the women shot the captain a glance. He mopped his brow again and 
consulted a slip of paper in his hand. The hand was shaking.
"Ah, a correction. The engineer announces that tours will not be resumed. There 
is, ah... that is, they are being overhauled, or... or something." The woman 
relaxed slightly.
"The rumor that the main reactor has been shut down is unfounded. The surgeon 
has told me that there has been no spillage of radioactive material, and even if 
there had been, the amount was insignificant and would only have been a danger 
to those passengers with high cumulative exposures. The surgeon will be 
collecting dosimeters at 1400 hours tomorrow.
"Let me repeat: there is no cause for alarm. As captain of this ship, I take a 
very dim view of rumormongering. Anyone caught disseminating stories about the 
unspaceworthiness of this vessel in the future will be dealt with sternly."
"Lifeboat drill will be held tomorrow on A Deck, as scheduled. Anyone who has 
not as yet been checked out on his life jacket will do so by noon tomorrow, 
ship's time. That is... is that all?" This last was addressed to the woman to 
his left, in a whisper. She nodded curtly, and the three of them walked off the 
stage, their magnetized shoes sticking to the deck like flypaper.
Solace nudged Quester in the ribs.
"Are those women bodyguards?" she whispered. "Do you think his life is in 
danger?"
Quester looked at the way the women gripped the captain's elbows. Not 
bodyguards, but guards, certainly...
"Say, I just remembered I still have some unpacking to do," he said. "Maybe I 
can join you and your friends later on. I'll just nose around, see what I can 
pick up, you know, and—"
But he couldn't squirm free of her grip. Those peds were strong.
"May I have your attention, please? Lifeboat drill for tomorrow has been 
canceled. Repeat, canceled. Passengers showing up at the cradles for lifeboat 
drill will be interrogated, by order of the captain. That is all."
On the way to Solace's room, the two were shoved out of the way by a group of 
people in uniform. Their faces were determined, and some of them carried clubs.
"Where does that corridor lead?" he asked.
"To the bridge. But they won't find anything there, it's been—"
"I know."
"I think we're being followed."
"Wha'?" He looked behind him as he bounced along in her wake. There was someone 
back there, all right. They turned a corner and Solace hauled Quester into a 
dimly lit alcove, bumping his head roughly against the wall. He was getting fed 
up with this business of being dragged. If this was an adventure, he was 
Winnie-the-Pooh following Christopher Robin up the stairs. He started to object, 
but she clapped a hand around his mouth, holding him close.
"Shhh," she hissed.
A fine thing, Quester grumbled to himself. Can't even speak my mind. He thought 
he was better off before, alone and puzzled, then he was with this mysterious 
giantess towing him around.
Of course, things could have been worse, he reflected. She was warm and naked to 
the touch no matter what his eyes told him. And tall. Floating there in the 
hall, she extended above and below him by a third of a meter.
"How can I think of something like that at a time like this?" he began, but she 
hushed him again and her arms tightened around him. He realized she was really 
scared, and he began to be so himself. The liquor and the sheer unlikelihood of 
recent events had detached him; he was drifting along, rudderless. Nothing in 
his life had prepared him to cope with things like the black-suited man who now 
eased slowly around the corner in shadowy pursuit of them.
They watched him from the concealment of the alcove. Many of the lights in the 
corridor were not working or were mere empty sockets. Earlier, Quester had been 
alarmed at this, adding it to his list of ways not to run a spaceship. Now, he 
was grateful.
"He doesn't look much like a man at all," Solace whispered. And sure enough, he 
didn't. Nor a woman. He didn't look too human.
"Humanoid, I'd say," Quester whispered back. "Pity no one told us. Obviously the 
system's been invaded by the first intelligent race of humanoids."
"Don't talk nonsense. And be quiet." The man, or whatever it was, was very close 
now. They could see the ill-fitting pink mask, the lumps and nodules in odd 
places under his sweater and pants. He passed them by, leaving a pungent odor of 
hydrogen sulfide.
Quester found himself laughing. To his surprise, Solace laughed along with him. 
The situation was so grotesque that he had to either laugh or scream.
"Listen," he said, "I don't believe in sinister humanoid invaders."
"No? But you believe in superhuman heavy-planet Invaders like the ones that have 
occupied the Earth, don't you? And you haven't even seen them."
"Are you telling me you do believe that thing was an... an alien?"
"I'm not saying anything. But I'm wondering what those people were doing, 
earlier, armed with clubs. Do you believe in mutiny?"
"Solace, I'd welcome a mutiny, I'd throw a party, give away all my worldly 
wealth to charity if only such a normal, everyday thing would happen. But I 
don't think it will. I think we've fallen through the looking glass."
"You think you're crazy?" She looked at him skeptically.
"Yep. I'm going to turn myself in right now. You're obviously not even here. 
Maybe this ship isn't even here."
She twisted slightly in the air, bringing her legs up close to his chest.
"I'll prove to you I'm here," she said, working with all four hands and peds at 
unbuttoning him.
"Hold it. What are you... how can you think of that at a time like..." It 
sounded familiar. She laughed, holding his wrists with her hands as her peds 
quickly stripped him.
"You've never been in danger before," she said. "I have. It's a common reaction 
to get aroused in a tight spot, especially when the danger's not immediate. And 
you are, and so am I."
It was true. He was, but didn't like doing it in the hallway.
"There's not room here," he protested. "Another of those critters could come 
along."
"Yes, isn't it exciting?" Her eyes were alight by now, and her breath was fast 
and shallow. "And if you think there isn't room, you haven't done it in 
free-fall yet. Ever tried the Hermesian Hyperbola?"
Quester sighed, and submitted. Soon he was doing more than submitting. He 
decided she was as crazy as everyone else, or, alternatively, he was crazy and 
she was as sane as everybody else. But she was right about the free-fall. There 
was plenty of room.
They were interrupted by a crackle of static from the public address. They 
paused to listen to it.
"Attention, your attention please. This is the provisional captain speaking. The 
traitor running-dog lackey ex-captain is now in chains. Long Live the 
Revolutionary Committee, who will now lead us on the true path of Procreative 
Anti-Abortionism."
"Free-Birthers!" Quester yelped. "We've been hijacked by Free-Birthers!"
The new captain, who sounded like a woman, started to go on, but her voice was 
cut short in a hideous gurgle.
"Long Live the Loyalist Faction of the Glorious Siblings of the—" a new voice 
began, but it, too, was cut short. Voices shouted in rapid succession.
"The counterrevolution has been suppressed," shouted yet another captain. 
"Liberate our wombs! Our gonads—our Freedom! Attention, attention! All female 
persons aboard this ship are ordered to report at once to the infirmary for 
artificial insemination. Shirkers will be obliterated. That is all."
Neither of them said anything for a long time. At last Solace eased herself away 
a bit and let him slip out of her. She let out a deep breath.
"I wonder if I could plead double jeopardy?"
"Insanity four, reality nothing," Quester giggled. He was in high spirits as 
they skulked their way down the dim corridors.
"Are you still on that?" Solace shot back. She sounded a bit tired of him. She 
kept having to hang back as he struggled to keep up with her supple 
quadridexterous pace. "Listen, if you want to get fitted for a straitjacket, the 
tailor's in the other direction. Me, I don't care how ridiculous the situation 
gets. I'll keep coping."
"I can't help it," he admitted. "I keep feeling that I wrote this story several 
years ago. Maybe in another life. I dunno."
She peered around another corner. They were on their way to the temporary 
bridge. They had stopped three times already to watch black-suited figures drift 
by. Everyone else they had seen— those dressed in holiday clothes—had ducked 
into doorways as quickly as they themselves. At least it seemed that the 
passengers were no longer in the holiday mood, were aware that there was 
something wrong.
"You a writer?" she asked.
"Yes. I write scientifiction. Maybe you've heard of it. There's a cult 
following, but we don't reach the general public."
"What's it about?"
"Scientifiction deals with life on Earth. It's set in the future— each of us 
creates our own hypothetical future with our own ground rules and set of 
assumptions. The basic assumption is that we figure out a way to fight the 
Invaders and reclaim the Earth, or at least a beachhead. In my stories we've 
managed to rout the Invaders, but the dolphins and whales are still around, and 
they want their allies back, so humans fight them. It's adventure stuff, purely 
for thrills. I have a hero called the Panama Kid."
She glanced back at him, and he couldn't read the expression. He was used to 
taking the defensive about his vocation.
"Is there a living in that?"
"I managed to get aboard the Snowball for the final trip, didn't I? That wasn't 
cheap, but then you know that. Say, what do you do for a living?"
"Nothing. My mother was a holehunter. She made a strike in '45 and got rich. She 
went out again and left the money to me. She's due back in about fifty years, 
unless she gets swallowed by a hole."
"So you were born on Pluto?"
"No. I was born in free-fall, about one hundred AU from the sun. I think that's 
a record so far." She grinned back at him, looking pleased with herself. "You 
made up your mind yet?"
"Huh?"
"Have you decided if you're the author or a character? If you really think 
you're crazy, you can shove off. What can you do but accept the reality of your 
senses?"
He paused and really thought about it for the first time since he met her.
"I do," he said firmly. "It's all happening. Holy Cetacean, it really is 
happening."
"Glad to have you with us. I told you you couldn't experience the Hermesian 
Hyperbola and still doubt your senses.
It hadn't been the love-making, Quester knew. That could be as illusory as 
anything else; he had the stained sheets to prove it. But he believed in her, 
even if there was something decidedly illogical about the goings-on around her.
"Attention, attention."
"Oh, shit. What now?" They slowed near a speaker so they could listen without 
distortion.
"Glad tidings! This is the provisional captain, speaking for the ad hoc steering 
committee. We have decided to steer this comet into a new, closer approach to 
the sun, thus gaining speed for a faster departure from solar space. It has been 
decided to convert this vessel hereafter to be referred to as the Spermatozoa, 
into an interstellar colony ship to spread the seed of humanity to the stars. 
All passengers are hereby inducted into the Proletarian Echelon of the Church of 
Unlimited Population. Conversion of all resources into a closed-ecology system 
will begin at once. Save your feces! Breathe shallowly until this crisis is 
past. Correction, correction, there is no crisis. Do not panic. Anyone found 
panicking will be shot. The steering committee has determined that there is no 
crisis. All surviving officers with knowledge of how to work these little 
gadgets on the bridge are ordered to report immediately."
Quester looked narrowly at Solace.
"Do you know anything about them?"
"I can pilot a ship, if that's what you mean. I've never flown anything quite 
this... enormous... but the principles are the same. You aren't suggesting that 
we help them, are you?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I didn't really think in terms of plans until a 
few minutes ago. What was your plan? Why are we headed for the bridge?"
She shrugged. "Just to see what the hell's going on, I guess. But maybe we ought 
to make some preparations. Let's get some life jackets."
They found a locker in the hall containing emergency equipment. Inside were 
twenty of the nullfield devices called life jackets. More accurately, they were 
emergency spacesuit generators, with attached water recyclers and oxygen supply. 
Each of them was a red cylinder about thirty centimeters long and fifteen in 
diameter with shoulder straps and a single flexible tube with a metal connector 
on the end. They were worn strapped to the back with the tube reaching over the 
shoulder.
In operation, the life jackets generated a nullfield that conformed closely to 
the contours of the wearer's body. The field oscillated between one and one and 
a half millimeters from the skin, and the resulting bellows action forced waste 
air through the exhaust nozzle. The device attached itself to a tiny metal valve 
that was surgically implanted in all the passengers. The valve's external 
connection was located under Quester's left collarbone. He had almost forgotten 
it was there. It was just a brass-colored flower that might be mistaken for 
jewelry but was actually part of a plumbing system that could route venous blood 
from his pulmonary artery to the oxygenator on his back. It then returned 
through a parallel pipe to his left auricle and on to his body.
Solace helped him get into it and showed him the few manual controls. Most of it 
was automatic. It would switch on the field around him if the temperature or 
pressure changed suddenly.
Then they were off again through the silent corridors to confront the hijackers.
At the last turn in the corridor before reaching the temporary bridge, they 
stopped to manually switch on their suit fields. Solace instantly became a 
mirror in the shape of a woman. The field reflected all electromagnetic 
radiation except through pupil-sized discontinuities over her eyes which let in 
controlled quanta of visible light. It was disquieting. The funhouse effect, it 
was called, and it looked as if her body had been twisted through another 
spatial dimension. She almost disappeared, except for a pattern of distortions 
that hurt Quester's eyes when he looked at it.
They reached the door leading to the bridge and stopped for a moment. It was a 
perfectly ordinary door. Quester wondered why he was here with this impulsive 
woman.
"Do we knock first, or what?" she mused. "What do you think, Quester? What would 
the Panama Kid do?"
"He'd knock it down," Quester said without hesitation. "But he wouldn't have 
gotten here without his trusty laser. Say, do you think we ought to go back 
and..."
"No. We'd better do it now before we think about it too hard. These suits are 
protections against any weapon I know of. The most they can do is capture us."
"Then what?"
"Then you can talk us out of it. You're the one who's fast with words, aren't 
you?"
Quester remained silent as she backed up and planted herself against the 
opposite wall, coiled and ready to hit the door with her shoulder. He didn't 
want to point out that skill with a typer and skill at oratory are not 
necessarily related. Besides, if she wanted to risk forcible insemination, it 
was her business.
Just on the off chance, he touched the door plate with his palm. It clicked, and 
the door opened. It was too late. Solace howled and barreled end-over-end into 
the room, reaching out with all four limbs like a huge silver starfish to grab 
onto something. Quester rushed after her, then stopped short as soon as he was 
into the room. There was no one in it.
"Talk about your anticlimax," Solace breathed, getting herself sorted out from a 
pile of crates at the far end of the room. "I... never mind. It was my fault. 
Who'd have thought it'd be unlocked?"
"I did," Quester pointed out. "Hold it a minute. We're sort of, well, we're 
being pretty hasty, aren't we? I haven't really had time to stop and think since 
we got going, but I think we're going at this the wrong way, I really do. Damn 
it, this isn't an adventure, where everything goes according to a set pattern. 
I've written enough of them, I ought to know. This is life, and that means 
there's got to be a rational explanation."
"So what is it?"
"I don't know. But I don't think we'll find it this way. Things have been 
happening... well, think about the announcements over the PA, for instance. They 
are crazy! No one's that crazy, not even Free-Birthers."
Quester's chain of thought was interrupted by the noisy entrance of four people 
in life jackets. He and Solace jumped up, banged their heads on the ceiling, and 
were quickly captured.
"All right, which one of you is the provisional captain?"
There was a short silence, then Solace broke it with a laugh.
"Lincoln?" she asked.
"Solace?"
The four were part of Solace's short-lived cabal. It seemed the ship was 
crawling with people who were concerned enough about the situation to try and do 
something about it. Before Quester caught all the names, they were surprised by 
another group of four, with three more close on their heels. The situation 
threatened to degenerate into a pitched battle of confused identities until 
someone had a suggestion.
"Why don't we hang a sign on the door? Anybody who comes in here thinks we're 
the hijackers." They did, and the sign said the provisional captain was dead. 
While new arrivals were pondering that and wondering what to do next, someone 
had time to explain the situation.
Someone arrived with a tray of drinks, and soon the would-be liberators were 
releasing their tensions in liquor and argument. There were fifteen pet theories 
expounded in as many minutes.
Now that he felt he had his feet under him, Quester adopted a wait-and-see 
attitude. The data was still insufficient.
" 'When you have eliminated the impossible,' " he quoted, " 'whatever is left, 
however improbable, must be the truth.' "
"So what does that gain us?" Solace asked.
"Only a viewpoint. Me, I think we'll have to wait until we get back to Mercury 
to find out what's been happening. Unless you bring me a live alien, or 
Free-Birther, or... some physical evidence."
"Then let's go look for it," Solace said.
"Attention, attention. This is the ship's computer speaking. I have grave news 
for all passengers. The entire crew has been assassinated. Until now, I have 
been blocked by a rogue program inserted by the revolutionaries which has 
prevented me from regaining control of operations. Luckily, this situation has 
been remedied. Unluckily, the bridge is still in the hands of the pirates! They 
have access to all my manual controls from their position, and I'm afraid there 
is but one course open to those of you who wish to avoid a catastrophe. We are 
on a trajectory that will soon intersect with the solar chromosphere, and I am 
powerless to correct it until the bridge is regained. Rally to me! Rise in 
righteous fury and repulse the evil usurpers! Storm the bridge! Long live the 
counterrevolution!"
There was a short silence as the implications sank in, then a babble of near 
panic. Several people headed for the door, only to come back and bolt it. There 
was an ominous roar from outside.
"...chromosphere? Where the hell are we? Has anyone been out on the surface 
lately?"
"...some pleasure cruise. I haven't even seen the sun and now they say we're 
about to..."
"...pirates, revolutions, counterrevolutions, Free-Birthers, aliens, for 
heaven's sake..."
Solace looked helplessly around her, listened to the pounding on the door. She 
located Quester hunkered down beside an instrument console and crouched beside 
him.
"Talk your way out of this one, Panama Kid," she yelled in his ear.
"My dear, I'm much too busy to talk. If I can get the back off this thing..." He 
worked at it and finally pulled off a metal cover. "There was a click from here 
when the computer came on the line."
There was a recorder inside, with a long reel of tape strung between playback 
heads. He punched a button that said rewind, watched the tape cycle briefly 
through, and hit the play button.
"Attention, attention. This is the ship's computer speaking. I have grave news 
for all passengers."
"We've heard that one already," someone shouted. Quester held his head in his 
hands for a moment, then looked up at Solace. She opened her mouth to say 
something, then bit her lip, her eyebrows almost touched in a look of puzzlement 
so funny that Quester would have laughed out loud. But the roof of the bridge 
evaporated.
It took only a few seconds. There was a blinding white light and a terrible 
roaring sound; then he was whisked into the air and pulled toward the outside. 
In an instant, everyone was covered in a nullfield and milling around the hole 
in the roof like a school of silverfish. In two's and three's they were sucked 
through. Then the room was empty and Quester was still in it. He looked down and 
saw Solace's hand around his ankle. She was grasping the firmly anchored 
computer console with one ped. She hauled him down to her and held him close as 
he found handholds. His teeth were chattering.
The door burst open, and there was another flurry of astonished passengers 
sucked through the roof. It didn't take as long this time; the hole in the roof 
was much larger. Beyond the hole was blackness.
Quester was surprised to see how calm he was once his initial shock had 
dissipated. He thanked Solace for saving him, then went on with what he had been 
about to say before the blowout.
"Did you talk to anyone who actually saw a mutineer, or a Free-Birther, or 
whatever?"
"Huh? Is this the time to...? No, I guess I didn't. But we saw those aliens, or 
whatever they—"
"Exactly. Whatever they were. They could have been anything. Someone is playing 
an awfully complicated trick on us. Something's happening, but it isn't what 
we've been led to believe."
"We've been led to believe something?"
"We've been given clues. Sometimes contradictory, sometimes absolutely insane, 
and encouraged to think a mutiny is going on; and this recorder proves it isn't 
happening. Listen." And he played back the recordings of various announcements 
they had heard earlier. It sounded tinny in their middle-ear receivers.
"But what does that prove?" Solace wanted to know. "Maybe this thing just taped 
them as they happened."
Quester was dumfounded for a moment. The theory of a vast conspiracy had 
appealed to him, even if he didn't know the reason for it.
He played past the point of the computer's announcement and sighed with relief 
when he heard that there was more. They let it natter on to no one about crises 
in the engine room, spillage in the second auxiliary reactor, and so on. It was 
obvious that it was playing a scenario that could no longer happen. Because the 
ship had already broken down completely and they were headed directly for...
They seemed to reach that thought simultaneously and scrambled up toward a hole 
in the ceiling to see what was going on. Quester forgot, as usual, to hang onto 
something and would have drifted straight up at near-escape velocity but for 
Solace's grasping hands.
The sun had eaten up the sky. It was huge, huge.
"That's what we paid to see," Solace said, weakly.
"Yeah. But I thought we'd see it from the ballroom. It's sort of... big, isn't 
it?"
"Do you think we're...?"
"I don't know. I never thought we'd get this close. Something the captain 
said—no, wait, it wasn't the captain, was it? But one of the recordings said 
something about..."
The ground heaved under them.
Quester saw the revolving casino complex off to his right. It swayed, danced, 
and came apart. The twin balls broke open, still rotating, and spilled tables 
and roulette wheels and playing cards and dishes and walls and carpets to the 
waiting stars. The debris formed a glittering double spiral of ejecta, like 
droplets of water spraying from the tips of a lawn sprinkler. Bits of it twisted 
in the sunlight, cartwheeling, caroming, semaphoring, kicking.
"Those are people."
"Are they...?" Quester couldn't ask it.
"No," Solace answered. "Those suits will protect them. Maybe they can be picked 
up later. You see, when you hit something wearing one of these suits, you—"
She didn't have time to finish, but Quester soon had a demonstration of what she 
was talking about. The ground opened a few meters from them. They were swept off 
their feet and tumbled helplessly across the dirty white surface until they hung 
suspended over the pit.
Quester hit the far side of the rift and bounced. He felt little of the impact, 
though he hit quite hard, because the suit field automatically stiffened when 
struck by a fast-moving object. He had cause to be thankful for that fact, 
because the rift began to close. He clawed his way along the surface toward the 
sunlight, but the walls of ice closed on him like a book snapped shut.
For a brief moment he was frozen while the ice and rock around him shook and 
vaporized under the incredible pressures of shearing force. He saw nothing but 
white heat as frozen methane and water became gas in an instant without an 
intermediate liquid stage. Then he was shot free as the masses came apart again.
He was still frozen into a climbing position, but now he could see. He was 
surrounded by chunks of debris, ranging from fist-sized rocks glowing bright red 
to giant icebergs that sublimated and disappeared before his eyes. Each time the 
suit began to lose its rigidity he was hit by another object and frozen into a 
new position as the suit soaked up the kinetic energy.
In a surprisingly short time, everything had vanished. Every particle of the 
explosion was impelled away from every other particle by the pressures of 
expanding superheated steam.
But Solace was still clinging to his ankle. She was the only thing left in his 
universe apart from a few tiny flashing stars of debris far in the distance, 
tumbling, tumbling.
And the sun.
He could look directly at it as it swung past his field of vision once every ten 
seconds. It could barely be seen as a sphere; each second it looked more like a 
flat, boiling plane. The majestic, crushing presence of it flattened his ego 
with a weight he could barely tolerate. He found Solace in his arms. He looked 
at her face, which was endless mirrors showing a vanishing series of suns 
rebounding from his face to hers and back to infinity. The funhouse effect, so 
disconcerting only an hour ago, seemed familiar and reassuring now in comparison 
to the chaos below him. He hugged her and closed his eyes.
"Are we going to hit it?" he asked.
"I can't tell. If we do, it'll be the hardest test these suits have ever had. I 
don't know if they have limits."
He was astounded. "You mean we might actually...?"
"I tell you, I don't know. Theoretically, yes, we could graze the chromosphere 
and not feel a thing, not from the heat, anyway. But it would be bound to slow 
us down pretty quickly. The deceleration could kill us. The suits protect us 
from outside forces almost completely, but internal accelerations can break 
bones and rupture organs. This suit doesn't stop gravity or inertia from 
working."
There was no use thinking too long on that possibility.
They were hurtling through the corona now, building up a wake of ionized 
particles that trailed after them like the tail of a tiny comet. They looked 
around them for other survivors but could find nothing. Soon, they could see 
little but a flickering haze as the electrical potential they had built up began 
discharging in furry feathers of hot plasma. It couldn't have lasted longer than 
a few minutes; then it began to fade slowly away.
There came a time when the sun could be seen to have shrunk slightly. They 
didn't speak of it, just held onto each other.
"What are our chances of pickup?" Quester wanted to know. The sun was now much 
smaller, receding almost visibly behind them. They were concerned only for the 
next twenty hours, which was the length of their oxygen reserves.
"How should I know? Someone must know by now that something's happened, but I 
don't know if any ships can get to us in time. It would depend on where they 
were at the time of the disaster."
Quester scanned the stars as they swept past his field of vision. They had no 
way to slow their rotation; so the stars still went around them every ten 
seconds.
He didn't expect to see anything but was not surprised when he did. It was the 
next-to-last in a long series of incongruities. There was a ship closing in on 
them. A voice over the radio told them to stand by to come aboard and asked them 
how they enjoyed the trip.
Quester was winding up for a reply, but the speaker said one word, slowly and 
clearly:
"Frightfulness."
And everything changed.
 
I woke up and found out it had all been a dream.
The very first story I wrote, back when I was five years old, ended with words 
very much like that last sentence. I'm not ashamed of it. The thought was not 
new, but it was original with me. It was only later that I learned it's not a 
fair way to end a story, that the reader deserves more than that.
So here's more.
I woke up and found out it had almost all been a dream. The word, 
"frightfulness," was a posthypnotic trigger that caused me to remember all the 
things which had been blocked from me by earlier suggestion.
I don't know why I'm bothering to explain all this. I guess old writing habits 
die hard. No matter that this is being written for a board of psychists, 
mediartists, and flacks; I have to preserve the narrative thread. I've broken 
the rules by changing to first person at the end, but I found I could not write 
the account Icarus Lines requested of me unless I did it in the third person.
"I" am Quester, though that's not my real name. I am a scientifiction writer, 
but I have no character named the Panama Kid. Solace's name is something else. 
It was suggested that I change the names.
I signed aboard Hell's Snowball knowing that it was going to break apart along 
the way. That's why so much of it had been stripped. They retained only enough 
to preserve a tenuous illusion that the trip was a normal one, then threw in 
everything they could think of to scare the daylights out of us.
We knew they would. We agreed to and submitted to a hypnotic treatment that 
would fool us into thinking we were on a normal trip and were released into the 
crazy world they cooked up for us. It's the first time they had ever tried it, 
and so they threw in everything in the book: aliens, accidents, mutiny, 
confusion, crackpots, and I didn't even see it all. The experience is different 
for each passenger, but the basic theme is to put us into a scary situation with 
evident peril of life and limb; shake well, and then let us come through the 
experience safe and sound.
There was no danger, not from the first to the last. We were on a stable, 
carefully calculated orbit. The life jackets were enough to keep us absolutely 
safe against anything we would encounter, and we were conditioned to have them 
on at the right time. As proof of this, not a single passenger was injured.
We were all nearly scared to death.
It says here you want to know the motive. I remember it clearly now, though I 
remembered an entirely different one at the time. I went on the Disaster Express 
because I had just sold a novel and wanted to do something wild, out of 
character. That was the wildest thing I could think of, and I could wish I had 
gone to a museum instead. Because the next question you want me to answer is how 
I feel about it now that it's over, and you won't like it. I hope I'm in the 
majority and you people at Icarus will give this thing up and never run another 
like it.
There used to be something called a "haunted house." One was led blindfolded 
through it and encountered various horrors, the effect being heightened by the 
unknown nature of the things one touched and was touched by. People have done 
things like that for as long as we have history. We go to movies to be scared, 
ride on roller coasters, read books, go to funhouses. Thrills are never cheap, 
no matter what they say. It takes skill to produce them, and art, and a 
knowledge of what will be genuinely thrilling and what will be only amusing.
You people had mixed success. Part of it was the kitchen-sink approach you took 
on this first trip. If you unified your theme the next time, stuck to a mutiny 
or an invasion, for instance, instead of mucking it up with all the other 
insanity you put in... but what am I saying? I don't want you to improve it. 
It's true that I was a little bemused by the unreality of the opener, but it was 
stark terror all the way when we approached the sun. My stomach still tightens 
just to think about it.
But—and I must cry it from the rooftops—you have gone too far. I'm basically 
conservative, as are all scientifiction writers, being concerned as we are with 
the past on Earth rather than the future in the stars. But I can't avoid 
thinking how frivolous it all was. Have we come to this? While our precious home 
planet remains under the three-hundred-year Occupation, do we devote ourselves 
to more and more elaborate ways of finding thrills?
I hope not.
There is a second consideration, one that I find it difficult to put into words. 
You hear of the "shipboard romance," when passengers become involved with each 
other only to part forever at their destination. Something of the sort happened 
to me and to Solace. We grew close on that loop through the corona. I didn't 
write about it. It's still painful. We clung to each other for two days. We made 
love with the stars at our feet.
We might even have remained involved, if our minds had been our own. But upon 
the utterance of that magic word we suddenly found that we were not the people 
we had been presenting ourselves as being. It's difficult enough to find out 
that one you care for is not the person she seemed to be; how much harder when 
it is you who are not what you thought you were?
It is a tremendous identity crisis, one that I am only now getting over. I, 
Quester, would not have behaved as I did aboard the Snowball if I had been in 
possession of all my faculties. We were tested, destructively tested in a way, 
to see if the injunction against discovering the underlying facts was strong 
enough to hold. It was, though I was beginning to see through the veils at the 
end. With a more consistent emergency I'm sure I would have had no inkling that 
it was anything but real. And that would be much worse. As it was, I was able to 
retain a degree of detachment, to entertain the notion that I might be insane. I 
was right.
The trip to the sun is thrill enough. Leave it at that, please, so that we may 
be sure of our loves and fears and not come to think that all might be illusion. 
I'll always have the memory of the way Solace looked when she woke from the 
dream she shared with me. The dream was gone; Solace was not the person I 
thought she might be. I'll have to look for solace elsewhere.
 
The Barbie Murders
THE BODY CAME TO the morgue at 2246 hours. No one paid much attention to it. It 
was a Saturday night, and the bodies were piling up like logs in a millpond. A 
harried attendant working her way down the row of stainless steel tables picked 
up the sheaf of papers that came with the body, peeling back the sheet over the 
face. She took a card from her pocket and scrawled on it, copying from the 
reports filed by the investigating officer and the hospital staff:
Ingraham, Leah Petrie. Female. Age: 35. Length: 2.1 meters. Mass: 59 kilograms. 
Dead on arrival, Crisium Emergency Terminal. Cause of death: homicide. Next of 
kin: unknown.
She wrapped the wire attached to the card around the left big toe, slid the dead 
weight from the table and onto the wheeled carrier, took it to cubicle 659A, and 
rolled out the long tray.
The door slammed shut, and the attendant placed the paperwork in the out tray, 
never noticing that, in his report, the investigating officer had not specified 
the sex of the corpse.
 
Lieutenant Anna-Louise Bach had moved into her new office three days ago and 
already the paper on her desk was threatening to avalanche onto the floor.
To call it an office was almost a perversion of the term. It had a file cabinet 
for pending cases; she could open it only at severe risk to life and limb. The 
drawers had a tendency to spring out at her, pinning her in her chair in the 
corner. To reach "A" she had to stand on her chair; "Z" required her either to 
sit on her desk or to straddle the bottom drawer with one foot in the legwell 
and the other against the wall.
But the office had a door. True, it could only be opened if no one was occupying 
the single chair in front of the desk.
Bach was in no mood to gripe. She loved the place. It was ten times better than 
the squadroom, where she had spent ten years elbow-to-elbow with the other 
sergeants and corporals.
Jorge Weil stuck his head in the door.
"Hi. We're taking bids on a new case. What am I offered?"
"Put me down for half a Mark," Bach said, without looking up from the report she 
was writing. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
"Not as busy as you're going to be." Weil came in without an invitation and 
settled himself in the chair. Bach looked up, opened her mouth, then said 
nothing. She had the authority to order him to get his big feet out of her 
"cases completed" tray, but not the experience in exercising it. And she and 
Jorge had worked together for three years. Why should a stripe of gold paint on 
her shoulder change their relationship? She supposed the informality was Weil's 
way of saying he wouldn't let her promotion bother him as long as she didn't get 
snotty about it.
Weil deposited a folder on top of the teetering pile marked "For Immediate 
Action," then leaned back again. Bach eyed the stack of paper—and the circular 
file mounted in the wall not half a meter from it, leading to the 
incinerator—and thought about having an accident. Just a careless nudge with an 
elbow...
"Aren't you even going to open it?" Weil asked, sounding disappointed. "It's not 
every day I'm going to hand-deliver a case."
"You tell me about it, since you want to so badly."
"All right. We've got a body, which is cut up pretty bad. We've got the murder 
weapon, which is a knife. We've got thirteen eyewitnesses who can describe the 
killer, but we don't really need them since the murder was committed in front of 
a television camera. We've got the tape."
"You're talking about a case which has to have been solved ten minutes after the 
first report, untouched by human hands. Give it to the computer, idiot." But she 
looked up. She didn't like the smell of it. "Why give it to me?"
"Because of the other thing we know. The scene of the crime. The murder was 
committed at the barbie colony."
"Oh, sweet Jesus."
 
The Temple of the Standardized Church in Luna was in the center of the 
Standardist Commune, Anytown, North Crisium. The best way to reach it, they 
found, was a local tube line which paralleled the Cross-Crisium Express Tube.
She and Weil checked out a blue-and-white police capsule with a priority sorting 
code and surrendered themselves to the New Dresden municipal transport 
system—the pill sorter, as the New Dresdenites called it. They were whisked 
through the precinct chute to the main nexus, where thousands of capsules were 
stacked awaiting a routing order to clear the computer. On the big conveyer 
which should have taken them to a holding cubby, they were snatched by a 
grapple—the cops called it the long arm of the law—and moved ahead to the 
multiple maws of the Cross-Crisium while people in other capsules glared at 
them. The capsule was inserted, and Bach and Weil were pressed hard into the 
backs of their seats.
In seconds they emerged from the tube and out onto the plain of Crisium, 
speeding along through the vacuum, magnetically suspended a few millimeters 
above the induction rail. Bach glanced up at the Earth, then stared out the 
window at the featureless landscape rushing by. She brooded.
It had taken a look at the map to convince her that the barbie colony was indeed 
in the New Dresden jurisdiction—a case of blatant gerrymandering if ever there 
was one. Anytown was fifty kilometers from what she thought of as the boundaries 
of New Dresden, but was joined to the city by a dotted line that represented a 
strip of land one meter wide.
A roar built up as they entered a tunnel and air was injected into the tube 
ahead of them. The car shook briefly as the shock wave built up, then they 
popped through pressure doors into the tube station of Anytown. The capsule 
doors hissed and they climbed out onto the platform.
The tube station at Anytown was primarily a loading dock and warehouse. It was a 
large space with plastic crates stacked against all the walls, and about fifty 
people working to load them into freight capsules.
Bach and Weil stood on the platform for a moment, uncertain where to go. The 
murder had happened at a spot not twenty meters in front of them, right here in 
the tube station.
"This place gives me the creeps," Weil volunteered.
"Me, too."
Every one of the fifty people Bach could see was identical to every other. All 
appeared to be female, though only faces, feet, and hands were visible, 
everything else concealed by loose white pajamas belted at the waist. They were 
all blonde; all had hair cut off at the shoulder and parted in the middle, blue 
eyes, high foreheads, short noses, and small mouths.
The work slowly stopped as the barbies became aware of them. They eyed Bach and 
Weil suspiciously. Bach picked one at random and approached her.
"Who's in charge here?" she asked.
"We are," the barbie said. Bach took it to mean the woman herself, recalling 
something about barbies never using the singular pronoun.
"We're supposed to meet someone at the temple," she said. "How do we get there?"
"Through that doorway," the woman said. "It leads to Main Street. Follow the 
street to the temple. But you really should cover yourselves."
"Huh? What do you mean?" Bach was not aware of anything wrong with the way she 
and Weil were dressed. True, neither of them wore as much as the barbies did. 
Bach wore her usual blue nylon briefs in addition to a regulation uniform cap, 
arm and thigh bands, and cloth-soled slippers. Her weapon, communicator, and 
handcuffs were fastened to a leather equipment belt.
"Cover yourself," the barbie said, with a pained look. "You're flaunting your 
differentness. And you, with all that hair..." There were giggles and a few 
shouts from the other barbies.
"Police business," Weil snapped.
"Uh, yes," Bach said, feeling annoyed that the barbie had put her on the 
defensive. After all, this was New Dresden, it was a public thoroughfare—even 
though by tradition and usage a Standardist enclave—and they were entitled to 
dress as they wished.
Main Street was a narrow, mean little place. Bach had expected a promenade like 
those in the shopping districts of New Dresden; what she found was 
indistinguishable from a residential corridor. They drew curious stares and 
quite a few frowns from the identical people they met.
There was a modest plaza at the end of the street. It had a low roof of bare 
metal, a few trees, and a blocky stone building in the center of a radiating 
network of walks.
A barbie who looked just like all the others met them at the entrance. Bach 
asked if she was the one Weil had spoken to on the phone, and she said she was. 
Bach wanted to know if they could go inside to talk. The barbie said the temple 
was off limits to outsiders and suggested they sit on a bench outside the 
building.
When they were settled, Bach started her questioning. "First, I need to know 
your name, and your title. I assume that you are... what was it?" She consulted 
her notes, taken hastily from a display she had called up on the computer 
terminal in her office. "I don't seem to have found a title for you."
"We have none," the barbie said. "If you must think of a title, consider us as 
the keeper of records."
"All right. And your name?"
"We have no name."
Bach sighed. "Yes, I understand that you forsake names when you come here. But 
you had one before. You were given one at birth. I'm going to have to have it 
for my investigation."
The woman looked pained. "No, you don't understand. It is true that this body 
had a name at one time. But it has been wiped from this one's mind. It would 
cause this one a great deal of pain to be reminded of it." She stumbled verbally 
every time she said "this one." Evidently even a polite circumlocution of the 
personal pronoun was distressing.
"I'll try to get it from another angle, then." This was already getting hard to 
deal with, Bach saw, and knew it could only get tougher. "You say you are the 
keeper of records."
"We are. We keep records because the law says we must. Each citizen must be 
recorded, or so we have been told."
"For a very good reason," Bach said. "We're going to need access to those 
records. For the investigation. You understand? I assume an officer has already 
been through them, or the deceased couldn't have been identified as Leah P. 
Ingraham."
"That's true. But it won't be necessary for you to go through the records again. 
We are here to confess. We murdered L. P. Ingraham, serial number 11005. We are 
surrendering peacefully. You may take us to your prison." She held out her 
hands, wrists close together, ready to be shackled.
Weil was startled, reached tentatively for his handcuffs, then looked to Bach 
for guidance.
"Let me get this straight. You're saying you're the one who did it? You, 
personally."
"That's correct. We did it. We have never defied temporal authority, and we are 
willing to pay the penalty."
"Once more." Bach reached out and grasped the barbie's wrist, forced the hand 
open, palm up. "This is the person, this is the body that committed the murder? 
This hand, this one right here, held the knife and killed Ingraham? This hand, 
as opposed to 'your' thousands of other hands?"
The barbie frowned.
"Put that way, no. This hand did not grasp the murder weapon. But our hand did. 
What's the difference?"
"Quite a bit, in the eyes of the law." Bach sighed, and let go of the woman's 
hand. Woman? She wondered if the term applied. She realized she needed to know 
more about Standardists. But it was convenient to think of them as such, since 
their faces were feminine.
"Let's try again. I'll need you—and the eyewitnesses to the crime—to study the 
tape of the murder. I can't tell the difference between the murderer, the 
victim, or any of the bystanders. But surely you must be able to. I assume 
that... well, like the old saying went, 'all Chinamen look alike.' That was to 
Caucasian races, of course. Orientals had no trouble telling each other apart. 
So I thought that you... that you people would..." She trailed off at the look 
of blank incomprehension on the barbie's face.
"We don't know what you're talking about."
Bach's shoulders slumped.
"You mean you can't... not even if you saw her again...?"
The woman shrugged. "We all look the same to this one."
 
Anna-Louise Bach sprawled out on her flotation bed later that night, surrounded 
by scraps of paper. Untidy as it was, her thought processes were helped by 
actually scribbling facts on paper rather than filing them in her datalink. And 
she did her best work late at night, at home, in bed, after taking a bath or 
making love. Tonight she had done both and found she needed every bit of the 
invigorating clarity it gave her.
Standardists.
They were an off-beat religious sect founded ninety years earlier by someone 
whose name had not survived. That was not surprising, since Standardists gave up 
their names when they joined the order, made every effort consistent with the 
laws of the land to obliterate the name and person as if he or she had never 
existed. The epithet "barbie" had quickly been attached to them by the press. 
The origin of the word was a popular children's toy of the twentieth and early 
twenty-first centuries, a plastic, sexless, mass-produced "girl" doll with an 
elaborate wardrobe.
The barbies had done surprisingly well for a group which did not reproduce, 
which relied entirely on new members from the outside world to replenish their 
numbers. They had grown for twenty years, then reached a population stability 
where deaths equalled new members—which they call "components." They had 
suffered moderately from religious intolerance, moving from country to country 
until the majority had come to Luna sixty years ago.
They drew new components from the walking wounded of society, the people who had 
not done well in a world which preached conformity, passivity, and tolerance of 
your billions of neighbors, yet rewarded only those who were individualist and 
aggressive enough to stand apart from the herd. The barbies had opted out of a 
system where one had to be at once a face in the crowd and a proud individual 
with hopes and dreams and desires. They were the inheritors of a long tradition 
of ascetic withdrawal, surrendering their names, their bodies, and their 
temporal aspirations to a life that was ordered and easy to understand.
Bach realized she might be doing some of them a disservice in that evaluation. 
They were not necessarily all losers. There must be those among them who were 
attracted simply by the religious ideas of the sect, though Bach felt there was 
little in the teachings that made sense.
She skimmed through the dogma, taking notes. The Standardists preached the 
commonality of humanity, denigrated free will, and elevated the group and the 
consensus to demi-god status. Nothing too unusual in the theory; it was the 
practice of it that made people queasy.
There was a creation theory and a godhead, who was not worshipped but 
contemplated. Creation happened when the Goddess—a prototypical earth-mother who 
had no name—gave birth to the universe. She put people in it, all alike, stamped 
from the same universal mold.
Sin entered the picture. One of the people began to wonder. This person had a 
name, given to him or her after the original sin as part of the punishment, but 
Bach could not find it written down anywhere. She decided that it was a dirty 
word which Standardists never told an outsider.
This person asked Goddess what it was all for. What had been wrong with the 
void, that Goddess had seen fit to fill it with people who didn't seem to have a 
reason for existing?
That was too much. For reasons unexplained—and impolite to even ask 
about—Goddess had punished humans by introducing differentness into the world. 
Warts, big noses, kinky hair, white skin, tall people and fat people and 
deformed people, blue eyes, body hair, freckles, testicles, and labia. A billion 
faces and fingerprints, each soul trapped in a body distinct from all others, 
with the heavy burden of trying to establish an identity in a perpetual shouting 
match.
But the faith held that peace was achieved in striving to regain that lost Eden. 
When all humans were again the same person, Goddess would welcome them back. 
Life was a testing, a trial.
Bach certainly agreed with that. She gathered her notes and shuffled them 
together, then picked up the book she had brought back from Anytown. The barbie 
had given it to her when Bach asked for a picture of the murdered woman.
It was a blueprint for a human being.
The title was The Book of Specifications. The Specs, for short. Each barbie 
carried one, tied to her waist with a tape measure. It gave tolerances in 
engineering terms, defining what a barbie could look like. It was profusely 
illustrated with drawings of parts of the body in minute detail, giving 
measurements in millimeters.
She closed the book and sat up, propping her head on a pillow. She reached for 
her viewpad and propped it on her knees, punched the retrieval code for the 
murder tape. For the twentieth time that night, she watched a figure spring 
forward from a crowd of identical figures in the tube station, slash at Leah 
Ingraham, and melt back into the crowd as her victim lay bleeding and 
eviscerated on the floor.
She slowed it down, concentrating on the killer, trying to spot something 
different about her. Anything at all would do. The knife struck. Blood spurted. 
Barbies milled about in consternation. A few belatedly ran after the killer, not 
reacting fast enough. People seldom reacted quickly enough. But the killer had 
blood on her hand. Make a note to ask about that.
Bach viewed the film once more, saw nothing useful, and decided to call it a 
night.
 
The room was long and tall, brightly lit from strips high above. Bach followed 
the attendant down the rows of square locker doors which lined one wall. The air 
was cool and humid, the floor wet from a recent hosing.
The man consulted the card in his hand and pulled the metal handle on locker 
659A, making a noise that echoed through the bare room. He slid the drawer out 
and lifted the sheet from the corpse.
It was not the first mutilated corpse Bach had seen, but it was the first nude 
barbie. She immediately noted the lack of nipples on the two hills of flesh that 
pretended to be breasts, and the smooth, unmarked skin in the crotch. The 
attendant was frowning, consulting the card on the corpse's foot.
"Some mistake here," he muttered. "Geez, the headaches. What do you do with a 
thing like that?" He scratched his head, then scribbled through the large letter 
"F" on the card, replacing it with a neat "N." He looked at Bach and grinned 
sheepishly. "What do you do?" he repeated.
Bach didn't much care what he did. She studied L. P. Ingraham's remains, hoping 
that something on the body would show her why a barbie had decided she must die.
There was little difficulty seeing how she had died. The knife had entered her 
abdomen, going deep, and the wound extended upward from there in a slash that 
ended beneath the breastbone. Part of the bone was cut through. The knife had 
been sharp, but it would have taken a powerful arm to slice through that much 
meat.
The attendant watched curiously as Bach pulled the dead woman's legs apart and 
studied what she saw there. She found the tiny slit of the urethra set back 
around the curve, just anterior to the anus.
Bach opened her copy of The Specs, took out a tape measure, and started to work.
 
"Mr. Atlas, I got your name from the Morphology Guide's files as a practitioner 
who's had a lot of dealings with the Standardist Church."
The man frowned, then shrugged. "So? You may not approve of them, but they're 
legal. And my records are in order. I don't do any work on anybody until the 
police have checked for a criminal record." He sat on the edge of the desk in 
the spacious consulting room, facing Bach. Mr. Rock Atlas—surely a nom de 
métier—had shoulders carved from granite, teeth like flashing pearls, and the 
face of a young god. He was a walking, flexing advertisement for his profession. 
Bach crossed her legs nervously. She had always had a taste for beef.
"I'm not investigating you, Mr. Atlas. This is a murder case, and I'd appreciate 
your cooperation."
"Call me Rock," he said, with a winning smile.
"Must I? Very well. I came to ask you what you would do, how long the work would 
take, if I asked to be converted to a barbie."
His face fell. "Oh, no, what a tragedy! I can't allow it. My dear, it would be a 
crime." He reached over to her and touched her chin lightly, turning her head. 
"No, Lieutenant, for you I'd build up the hollows in the cheeks just the 
slightest bit—maybe tighten up the muscles behind them—then drift the orbital 
bones out a little bit farther from the nose to set your eyes wider. More 
attention-getting, you understand. That touch of mystery. Then of course there's 
your nose."
She pushed his hand away and shook her head. "No, I'm not coming to you for the 
operation. I just want to know. How much work would it entail, and how close can 
you come to the specs of the church?" Then she frowned and looked at him 
suspiciously. "What's wrong with my nose?"
"Well, my dear, I didn't mean to imply there was anything wrong; in fact, it has 
a certain overbearing power that must be useful to you once in a while, in the 
circles you move in. Even the lean to the left could be justified, 
aesthetically—"
"Never mind," she said, angry at herself for having fallen into his sales pitch. 
"Just answer my question."
He studied her carefully, asked her to stand up and turn around. She was about 
to object that she had not necessarily meant herself personally as the surgical 
candidate, just a woman in general, when he seemed to lose interest in her.
"It wouldn't be much of a job," he said. "Your height is just slightly over the 
parameters; I could take that out of your thighs and lower legs, maybe shave 
some vertebrae. Take out some fat here and put it back there. Take off those 
nipples and dig out your uterus and ovaries, sew up your crotch. With a man, 
chop off the penis. I'd have to break up your skull a little and shift the bones 
around, then build up the face from there. Say two days work, one overnight and 
one outpatient."
"And when you were through, what would be left to identify me?"
"Say that again?"
Bach briefly explained her situation, and Atlas pondered it.
"You've got a problem. I take off the fingerprints and footprints. I don't leave 
any external scars, not even microscopic ones. No moles, freckles, warts or 
birthmarks; they all have to go. A blood test would work, and so would a retinal 
print. An X-ray of the skull. A voiceprint would be questionable. I even that 
out as much as possible. I can't think of anything else."
"Nothing that could be seen from a purely visual exam?"
"That's the whole point of the operation, isn't it?"
"I know. I was just hoping you might know something even the barbies were not 
aware of. Thank you, anyway."
He got up, took her hand, and kissed it. "No trouble. And if you ever decide to 
get that nose taken care of..."
 
She met Jorge Weil at the temple gate in the middle of Anytown. He had spent his 
morning there, going through the records, and she could see the work didn't 
agree with him. He took her back to the small office where the records were kept 
in battered file cabinets. There was a barbie waiting for them there. She spoke 
without preamble.
"We decided at equalization last night to help you as much as possible."
"Oh, yeah? Thanks. I wondered if you would, considering what happened fifty 
years ago."
Weil looked puzzled. "What was that?" Bach waited for the barbie to speak, but 
she evidently wasn't going to.
"All right. I found it last night. The Standardists were involved in murder once 
before, not long after they came to Luna. You notice you never see one of them 
in New Dresden?"
Weil shrugged. "So what? They keep to themselves."
"They were ordered to keep to themselves. At first, they could move freely like 
any other citizens. Then one of them killed somebody—not a Standardist this 
time. It was known the murderer was a barbie; there were witnesses. The police 
started looking for the killer. You guess what happened."
"They ran into the problems we're having." Weil grimaced. "It doesn't look so 
good, does it?"
"It's hard to be optimistic," Bach conceded. "The killer was never found. The 
barbies offered to surrender one of their number at random, thinking the law 
would be satisfied with that. But of course it wouldn't do. There was a public 
outcry, and a lot of pressure to force them to adopt some kind of distinguishing 
characteristic, like a number tattooed on their foreheads. I don't think that 
would have worked, either. It could have been covered.
"The fact is that the barbies were seen as a menace to society. They could kill 
at will and blend back into their community like grains of sand on a beach. We 
would be powerless to punish a guilty party. There was no provision in the law 
for dealing with them."
"So what happened?"
"The case is marked closed, but there's no arrest, no conviction, and no 
suspect. A deal was made whereby the Standardists could practice their religion 
as long as they never mixed with other citizens. They had to stay in Anytown. Am 
I right?" She looked at the barbie.
"Yes. We've adhered to the agreement."
"I don't doubt it. Most people are barely aware you exist out here. But now 
we've got this. One barbie kills another barbie, and under a television 
camera..." Bach stopped, and looked thoughtful. "Say, it occurs to me... wait a 
minute. Wait a minute." She didn't like the look of it.
"I wonder. This murder took place in the tube station. It's the only place in 
Anytown that's scanned by the municipal security system. And fifty years is a 
long time between murders, even in a town as small as... how many people did you 
say live here, Jorge?"
"About seven thousand. I feel I know them all intimately." Weil had spent the 
day sorting barbies. According to measurements made from the tape, the killer 
was at the top end of permissible height.
"How about it?" Bach said to the barbie. "Is there anything I ought to know?"
The woman bit her lip, looked uncertain.
"Come on, you said you were going to help me."
"Very well. There have been three other killings in the last month. You would 
not have heard of this one except it took place with outsiders present. 
Purchasing agents were there on the loading platform. They made the initial 
report. There was nothing we could do to hush it up."
"But why would you want to?"
"Isn't it obvious? We exist with the possibility of persecution always with us. 
We don't wish to appear a threat to others. We wish to appear peaceful—which we 
are—and prefer to handle the problems of the group within the group itself. By 
divine consensus."
Bach knew she would get nowhere pursuing that line of reasoning. She decided to 
take the conversation back to the previous murders.
"Tell me what you know. Who was killed, and do you have any idea why? Or should 
I be talking to someone else?" Something occurred to her then, and she wondered 
why she hadn't asked it before. "You are the person I was speaking to yesterday, 
aren't you? Let me rephrase that. You're the body... that is, this body before 
me..."
"We know what you're talking about," the barbie said. "Uh, yes, you are correct. 
We are... I am the one you spoke to." She had to choke the word out, blushing 
furiously. "We have been... I have been selected as the component to deal with 
you, since it was perceived at equalization that this matter must be dealt with. 
This one was chosen as... I was chosen as punishment."
"You don't have to say 'I' if you don't want to."
"Oh, thank you."
"Punishment for what?"
"For... for individualistic tendencies. We spoke up too personally at 
equalization, in favor of cooperation with you. As a political necessity. The 
conservatives wish to stick to our sacred principles no matter what the cost. We 
are divided; this makes for bad feelings within the organism, for sickness. This 
one spoke out, and was punished by having her own way, by being appointed... 
individually... to deal with you." The woman could not meet Bach's eyes. Her 
face burned with shame.
"This one has been instructed to reveal her serial number to you. In the future, 
when you come here you are to ask for 23900."
Bach made a note of it.
"All right. What can you tell me about a possible motive? Do you think all the 
killings were done by the same... component?"
"We do not know. We are no more equipped to select an... individual from the 
group than you are. But there is great consternation. We are fearful."
"I would think so. Do you have reason to believe that the victims were... does 
this make sense?... known to the killer? Or were they random killings?" Bach 
hoped not. Random killers were the hardest to catch; without motive, it was hard 
to tie killer to victim, or to sift one person out of thousands with the 
opportunity. With the barbies, the problem would be squared and cubed.
"Again, we don't know."
Bach sighed. "I want to see the witnesses to the crime. I might as well start 
interviewing them."
In short order, thirteen barbies were brought. Bach intended to question them 
thoroughly to see if their stories were consistent, and if they had changed.
She sat them down and took them one at a time, and almost immediately ran into a 
stone wall. It took her several minutes to see the problem, frustrating minutes 
spent trying to establish which of the barbies had spoken to the officer first, 
which second, and so forth.
"Hold it. Listen carefully. Was this body physically present at the time of the 
crime? Did these eyes see it happen?"
The barbie's brow furrowed. "Why, no. But does it matter?"
"It does to me, babe. Hey, twenty-three thousand!"
The barbie stuck her head in the door. Bach looked pained.
"I need the actual people who were there. Not thirteen picked at random."
"The story is known to all."
Bach spent five minutes explaining that it made a difference to her, then waited 
an hour as 23900 located the people who were actual witnesses.
And again she hit a stone wall. The stories were absolutely identical, which she 
knew to be impossible. Observers always report events differently. They make 
themselves the hero, invent things before and after they first began observing, 
rearrange and edit and interpret. But not the barbies. Bach struggled for an 
hour, trying to shake one of them, and got nowhere. She was facing a consensus, 
something that had been discussed among the barbies until an account of the 
event had emerged and then been accepted as truth. It was probably a close 
approximation, but it did Bach no good. She needed discrepancies to gnaw at, and 
there were none.
Worst of all, she was convinced no one was lying to her. Had she questioned the 
thirteen random choices she would have gotten the same answers. They would have 
thought of themselves as having been there, since some of them had been and they 
had been told about it. What happened to one, happened to all.
Her options were evaporating fast. She dismissed the witnesses, called 23900 
back in, and sat her down. Bach ticked off points on her fingers.
"One. Do you have the personal effects of the deceased?"
"We have no private property."
Bach nodded. "Two. Can you take me to her room?"
"We each sleep in any room we find available at night. There is no—"
"Right. Three. Any friends or co-workers I might..." Bach rubbed her forehead 
with one hand. "Right. Skip it. Four. What was her job? Where did she work?"
"All jobs are interchangeable here. We work at what needs—"
"Right!" Bach exploded. She got up and paced the floor. "What the hell do you 
expect me to do with a situation like this? I don't have anything to work with, 
not one snuffin' thing. No way of telling why she was killed, no way to pick out 
the killer, no way... ah, shit. What do you expect me to do?"
"We don't expect you to do anything," the barbie said, quietly. "We didn't ask 
you to come here. We'd like it very much if you just went away."
In her anger Bach had forgotten that. She was stopped, unable to move in any 
direction. Finally, she caught Weil's eye and jerked her head toward the door.
"Let's get out of here." Weil said nothing. He followed Bach out the door and 
hurried to catch up.
They reached the tube station, and Bach stopped outside their waiting capsule. 
She sat down heavily on a bench, put her chin on her palm, and watched the 
ant-like mass of barbies working at the loading dock. "Any ideas?"
Weil shook his head, sitting beside her and removing his cap to wipe sweat from 
his forehead.
"They keep it too hot in here," he said. Bach nodded, not really hearing him. 
She watched the group of barbies as two separated themselves from the crowd and 
came a few steps in her direction. Both were laughing, as if at some private 
joke, looking right at Bach. One of them reached under her blouse and withdrew a 
long, gleaming steel knife. In one smooth motion she plunged it into the other 
barbie's stomach and lifted, bringing her up on the balls of her feet. The one 
who had been stabbed looked surprised for a moment, staring down at herself, her 
mouth open as the knife gutted her like a fish. Then her eyes widened and she 
stared horror-stricken at her companion, and slowly went to her knees, holding 
the knife to her as blood gushed out and soaked her white uniform.
"Stop her!" Bach shouted. She was on her feet and running, after a moment of 
horrified paralysis. It had looked so much like the tape.
She was about forty meters from the killer, who moved with deliberate speed, 
jogging rather than running. She passed the barbie who had been attacked—and who 
was now on her side, still holding the knife hilt almost tenderly to herself, 
wrapping her body around the pain. Bach thumbed the panic button on her 
communicator, glanced over her shoulder to see Weil kneeling beside the stricken 
barbie, then looked back—
—to a confusion of running figures. Which one was it? Which one?
She grabbed the one that seemed to be in the same place and moving in the same 
direction as the killer had been before she looked away. She swung the barbie 
around and hit her hard on the side of the neck with the edge of her palm, 
watched her fall while trying to look at all the other barbies at the same time. 
They were running in both directions, some trying to get away, others entering 
the loading dock to see what was going on. It was a madhouse scene with shrieks 
and shouts and baffling movement.
Bach spotted something bloody lying on the floor, then knelt by the inert figure 
and clapped the handcuffs on her.
She looked up into a sea of faces, all alike.
 
The commissioner dimmed the lights, and he, Bach, and Weil faced the big screen 
at the end of the room. Beside the screen was a department photoanalyst with a 
pointer in her hand. The tape began to run.
"Here they are," the woman said, indicating two barbies with the tip of the long 
stick. They were just faces on the edge of the crowd, beginning to move. "Victim 
right here, the suspect to her right." Everyone watched as the stabbing was 
re-created. Bach winced when she saw how long she had taken to react. In her 
favor, it had taken Weil a fraction of a second longer.
"Lieutenant Bach begins to move here. The suspect moves back toward the crowd. 
If you'll notice, she is watching Bach over her shoulder. Now. Here." She froze 
a frame. "Bach loses eye contact. The suspect peels off the plastic glove which 
prevented blood from staining her hand. She drops it, moves laterally. By the 
time Bach looks back, we can see she is after the wrong suspect."
Bach watched in sick fascination as her image assaulted the wrong barbie, the 
actual killer only a meter to her left. The tape resumed normal speed, and Bach 
watched the killer until her eyes began to hurt from not blinking. She would not 
lose her this time. "She's incredibly brazen. She does not leave the room for 
another twenty minutes." Bach saw herself kneel and help the medical team load 
the wounded barbie into the capsule. The killer had been at her elbow, almost 
touching her. She felt her arm break out in goose pimples.
She remembered the sick fear that had come over her as she knelt by the injured 
woman. It could be any of them. The one behind me, for instance...
She had drawn her weapon then, backed against the wall, and not moved until the 
reinforcements arrived a few minutes later. At a motion from the commissioner, 
the lights came back on. "Let's hear what you have," he said.
Bach glanced at Weil, then read from her notebook. " 'Sergeant Weil was able to 
communicate with the victim shortly before medical help arrived. He asked her if 
she knew anything pertinent as to the identity of her assailant. She answered 
no, saying only that it was "the wrath." She could not elaborate.' I quote now 
from the account Sergeant Weil wrote down immediately after the interview. ' "It 
hurts, it hurts." "I'm dying, I'm dying." I told her help was on the way. She 
responded: "I'm dying." Victim became incoherent, and I attempted to get a shirt 
from the onlookers to stop the flow of blood. No cooperation was forthcoming.' "
"It was the word 'I'," Weil supplied. "When she said that, they all started to 
drift away."
" 'She became rational once more,' " Bach resumed, " 'long enough to whisper a 
number to me. The number was twelve-fifteen, which I wrote down as 
one-two-one-five. She roused herself once more, said "I'm dying." ' " Bach 
closed the notebook and looked up. "Of course, she was right." She coughed 
nervously.
"We invoked section 35b of the New Dresden Unified Code, 'Hot Pursuit,' 
suspending civil liberties locally for the duration of the search. We located 
component 1215 by the simple expedient of lining up all the barbies and having 
them pull their pants down. Each has a serial number in the small of her back. 
Component 1215, one Sylvester J. Cronhausen, is in custody at this moment.
"While the search was going on, we went to sleeping cubicle 1215 with a team of 
criminologists. In a concealed compartment beneath the bunk we found these 
items." Bach got up, opened the evidence bag, and spread the items on the table.
There was a carved wooden mask. It had a huge nose with a hooked end, a 
mustache, and a fringe of black hair around it. Beside the mask were several 
jars of powders and creams, greasepaint and cologne. One black nylon sweater, 
one pair black trousers, one pair black sneakers. A stack of pictures clipped 
from magazines, showing ordinary people, many of them wearing more clothes than 
was normal in Luna. There was a black wig and a merkin of the same color.
"What was that last?" the commissioner asked.
"A merkin, sir," Bach supplied. "A pubic wig."
"Ah." He contemplated the assortment, leaned back in his chair. "Somebody liked 
to dress up."
"Evidently, sir." Bach stood at ease with her hands clasped behind her back, her 
face passive. She felt an acute sense of failure, and a cold determination to 
get the woman with the gall to stand at her elbow after committing murder before 
her eyes. She was sure the time and place had been chosen deliberately, that the 
barbie had been executed for Bach's benefit.
"Do you think these items belonged to the deceased?"
"We have no reason to state that, sir," Bach said. "However, the circumstances 
are suggestive."
"Of what?"
"I can't be sure. These things might have belonged to the victim. A random 
search of other cubicles turned up nothing like this. We showed the items to 
component 23900, our liaison. She professed not to know their purpose." She 
stopped, then added, "I believe she was lying. She looked quite disgusted."
"Did you arrest her?"
"No, sir. I didn't think it wise. She's the only connection we have, such as she 
is."
The commissioner frowned, and laced his fingers together. "I'll leave it up to 
you, Lieutenant Bach. Frankly, we'd like to be shut of this mess as soon as 
possible."
"I couldn't agree with you more, sir."
"Perhaps you don't understand me. We have to have a warm body to indict. We have 
to have one soon."
"Sir, I'm doing the best I can. Candidly, I'm beginning to wonder if there's 
anything I can do."
"You still don't understand me." He looked around the office. The stenographer 
and photoanalyst had left. He was alone with Bach and Weil. He flipped a switch 
on his desk, turning a recorder off, Bach realized.
"The news is picking up on this story. We're beginning to get some heat. On the 
one hand, people are afraid of these barbies. They're hearing about the murder 
fifty years ago, and the informal agreement. They don't like it much. On the 
other hand, there's the civil libertarians. They'll fight hard to prevent 
anything happening to the barbies, on principle. The government doesn't want to 
get into a mess like that. I can hardly blame them."
Bach said nothing, and the commissioner looked pained.
"I see I have to spell it out. We have a suspect in custody," he said.
"Are you referring to component 1215, Sylvester Cronhausen?"
"No. I'm speaking of the one you captured."
"Sir, the tape clearly shows she is not the guilty party. She was an innocent 
bystander." She felt her face heat up as she said it. Damn it; she had tried her 
best.
"Take a look at this." He pressed a button and the tape began to play again. But 
the quality was much impaired. There were bursts of snow, moments when the 
picture faded out entirely. It was a very good imitation of a camera failing. 
Bach watched herself running through the crowd—there was a flash of white— and 
she had hit the woman. The lights came back on in the room.
"I've checked with the analyst. She'll go along. There's a bonus in this, for 
both of you." He looked from Weil to Bach.
"I don't think I can go through with that, sir."
He looked like he'd tasted a lemon. "I didn't say we were doing this today. It's 
an option. But I ask you to look at it this way, just look at it, and I'll say 
no more. This is the way they themselves want it. They offered you the same deal 
the first time you were there. Close the case with a confession, no mess. We've 
already got this prisoner. She just says she killed her, she killed all of them. 
I want you to ask yourself, is she wrong? By her own lights and moral values? 
She believes she shares responsibility for the murders, and society demands a 
culprit. What's wrong with accepting their compromise and letting this all blow 
over?"
"Sir, it doesn't feel right to me. This is not in the oath I took. I'm supposed 
to protect the innocent, and she's innocent. She's the only barbie I know to be 
innocent."
The commissioner sighed. "Bach, you've got four days. You give me an alternative 
by then."
"Yes, sir. If I can't, I'll tell you now that I won't interfere with what you 
plan. But you'll have to accept my resignation."
 
Anna-Louise Bach reclined in the bathtub with her head pillowed on a folded 
towel. Only her neck, nipples, and knees stuck out above the placid surface of 
the water, tinted purple with a generous helping of bath salts. She clenched a 
thin cheroot in her teeth. A ribbon of lavender smoke curled from the end of it, 
rising to join the cloud near the ceiling.
She reached up with one foot and turned on the taps, letting out cooled water 
and refilling with hot until the sweat broke out on her brow. She had been in 
the tub for several hours. The tips of her fingers were like washboards.
There seemed to be few alternatives. The barbies were foreign to her, and to 
anyone she could assign to interview them. They didn't want her help in solving 
the crimes. All the old rules and procedures were useless. Witnesses meant 
nothing; one could not tell one from the next, nor separate their stories. 
Opportunity? Several thousand individuals had it. Motive was a blank. She had a 
physical description in minute detail, even tapes of the actual murders. Both 
were useless.
There was one course of action that might show results. She had been soaking for 
hours in the hope of determining just how important her job was to her.
Hell, what else did she want to do?
She got out of the tub quickly, bringing a lot of water with her to drip onto 
the floor. She hurried into her bedroom, pulled the sheets off the bed and 
slapped the nude male figure on the buttocks.
"Come on, Svengali," she said. "Here's your chance to do something about my 
nose."
 
She used every minute while her eyes were functioning to read all she could find 
about Standardists. When Atlas worked on her eyes, the computer droned into an 
earphone. She memorized most of the Book of Standards.
Ten hours of surgery, followed by eight hours flat on her back, paralyzed, her 
body undergoing forced regeneration, her eyes scanning the words that flew by on 
an overhead screen.
Three hours of practice, getting used to shorter legs and arms. Another hour to 
assemble her equipment.
When she left the Atlas clinic, she felt she would pass for a barbie as long as 
she kept her clothes on. She hadn't gone that far.
 
People tended to forget about access locks that led to the surface. Bach had 
used the fact more than once to show up in places where no one expected her.
She parked her rented crawler by the lock and left it there. Moving awkwardly in 
her pressure suit, she entered and started it cycling, then stepped through the 
inner door into an equipment room in Anytown. She stowed the suit, checked 
herself quickly in a washroom mirror, straightened the tape measure that belted 
her loose white jumpsuit, and entered the darkened corridors.
What she was doing was not illegal in any sense, but she was on edge. She didn't 
expect the barbies to take kindly to her masquerade if they discovered it, and 
she knew how easy it was for a barbie to vanish forever. Three had done so 
before Bach ever got the case.
The place seemed deserted. It was late evening by the arbitrary day cycle of New 
Dresden. Time for the nightly equalization. Bach hurried down the silent 
hallways to the main meeting room in the temple.
It was full of barbies and a vast roar of conversation. Bach had no trouble 
slipping in, and in a few minutes she knew her facial work was as good as Atlas 
had promised.
Equalization was the barbie's way of standardizing experience. They had been 
unable to simplify their lives to the point where each member of the community 
experienced the same things every day; the Book of Standards said it was a goal 
to be aimed for, but probably unattainable this side of Holy Reassimilation with 
Goddess. They tried to keep the available jobs easy enough that each member 
could do them all. The commune did not seek to make a profit; but air, water, 
and food had to be purchased, along with replacement parts and services to keep 
things running. The community had to produce things to trade with the outside.
They sold luxury items: hand-carved religious statues, illuminated holy books, 
painted crockery, and embroidered tapestries. None of the items were 
Standardist. The barbies had no religious symbols except their uniformity and 
the tape measure, but nothing in their dogma prevented them from selling objects 
of reverence to people of other faiths.
Bach had seen the products for sale in the better shops. They were meticulously 
produced, but suffered from the fact that each item looked too much like every 
other. People buying hand-produced luxuries in a technological age tend to want 
the differences that non-machine production entails, whereas the barbies wanted 
everything to look exactly alike. It was an ironic situation, but the barbies 
willingly sacrificed value by adhering to their standards.
Each barbie did things during the day that were as close as possible to what 
everyone else had done. But someone had to cook meals, tend the air machines, 
load the freight. Each component had a different job each day. At equalization, 
they got together and tried to even that out.
It was boring. Everyone talked at once, to anyone that happened to be around. 
Each woman told what she had done that day. Bach heard the same group of stories 
a hundred times before the night was over, and repeated them to anyone who would 
listen.
Anything unusual was related over a loudspeaker so everyone could be aware of it 
and thus spread out the intolerable burden of anomaly. No barbie wanted to keep 
a unique experience to herself; it made her soiled, unclean, until it was shared 
by all.
Bach was getting very tired of it—she was short on sleep— when the lights went 
out. The buzz of conversation shut off as if a tape had broken.
"All cats are alike in the dark," someone muttered, quite near Bach. Then a 
single voice was raised. It was solemn; almost a chant.
"We are the wrath. There is blood on our hands, but it is the holy blood of 
cleansing. We have told you of the cancer eating at the heart of the body, and 
yet still you cower away from what must be done. The filth must be removed from 
us!"
Bach was trying to tell which direction the words were coming from in the total 
darkness. Then she became aware of movement, people brushing against her, all 
going in the same direction. She began to buck the tide when she realized 
everyone was moving away from the voice.
"You think you can use our holy uniformity to hide among us, but the vengeful 
hand of Goddess will not be stayed. The mark is upon you, our one-time sisters. 
Your sins have set you apart, and retribution will strike swiftly.
"There are five of you left. Goddess knows who you are, and will not tolerate 
your perversion of her holy truth. Death will strike you when you least expect 
it. Goddess sees the differentness within you, the differentness you seek but 
hope to hide from your upright sisters."
People were moving more swiftly now, and a scuffle had developed ahead of her. 
She struggled free of people who were breathing panic from every pore, until she 
stood in a clear space. The speaker was shouting to be heard over the sound of 
whimpering and the shuffling of bare feet. Bach moved forward, swinging her 
outstretched hands. But another hand brushed her first.
The punch was not centered on her stomach, but it drove the air from her lungs 
and sent her sprawling. Someone tripped over her, and she realized things would 
get pretty bad if she didn't get to her feet. She was struggling up when the 
lights came back on.
There was a mass sigh of relief as each barbie examined her neighbor. Bach half 
expected another body to be found, but that didn't seem to be the case. The 
killer had vanished again.
She slipped away from the equalization before it began to break up, and hurried 
down the deserted corridors to room 1215.
She sat in the room—little more than a cell, with a bunk, a chair, and a light 
on a table—for more than two hours before the door opened, as she had hoped it 
would. A barbie stepped inside, breathing hard, closed the door, and leaned 
against it.
"We wondered if you would come," Bach said, tentatively.
The woman ran to Bach and collapsed at her knees, sobbing.
"Forgive us, please forgive us, our darling. We didn't dare come last night. We 
were afraid that... that if... that it might have been you who was murdered, and 
that the wrath would be waiting for us here. Forgive us, forgive us."
"It's all right," Bach said, for lack of anything better. Suddenly, the barbie 
was on top of her, kissing her with a desperate passion. Bach was startled, 
though she had expected something of the sort. She responded as best she could. 
The barbie finally began to talk again.
"We must stop this, we just have to stop. We're so frightened of the wrath, 
but... but the longing! We can't stop ourselves. We need to see you so badly 
that we can hardly get through the day, not knowing if you are across town or 
working at our elbow. It builds all day, and at night, we cannot stop ourselves 
from sinning yet again." She was crying, more softly this time, not from 
happiness at seeing the woman she took Bach to be, but from a depth of 
desperation. "What's going to become of us?" she asked, helplessly.
"Shhh," Bach soothed. "It's going to be all right."
She comforted the barbie for a while, then saw her lift her head. Her eyes 
seemed to glow with a strange light.
"I can't wait any longer," she said. She stood up, and began taking off her 
clothes. Bach could see her hands shaking.
Beneath her clothing the barbie had concealed a few things that looked familiar. 
Bach could see that the merkin was already in place between her legs. There was 
a wooden mask much like the one that had been found in the secret panel, and a 
jar. The barbie unscrewed the top of it and used her middle finger to smear dabs 
of brown onto her breasts, making stylized nipples.
"Look what I got," she said, coming down hard on the pronoun, her voice 
trembling. She pulled a flimsy yellow blouse from the pile of clothing on the 
floor, and slipped it over her shoulders. She struck a pose, then strutted up 
and down the tiny room.
"Come on, darling," she said. "Tell me how beautiful I am. Tell me I'm lovely. 
Tell me I'm the only one for you. The only one. What's the matter? Are you still 
frightened? I'm not. I'll dare anything for you, my one and only love." But now 
she stopped walking and looked suspiciously at Bach. "Why aren't you getting 
dressed?"
"We...uh, I can't," Bach said, extemporizing. "They, uh, someone found the 
things. They're all gone." She didn't dare remove her clothes because her 
nipples and pubic hair would look too real, even in the dim light.
The barbie was backing away. She picked up her mask and held it protectively to 
her. "What do you mean? Was she here? The wrath? Are they after us? It's true, 
isn't it? They can see us." She was on the edge of crying again, near panic.
"No, no, I think it was the police—" But it was doing no good. The barbie was at 
the door now, and had it half open.
"You're her! What have you done to... no, no, you stay away." She reached into 
the clothing that she now held in her hand, and Bach hesitated for a moment, 
expecting a knife. It was enough time for the barbie to dart quickly through the 
door, slamming it behind her.
When Bach reached the door, the woman was gone.
 
Bach kept reminding herself that she was not here to find the other potential 
victims—of whom her visitor was certainly one— but to catch the killer. The fact 
remained that she wished she could have detained her, to question her further.
The woman was a pervert, by the only definition that made any sense among the 
Standardists. She, and presumably the other dead barbies, had an individuality 
fetish. When Bach had realized that, her first thought had been to wonder why 
they didn't simply leave the colony and become whatever they wished. But then 
why did a Christian seek out prostitutes? For the taste of sin. In the larger 
world, what these barbies did would have had little meaning. Here, it was sin of 
the worst and tastiest kind.
And somebody didn't like it at all.
The door opened again, and the woman stood there facing Bach, her hair 
disheveled, breathing hard.
"We had to come back," she said. "We're so sorry that we panicked like that. Can 
you forgive us?" She was coming toward Bach now, her arms out. She looked so 
vulnerable and contrite that Bach was astonished when the fist connected with 
her cheek.
Bach thudded against the wall, then found herself pinned under the woman's 
knees, with something sharp and cool against her throat. She swallowed very 
carefully, and said nothing. Her throat itched unbearably.
"She's dead," the barbie said. "And you're next." But there was something in her 
face that Bach didn't understand. The barbie brushed at her eyes a few times, 
and squinted down at her.
"Listen, I'm not who you think I am. If you kill me, you'll be bringing more 
trouble on your sisters than you can imagine."
The barbie hesitated, then roughly thrust her hand down into Bach's pants. Her 
eyes widened when she felt the genitals, but the knife didn't move. Bach knew 
she had to talk fast, and say all the right things.
"You understand what I'm talking about, don't you?" She looked for a response, 
but saw none. "You're aware of the political pressures that are coming down. You 
know this whole colony could be wiped out if you look like a threat to the 
outside. You don't want that."
"If it must be, it will be," the barbie said. "The purity is the important 
thing. If we die, we shall die pure. The blasphemers must be killed."
"I don't care about that anymore," Bach said, and finally got a ripple of 
interest from the barbie. "I have my principles, too. Maybe I'm not as fanatical 
about them as you are about yours. But they're important to me. One is that the 
guilty be brought to justice."
"You have the guilty party. Try her. Execute her. She will not protest."
"You are the guilty party."
The woman smiled. "So arrest us."
"All right, all right. I can't, obviously. Even if you don't kill me, you'll 
walk out that door and I'll never be able to find you. I've given up on that. I 
just don't have the time. This was my last chance, and it looks like it didn't 
work."
"We didn't think you could do it, even with more time. But why should we let you 
live?"
"Because we can help each other." She felt the pressure ease up a little, and 
managed to swallow again. "You don't want to kill me, because it could destroy 
your community. Myself... I need to be able to salvage some self-respect out of 
this mess. I'm willing to accept your definition of morality and let you be the 
law in your own community. Maybe you're even right. Maybe you are one being. But 
I can't let that woman be convicted, when I know she didn't kill anyone."
The knife was not touching her neck now, but it was still being held so that the 
barbie could plunge it into her throat at the slightest movement.
"And if we let you live? What do you get out of it? How do you free your 
'innocent' prisoner?"
"Tell me where to find the body of the woman you just killed. I'll take care of 
the rest."
 
The pathology team had gone and Anytown was settling down once again. Bach sat 
on the edge of the bed with Jorge Weil. She was as tired as she ever remembered 
being. How long had it been since she slept?
"I'll tell you," Weil said, "I honestly didn't think this thing would work. I 
guess I was wrong."
Bach sighed. "I wanted to take her alive, Jorge. I thought I could. But when she 
came at me with the knife..." She let him finish the thought, not caring to lie 
to him. She'd already done that to the interviewer. In her story, she had taken 
the knife from her assailant and tried to disable her, but was forced in the end 
to kill her. Luckily, she had the bump on the back of her head from being thrown 
against the wall. It made a blackout period plausible. Otherwise, someone would 
have wondered why she waited so long to call for police and an ambulance. The 
barbie had been dead for an hour when they arrived.
"Well, I'll hand it to you. You sure pulled this out. I'll admit it, I was 
having a hard time deciding if I'd do as you were going to do and resign, or if 
I could have stayed on. Now I'll never know."
"Maybe it's best that way. I don't really know, either."
Jorge grinned at her. "I can't get used to thinking of you being behind that 
godawful face."
"Neither can I, and I don't want to see any mirrors. I'm going straight to Atlas 
and get it changed back." She got wearily to her feet and walked toward the tube 
station with Weil.
She had not quite told him the truth. She did intend to get her own face back as 
soon as possible—nose and all—but there was one thing left to do.
From the first, a problem that had bothered her had been the question of how the 
killer identified her victims.
Presumably the perverts had arranged times and places to meet for their strange 
rites. That would have been easy enough. Any one barbie could easily shirk her 
duties. She could say she was sick, and no one would know it was the same barbie 
who had been sick yesterday, and for a week or month before. She need not work; 
she could wander the halls acting as if she was on her way from one job to 
another. No one could challenge her. Likewise, while 23900 had said no barbie 
spent consecutive nights in the same room, there was no way for her to know 
that. Evidently room 1215 had been taken over permanently by the perverts.
And the perverts would have no scruples about identifying each other by serial 
number at their clandestine meetings, though they could do it in the streets. 
The killer didn't even have that.
But someone had known how to identify them, to pick them out of a crowd. Bach 
thought she must have infiltrated meetings, marked the participants in some way. 
One could lead her to another, until she knew them all and was ready to strike.
She kept recalling the strange way the killer had looked at her, the way she had 
squinted. The mere fact that she had not killed Bach instantly in a case of 
mistaken identity meant she had been expecting to see something that had not 
been there.
And she had an idea about that.
She meant to go to the morgue first, and to examine the corpses under different 
wavelengths of lights, with various filters. She was betting some kind of mark 
would become visible on the faces, a mark the killer had been looking for with 
her contact lenses.
It had to be something that was visible only with the right kind of equipment, 
or under the right circumstances. If she kept at it long enough, she would find 
it.
If it was an invisible ink, it brought up another interesting question. How had 
it been applied? With a brush or spray gun? Unlikely. But such an ink on the 
killer's hands might look and feel like water.
Once she had marked her victims, the killer would have to be confident the mark 
would stay in place for a reasonable time. The murders had stretched over a 
month. So she was looking for an indelible, invisible ink, one that soaked into 
pores.
And if it was indelible...
There was no use thinking further about it. She was right, or she was wrong. 
When she struck the bargain with the killer she had faced up to the possibility 
that she might have to live with it. Certainly she could not now bring a killer 
into court, not after what she had just said.
No, if she came back to Anytown and found a barbie whose hands were stained with 
guilt, she would have to do the job herself.
 
Equinoctial
PARAMETER KNEW SHE WAS being followed. They had been behind her for days, always 
far enough behind that they couldn't get a permanent fix on her, but never so 
far that she could lose them. She was in danger, but now was not the time to 
worry about it.
Now was one of the big moments in her life. She proposed to savor it to the full 
and refused to be distracted by the hunters. She was giving birth to 
quintuplets.
Uni, Duo, Tri, Quad... Hopelessly trite. Doc, Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy—no, there 
were seven of those. Army, Navy, Marine, Airforce, Coastguard? That was a 
pentagon, for an interesting pun. But who wanted to be called Coastguard? What 
was a Coastguard, anyway?
She put the naming ordeal out of her mind. It wasn't important; they would pick 
their own names when the time came. She just thought it might be nice with five 
to have something to tag them with, if only for bookkeeping purposes.
"They just got another sighting," she thought, but it wasn't her own thought. It 
was the voice of Equinox. Equinox was Parameter's companion, her environment, 
her space suit, her alter ego; her Symb. She looked in the direction she had 
come from.
She looked back on the most spectacular scene in the solar system. She was 
230,000 kilometers from the center of Saturn, according to the figures floating 
in the upper left corner of her field of vision. To one side of her was the 
yellow bulk of the giant planet, and all around her was a golden line that 
bisected the universe. She was inside the second and brightest of the Rings.
But Saturn and the Rings was not all she saw. About ten degrees away from Saturn 
and in the plane of the Rings was a hazy thing like the bell of a trumpet. It 
was transparent. The wide end of the bell was facing her. Within this shape were 
four lines of red that were sharp and well-defined far away but became fuzzy as 
they neared her. These were the hunters. All around her, but concentrated in the 
plane of the Rings, were slowly moving lines of all colors, each with an arrow 
at one end, each shifting perspective in a dazzling 3-D ballet.
None of it—the lines, the bells, the "hunters," even Saturn itself—none of it 
was any more real than the image in a picture tube. Some of it was even less 
real than that. The shifting lines, for instance, were vector representations of 
the large chunks of rock and ice within radar range of Equinox.
The bell was closer than it had been for days. That was bad news, because the 
space-time event it represented was the approach of the hunters and their 
possible locations projected from the time of the last fix. The fuzzy part was 
almost touching her. That meant they could be very close indeed, though it 
wasn't too likely. They were probably back in the stem where the projection 
looked almost solid, and almost certainly within the four lines that were their 
most probable location. But it was still too close.
"Since they know where we are, let's get a fix on them," Parameter decided, and 
as she thought it the bell disappeared, to be replaced by four red points that 
grew tails even as she watched.
"Too close. Way too close." Now they had two fixes on her: one of their own, and 
the one she had given them by bouncing a signal off them. From this, their Symbs 
could plot a course; therefore, it was time to alter it.
She couldn't afford to change course in the usual way, by bouncing off a rock. 
The hunters were close enough that they would detect the change in the rock's 
velocity and get a better idea of where she was. It was time for thrusters, 
though she could ill afford the wasted mass.
"Which way?" she asked.
"I suggest you move out of the plane. They won't expect that yet. They don't 
know you're in labor."
"That's pretty dangerous. There's nothing to hide in out there."
Equinox considered it. "If they get any closer, you'll have to do something at 
least that drastic, with less chance of success. But I only advise."
"Sure. All right, do it, my green pasture."
The world around her jerked, and all the colored lines started moving down 
around her, bending as their relative velocity changed. There was a gentle 
pressure at the small of her back.
"Keep an eye on them. I'm going back to the business of giving birth. How are 
they doing, by the way?"
"No sweat. One of the girls is in the tube right now—you can feel her—"
"You can tell me that three times..."
"—and she's a little puzzled by the pressure. But she's taking it well. She 
tells you not to worry, she'll be all right."
"Can I talk to her yet?"
"Not for another few hours. Be patient."
"Right. It shouldn't be long now."
And that was very true. She felt the wave of sensation as her uterus contracted 
again. She looked down at herself, absently expecting to see the first head 
coming out. But she could no longer see that far; her belly stuck out.
Nothing that Parameter saw was real; all was illusion. Her head was completely 
enclosed in the thick, opaque substance of Equinox, and all the sensory data she 
received was through the direct connection from Equinox's senses into her own 
brain. Much of this information was edited and embellished in ways that made it 
easier for Parameter to interpret.
So it was that when she looked down at herself she saw not the dark-green 
surface of Equinox, but her own brown skin. She had asked for that illusion long 
ago, when it had become a matter of some importance to her to believe she still 
had her own body. The illusion was flawless. She could see the fingerprints on 
her hand, the mole on her knee, the color of her nipples, the sentimental scar 
on her forearm, all illuminated by the soft diffusion of light from the Rings. 
But if she tried to touch herself, her hand would be stopped while still a good 
distance from what she saw as the surface of her body. Equinox was invisible to 
her, but she was certainly there.
She watched as the contraction caused her stomach to writhe and flow like putty. 
This was more like it. She remembered her other deliveries, before she married 
Equinox. One had been "natural" and it hadn't worked all that well. She didn't 
regret it, but it had been painful, not something she would want to repeat. The 
other had been under anesthetic, and no fun at all. She might as well not have 
bothered; there had been no pain, no pleasure, no sensation. It was like reading 
about it in the newspaper. But this one, her third birth, was different. It was 
intense, so intense she had difficulty concentrating on eluding the hunters. But 
there was no pain. All she felt was a series of waves of pleasure-pain that 
didn't hurt, and could be related to no other sensation humans had ever 
experienced.
One of the lines ahead seemed to point almost directly at her. It was a thick 
red line, meaning it was seventy percent ice and about a million kilograms in 
mass. The vector was short. It was moving slowly enough that rendezvous would be 
easy.
She took the opportunity and altered course slightly with the sure instinct she 
had developed. The line swung, foreshortened even more, then flashed brighter 
and began to pulse. This was the collision warning from Equinox's plotting 
sector.
When the rock was close enough to see as an object rather than a simulated 
projection, she rotated until her legs pointed at it. She soaked up the shock of 
the landing, then began to scuttle over the surface in a manner quite 
astonishing, and with a speed not to be believed. She moved with the coordinated 
complexity of a spider, all four limbs grasping at the rock and ice.
To an observer, she was a comical sight. She looked like a barbell with arms and 
legs and a bulge at the top that just might be a head. There were no creases or 
sharp lines anywhere on the outer surface of Equinox; all was gentle curves, 
absolutely featureless except for short claws on the hands and feet. At the ends 
of her legs were grasping appendages more like oversized hands than feet. And 
her legs bent the wrong way. Her knees were hinged to bend away from each other.
But she swarmed over the rock with effortless ease, not even hampered by her 
pregnancy, though the labor "pains" were getting intense.
When she was where she wanted to be, she pushed off with both hands and peds, 
rising rapidly. She was now on a course about ninety degrees away from her 
pursuers. She hoped they would not be expecting this. Now she had to rely on the 
screening effect of the billions of tiny rocks and ice crystals around her. For 
the next few hours she would be vulnerable if they beamed in her direction, but 
she didn't think it likely they would. Their Symbs would be plotting a course 
for her almost opposite to the one she was actually taking. If she had continued 
that way they would certainly have caught her later when she was burdened with 
five infants. Now was the time for audacity.
Having done that, she put the matter out of her mind again, and none too soon. 
The first baby had arrived.
The head was just emerging as she pushed off the rock. She savored the delicious 
agony as the head forced its way through her body, struggling to reach the air. 
It would never reach it. There was no air out here, just another womb that 
Equinox had prepared, a womb the baby would live in for the rest of its life. No 
first breath for Parameter's children; no breath at all.
The babies were not full-term. Each had been growing only seven months and would 
not be able to survive without extensive care. But Equinox was the world's best 
incubator. She had counseled, and Parameter had agreed, that it would be best to 
birth them while they were still small and get them out where Equinox could keep 
a closer eye on them.
Parameter moved her strangely articulated legs, bringing the hand-like peds up 
to the baby. She pressed slowly and felt the peds sink in as Equinox absorbed 
the outer covering. Then she felt the head with her own nerve endings. She ran 
her long fingers over the wet ball. There was another contraction and the baby 
was out. She was holding it in her peds. She couldn't see much of it, and 
suddenly she wanted to.
"This is one of the girls, right?"
"Yes. And so are two, three, and five. Navy, Marine, and Coastguard, if you want 
to get more personal."
"Those were just tags," she laughed. "I didn't even like them."
"Until you think of something else, they'll do."
"They won't want them."
"Perhaps not. Anyway, I'm thinking of shifting the boy around to fifth position. 
There's a little tangling of the cords."
"Whatever you want. I'd like to see her. 'Army,' I mean."
"Do you want a picture, or should I move her?"
"Move her." She knew it was only a semantic quibble as to whether she would 
actually "see" her child. The projection Equinox could provide would look just 
as real, hanging in space. But she wanted the picture to coincide with the feel 
she was getting of the baby against her skin.
By undulating the inner surface of her body, Equinox was able to move the infant 
around the curve of Parameter's belly until she was visible. She was wet, but 
there was no blood; Equinox had already absorbed it all.
"I want to touch her with my hands," Parameter thought.
"Go ahead. But don't forget there's another coming in a few minutes."
"Hold it up. I want to enjoy this one first."
She put her hands on the invisible surface of Equinox and they sank in until she 
was holding the child. It stirred and opened its mouth, but no sound came. There 
seemed to be no trauma involved for the brand-new human being; she moved her 
arms and legs slowly but seemed content to lie still for the most part. Compared 
to most human children, she hadn't really been born at all. Parameter tried to 
interest her in a nipple, but she didn't want it. She was the prettiest thing 
Parameter had ever seen.
"Let's get the next one out," she said. "This is so extravagant I still can't 
believe it. Five!"
She drifted into a wonderful haze as the others arrived, each as pretty as the 
last. Soon she was covered with tiny bodies, each still tied to an umbilicus. 
The cords would be left in place until Equinox had finished her childbirth and 
had five semiautonomous baby Symbs to receive the children. Until then, the 
children were still a part of her. It was a feeling Parameter loved; she would 
never be closer to her children.
"Can you hear them yet?" Equinox asked.
"No, not yet."
"You'll have to wait a while longer for mind contact. I'm tuning out. Are you 
all right? I shouldn't be longer than about two hours."
"Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. In fact, I've never been happier." She 
stopped verbalizing and let a wave of intense love flood over her; love for her 
invisible mate. It was answered by such an outpouring of affection that 
Parameter was in tears. "I love you, earthmother," she said.
"And you, sunshine."
"I hope it'll be as good for you as it was for me."
"I wish I could share it with you. But back to business. I really think we've 
shaken the hunters. There's been no signal from them for an hour, and their 
projected path is well away from us. I think we'll be safe, at least for a few 
hours."
"I hope so. But don't worry about me. I'll get along while you're away. I'm not 
scared of the dark."
"I know. It won't be for long. See you later."
Parameter felt her mate slipping away. For a moment she was afraid, but not of 
the dark. She was afraid of the loneliness. Equinox would be unavailable to her 
for the time it took to give birth to her children, and that meant she would be 
cut off from the outside. That didn't matter, but the absence of Equinox from 
Parameter's mind was a little frightening. It recalled an unpleasant incident in 
her past.
But as the lights faded she realized she was not alone. Cut off from sight, 
sound, smell, and taste by the shutdown of Equinox's interpretative faculties, 
she still had touch, and that was enough.
She floated in total darkness and felt the sharp tingle as a mouth found a 
nipple and began to suck. Imperceptibly, she drifted into sleep.
 
She awoke to a vague feeling of discomfort. It was small and nagging, and 
impossible to ignore. She felt in her mind for Equinox, and couldn't find her. 
So she was still in the process of giving birth.
But the feeling persisted. She felt helpless in the dark, then she realized it 
wasn't totally dark. There was a faint pinkness, like looking into closed 
eyelids. She could not account for it. Then she knew what was wrong, and it was 
worse than she could have imagined. The babies were gone.
She felt over her body with increasing panic, but they were nowhere to be found. 
Before her panic overwhelmed her, she tried to think of what could have happened 
that would have separated them, and all she could come up with was the hunters. 
But why would they take the babies? Then she lost control; there was nothing she 
could do in the darkness without Equinox to create the universe for her.
She was drawn back to rationality by a thought so black she could hardly credit 
it. In torment, she opened her eyes.
She could see.
She was floating in the center of a room hollowed out of bare rock. There was 
another person in the room, or rather another symbiote; all she could see was 
the dark-green, curved form of the Symb.
"Equinox!" she yelled, and heard herself. In a dream, she looked down at her 
body and felt the bare reality of it. She touched herself; there was no 
resistance. She was alone. Half of her was gone.
Her mind was dissolving; She watched it go, and knew it to be preferable to 
facing life without Equinox. She said good-bye to the last shreds of reality, 
rolled her eyes up into her head, and swallowed her tongue.
 
The figure looked like a cartoon of a human drawn by a three-year-old, one who 
was confused about sex. The broad shoulders and bullish neck were ludicrously 
like the build of a weightlifter, and the narrowing waist and bulbous ass were a 
moron's idea of a well-built woman. He was green, and featureless except for an 
oval opening where his mouth should have been.
"Just why do you want to become a Ringer?" The sound issued from the hole in his 
"face."
Parameter sighed and leaned back in her chair. The operation at Titan was 
anything but efficient. She had spent three days talking to people who had been 
no help at all and finally found this man, who seemed to have the authority to 
give her a Symb. Her patience—never very long—was at an end.
"I should make a tape," she said. "You're the fourth bastard who's asked me that 
today."
"Nevertheless, I must have your answer. And why don't you keep the smart remarks 
to yourself? I don't need them. For two cents I'd walk out of here and forget 
about you."
"Why don't you? I don't think you can even get out of that chair, much less walk 
out of here. I never expected anything like this. I thought you Consers wanted 
new people, so why are you giving me such a runaround? I might get up and walk 
out myself. You people aren't the only Ringers."
He proved her wrong by rising from the chair. He was awkward but steady, and, 
even more interesting, there was something in his hand that could only be a gun. 
She was amazed. He was sitting in a bare room, and had been empty-handed. 
Suddenly there was this gun, out of nowhere.
"If you mean that you're thinking of going over to the Engineers, it's my duty 
to blow your brains out. You have ten seconds to explain yourself." There was no 
trace of anger. The gun never wavered.
She swallowed hard, keeping very still.
"Uh, no, that's not what I meant."
The gun dropped slightly.
"It was a foolish remark," she said, her ears burning with shame and anger. "I'm 
committed to the Conservationists."
The gun vanished into the Symb he was wearing. It could still be in his hand for 
all she could tell.
"Now you can answer my question."
Keeping her anger rigidly in check, she started her story. She was quite good at 
it by now, and had it condensed nicely. She recited it in a singsong tone that 
the interrogator didn't seem to notice.
"I am seventy-seven Earth years old, I was born on Mercury, the Helios Enclave, 
the child of an extremely wealthy energy magnate. I grew up in the rigid, 
confining atmosphere that has always existed in Mercury, and I hated it. When I 
turned twelve, my mother gave me twenty percent of her fortune and said she 
hoped I'd use it wisely. Luckily for me, I was an adult and beyond her reach, 
because I disappointed her badly.
"I bought passage on the first ship leaving the planet, which happened to be 
going to Mars. For the next sixty years I devoted myself to experiencing 
everything the human organism can experience and still survive.
"It would be tedious and overlong to tell you everything I did, but so you won't 
think I'm hiding something, I can give you a random sample.
"Drugs: I tried them all. Some only once. Others for years at a time. I had to 
have my personality rebuilt three times and lost a lot of memory in the process.
"Sex: with two, three, four partners; seven partners; thirty partners; three 
hundred partners. All-week orgies. Men, women, girls, boys. Infants. Elephants. 
Pythons. Corpses. I changed sex so many times I'm not sure if I grew up as a 
male or a female.
"I killed a man. I got away with it. I killed a woman and got away again. I got 
caught the third time and spent seven years in rehabilitation.
"I traveled. I went to the Belt, to Luna, to the moons of Saturn, Uranus, 
Neptune. I went to Pluto, and beyond with a holehunter.
"I tried surgery. I joined up with a pair-cult and was connected for a year to 
another woman as a Siamese twin. I tried out weird new organs and sex systems. I 
tried on extra limbs.
"A few years ago I joined a passivity cult. They believed all action was 
meaningless, and demonstrated it by having their arms and legs amputated and 
relying on the mercy of random strangers to feed them and keep them alive. I lay 
for months in the public square beneath Coprates. Sometimes I went hungry and 
thirsty. Sometimes I stewed in my own filth; then someone would clean me up, 
usually with a stern lecture to quit this way of life and go straight. I didn't 
care.
"But the second time a dog used me for a urinal, I gave it up. I asked someone 
to carry me to a doctor, and walked out a changed woman. I decided I had done 
everything and had better start looking for an elaborate and original suicide. I 
was so bored, so jaded, that breathing seemed like too much of a bother.
"Then I thought of two places I'd never been: the sun and the Rings. The sun is 
the fancy suicide I told you about. The only way to get to the Rings is in a 
Symb. I tend to sympathize with you people over the Engineers. So here I am."
She settled back in her chair. She was not optimistic about being allowed to 
join the Conservationist Church, and was already planning ways to get over to 
the Engineers. If there was ever an unprepossessing story, it was hers, and she 
knew it. These Consers were supposed to be dedicated people, and she knew she 
couldn't present a very convincing line. In point of fact, she didn't give any 
thought at all to the Grand Design of the Engineers. Why should she care if a 
band of religious fanatics were trying to paint one of Saturn's Rings?
"The next to the last statement was a lie," the man informed her.
"Right," she spat. "You self-righteous bastards. It's the custom in polite 
society to inform someone when they're undergoing a lie-detector test. Even ask 
their consent." She got up to go.
"Please sit down, Parameter." She hesitated, then did so.
"It's time some false impressions were cleared up. First, this is not 'polite 
society,' this is war. Religious war, which is the dirtiest kind. We do what we 
have to in the interest of security. The sole purpose of this interview was to 
determine if your story was true. We don't care what you have done, as long as 
you haven't been consorting with our enemy. Have you?"
"No."
"That is a true statement. Now for the other mistake. We are not self-righteous 
bastards. We're pragmatists. And we're not religious fanatics, not really, 
though we all come to believe deeply in what we're doing out here. And that 
brings us to the third mistake. The primary reasons we're out here have little 
to do with defeating the Engineers. We're all out here for our own personal 
reasons, too."
"And what are they?"
"They're personal. Each of us had a different reason for coming. You are out 
here to satisfy the last dregs of a jaded appetite; that's a common reason. You 
have some surprises coming up, but you'll stay. You'll have to. You won't be 
able to bear leaving. And you'll like it. You might even help us fight the 
Engineers."
She looked at him with suspicion.
"We don't care why you're out here. Your story doesn't impress me one way or the 
other. You probably expected condemnation or contempt. Don't flatter yourself. 
As long as you're not here to help paint Ring Beta red, we don't care."
"Then when do I get a Symb?"
"As soon as you can undergo a bit of surgery." For the first time he unbent a 
little. The corners of the slit that covered his mouth bent up in a silly 
attempt at a smile. "I must confess that I was interested by one thing you said. 
How do you have sex with an elephant?"
Parameter kept a perfectly straight face.
"You don't have sex with an elephant. The best you can do is have sex at an 
elephant."
 
The Symb was a soft-looking greenish lump in the center of the room. With the 
best will in the world, Parameter could not see that it resembled anything so 
much as a pile of green cow manure. It was smaller than she had expected, but 
that was because it had no occupant. She was about to remedy that.
She stumped over to it and looked down dubiously. She had no choice but to walk 
awkwardly; her legs were no longer built for walking. They had been surgically 
altered so that the best she could do was a grotesque bowlegged prancing, 
stepping high so her long fingers would clear the floor. She was now ideally 
suited for a weightless existence. In a gravitational field, she was clumsy 
beyond belief.
The man who had interviewed her, whom she now knew by the name of Bushwacker, 
was the only other occupant of the room. He handled himself better than she did, 
but only slightly. He was itching to get back to the Rings; this base duty 
galled him. Gravity was for poor flatfoots.
"Just touch it, that's all?" she said. Now that it had come to it, she was 
having second thoughts.
"That's right. The Symb will do the rest. It won't be easy. You'll have between 
six weeks and three months of sensory deprivation while the personality 
develops. You'd go crazy in two days, but you won't be alone. All you'll have to 
hang on to will be the mind of the Symb. And it'll be a baby, hard to get along 
with. You'll grow up together."
She took a deep breath, wondering why she was so reluctant. She had done things 
easily that were much more repulsive than this. Perhaps it was the dawning 
realization that this would be much more than a simple lark. It could last a 
long time.
"Here goes." She lifted her leg and touched one of her ped-fingers to the blob. 
It stuck. The Symb slowly began stirring.
The Symb was... warm? No, at first she thought so, but it would be more accurate 
to say it was no temperature at all. It was thirty-seven degrees: blood 
temperature. It oozed up her leg, spreading itself thinner as it came. In a 
short time it was inching up her neck.
"Inhale," Bushwacker advised. "It'll help a little."
She did so, just as the Symb moved over her chin. It moved over her mouth and 
nose, then her eyes.
There was a moment of near-panic when part of her brain told her she must take a 
breath, and she dutifully tried to. Nothing happened, and she wanted to scream. 
But it was all right. She didn't need to breathe. When she opened her mouth the 
Symb flowed down her throat and trachea. Soon her lungs were filled with the 
interface tissue whose function it was to put oxygen in her blood and remove 
carbon dioxide. It filled her nasal passages, slithered up the eustachian tube 
to her inner ear. At that point she lost her balance and fell to the floor. Or 
she thought she did; she could no longer be sure. She had felt no impact. A wave 
of dizziness swept over her; she wondered what a Symb would do about vomiting. 
But it didn't happen, and she suspected it never would.
It was a shock, even though she had expected it, when the Symb entered her anus 
and vagina. Not a bad shock. Rather a thrill, actually. It filled the spaces in 
her uterus, wound into the urethra to fill the bladder, then up the ureter to 
mingle with the kidneys. Meanwhile another tendril had filled the large and 
small intestine, consuming the nutrients it found there, and joined with the 
tendril coming from her mouth. When it was done, she was threaded like the eye 
of a serpentine needle, and was revealed to any that could see as a topological 
example of a torus.
The silence closed in. It was absolutely quiet for a period of time she was 
powerless to measure, but couldn't have been longer than five minutes.
The obvious place where the human brain is accessible without violating any 
solid membranes is alongside the eyeball and through the supraorbital foramen. 
But the Symb would not be able to get a very substantial tendril through in the 
tight confines of the eye. So the genetic engineers, elaborating on the basic 
design for oxygen breathers received over the Ophiuchi Hotline, had given the 
Symb the capability of forcing an entry through the top of the skull.
Parameter felt a twinge of pain as a two-centimeter hole was eaten in the top of 
her head. But it subsided as the Symb began to feel out the proper places to 
make connections. The Symb was still a mindless thing, but was guided infallibly 
by the carefully designed instinct built into it.
Suddenly she was surrounded by fear; childish, inconsolable fear that frightened 
her out of her wits but did not come from her mind. She fought it, but it only 
became more insistent. In the end, she abandoned herself to it and cried like a 
baby. She became an infant, sloughing off her seventy-odd years there in the 
impalpable darkness like they had never happened.
There was nothing; nothing but two very lost voices, crying in the void.
 
There had been a debate raging for centuries as to whether the Symbiotic 
Space-Environment Organisms were really a form of artificial intelligence. (Or 
alien intelligence, depending on your definition.) The people who lived in them 
were unanimously of the opinion that they were. But the other side—who were 
mostly psychologists—pointed out that the people who actually lived in them were 
in the worst possible place to judge. Whatever one's opinion on the subject, it 
was based on personal prejudice, because there could be no objective facts.
The Symbs were genetically tailored organisms that could provide a complete, 
self-contained environment for a single human being in space. They thrived on 
human waste products: urine, feces, heat, and carbon dioxide.
They contained several chlorophyll-like enzymes and could accomplish 
photosynthesis utilizing the human's body heat, though at a low efficiency. For 
the rest of the energy needs of the pair, the Symb could use sunlight. They were 
very good at storing energy in chemical compounds that could be broken down 
later at need. Together with a human, a Symb made a self-contained heat engine. 
They were a closed ecology, neither host nor parasite: a symbiosis.
To the human being, the Symb was a green pasture, a running brook, a fruit tree, 
an ocean to swim in. To the Symb, the human was rich soil, sunshine, gentle 
rain, fertilizer, a pollinating bee. It was an ideal team. Without the other, 
each was at the mercy of elaborate mechanical aids to survive. Humans were 
adapted to an environment that no longer existed for their use in a natural 
state; wherever humans lived since the occupation of the Earth, they had to make 
their own environment. Now the Symbs were to provide that environment free of 
charge.
But it hadn't worked that way.
The Symbs were more complicated than they looked. Humans were used to taking 
from their surroundings, bending or breaking them until they fit human needs. 
The Symbs required more of humanity; they made it necessary to give.
When inside a Symb, a human was cut off entirely from the external universe. The 
human component of the symbiosis had to rely on the Symb's faculties. And the 
sensory data were received in an unusual way.
The Symb extended a connection directly into the human brain and fed data into 
it. In the process, it had to get tied up in the brain in such a way that it 
could be difficult to say where human left off and Symb began. The Symb 
reorganized certain portions of the human brain, freeing its tremendous 
potential for computation and integration, and using those abilities to 
translate the sensory data into pictures, sounds, tastes, smells, and touches, 
going directly through the sensorium. In the process, a mind was generated.
The Symb had no brain of its own, it merely was able to utilize the human brain 
on a time-sharing basis, and utilize it better than its original owner had been 
able to. So it would seem impossible that it could have a mind of its own. But 
every Ringer in the system would swear it had. And that was the crux of the 
debate: Was it actually an independent mind, parasitically using the human brain 
as its vehicle for sentient thought, or was it merely schizophrenia, induced by 
isolation and projection?
It was impossible to decide. Without a human inside it, there is nothing more 
helpless than a Symb. Without the human brain in combination with the genetic 
information and enzymatically coded procedures, the Symb can do no more than lie 
there inert like the green turd it so closely resembles. It has only rudimentary 
musculature, and doesn't even use that when alone. There is no good analogy for 
a Symb without a human; nothing else is so dependent on anything else.
Once combined with a human, the pair is transformed, becoming much more than the 
sum of its parts. The human is protected against the harshest environment 
imaginable. The livable range with a Symb extends from just outside the orbit of 
Earth (radiation limit) to the orbit of Neptune (sunlight limit). The pair feed 
each other, water each other, and respirate each other. The human brain is 
converted into a supercomputer. The Symb has radio and radar sender and receiver 
organs, in addition to sensors for radiation and the electromagnetic spectrum 
from one thousand to sixteen thousand angstroms. The system can gain mass by 
ingesting rock and ice and the Symb can retain the valuable minerals and water 
and discard the rest. About all the pair cannot do is change velocity without a 
chunk of rock to push against. But it is a small matter to carry a rocket 
thruster instead of the whole apparatus of a space suit. In the Rings, they 
didn't even do that. The Symb could manufacture enough gas for attitude control. 
For major velocity changes, the Ringers carried small bottles of compressed gas.
So why weren't all humans in space installed in Symbs?
The reason was that the Symbs needed more than most people were willing to give. 
It wasn't a simple matter of putting it on when you needed it and taking it off 
later. When you took off your Symb, the Symb ceased to exist.
It was probably the heaviest obligation a human ever had to face. Once mated 
with a Symb, you were mated for life. There had never been a closer 
relationship; the Symb lived inside your mind, was with you even when you slept, 
moving independently through your dreams. Compared with that, Siamese twins were 
utter strangers who pass in the night.
It was true that all the humans who had ever tried it swore they hadn't even 
been alive before they joined their Symb. It looked attractive in some ways, but 
for most people the imagined liabilities outweighed the gains. Few people are 
able to make a commitment they know will be permanent, not when permanent could 
mean five or six hundred years.
After an initial rush of popularity the Symb craze had died down. Now all the 
Symbs in the system were in the Rings, where they had made possible a nomadic 
existence never before known.
Ringers are loners by definition. Humans meet at long intervals, mate if they 
are of a mind to, and go their separate ways. Ringers seldom see the same person 
twice in a lifetime.
They are loners who are never alone.
 
"Are you there?"
?????
"I can sense you. We have to do something. I can't stand this darkness, can you? 
Listen: Let there be light!"
?????
"Oh, you're hopeless. Why don't you get lost?"
Sorrow. Deep and childish sorrow. Parameter was drawn into it, cursing herself 
and the infantile thing she was caught with. She tried for the thousandth time 
to thrash her legs, to let someone out there know she wanted out. But she had 
lost her legs. She could no longer tell if she was moving them.
From the depths of the Symb's sorrow, she drew herself up and tried to stand 
away from it. It was no use. With a mental sob, she was swallowed up again and 
was no longer able to distinguish herself from the infant alien.
 
Her chest was rising and falling. There was an unpleasant smell in her nostrils. 
She opened her eyes.
She was still in the same room, but now there was a respirator clamped to her 
face, forcing air in and out of her lungs. She rolled her eyes and saw the 
grotesque shape of the other person in the room with her. It floated, bandy legs 
drawn up, hands and peds clasped together.
A hole formed in the front of the blank face.
"Feeling any better?"
She screamed and screamed until she thankfully faded back into her dream world.
 
"You're getting it. Keep trying. No, that's the wrong direction; whatever you 
were doing just then, do the opposite."
It was tentative; Parameter hadn't the foggiest idea of what opposite was, 
because she hadn't the foggiest idea of what the little Symb was doing in the 
first place. But it was progress. There was light. Faint, wavering, tentative; 
but light.
The undefined luminance flickered like a candle, shimmered, blew out. But she 
felt good. Not half as good as the Symb felt; she was flooded by a proud feeling 
of accomplishment that was not her own. But, she reflected, what does it matter 
if it's my own or not? It was getting to where she no longer cared to haggle 
about whether it was she who felt something or the Symb. If they both had to 
experience it, what difference did it make?
"That was good. We're getting there. You and me, kid. We'll go places. We'll get 
out of this mess yet."
Go? Fear. Go? Sorrow. Go? Anger?
The emotions were coming labeled with words now, and they were extending in 
range.
"Anger? Anger, did you say? What's this? Of course, I want to get out of here, 
why do you think we're going through this? It ain't easy, kid. I don't remember 
anything so hard to get a grip on since I tried to control my alpha waves, years 
ago. Now wait a minute..." Fear, fear, fear. "Don't do that, kid, you scare me. 
Wait. I didn't mean it..." Fear, fear loneliness, fear, FEAR! "Stop! Stop, 
you're scaring me to death, you're..." Parameter was shivering, becoming a child 
again.
Black, endless fear. Parameter slipped away from her mind; fused with the other 
mind; chided herself; consoled herself; comforted herself; loved herself.
 
"Here, take some water, it'll make you feel better."
"Ggggwwway."
"What?"
"Goway. Gway. Goaway. GO. A. WAY!"
"You'll have to drink some water first. I won't go away until you do."
"Go 'way. Murder. Murder'r."
 
Parameter was at a loss.
"Why, why won't you do it? For me. Do it for Parameter."
Negation.
"You mean 'no.' Where do you get those fancy words?"
Your memory. No. Will not do it.
Parameter sighed, but she had acquired patience, infinite patience. And 
something else, something that was very like love. At least it was a profound 
admiration for this spunky kid. But she was still scared, because the Symb was 
beginning to win her over and it was only with increasing desperation that she 
hung onto her idea of getting the child to open the outside world so she could 
tell someone she wanted out.
And the desperation only made matters worse. She couldn't conceal it from the 
Symb, and the act of experiencing communicated it in all its raw, naked panic.
"Listen to me. We've got to get off this merry-go-round. How can we talk 
something over intelligently if I keep communicating my fear to you, which makes 
you scared, which scares me, which makes you panicky, which scares me more, 
which... now stop that!"
Not my fault. Love, love. You need me. You are incomplete without me. I need 
commitment before I'll cooperate.
"But I can't. Can't you see I have to be me? I can't be you. And it's you who's 
incomplete without me, not the way you said."
Wrong. Both incomplete without the other. It's too late for you. You are no 
longer you. You are me, I am you.
"I won't believe that. We've been here for centuries, for eons. If I haven't 
accepted you yet, I never will. I want to be free, in time to see the sun burn 
out."
Wrong. Here for two months. The sun is still burning.
"Aha! Tricked you, didn't I? You can see out, you're further along than you told 
me. Why did you trick me like that? Why didn't you tell me you knew what time it 
was? I've been aching to know that. Why didn't you tell me?"
You didn't ask.
"What kind of answer is that?"
An honest one.
Parameter simmered. She knew it was honest. She knew she was belaboring the 
child, who couldn't tell a lie any more than she could. But she clung to her 
anger with the sinking feeling that it was all she had left of herself.
You hurt me. You are angry. I've done nothing to you. Why do you hate me? Why? 
????? I love you. I'm afraid you'll leave me.
"I... I love you. I love you, godhelpme, I really do. But that's not me. No! 
It's something else. I don't know what yet, but I'll hang on. Hang on to it. 
Hang on to it."
Where are you?
Parameter?
"I'm here. Go away."
 
"Go away."
"You have to eat something. Please, try this. It's good for you. Really it is. 
Try it."
"Eat!" She turned in the air with sudden cramps of hunger and revulsion. She 
retched up stale air and thin fluid. "Get away from me. Don't touch me. Equinox! 
Equinox!"
The figure touched her with its hand. The hand was hard and cold.
"Your breasts," he said. "They've been oozing milk. I was wondering..."
"Gone. All gone."
 
Parameter.
"What is it? Are you ready to try again with that picture?"
No. No need. You can go.
"Huh?"
You can go. I can't keep you. You think you are self-sufficient; maybe you're 
right. You can go.
Parameter was confused.
"Why? Why so sudden?"
I've been looking into some of the concepts in your memory. Freedom. 
Self-determination. Independence. You are free to go.
"You know what I think, what I really think about those concepts, too. Unproven 
at best. Fantasies at worst."
You are cynical. I recognize that they may indeed be real, so you should be 
free. I am detaining you against your will. This is contrary to most ethical 
codes, including the ones you accept more than any others. You are free to go.
It was an awkward moment. It hurt more than she would have thought possible. And 
she was unsure of whose hurt she was feeling. Not that it mattered.
What was she saying? Here was what might be her one and only chance, and she was 
acknowledging what the kid had said all along, that they were already fused. And 
the kid had heard it, like she heard everything.
Yes, I heard it. It doesn't matter. I can hear your doubts about many things. I 
can feel your uncertainty. It will be with you always.
"Yes. I guess it will. But you. I can't feel much from you. Not that I can 
distinguish."
You feel my death.
"No, no. It isn't that bad. They'll give you another human. You'll get along. 
Sure you will."
Perhaps. Despair. Disbelief.
Parameter kicked herself in the mental butt, told herself that if she didn't get 
out now, she never would.
"Okay. Let me out."
Fade. A gradual withdrawal that was painful and slow as the tendril began to 
disengage. And Parameter felt her mind being drawn in two.
It would always be like that. It would never get any better.
"Wait, kid. Wait!"
The withdrawal continued.
"Listen to me. Really! No kidding, I really want to discuss this with you. Don't 
go."
It's for the best. You'll get along.
"No! No more than you will. I'll die."
No you won't. It's like you said; if you don't get out now, you never will. 
You'll... all right... bye...
"No! You don't understand. I don't want to go anymore. I'm afraid. Don't leave 
me like this. You can't leave me."
Hesitation.
"Listen to me. Listen. Feel me. Love. Love. Commitment, pure and honest 
commitment-forever-and-ever-till-death-us-do-part. Feel me."
"I feel you. We are one."
 
She had eaten, only to bring it back up. But her jailer was persistent. He was 
not going to let her die.
"Would it be any better if you got inside with me?"
"No. I can't. I'm half gone. It would be no good. Where is Equinox?"
"I told you I don't know. And I don't know where your children are. But you 
won't believe me."
"That's right. I don't believe you. Murderer."
She listened groggily as he explained how she came to be in this room with him. 
She didn't believe him, not for a minute.
He said he had found her by following a radio beacon signaling from a point 
outside the plane of the Rings. He had found a pseudosymb there; a simplified 
Symb created by budding a normal one without first going through the conjugation 
process. A pseudo can only do what any other plant can do: that is, ingest 
carbon dioxide and give out oxygen from its inner surface. It cannot contract 
into contact with a human body. It remains in the spherical configuration. A 
human can stay alive in a pseudosymb, but will soon die of thirst.
Parameter had been inside the pseudo, bruised and bleeding from the top of her 
head and from her genitals. But she had been alive. Even more remarkable, she 
had lived the five days it had taken to get her to the Conser emergency station. 
The Consers didn't maintain many of the stations. The ones they had were widely 
separated.
"You were robbed by Engineers," he said. "There's no other explanation. How long 
have you been in the Rings?"
After the third repeat of the question, Parameter muttered, "Five years."
"I thought so. A new one. That's why you don't believe me. You don't know much 
about Engineers, do you? You can't understand why they would take your Symb and 
leave you alive, with a beacon to guide help to you. It doesn't make sense, 
right?"
"I... no, I don't know. I can't understand. They should have killed me. What 
they did was more cruel."
No emotion could be read on the man's "face," but he was optimistic for the 
first time that she might pull through. At least she was talking, if fitfully.
"You should have learned more. I've been fighting for a century, and I still 
don't know all I'd like to know. They robbed you for your children, don't you 
see? To raise them as Engineers. That's what the real battle is about: 
population. The side that can produce the most offspring is the one that gains 
the advantage."
"I don't want to talk."
"I understand. Will you just listen?"
He took her lack of response to mean she would.
"You've just been drifting through your life. It's easy to do out here; we all 
just drift from time to time. When you think about the Engineers at all, it's 
just a question of evading them. That isn't too hard. Considering the cubic 
kilometers out here, the hunted always has the advantage over the hunter. There 
are so many places to hide; so many ways to dodge.
"But you've drifted into a rough neighborhood. The Engineers have concentrated a 
lot of people in this sector. Maybe you've noticed the high percentage of red 
rocks. They hunt in teams, which is not something we Consers have ever done. 
We're too loose a group to get together much, and we all know our real fight 
doesn't begin for another thousand years.
"We are the loosest army in the history of humanity. We're volunteers on both 
sides, and on our side, we don't require that individuals do anything at all to 
combat the Engineers. So you don't know anything about them, beyond the fact 
that they've vowed to paint Ring Beta red within twenty-five thousand years."
He at last got a rise out of her.
"I know a little more than that. I know they are followers of Ringpainter the 
Great. I know he lived almost two hundred years ago. I know he founded the 
Church of Cosmic Engineering."
"You read all that in a book. Do you know that Ringpainter is still alive? Do 
you know how they plan to paint the Ring? Do you know what they do to Consers 
they catch?"
He was selective in his interpretations. This time he took her silence to mean 
she didn't know.
"He is alive. Only he's a she now. Her 'Population Edict' of fifty years ago 
decreed that each Engineer shall spend ninety percent of her time as a female, 
and bear three children every year. If they really do that, we haven't got a 
chance. The Rings would be solid Engineers in a few centuries."
She was slightly interested for the first time in weeks.
"I didn't know it was such a long-term project."
"The longest ever undertaken by humans. At the present rate of coloring, it 
would take three million years to paint the entire Ring. But the rate is 
accelerating."
He waited, trying to draw her out again, but she lapsed back into listlessness. 
He went on.
"The one aspect of their religion you don't seem to know about is their ban on 
killing. They won't take a human or Symb life."
That got her attention.
"Equinox! Where..." she started shaking again.
"She's almost certainly alive."
"How could they keep her alive?"
"You're forgetting your children. Five of them."
 
The last thing anyone said to Parameter for two years was, "Take this, you might 
want to use it. Just press it to a red rock and forget about it. It lasts 
forever."
She took the object, a thin tube with a yellow bulb on each end. It was a 
Bacteriophage Applicator, filled with the tailored DNA that attacked and broke 
down the deposits of red dust left by the Engineers' Ringvirus. Touching the end 
of it to a coated rock would begin a chain reaction that would end only when all 
the surface of the rock was restored to its original color.
Parameter absently touched it to her side, where it sank without a trace in the 
tough integument of Equinox's outer hide. Then she shoved out the airlock and 
into fairyland.
"I never saw anything like this, Equinox," she said.
"No, you certainly haven't." The Symb had only Parameter's experiences to draw 
on.
"Where should we go? What's that line around the sky? Which way is it to the 
Ring?"
Affectionate laughter. "Silly planteater. We're in the Ring. That's why it 
stretches all around us. All except over in that direction. The sun is behind 
that part of the Ring, so the particles are illuminated primarily from the other 
side. You can see it faintly, by reflected light."
"Where did you learn all that?"
"From your head. The facts are there, and the deductive powers. You just never 
thought about it."
"I'm going to start thinking a lot more. This is almost frightening. I repeat: 
Where do we go from here?"
"Anywhere at all, as long as it's away from this awful place. I don't think I 
want to come back to the Ringmarket for about a decade."
"Now, now," Parameter chided her. "Surely we'll have to go back before that. 
Aren't you feeling the least bit poetic?"
The Ringmarket was the clearinghouse for the wildly variant and irresistibly 
beautiful art that was the byproduct of living a solitary life in the Rings. Art 
brokers, musicmongers, poetry sellers, editors, moodmusic vendors... all the 
people who made a living by standing between the artist and the audience and 
raking off a profit as works of art passed through their hands; they all 
gathered at the Ringmarket bazaar and bought exquisite works for the equivalent 
of pretty-colored beads. The Ringers had no need of money. All exchanges were 
straight barter: a fresh gas bottle for a symphony that would crash through the 
mind with unique rhythms and harmonies. A handful of the mineral pellets the 
Ringers needed every decade to supply trace elements that were rare in the Rings 
could buy a painting that would bring millions back in civilization. It was a 
speculative business. No one could know which of the thousands of works would 
catch the public taste at high tide and run away with it. All the buyers knew 
was that for unknown reasons the art of the Rings had consistently captured the 
highest prices and the wildest reviews. It was different. It was from a whole 
new viewpoint.
"I can't feel poetic back there. Besides, didn't you know that when we start to 
create, it will be music?"
"I didn't know that. How do you know?"
"Because there's a song in my heart. Off-key. Let's get out of here."
They left the metallic sphere of the market and soon it was only a blue vector 
line, pointed away from them.
They spent two years just getting used to their environment. The wonder never 
wore off. When they met others, they avoided them. Neither was ready for 
companionship; they had all they needed.
 
She was sinking, and glad of it. Every day without Equinox was torture. She had 
come to hate her jailer, even if his story was true. He was keeping her alive, 
which was the cruelest thing he could do. But even her hatred was a weak and 
fitful thing.
She stared into the imaginary distance and seldom noticed his comings and 
goings.
Then one day there were two of them. She noted it dispassionately, watched as 
they embraced each other and began to flow. So the other person was a female; 
they were going to mate. She turned away and didn't see, as the two Symbs merged 
in their conjugation process and slowly expanded into a featureless green sphere 
within which the humans would couple silently and then part, probably forever.
But something nagged at her, and she looked back. A bulge was forming on the 
side of the sphere that was facing her. It grew outward and began to form 
another, smaller sphere. A pink line formed the boundary between the two globes.
She looked away again, unable to retain an interest as the Symbs gave birth. But 
something was still nagging.
"Parameter."
The man (or was it the woman?) was floating beside her, holding the baby Symb.
She froze. Her eyes filled with horror.
"You're out of your mind."
"Maybe. I can't force it on you. But it's here. I'm going now, and you'll never 
see me again. You can live or die, whichever you choose. I've done all I can."
 
It was a warm day in the Upper Half. But then it was always a warm day, though 
some were warmer than others.
Ringography is an easy subject to learn. There are the Rings: Alpha, Beta, and 
the thin Gamma. The divisions are called Cassini and Encke, each having been 
created by the gravitational tug-of-war between Saturn and the larger moons for 
possession of the particles that make up the Rings. Beyond that, there is only 
the Upper Half and the Lower Half, above and below the plane, and Inspace and 
Outspace. The Ringers never visited Inspace because it included the intense Van 
Allen-type radiation belts that circle Saturn. Outspace was far from the 
traveled parts of the Rings, but was a nice place to visit because the Rings 
were all in one part of the sky from that vantage point. An odd experience for 
children, accustomed from birth to see the sky cut in half by the Rings.
Parameter was in the Upper Half to feed on the sunlight that was so much more 
powerful there than in the Rings. Equinox was in her extended configuration. The 
pair looked like a gauzy parabolic dish, two hundred meters across. The dish was 
transparent, with veins that made it look like a spider web. The illusion was 
heightened by the small figure spread-eagled in the center of it, like a fly. 
The fly was Parameter.
It was delicious to float there. She looked directly at the sun, which was 
bright even this far away and would have burned her eyes quickly if she had been 
really looking at it. But she saw only a projection. Equinox's visual senses 
were not nearly as delicate as human eyes.
The front of her body was bathed in radiance. It was highly sensual, but in a 
new way. It was the mindless joy of a flower unfolding to the sun that Parameter 
experienced, not the hotter animal passions she was used to. Energy coursed 
through her body and out into the light-gathering sheets that Equinox had 
extended. Her mind was disconnected more completely than she would have believed 
possible. Her thoughts came hours apart, and were concerned with sluggish, 
vegetable pleasures. She saw herself as naked, exposed to the light and the 
wind, floating in the center of a silver circle of life. She could feel the wind 
on her body in this airless place and wondered vacantly how Equinox could be so 
utterly convincing in the webs of illusion she spun.
There was a sudden gust.
"Parameter. Wake up, my darling."
"Hmmm?"
"There's a storm coming up. We've got to furl the sails and head into port."
Parameter felt other gusts as she swam through the warm waters back to 
alertness.
"How far are we from the Ring?"
"We're all right. We can be there in ten minutes if I tack for a bit and then 
use a few seconds of thrust."
In her extended configuration, Equinox was a moderately efficient solar sail. By 
controlling the angle she presented to the incoming sunlight she could slowly 
alter velocity. All Parameter had to do was push off above or below the Rings in 
a shallow arc. Equinox could bring them back into the Rings in a few days, using 
solar pressure. But the storm was a danger they had always to keep in mind.
It was the solar wind that Equinox felt, a cloud of particles thrust out from 
the sun by storms beneath the surface. Her radiation sensors had detected the 
first speed-of-light gusts of it, and the dangerous stuff would not be far 
behind.
Radiation was the chief danger of life in the Rings. The outer surface of a Symb 
was proof against much of the radiation the symbiotic pair would encounter in 
space. What got through was not enough to worry about, certainly never enough to 
cause sickness. But stray high-energy particles could cause mutations of the egg 
and sperm cells of the humans.
The intensity of the wind was increasing as they furled their sails and applied 
the gas thrusters.
"Did we get moving in time?" Parameter asked.
"There's a good margin. But we can't avoid getting a little hard stuff. Don't 
worry about it."
"What about children? If I want to have some later, couldn't that be a problem?"
"Naturally. But you'll never give birth to a mutation. I'll be able to see any 
deviations in the first few weeks and abort it and not even have to tell you."
"But you would tell me, wouldn't you?"
"If you want me to. But it isn't important. No more than the daily control I 
exert over any of your other bodily processes."
"If you say so."
"I say so. Don't worry; I said. You just handle the motor control and leave the 
busy work to me. Things don't seem quite real to me unless they're on the 
molecular level."
Parameter trusted Equinox utterly. So much so that when the really hard wind 
began buffeting them, she didn't worry for a second. She spread her arms to it, 
embraced it. It was strange that the "wind" didn't blow her around like a leaf. 
She would have liked that. All she really missed was her hair streaming around 
her shoulders. She no longer had any hair at all. It got in the way of the seal 
between the two of them.
As soon as she thought it, long black hair whipped out behind her, curling into 
her face and tickling her eyes. She could see it and feel it against her skin, 
but she couldn't touch it. That didn't surprise her, because it wasn't there.
"Thank you," she laughed. And then she laughed even harder as she looked down at 
herself. She was covered with hair; long, flowing hair that grew as she watched 
it.
They reentered the Ring, preceded by a twisting, imaginary train of hair a 
kilometer long.
 
Three days later she was still staring at the floating ball.
On the fifth day her hand twitched toward it.
"No. No. Equinox. Where are you?"
The Symb was in its dormant state. Only an infant Symb could exist without a 
human to feed and water it; once it had become attached to a human, it would die 
very quickly without one. But in dormancy, they could live for weeks at a low 
energy level. It only needed the touch of her hand to be triggered into action.
The hunger was eating its way through her body; she ignored it completely. It 
had become a fact of life, something she clutched to her to forget about the 
real hunger that was in her brain. She would never be forced to accept the Symb 
from hunger. It didn't even enter the question.
On the ninth day her hand began moving. She watched it, crying for Equinox to 
stop the movement, to give her strength.
She touched it.
 
"I think it's time we tried out the new uterus."
"I think you're right."
"If that thing out there is a male, we'll do it." Equinox had in her complex of 
capabilities the knack of producing a nodule within her body that could take a 
cloned cell and nurture it until it grew into a complete organ; any organ she 
wished. She had done that with one of Parameter's cells. She removed it, cloned 
it, and let it grow into a new uterus. Parameter's old one had run out of eggs 
long ago and was useless for procreation, but the new one was brimming with 
life.
She had operated on her mate, taking out the old one and putting in the new. It 
had been painless and quick; Parameter had not even felt it.
Now they were ready to have a seed planted in it. "Male," came the voice of the 
other figure. Before, Parameter would have answered by saying, "Solitude," and 
he would have gone on his way.
Now she said, "Female."
"Wilderness," he introduced himself.
"Parameter."
The mating ritual over, they fell silent as they drifted closer. She had 
computed it well, if a little fast. They hit and clung together with all their 
limbs. Slowly the Symbs melted into each other.
A sensation of pleasure came over Parameter. "What is it?"
"What do you think? It's heaven. Did you think that because we're sexless, we 
wouldn't get any pleasure out of conjugation?"
"I guess I hadn't thought about it. It's... different. Not bad at all. But 
nothing like an orgasm."
"Stick around. We're just getting started." There was a moment of insecurity as 
Equinox withdrew her connections, leaving only the one into her brain. She 
shuddered as an unfamiliar feeling passed over her, then realized she was 
holding her breath. She had to start respirating again. Her chest crackled as 
she brought long-unused muscles into play, but once the reflex was started she 
was able to forget about it and let her hindbrain handle the chore.
The inner surface started to phosphoresce, and she made out a shadowy figure 
floating in front of her. The light got brighter until it reached the level of 
bright moonlight. She could see him now.
"Hello," she said. He seemed surprised she wanted to talk, but grinned at her.
"Hello. You must be new."
"How did you know?"
"It shows. You want to talk. You probably expect me to go through an elaborate 
ritual." And with that he reached for her and pulled her toward him.
"Hold on there," she said. "I'd like to know you a little better first."
He sighed, but let her go. "I'm sorry. You don't know yet. All right, what would 
you like to know about me?"
She looked him over. He was small, slightly smaller than her. He was completely 
hairless, as was she. There didn't seem to be any way to guess his age; all the 
proper clues were missing. Growing out of the top of his head was a snaky 
umbilicus.
She discovered there was really little to ask him, but having made a point of 
it, she threw in a token question.
"How old are you?"
"Old enough. Fourteen."
"All right, let's do it your way." She touched him and shifted in space to 
accommodate his entry.
To her pleasant surprise, it lasted longer than the thirty seconds she had 
expected. He was an accomplished lover; he seemed to know all the right moves. 
She was warming deliciously when she heard him in her head.
"Now you know," he said, and her head was filled with his laughter.
Everything before that, good as it was, had been just a warm-up.
 
Parameter and the baby Symb howled with pain.
"I didn't want you," she cried, hurling waves of rejection at the child and at 
herself. "All I want is Equinox."
That went on for an endless time. The stars burnt out around them. The galaxy 
turned like a whirligig. The universe contracted; exploded; contracted again. 
Exploded. Contracted and gave it up as a waste of time. Time ended as all events 
came to an end. The two of them floated, howling at each other.
 
Wilderness drifted away against the swirling background of stars. He didn't look 
back, and neither did Parameter. They knew each other too well to need 
good-byes. They might never meet again, but that didn't matter either, because 
each carried all they needed of the other.
"In a life full of cheap thrills, I never had anything like that."
Equinox seemed absorbed. She quietly acknowledged that it had, indeed, been 
superduper, but there was something else. There was a new knowledge.
"I'd like to try something," she said.
"Shoot."
Parameter's body was suddenly caressed by a thousand tiny, wet tongues. They 
searched out every cranny, all at the same time. They were hot, at least a 
thousand billion degrees, but they didn't burn; they soothed.
"Where were you keeping that?" Parameter quavered when it stopped. "And why did 
you stop?"
"I just learned it. I was watching while I was experiencing. I picked up a few 
tricks."
"You've got more?"
"Sure. I didn't want to start out with the intense ones until I saw how you 
liked that one. I thought it was very nice. You shuddered beautifully; the delta 
waves were fascinating."
Parameter broke up with laughter. "Don't give me that clinical stuff. You liked 
it so much you scared yourself."
"That comes as close as you can come to describing my reaction. But I was 
serious about having things I think we'll like even better. I can combine 
sensations in a novel way. Did you appreciate the subtle way the 'heat' blended 
into the sensation of feathers with an electric current through them?"
"It sounds hideous when you say it in words. But that was what it was, all 
right. Electric feathers. But pain had nothing to do with it."
Equinox considered it. "I'm not sure about that. I was deep into the 
pain-sensation center of you. But I was tickling it in a new way, the same way 
Wilderness tickled you. There is something I'm discovering. It has to do with 
the reality of pain. All you experience is more a function of your brain than of 
your nerve endings. Pain is no exception. What I do is connect the two 
centers—pain and pleasure—and route them through other sensorium pathways, 
resulting in..."
"Equinox."
?????
"Make love to me."
She was in the center of the sun, every atom of her body fusing in heat so hot 
it was icy. She swam to the surface, taking her time through the plastic waves 
of ionized gas, where she grew until she could hold the whole sputtering ball in 
her hand and rub it around her body. It flicked and fumed and smoked, gigantic 
prominences responding to her will, wreathing her in fire and smoke that bit and 
tickled. Flares snaked into her, reaming nerves with needle-sharp pins of gas 
that were soft as a kiss. She was swallowed whole by something pink that had no 
name, and slid down the slippery innards to splash in a pool of sweet-smelling 
sulfur.
It melted her; she melted it. Equinox was there; she picked her up and hurled 
her and herself in a wave of water, a gigantic wave that was gigatons of pent-up 
energy, rearing itself into a towering breaker a thousand kilometers high. She 
crashed on a beach of rubbery skin, which became a forest of snakes that 
squeezed her until the top of her head blew off and tiny flowers showered around 
her, all of them Equinox.
She was drawn back together from the far corners of the solar system and put 
into a form that called itself "Parameter" but would answer to anything at all. 
Then she was rising on a rocket that thrust deep into her vagina, into recesses 
that weren't even there but felt like mirrors that showed her own face. She was 
a fusion warhead of sensation; primed to blow. Sparks whipped around her, and 
each was a kiss of electric feathers. She was reaching orbital velocity; solar 
escape velocity; the speed of light. She turned herself inside out and contained 
the universe. The speed of light was a crawl slower than any snail; she 
transcended it.
There was an explosion; an implosion. She drew away from herself and fell into 
herself, and the fragments of her body drifted down to the beach, where she and 
Equinox gathered them and put them in a pile of quivering parts, each smaller 
than an atom.
It was a long job. They took their time.
"Next time," Parameter suggested, "try to work in some elephants."
 
Someone had invented a clock. It ticked.
Parameter woke up.
"Did you do that?"
No answer.
"Shut the damn thing off."
The ticking stopped. She rolled over and went back to sleep. Around her, a 
trillion years passed.
 
It was no good; she couldn't sleep. "Are you there?" Yes.
"What do you think we ought to do?" Despair. We've lost Equinox. "You never knew 
her."
Part of her will always be with you. Enough to hurt you. We will always hurt.
"I want to live again."
Live with hurt?
"If there's no other way. Come on. Let's start. Try to make a light. Come on, 
you can do it. I can't tell you how; you have to do that yourself. I love you. 
Blend with me, wash me clean, wipe out the memory."
Impossible. We cannot alter ourselves. I want Equinox.
"Damn you, you never knew her."
Know her as good as you. Better. In a way, I am Equinox. But in another way, I 
can never be.
"Don't talk in riddles. Merge with me."
Cannot. You do not love me yet.
"You want to sleep on it another few thousand years?"
Yes. You are much nicer when you are asleep.
"Is that an insult?"
No. You have loved me in your sleep. You have talked to me, you have taught me, 
given me love and guidance, grown me up to an adult. But you still think I'm 
Equinox. I'm not. I am me.
"Who is that?"
No name. I will have a name when you start really talking to me.
"Go to sleep. You confuse me."
Love. Affection. Rockabye, rockabye, rockabye.
 
"You have a name yet?"
"Yes. My name is Solstice."
Parameter cried, loud and long, and washed herself clean in her own tears.
 
It took them four years to work their way around to Ringmarket. They traded a 
song, one that had taken three years to produce, a sweet-sad dirge that somehow 
rang with hope, orchestrated for three lutes and synthesizer; traded it and a 
promise of four more over the next century to a tinpan alleycat for an elephant 
gun. Then they went out on a trail that was four years cold to stalk the memory 
of those long-ago pachyderm days.
In the way that an earlier generation of humans had known the shape of a hill, 
the placement of trees and flowers on it, the smell and feel of it; and another 
generation could remember at a glance what a street corner looked like; or still 
another the details of a stretch of corridor beneath the surface of the moon; in 
that same way, Parameter knew rocks. She would know the rock she had pushed off 
from on that final day just before Equinox was taken from her, the rock she now 
knew to have been an Engineer way-station. She knew where it had been going on 
that day, and how fast, and for how long. She knew where it would be now, and 
that was where she and Solstice were headed. The neighborhood would be 
different, but she could find that rock.
They found it, in only three years of search. She knew it instantly, knew every 
crevice and pit on the side she had landed on. The door was on the other side. 
They picked a likely rock a few kilometers away and settled down for a long 
wait.
Seventy-six times Saturn turned below them while they used the telescopic sight 
of the gun to survey the traffic at the station. By the end of that time, they 
knew the routine of the place better than the residents did. When the time came 
for action they had worked over each detail until it was almost a reflex.
A figure came out of the rock and started off in the proper direction. Parameter 
squinted down the barrel of the gun and drew a bead. The range was extreme, but 
she had no doubt of a hit. The reason for her confidence was the long red 
imaginary line that she saw growing from the end of the barrel. It represented 
the distance the bullet would travel in one-thousandth of a second. The figure 
she was shooting at also had a line extending in front of it, not nearly so 
long. All she had to do was bring the ends of the two lines together and squeeze 
the trigger.
It went as planned. The gun was firing stunbullets, tiny harmonic generators 
that would knock out the pair for six hours. The outer hide of a Symb was proof 
against the kinetic energy contained in most projectiles, natural or artificial. 
She didn't dare use a beam stunner because the Engineers in the station would 
detect it.
They set out in pursuit of the unconscious pair. There was no hurry; the longer 
it took to rendezvous, the farther they would be from danger.
It took five hours to reach them. Once in contact, Solstice took over. She had 
assured Parameter that it would be possible to fuse with an unconscious Symb, 
and she was right. Soon Parameter was floating in the dark cavity with the 
Engineer, a female. She put the barrel of the gun under the other's chin and 
waited.
"I don't know if I can do it, Solstice," she said.
"It won't be something you'll ever be proud of, but you know the reasons as well 
as I. Just keep thinking of Equinox."
"I wonder if that's a good idea? I'd rather do something for her that I would be 
proud of."
"Want to back out? We can still get away. But if she wakes up and sees us, it 
could get awkward if we let her live."
"I know. I have to do it. I just don't like it."
The Engineer was stirring. Parameter tightened her grip on the rifle.
She opened her eyes, looked around, and seemed to be listening. Solstice was 
keeping the other Symb from calling for help.
"I won't give you any trouble," the woman said. "But is it asking too much to 
allow me a few minutes for my death ritual?"
"You can have that and more if you're a fast talker. I don't want to kill you, 
but I confess I think I'll have to. I want to tell you some things, and to do 
it, I'll need your cooperation. If you don't cooperate, I can take what I need 
from you anyway. What I'm hoping is that there'll be some way you can show me 
that will make your death unnecessary. Will you open your mind to me?"
A light came into the woman's eyes, then was veiled. Parameter was instantly 
suspicious.
"Don't be nervous," the Engineer said, "I'll do as you ask. It was just 
something of a surprise." She relaxed, and Parameter eased herself into the arms 
of Solstice, who took over as go-between.
They had a lot staked on the outcome of this mutual revelation.
 
It came in a rush, the impalpable weight of the religious fervor and dedication. 
And above it all, the Great Cause, the project that would go on long after 
everyone now alive was dead. The audacity of it! The vision of Humanity the 
mover, the controller, the artist; the Engineer. The universe would acknowledge 
the sway of Humanity when it gazed at the wonder that was being wrought in the 
Rings of Saturn.
Ringpainter the Great was a Utopian on a grand scale. He had been bitterly 
disappointed in the manner in which humanity had invaded the solar system. He 
thought in terms of terraforming and of shifting planets in their courses. What 
he saw was burrows in rock.
So he preached, and spoke of Dyson spheres and space arks, of turning stars on 
and off at will, of remodeling galaxies. To him and his followers, the universe 
was an immensely complex toy that they could do beautiful things with. They 
wanted to unscrew a black hole and see what made it tick. They wanted to unshift 
the red shift. They believed in continuous creation, because the big bang 
implied an end to all their efforts.
Parameter and Solstice reeled under the force of it; the conviction that this 
admittedly symbolic act could get humanity moving in the direction Ringpainter 
wanted. He had an idea that there were beings out there keeping score, and they 
could be impressed by the Grand Gesture. When they saw what a pretty thing Ring 
Beta had become, they would step in and give the forces of Ring-painter a hand.
The woman they had captured, whose name they learned was Rosy-Red-Ring 3351, was 
convinced of the truth of these ideas. She had devoted her life to the 
furtherance of the Design. But they saw her faith waver as she beheld what they 
had to show her. She cringed away from the shrunken, hardened, protectively 
encased memory of the days after the theft of Equinox. They held it up and made 
her look at it, peeling away the layers of forgetfulness they had protected 
themselves with and thrusting it at her.
At last they let her go. She crouched, quivering, in the air.
"You've seen what we've been."
"Yes." She was sobbing.
"And you know what we have to do to find Equinox. You saw that in my mind. What 
I want to know is, can this cup pass from us? Do you know another way? Tell me 
quick."
"I didn't know," she cried. "It's what we do to all the Consers we capture. We 
can't kill them. It's against the Law. So we separate them, keep the Symb, leave 
the human to be found. We know most of them are never found, but it's the best 
we can do. But I didn't know it was so bad. I never thought of it. I almost 
think—"
"No need to think. You're right. It would be more merciful to kill the human. I 
don't know about the Symb. I'll have to talk to Equinox about that. At first I 
wanted to kill all the Engineers in the Rings, with a lot of care put into the 
project so they didn't die too quick. I can't do that any more. I'm not a 
Conser. I never was. I'm not anything but a seeker, looking for my friend. I 
don't care if you paint the Ring; go ahead. But I have to find Equinox, and I 
have to find my children. You have to answer my question now. Can you think of a 
way I can let you live and still do what I have to do?"
"No. There's no other way."
Parameter sighed. "All right. Get on with your ritual."
"I'm not sure if I want to any more."
"You'd probably better. Your faith has been shaken, but you might be right about 
the scorekeepers. If you are, I'd hate to be the cause of you going out the 
wrong way." She was already putting her distance between herself and this woman 
she would kill. She was becoming an object, something she was going to do 
something unpleasant to; not a person with a right to live.
Rosy-Red-Ring 3351 gradually calmed as she went through the motions of her 
auto-extreme unction. By the time she had finished she was as composed as she 
had been at the start of her ordeal.
"I've experienced the fullness of it," she said quietly. "The Engineers do not 
claim to know everything. We were wrong about our policy of separating symbiotic 
pairs. My only regret is that I can't tell anyone about our mistake." She looked 
doubtfully at Parameter, but knew it was useless. "I forgive you. I love you, my 
killer. Do the deed." She presented her white neck and closed her eyes.
"Umm," Parameter said. She had not heard her victim's last words; she had cut 
herself off and could see only the neck. She let Solstice guide her hands. They 
found the pressure points as if by instinct, pressed hard, and it was just like 
Solstice had said it would be. The woman was unconscious in seconds. Now she 
must be kept alive for a few minutes while Solstice did what she had to do.
"Got it," came Solstice's shaken thought.
"Was it hard?" Parameter had kept away from it.
"Let's don't talk about it. I'll show it to you in about a decade and we can cry 
for a year. But I have it."
So the other Symb was already dead, and Solstice had been with it as it died. 
Parameter's job would not be nearly so hard.
She put her thumbs on the woman's neck again, bent her ear to the chest. She 
pressed, harder this time. Soon the heartbeat fluttered, raced briefly. There 
was a convulsion, then she was dead.
"Let's get out of here."
 
What they had acquired was the Symb-Engineer frequency organ. It was the one way 
the inhabitants of the Rings had of telling friend from foe. The radio organs of 
the Symbs were tuned from birth to send on a specific frequency, and the 
Engineers used one band exclusively. The Consers employed another, because they 
had a stake in identifying friends and foes, too. But Parameter no longer 
identified with either side, and now had the physical resources to back up her 
lack of conviction. She could send on either band now, according to the needs of 
the moment, and so could move freely from one society to the other. If caught, 
she would be seen as a spy by either side, but she didn't think of herself as 
one.
It had been necessary to kill the Engineer pair because the organ could not be 
removed without causing the death of the Symb. The organ could be cloned, and 
that was the escape Parameter had offered the other two. But it had been 
refused. So now Solstice had two voices; her own, and the one from the other 
organ which she had already implanted in herself.
In addition to the double voice, they had picked up information about the life 
of the Engineers without which it would be impossible to function without 
immediate exposure. They knew the customs and beliefs of the Engineers and could 
fit in with them as long as they didn't go into sexual rapport. That could get 
sticky, but they had a dodge. The most reliable way to avoid intercourse was to 
be pregnant, and that was what they set out to do.
 
It didn't seem too important, but his name was Appoggiatura. They had 
encountered him during the third week after the murder. It was a risk—a small 
one, but a risk all the same. He had been easy about it. He learned all about 
Parameter's deeds and plans during their intercourse and remained unperturbed. 
Fanatic dedication was rare among Consers; the only real fanatic Parameter had 
met was Bushwhacker, who had offered to shoot her at the hint of treason. 
Parameter and Solstice were aware that what they were doing was treason to the 
Conser cause. Appoggiatura didn't seem to care, or if he did, he thought it was 
justified after what they had been through.
"But have you thought about what you'll do if you find Equinox? I don't know 
what you think, but it sounds like a thorny problem to me."
"It's thorny, all right," Solstice agreed. "To me, especially. Don't talk to me 
about problems until you've gone through the insecurity I've felt when I think 
about that day."
"It's my insecurity, too," Parameter said. "We don't know. But we do know we 
have to find her. And the children, though that isn't so strong. I only saw them 
for a few minutes, and they'll be seven years old now. I can't expect much 
there."
"I wouldn't expect much from Equinox, either," he said. "I know something about 
what happens to a Symb when it's separated from a human. Something dies; I don't 
know what. But it has to start over again from the beginning. She'll be a part 
of one of your children now, whichever one of them she took over when she was 
separated from you. You won't know her, and she won't know you."
"Still, we have to do this. I want to leave you now."
 
For six months they drifted, allowing Parameter's body to swell to the point 
that it would be obvious she was pregnant and not available for sex. During that 
time they thought.
Countless times they decided they were being foolish; that to complete their 
search would be to finish their life's mission and be faced with what to do with 
the next thousand years. But they could not just go through the motions. Perhaps 
one person could do that, but it wouldn't work with two. There was always that 
alter ego telling you by her very presence that you were living a lie.
And there was Rosy-Red-Ring 3351. If they quit, her murder would have been for 
no purpose. That would have been too much to bear. They had her in their memory, 
always cherishing her, always ashamed of what they had done. And the Symb, whose 
name Solstice had not yet been able to mention. One day Parameter would have to 
go through that killing again, but closer. Solstice was, if anything, even more 
determined than Parameter to verify the necessity of that terrible act.
So they started back to the Engineer-infested sector where so long ago Equinox 
had been made a prisoner of war.
There was a nervous moment the first time they used the stolen transmitter 
organ, but it went off smoothly. After that, they were able to move freely in 
Engineer society. It was a strange world, steeped in ritual that would have 
instantly confounded a novice. But they had received an instant course in 
religion and fell back on the memories of Rosy-Red-Ring that were burned into 
their minds.
They took the name Earth-Revenger 9954f, a common name attached to a random 
number with the "f" added as a mark of status. Only Engineers who had borne a 
hundred children were supposed to add the letter to their names. Theoretically, 
births were supposed to be recorded at Ringpainter Temple, clear across the Ring 
from them, where what records it was possible to keep in Ring society were 
stored. But there was no danger once they had verified that their stolen 
transmitter would fool the Engineers. Even in Engineer society, where social 
contact was more important than among Consers, the chance of meeting the same 
person twice was small. The chance of Parameter and Solstice meeting the real 
Earth-Revenger 9954f was not even worth thinking about.
The place they stayed around was the very rock she had pushed off from on the 
day of her capture, the rock from which Rosy-Red-Ring had left on her final day. 
It was a communications center, a social hall, a gossip rendezvous; the means by 
which the Engineers were able to keep their cohesiveness against the formidable 
odds of empty space.
She took over the job of station manager, a largely informal, voluntary post 
that meant you stayed in the station and loosely coordinated the activities 
there. These consisted of posting in written form information that was too 
important to entrust to word of mouth, and generally trying to pump each 
incoming Engineer for that type of information. As such, it was ideally suited 
for what she wanted to do.
There was the problem of her pregnancy. Pregnant women needed a lot of sunshine 
and rock and ice, and generally didn't take the job. She faced a lot of 
questions about it, but got away with her story about just plain liking the job 
so much she didn't want to give it up.
But the problem of getting enough sunlight was real. The location of the station 
was deep enough inside the Rings by now that the incident sunlight was low. She 
should have gone above the plane to where the light wasn't scattered off so many 
rocks, but she couldn't.
She compromised by spending all her free time outside the station with Solstice 
in her extended configuration.
The prime topic of conversation was the failure of the Pop Edict, and it was 
this that led her to information about Equinox.
Under the Edict, each Engineer was to undergo a sex change and spend nine years 
as a female for every year as a male. Three children were to be borne each of 
those years. The figures told a different story.
It was the first resistance to an Edict; unorganized, but still disturbing. 
There was much debate about it, and much solemn rededication. Everyone vowed to 
bear as many children as she could, but Parameter wondered how sincere it was. 
Her own sampling of Engineers revealed that females did outnumber males, but 
only by three to one, not nine to one.
There were several causes discussed for it. One, and the most obvious, was 
simple preference. Statistically, 90 percent of all people had a preferred sex, 
and of those, it was evenly divided as to which sex was the preferred one. For 
the target percentages to be in effect, 35 percent of the Engineers would have 
to be living as the sex they did not prefer. The actual figures indicated that 
not many of them were doing so. They were remaining defiantly male.
Then there was the logistical problem. To gain enough useful mass to produce one 
baby, a Symb-human pair had to ingest almost a thousand kilograms of rock and 
ice. Only a tiny fraction of it was the chemicals needed to produce a baby. 
Then, to convert the mass to useful form, energy was required. The pair had to 
spend long hours in the sunlight. After all that, there was little time for 
painting the Ring, and that was what most Engineers saw as their prime mission, 
not becoming baby factories.
It was said that Ringpainter was in meditation, and had been for the past ten 
years, trying to find a way out of the dilemma. She saw her Grand Gesture being 
slowed down to the point where it was actually in jeopardy. If, in the far 
future, the Engineer birthrate didn't outstrip the Conser birthrate, it would 
mean trouble. The time of the great Conser effort was yet to come. As things now 
stood, a Conser might not even see a painted rock in three or four days; they 
were too far apart. But as the number of painted rocks grew, the rate of 
recoloring would also grow. Then the Engineers would have to depend on the sheer 
rate of repainting to overpower the negative effect of the Consers. If their 
populations were nearly equal, it would be a stalemate, and only the Consers 
could win a stalemate. To accomplish the Grand Design, 90 percent of the rock in 
Ring Beta must be painted. To reach this figure, the Engineers must outnumber 
the Consers by ten to one, otherwise the number of painted rocks would stabilize 
below the target figure. It was a crisis of the first magnitude, though no one 
alive would see the outcome.
In discussing this with one of the Engineers, a woman named Glorious-Red-Ring 
43f, the break came. She was one of the early followers of Ringpainter, had been 
in the Ring for two hundred years. She had birthed 389 children, and 
acknowledged it was below her quota. She was living proof that the goals of 
Ringpainter were unrealistic, but she had unshakable faith that it was the right 
policy. She blamed herself that she had not had six hundred children, and had 
dedicated herself to meeting her quota within the next century. To do that, she 
must bear five hundred children. Parameter thought she was pathetic. She was 
pregnant with septuplets.
"I see these young ones coming in here with twins in their wombs and wonder how 
they can call themselves Engineers," she complained. "Only last month I saw one 
with a single child on the way. One! Can you imagine? How many do you have 
there?"
"Three. Maybe it should have been more." Parameter tried to sound guilty about 
it.
"That's all right. Three is the right number. I won't ask if you had three last 
year.
"And the number of males I see makes me weep. I make it 7.43 to 2.57, female to 
male." She lapsed into a brooding silence.
"If that wasn't bad enough," Parameter prompted, "I understand the Conser 
birthrate has equalled ours."
"Has it?" She was concerned at this bit of news, and would have been relieved to 
learn it was totally spurious. Parameter used that line frequently to lead 
someone into a discussion of Conser women in general and one Conser in 
particular who had been captured around here several years ago while birthing 
quints.
"But it shouldn't surprise me," the Engineer said. "So many of the Consers we've 
taken lately have been pregnant with three, four, even five."
This was more like it. Parameter considered remarks that might draw the woman 
out.
"I recall, almost ten years ago... or was it five? I get confused. There was 
this Conser some of our people took. Five children she had just borne."
Parameter was so surprised she almost let the opportunity slip by.
"Five?" she managed to croak. It was enough.
"That's right. How long has it been since you saw one of ours give birth to 
five? And those anarchists don't even have a Pop Edict to tell them to do it. 
She was doing it for fun."
"Were you there when it happened? When they captured the woman?"
"I heard about it later. They had the pups around here for a few days. Didn't 
know what to do with them. No one had heard about the crèche."
"Crèche?"
"You, too. The newsmongering around here has fallen down. It should have been 
posted and circulated."
"I'll surely see that it's done if you'll tell me about it."
"There's a crèche for POW children about fifty thousand kilometers forward from 
here. That's where we're supposed to take captured Conser children for 
indoctrination."
They digested that, didn't like the taste of it.
"The indoctrination's pretty successful, is it?"
"Great Red Ring, I hope so. Haven't been there myself. But we need everything we 
can get these days."
"Just where is this crèche? I should post the orbital elements around here."
 
The triplets were a failure. During the tenth month, on the way to the crèche, 
Solstice notified Parameter that it was hopeless; they hadn't gotten enough 
energy and raw materials during their stay at the way-station. It was no longer 
possible to hold their development back, and it was too late to amass the 
necessary minerals to do the job.
Solstice aborted them and reabsorbed the dead bodies. With the extra energy from 
the abortion, they were able to make good time to the crèche. It only took two 
years.
The crèche was deserted; an empty shell. News traveled slowly in the Ring. 
Inquiring around, Parameter discovered that it had not been operating for 
fifteen years. So her children had never arrived, though they had set out.
This was the time for despair, but they were beyond despair. Somewhere on the 
way to the crèche they had stopped believing it was possible to do what they 
were trying to do. So it wasn't a blow to find the crèche deserted. Still, it 
was hard to accept that their search ended here; they had been on the trail for 
nine years.
But the figures were unimpeachable. The volume of Ring Beta was seventy billion 
cubic kilometers, and any one of them could hide a thousand children.
They hung around the crèche for a few weeks, questioning Engineers, trying to 
find an angle that would enable them to defeat the statistics. Without a known 
destination for their children, there was no way out; they could be anywhere, 
and that was so vast it didn't bear thinking about.
In the end they left, and didn't know where they were bound.
Three days later they encountered another Conser, a male, and mated with him. He 
was sympathetic to their plight, but agreed with them that there was no chance 
of finding their children. Solstice carefully saw to it that Parameter was not 
fertilized. They had had enough of pregnancy for the next century or so.
And after they left the Conser, they found themselves falling asleep. Only they 
knew it wasn't sleep.
 
Before she even opened her eyes, Parameter reached frantically for the top of 
her head.
"Solstice..."
"I'm here. Don't make any sudden moves. We've been captured. I don't know by 
whom, but he's armed."
She opened her eyes. She was in a conjugation sphere and the tendril from 
Solstice was still firmly planted in her head. There was another person with 
her, a small person. He waved his gun at her and she nodded.
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "If you can answer a few questions you'll probably 
come out of this alive."
"You can set your mind at ease. I won't cause any trouble."
She realized he was a child, about eleven years old. But he seemed to know about 
stunners.
"We've been watching you for about a week," he said. "You talked to Engineers, 
so we naturally assumed you were one. But just now you spoke to a Conser, and on 
the Conser frequency. I want an explanation."
"I was originally a Conser. Recently I killed an Engineer and stole her 
transmitter organ." She knew she couldn't think of a convincing lie quickly 
enough to be safe from his stunner. She wasn't sure there was a convincing lie 
to cover her situation.
"Which side do you identify with now?"
"Neither side. I want to be independent if anyone will allow that."
He looked thoughtful. "That may be easier than you know. Why did you kill the 
Engineer?"
"I had to do it so I could move in Engineer society, so I could hunt for my 
children and the Symb who was taken from me several years ago. I have been—"
"What's your name?"
"Parameter, and Solstice."
"Right. I've got a message for you, Parameter. It's from your children. They're 
all right, and looking for you around here. We should be able to find them in a 
few days' search."
 
The children recognized the awkwardness of the situation. As they joined the 
group conjugation, emerging from the walls of the slowly enlarging sphere, they 
limited themselves to a brief kiss, then withdrew into a tangle of small bodies.
Parameter and Solstice were so jittery they could hardly think. The five 
children they could get to know, but Equinox? What about her?
They got the distinct feeling that the children recognized Parameter, then 
realized it was possible. Equinox had been talking to them while still in the 
womb, urging their minds to develop with pictures and sounds. Some of the 
pictures would have been of Parameter.
Ring children are not like other human children. They are born already knowing 
most of what they need to survive in the Rings. Then they are able to join with 
an infant Symb and help guide its development into an adult in a few weeks. From 
there, the Symb takes over for three years, teaching them and leading them to 
the places they need to go to grow up strong and healthy. For all practical 
purposes they are mature at three years. They must be; they cannot count on 
being with their mother more than the few weeks it takes them to acquire an 
adult Symb. From that time, they are on their own. Infant physical shortcomings 
are made up by the guidance and control of the Symb.
Parameter looked at these strange children, these youngsters whose backyard was 
billions of cubic kilometers wide and whose toys were stars and comets. What did 
she know of them? They might as well be another species. But that shouldn't 
matter; so was Solstice.
Solstice was almost hysterical. She was gripped in fear that in some way she 
couldn't understand she was going to lose Parameter. She was in danger of losing 
her mind. One part of her loved Equinox as hopelessly as Parameter did; another 
part knew there was room for only one Symb for any one human. What if it came to 
a choice? How would they face it?
"Equinox?"
There was a soundless scream from Solstice. "Equinox?"
?????
 
"Is that you, Equinox?"
The answer was very faint, very far away. They could not hear it.
"It's me. Parameter."
"And Solstice. You don't know me—"
I know you. You are me. I used to be you. I remember both of you. Interesting.
But the voice didn't sound interested. It was cool.
"I don't understand." No one was sure who said it.
But you do. I am gone. There is a new me. There is a new you. It is over.
"We love you."
Yes. Of course you do. But there is no me left to love.
"We're confused."
You will get over it.
The children floated together: quietly, respectfully; waiting for their mother 
to come to grips with her new reality. At last she stirred.
"Maybe we'll understand it some day," Parameter said.
One of the girls spoke.
"Equinox is no more, Mother," she said. "And yet she's still with us. She made a 
choice when she knew we were going to be captured. She reabsorbed her children 
and fissioned into five parts. None of us got all of her, but we all got 
enough."
Parameter shook her head and tried to make sense out of it. The child who had 
brought her here had not been willing to tell her anything, preferring to wait 
until her children could be with her.
"I don't understand how you came to find me."
"All it took was patience. We never reached the crèche; we were liberated on the 
way here by Alphans. They killed all the Engineers who were guarding us and 
adopted us themselves."
"What's an Alphan?"
"Alphans are the Ringers who live in Ring Alpha, who are neither Conser nor 
Engineer. They are renegades from both sides who have opted out of the conflict. 
They took care of us, and helped us when we said we wanted to find you. We knew 
where we had been going, and knew it was only a matter of time until you showed 
up here, if you were still alive. So we waited. And you got here in only nine 
years. You're very resourceful."
"Perhaps." She was looking at her children's legs. They were oddly deformed. And 
what were those blunt instruments at the ends of them? How odd.
"Feet, Mother," the child said. "There are surgeons in Alpha, but we could never 
afford to go there until we had found you. Now we'll go. We hope you'll go with 
us."
"Huh? Ah, I guess I should. That's across the Cassini Division, isn't it? And 
there's no war there? No killing?"
"That's right. We don't care if they paint Ring Beta with stripes and polka 
dots. They're freaks: Conser and Engineers. We are the true Ringers."
"Solstice?"
"Why not?"
"We'll go with you. Say, what are your names?"
"Army," said one of the girls.
"Navy," said another.
"Marine."
"Airforce."
"And Elephant," said the boy.
 
Manikins
"YOU'RE SURE SHE'S NOT dangerous?"
"Not at all. Not to you, anyway."
Evelyn closed the sliding window in the door and made an effort to control the 
misgivings that tugged at her. It was a little late to discover in herself a 
queasiness about crazy people.
She looked around and discovered with relief that it wasn't the patients she 
feared. It was the fortress atmosphere of the Bedford Institution. The place was 
a nightmare of barred windows, padded rooms, canvas sheets and straightjackets 
and hypodermics and burly attendants. It was a prison. With all the precautions 
it was only natural that she should feel nervous about the people it was built 
to contain.
She peeked into the room again. The woman inside was so small, so quiet and 
composed to be the cause of all this fuss.
Doctor Burroughs closed the thick file he had been scanning. Barbara Endicott. 
Age: 28. Height: 5' 3". Weight: 101. Diagnosis: Paranoid Schizophrenic. Remarks: 
Subject is to be considered dangerous. Remanded for observation from criminal 
court, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, murder. Intense hostility to men. There 
was more, much more. Evelyn had read some of it.
"She's got a massively defended psychosis. As usual, granting the illogical 
assumptions, the delusional system is carefully worked out and internally 
consistent."
"I know," Evelyn said.
"Do you? Yes, I suppose you do, from books and films." He closed the file and 
handed it to her. "You'll find it's a little different actually talking to one 
of them. They're sure of the things they say in a way that no sane person is 
ever likely to be. We all live with our little doubts, you know. They don't. 
They've seen the truth, and nothing will convince them otherwise. It takes a 
strong grip on reality to deal with them. You're likely to be a bit shaken when 
you're through with her."
Evelyn wished he'd finish and open the door. She had no worries about her sense 
of reality. Did he really worry that the woman would unsettle her with the kind 
of rubbish that was down in that file?
"We've had her on electroshock treatments for the last week," he said. He 
shrugged, helplessly. "I know what your teachers have said about that. It wasn't 
my decision. There's just no way to reach these people. When we run out of 
reason and persuasion, we try the shocks. It's not doing her any good. Her 
psychosis is as defended as it ever was." He rocked back on his heels, frowning.
"I guess you might as well go on in. You're perfectly safe. Her hostility is 
directed only at men." He gestured to the white-suited attendant, who looked 
like an NFL lineman, and the man turned a key in the lock. He opened the door, 
standing back to let her pass.
Barbara Endicott sat in a chair by the window. The sunlight streamed through and 
the bars made a cross-hatched pattern over her face. She turned, but did not get 
up.
"Hello, I'm... I'm Evelyn Winters." The woman had turned away as soon as she 
started talking. Evelyn's confidence, feeble enough in this forbidding place, 
threatened to leave her entirely.
"I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind. I'm not a doctor, Barbara."
The woman turned back and looked at her.
"Then what are you doing in that white coat?"
Evelyn looked down at the lab smock. She felt silly in the damn thing.
"They told me I had to wear it."
"Who is 'they?' " Barbara asked, with the hint of a chuckle. "You sound 
paranoid, my dear."
Evelyn relaxed a little. "Now that should have been my question. 'They' are the 
staff of this... place." Damn it, relax! The woman seemed friendly enough now 
that she saw Evelyn wasn't a doctor. "I guess they want to know if I'm a 
patient."
"Right. They'd give you one of these blue outfits if you were."
"I'm a student. They said I could interview you."
"Shoot." Then she smiled, and it was such a friendly, sane smile that Evelyn 
smiled back and extended her hand. But Barbara was shaking her head.
"That's a man thing," she said, indicating the hand. " 'See? I have no weapons. 
I'm not going to kill you.' We don't need that, Evelyn. We're women."
"Oh, of course." She awkwardly stuffed the hand into the pocket of the lab coat, 
clenched. "May I sit down?"
"Sure. There's just the bed, but it's hard enough to sit on."
Evelyn sat on the edge of the bed, the file and notebook in her lap. She poised 
there, and found that her weight was still on the balls of her feet, ready to 
leap away. The bleakness of the room assaulted her. She saw flaking gray paint, 
yellow window glass set in a well behind a mesh screen, gun-metal bolts securing 
it to the wall. The floor was concrete, damp and unfriendly. The room echoed 
faintly. The only furniture was the chair and the bed with gray sheets and 
blanket.
Barbara Endicott was small, dark-haired, with the smooth perfection of features 
that reminded Evelyn of an oriental. She looked pale, probably from two months 
in the cell. Under it, she had robust health. She sat in a checkerboard of 
sunlight, soaking up what rays passed through the glass. She wore a blue 
bathrobe with nothing underneath, belted at the waist, and cloth slippers.
"So I'm your assignment for the day. Did you pick me, or someone else?"
"They told me you'd only speak to women."
"That's true, but you didn't answer my question, did you? I'm sorry. I didn't 
mean to make you nervous, really. I won't be like that again. I'm acting like a 
crazy woman."
"What do you mean?"
"Being bold, aggressive. Saying whatever I want to. That's how all the crazy 
people around here act. I'm not crazy, of course." Her eyes were twinkling.
"I can't tell if you're putting me on," Evelyn admitted, and suddenly felt much 
closer to the woman. It was an easy trap to fall into, thinking of deranged 
people as mentally defective, lacking in reasoning powers. There was nothing 
wrong with Barbara Endicott in that direction. She could be subtle.
"Of course I'm crazy," she said. "Would they have me locked up here if I 
wasn't?" She grinned, and Evelyn relaxed. Her back loosened up; the bedspring 
creaked as she settled on them.
"All right. Do you want to talk about it?"
"I'm not sure if you want to hear. You know I killed a man, don't you?"
"Did you? I know the hearing thought you did, but they found you incapable of 
standing trial."
"I killed him, all right. I had to find out."
"Find out what?"
"If he could still walk with his head cut off."
And there it was; she was an alien again. Evelyn suppressed a shudder. The woman 
had said it in such a reasonable tone of voice, without any obvious try for 
shock value. And indeed, it had not affected her as strongly as it might have a 
few minutes ago. She was revolted, but not scared.
"And what made you think he might be able to?"
"That's not the important question," she chided. "Maybe it's not important to 
you, but it is to me. I wouldn't have done a thing like that unless it was 
important to know."
"To know... oh. Well, did he?"
"He sure did. For two or three minutes, he blundered around that room. I saw it, 
and I knew I was right."
"Will you tell me what led you to think he could?"
Barbara looked her over.
"And why should I? Look at you. You're a woman, but you've swallowed all the 
lies. You're working for them."
"What do you mean?"
"You've painted yourself up. You've scraped the hair off your legs and covered 
them with nylon, and you're walking inefficiently with a skirt to hobble your 
legs and heels designed to make you stumble if you run from them when they try 
to rape you. You're here doing their work for them. Why should I tell you? You 
wouldn't believe me."
Evelyn was not alarmed by this turn in the conversation. There was no hostility 
in what Barbara was saying. If anything, there was pity. Barbara would not harm 
her, simply because she was a woman. Now that she understood that, she could go 
on with more assurance.
"That may be true. But don't you owe it to me, as a woman, to tell me about this 
threat if it's really so important?"
Barbara slapped her knees in delight.
"You got me, doc. You're right. But that was sure tricky, turning my own 
delusions against me."
Evelyn wrote in her notebook: Can be glib when discussing her 
delusional-complex. She is assured enough of her rightness to make jokes about 
it.
"What are you writing?"
"Huh? Oh..." Be honest, she'll know if you lie. Be straight with her and match 
her irreverence. "...just notes on your condition. I have to make a diagnosis to 
my instructor. He wants to know what kind of crazy you are."
"That's easy. I'm paranoid schizophrenic. You don't need a degree to see that."
"No, I guess not. All right, tell me about it."
"Basically, what I believe is that the Earth was invaded by some kind of 
parasite at some point back in pre-history. Probably in cave-dwelling days. It's 
hard to tell for sure, since history is such a pack of lies. They rewrite it all 
the time, you know."
Again, Evelyn didn't know if she was being played with, and the thought amused 
her. This was a complex, tricky woman. She'd have to stay on her toes. That 
speech had been such an obvious paranoid construction, and Barbara was well 
aware of it.
"I'll play your game. Who is 'they?' "
" 'They' is the all-purpose paranoid pronoun. Any group that is involved in a 
conspiracy, conscious or not, to 'get' you. I know that's crazy, but there are 
such groups."
"Are there?"
"Sure. I didn't say they had to be holding meetings to plot ways to bedevil you. 
They don't. You can admit the existence of groups whose interests are not your 
own, can't you?"
"Certainly."
"The more important thing is it doesn't matter if they're really an explicit 
conspiracy, or just have the same effect because that's the way they function. 
It doesn't have to be personal, either. Each year, the IRS conspires to rob you 
of money that you earned, don't they? They're in a plot with the President and 
Congress to steal your money and give it to other people, but they don't know 
you by name. They steal from everybody. That's the kind of thing I'm talking 
about."
Justifies her fear of external, inimical forces by pointing to real antagonistic 
groups.
"Yes, I can see that. But we all know the IRS is out there. You're talking about 
a secret that only you see. Why should I believe you?"
Her face got more serious. Perhaps she was realizing the strengths of her 
opponent. Her opponent always had the stronger arguments, it was the nature of 
things. Why are you right and everyone else wrong?
"That's the tough part. You can offer me reams of 'proof' that I'm wrong, and I 
can't show you anything. If you'd been there when I'd killed that fellow, you'd 
know. But I can't do it again." She drew a deep breath, and seemed to settle in 
for a long debate.
"Let's get back to these parasites," Evelyn said. "They're men? Is that what 
you're saying?"
"No, no." She laughed, without humor. "There's no such thing as a man, the way 
you're thinking about it. Only women who've been taken over at birth by these, 
these..." she groped in the air for a word hideous enough to express her 
distaste. She couldn't find it. "Things. Organisms. I said they invaded the 
Earth, but I'm not sure. They might be from here. There's no way to know, 
they've taken over too completely."
Leaves flexibility in her rationale. Yes, that would fit with what the books 
said. It would be hard to stump her, to ask her a question she couldn't answer 
in terms of her delusion. She admitted not knowing everything about the subject, 
and she was free to reject whole categories of argument as having been tampered 
with, like history.
"So how is it... no, wait. Maybe you'd better tell me more about these 
parasites. Where do they hide? How is it that no one but you is aware of them?"
She nodded. She now seemed totally serious. She could not joke about this 
subject when they got this specific.
"They're not strictly parasites. They're sort of symbiotic. They don't kill 
their hosts, not quickly. They even help the host in the short run, making them 
stronger and larger and more capable of domination. But in the long run, they 
sap the strength of the host. They make her more susceptible to disease, weaken 
her heart. As to what they look like, you've seen them. They're blind, helpless, 
immobile worms. They attach themselves to a woman's urinary tract, filling and 
covering the vagina and extending nerves into the ovaries and uterus. They 
inject hormones into her body and cause her to grow up with deformities, like 
facial hair, enlarged muscles, reduced thinking capacity, and wildly defective 
emotions. The host becomes aggressive and murderous. Her breasts never develop. 
She is permanently sterile."
Evelyn scribbled in her notebook to cover her emotions. She wanted to laugh; she 
felt like crying. Who could figure the human mind? She shuddered to think of the 
pressures that must have driven this outwardly normal woman to such a bizarre 
way of looking at the universe. Father? Lover? Was she raped? Barbara had been 
unhelpful in talking about these things, maintaining that they were no one's 
business but her own. Besides, they had no bearing on what she saw as the facts 
of the case.
"I hardly know where to begin," Evelyn said.
"Yes, I know. It's not the sort of thing they'd allow you to seriously consider, 
is it? It's too alien to what you've been led to believe. I'm sorry. I hope I 
can help you."
Damn! she wrote, then scratched it out. Puts questioners on the defensive. Shows 
sympathy with their inability to see things as she sees them.
"Call it the new biology," Barbara said, getting up and slowly walking back and 
forth in the confined space. Her loose slippers slipped off her heels with each 
step. "I began to suspect it several years ago. The world just didn't make sense 
any other way. You've got to begin to doubt what you've been told. You've got to 
trust the evidence of your intellect. You've got to allow yourself to look 
through your woman's eyes as a woman would, not as an imperfect man would. 
They've trained you to believe in their values, their system. What you begin to 
realize is that they are imperfect women, not the other way around. They can't 
reproduce themselves, shouldn't that tell you something? 'Males' live on our 
bodies as parasites, they use our fertility to perpetuate their species." She 
turned to Evelyn, and her eyes were burning. "Can you try to look at it that 
way? Just try? Don't try to be a man; redefine! You don't know what you are. All 
your life you've struggled to be a man. They've defined the role you should 
play. And you're not made for it. You don't have that parasite eating at your 
brain. Can you accept that?"
"I can, for the sake of argument."
"That's good enough."
Evelyn was treading cautiously. "Uh, just what do I have to do to... 'see things 
as a woman?' I feel like a woman right now."
"Feel! That's it, just feel. You know what 'woman's intuition' is? It's the 
human way to think. They've laughed at it to the point where we automatically 
distrust it. They had to; they've lost the capacity to see a truth intuitively. 
I can see you don't like that phrase. You wouldn't. It's been laughed at so much 
that an 'enlightened woman' like yourself doesn't believe it exists. That's what 
they want you to think. All right, don't use the word 'intuition.' Use something 
else. What I'm talking about is the innate capacity of a human being to feel the 
truth of a matter. We all know we have it, but we've been trained to distrust 
it. And it's gotten screwed up. Haven't you ever felt you're right for no reason 
you could name except that you knew you were right?"
"Yes, I guess I have. Most people do." Rejects logical argument as being part of 
her oppression. She decided to test that.
"What I've been... trained to do, is to apply the rules of logic to analyze a 
question. Right? And you say it's no good, despite thousands of years of human 
experience?"
"That's right. It's not human experience, though. It's a trick. It's a game, a 
very complicated game."
"What about science? Biology, in particular."
"Science is the biggest game of all. Have you ever thought about it? Do you 
seriously feel that the big questions of the universe, the important truths that 
should be easily in our grasp, will be solved by scientists haggling over how 
many neutrinos can dance on the head of a pin? It's a tail-eating snake, 
relevant only to itself. But once you accept the basic ground rules, you're 
trapped. You think that counting and sorting and numbering will teach you 
things. You have to reject it all and see the world with new eyes. You'll be 
astounded at what is there, ready for you to pick up."
"Genetics?"
"Hogwash. The whole structure of genetics has been put there to explain an 
untenable position: that there are two sexes, neither of them worthwhile alone, 
but together they're able to reproduce. It doesn't hold up when you think about 
it. Genes and chromosomes, half from each parent: no, no, no! Tell me, have you 
ever seen a gene?"
"I've seen pictures."
"Hah!" That seemed enough for the moment. She paced the floor, overwhelmed by 
the scope of it. She turned again and faced Evelyn.
"I know, I know. I've thought about it enough. There's this... this basic set of 
assumptions we all live by. We can't get along without accepting almost all of 
it, right? I mean, I could tell you that I don't believe in... Tokyo, for 
instance, that Tokyo doesn't exist simply because I haven't been there to see it 
for myself. The news films I've seen were all clever hoaxes, right? Travelogues, 
books, Japanese; they're all in a conspiracy to make me think there's such a 
place as Tokyo."
"You could make a case for it, I guess."
"Sure I could. We all exist, all of us, in our own heads, looking out through 
the eyeballs. Society isn't possible unless we can believe in second-hand 
reports of certain things. So we've all conspired together to accept what other 
people tell us unless we can think of a reason why we're being lied to. Society 
can be seen as a conspiracy of unquestioning acceptance of unprovable things. We 
all work together at it, we all define a set of things as needing no proof."
She started to say more, but shut her mouth. She seemed to be considering if she 
should go on. She looked speculatively at Evelyn.
Evelyn shifted on her cot. Outside, the sun was setting in a haze of red and 
yellow. Where had the day gone? What time had she come into this room, anyway? 
She was unsure. Her stomach grumbled at her, but she wasn't too uncomfortable. 
She was fascinated. She felt a sort of lassitude, a weakness that made her want 
to lie down on the bed.
"Where was I? Oh, the untested assumptions. Okay. If we can't accept anything 
that's told us, we can't function in society. You can get away with not 
accepting a lot. You can believe the world is flat, or that there are no such 
things as photons or black holes or genes. Or that Christ didn't rise from the 
grave. You can go a long way from the majority opinion. But if you evolve an 
entirely new world picture, you start to get in trouble."
"What's most dangerous of all," Evelyn pointed out, "is starting to live by 
these new assumptions."
"Yes, yes. I should have been more careful, shouldn't I? I could have kept this 
discovery to myself. Or I could have gone on wondering. I was sure, you see, but 
in my foolishness I had to have proof. I had to see if a man could live with his 
head cut off, against what all the medical books had told me. I had to know if 
it was the brain that controlled him, or if it was that parasite."
Evelyn wondered what to ask as Barbara quieted for a moment. She knew it wasn't 
necessary to ask anything. The woman was off now; she would not wind down for 
hours. But she felt she ought to try and guide her.
"I was wondering," she finally ventured, "why you didn't need a second case. 
A... a check from the other side. Why didn't you kill a woman, too, to see 
if..." The hair stood up on the back of her neck. Of all the things she should 
have kept her mouth shut about, and to a homicidal paranoid! She was painfully 
aware of her throat. She controlled her hand, which wanted to go to her neck in 
feeble protection. She has no weapons, but she could be very strong...
But Barbara didn't pick up the thought. She didn't appear to notice Evelyn's 
discomfort.
"Foolish!" she exploded. "I was foolish. Of course I should have taken it on 
faith. I felt I was right; I knew I was right. But the old scientific 
orientation finally drove me to the experiment. Experiment." She spat the word 
out. She paused again, calming down, and seemed to think back.
"Kill a woman?" She shook her head and gave Evelyn a wry smile. "Dear, that 
would be murder. I'm not a killer. These 'men' are already dead from my 
viewpoint; killing them is a mercy, and a defensive act. Anyhow, after I'd done 
the first experiment I realized I had really proved nothing. I had only 
disproved the assumption that a man cannot live with his head cut off. That left 
a whole range of possibilities, you see? Maybe the brain is not in the head. 
Maybe the brain isn't good for anything. How do you know what's inside you? Have 
you ever seen your brain? How do you know that you're not really a wired-up 
midget, two inches tall, sitting in a control room in your head? Doesn't it feel 
like that sometimes?"
"Ah..." Barbara had hit on a common nerve. Not the midget, which was only a 
fanciful way of putting it, but the concept of living in one's head with 
eye-sockets as windows on the universe.
"Right. But you reject the gut feelings. I listen to them."
The light in the room was rapidly failing. Evelyn looked at the bare bulb in the 
ceiling, wondering when it would come on. She was getting sleepy, so tired. But 
she wanted to hear more. She leaned back farther on the cot and let her legs and 
arms relax.
"Maybe you should..." she yawned, wider and wider, unable to control it. "Excuse 
me. Maybe you should tell me more about the parasites."
"Ah. All right." She went back to her chair and sat in it. Evelyn could barely 
see her in the shadows. She heard a faint creaking, as of wooden slats on a 
rocking chair. But the chair wasn't a rocker. It wasn't even made of wood. 
Nevertheless, Barbara's shadow was moving slowly and rhythmically, and the 
creaking went on.
"The parasites, I've already told you what they do. Let me tell you what I've 
managed to deduce about their life-cycle."
Evelyn grinned in the dark. Life-cycle. Of course they'd have one. She leaned on 
one elbow and rested her head on the wall behind her. It would be interesting.
"They reproduce asexually, like everything else. They grow by budding, since the 
new ones are so much smaller than the mature ones. Then doctors implant them 
into women's wombs when they know they're pregnant, and they grow up with the 
embryo."
"Wait a minute," Evelyn sat up a little straighter. "Why don't they implant them 
on all children? Why are girls allowed to... oh, I see."
"Yes. They need us. They can't reproduce by themselves. They need the warmth of 
the womb to grow in, and we have the wombs. So they've systematically oppressed 
the women they've allowed to remain uninfested so they'll have a docile, ready 
supply of breeders. They've convinced us that we can't have children until we've 
been impregnated, which is the biggest lie of all."
"It is?"
"Yes. Take a look."
Evelyn peered through the gloom and saw Barbara, standing in profile. She was 
illuminated by a sort of flickering candlelight. Evelyn did not wonder about it, 
but was bothered by a strange feeling. It was rather like wondering why she was 
not curious.
But before even that ephemeral feeling could concern her, Barbara loosened the 
cloth belt on her wrap and let it fall open. There was a gentle swell in her 
belly, unmistakably an early pregnancy. Her hand traced out the curve.
"See? I'm pregnant. I'm about four or five months along. I can't say for sure, 
you see, because I haven't had intercourse for over five years."
Hysterical pregnancy, Evelyn thought, and groped for her notebook. Why couldn't 
she find it? Her hand touched it in the dark, then the pencil. She tried to 
write, but the pencil broke. Did it break, she wondered, or was it bending?
She heard the creaking of the floorboards again, and knew Barbara had sat down 
in her rocker. She looked sleepily for the source of light, but could not find 
it.
"What about other mammals?" Evelyn asked, with another yawn.
"Uh-huh. The same. I don't know if it's only one sort of parasite which is 
adaptable to any species of mammal, or if there's one breed for each. But there 
are no males. Nowhere. Only females, and infested females."
"Birds?"
"I don't know yet," she said, simply. "I suspect that the whole concept of the 
sexes is part of the game. It's such an unlikely thing. Why should we need two? 
One is enough."
Leaves flexibility, she wrote. But no, she hadn't written, had she? The notebook 
was lost again. She burrowed down into the pile of blankets or furs on the cot, 
feeling warm and secure. She heard a sliding sound.
There in the peephole, ghostly in the candlelight, was a man's face. It was the 
attendant, looking in on them. She gasped, and started to sit up as the light 
got brighter around her. There was the sound of a key grating in a lock.
Barbara was kneeling at the side of the bed. Her robe was still open, and her 
belly was huge. She took Evelyn's hands and held them tight.
"The biggest giveaway of all is childbirth," she whispered. The light wavered 
for a moment and the metallic scraping and jiggling of the doorknob lost pitch, 
growled and guttered like a turntable losing speed. Barbara took Evelyn's head 
in her arms and pulled her down to her breasts. Evelyn closed her eyes and felt 
the taut skin and the movement of something inside the woman. It got darker.
"Pain. Why should giving birth involve pain? Why should we so often die 
reproducing ourselves? It doesn't feel right. I won't say it's illogical; it 
doesn't feel right. My intuition tells me that it isn't so. It's not the way it 
was meant to be. Do you want to know why we die in childbirth?"
"Yes Barbara, tell me that." She closed her eyes and nuzzled easily into the 
warmth.
"It's the poison they inject into us." She gently rubbed Evelyn's hair as she 
spoke. "The white stuff, the waste product. They tell us it's the stuff that 
makes us pregnant, but that's a lie. It warps us, even those of us they do not 
inhabit. It pollutes the womb, causes us to grow too large for the birth canal. 
When it comes time for us to be born, girl and half-girl, we must come through a 
passage that has been savaged by this poison. The result is pain, and sometimes 
death."
"Ummm." It was very quiet in the room. Outside, the crickets were starting to 
chirp. She opened her eyes once more, looked for the door and the man. She 
couldn't find them. She saw a candle sitting on a wooden table. Was that a 
fireplace in the other room?
"But it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't. Virgin birth is quite painless. 
I know. I'll know again very soon. Do you remember now, Eve? Do you remember?"
"What? I..." She sat up a little, still holding to the comforting warmth of the 
other woman. Where was the cell? Where was the concrete floor and barred window? 
She felt her heart beating faster and began to struggle, but Barbara was strong. 
She held her tight to her belly.
"Listen, Eve. Listen, it's happening."
Eve put her hand on the swollen belly and felt it move. Barbara shifted 
slightly, reached down and cradled something wet and warm, something that moved 
in her hand. She brought it up to the light. Virgin birth. A little girl, tiny, 
only a pound or two, who didn't cry but looked around her in curiosity.
"Can I hold her?" she sniffed, and then the tears flowed over the little human. 
There were other people crowding around, but she couldn't see them. She didn't 
care. She was home.
"Are you feeling any better now?" Barbara asked. "Can you remember what 
happened?"
"Only a little," Eve whispered. "I was... I remember it now. I thought I was... 
it was awful. Oh, Barbara, it was terrible. I thought..."
"I know. But you're back. There's no need to be ashamed. It still happens to all 
of us. We go crazy. We're programmed to go crazy, all of us in the infected 
generation. But not our children. You relax and hold the baby, darling. You'll 
forget it. It was a bad dream."
"But it was so real!"
"It was what you used to be. Now you're back with your friends, and we're 
winning the struggle. We have to win; we've got the wombs. There's more of our 
children every day."
Our children. Her own, and Barbara's and... and Karen's, yes, Karen. She looked 
up and saw her old friend, smiling down at her. And Clara, and there was June, 
and Laura. And over there with her children was Sacha. And... who was that? 
It's...
"Hello, Mother. Do you feel better now?"
"Much better, dear. I'm all right. Barbara helped me through it. I hope it won't 
happen again." She sniffed and wiped her eyes. She sat up, still cradling the 
tiny baby. "What are you naming her, Barb?"
Barbara grinned, and for the last time Eve could see the ghostly outline of that 
cell, the blue robe, Doctor Burroughs. It faded out forever.
"Let's call her Evelyn."
 
Beatnik Bayou
THE PREGNANT WOMAN HAD been following us for over an hour when Cathay did the 
unspeakable thing.
At first it had been fun. Me and Denver didn't know what it was about, just that 
she had some sort of beef with Cathay. She and Cathay had gone off together and 
talked. The woman started yelling, and it was not too long before Cathay was 
yelling, too. Finally Cathay said something I couldn't hear and came back to 
join the class. That was me, Denver, Trigger, and Cathay, the last two being the 
teachers, me and Denver being the students. I know, you're not supposed to be 
able to tell which is which, but believe me, you usually know.
That's when the chase started. This woman wouldn't take no for an answer, and 
she followed us wherever we went. She was about as awkward an animal as you 
could imagine, and I certainly wasn't feeling sorry for her after the way she 
had talked to Cathay, who is my friend. Every time she slipped and landed on her 
behind, we all had a good laugh.
For a while. After an hour, she started to seem a little frightening. I had 
never seen anyone so determined.
The reason she kept slipping was that she was chasing us through Beatnik Bayou, 
which is Trigger's home. Trigger herself describes it as "twelve acres of mud, 
mosquitoes, and moonshine." Some of her visitors had been less poetic but more 
colorful. I don't know what an acre is, but the bayou is fairly large. Trigger 
makes the moonshine in a copper and aluminum still in the middle of a canebrake. 
The mosquitoes don't bite, but they buzz a lot. The mud is just plain old 
mississippi mud, suitable for beating your feet. Most people see the place and 
hate it instantly, but it suits me fine.
Pretty soon the woman was covered in mud. She had three things working against 
her. One was her ankle-length maternity gown, which covered all of her except 
for face, feet, and bulging belly and breasts. She kept stepping on the long 
skirt and going down. After a while, I winced every time she did that.
Another handicap was her tummy, which made her walk with her weight back on her 
heels. That's not the best way to go through mud, and every so often she sat 
down real hard, proving it.
Her third problem was the Birthgirdle pelvic bone, which must have just been 
installed. It was one of those which sets the legs far apart and is hinged in 
the middle so when the baby comes it opens out and gives more room. She needed 
it, because she was tall and thin, the sort of build that might have died in 
childbirth back when such things were a problem. But it made her waddle like a 
duck.
"Quack, quack," Denver said, with an attempt at a smile. We both looked back at 
the woman, still following, still waddling. She went down, and struggled to her 
feet. Denver wasn't smiling when she met my eyes. She muttered something.
"What's that?" I said.
"She's unnerving," Denver repeated. "I wonder what the hell she wants?"
"Something pretty powerful."
Cathay and Trigger were a few paces ahead of us, and I saw Trigger glance back. 
She spoke to Cathay. I don't think I was supposed to hear it, but I did. I've 
got good ears.
"This is starting to upset the kids."
"I know," he said, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. All four of us 
watched her as she toiled her way up the far side of the last rise. Only her 
head and shoulders were visible.
"Damn. I thought she'd give up pretty soon." He groaned, but then his face 
became expressionless. "There's no help for it. We'll have to have a 
confrontation."
"I thought you already did," Trigger said, lifting an eyebrow.
"Yeah. Well, it wasn't enough, apparently. Come on, people. This is part of your 
lives, too." He meant me and Denver, and when he said that we knew this was 
supposed to be a "learning experience." Cathay can turn the strangest things 
into learning experiences. He started back toward the shallow stream we had just 
waded across, and the three of us followed him.
If I sounded hard on Cathay, I really shouldn't have been. Actually, he was one 
damn fine teacher. He was able to take those old saws about learning by doing, 
seeing is believing, one-on-one instruction, integration of life experiences—all 
the conventional wisdom of the educational establishment—and make it work better 
than any teacher I'd ever seen. I knew he was a counterfeit child. I had known 
that since I first met him, when I was seven, but it hadn't started to matter 
until lately. And that was just the natural cynicism of my age-group, as Trigger 
kept pointing out in that smug way of hers.
Okay, so he was really forty-eight years old. Physically he was just my age, 
which was almost thirteen: a short, slightly chubby kid with curly blond hair 
and an androgynous face, just starting to grow a little fuzz around his balls. 
When he turned to face that huge, threatening woman and stood facing her calmly, 
I was moved.
I was also fascinated. Mentally, I settled back on my haunches to watch and wait 
and observe. I was sure I'd be learning something about "life" real soon now. 
Class was in session.
When she saw us coming back, the woman hesitated. She picked her footing 
carefully as she came down the slight rise to stand at the edge of the water, 
then waited for a moment to see if Cathay was going to join her. He wasn't. She 
made an awful face, lifted her skirt up around her waist, and waded in.
The water lapped around her thighs. She nearly fell over when she tried to dodge 
some dangling Spanish moss. Her lace dress was festooned with twigs and leaves 
and smeared with mud.
"Why don't you turn around?" Trigger yelled, standing beside me and Denver and 
shaking her fist. "It's not going to do you any good."
"I'll be the judge of that," she yelled back. Her voice was harsh and ugly and 
what had probably been a sweet face was now set in a scowl. An alligator was 
swimming up to look her over. She swung at it with her fist, nearly losing her 
balance. "Get out of here, you slimy lizard!" she screamed. The reptile recalled 
urgent business on the other side of the swamp, and hurried out of her way.
She clambered ashore and stood ankle-deep in ooze, breathing hard. She was a 
mess, and beneath her anger I could now see fear. Her lips trembled for a 
moment. I wished she would sit down; just looking at her exhausted me.
"You've got to help me," she said, simply.
"Believe me, if I could, I would," Cathay said.
"Then tell me somebody who can."
"I told you, if the Educational Exchange can't help you, I certainly can't. 
Those few people I know who are available for a contract are listed on the 
exchange."
"But none of them are available any sooner than three years."
"I know. It's the shortage."
"Then help me," she said, miserably. "Help me."
Cathay slowly rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, then squared his 
shoulders and put his hands on his hips.
"I'll go over it once more. Somebody gave you my name and said I was available 
for a primary stage teaching contract. I—"
"He did! He said you'd—"
"I never heard of this person," Cathay said, raising his voice. "Judging from 
what you're putting me through, he gave you my name from the Teacher's 
Association listings just to get you off his back. I guess I could do something 
like that, but frankly, I don't think I have the right to subject another 
teacher to the sort of abuse you've heaped on me." He paused, and for once she 
didn't say anything.
"Right," he said, finally. "I'm truly sorry that the man you contracted with for 
your child's education went to Pluto instead. From what you told me, what he did 
was legal, which is not to say ethical." He grimaced at the thought of a teacher 
who would run out on an ethical obligation. "All I can say is you should have 
had the contract analyzed, you should have had a standby contract drawn up three 
years ago... oh, hell. What's the use? That doesn't do you any good. You have my 
sympathy, I hope you believe that."
"Then help me," she whispered, and the last word turned into a sob. She began to 
cry quietly. Her shoulders shook and tears leaked from her eyes, but she never 
looked away from Cathay.
"There's nothing I can do."
"You have to."
"Once more. I have obligations of my own. In another month, when I've fulfilled 
my contract with Argus' mother," he gestured toward me, "I'll be regressing to 
seven again. Don't you understand? I've already got an intermediate contract. 
The child will be seven in a few months. I contracted for her education four 
years ago. There's no way I can back out of that, legally or morally."
Her face was twisting again, filling with hate.
"Why not?" she rasped. "Why the hell not? He ran out on my contract. Why the 
hell should I be the only one to suffer? Why me, huh? Listen to me, you 
shitsucking little son of a blowout. You're all I've got left. After you, 
there's nothing but the public educator. Or trying to raise him all by myself, 
all alone, with no guidance. You want to be responsible for that? What the hell 
kind of start in life does that give him?"
She went on like that for a good ten minutes, getting more illogical and abusive 
with every sentence. I'd vacillated between a sort of queasy sympathy for 
her—she was in a hell of a mess, even though she had no one to blame but 
herself—and outright hostility. Just then she scared me. I couldn't look into 
those tortured eyes without cringing. My gaze wandered down to her fat belly, 
and the glass eye of the wombscope set into her navel. I didn't need to look 
into it to know she was due, and overdue. She'd been having the labor postponed 
while she tried to line up a teacher. Not that it made much sense; the kid's 
education didn't start until his sixth month. But it was a measure of her 
desperation, and of her illogical thinking under stress.
Cathay stood there and took it until she broke into tears again. I saw her 
differently this time, maybe a little more like Cathay was seeing her. I was 
sorry for her, but the tears failed to move me. I saw that she could devour us 
all if we didn't harden ourselves to her. When it came right down to it, she was 
the one who had to pay for her carelessness. She was trying her best to get 
someone else to shoulder the blame, but Cathay wasn't going to do it.
"I didn't want to do this," Cathay said. He looked back at us. "Trigger?"
Trigger stepped forward and folded her arms across her chest.
"Okay," she said. "Listen, I didn't get your name, and I don't really want to 
know it. But whoever you are, you're on my property, in my house. I'm ordering 
you to leave here, and I further enjoin you never to come back."
"I won't go," she said, stubbornly, looking down at her feet. "I'm not leaving 
till he promises to help me."
"My next step is to call the police," Trigger reminded her.
"I'm not leaving."
Trigger looked at Cathay and shrugged helplessly. I think they were both 
realizing that this particular life experience was getting a little too raw.
Cathay thought it over for a moment, eye to eye with the pregnant woman. Then he 
reached down and scooped up a handful of mud. He looked at it, hefting it 
experimentally, then threw it at her. It struck her on the left shoulder with a 
wet plop, and began to ooze down.
"Go," he said. "Get out of here."
"I'm not leaving," she said.
He threw another handful. It hit her face, and she gasped and sputtered.
"Go," he said, reaching for more mud. This time he hit her on the leg, but by 
now Trigger had joined him, and the woman was being pelted.
Before I quite knew what was happening, I was scooping mud from the ground and 
throwing it. Denver was, too. I was breathing hard, and I wasn't sure why.
When she finally turned and fled from us, I noticed that my jaw muscles were 
tight as steel. It took me a long time to relax them, and when I did, my front 
teeth were sore.
 
There are two structures on Beatnik Bayou. One is an old, rotting bait shop and 
lunch counter called the Sugar Shack, complete with a rusty gas pump out front, 
a battered Grapette machine on the porch, and a sign advertising Rainbow Bread 
on the screen door. There's a gray Dodge pickup sitting on concrete blocks to 
one side of the building, near a pile of rusted auto parts overgrown with weeds. 
The truck has no wheels. Beside it is a Toyota sedan with no windows or engine. 
A dirt road runs in front of the shack, going down to the dock. In the other 
direction the road curves around a cypress tree laden with moss—
—and runs into the wall. A bit of a jolt. But though twelve acres is large for a 
privately owned disneyland, it's not big enough to sustain the illusion of 
really being there. "There," in this case, is supposed to be Louisiana in 1951, 
old style. Trigger is fascinated by the twentieth century, which she defines as 
1903 to 1987.
But most of the time it works. You can seldom see the walls because trees are in 
the way. Anyhow, I soak up the atmosphere of the place not so much with my eyes 
but with my nose and ears and skin. Like the smell of rotting wood, the sound of 
a frog hitting the water or the hum of the compressor in the soft drink machine, 
the silver wiggle of a dozen minnows as I scoop them from the metal tanks in 
back of the shack, the feel of sun-heated wood as I sit on the pier fishing for 
alligator gar.
It takes a lot of power to operate the "sun," so we get a lot of foggy days, and 
long nights. That helps the illusion, too. I would challenge anyone to go for a 
walk in the bayou night with the crickets chirping and the bullfrogs booming and 
not think they were back on Old Earth. Except for the Lunar gravity, of course.
Trigger inherited money. Even with that and a teacher's salary, the bayou is an 
expensive place to maintain. It used to be a more conventional environment, but 
she discovered early that the swamp took less upkeep, and she likes the sleazy 
atmosphere, anyway. She put in the bait shop, bought the automotive mockups from 
artists, and got it listed with the Lunar Tourist Bureau as an authentic period 
reconstruction. They'd die if they knew the truth about the Toyota, but I 
certainly won't tell them.
The only other structure is definitely not from Louisiana of any year. It's a 
teepee sitting on a slight rise, just out of sight of the Sugar Shack. Cheyenne, 
I think. We spend most of our time there when we're on the bayou.
That's where we went after the episode with the pregnant woman. The floor is 
hard-packed clay and there's a fire always burning in the center. There's lots 
of pillows scattered around, and two big waterbeds.
We tried to talk about the incident. I think Denver was more upset than the rest 
of us, but from the tense way Cathay sat while Trigger massaged his back I knew 
he was bothered, too. His voice was troubled.
I admitted I had been scared, but there was more to it than that, and I was far 
from ready to talk about it. Trigger and Cathay sensed it, and let it go for the 
time being. Trigger got the pipe and stuffed it with dexeplant leaves.
It's a long-stemmed pipe. She got it lit, then leaned back with the stem in her 
teeth and the bowl held between her toes. She exhaled sweet, honey-colored 
smoke. As the day ended outside, she passed the pipe around. It tasted good, and 
calmed me wonderfully. It made it easy to fall asleep.
 
But I didn't sleep. Not quite. Maybe I was too far into puberty for the drug in 
the plant to act as a tranquilizer anymore. Or maybe I was too emotionally 
stimulated. Denver fell asleep quickly enough.
Cathay and Trigger didn't. They made love on the other side of the teepee, did 
it in such a slow, dreamy way that I knew the drug was affecting them. Though 
Cathay is in his forties and Trigger is over a hundred, both have the bodies of 
thirteen-year-olds, and the metabolism that goes with the territory.
They didn't actually finish making love; they sort of tapered off, like we used 
to do before orgasms became a factor. I found that made me happy, lying on my 
side and watching them through slitted eyes.
They talked for a while. The harder I strained to hear them, the sleepier I got. 
Somewhere in there I lost the battle to stay awake.
 
I became aware of a warm body close to me. It was still dark, the only light 
coming from the embers of the fire.
"Sorry, Argus," Cathay said. "I didn't mean to wake you."
"It's okay. Put your arms around me?" He did, and I squirmed until my back fit 
snugly against him. For a long time I just enjoyed it. I didn't think about 
anything, unless it was his warm breath on my neck, or his penis slowly 
hardening against my back. If you can call that thinking.
How many nights had we slept like this in the last seven years? Too many to 
count. We knew each other every way possible. A year ago he had been female, and 
before that both of us had been. Now we were both male, and that was nice, too. 
One part of me thought it didn't really matter which sex we were, but another 
part was wondering what it would be like to be female and know Cathay as a male. 
We hadn't tried that yet.
The thought of it made me shiver with anticipation. It had been too long since 
I'd had a vagina. I wanted Cathay between my legs, like Trigger had had him a 
short while before.
"I love you," I mumbled.
He kissed my ear. "I love you, too, silly. But how much do you love me?"
. "What do you mean?"
I felt him shift around to prop his head up on one hand. His fingers unwound a 
tight curl in my hair.
"I mean, will you still love me when I'm no taller than your knee?"
I shook my head, suddenly feeling cold. "I don't want to talk about that."
"I know that very well," he said. "But I can't let you forget it. It's not 
something that'll go away."
I turned onto my back and looked up at him. There was a faint smile on his face 
as he toyed with my lips and hair with his gentle fingertips, but his eyes were 
concerned. Cathay can't hide much from me anymore.
"It has to happen," he emphasized, showing no mercy. "For the reasons you heard 
me tell the woman. I'm committed to going back to age seven. There's another 
child waiting for me. She's a lot like you."
"Don't do it," I said, feeling miserable. I felt a tear in the corner of my eye, 
and Cathay brushed it away.
I was thankful that he didn't point out how unfair I was being. We both knew it; 
he accepted that, and went on as best he could.
"You remember our talk about sex? About two years ago, I think it was. Not too 
long after you first told me you love me."
"I remember. I remember it all."
He kissed me. "Still, I have to bring it up. Maybe it'll help. You know we 
agreed that it didn't matter what sex either of us was. Then I pointed out that 
you'd be growing up, while I'd become a child again. That we'd grow further 
apart sexually."
I nodded, knowing that if I spoke I'd start to sob.
"And we agreed that our love was deeper than that. That we didn't need sex to 
make it work. It can work."
This was true. Cathay was close to all his former students. They were adults 
now, and came to see him often. It was just to be close, to talk and hug. Lately 
sex had entered it again, but they all understood that would be over soon.
"I don't think I have that perspective," I said, carefully. "They know in a few 
years you'll mature again. I know it too, but it still feels like..."
"Like what?"
"Like you're abandoning me. I'm sorry, that's just how it feels."
He sighed, and pulled me close to him. He hugged me fiercely for a while, and it 
felt so good.
"Listen," he said, finally. "I guess there's no avoiding this. I could tell you 
that you'll get over it—you will—but it won't do any good. I had this same 
problem with every child I've taught."
"You did?" I hadn't known that, and it made me feel a little better.
"I did. I don't blame you for it. I feel it myself. I feel a pull to stay with 
you. But it wouldn't work, Argus. I love my work, or I wouldn't be doing it. 
There are hard times, like right now. But after a few months you'll feel 
better."
"Maybe I will." I was far from sure of it, but it seemed important to agree with 
him and get the conversation ended.
"In the meantime," he said, "we still have a few weeks together. I think we 
should make the most of them." And he did, his hands roaming over my body. He 
did all the work, letting me relax and try to get myself straightened out.
So I folded my arms under my head and reclined, trying to think of nothing but 
the warm circle of his mouth.
But eventually I began to feel I should be doing something for him, and knew 
what was wrong. He thought he was giving me what I wanted by making love to me 
in the way we had done since we grew older together. But there was another way, 
and I realized I didn't so much want him to stay thirteen. What I really wanted 
was to go back with him, to be seven again.
I touched his head and he looked up, then we embraced again face to face. We 
began to move against each other as we had done since we first met, the 
mindless, innocent friction from a time when it had less to do with sex than 
with simply feeling good.
But the body is insistent, and can't be fooled. Soon our movements were frantic, 
and then a feeling of wetness between us told me as surely as entropy that we 
could never go back.
 
On my way home the signs of change were all around me.
You grow a little, let out the arms and legs of your pressure suit until you 
finally have to get a new one. People stop thinking of you as a cute little kid 
and start talking about you being a fine young person. Always with that smile, 
like it's a joke that you're not supposed to get.
People treat you differently as you grow up. At first you hardly interact at all 
with adults, except your own mother and the mothers of your friends. You live in 
a kid's world, and adults are hardly even obstacles because they get out of your 
way when you run down the corridors. You go all sorts of places for free; people 
want you around to make them happy because there are so few kids and just about 
everybody would like to have more than just the one. You hardly even notice the 
people smiling at you all the time.
But it's not like that at all when you're thirteen. Now there was the 
hesitation, just a fraction of a second before they gave me a child's 
privileges. Not that I blamed anybody. I was nearly as tall as a lot of the 
adults I met.
But now I had begun to notice the adults, to watch them. Especially when they 
didn't know they were being watched. I saw that a lot of them spent a lot of 
time frowning. Occasionally, I would see real pain on a face. Then he or she 
would look at me, and smile. I could see that wouldn't be happening forever. 
Sooner or later I'd cross some invisible line, and the pain would stay in those 
faces, and I'd have to try to understand it. I'd be an adult, and I wasn't sure 
I wanted to be.
It was because of this new preoccupation with faces that I noticed the woman 
sitting across from me on the Archimedes train. I planned to be a writer, so I 
tended to see everything in terms of stories and characters. I watched her and 
tried to make a story about her.
She was attractive: physically mid-twenties, straight black hair and brownish 
skin, round face without elaborate surgery or startling features except her dark 
brown eyes. She wore a simple thigh-length robe of thin white material that 
flowed like water when she moved. She had one elbow on the back of her seat, 
absently chewing a knuckle as she looked out the window.
There didn't seem to be a story in her face. She was in an unguarded moment, but 
I saw no pain, no big concerns or fears. It's possible I just missed it. I was 
new at the game and I didn't know much about what was important to adults. But I 
kept trying.
Then she turned to look at me, and she didn't smile.
I mean, she smiled, but it didn't say isn't-he-cute. It was the sort of smile 
that made me wish I'd worn some clothes. Since I'd learned what erections are 
for, I no longer wished to have them in public places.
I crossed my legs. She moved to sit beside me. She held up her palm and I 
touched it. She was facing me with one leg drawn up under her and her arm 
resting on the seat behind me.
"I'm Trilby," she said.
"Hi. I'm Argus." I found myself trying to lower my voice.
"I was sitting over there watching you watch me."
"You were?"
"In the glass," she explained.
"Oh." I looked, and sure enough, from where she had been sitting she could 
appear to be looking at the landscape while actually studying my reflection. "I 
didn't mean to be rude."
She laughed and put her hand on my shoulder, then moved it. "What about me?" she 
said. "I was being sneaky about it; you weren't. Anyhow, don't fret. I don't 
mind." I shifted again, and she glanced down. "And don't worry about that, 
either. It happens."
I still felt nervous but she was able to put me at ease. We talked for the rest 
of the ride, and I have no memory of what we talked about. The range of subjects 
must have been quite narrow, as I'm sure she never made reference to my age, my 
schooling, her profession—or just why she had started a conversation with a 
thirteen-year-old on a public train.
None of that mattered. I was willing to talk about anything. If I wondered about 
her reasons, I assumed she actually was in her twenties, and not that far from 
her own childhood.
"Are you in a hurry?" she asked at one point, giving her head a little toss.
"Me? No. I'm on my way to see—" No, no, not your mother. "—a friend. She can 
wait. She expects me when I get there." That sounded better.
"Can I buy you a drink?" One eyebrow raised, a small motion with the hand. Her 
gestures were economical, but seemed to say more than her words. I mentally 
revised her age upward a few years. Maybe quite a few.
This was timed to the train arriving at Archimedes; we got up and I quickly 
accepted.
"Good. I know a nice place."
The bartender gave me that smile and was about to give me the customary free one 
on the house toward my legal limit of two. But Trilby changed all that.
"Two Irish whiskeys, please. On the rocks." She said it firmly, raising her 
voice a little, and a complex thing happened between her and the bartender. She 
gave him a look, his eyebrow twitched and he glanced at me, seemed to understand 
something. His whole attitude toward me changed.
I had the feeling something had gone over my head, but didn't have time to worry 
about it. I never had time to worry when Trilby was around. The drinks arrived, 
and we sipped them.
"I wonder why they still call it Irish?" she said.
We launched into a discussion of the Invaders, or Ireland, or Occupied Earth. 
I'm not sure. It was inconsequential, and the real conversation was going on eye 
to eye. Mostly it was her saying wordless things to me, and me nodding agreement 
with my tongue hanging out.
We ended up at the public baths down the corridor. Her nipples were shaped like 
pink valentine hearts. Other than that, her body was unremarkable, though 
wonderfully firm beneath the softness. She was so unlike Trigger and Denver and 
Cathay. So unlike me. I catalogued the differences as I sat behind her in the 
big pool and massaged her soapy shoulders.
On the way to the tanning room she stopped beside one of the private alcoves and 
just stood there, waiting, looking at me. My legs walked me into the room and 
she followed me. My hands pressed against her back and my mouth opened when she 
kissed me. She lowered me to the soft floor and took me.
 
What was so different about it?
I pondered that during the long walk from the slide terminus to my home. Trilby 
and I had made love for the better part of an hour. It was nothing fancy, 
nothing I had not already tried with Trigger and Denver. I had thought she would 
have some fantastic new tricks to show me, but that had not been the case.
Yet she had not been like Trigger or Denver. Her body responded in a different 
way, moved in directions I was not used to. I did my best. When I left her, I 
knew she was happy, and yet felt she expected more.
I found that I was very interested in giving her more.
I was in love again.
 
With my hand on the doorplate, I suddenly knew that she had already forgotten 
me. It was silly to assume anything else. I had been a pleasant diversion, an 
interesting novelty.
I hadn't asked for her name, her address or call number. Why not? Maybe I 
already knew she would not care to hear from me again.
I hit the plate with the heel of my hand and brooded during the elevator ride to 
the surface.
My home is unusual. Of course, it belongs to Darcy, my mother. She was there 
now, putting the finishing touches on a diorama. She glanced up at me, smiled, 
and offered her cheek for a kiss.
"I'll be through in a moment," she said. "I want to finish this before the light 
fails."
We live in a large bubble on the surface. Part of it is partitioned into rooms 
without ceilings, but the bulk forms Darcy's studio. The bubble is transparent. 
It screens out the ultraviolet light so we don't get burned.
It's an uncommon way to live, but it suits us. From our vantage point at the 
south side of a small valley only three similar bubbles can be seen. It would be 
impossible for an outsider to guess that a city teemed just below the surface.
Growing up, I never gave a thought to agoraphobia, but it's common among 
Lunarians. I felt sorry for those not fortunate enough to grow up with a view.
Darcy likes it for the light. She's an artist, and particular about light. She 
works two weeks on and two off, resting during the night. I grew up to that 
schedule, leaving her alone while she put in marathon sessions with her 
airbrushes, coming home to spend two weeks with her when the sun didn't shine.
That had changed a bit when I reached my tenth birthday. We had lived alone 
before then, Darcy cutting her work schedule drastically until I was four, 
gradually picking it up as I attained more independence. She did it so she could 
devote all her time to me. Then one day she sat me down and told me two men were 
moving in. It was only later that I realized how Darcy had altered her lifestyle 
to raise me properly. She is a serial polyandrist, especially attracted to 
fierce-faced, uncompromising, maverick male artists whose work doesn't sell and 
who are usually a little hungry. She likes the hunger, and the determination 
they all have not to pander to public tastes. She usually keeps three or four of 
them around, feeding them and giving them a place to work. She demands little of 
them other than that they clean up after themselves.
I had to step around the latest of these household pets to get to the kitchen. 
He was sound asleep, snoring loudly, his hands stained yellow and red and green. 
I'd never seen him before.
Darcy came up behind me while I was making a snack, hugged me, then pulled up a 
chair and sat down. The sun would be out another half hour or so, but there 
wasn't time to start another painting.
"How have you been? You didn't call for three days."
"Didn't I? I'm sorry. We've been staying on the bayou."
She wrinkled her nose. Darcy had seen the bayou. Once.
"That place. I wish I knew why—"
"Darcy. Let's not get into that again. Okay?"
"Done." She spread her paint-stained hands and waved them in a circle, as if 
erasing something, and that was it. Darcy is good that way. "I've got a new 
roommate."
"I nearly stumbled over him."
She ran one hand through her hair and gave me a lopsided grin. "He'll shape up. 
His name's Thogra."
"Thogra," I said, making a face. "Listen, if he's housebroken, and stays out of 
my way, we'll—" But I couldn't go on. We were both laughing and I was about to 
choke on a bite that went down wrong. Darcy knows what I think of her choice in 
bedmates.
"What about... what's-his-name? The armpit man. The guy who kept getting 
arrested for body odor."
She stuck her tongue out at me.
"You know he cleaned up months ago."
"Hah! It's those months before he discovered water that I remember. All my 
friends wondering where we were raising sheep, the flowers losing petals when he 
walked by, the—"
"Abil didn't come back," Darcy said, quietly.
I stopped laughing. I'd known he'd been away a few weeks, but that happens. I 
raised one eyebrow.
"Yeah. Well, you know he sold a few things. And he had some offers. But I keep 
expecting him to at least stop by to pick up his bedroll."
I didn't say anything. Darcy's loves follow a pattern that she is quite aware 
of, but it's still tough when one breaks up. Her men would often speak with 
contempt of the sort of commercial art that kept me and Darcy eating and paying 
the oxygen bills. Then one of three things would happen. They would get nowhere, 
and leave as poor as they had arrived, contempt intact. A few made it on their 
own terms, forcing the art world to accept their peculiar visions. Often Darcy 
was able to stay on good terms with these; she was on a drop-in-and-make-love 
basis with half the artists in Luna.
But the most common departure was when the artist decided he was tired of 
poverty. With just a slight lowering of standards they were all quite capable of 
making a living. Then it became intolerable to live with the woman they had 
ridiculed. Darcy usually kicked them out quickly, with a minimum of pain. They 
were no longer hungry, no longer fierce enough to suit her. But it always hurt.
Darcy changed the subject.
"I made an appointment at the medico for your Change," she said. "You're to be 
there next Monday, in the morning."
A series of quick, vivid impressions raced through my mind. Trilby. Breasts 
tipped with hearts. The way it had felt when my penis entered her, and the warm 
exhaustion after the semen had left my body.
"I've changed my mind about that," I said, crossing my legs. "I'm not ready for 
another Change. Maybe in a few months."
She just sat there with her mouth open.
"Changed your mind? Last time I talked to you, you were all set to change your 
sex. In fact, you had to talk me into giving permission."
"I remember," I said, feeling uneasy about it. "I just changed my mind, that's 
all."
"But Argus. This just isn't fair. I sat up two nights convincing myself how nice 
it would be to have my daughter back again. It's been a long time. Don't you 
think you—"
"It's really not your decision, Mother."
She looked like she was going to get angry, then her eyes narrowed. "There must 
be a reason. You've met somebody. Right?"
But I didn't want to talk about that. I had told her the first time I made love, 
and about every new person I'd gone to bed with since. But I didn't want to 
share this with her.
So I told her about the incident earlier that day on the bayou. I told her about 
the pregnant woman, and about the thing Cathay had done.
Darcy frowned more and more. When I got to the part about the mud, there were 
ridges all over her forehead.
"I don't like that," she said.
"I don't really like it, either. But I didn't see what else we could do."
"I just don't think it was handled well. I think I should call Cathay and talk 
to him about it."
"I wish you wouldn't." I didn't say anything more, and she studied my face for a 
long, uncomfortable time. She and Cathay had differed before about how I should 
be raised.
"This shouldn't be ignored."
"Please, Darcy. He'll only be my teacher for another month. Let it go, okay?"
After a while she nodded, and looked away from me.
"You're growing more every day," she said, sadly. I didn't know why she said 
that, but was glad she was dropping the subject. To tell the truth, I didn't 
want to think about the woman anymore. But I was going to have to think about 
her, and very soon.
 
I had intended to spend the week at home, but Trigger called the next morning to 
say that Mardi Gras '56 was being presented again, and it was starting in a few 
hours. She'd made reservations for the four of us.
Trigger had seen the presentation before, but I hadn't, and neither had Denver. 
I told her I'd come, went in to tell Darcy, found her still asleep. She often 
slept for two days after a Lunar Day of working. I left her a note and hurried 
to catch the train.
 
It's called the Cultural Heritage Museum, and though they pay for it with their 
taxes, most Lunarians never go there. They find the exhibits disturbing. I 
understand that lately, however, with the rise of the Free Earth Party, it's 
become more popular with people searching for their roots.
Once they presented London Town 1903, and I got to see what Earth museums had 
been like by touring the replica British Museum. The CHM isn't like that at all. 
Only a very few art treasures, artifacts, and historical curiosities were 
brought to Luna in the days before the Invasion. As a result, all the tangible 
relics of Earth's past were destroyed.
On the other hand, the Lunar computer system had a capacity that was virtually 
limitless even then; everything was recorded and stored. Every book, painting, 
tax receipt, statistic, photograph, government report, corporate record, film, 
and tape existed in the memory banks. Just as the disneylands are populated with 
animals cloned from cells stored in the Genetic Library, the CHM is filled with 
cunning copies made from the old records of the way things were.
I met the others at the Sugar Shack, where Denver was trying to talk Trigger 
into taking Tuesday along with us. Tuesday is the hippopotamus that lives on the 
bayou, in cheerful defiance of any sense of authenticity. Denver had her on a 
chain and she stood placidly watching us, blinking her piggy little eyes.
Denver was tickled at the idea of going to Mardi Gras with a hippo named 
Tuesday, but Trigger pointed out that the museum officials would never let us 
into New Orleans with the beast. Denver finally conceded, and shooed her back 
into the swamp. The four of us went down the road and out of the bayou, boarded 
the central slidewalk, and soon arrived in the city center.
 
There are twenty-five theaters in the CHM. Usually about half of them are 
operating while the others are being prepared for a showing. Mardi Gras '56 is a 
ten-year-old show, and generally opens twice a year for a two week run. It's one 
of the more popular environments.
We went to the orientation room and listened to the lecture on how to behave, 
then were given our costumes. That's the part I like the least. Up until about 
the beginning of the twenty-first century, clothing was designed with two main 
purposes in mind: modesty, and torture. If it didn't hurt, it needed 
redesigning. It's no wonder they killed each other all the time. Anybody would, 
with high gravity and hard shoes mutilating their feet.
"We'll be beatniks," Trigger said, looking over the racks of period clothing. 
"They were more informal, and it's accurate enough to get by. There were 
beatniks in the French Quarter."
Informality was fine with us. The girls didn't need bras, and we could choose 
between leather sandals or canvas sneakers for our feet. I can't say I cared 
much for something called Levis, though. They were scratchy, and pinched my 
balls. But after visiting Victorian England—I had been female at the time, and 
what those people made girls wear would shock most Lunarians silly—anything was 
an improvement.
Entry to the holotorium was through the restrooms at the back of a nightclub 
that fronted on Bourbon Street. Boys to the left, girls to the right. I think 
they did that to impress you right away that you were going back into the past, 
when people did things in strange ways. There was a third restroom, actually, 
but it was only a false door with the word "colored" on it. It was impossible to 
sort that out anymore.
I like the music of 1956 New Orleans. There are many varieties, all sounding 
similar for modern ears with their simple rhythms and blends of wind, string, 
and percussion. The generic term is jazz, and the particular kind of jazz that 
afternoon in the tiny, smoke-filled basement was called dixieland. It's 
dominated by two instruments called a clarinet and a trumpet, each improvising a 
simple melody while the rest of the band makes as much racket as it can.
We had a brief difference of opinion. Cathay and Trigger wanted me and Denver to 
stay with them, presumably so they could use any opportunity to show off their 
superior knowledge— translation: "educate" us. After all, they were teachers. 
Denver didn't seem to mind, but I wanted to be alone.
I solved the problem by walking out onto the street, reasoning that they could 
follow me if they wished. They didn't, and I was free to explore on my own.
Going to a holotorium show isn't like the sensies, where you sit in a chair and 
the action comes to you. And it's not like a disneyland, where everything is 
real and you just poke around. You have to be careful not to ruin the illusion.
The majority of the set, most of the props, and all of the actors are holograms. 
Any real people you meet are costumed visitors, like yourself. What they did in 
the case of New Orleans was to lay out a grid of streets and surface them as 
they had actually been. Then they put up two-meter walls where the buildings 
would be, and concealed them behind holos of old buildings. A few of the doors 
in these buildings were real, and if you went in you would find the interiors 
authentic down to the last detail. Most just concealed empty blocks.
You don't go there to play childish tricks with holos, that's contrary to the 
whole spirit of the place. You find yourself being careful not to shatter the 
illusion. You don't talk to people unless you're sure they're real, and you 
don't touch things until you've studied them carefully. No holo can stand up to 
a close scrutiny, so you can separate the real from the illusion if you try.
The stage was a large one. They had reproduced the French Quarter—or Vieux 
Carre—from the Mississippi River to Rampart Street, and from Canal Street to a 
point about six blocks east. Standing on Canal and looking across, the city 
seemed to teem with life for many kilometers in the distance, though I knew 
there was a wall right down the yellow line in the middle.
New Orleans '56 begins at noon on Shrove Tuesday and carries on far into the 
night. We had arrived in late afternoon, with the sun starting to cast long 
shadows over the endless parades. I wanted to see the place before it got dark.
I went down Canal for a few blocks, looking into the "windows." There was an old 
flat movie theater with a marquee announcing From Here to Eternity, winner of 
something called an Oscar. I saw that it was a real place and thought about 
going in, but I'm afraid those old 2-D movies leave me flat, no matter how good 
Trigger says they are.
So instead I walked the streets, observing, thinking about writing a story set 
in old New Orleans.
That's why I hadn't wanted to stay and listen to the music with the others. 
Music is not something you can really put into a story, beyond a bare 
description of what it sounds like, who is playing it, and where it is being 
heard. In the same way, going to the flat movie would not have been very 
productive.
But the streets, the streets! There was something to study.
The pattern was the same as old London, but all the details had changed. The 
roads were filled with horseless carriages, great square metal boxes that must 
have been the most inefficient means of transport ever devised. Nothing was 
truly straight, nor very clean. To walk the streets was to risk broken toes or 
cuts on the soles of the feet. No wonder they wore thick shoes.
I knew what the red and green lights were for, and the lines painted on the 
road. But what about the rows of timing devices on each side of the street? What 
was the red metal object that a dog was urinating on? What did the honking of 
the car horns signify? Why were wires suspended overhead on wooden poles? I 
ignored the Mardi Gras festivities and spent a pleasant hour looking for the 
answers to these and many other questions.
What a challenge to write of this time, to make the story a slice of life, where 
these outlandish things seemed normal and reasonable. I visualized one of the 
inhabitants of New Orleans transplanted to Archimedes, and tried to picture her 
confusion.
Then I saw Trilby, and forgot about New Orleans.
She was behind the wheel of a 1955 Ford station wagon. I know this because when 
she motioned for me to join her, slid over on the seat, and let me drive, there 
was a gold plaque on the bulkhead just below the forward viewport.
"How do you run this thing?" I asked, flustered and trying not to show it. 
Something was wrong. Maybe I'd known it all along, and was only now admitting 
it.
"You press that pedal to go, and that one to stop. But mostly it controls 
itself." The car proved her right by accelerating into the stream of holographic 
traffic. I put my hands on the wheel, found that I could guide the car within 
limits. As long as I wasn't going to hit anything it let me be the boss.
"What brings you here?" I asked, trying for a light voice.
"I went by your home," she said. "Your mother told me where you were."
"I don't recall telling you where I live."
She shrugged, not seeming too happy. "It's not hard to find out."
"I... I mean, you didn't..." I wasn't sure if I wanted to say it, but decided 
I'd better go on. "We didn't meet by accident, did we?"
"No."
"And you're my new teacher."
She sighed. "That's an oversimplification. I want to be one of your new 
teachers. Cathay recommended me to your mother, and when I talked to her, she 
was interested. I was just going to get a look at you on the train, but when I 
saw you looking at me... well, I thought I'd give you something to remember me 
by."
"Thanks."
She looked away. "Darcy told me today that it might have been a mistake. I guess 
I judged you wrong."
"It's nice to hear that you can make a mistake."
"I guess I don't understand."
"I don't like to feel predictable. I don't like to be toyed with. Maybe it hurts 
my dignity. Maybe I get enough of that from Trigger and Cathay. All the 
lessons."
"I see it now," she sighed. "It's a common enough reaction, in bright children, 
they—"
"Don't say that."
"I'm sorry, but I must. There's no use hiding from you that my business is to 
know people, and especially children. That means the phases they go through, 
including the phase when they like to imagine they don't go through phases. I 
didn't recognize it in you, so I made a mistake."
I sighed. "What does it matter, anyway? Darcy likes you. That means you'll be my 
new teacher, doesn't it?"
"It does not. Not with me, anyway. I'm one of the first big choices you get to 
make with no adult interference."
"I don't get it."
"That's because you've never been interested enough to find out what's ahead of 
you in your education. At the risk of offending you again, I'll say it's a 
common response in people your age. You're only a month from graduating away 
from Cathay, ready to start more goal-oriented aspects of learning, and you 
haven't bothered to find what that will entail. Did you ever stop to think 
what's between you and becoming a writer?"
"I'm a writer, already," I said, getting angry for the first time. Before that, 
I'd been feeling hurt more than anything. "I can use the language, and I watch 
people. Maybe I don't have much experience yet, but I'll get it with or without 
you. I don't even have to have teachers at all anymore. At least I know that 
much."
"You're right, of course. But you've known your mother intended to pay for your 
advanced education. Didn't you ever wonder what it would be like?"
"Why should I? Did you ever think that I'm not interested because it just 
doesn't seem important? I mean, who's asked me what I felt about any of this up 
to now? What kind of stake do I have in it? Everyone seems to know what's best 
for me. Why should I be consulted?"
"Because you're nearly an adult now. My job, if you hire me, will be to ease the 
transition. When you've made it, you'll know, and you won't need me anymore. 
This isn't primary phase. Your teacher's job back then was to work with your 
mother to teach you the basic ways of getting along with people and society, and 
to cram your little head with all the skills a seven-year-old can learn. They 
taught you language, dexterity, reasoning, responsibility, hygiene, and not to 
go in an airlock without your suit. They took an ego-centered infant and turned 
him into a moral being. It's a tough job; so little, and you could have been a 
sociopath.
"Then they handed you to Cathay. You didn't mind. He showed up one day, just 
another playmate your own age. You were happy and trusting. He guided you very 
gently, letting your natural curiosity do most of the work. He discovered your 
creative abilities before you had any inkling of them, and he saw to it that you 
had interesting things to think about, to react to, to experience.
"But lately you've been a problem for him. Not your fault, nor his, but you no 
longer want anyone to guide you. You want to do it on your own. You have vague 
feelings of being manipulated."
"Which is not surprising," I put in. "I am being manipulated."
"That's true, so far as it goes. But what would you have Cathay do? Leave 
everything to chance?"
"That's beside the point. We're talking about my feelings now, and what I feel 
is you were dishonest with me. You made me feel like a fool. I thought what 
happened was... was spontaneous, you know? Like a fairy tale."
She gave me a funny smile. "What an odd way to put it. What I intended to do was 
allow you to live out a wet dream."
I guess the easy way she admitted that threw me off my stride. I should have 
told her there was no real difference. Both fairy tales and wet dreams were 
visions of impossibly convenient worlds, worlds where things go the way you want 
them to go. But I didn't say anything.
"I realize now that it was the wrong way to approach you. Frankly, I thought 
you'd enjoy it. Wait, let me change that. I thought you'd enjoy it even after 
you knew. I submit that you did enjoy it while it was happening."
I once again said nothing, because it was the simple truth. But it wasn't the 
point.
She waited, watching me as I steered the old car through traffic. Then she 
sighed, and looked out the viewport again.
"Well, it's up to you. As I said, things won't be planned for you anymore. 
You'll have to decide if you want me to be your teacher."
"Just what is it you teach?" I asked.
"Sex is part of it."
I started to say something, but was stopped by the novel idea that someone 
thought she could—or needed to—teach me about sex. I mean, what was there to 
learn?
I hardly noticed it when the car stopped on its own, was shaken out of my 
musings only when a man in blue stuck his head in the window beside me. There 
was a woman behind him, dressed the same way. I realized they were wearing 1956 
police uniforms.
"Are you Argus-Darcy-Meric?" the man asked.
"Yeah. Who are you?"
"My name is Jordan. I'm sorry, but you'll have to come with me. A complaint has 
been filed against you. You are under arrest."
 
Arrest. To take into custody by legal authority. Or, to stop suddenly.
Being arrested contains both meanings, it seems to me. You're in custody, and 
your life comes to a temporary halt. Whatever you were doing is interrupted, and 
suddenly only one thing is important.
I wasn't too worried until I realized what that one thing must be. After all, 
everyone gets arrested. You can't avoid it in a society of laws. Filing a 
complaint against someone is the best way of keeping a situation from turning 
violent. I had been arrested three times before, been found guilty twice. Once I 
had filed a complaint myself, and had it sustained.
But this time promised to be different. I doubted I was being hauled in for some 
petty violation I had not even been aware of. No, this had to be the pregnant 
woman, and the mud. I had a while to think about that as I sat in the 
bare-walled holding cell, time to get really worried. We had physically attacked 
her, there was no doubt about that.
I was finally summoned to the examination chamber. It was larger than the ones I 
had been in before. Those occasions had involved just two people. This room had 
five wedge-shaped glass booths, each with a chair inside, arranged so that we 
faced each other in a circle. I was shown into the only empty one and I looked 
around at Denver, Cathay, Trigger... and the woman.
It's quiet in the booths. You are very much alone.
I saw Denver's mother come in and sit behind her daughter, outside the booth. 
Turning around, I saw Darcy. To my surprise, Trilby was with her.
"Hello, Argus." The Central Computer's voice filled the tiny booth, mellow as 
usual but without the reassuring resonance.
"Hello, CC," I tried to keep it light, but of course the CC was not fooled.
"I'm sorry to see you in so much trouble."
"Is it real bad?"
"The charge certainly is, there's no sense denying that. I can't comment on the 
testimony, or on your chances. But you know you're facing a possible mandatory 
death penalty, with automatic reprieve."
I was aware of it. I also knew it was rarely enforced against someone my age. 
But what about Cathay and Trigger?
I've never cared for that term "reprieve." It somehow sounds like they aren't 
going to kill you, but they are. Very, very dead. The catch is that they then 
grow a clone from a cell of your body, force it quickly to maturity, and play 
your recorded memories back into it. So someone very like you will go on, but 
you will be dead. In my case, the last recording had been taken three years ago. 
I was facing the loss of almost a quarter of my life. If it was found necessary 
to kill me, the new Argus—not me, but someone with my memories and my name—would 
start over at age ten. He would be watched closely, be given special guidance to 
insure he didn't grow into the sociopath I had become.
The CC launched into the legally required explanation of what was going on: my 
rights, the procedures, the charges, the possible penalties, what would happen 
if a determination led the CC to believe the offense might be a capital one.
"Whew!" the CC breathed, lapsing back into the informal speech it knew I 
preferred. "Now that we have that out of the way, I can tell you that, from the 
preliminary reports, I think you're going to be okay."
"You're not just saying that?" I was sincerely frightened. The enormity of it 
had now had time to sink in.
"You know me better than that."
The testimony began. The complainant went first, and I learned her name was 
Tiona. The first round was free-form; we could say anything we wanted to, and 
she had some pretty nasty things to say about all four of us.
The CC went around the circle asking each of us what had happened. I thought 
Cathay told it most accurately, except for myself. During the course of the 
statements both Cathay and Trigger filed counter-complaints. The CC noted them. 
They would be tried simultaneously.
There was a short pause, then the CC spoke in its "official" voice.
"In the matters of Argus and Denver: testimony fails to establish premeditation, 
but neither deny the physical description of the incident, and a finding of 
Assault is returned. Mitigating factors of age and consequent inability to 
combat the mob aspect of the situation are entered, with the following result: 
the charge is reduced to Willful Deprivation of Dignity.
"In the case of Tiona versus Argus: guilty.
"In the case of Tiona versus Denver: guilty.
"Do either of you have anything to say before sentence is entered?"
I thought about it. "I'm sorry," I said. "It upset me quite a bit, what 
happened. I won't do it again."
"I'm not sorry," Denver said. "She asked for it. I'm sorry for her, but I'm not 
sorry for what I did."
"Comments are noted," the CC said. "You are each fined the sum of three hundred 
Marks, collection deferred until you reach employable age, sum to be taken at 
the rate of ten percent of your earnings until paid, half going to Tiona, half 
to the State. Final entry of sentence shall be delayed until a further 
determination of matters still before the court is made."
"You got off easy," the CC said, speaking only to me. "But stick around. Things 
could still change, and you might not have to pay the fine after all."
It was a bit of a wrench, getting a sentence, then sympathy from the same 
machine. I had to guard against feeling that the CC was on my side. It wasn't, 
not really. It's absolutely impartial, so far as I can tell. Yet it is so vast 
an intelligence that it makes a different personality for each citizen it deals 
with. The part that had just talked to me was really on my side, but was 
powerless to affect what the judgmental part of it did.
"I don't get it," I said. "What happens now?"
"Well, I've been rashomoned again. That means you all told your stories from 
your own viewpoints. We haven't reached deeply enough into the truth. Now I'm 
going to have to wire you all, and take another round."
As it spoke, I saw the probes come up behind everyone's chairs: little golden 
snakes with plugs on the end. I felt one behind me search through my hair until 
it found the terminal. It plugged in.
There are two levels to wired testimony. Darcy and Trilby and Denver's mother 
had to leave the room for the first part, when we all told our stories without 
our censors working. The transcript bears me out when I say I didn't tell any 
lies in the first round, unlike Tiona, who told a lot of them. But it doesn't 
sound like the same story, nevertheless. I told all sorts of things I never 
would have said without being wired: fears, selfish, formless desires, infantile 
motivations. It's embarrassing, and I'm glad I don't recall any of it. I'm even 
happier that only Tiona and I, as interested parties, can see my testimony. I 
only wish I was the only one.
The second phase is the disconnection of the subconscious. I told the story a 
third time, in terms as bloodless as the stage directions of a holovision 
script.
Then the terminals withdrew from us and I suffered a moment of disorientation. I 
knew where I was, where I had been, and yet I felt like I had been told about it 
rather than lived it. But that passed quickly. I stretched.
"Is everyone ready to go on?" the CC asked, politely. We all said that we were.
"Very well. In the matters of Tiona versus Argus and Denver: the guilty 
judgments remain in force in both cases, but both fines are rescinded in view of 
provocation, lessened liability due to immaturity, and lack of signs of 
continuing sociopathic behavior. In place of the fines, Denver and Argus are to 
report weekly for evaluation and education in moral principles until such time 
as a determination can be made, duration of such sessions to be no less than 
four weeks.
"In the matter of Tiona versus Trigger: Trigger is guilty of an Assault. 
Tempering this judgment is her motive, which was the recognition of Cathay's 
strategy in dealing with Tiona, and her belief that he was doing the right 
thing. This court notes that he was doing the merciful thing; right is another 
matter. There can be no doubt that a physical assault occurred. It cannot be 
condoned, no matter what the motive. For bad judgment, then, this court fines 
Trigger ten percent of her earnings for a period of ten years, all of it to be 
paid to the injured party, Tiona."
Tiona did not look smug. She must have known by then that things were not going 
her way. I was beginning to understand it, too.
"In the matter of Tiona versus Cathay," the CC went on, "Cathay is guilty of an 
Assault. His motive has been determined to be the avoidance of just such a 
situation as he now finds himself in, and the knowledge that Tiona would suffer 
greatly if he brought her to court. He attempted to bring the confrontation to 
an end with a minimum of pain for Tiona, never dreaming that she would show the 
bad judgment to bring the matter to court. She did, and now he finds himself 
convicted of assault. In view of his motives, mercy will temper this court's 
decision. He is ordered to pay the same fine as his colleague, Trigger.
"Now to the central matter, that of Trigger and Cathay versus Tiona." I saw her 
sink a little lower in her chair.
"You are found to be guilty by reason of insanity of the following charges: 
harassment, trespassing, verbal assault, and four counts of infringement.
"Your offense was in attempting to make others shoulder the blame for your own 
misjudgments and misfortunes. The court is sympathetic to your plight, realizes 
that the fault for your situation was not entirely your own. This does not 
excuse your behavior, however.
"Cathay attempted to do you a favor, supposing that your aberrant state of mind 
would not last long enough for the filing of charges, that when you were alone 
and thought it over you would realize how badly you had wronged him and that a 
court would find in his favor.
"The State holds you responsible for the maintenance of your own mind, does not 
care what opinions you hold or what evaluations you make of reality so long as 
they do not infringe on the rights of other citizens. You are free to think 
Cathay responsible for your troubles, even if this opinion is irrational, but 
when you assault him with this opinion the State must take notice and make a 
judgment as to the worth of the opinion.
"This court is appointed to make that judgment of right and wrong, and finds no 
basis in fact for your contentions.
"This court finds you to be insane.
"Judgment is as follows:
"Subject to the approval of the wronged parties, you are given the choice of 
death with reprieve, or submission to a course of treatment to remove your 
sociopathic attitudes.
"Argus, do you demand her death?"
"Huh?" That was a big surprise to me, and not one that I liked. But the decision 
gave me no trouble.
"No, I don't demand anything. I thought I was out of this, and I feel just 
rotten about the whole thing. Would you really have killed her if I asked you 
to?"
"I can't answer that, because you didn't. It's not likely that I would have, 
mostly because of your age." It went on to ask the other four, and I suspect 
that Tiona would have been pushing up daisies if Cathay had wanted it that way, 
but he didn't. Neither did Trigger or Denver.
"Very well. How do you choose, Tiona?"
She answered in a very small voice that she would be grateful for the chance to 
go on living. Then she thanked each of us. It was excruciatingly painful for me; 
my empathy was working overtime, and I was trying to imagine what it would feel 
like to have society's appointed representative declare me insane.
The rest of it was clearing up details. Tiona was fined heavily, both in court 
costs and taxes, and in funds payable to Cathay and Trigger. Their fines were 
absorbed in her larger ones, with the result that she would be paying them for 
many years. Her child was in cold storage; the CC ruled that he should stay 
there until Tiona was declared sane, as she was now unfit to mother him. It 
occurred to me that if she had considered suspending his animation while she 
found a new primary teacher, we all could have avoided the trial.
Tiona hurried away when the doors came open behind us. Darcy hugged me while 
Trilby stayed in the background, then I went over to join the others, expecting 
a celebration.
But Trigger and Cathay were not elated. In fact, you would have thought they'd 
just lost the judgment. They congratulated me and Denver, then hurried away. I 
looked at Darcy, and she wasn't smiling, either.
"I don't get it," I confessed. "Why is everyone so glum?"
"They still have to face the Teacher's Association," Darcy said.
"I still don't get it. They won."
"It's not just a matter of winning or losing with the TA," Trilby said. "You 
forget, they were judged guilty of assault. To make it even worse, in fact as 
bad as it can be, you and Denver were there when it happened. They were the 
cause of you two joining in the assault. I'm afraid the TA will frown on that."
"But if the CC thought they shouldn't be punished, why should the TA think 
otherwise? Isn't the CC smarter than people?"
Trilby grimaced. "I wish I could answer that. I wish I was even sure how I feel 
about it."
 
She found me the next day, shortly after the Teacher's Association announced its 
decision. I didn't really want to be found, but the bayou is not so big that one 
can really hide there, so I hadn't tried. I was sitting on the grass on the 
highest hill in Beatnik Bayou, which was also the driest place.
She beached the canoe and came up the hill slowly, giving me plenty of time to 
warn her off if I really wanted to be alone. What the hell. I'd have to talk to 
her soon enough.
For a long time she just sat there. She rested her elbows on her knees and 
stared down at the quiet waters, just like I'd been doing all afternoon.
"How's he taking it?" I said, at last.
"I don't know. He's back there, if you want to talk to him. He'd probably like 
to talk to you."
"At least Trigger got off okay." As soon as I'd said it, it sounded hollow.
"Three years' probation isn't anything to laugh about. She'll have to close this 
place down for a while. Put it in mothballs."
"Mothballs." I saw Tuesday the hippo, wallowing in the deep mud across the 
water. Tuesday in suspended animation? I thought of Tiona's little baby, waiting 
in a bottle until his mother became sane again. I remembered the happy years 
slogging around in the bayou mud, and saw the waters frozen, icicles mixed with 
Spanish moss in the tree limbs. "I guess it'll cost quite a bit to start it up 
again in three years, won't it?" I had only hazy ideas of money. So far, it had 
never been important to me.
Trilby glanced at me, eyes narrowed. She shrugged.
"Most likely, Trigger will have to sell the place. There's a buyer who wants to 
expand it and turn it into a golf course."
"Golf course," I echoed, feeling numb. Manicured greens, pretty water hazards, 
sand traps, flags whipping in the breeze. Sterile. I suddenly felt like crying, 
but for some reason I didn't do it.
"You can't come back here, Argus. Nothing stays the same. Change is something 
you have to get used to."
"Cathay will, too." And just how much change should a person be expected to 
take? With a shock, I realized that now Cathay would be doing what I had wanted 
him to do. He'd be growing up with me, getting older instead of being regressed 
to grow up with another child. And it was suddenly just too much. It hadn't been 
my fault that this was happening to him, but having wished for it and having it 
come true made it feel like it was. The tears came, and they didn't stop for a 
long time.
Trilby left me alone, and I was grateful for that.
 
She was still there when I got myself under control. I didn't care one way or 
the other. I felt empty, with a burning in the back of my throat. Nobody had 
told me life was going to be like this.
"What... what about the child Cathay contracted to teach?" I asked, finally, 
feeling I should say something. "What happens to her?"
"The TA takes responsibility," Trilby said. "They'll find someone. For Trigger's 
child, too."
I looked at her. She was stretched out, both elbows behind her to prop her up. 
Her valentine nipples crinkled as I watched.
She glanced at me, smiled with one corner of her mouth. I felt a little better. 
She was awfully pretty.
"I guess he can... well, can't he still teach older kids?"
"I suppose he can," Trilby said, with a shrug. "I don't know if he'll want to. I 
know Cathay. He's not going to take this well."
"Is there anything I could do?"
"Not really. Talk to him. Show sympathy, but not too much. You'll have to figure 
it out. See if he wants to be with you."
It was too confusing. How was I supposed to know what he needed? He hadn't come 
to see me. But Trilby had.
So there was one uncomplicated thing in my life right then, one thing I could do 
where I wouldn't have to think. I rolled over and got on top of Trilby and 
started to kiss her. She responded with a lazy eroticism I found irresistible. 
She did know some tricks I'd never heard of.
 
"How was that?" I said, much later.
That smile again. I got the feeling that I constantly amused her, and somehow I 
didn't mind it. Maybe it was the fact that she made no bones about her being the 
adult and me being the child. That was the way it would be with us. I would have 
to grow up to her; she would not go back and imitate me.
"Are you looking for a grade?" she asked. "Like the twentieth century?" She got 
to her feet and stretched.
"All right. I'll be honest. You get an A for effort, but any thirteen-year-old 
would. You can't help it. In technique, maybe a low C. Not that I expected any 
more, for the same reason."
"So you want to teach me to do better? That's your job?"
"Only if you hire me. And sex is such a small part of it. Listen, Argus. I'm not 
going to be your mother. Darcy does that okay. I won't be your playmate, either, 
like Cathay was. I won't be teaching you moral lessons. You're getting tired of 
that, anyway."
It was true. Cathay had never really been my contemporary, though he tried his 
best to look it and act it. But the illusion had started to wear thin, and I 
guess it had to. I was no longer able to ignore the contradictions, I was too 
sophisticated and cynical for him to hide his lessons in everyday activities.
It bothered me in the same way the CC did. The CC could befriend me one minute 
and sentence me to death the next. I wanted more than that, and Trilby seemed to 
be offering it.
"I won't be teaching you science or skills, either," she was saying. "You'll 
have tutors for that, when you decide just what you want to do."
"Just what is it you do, then?"
"You know, I've never been able to find a good way of describing that. I won't 
be around all the time, like Cathay was. You'll come to me when you want to, 
maybe when you have a problem. I'll be sympathetic and do what I can, but mostly 
I'll just point out that you have to make all the hard choices. If you've been 
stupid I'll tell you so, but I won't be surprised or disappointed if you go on 
being stupid in the same way. You can use me as a role model if you want to, but 
I don't insist on it. But I promise I'll always tell you things straight, as I 
see them. I won't try to slip things in painlessly. It's time for pain. Think of 
Cathay as a professional child. I'm not putting him down. He turned you into a 
civilized being, and when he got you you were hardly that. It's because of him 
that you're capable of caring about his situation now, that you have loyalties 
to feel divided about. And he's good enough at it to know how you'll choose."
"Choose? What do you mean?"
"I can't tell you that." She spread her hands, and grinned. "See how helpful I 
can be?"
She was confusing me again. Why can't things be simpler?
"Then if Cathay's a professional child, you're a professional adult?"
"You could think of it like that. It's not really analogous."
"I guess I still don't know what Darcy would be paying you for."
"We'll make love a lot. How's that? Simple enough for you?" She brushed dirt 
from her back and frowned at the ground. "But not on dirt anymore. I don't care 
for dirt."
I looked around, too. The place was messy. Not pretty at all. I wondered how I 
could have liked it so much. Suddenly I wanted to get out, to go to a clean, dry 
place.
"Come on," I said, getting up. "I want to try some of those things again."
"Does this mean I have a job?"
"Yeah. I guess it does."
 
Cathay was sitting on the porch of the Sugar Shack, a line of brown beer bottles 
perched along the edge. He smiled at us as we approached him. He was stinking 
drunk.
It's strange. We'd been drunk many times together, the four of us. It's great 
fun. But when only one person is drunk, it's a little disgusting. Not that I 
blamed him. But when you're drinking together all the jokes make sense. When you 
drink alone, you just make a sloppy nuisance of yourself.
Trilby and I sat on either side of him. He wanted to sing. He pressed bottles on 
both of us, and I sipped mine and tried to get into the spirit of it. But pretty 
soon he was crying, and I felt awful. And I admit that it wasn't entirely in 
sympathy. I felt helpless because there was so little I could do, and a bit 
resentful of some of the promises he had me make. I would have come to see him 
anyway. He didn't have to blubber on my shoulder and beg me not to abandon him.
So he cried on me, and on Trilby, then just sat between us looking glum. I tried 
to console him.
"Cathay, it's not the end of the world. Trilby says you'll still be able to 
teach older kids. My age and up. The TA just said you couldn't handle younger 
ones."
He mumbled something.
"It shouldn't be that different," I said, not knowing when to shut up.
"Maybe you're right," he said.
"Sure I am." I was unconsciously falling into that false heartiness people use 
to cheer up drunks. He heard it immediately.
"What the hell do you know about it? You think you... damn it, what do you know? 
You know what kind of person it takes to do my job? A little bit of a misfit, 
that's what. Somebody who doesn't want to grow up any more than you do. We're 
both cowards, Argus. You don't know it, but I do. I do. So what the hell am I 
going to do? Huh? Why don't you go away? You got what you wanted, didn't you?"
"Take it easy, Cathay," Trilby soothed, hugging him close to her. "Take it 
easy."
He was immediately contrite, and began to cry quietly. He said how sorry he was, 
over and over, and he was sincere. He said, he hadn't meant it, it just came 
out, it was cruel.
And so forth.
I was cold all over.
We put him to bed in the shack, then started down the road.
"We'll have to watch him the next few days," Trilby said. "He'll get over this, 
but it'll be rough."
"Right," I said.
I took a look at the shack before we went around the false bend in the road. For 
one moment I saw Beatnik Bayou as a perfect illusion, a window through time. 
Then we went around the tree and it all fell apart. It had never mattered 
before.
But it was such a sloppy place. I'd never realized how ugly the Sugar Shack was.
I never saw it again. Cathay came to live with us for a few months, tried his 
hand at art. Darcy told me privately that he was hopeless. He moved out, and I 
saw him frequently after that, always saying hello.
But he was depressing to be around, and he knew it. Besides, he admitted that I 
represented things he was trying to forget. So we never really talked much.
Sometimes I play golf in the old bayou. It's only two holes, but there's talk of 
expanding it.
They did a good job on the renovation.
 
Good-bye, Robinson Crusoe
IT WAS SUMMER. AND Piri was in his second childhood. First, second; who counted? 
His body was young. He had not felt more alive since his original childhood back 
in the spring, when the sun drew closer and the air began to melt.
He was spending his time at Rarotonga Reef, in the Pacifica disneyland. Pacifica 
was still under construction, but Rarotonga had been used by the ecologists as a 
testing ground for the more ambitious barrier-type reef they were building in 
the south, just off the "Australian" coast. As a result, it was more firmly 
established than the other biomes. It was open to visitors, but so far only Piri 
was there. The "sky" disconcerted everyone else.
Piri didn't mind it. He was equipped with a brand-new toy: a fully operational 
imagination, a selective sense of wonder that allowed him to blank out those 
parts of his surroundings that failed to fit with his current fantasy.
He awoke with the tropical sun blinking in his face through the palm fronds. He 
had built a rude shelter from flotsam and detritus on the beach. It was not to 
protect him from the elements. The disneyland management had the weather well in 
hand; he might as well have slept in the open. But castaways always build some 
sort of shelter.
He bounced up with the quick alertness that comes from being young and living 
close to the center of things, brushed sand from his naked body, and ran for the 
line of breakers at the bottom of the narrow strip of beach.
His gait was awkward. His feet were twice as long as they should have been, with 
flexible toes that were webbed into flippers. Dry sand showered around his legs 
as he ran. He was brown as coffee and cream, and hairless.
Piri dived flat to the water, sliced neatly under a wave, and paddled out to 
waist-height. He paused there. He held his nose and worked his arms up and down, 
blowing air through his mouth and swallowing at the same time. What looked like 
long, hairline scars between his lower ribs came open. Red-orange fringes became 
visible inside them, and gradually lowered. He was no longer an air-breather.
He dived again, mouth open, and this time he did not come up. His esophagus and 
trachea closed and a new valve came into operation. It would pass water in only 
one direction, so his diaphragm now functioned as a pump pulling water through 
his mouth and forcing it out through the gill-slits. The water flowing through 
this lower chest area caused his gills to engorge with blood, turning them 
purplish-red and forcing his lungs to collapse upward into his chest cavity. 
Bubbles of air trickled out his sides, then stopped. His transition was 
complete.
The water seemed to grow warmer around him. It had been pleasantly cool; now it 
seemed no temperature at all. It was the result of his body temperature lowering 
in response to hormones released by an artificial gland in his cranium. He could 
not afford to burn energy at the rate he had done in the air; the water was too 
efficient a coolant for that. All through his body arteries and capillaries were 
constricting as parts of him stabilized at a lower rate of function.
No naturally evolved mammal had ever made the switch from air to water 
breathing, and the project had taxed the resources of bio-engineering to its 
limits. But everything in Piri's body was a living part of him. It had taken two 
full days to install it all.
He knew nothing of the chemical complexities that kept him alive where he should 
have died quickly from heat loss or oxygen starvation. He knew only the joy of 
arrowing along the white sandy bottom. The water was clear, blue-green in the 
distance.
The bottom kept dropping away from him, until suddenly it reached for the waves. 
He angled up the wall of the reef until his head broke the surface, climbed up 
the knobs and ledges until he was standing in the sunlight. He took a deep 
breath and became an air-breather again.
The change cost him some discomfort. He waited until the dizziness and fit of 
coughing had passed, shivering a little as his body rapidly underwent a reversal 
to a warm-blooded economy.
It was time for breakfast.
He spent the morning foraging among the tidepools. There were dozens of plants 
and animals that he had learned to eat raw. He ate a great deal, storing up 
energy for the afternoon's expedition on the outer reef.
Piri avoided looking at the sky. He wasn't alarmed by it; it did not disconcert 
him as it did the others. But he had to preserve the illusion that he was 
actually on a tropical reef in the Pacific Ocean, a castaway, and not a 
vacationer in an environment bubble below the surface of Pluto.
Soon he became a fish again, and dived off the sea side of the reef.
The water around the reef was oxygen-rich from the constant wave action. Even 
here, though, he had to remain in motion to keep enough water flowing past his 
external gill fringes. But he could move more slowly as he wound his way down 
into the darker reaches of the sheer reef face. The reds and yellows of his 
world were swallowed by the blues and greens and purples. It was quiet. There 
were sounds to hear, but his ears were not adapted to them. He moved slowly 
through shafts of blue light, keeping up the bare minimum of water flow.
He hesitated at the ten-meter level. He had thought he was going to his Atlantis 
Grotto to check out his crab farm. Then he wondered if he ought to hunt up Ocho 
the Octopus instead. For a panicky moment he was afflicted with the bane of 
childhood: an inability to decide what to do with himself. Or maybe it was 
worse, he thought. Maybe it was a sign of growing up. The crab farm bored him, 
or at least it did today.
He waffled back and forth for several minutes, idly chasing the tiny red fish 
that flirted with the anemones. He never caught one. This was no good at all. 
Surely there was an adventure in this silent fairyland. He had to find one.
An adventure found him, instead. Piri saw something swimming out in the open 
water, almost at the limits of his vision. It was long and pale, an attenuated 
missile of raw death. His heart squeezed in panic, and he scuttled for a hollow 
in the reef.
Piri called him the Ghost. He had seen him many times in the open sea. He was 
eight meters of mouth, belly and tail: hunger personified. There were those who 
said the great white shark was the most ferocious carnivore that ever lived. 
Piri believed it.
It didn't matter that the Ghost was completely harmless to him. The Pacifica 
management did not like having its guests eaten alive. An adult could elect to 
go into the water with no protection, providing the necessary waivers were on 
file. Children had to be implanted with an equalizer. Piri had one, somewhere 
just below the skin of his left wrist. It was a sonic generator, set to emit a 
sound that would mean terror to any predator in the water.
The Ghost, like all the sharks, barracudas, morays, and other predators in 
Pacifica, was not like his cousins who swam the seas of Earth. He had been 
cloned from cells stored in the Biological Library on Luna. The library had been 
created two hundred years before as an insurance policy against the extinction 
of a species. Originally, only endangered species were filed, but for years 
before the Invasion the directors had been trying to get a sample of everything. 
Then the Invaders had come, and Lunarians were too busy surviving without help 
from Occupied Earth to worry about the library. But when the time came to build 
the disneylands, the library had been ready.
By then, biological engineering had advanced to the point where many 
modifications could be made in genetic structure. Mostly, the disneyland 
biologists had left nature alone. But they had changed the predators. In the 
Ghost, the change was a mutated organ attached to the brain that responded with 
a flood of fear when a supersonic note was sounded.
So why was the Ghost still out there? Piri blinked his nictating membranes, 
trying to clear his vision. It helped a little. The shape looked a bit 
different.
Instead of moving back and forth, the tail seemed to be going up and down, 
perhaps in a scissoring motion. Only one animal swims like that. He gulped down 
his fear and pushed away from the reef.
But he had waited too long. His fear of the Ghost went beyond simple danger, of 
which there was none. It was something more basic, an unreasoning reflex that 
prickled his neck when he saw that long white shape. He couldn't fight it, and 
didn't want to. But the fear had kept him against the reef, hidden, while the 
person swam out of reach. He thrashed to catch up, but soon lost track of the 
moving feet in the gloom.
He had seen gills trailing from the sides of the figure, muted down to a deep 
blue-black by the depths. He had the impression that it was a woman.
 
Tongatown was the only human habitation on the island. It housed a crew of 
maintenance people and their children, about fifty in all, in grass huts 
patterned after those of South Sea natives. A few of the buildings concealed 
elevators that went to the underground rooms that would house the tourists when 
the project was completed. The shacks would then go at a premium rate, and the 
beaches would be crowded.
Piri walked into the circle of firelight and greeted his friends. Nighttime was 
party time in Tongatown. With the day's work over, everybody gathered around the 
fire and roasted a vat-grown goat or lamb. But the real culinary treats were the 
fresh vegetable dishes. The ecologists were still working out the kinks in the 
systems, controlling blooms, planting more of failing species. They often 
produced huge excesses of edibles that would have cost a fortune on the outside. 
The workers took some of the excess for themselves. It was understood to be a 
fringe benefit of the job. It was hard enough to find people who could stand to 
stay under the Pacifica sky.
"Hi, Piri," said a girl. "You meet any pirates today?" It was Harra, who used to 
be one of Piri's best friends but had seemed increasingly remote over the last 
year. She was wearing a handmade grass skirt and a lot of flowers, tied into 
strings that looped around her body. She was fifteen now, and Piri was... but 
who cared? There were no seasons here, only days. Why keep track of time?
Piri didn't know what to say. The two of them had once played together out on 
the reef. It might be Lost Atlantis, or Submariner, or Reef Pirates; a new plot 
line and cast of heroes and villains every day. But her question had held such 
thinly veiled contempt. Didn't she care about the Pirates anymore? What was the 
matter with her?
She relented when she saw Piri's helpless bewilderment.
"Here, come on and sit down. I saved you a rib." She held out a large chunk of 
mutton.
Piri took it and sat beside her. He was famished, having had nothing all day 
since his large breakfast.
"I thought I saw the Ghost today," he said, casually.
Harra shuddered. She wiped her hands on her thighs and looked at him closely.
"Thought? You thought you saw him?" Harra did not care for the Ghost. She had 
cowered with Piri more than once as they watched him prowl.
"Yep. But I don't think it was really him."
"Where was this?"
"On the sea-side, down about, oh, ten meters. I think it was a woman."
"I don't see how it could be. There's just you and—and Midge and Darvin with—did 
this woman have an air tank?"
"Nope. Gills. I saw that."
"But there's only you and four others here with gills. And I know where they all 
were today."
"You used to have gills," he said, with a hint of accusation.
She sighed. "Are we going through that again? I told you, I got tired of the 
flippers. I wanted to move around the land some more."
"I can move around the land," he said, darkly.
"All right, all right. You think I deserted you. Did you ever think that you 
sort of deserted me?"
Piri was puzzled by that, but Harra had stood up and walked quickly away. He 
could follow her, or he could finish his meal. She was right about the flippers. 
He was no great shakes at chasing anybody.
Piri never worried about anything for too long. He ate, and ate some more, long 
past the time when everyone else had joined together for the dancing and 
singing. He usually hung back, anyway. He could sing, but dancing was out of his 
league.
Just as he was leaning back in the sand, wondering if there were any more 
corners he could fill up—perhaps another bowl of that shrimp teriyaki?—Harra was 
back. She sat beside him.
"I talked to my mother about what you said. She said a tourist showed up today. 
It looks like you were right. It was a woman, and she was amphibious."
Piri felt a vague unease. One tourist was certainly not an invasion, but she 
could be a harbinger. And amphibious. So far, no one had gone to that expense 
except for those who planned to live here for a long time. Was his tropical 
hideout in danger of being discovered?"
"What—what's she doing here?" He absently ate another spoonful of crab cocktail.
"She's looking for you," Harra laughed, and elbowed him in the ribs. Then she 
pounced on him, tickling his ribs until he was howling in helpless glee. He 
fought back, almost to the point of having the upper hand, but she was bigger 
and a little more determined. She got him pinned, showering flower petals on him 
as they struggled. One of the red flowers from her hair was in her eye, and she 
brushed it away, breathing hard.
"You want to go for a walk on the beach?" she asked.
Harra was fun, but the last few times he'd gone with her she had tried to kiss 
him. He wasn't ready for that. He was only a kid. He thought she probably had 
something like that in mind now.
"I'm too full," he said, and it was almost the literal truth. He had stuffed 
himself disgracefully, and only wanted to curl up in his shack and go to sleep.
Harra said nothing, just sat there getting her breathing under control. At last 
she nodded, a little jerkily, and got to her feet. Piri wished he could see her 
face to face. He knew something was wrong. She turned from him and walked away.
 
Robinson Crusoe was feeling depressed when he got back to his hut. The walk down 
the beach away from the laughter and singing had been a lonely one. Why had he 
rejected Harra's offer of companionship? Was it really so bad that she wanted to 
play new kinds of games?
But no, damn it. She wouldn't play his games, why should he play hers?
After a few minutes of sitting on the beach under the crescent moon, he got into 
character. Oh, the agony of being a lone castaway, far from the company of 
fellow creatures, with nothing but faith in God to sustain oneself. Tomorrow he 
would read from the scriptures, do some more exploring along the rocky north 
coast, tan some goat hides, maybe get in a little fishing.
With his plans for the morrow laid before him, Piri could go to sleep, wiping 
away a last tear for distant England.
The ghost woman came to him during the night. She knelt beside him in the sand. 
She brushed his sandy hair from his eyes and he stirred in his sleep. His feet 
thrashed.
He was churning through the abyssal deeps, heart hammering, blind to everything 
but internal terror. Behind him, jaws yawned, almost touching his toes. They 
closed with a snap.
He sat up woozily. He saw rows of serrated teeth in the line of breakers in 
front of him. And a tall, white shape in the moonlight dived into a curling 
breaker and was gone.
 
"Hello."
Piri sat up with a start. The worst thing about being a child living alone on an 
island—which, when he thought about it, was the sort of thing every child 
dreamed of—was not having a warm mother's breast to cry on when you had 
nightmares. It hadn't affected him much, but when it did, it was pretty bad.
He squinted up into the brightness. She was standing with her head blocking out 
the sun. He winced, and looked away, down to her feet. They were webbed, with 
long toes. He looked a little higher. She was nude, and quite beautiful.
"Who...?"
"Are you awake now?" She squatted down beside him. Why had he expected sharp, 
triangular teeth? His dreams blurred and ran like watercolors in the rain, and 
he felt much better. She had a nice face. She was smiling at him.
He yawned, and sat up. He was groggy, stiff, and his eyes were coated with sand 
that didn't come from the beach. It had been an awful night.
"I think so."
"Good. How about some breakfast?" She stood, and went to a basket on the sand.
"I usually—" but his mouth watered when he saw the guavas, melons, kippered 
herring, and the long brown loaf of bread. She had butter, and some orange 
marmalade. "Well, maybe just a—" and he had bitten into a succulent slice of 
melon. But before he could finish it, he was seized by an even stronger urge. He 
got to his feet and scuttled around the palm tree with the waist-high dark stain 
and urinated against it.
"Don't tell anybody, huh?" he said, anxiously.
She looked up. "About the tree? Don't worry."
He sat back down and resumed eating the melon. "I could get in a lot of trouble. 
They gave me a thing and told me to use it."
"It's all right with me," she said, buttering a slice of bread and handing it to 
him. "Robinson Crusoe never had a portable EcoSan, right?"
"Right," he said, not showing his surprise. How did she know that?
Piri didn't know quite what to say. Here she was, sharing his morning, as much a 
fact of life as the beach or the water.
"What's your name?" It was as good a place to start as any.
"Leandra. You can call me Lee."
"I'm—"
"Piri. I heard about you from the people at the party last night. I hope you 
don't mind me barging in on you like this."
He shrugged, and tried to indicate all the food with the gesture. "Anytime," he 
said, and laughed. He felt good. It was nice to have someone friendly around 
after last night. He looked at her again, from a mellower viewpoint.
She was large; quite a bit taller than he was. Her physical age was around 
thirty, unusually old for a woman. He thought she might be closer to sixty or 
seventy, but he had nothing to base it on. Piri himself was in his nineties, and 
who could have known that? She had the slanting eyes that were caused by the 
addition of transparent eyelids beneath the natural ones. Her hair grew in a 
narrow band, cropped short, starting between her eyebrows and going over her 
head to the nape of her neck. Her ears were pinned efficiently against her head, 
giving her a lean, streamlined look.
"What brings you to Pacifica?" Piri asked.
She reclined on the sand with her hands behind her head, looking very relaxed.
"Claustrophobia." She winked at him. "Not really. I wouldn't survive long in 
Pluto with that." Piri wasn't even sure what it was, but he smiled as if he 
knew. "Tired of the crowds. I heard that people couldn't enjoy themselves here, 
what with the sky, but I didn't have any trouble when I visited. So I bought 
flippers and gills and decided to spend a few weeks skin-diving by myself."
Piri looked at the sky. It was a staggering sight. He'd grown used to it, but 
knew that it helped not to look up more than he had to.
It was an incomplete illusion, all the more appalling because the half of the 
sky that had been painted was so very convincing. It looked like it really was 
the sheer blue of infinity, so when the eye slid over to the unpainted 
overhanging canopy of rock, scarred from blasting, painted with gigantic numbers 
that were barely visible from twenty kilometers below—one could almost imagine 
God looking down through the blue opening. It loomed, suspended by nothing, 
gigatons of rock hanging up there.
Visitors to Pacifica often complained of headaches, usually right on the crown 
of the head. They were cringing, waiting to get conked.
"Sometimes I wonder how I live with it," Piri said.
She laughed. "It's nothing for me. I was a space pilot once."
"Really?" This was catnip to Piri. There's nothing more romantic than a space 
pilot. He had to hear stories.
The morning hours dwindled as she captured his imagination with a series of tall 
tales he was sure were mostly fabrication. But who cared? Had he come to the 
South Seas to hear of the mundane? He felt he had met a kindred spirit, and 
gradually, fearful of being laughed at, he began to tell her stories of the Reef 
Pirates, first as wishful wouldn't-it-be-fun-if's, then more and more seriously 
as she listened intently. He forgot her age as he began to spin the best of the 
yarns he and Harra had concocted.
It was a tacit conspiracy between them to be serious about the stories, but that 
was the whole point. That was the only way it would work, as it had worked with 
Harra. Somehow, this adult woman was interested in playing the same games he 
was.
Lying in his bed that night, Piri felt better than he had for months, since 
before Harra had become so distant. Now that he had a companion, he realized 
that maintaining a satisfying fantasy world by yourself is hard work. Eventually 
you need someone to tell the stories to, and to share in the making of them.
They spent the day out on the reef. He showed her his crab farm, and introduced 
her to Ocho the Octopus, who was his usual shy self. Piri suspected the damn 
thing only loved him for the treats he brought.
She entered into his games easily and with no trace of adult condescension. He 
wondered why, and got up the courage to ask her. He was afraid he'd ruin the 
whole thing, but he had to know. It just wasn't normal.
They were perched on a coral outcropping above the high tide level, catching the 
last rays of the sun.
"I'm not sure," she said. "I guess you think I'm silly, huh?"
"No, not exactly that. It's just that most adults seem to, well, have more 
'important' things on their minds." He put all the contempt he could into the 
word.
"Maybe I feel the same way you do about it. I'm here to have fun. I sort of feel 
like I've been reborn into a new element. It's terrific down there, you know 
that. I just didn't feel like I wanted to go into that world alone. I was out 
there yesterday..."
"I thought I saw you."
"Maybe you did. Anyway, I needed a companion, and I heard about you. It seemed 
like the polite thing to, well, not to ask you to be my guide, but sort of fit 
myself into your world. As it were." She frowned, as if she felt she had said 
too much. "Let's not push it, all right?"
"Oh, sure. It's none of my business."
"I like you, Piri."
"And I like you. I haven't had a friend for... too long."
That night at the luau, Lee disappeared. Piri looked for her briefly, but was 
not really worried. What she did with her nights was her business. He wanted her 
during the days.
As he was leaving for his home, Harra came up behind him and took his hand. She 
walked with him for a moment, then could no longer hold it in.
"A word to the wise, old pal," she said. "You'd better stay away from her. She's 
not going to do you any good."
"What are you talking about? You don't even know her."
"Maybe I do."
"Well, do you or don't you?"
She didn't say anything, then sighed deeply.
"Piri, if you do the smart thing you'll get on that raft of yours and sail to 
Bikini. Haven't you had any... feelings about her? Any premonitions or 
anything?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, thinking of sharp teeth and 
white death.
"I think you do. You have to, but you won't face it. That's all I'm saying. It's 
not my business to meddle in your affairs."
"I'll say it's not. So why did you come out here and put this stuff in my ear?" 
He stopped, and something tickled at his mind from his past life, some earlier 
bit of knowledge, carefully suppressed. He was used to it. He knew he was not 
really a child, and that he had a long life and many experiences stretching out 
behind him. But he didn't think about it. He hated it when part of his old self 
started to intrude on him.
"I think you're jealous of her," he said, and knew it was his old, cynical self 
talking. "She's an adult, Harra. She's no threat to you. And, hell, I know what 
you've been hinting at these last months. I'm not ready for it, so leave me 
alone. I'm just a kid."
Her chin came up, and the moonlight flashed in her eyes.
"You idiot. Have you looked at yourself lately? You're not Peter Pan, you know. 
You're growing up. You're damn near a man."
"That's not true." There was panic in Piri's voice. "I'm only... well, I haven't 
exactly been counting, but I can't be more than nine, ten years—"
"Shit. You're as old as I am, and I've had breasts for two years. But I'm not 
out to cop you. I can cop with any of seven boys in the village younger than you 
are, but not you." She threw her hands up in exasperation and stepped back from 
him. Then, in a sudden fury, she hit him on the chest with the heel of her fist. 
He fell back, stunned at her violence.
"She is an adult," Harra whispered through her teeth. "That's what I came here 
to warn you against. I'm your friend, but you don't know it. Ah, what's the use? 
I'm fighting against that scared old man in your head, and he won't listen to 
me. Go ahead, go with her. But she's got some surprises for you."
"What? What surprises?" Piri was shaking, not wanting to listen to her. It was a 
relief when she spat at his feet, whirled, and ran down the beach.
"Find out for yourself," she yelled back over her shoulder. It sounded like she 
was crying.
That night, Piri dreamed of white teeth, inches behind him, snapping.
 
But morning brought Lee, and another fine breakfast in her bulging bag. After a 
lazy interlude drinking coconut milk, they went to the reef again. The pirates 
gave them a rough time of it, but they managed to come back alive in time for 
the nightly gathering.
Harra was there. She was dressed as he had never seen her, in the blue tunic and 
shorts of the reef maintenance crew. He knew she had taken a job with the 
disneyland and had been working days with her mother at Bikini, but had not seen 
her dressed up before. He had just begun to get used to the grass skirt. Not 
long ago, she had been always nude like him and the other children.
She looked older somehow, and bigger. Maybe it was just the uniform. She still 
looked like a girl next to Lee. Piri was confused by it, and his thoughts veered 
protectively away.
Harra did not avoid him, but she was remote in a more important way. It was like 
she had put on a mask, or possibly taken one off. She carried herself with a 
dignity that Piri thought was beyond her years.
Lee disappeared just before he was ready to leave. He walked home alone, half 
hoping Harra would show up so he could apologize for the way he'd talked to her 
the night before. But she didn't.
 
He felt the bow-shock of a pressure wave behind him, sensed by some mechanism he 
was unfamiliar with, like the lateral line of a fish, sensitive to slight 
changes in the water around him. He knew there was something behind him, closing 
the gap a little with every wild kick of his flippers.
It was dark. It was always dark when the thing chased him. It was not the wispy, 
insubstantial thing that darkness was when it settled on the night air, but the 
primal, eternal night of the depths. He tried to scream with his mouth full of 
water, but it was a dying gurgle before it passed his lips. The water around him 
was warm with his blood.
He turned to face it before it was upon him, and saw Harra's face corpse-pale 
and glowing sickly in the night. But no, it wasn't Harra, it was Lee, and her 
mouth was far down her body, rimmed with razors, a gaping crescent hole in her 
chest. He screamed again—
And sat up.
"What? Where are you?"
"I'm right here, it's going to be all right." She held his head as he brought 
his sobbing under control. She was whispering something but he couldn't 
understand it, and perhaps wasn't meant to. It was enough. He calmed down 
quickly, as he always did when he woke from nightmares. If they hung around to 
haunt him, he never would have stayed by himself for so long.
There was just the moonlit paleness of her breast before his eyes and the smell 
of skin and sea water. Her nipple was wet. Was it from his tears? No, his lips 
were tingling and the nipple was hard when it brushed against him. He realized 
what he had been doing in his sleep.
"You were calling for your mother," she whispered, as though she'd read his 
mind. "I've heard you shouldn't wake someone from a nightmare. It seemed to calm 
you down."
"Thanks," he said quietly. "Thanks for being here, I mean."
She took his cheek in her hand, turned his head slightly, and kissed him. It was 
not a motherly kiss, and he realized they were not playing the same game. She 
had changed the rules on him.
"Lee..."
"Hush. It's time you learned."
She eased him onto his back, and he was overpowered with deja vu. Her mouth 
worked downward on his body and it set off chains of associations from his past 
life. He was familiar with the sensation. It had happened to him often in his 
second childhood. Something would happen that had happened to him in much the 
same way before and he would remember a bit of it. He had been seduced by an 
older woman the first time he was young. She had taught him well, and he 
remembered it all but didn't want to remember. He was an experienced lover and a 
child at the same time.
"I'm not old enough," he protested, but she was holding in her hand the evidence 
that he was old enough, had been old enough for several years. I'm fourteen 
years old, he thought. How could he have kidded himself into thinking he was 
ten?
"You're a strong young man," she whispered in his ear. "And I'm going to be very 
disappointed if you keep saying that. You're not a child anymore, Piri. Face 
it."
"I... I guess I'm not."
"Do you know what to do?"
"I think so."
She reclined beside him, drew her legs up. Her body was huge and ghostly and 
full of limber strength. She would swallow him up, like a shark. The gill slits 
under her arms opened and shut quickly with her breathing, smelling of salt, 
iodine, and sweat.
He got on his hands and knees and moved over her.
 
He woke before she did. The sun was up: another warm, cloudless morning. There 
would be two thousand more before the first scheduled typhoon.
Piri was a giddy mixture of elation and sadness. It was sad, and he knew it 
already, that his days of frolicking on the reef were over. He would still go 
out there, but it would never be the same.
Fourteen years old! Where had the years gone? He was nearly an adult. He moved 
away from the thought until he found a more acceptable one. He was an 
adolescent, and a very fortunate one to have been initiated into the mysteries 
of sex by this strange woman.
He held her as she slept, spooned cozily back to front with his arms around her 
waist. She had already been playmate, mother, and lover to him. What else did 
she have in store?
But he didn't care. He was not worried about anything. He already scorned his 
yesterdays. He was not a boy, but a youth, and he remembered from his other 
youth what that meant and was excited by it. It was a time of sex, of internal 
exploration and the exploration of others. He would pursue these new frontiers 
with the same single-mindedness he had shown on the reef.
He moved against her, slowly, not disturbing her sleep. But she woke as he 
entered her and turned to give him a sleepy kiss.
They spent the morning involved in each other, until they were content to lie in 
the sun and soak up heat like glossy reptiles.
"I can hardly believe it," she said. "You've been here for... how long? With all 
these girls and women. And I know at least one of them was interested."
He didn't want to go into it. It was important to him that she not find out he 
was not really a child. He felt it would change things, and it was not fair. Not 
fair at all, because it had been the first time. In a way he could never have 
explained to her, last night had been not a rediscovery but an entirely new 
thing. He had been with many women and it wasn't as if he couldn't remember it. 
It was all there, and what's more, it showed up in his lovemaking. He had not 
been the bumbling teenager, had not needed to be told what to do.
But it was new. That old man inside had been a spectator and an invaluable 
coach, but his hardened viewpoint had not intruded to make last night just 
another bout. It had been a first time, and the first time is special.
When she persisted in her questions he silenced her in the only way he knew, 
with a kiss. He could see he had to rethink his relationship to her. She had not 
asked him questions as a playmate, or a mother. In the one role, she had been 
seemingly as self-centered as he, interested only in the needs of the moment and 
her personal needs above all. As a mother, she had offered only wordless comfort 
in a tight spot.
Now she was his lover. What did lovers do when they weren't making love?
 
They went for walks on the beach, and on the reef. They swam together, but it 
was different. They talked a lot.
She soon saw that he didn't want to talk about himself. Except for the odd 
question here and there that would momentarily confuse him, throw him back to 
stages of his life he didn't wish to remember, she left his past alone.
They stayed away from the village except to load up on supplies. It was mostly 
his unspoken wish that kept them away. He had made it clear to everyone in the 
village many years ago that he was not really a child. It had been necessary to 
convince them that he could take care of himself on his own, to keep them from 
being overprotective. They would not spill his secret knowingly, but neither 
would they lie for him.
So he grew increasingly nervous about his relationship with Lee, founded as it 
was on a lie. If not a lie, then at least a withholding of the facts. He saw 
that he must tell her soon, and dreaded it. Part of him was convinced that her 
attraction to him was based mostly on age difference.
Then she learned he had a raft, and wanted to go on a sailing trip to the edge 
of the world.
Piri did have a raft, though an old one. They dragged it from the bushes that 
had grown around it since his last trip and began putting it into shape. Piri 
was delighted. It was something to do, and it was hard work. They didn't have 
much time for talking.
It was a simple construction of logs lashed together with rope. Only an insane 
sailor would put the thing to sea in the Pacific Ocean, but it was safe enough 
for them. They knew what the weather would be, and the reports were absolutely 
reliable. And if it came apart, they could swim back.
All the ropes had rotted so badly that even gentle wave action would have 
quickly pulled it apart. They had to be replaced, a new mast erected, and a new 
sailcloth installed. Neither of them knew anything about sailing, but Piri knew 
that the winds blew toward the edge at night and away from it during the day. It 
was a simple matter of putting up the sail and letting the wind do the 
navigating.
He checked the schedule to be sure they got there at low tide. It was a moonless 
night, and he chuckled to himself when he thought of her reaction to the edge of 
the world. They would sneak up on it in the dark, and the impact would be all 
the more powerful at sunrise.
But he knew as soon as they were an hour out of Rarotonga that he had made a 
mistake. There was not much to do there in the night but talk.
"Piri, I've sensed that you don't want to talk about certain things."
"Who? Me?"
She laughed into the empty night. He could barely see her face. The stars were 
shining brightly, but there were only about a hundred of them installed so far, 
and all in one part of the sky.
"Yeah, you. You won't talk about yourself. It's like you grew here, sprang up 
from the ground like a palm tree. And you've got no mother in evidence. You're 
old enough to have divorced her, but you'd have a guardian somewhere. Someone 
would be looking after your moral upbringing. The only conclusion is that you 
don't need an education in moral principles. So you've got a co-pilot."
"Um." She had seen through him. Of course she would have. Why hadn't he realized 
it?
"So you're a clone. You've had your memories transplanted into a new body, grown 
from one of your own cells. How old are you? Do you mind my asking?"
"I guess not. Uh... what's the date?"
She told him.
"And the year?"
She laughed, but told him that, too.
"Damn. I missed my one-hundredth birthday. Well, so what? It's not important. 
Lee, does this change anything?"
"Of course not. Listen, I could tell the first time, that first night together. 
You had that puppy-dog eagerness, all right, but you knew how to handle 
yourself. Tell me: what's it like?"
"The second childhood, you mean?" He reclined on the gently rocking raft and 
looked at the little clot of stars. "It's pretty damn great. It's like living in 
a dream. What kid hasn't wanted to live alone on a tropic isle? I can, because 
there's an adult in me who'll keep me out of trouble. But for the last seven 
years I've been a kid. It's you that finally made me grow up a little, maybe 
sort of late, at that."
"I'm sorry. But it felt like the right time."
"It was. I was afraid of it at first. Listen, I know that I'm really a hundred 
years old, see? I know that all the memories are ready for me when I get to 
adulthood again. If I think about it, I can remember it all as plain as 
anything. But I haven't wanted to, and in a way, I still don't want to. The 
memories are suppressed when you opt for a second childhood instead of being 
transplanted into another full-grown body."
"I know."
"Do you? Oh, yeah. Intellectually. So did I, but I didn't understand what it 
meant. It's a nine- or ten-year holiday, not only from your work, but from 
yourself. When you get into your nineties, you might find that you need it."
She was quiet for a while, lying beside him without touching.
"What about the reintegration? Is that started?"
"I don't know. I've heard it's a little rough. I've been having dreams about 
something chasing me. That's probably my former self, right?"
"Could be. What did your older self do?"
He had to think for a moment, but there it was. He'd not thought of it for eight 
years.
"I was an economic strategist."
Before he knew it, he found himself launching into an explanation of offensive 
economic policy.
"Did you know that Pluto is in danger of being gutted by currency transfers from 
the Inner Planets? And you know why? The speed of light, that's why. Time lag. 
It's killing us. Since the time of the Invasion of Earth it's been humanity's 
idea—and a good one, I think—that we should stand together. Our whole cultural 
thrust in that time has been toward a total economic community. But it won't 
work at Pluto. Independence is in the cards."
She listened as he tried to explain things that only moments before he would 
have had trouble understanding himself. But it poured out of him like a breached 
dam, things like inflation multipliers, futures buying on the oxygen and 
hydrogen exchanges, phantom dollars and their manipulation by central banking 
interests, and the invisible drain.
"Invisible drain? What's that?"
"It's hard to explain, but it's tied up in the speed of light. It's an economic 
drain on Pluto that has nothing to do with real goods and services, or labor, or 
any of the other traditional forces. It has to do with the fact that any 
information we get from the Inner Planets is already at least nine hours old. In 
an economy with a stable currency—pegged to gold, for instance, like the 
classical economies on Earth—it wouldn't matter much, but it would still have an 
effect. Nine hours can make a difference in prices, in futures, in outlook on 
the markets. With a floating exchange medium, one where you need the hourly 
updates on your credit meter to know what your labor input will give you in 
terms of material output—your personal financial equation, in other words—and 
the inflation multiplier is something you simply must have if the equation is 
going to balance and you're not going to be wiped out, then time is really of 
the essence. We operate at a perpetual disadvantage on Pluto in relation to the 
Inner Planet money markets. For a long time it ran on the order of point three 
percent leakage due to outdated information. But the inflation multiplier has 
been accelerating over the years. Some of it's been absorbed by the fact that 
we've been moving closer to the I.P.; the time lag has been getting shorter as 
we move into summer. But it can't last. We'll reach the inner point of our orbit 
and the effects will really start to accelerate. Then it's war."
"War?" She seemed horrified, as well she might be.
"War, in the economic sense. It's a hostile act to renounce a trade agreement, 
even if it's bleeding you white. It hits every citizen of the Inner Planets in 
the pocketbook, and we can expect retaliation. We'd be introducing instability 
by pulling out of the Common Market."
"How bad will it be? Shooting?"
"Not likely. But devastating enough. A depression's no fun. And they'll be 
planning one for us."
"Isn't there any other course?"
"Someone suggested moving our entire government and all our corporate 
headquarters to the Inner Planets. It could happen, I guess. But who'd feel like 
it was ours? We'd be a colony, and that's a worse answer than independence, in 
the long run."
She was silent for a time, chewing it over. She nodded her head once; he could 
barely see the movement in the darkness.
"How long until the war?"
He shrugged. "I've been out of touch. I don't know how things have been going. 
But we can probably take it for another ten years or so. Then we'll have to get 
out. I'd stock up on real wealth if I were you. Canned goods, air, water, so 
forth. I don't think it'll get so bad that you'll need those things to stay 
alive by consuming them. But we may get to a semibarter situation where they'll 
be the only valuable things. Your credit meter'll laugh at you when you punch a 
purchase order, no matter how much work you've put into it."
The raft bumped. They had arrived at the edge of the world.
 
They moored the raft to one of the rocks on the wall that rose from the open 
ocean. They were five kilometers out of Rarotonga. They waited for some light as 
the sun began to rise, then started up the rock face.
It was rough: blasted out with explosives on this face of the dam. It went up at 
a thirty-degree angle for fifty meters, then was suddenly level and smooth as 
glass. The top of the dam at the edge of the world had been smoothed by cutting 
lasers into a vast table top, three hundred kilometers long and four kilometers 
wide. They left wet footprints on it as they began the long walk to the edge.
They soon lost any meaningful perspective on the thing. They lost sight of the 
sea-edge, and couldn't see the dropoff until they began to near it. By then, it 
was full light. Timed just right, they would reach the edge when the sun came up 
and they'd really have something to see.
A hundred meters from the edge when she could see over it a little, Lee began to 
unconsciously hang back. Piri didn't prod her. It was not something he could 
force someone to see. He'd reached this point with others, and had to turn back. 
Already, the fear of falling was building up. But she came on, to stand beside 
him at the very lip of the canyon.
Pacifica was being built and filled in three sections. Two were complete, but 
the third was still being hollowed out and was not yet filled with water except 
in the deepest trenches. The water was kept out of this section by the dam they 
were standing on. When it was completed, when all the underwater trenches and 
mountain ranges and guyots and slopes had been built to specifications, the 
bottom would be covered with sludge and ooze and the whole wedge-shaped section 
flooded. The water came from liquid hydrogen and oxygen on the surface, combined 
with the limitless electricity of fusion powerplants.
"We're doing what the Dutch did on Old Earth, but in reverse," Piri pointed out, 
but he got no reaction from Lee. She was staring, spellbound, down the sheer 
face of the dam to the apparently bottomless trench below. It was shrouded in 
mist, but seemed to fall off forever.
"It's eight kilometers deep," Piri told her. "It's not going to be a regular 
trench when it's finished. It's there to be filled up with the remains of this 
dam after the place has been flooded." He looked at her face, and didn't bother 
with more statistics. He let her experience it in her own way.
The only comparable vista on a human-inhabited planet was the Great Rift Valley 
on Mars. Neither of them had seen it, but it suffered in comparison to this 
because not all of it could be seen at once. Here, one could see from one side 
to the other, and from sea level to a distance equivalent to the deepest oceanic 
trenches on Earth. It simply fell away beneath them and went straight down to 
nothing. There was a rainbow beneath their feet. Off to the left was a huge 
waterfall that arced away from the wall in a solid stream. Tons of overflow 
water went through the wall, to twist, fragment, vaporize and blow away long 
before it reached the bottom of the trench.
Straight ahead of them and about ten kilometers away was the mountain that would 
become the Okinawa biome when the pit was filled. Only the tiny, blackened tip 
of the mountain would show above the water.
Lee stayed and looked at it as long as she could. It became easier the longer 
one stood there, and yet something about it drove her away. The scale was too 
big, there was no room for humans in that shattered world. Long before noon, 
they turned and started the long walk back to the raft.
 
She was silent as they boarded, and set sail for the return trip.
The winds were blowing fitfully, barely billowing the sail. It would be another 
hour before they blew very strongly. They were still in sight of the dam wall.
They sat on the raft, not looking at each other.
"Piri, thanks for bringing me here."
"You're welcome. You don't have to talk about it."
"All right. But there's something else I have to talk about. I... I don't know 
where to begin, really."
Piri stirred uneasily. The earlier discussion about economics had disturbed him. 
It was part of his past life, a part that he had not been ready to return to. He 
was full of confusion. Thoughts that had no place out here in the concrete world 
of wind and water were roiling through his brain. Someone was calling to him, 
someone he knew but didn't want to see right then.
"Yeah? What is it you want to talk about?"
"It's about—" she stopped, seemed to think it over. "Never mind. It's not time 
yet." She moved close and touched him. But he was not interested. He made it 
known in a few minutes, and she moved to the other side of the raft.
He lay back, essentially alone with his troubled thoughts. The wind gusted, then 
settled down. He saw a flying fish leap, almost passing over the raft. There was 
a piece of the sky falling through the air. It twisted and turned like a 
feather, a tiny speck of sky that was blue on one side and brown on the other. 
He could see the hole in the sky where it had been knocked loose.
It must be two or three kilometers away. No, wait, that wasn't right. The top of 
the sky was twenty kilometers up, and it looked like it was falling from the 
center. How far away were they from the center of Pacifica? A hundred 
kilometers?
A piece of the sky?
He got to his feet, nearly capsizing the raft.
"What's the matter?"
It was big. It looked large even from this far away. It was the dreamy tumbling 
motion that had deceived him.
"The sky is..." he choked on it, and almost laughed. But this was no time to 
feel silly about it. "The sky is falling, Lee." How long? He watched it, his 
mind full of numbers. Terminal velocity from that high up, assuming it was heavy 
enough to punch right through the atmosphere... over six hundred meters per 
second. Time to fall, seventy seconds. Thirty of those must already have gone 
by.
Lee was shading her eyes as she followed his gaze. She still thought it was a 
joke. The chunk of sky began to glow red as the atmosphere got thicker.
"Hey, it really is falling," she said. "Look at that."
"It's big. Maybe one or two kilometers across. It's going to make quite a 
splash, I'll bet."
They watched it descend. Soon it disappeared over the horizon, picking up speed. 
They waited, but the show seemed to be over. Why was he still uneasy?
"How many tons in a two-kilometer chunk of rock, I wonder?" Lee mused. She 
didn't look too happy, either. But they sat back down on the raft, still looking 
in the direction where the thing had sunk into the sea.
Then they were surrounded by flying fish, and the water looked crazy. The fish 
were panicked. As soon as they hit they leaped from the water again. Piri felt 
rather than saw something pass beneath them. And then, very gradually, a roar 
built up, a deep bass rumble that soon threatened to turn his bones to powder. 
It picked him up and shook him, and left him limp on his knees. He was stunned, 
unable to think clearly. His eyes were still fixed on the horizon, and he saw a 
white fan rising in the distance in silent majesty. It was the spray from the 
impact, and it was still going up.
"Look up there," Lee said, when she got her voice back. She seemed as confused 
as he. He looked where she pointed and saw a twisted line crawling across the 
blue sky. At first he thought it was the end of his life, because it appeared 
that the whole overhanging dome was fractured and about to fall in on them. But 
then he saw it was one of the tracks that the sun ran on, pulled free by the 
rock that had fallen, twisted into a snake of tortured metal.
"The dam!" he yelled. "The dam! We're too close to the dam!"
"What?"
"The bottom rises this close to the dam. The water here isn't that deep. 
There'll be a wave coming, Lee, a big wave. It'll pile up here."
"Piri, the shadows are moving."
"Huh?"
Surprise was piling on surprise too fast for him to cope with it. But she was 
right. The shadows were moving. But why?
Then he saw it. The sun was setting, but not by following the tracks that led to 
the concealed opening in the west. It was falling through the air, having been 
shaken loose by the rock.
Lee had figured it out, too.
"What is that thing?" she asked. "I mean, how big is it?"
"Not too big, I heard. Big enough, but not nearly the size of that chunk that 
fell. It's some kind of fusion generator. I don't know what'll happen when it 
hits the water."
They were paralyzed. They knew there was something they should do, but too many 
things were happening. There was not time to think it out.
"Dive!" Lee yelled. "Dive into the water!"
"What?"
"We have to dive and swim away from the dam, and down as far as we can go. The 
wave will pass over us, won't it?"
"I don't know."
"It's all we can do."
So they dived. Piri felt his gills come into action, then he was swimming down 
at an angle toward the dark-shrouded bottom. Lee was off to his left, swimming 
as hard as she could. And with no sunset, no warning, it got black as pitch. The 
sun had hit the water.
He had no idea how long he had been swimming when he suddenly felt himself 
pulled upward. Floating in the water, weightless, he was not well equipped to 
feel accelerations. But he did feel it, like a rapidly rising elevator. It was 
accompanied by pressure waves that threatened to burst his eardrums. He kicked 
and clawed his way downward, not even knowing if he was headed in the right 
direction. Then he was falling again.
He kept swimming, all alone in the dark. Another wave passed, lifted him, let 
him down again. A few minutes later, another one, seeming to come from the other 
direction. He was hopelessly confused. He suddenly felt he was swimming the 
wrong way. He stopped, not knowing what to do. Was he pointed in the right 
direction? He had no way to tell.
He stopped paddling and tried to orient himself. It was useless. He felt surges, 
and was sure he was being tumbled and buffeted.
Then his skin was tingling with the sensation of a million bubbles crawling over 
him. It gave him a handle on the situation. The bubbles would be going up, 
wouldn't they? And they were traveling over his body from belly to back. So down 
was that way.
But he didn't have time to make use of the information. He hit something hard 
with his hip, wrenched his back as his body tried to tumble over in the foam and 
water, then was sliding along a smooth surface. It felt like he was going very 
fast, and he knew where he was and where he was heading and there was nothing he 
could do about it. The tail of the wave had lifted him clear of the rocky slope 
of the dam and deposited him on the flat surface. It was now spending itself, 
sweeping him along to the edge of the world. He turned around, feeling the 
sliding surface beneath him with his hands, and tried to dig in. It was a 
nightmare; nothing he did had any effect. Then his head broke free into the air.
He was still sliding, but the huge hump of the wave had dissipated itself and 
was collapsing quietly into froth and puddles. It drained away with amazing 
speed. He was left there, alone, cheek pressed lovingly to the cold rock. The 
darkness was total.
He wasn't about to move. For all he knew, there was an eight-kilometer drop just 
behind his toes.
Maybe there would be another wave. If so, this one would crash down on him 
instead of lifting him like a cork in a tempest. It should kill him instantly. 
He refused to worry about that. All he cared about now was not slipping any 
further.
The stars had vanished. Power failure? Now they blinked on. He raised his head a 
little, in time to see a soft, diffused glow in the east. The moon was rising, 
and it was doing it at breakneck speed. He saw it rotate from a thin crescent 
configuration to bright fullness in under a minute. Someone was still in charge, 
and had decided to throw some light on the scene.
He stood, though his knees were weak. Tall fountains of spray far away to his 
right indicated where the sea was battering at the dam. He was about in the 
middle of the tabletop, far from either edge. The ocean was whipped up as if by 
thirty hurricanes, but he was safe from it at this distance unless there were 
another tsunami yet to come.
The moonlight turned the surface into a silver mirror, littered with flopping 
fish. He saw another figure get to her feet, and ran in that direction.
 
The helicopter located them by infrared detector. They had no way of telling how 
long it had been. The moon was hanging motionless in the center of the sky.
They got into the cabin, shivering.
The helicopter pilot was happy to have found them, but grieved over other lives 
lost. She said the toll stood at three dead, fifteen missing and presumed dead. 
Most of these had been working on the reefs. All the land surface of Pacifica 
had been scoured, but the loss of life had been minimal. Most had had time to 
get to an elevator and go below or to a helicopter and rise above the 
devastation.
From what they had been able to find out, heat expansion of the crust had moved 
farther down into the interior of the planet than had been expected. It was 
summer on the surface, something it was easy to forget down here. The engineers 
had been sure that the inner surface of the sky had been stabilized years ago, 
but a new fault had been opened by the slight temperature rise. She pointed up 
to where ships were hovering like fireflies next to the sky, playing 
searchlights on the site of the damage. No one knew yet if Pacifica would have 
to be abandoned for another twenty years while it stabilized.
She set them down on Rarotonga. The place was a mess. The wave had climbed the 
bottom rise and crested at the reef, and a churning hell of foam and debris had 
swept over the island. Little was left standing except the concrete blocks that 
housed the elevators, scoured of their decorative camouflage.
Piri saw a familiar figure coming toward him through the wreckage that had been 
a picturesque village. She broke into a run, and nearly bowled him over, 
laughing and kissing him.
"We were sure you were dead," Harra said, drawing back from him as if to check 
for cuts and bruises.
"It was a fluke I guess," he said, still incredulous that he had survived. It 
had seemed bad enough out there in the open ocean; the extent of the disaster 
was much more evident on the island. He was badly shaken to see it.
"Lee suggested that we try to dive under the wave. That's what saved us. It just 
lifted us up, then the last one swept us over the top of the dam and drained 
away. It dropped us like leaves."
"Well, not quite so tenderly in my case," Lee pointed out. "It gave me quite a 
jolt. I think I might have sprained my wrist."
A medic was available. While her wrist was being bandaged, she kept looking at 
Piri. He didn't like the look.
"There's something I'd intended to talk to you about on the raft, or soon after 
we got home. There's no point in your staying here any longer anyway, and I 
don't know where you'd go."
"No!" Harra burst out. "Not yet. Don't tell him anything yet. It's not fair. 
Stay away from him." She was protecting Piri with her body, from no assault that 
was apparent to him.
"I just wanted to—"
"No, no. Don't listen to her, Piri. Come with me." She pleaded with the other 
woman. "Just give me a few hours alone with him, there's some things I never got 
around to telling him."
Lee looked undecided, and Piri felt mounting rage and frustration. He had known 
things were going on around him. It was mostly his own fault that he had ignored 
them, but now he had to know. He pulled his hand free from Harra and faced Lee.
"Tell me."
She looked down at her feet, then back to his eyes.
"I'm not what I seem, Piri. I've been leading you along, trying to make this 
easier for you. But you still fight me. I don't think there's any way it's going 
to be easy."
"No!" Harra shouted again.
"What are you?"
"I'm a psychiatrist. I specialize in retrieving people like you, people who are 
in a mental vacation mode, what you call 'second childhood.' You're aware of all 
this, on another level, but the child in you has fought it at every stage. The 
result has been nightmares—probably with me as the focus, whether you admitted 
it or not."
She grasped both his wrists, one of them awkwardly because of her injury.
"Now listen to me." She spoke in an intense whisper, trying to get it all out 
before the panic she saw in his face broke free and sent him running. "You came 
here for a vacation. You were going to stay ten years, growing up and taking it 
easy. That's all over. The situation that prevailed when you left is now out of 
date. Things have moved faster than you believed possible. You had expected a 
ten-year period after your return to get things in order for the coming battles. 
That time has evaporated. The Common Market of the Inner Planets has fired the 
first shot. They've instituted a new system of accounting and it's locked into 
their computers and running. It's aimed right at Pluto, and it's been working 
for a month now. We cannot continue as an economic partner to the C.M.I.P., 
because from now on every time we sell or buy or move money the inflationary 
multiplier is automatically juggled against us. It's all perfectly legal by all 
existing treaties, and it's necessary to their economy. But it ignores our 
time-lag disadvantage. We have to consider it as a hostile act, no matter what 
the intent. You have to come back and direct the war, Mister Finance Minister."
The words shattered what calm Piri had left. He wrenched free of her hands and 
turned wildly to look all around him. Then he sprinted down the beach. He 
tripped once over his splay feet, got up without ever slowing, and disappeared.
Harra and Lee stood silently and watched him go.
"You didn't have to be so rough with him," Harra said, but knew it wasn't so. 
She just hated to see him so confused.
"It's best done quickly when they resist. And he's all right. He'll have a fight 
with himself, but there's no real doubt of the outcome."
"So the Piri I know will be dead soon?"
Lee put her arm around the younger woman.
"Not at all. It's a reintegration, without a winner or a loser. You'll see." She 
looked at the tear-streaked face.
"Don't worry. You'll like the older Piri. It won't take him any time at all to 
realize that he loves you."
 
He had never been to the reef at night. It was a place of furtive fish, always 
one step ahead of him as they darted back into their places of concealment. He 
wondered how long it would be before they ventured out in the long night to 
come. The sun might not rise for years.
They might never come out. Not realizing the changes in their environment, night 
fish and day fish would never adjust. Feeding cycles would be disrupted, 
critical temperatures would go awry, the endless moon and lack of sun would 
frustrate the internal mechanisms, bred over billions of years, and fish would 
die. It had to happen.
The ecologists would have quite a job on their hands.
But there was one denizen of the outer reef that would survive for a long time. 
He would eat anything that moved and quite a few things that didn't, at any time 
of the day or night. He had no fear, he had no internal clocks dictating to him, 
no inner pressures to confuse him except the one overriding urge to attack. He 
would last as long as there was anything alive to eat.
But in what passed for a brain in the white-bottomed torpedo that was the Ghost, 
a splinter of doubt had lodged. He had no recollection of similar doubts, though 
there had been some. He was not equipped to remember, only to hunt. So this new 
thing that swam beside him, and drove his cold brain as near as it could come to 
the emotion of anger, was a mystery. He tried again and again to attack it, then 
something would seize him with an emotion he had not felt since he was half a 
meter long, and fear would drive him away.
Piri swam along beside the faint outline of the shark. There was just enough 
moonlight for him to see the fish, hovering at the ill-defined limit of his 
sonic signal. Occasionally, the shape would shudder from head to tail, turn 
toward him, and grow larger. At these times Piri could see nothing but a gaping 
jaw. Then it would turn quickly, transfix him with that bottomless pit of an 
eye, and sweep away.
Piri wished he could laugh at the poor, stupid brute. How could he have feared 
such a mindless eating machine?
Good-bye, pinbrain. He turned and stroked lazily toward the shore. He knew the 
shark would turn and follow him, nosing into the interdicted sphere of his 
transponder, but the thought did not impress him. He was without fear. How could 
he be afraid, when he had already been swallowed into the belly of his 
nightmare? The teeth had closed around him, he had awakened, and remembered. And 
that was the end of his fear.
Good-bye, tropical paradise. You were fun while you lasted. Now I'm a grownup, 
and must go off to war.
He didn't relish it. It was a wrench to leave his childhood, though the time had 
surely been right. Now the responsibilities had descended on him, and he must 
shoulder them. He thought of Harra.
"Piri," he told himself, "as a teenager, you were just too dumb to live."
Knowing it was the last time, he felt the coolness of the water flowing over his 
gills. They had served him well, but had no place in his work. There was no 
place for a fish, and no place for Robinson Crusoe.
Good-bye, gills.
He kicked harder for the shore and came to stand, dripping wet, on the beach. 
Harra and Lee were there, waiting for him.
 
Lollipop and the Tar Baby
"ZZZZELLO. ZZZ. HELLO. HELLO." Someone was speaking to Xanthia from the end of a 
ten-kilometer metal pipe, shouting to be heard across a roomful of gongs and 
cymbals being knocked over by angry giant bees. She had never heard such 
interference.
"Hello?" she repeated. "What are you doing on my wavelength?"
"Hello." The interference was still there, but the voice was slightly more 
distinct. "Wavelength. Searching, searching wavelength... get best reception 
with... Hello? Listening?"
"Yes, I'm listening. You're talking over... My radio isn't even..." She banged 
the radio panel with her palm in the ancient ritual humans employ when their 
creations are being balky. "My goddamn radio isn't even on. Did you know that?" 
It was a relief to feel anger boiling up inside her. Anything was preferable to 
feeling lost and silly.
"Not necessary."
"What do you mean, not—who are you?"
"Who. Having... I'm, pronoun, yes, I'm having difficulty. Bear with. Me? Yes, 
pronoun. Bear with me. I'm not who. What. What am I?"
"All right. What are you?"
"Spacetime phenomenon. I'm gravity and causality-sink. Black hole."
Xanthia did not need black holes explained to her. She had spent her entire 
eighteen years hunting them, along with her clone-sister, Zoetrope. But she was 
not used to having them talk to her.
"Assuming for the moment that you really are a black hole," she said, beginning 
to wonder if this might be some elaborate trick played on her by Zoe, "just 
taking that as a tentative hypothesis—how are you able to talk to me?"
There was a sound like an attitude thruster going off, a rumbling pop. It was 
repeated.
"I manipulate spacetime framework... no, please hold line... the line. I 
manipulate the spacetime framework with controlled gravity waves projected in 
narrow... a narrow cone. I direct at the speaker in your radio. You hear. Me."
"What was that again?" It sounded like a lot of crap to her.
"I elaborate. I will elaborate. I cut through space itself, through—hold the 
line, hold the line, reference." There was a sound like a tape reeling rapidly 
through playback heads. "This is the BBC," said a voice that was recognizably 
human, but blurred by static. The tape whirred again, "gust the third, in the 
year of our Lord nineteen fifty-seven. Today in—" Once again the tape hunted.
"chelson-Morley experiment disproved the existence of the ether, by ingeniously 
arranging a rotating prism—" Then the metallic voice was back.
"Ether. I cut through space itself, through a—hold the line." This time the 
process was shorter. She heard a fragment of what sounded like a video adventure 
serial. "Through a spacewarp made through the ductile etheric continuum—"
"Hold on there. That's not what you said before."
"I was elaborating."
"Go on. Wait, what were you doing? With that tape business?"
The voice paused, and when the answer came the line had cleared up quite a bit. 
But the voice still didn't sound human. Computer?
"I am not used to speech. No need for it. But I have learned your language by 
listening to radio transmissions. I speak to you through use of indeterminate 
statistical concatenations. Gravity waves and probability, which is not the same 
thing in a causality singularity, enables a nonrational event to take place."
"Zoe, this is really you, isn't it?"
Xanthia was only eighteen Earth-years old, on her first long orbit into the 
space beyond Pluto, the huge cometary zone where space is truly flat. Her whole 
life had been devoted to learning how to find and capture black holes, but one 
didn't come across them very often. Xanthia had been born a year after the 
beginning of the voyage and had another year to go before the end of it. In her 
whole life she had seen and talked to only one other human being, and that was 
Zoe, who was one hundred and thirty-five years old and her identical twin.
Their home was the Shirley Temple, a fifteen-thousand-tonne fusion-drive ship 
registered out of Lowell, Pluto. Zoe owned Shirley free and clear; on her first 
trip, many years ago, she had found a scale-five hole and had become instantly 
rich. Most hole hunters were not so lucky.
Zoe was also unusual in that she seemed to thrive on solitude. Most hunters who 
made a strike settled down to live in comfort, buy a large company or put the 
money into safe investments and live off the interest. They were unwilling or 
unable to face another twenty years alone. Zoe had gone out again, and a third 
time after the second trip had proved fruitless. She had found a hole on her 
third trip, and was now almost through her fifth.
But for some reason she had never adequately explained to Xanthia, she had 
wanted a companion this time. And what better company than herself? With the 
medical facilities aboard Shirley she had grown a copy of herself and raised the 
little girl as her daughter.
 
Xanthia squirmed around in the control cabin of The Good Ship Lollipop, stuck 
her head through the hatch leading to the aft exercise room, and found nothing. 
What she had expected, she didn't know. Now she crouched in midair with a 
screwdriver, attacking the service panels that protected the radio assembly.
"What are you doing by yourself?" the voice asked.
"Why don't you tell me, Zoe?" she said, lifting the panel off and tossing it 
angrily to one side. She peered into the gloomy interior, wrinkling her nose at 
the smell of oil and paraffin. She shone her pencil-beam into the space, 
flicking it from one component to the next, all as familiar to her as 
neighborhood corridors would be to a planet-born child. There was nothing out of 
place, nothing that shouldn't be there. Most of it was sealed into plastic 
blocks to prevent moisture or dust from getting to critical circuits. There were 
no signs of tampering.
"I am failing to communicate. I am not your mother, I am a gravity and 
causality—"
"She's not my mother," Xanthia snapped.
"My records show that she would dispute you."
Xanthia didn't like the way the voice said that. But she was admitting to 
herself that there was no way Zoe could have set this up. That left her with the 
alternative: she really was talking to a black hole.
"She's not my mother," Xanthia repeated. "And if you've been listening in, you 
know why I'm out here in a lifeboat. So why do you ask?"
"I wish to help you. I have heard tension building between the two of you these 
last years. You are growing up."
Xanthia settled back in the control chair. Her head did not feel so good.
 
Hole hunting was a delicate economic balance, a tightrope walked between the 
needs of survival and the limitations of mass. The initial investment was 
tremendous and the return was undependable, so the potential hole hunter had to 
have a line to a source of speculative credit or be independently wealthy.
No consortium or corporation had been able to turn a profit at the business by 
going at it in a big way. The government of Pluto maintained a monopoly on the 
use of one-way robot probes, but they had found over the years that when a probe 
succeeded in finding a hole, a race usually developed to see who would reach it 
and claim it first. Ships sent after such holes had a way of disappearing in the 
resulting fights, far from law and order.
The demand for holes was so great that an economic niche remained which was 
filled by the solitary prospector, backed by people with tax write-offs to gain. 
Prospectors had a ninety percent bankruptcy rate. But as with gold and oil in 
earlier days, the potential profits were huge, so there was never a lack of 
speculators.
Hole hunters would depart Pluto and accelerate to the limits of engine power, 
then coast for ten to fifteen years, keeping an eye on the mass detector. 
Sometimes they would be half a light-year from Sol before they had to decelerate 
and turn around. Less mass equalled more range, so the solitary hunter was the 
rule.
Teaming of ships had been tried, but teams that discovered a hole seldom came 
back together. One of them tended to have an accident. Hole hunters were a 
greedy lot, self-centered and self-sufficient.
Equipment had to be reliable. Replacement parts were costly in terms of mass, so 
the hole hunter had to make an agonizing choice with each item. Would it be 
better to leave it behind and chance a possibly fatal failure, or take it along, 
decreasing the range, and maybe miss the glory hole that is sure to be lurking 
just one more AU away? Hole hunters learned to be handy at repairing, 
jury-rigging, and bashing, because in twenty years even fail-safe triplicates 
can be on their last legs.
Zoe had sweated over her faulty mass detector before she admitted it was beyond 
her skills. Her primary detector had failed ten years into the voyage, and the 
second one had begun to act up six years later. She tried to put together one 
functioning detector with parts cannibalized from both. She nursed it along for 
a year with the equivalents of bobby pins and bubblegum. It was hopeless.
But Shirley Temple was a palace among prospecting ships. Having found two holes 
in her career, Zoe had her own money. She had stocked spare parts, beefed up the 
drive, even included that incredible luxury, a lifeboat.
The lifeboat was sheer extravagance, except for one thing. It had a mass 
detector as part of its astrogational equipment. She had bought it mainly for 
that reason, since it had only an eighteen-month range and would be useless 
except at the beginning and end of the trip, when they were close to Pluto. It 
made extensive use of plug-in components, sealed in plastic to prevent tampering 
or accidents caused by inexperienced passengers. The mass detector on board did 
not have the range or accuracy of the one on Shirley. It could be removed or 
replaced, but not recalibrated.
They had begun a series of three-month loops out from the mother ship. Xanthia 
had flown most of them earlier, when Zoe did not trust her to run Shirley. Later 
they had alternated.
"And that's what I'm doing out here by myself," Xanthia said. "I have to get out 
beyond ten million kilometers from Shirley so its mass doesn't affect the 
detector. My instrument is calibrated to ignore only the mass of this ship, not 
Shirley. I stay out here for three months, which is a reasonably safe time for 
the life systems on Lollipop, and time to get pretty lonely. Then back for 
refueling and supplying."
"The Lollipop?"
Xanthia blushed. "Well, I named this lifeboat that, after I started spending so 
much time on it. We have a tape of Shirley Temple in the library, and she sang 
this song, see—"
"Yes, I've heard it. I've been listening to radio for a very long time. So you 
no longer believe this is a trick by your mother?"
"She's not..." Then she realized she had referred to Zoe in the third person 
again.
"I don't know what to think," she said, miserably. "Why are you doing this?"
"I sense that you are still confused. You'd like some proof that I am what I say 
I am. Since you'll think of it in a minute, I might as well ask you this 
question. Why do you suppose I haven't yet registered on your mass detector?"
Xanthia jerked in her seat, then was brought up short by the straps. It was 
true, there was not the slightest wiggle on the dials of the detector.
"All right, why haven't you?" She felt a sinking sensation. She was sure the 
punchline came now, after she'd shot off her mouth about Lollipop—her secret 
from Zoe—and made such a point of the fact that Zoe was not her mother. It was 
her own private rebellion, one that she had not had the nerve to face Zoe with. 
Now she's going to reveal herself and tell me how she did it, and I'll feel like 
a fool, she thought.
"It's simple," the voice said. "You weren't in range of me yet. But now you are. 
Take a look."
The needles were dancing, giving the reading of a scale-seven hole. A scale 
seven would mass about a tenth as much as the asteroid Ceres.
 
"Mommy, what is a black hole?"
The little girl was seven years old. One day she would call herself Xanthia, but 
she had not yet felt the need for a name and her mother had not seen fit to give 
her one. Zoe reasoned that you needed two of something before you needed names. 
There was only one other person on Shirley. There was no possible confusion. 
When the girl thought about it at all, she assumed her name must be Hey, or 
Darling.
She was a small child, as Zoe had been. She was recapitulating the growth Zoe 
had already been through a hundred years ago. Though she didn't know it, she was 
pretty: dark eyes with an oriental fold, dark skin, and kinky blonde hair. She 
was a genetic mix of Chinese and Negro, with dabs of other races thrown in for 
seasoning.
"I've tried to explain that before," Zoe said. "You don't have the math for it 
yet. I'll get you started on spacetime equations, then in about a year you'll be 
able to understand."
"But I want to know now." Black holes were a problem for the child. From her 
earliest memories the two of them had done nothing but hunt them, yet they never 
found one. She'd been doing a lot of reading—there was little else to do—and was 
wondering if they might inhabit the same category where she had tentatively 
placed Santa Claus and leprechauns.
"If I try again, will you go to sleep?"
"I promise."
So Zoe launched into her story about the Big Bang, the time in the long-ago when 
little black holes could be formed.
"As far as we can tell, all the little black holes like the ones we hunt were 
made in that time. Nowadays other holes can be formed by the collapse of very 
large stars. When the fires burn low and the pressures that are trying to blow 
the star apart begin to fade, gravity takes over and starts to pull the star in 
on itself." Zoe waved her hands in the air, forming cups to show bending space, 
flailing out to indicate pressures of fusion. These explanations were almost as 
difficult for her as stories of sex had been for earlier generations. The truth 
was that she was no relativist and didn't really grasp the slightly incredible 
premises behind black-hole theory. She suspected that no one could really 
visualize one, and if you can't do that, where are you? But she was practical 
enough not to worry about it.
"And what's gravity? I forgot." The child was rubbing her eyes to stay awake. 
She struggled to understand but already knew she would miss the point yet 
another time.
"Gravity is the thing that holds the universe together. The glue, or the rivets. 
It pulls everything toward everything else, and it takes energy to fight it and 
overcome it. It feels like when we boost the ship, remember I pointed that out 
to you?"
"Like when everything wants to move in the same direction?"
"That's right. So we have to be careful, because we don't think about it much. 
We have to worry about where things are because when we boost, everything will 
head for the stern. People on planets have to worry about that all the time. 
They have to put something strong between themselves and the center of the 
planet, or they'll go down."
"Down." The girl mused over that word, one that had been giving her trouble as 
long as she could remember, and thought she might finally have understood it. 
She had seen pictures of places where down was always the same direction, and 
they were strange to the eye. They were full of tables to put things on, chairs 
to sit in, and funny containers with no tops. Five of the six walls of rooms on 
planets could hardly be used at all. One, the "floor," was called on to take all 
the use.
"So they use their legs to fight gravity with?" She was yawning now.
"Yes. You've seen pictures of the people with the funny legs. They're not so 
funny when you're in gravity. Those flat things on the ends are called feet. If 
they had peds like us, they wouldn't be able to walk so good. They always have 
to have one foot touching the floor, or they'd fall toward the surface of the 
planet."
Zoe tightened the strap that held the child to her bunk, and fastened the velcro 
patch on the blanket to the side of the sheet, tucking her in. Kids needed a 
warm, snug place to sleep. Zoe preferred to float free in her own bedroom, 
tucked into a fetal position and drifting.
"G'night, Mommy."
"Good night. You get some sleep, and don't worry about black holes."
But the child dreamed of them, as she often did. They kept tugging at her, and 
she would wake breathing hard and convinced that she was going to fall into the 
wall in front of her.
 
"You don't mean it? I'm rich!"
Xanthia looked away from the screen. It was no good pointing out that Zoe had 
always spoken of the trip as a partnership. She owned Shirley and Lollipop.
"Well, you too, of course. Don't think you won't be getting a real big share of 
the money. I'm going to set you up so well that you'll be able to buy a ship of 
your own, and raise little copies of yourself if you want to."
Xanthia was not sure that was her idea of heaven, but said nothing.
"Zoe, there's a problem, and I... well, I was—" But she was interrupted again by 
Zoe, who would not hear Xanthia's comment for another thirty seconds.
"The first data is coming over the telemetry channel right now, and I'm feeding 
it into the computer. Hold on a second while I turn the ship. I'm going to start 
decelerating in about one minute, based on these figures. You get the refined 
data to me as soon as you have it."
There was a brief silence.
"What problem?"
"It's talking to me, Zoe. The hole is talking to me."
This time the silence was longer than the minute it took the radio signal to 
make the round trip between ships. Xanthia furtively thumbed the contrast knob, 
turning her sister-mother down until the screen was blank. She could look at the 
camera and Zoe wouldn't know the difference.
Damn, damn, she thinks I've flipped. But I had to tell her.
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"Just what I said. I don't understand it, either. But it's been talking to me 
for the last hour, and it says the damnedest things."
There was another silence.
"All right. When you get there, don't do anything, repeat, anything, until I 
arrive. Do you understand?"
"Zoe, I'm not crazy. I'm not."
Then why am I crying?
"Of course you're not, baby, there's an explanation for this and I'll find out 
what it is as soon as I get there. You just hang on. My first rough estimate 
puts me alongside you about three hours after you're stationary relative to the 
hole."
Shirley and Lollipop, traveling parallel courses, would both be veering from 
their straight-line trajectories to reach the hole. But Xanthia was closer to 
it; Zoe would have to move at a more oblique angle and would be using more fuel. 
Xanthia thought four hours was more like it.
"I'm signing off," Zoe said. "I'll call you back as soon as I'm in the groove."
Xanthia hit the off button on the radio and furiously unbuckled her seatbelt. 
Damn Zoe, damn her, damn her, damn her. Just sit tight, she says. I'll be there 
to explain the unexplainable. It'll be all right.
She knew she should start her deceleration, but there was something she must do 
first.
She twisted easily in the air, grabbing at braces with all four hands, and dived 
through the hatch to the only other living space in Lollipop: the exercise area. 
It was cluttered with equipment that she had neglected to fold into the walls, 
but she didn't mind; she liked close places. She squirmed through the maze like 
a fish gliding through coral, until she reached the wall she was looking for. It 
had been taped over with discarded manual pages, the only paper she could find 
on Lollipop. She started ripping at the paper, wiping tears from her cheeks with 
one ped as she worked. Beneath the paper was a mirror.
How to test for sanity? Xanthia had not considered the question; the thing to do 
had simply presented itself and she had done it. Now she confronted the mirror 
and searched for... what? Wild eyes? Froth on the lips?
What she saw was her mother.
Xanthia's life had been a process of growing slowly into the mold Zoe 
represented. She had known her pug nose would eventually turn down. She had 
known what baby fat would melt away. Her breasts had grown just into the small 
cones she knew from her mother's body and no farther.
She hated looking in mirrors.
Xanthia and Zoe were small women. Their most striking feature was the frizzy 
dandelion of yellow hair, lighter than their bodies. When the time had come for 
naming, the young clone had almost opted for Dandelion until she came upon the 
word xanthic in a dictionary. The radio call-letters for Lollipop happened to be 
X-A-N, and the word was too good to resist. She knew, too, that Orientals were 
thought of as having yellow skin, though she could not see why.
Why had she come here, of all places? She strained toward the mirror, fighting 
her repulsion, searching her face for signs of insanity. The narrow eyes were a 
little puffy, and as deep and expressionless as ever. She put her hands to the 
glass, startled in the silence to hear the multiple clicks as the long nails 
just missed touching the ones on the other side. She was always forgetting to 
trim them.
Sometimes, in mirrors, she knew she was not seeing herself. She could twitch her 
mouth, and the image would not move. She could smile, and the image would frown. 
It had been happening for two years, as her body put the finishing touches on 
its eighteen-year process of duplicating Zoe. She had not spoken of it, because 
it scared her.
"And this is where I come to see if I'm sane," she said aloud, noting that the 
lips in the mirror did not move. "Is she going to start talking to me now?" She 
waved her arms wildly, and so did Zoe in the mirror. At least it wasn't that bad 
yet; it was only the details that failed to match: the small movements, and 
especially the facial expressions. Zoe was inspecting her dispassionately and 
did not seem to like what she saw. That small curl at the edge of the mouth, the 
almost brutal narrowing of the eyes...
Xanthia clapped her hands over her face, then peeked out through the fingers. 
Zoe was peeking out, too. Xanthia began rounding up the drifting scraps of paper 
and walling her twin in again with new bits of tape.
 
The beast with two backs and legs at each end writhed, came apart, and resolved 
into Xanthia and Zoe, drifting, breathing hard. They caromed off the walls like 
monkeys, giving up their energy, gradually getting breath back under control. 
Golden, wet hair and sweaty skin brushed against each other again and again as 
they came to rest.
Now the twins floated in the middle of the darkened bedroom. Zoe was already 
asleep, tumbling slowly with that total looseness possible only in free fall. 
Her leg rubbed against Xanthia's belly and her relative motion stopped. The leg 
was moist. The room was close, thick with the smell of passion. The 
recirculators whined quietly as they labored to clear the air.
Pushing one finger gently against Zoe's ankle, Xanthia turned her until they 
were face to face. Frizzy blonde hair tickled her nose, and she felt warm breath 
on her mouth.
Why can't it always be like this?
"You're not my mother," she whispered. Zoe had no reaction to this heresy. 
"You're not."
Only in the last year had Zoe admitted the relationship was much closer. Xanthia 
was now fifteen.
And what was different? Something, there had to be something beyond the mere 
knowledge that they were not mother and child. There was a new quality in their 
relationship, growing as they came to the end of the voyage. Xanthia would look 
into those eyes where she had seen love and now see only blankness, coldness.
"Oriental inscrutability?" she asked herself, half-seriously. She knew she was 
hopelessly unsophisticated. She had spent her life in a society of two. The only 
other person she knew had her own face. But she had thought she knew Zoe. Now 
she felt less confident with every glance into Zoe's face and every kilometer 
passed on the way to Pluto.
Pluto.
Her thoughts turned gratefully away from immediate problems and toward that 
unimaginable place. She would be there in only four more years. The cultural 
adjustments she would have to make were staggering. Thinking about that, she 
felt a sensation in her chest that she guessed was her heart leaping in 
anticipation. That's what happened to characters in tapes when they got excited, 
anyway. Their hearts were forever leaping, thudding, aching, or skipping beats.
She pushed away from Zoe and drifted slowly to the viewport. Her old friends 
were all out there, the only friends she had ever known, the stars. She greeted 
them all one by one, reciting childhood mnemonic riddles and rhymes like bedtime 
prayers.
It was a funny thought that the view from her window would terrify many of those 
strangers she was going to meet on Pluto. She'd read that many tunnel-raised 
people could not stand open spaces. What it was that scared them, she could not 
understand. The things that scared her were crowds, gravity, males, and mirrors.
"Oh, damn. Damn! I'm going to be just hopeless. Poor little idiot girl from the 
sticks, visiting the big city." She brooded for a time on all the thousands of 
things she had never done, from swimming in the gigantic underground disneylands 
to seducing a boy.
"To being a boy." It had been the source of their first big argument. When 
Xanthia had reached adolescence, the time when children want to begin 
experimenting, she had learned from Zoe that Shirley Temple did not carry the 
medical equipment for sex changes. She was doomed to spend her critical 
formative years as a sexual deviate, a unisex.
"It'll stunt me forever," she had protested. She had been reading a lot of pop 
psychology at the time.
"Nonsense," Zoe had responded, hard-pressed to explain why she had not stocked a 
viro-genetic imprinter and the companion Y-alyzer. Which, as Xanthia pointed 
out, any self-respecting home surgery kit should have.
"The human race got along for millions of years without sex changing," Zoe had 
said. "Even after the Invasion. We were a highly technological race for hundreds 
of years before changing. Billions of people lived and died in the same sex."
"Yeah, and look what they were like."
Now, for another of what seemed like an endless series of nights, sleep was 
eluding her. There was the worry of Pluto, and the worry of Zoe and her strange 
behavior, and no way to explain anything in her small universe which had become 
unbearably complicated in the last years.
I wonder what it would be like with a man?
 
Three hours ago Xanthia had brought Lollipop to a careful rendezvous with the 
point in space her instruments indicated contained a black hole. She had long 
since understood that even if she ever found one she would never see it, but she 
could not restrain herself from squinting into the starfield for some evidence. 
It was silly; though the hole massed ten to the fifteenth tonnes (the original 
estimate had been off one order of magnitude) it was still only a fraction of a 
millimeter in diameter. She was staying a good safe hundred kilometers from it. 
Still, you ought to be able to sense something like that, you ought to be able 
to feel it.
It was no use. This hunk of space looked exactly like any other.
"There is a point I would like explained," the hole said. "What will be done 
with me after you have captured me?"
The question surprised her. She still had not got around to thinking of the 
voice as anything but some annoying aberration like her face in the mirror. How 
was she supposed to deal with it? Could she admit to herself that it existed, 
that it might even have feelings?
"I guess we'll just mark you, in the computer, that is. You're too big for us to 
haul back to Pluto. So we'll hang around you for a week or so, refining your 
trajectory until we know precisely where you're going to be, then we'll leave 
you. We'll make some maneuvers on the way in so no one could retrace our path 
and find out where you are, because they'll know we found a big one when we get 
back."
"How will they know that?"
"Because we'll be renting... well, Zoe will be chartering one of those big 
monster tugs, and she'll come out here and put a charge on you and tow you... 
say, how do you feel about this?'
"Are you concerned with the answer?"
The more Xanthia thought about it, the less she liked it. If she really was not 
hallucinating this experience, then she was contemplating the capture and 
imprisonment of a sentient being. An innocent sentient being who had been 
wandering around the edge of the system, suddenly to find him or herself...
"Do you have a sex?"
"No."
"All right, I guess I've been kind of short with you. It's just because you did 
startle me, and I didn't expect it, and it was all a little alarming."
The hole said nothing.
"You're a strange sort of person, or whatever," she said.
Again there was a silence.
"Why don't you tell me more about yourself? What's it like being a black hole, 
and all that?" She still couldn't fight down the ridiculous feeling those words 
gave her.
"I live much as you do, from day to day. I travel from star to star, taking 
about ten million years for the trip. Upon arrival, I plunge through the core of 
the star. I do this as often as is necessary, then I depart by a slingshot 
maneuver through the heart of a massive planet. The Tunguska Meteorite, which 
hit Siberia in 1908, was a black hole gaining momentum on its way to Jupiter, 
where it could get the added push needed for solar escape velocity."
One thing was bothering Xanthia. "What do you mean, 'as often as is necessary'?"
"Usually five or six thousand passes is sufficient."
"No, no. What I meant is why is it necessary? What do you get out of it?"
"Mass," the hole said. "I need to replenish my mass. The Relativity Laws state 
that nothing can escape from a black hole, but the Quantum Laws, specifically 
the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, state that below a certain radius the 
position of a particle cannot be determined. I lose mass constantly through 
tunneling. It is not all wasted, as I am able to control the direction and form 
of the escaping mass, and to use the energy that results to perform functions 
that your present-day physics says are impossible."
"Such as?" Xanthia didn't know why, but she was getting nervous.
"I can exchange inertia for gravity, and create energy in a variety of ways."
"So you can move yourself."
"Slowly."
"And you eat..."
"Anything."
Xanthia felt a sudden panic, but she didn't know what was wrong. She glanced 
down at her instruments and felt her hair prickle from her wrists and ankles to 
the nape of her neck.
The hole was ten kilometers closer than it had been.
 
"How could you do that to me?" Xanthia raged. "I trusted you, and that's how you 
repaid me, by trying to sneak up on me and... and—"
"It was not intentional. I speak to you by means of controlled gravity waves. To 
speak to you at all, it is necessary to generate an attractive force between us. 
You were never in any danger."
"I don't believe that," Xanthia said angrily. "I think you're doubletalking me. 
I don't think gravity works like that, and I don't think you really tried very 
hard to tell me how you talk to me, back when we first started." It occurred to 
her now, also, that the hole was speaking much more fluently than in the 
beginning. Either it was a very fast learner, or that had been intentional.
The hole paused. "This is true," it said.
She pressed her advantage. "Then why did you do it?"
"It was a reflex, like blinking in a bright light, or drawing one's hand back 
from a fire. When I sense matter, I am attracted to it."
"The proper cliché would be 'like a moth to a flame.' But you're not a moth, and 
I'm not a flame. I don't believe you. I think you could have stopped yourself if 
you wanted to."
Again the hole hesitated. "You are correct."
"So you were trying to...?"
"I was trying to eat you."
"Just like that? Eat someone you've been having a conversation with?"
"Matter is matter," the hole said, and Xanthia thought she detected a defensive 
note in its voice.
"What do you think of what I said we're going to do with you? You were going to 
tell me, but we got off on that story about where you came from."
"As I understand it, you propose to return for me. I will be towed to near 
Pluto's orbit, sold, and eventually come to rest in the heart of an orbital 
power station, where your species will feed matter into my gravity well, 
extracting power cheaply from the gravitational collapse."
"Yeah, that's pretty much it."
"It sounds ideal. My life is struggle. Failing to find matter to consume would 
mean loss of mass until I am smaller than an atomic nucleus. The loss rate would 
increase exponentially, and my universe would disappear. I do not know what 
would happen beyond that point. I have never wished to find out."
How much could she trust this thing? Could it move very rapidly? She toyed with 
the idea of backing off still further. The two of them were now motionless 
relative to each other, but they were both moving slowly away from the location 
she had given Zoe.
It didn't make sense to think it could move in on her fast. If it could, why 
hadn't it? Then it could eat her and wait for Zoe. to arrive—Zoe, who was 
helpless to detect the hole with her broken mass detector.
She should relay the new vectors to Zoe. She tried to calculate where her twin 
would arrive, but was distracted by the hole speaking.
"I would like to speak to you now of what I initially contacted you for. 
Listening to Pluto radio, I have become aware of certain facts that you should 
know, if, as I suspect, you are not already aware of them. Do you know of Clone 
Control Regulations?"
"No, what are they?" Again, she was afraid without knowing why.
The genetic statutes, according to the hole, were the soul of simplicity. For 
three hundred years, people had been living just about forever. It had become 
necessary to limit the population. Even if everyone had only one child—the 
Birthright—population would still grow. For a while, clones had been a loophole. 
No more. Now, only one person had the right to any one set of genes. If two 
possessed them, one was excess, and was summarily executed.
"Zoe has prior property rights to her genetic code," the hole concluded. "This 
is backed up by a long series of court decisions."
"So I'm—"
"Excess."
 
Zoe met her at the airlock as Xanthia completed the docking maneuver. She was 
smiling, and Xanthia felt the way she always did when Zoe smiled these days: 
like a puppy being scratched behind the ears. They kissed, then Zoe held her at 
arm's length.
"Let me look at you. Can it only be three months? You've grown, my baby."
Xanthia blushed. "I'm not a baby anymore, Mother." But she was happy. Very 
happy.
"No. I should say not." She touched one of Xanthia's breasts, then turned her 
around slowly. "I should say not. Putting on a little weight in the hips, aren't 
we?"
"And the bosom. One inch while I was gone. I'm almost there." And it was true. 
At sixteen, the young clone was almost a woman.
"Almost there," Zoe repeated, and glanced away from her twin. But she hugged her 
again, and they kissed, and began to laugh as the tension was released.
They made love, not once and then to bed, but many times, feasting on each 
other. One of them remarked—Xanthia could not remember who because it seemed so 
accurate that either of them might have said it—that the only good thing about 
these three-month separations was the homecoming.
"You did very well," Zoe said, floating in the darkness and sweet exhausted 
atmosphere of their bedroom many hours later. "You handled the lifeboat like it 
was part of your body. I watched the docking. I wanted to see you make a 
mistake, I think, so I'd know I still have something on you." Her teeth showed 
in the starlight, rows of lights below the sparkles of her eyes and the great 
dim blossom of her hair.
"Ah, it wasn't that hard," Xanthia said, delighted, knowing full well that it 
was that hard.
"Well, I'm going to let you handle it again the next swing. From now on, you can 
think of the lifeboat as your ship. You're the skipper."
It didn't seem like the time to tell her that she already thought of it that 
way. Nor that she had christened the ship.
Zoe laughed quietly. Xanthia looked at her.
"I remember the day I first boarded my own ship," she said. "It was a big day 
for me. My own ship."
"This is the way to live," Xanthia agreed. "Who needs all those people? Just the 
two of us. And they say hole hunters are crazy. I... wanted to..." The words 
stuck in her throat, but Xanthia knew this was the time to get them out, if 
there ever would be a time. "I don't want to stay too long at Pluto, Mother. I'd 
like to get right back out here with you." There, she'd said it.
Zoe said nothing for a long time.
"We can talk about that later."
"I love you, Mother," Xanthia said, a little too loudly.
"I love you, too, baby," Zoe mumbled. "Let's get some sleep, okay?"
She tried to sleep, but it wouldn't happen. What was wrong?
Leaving the darkened room behind her, she drifted through the ship, looking for 
something she had lost, or was losing, she wasn't sure which. What had happened, 
after all? Certainly nothing she could put her finger on. She loved her mother, 
but all she knew was that she was choking on tears.
In the water closet, wrapped in the shower bag with warm water misting around 
her, she glanced in the mirror.
 
"Why? Why would she do a thing like that?"
"Loneliness. And insanity. They appear to go together. This is her solution. You 
are not the first clone she has made."
She had thought herself beyond shock, but the clarity that simple declarative 
sentence brought to her mind was explosive. Zoe had always needed the 
companionship Xanthia provided. She needed a child for diversion in the long, 
dragging years of a voyage; she needed someone to talk to. Why couldn't she have 
brought a dog? She saw herself now as a shipboard pet, and felt sick. The local 
leash laws would necessitate the destruction of the animal before landing. 
Regrettable, but there it was. Zoe had spent the last year working up the 
courage to do it.
How many little Xanthias? They might even have chosen that very name; they would 
have been that much like her. Three, four? She wept for her forgotten sisters. 
Unless...
"How do I know you're telling me the truth about this? How could she have kept 
it from me? I've seen tapes of Pluto. I never saw any mention of this."
"She edited those before you were born. She has been careful. Consider her 
position: there can be only one of you, but the law does not say which it has to 
be. With her death, you become legal. If you had known that, what would life 
have been like in Shirley Temple?"
"I don't believe you. You've got something in mind, I'm sure of it."
"Ask her when she gets here. But be careful. Think it out, all the way through."
 
She had thought it out. She had ignored the last three calls from Zoe while she 
thought. All the options must be considered, all the possibilities planned for. 
It was an impossible task; she knew she was far too emotional to think clearly, 
and there wasn't time to get herself under control.
But she had done what she could. Now The Good Ship Lollipop, outwardly 
unchanged, was a ship of war.
Zoe came backing in, riding the fusion torch and headed for a point dead in 
space relative to Xanthia. The fusion drive was too dangerous for Shirley to 
complete the rendezvous; the rest of the maneuver would be up to Lollipop.
Xanthia watched through the telescope as the drive went off. She could see 
Shirley clearly on her screen, though the ship was fifty kilometers away.
Her screen lit up again, and there was Zoe. Xanthia turned her own camera on.
"There you are," Zoe said. "Why wouldn't you talk to me?"
"I didn't think the time was ripe."
"Would you like to tell me how come this nonsense about talking black holes? 
What's gotten into you?"
"Never mind about that. There never was a hole, anyway. I just needed to talk to 
you about something you forgot to erase from the tape library in the Lol-... in 
the lifeboat. You were pretty thorough with the tapes in Shirley, but you forgot 
to take the same care here. I guess you didn't think I'd ever be using it. Tell 
me, what are Clone Control Regulations?"
The face on the screen was immobile. Or was it a mirror, and was she smiling? 
Was it herself, or Zoe she watched? Frantically, Xanthia thumbed a switch to put 
her telescope image on the screen, wiping out the face. Would Zoe try to talk 
her way out of it? If she did, Xanthia was determined to do nothing at all. 
There was no way she could check out any lie Zoe might tell her, nothing she 
could confront Zoe with except a fantastic story from a talking black hole.
Please say something. Take the responsibility out of my hands. She was willing 
to die, tricked by Zoe's fast talk, rather than accept the hole's word against 
Zoe's.
But Zoe was acting, not talking, and the response was exactly what the hole had 
predicted. The attitude control jets were firing, Shirley Temple was pitching 
and yawing slowly, the nozzles at the stern hunting for a speck in the telescope 
screen. When the engines were aimed, they would surely be fired, and Xanthia and 
the whole ship would be vaporized.
But she was ready. Her hands had been poised over the thrust controls. Lollipop 
had a respectable acceleration, and every gee of it slammed her into the couch 
as she scooted away from the danger spot.
Shirley's fusion engines fired, and began a deadly hunt. Xanthia could see the 
thin, incredibly hot stream playing around her as Zoe made finer adjustments in 
her orientation. She could only evade it for a short time, but that was all she 
needed.
Then the light went out. She saw her screen flare up as the telescope circuit 
became overloaded with an immense burst of energy. And it was over. Her radar 
screen showed nothing at all.
"As I predicted," the hole said.
"Why don't you shut up?" Xanthia sat very still, and trembled.
"I shall, very soon. I did not expect to be thanked. But what you did, you did 
for yourself."
"And you, too, you... you ghoul! Damn you, damn you to hell." She was shouting 
through her tears. "Don't think you've fooled me, not completely, anyway. I know 
what you did, and I know how you did it."
"Do you?" The voice was unutterably cool and distant. She could see that now the 
hole was out of danger, it was rapidly losing interest in her.
"Yes, I do. Don't tell me it was coincidence that when you changed direction it 
was just enough to be near Zoe when she got here. You had this planned from the 
start."
"From much further back than you know," the hole said. "I tried to get you both, 
but it was impossible. The best I could do was take advantage of the situation 
as it was."
"Shut up, shut up."
The hole's voice was changing from the hollow, neutral tones to something that 
might have issued from a tank of liquid helium. She would never have mistaken it 
for human.
"What I did, I did for my own benefit. But I saved your life. She was going to 
try to kill you. I maneuvered her into such a position that, when she tried to 
turn her fusion drive on you, she was heading into a black hole she was 
powerless to detect."
"You used me."
"You used me. You were going to imprison me in a power station."
"But you said you wouldn't mind! You said it would be the perfect place."
"Do you believe that eating is all there is to life? There is more to do in the 
wide universe than you can even suspect. I am slow. It is easy to catch a hole 
if your mass detector is functioning: Zoe did it three times. But I am beyond 
your reach now."
"What do you mean? What are you going to do? What am I going to do?" That 
question hurt so much that Xanthia almost didn't hear the hole's reply.
"I am on my way out. I converted Shirley into energy; I absorbed very little 
mass from her. I beamed the energy very tightly, and am now on my way out of 
your system. You will not see me again. You have two options. You can go back to 
Pluto and tell everyone what happened out here. It would be necessary for 
scientists to rewrite natural laws if they believed you. It has been done 
before, but usually with more persuasive evidence. There will be questions asked 
concerning the fact that no black hole has ever evaded capture, spoken, or 
changed velocity in the past. You can explain that when a hole has a chance to 
defend itself, the hole hunter does not survive to tell the story."
"I will. I will tell them what happened!" Xanthia was eaten by a horrible doubt. 
Was it possible there had been a solution to her problem that did not involve 
Zoe's death? Just how badly had the hole tricked her?
"There is a second possibility," the hole went on, relentlessly. "Just what are 
you doing out here in a lifeboat?"
"What am I... I told you, we had..." Xanthia stopped. She felt herself choking.
"It would be easy to see you as crazy. You discovered something in Lollipop's 
library that led you to know you must kill Zoe. This knowledge was too much for 
you. In defense, you invented me to trick you into doing what you had to do. 
Look in the mirror and tell me if you think your story will be believed. Look 
closely, and be honest with yourself."
She heard the voice laugh for the first time, from down in the bottom of its 
hole, like a voice from a well. It was an extremely unpleasant sound.
Maybe Zoe had died a month ago, strangled or poisoned or slashed with a knife. 
Xanthia had been sitting in her lifeboat, catatonic, all that time, and had 
constructed this episode to justify the murder. It had been self-defense, which 
was certainly a good excuse, and a very convenient one.
But she knew. She was sure, as sure as she had ever been of anything, that the 
hole was out there, that everything had happened as she had seen it happen. She 
saw the flash again in her mind, the awful flash that had turned Zoe into 
radiation. But she also knew that the other explanation would haunt her for the 
rest of her life.
"I advise you to forget it. Go to Pluto, tell everyone that your ship blew up 
and you escaped and you are Zoe. Take her place in the world, and never, never 
speak of talking black holes."
The voice faded from her radio. It did not speak again.
After days of numb despair and more tears and recriminations than she cared to 
remember, Xanthia did as the hole had predicted. But life on Pluto did not agree 
with her. There were too many people, and none of them looked very much like 
her. She stayed long enough to withdraw Zoe's money from the bank and buy a 
ship, which she named Shirley Temple. It was massive, with power to blast to the 
stars if necessary. She had left something out there, and she meant to search 
for it until she found it again.
 
Picnic on Nearside
THIS IS THE STORY of how I went to the Nearside and found old Lester and maybe 
grew up a little. And about time, too, as Carnival would say.
Carnival is my mother. We don't get along well most of the time, and I think 
it's because I'm twelve and she's ninety-six. She says it makes no difference, 
and she waited so long to have her child because she wanted to be sure she was 
ready for it. And I answer back that at her age she's too far away from 
childhood to remember what it's like. And she replies that her memory is perfect 
all the way back to her birth. And I retort...
We argue a lot.
I'm a good debater, but Carnival's a special problem. She's an Emotionalist; so 
anytime I try to bring facts into the argument she waves it away with a 
statement like, "Facts only get in the way of my preconceived notions." I tell 
her that's irrational, and she says I'm perfectly right, and she meant it to be. 
Most of the time we can't even agree on premises to base a disagreement on. 
You'd think that would be the death of debate, but if you did, you don't know 
Carnival and me.
The major topic of debate around our warren for seven or eight lunations had 
been the Change I wanted to get. The battle lines had been drawn, and we had 
been at it every day. She thought a Change would harm my mind at my age. 
Everybody was getting one.
We were all sitting at the breakfast table. There was me and Carnival, and 
Chord, the man Carnival has lived with for several years, and Adagio, Chord's 
daughter. Adagio is seven.
There had been a big battle the night before between me and Carnival. It had 
ended up (more or less) with me promising to divorce her as soon as I was of 
age. I don't remember what the counterthreat was. I had been pretty upset.
I was sitting there eating fitfully and licking my wounds. The argument had been 
inconclusive, philosophically, but from the pragmatic standpoint she had won, no 
question about it. The hard fact was that I couldn't get a Change until she 
affixed her personality index to the bottom of a sheet of input, and she said 
she'd put her brain in cold storage before she'd allow that. She would, too.
"I think I'm ready to have a Change," Carnival said to us.
"That's not fair!" I yelled. "You said that just to spite me. You just want to 
rub it in that I'm nothing and you're anything you want to be."
"We'll have no more of that," she said, sharply. "We've exhausted this subject, 
and I will not change my mind. You're too young for a Change."
"Blowout," I said. "I'll be an adult soon; it's only a year away. Do you really 
think I'll be all that different in a year?"
"I don't care to predict that. I hope you'll mature. But if, as you say, it's 
only a year, why are you in such a hurry?"
"And I wish you wouldn't use language like that," Chord said.
Carnival gave him a sour look. She has a hard line about outside interference 
when she's trying to cope with me. She doesn't want anyone butting in. But she 
wouldn't say anything in front of me and Adagio.
"I think you should let Fox get his Change," Adagio said, and grinned at me. 
Adagio is a good kid, as younger foster-siblings go. I could always count on her 
to back me up, and I returned the favor when I could.
"You keep out of this," Chord advised her, then to Carnival, "Maybe we should 
leave the table until you and Fox get this settled."
"You'd have to stay away for a year," Carnival said. "Stick around. The 
discussion is over. If Fox thinks different, he can go to his room."
That was my cue, and I got up and ran from the table. I felt silly doing it, but 
the tears were real. It's just that there's a part of me that stays cool enough 
to try and get the best of any situation.
Carnival came to see me a little later, but I did my best to make her feel 
unwelcome. I can be good at that, at least with her. She left when it became 
obvious she couldn't make anything any better. She was hurt, and when the door 
closed, I felt really miserable, mad at her and at myself, too. I was finding it 
hard to love her as much as I had a few years before, and feeling ashamed 
because I couldn't.
I worried over that for a while and decided I should apologize. I left my room 
and was ready to go cry in her arms, but it didn't happen that way. Maybe if it 
had, things would have been different and Halo and I would never have gone to 
Nearside.
Carnival and Chord were getting ready to go out. They said they'd be gone most 
of the lune. They were dressing up for it, and what bothered me and made me 
change my plans was that they were dressing in the family room instead of in 
their own private rooms where I thought they should.
She had taken off her feet and replaced them with peds, which struck me as 
foolish, since peds only make sense in free-fall. But Carnival wears them every 
chance she gets, prancing around like a high-stepping horse because they are so 
unsuited to walking. I think people look silly with hands on the ends of their 
legs. And naturally she had left her feet lying on the floor.
Carnival glanced at her watch and said something about how they would be late 
for the shuttle. As they left, she glanced over her shoulder.
"Fox, would you do me a favor and put those feet away, Please? Thanks." Then she 
was gone.
 
An hour later, in the depths of my depression, the door rang. It was a woman I 
had never seen before. She was nude.
You know how sometimes you can look at someone you know who's just had a Change 
and recognize them instantly, even though they might be twenty centimeters 
shorter or taller and mass fifty kilos more or less and look nothing at all like 
the person you knew? Maybe you don't, because not everyone has this talent, but 
I have it very strong. Carnival says it's an evolutionary change in the race, a 
response to the need to recognize other individuals who can change their 
appearance at will. That may be true; she can't do it at all.
I think it's something to do with the way a person wears a body: any body, of 
either sex. Little mannerisms like blinking, mouth movements, stance, fingers; 
maybe even the total kinesthetic gestalt the doctors talk about. This was like 
that. I could see behind the pretty female face and the different height and 
weight and recognize someone I knew. It was Halo, my best friend, who had been a 
male the last time I saw him, three lunes ago. She had a big foolish grin on her 
face.
"Hi, Fox," she said, in a voice that was an octave higher and yet was 
unmistakably Halo's. "Guess who?"
"Queen Victoria, right?" I tried to sound bored. "Come on in, Halo."
Her face fell. She came in, looking confused.
"What do you think?" she said, turning slowly to give me a look from all sides. 
All of them were good because—as if I needed anything else—her mother had let 
her get the full treatment: fully developed breasts, all the mature curves—the 
works. She had been denied only the adult height. She was even a few centimeters 
shorter than she had been.
"It's fine," I said.
"Listen, Fox, if you'd rather I left..."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Halo," I said, giving up on my hatred. "You look great. 
Fabulous. Really you do. I'm just having a hard time being happy for you. 
Carnival is never going to give in."
She was instantly sympathetic. She took my hand, startling me badly.
"I was so happy I guess I was tactless," she said in a low voice. "Maybe I 
shouldn't have come over here yet."
She looked at me with big brown eyes (they had been blue, usually), and I 
started realizing what this was going to mean to me. I mean, Halo? A female? 
Halo, the guy I used to run the corridors with? The guy who helped me build that 
awful eight-legged cat that Carnival wouldn't let in the house and looked like a 
confused caterpillar? Who made love to the same girls I did and compared notes 
with me later when we were alone and helped me out when the gang tried to beat 
me up and cried with me and vowed to get even? Could we do any of that now? I 
didn't know. Most of my best friends were male, maybe because the sex thing 
tended to make matters too complicated with females, and I couldn't handle both 
things with the same person yet.
But Halo was having no such doubts. In fact, she was standing very close to me 
and practicing a wide-eyed innocent look that she knew did funny things to me. 
She knew it because I had told her so, back when she was a boy. Somehow that 
didn't seem fair.
"Ah, listen, Halo," I said hastily, backing away. She had been going for my 
pants! "Ah, I think I need some time to get used to this. How can I...? You know 
what I'm talking about, don't you?" I don't think she did, and neither did I, 
really. All I knew was I was unaccountably mortified at what she was so anxious 
to try. And she was still coming at me.
"Say!" I said, desperately. "Say! I have an idea! Ah... I know. Let's take 
Carnival's jumper and go for a ride, okay? She said I could use it today." My 
mouth was leading its own life, out of control. Everything I said was 
extemporaneous, as much news to me as it was to her."
She stopped pursuing me. "Did she really?"
"Sure," I said, very assured. This was only a half lie, by my mother's lights. 
What had happened was I had meant to ask her for the jumper, and I was sure she 
would have said yes. I was logically certain she would have. I had just 
forgotten to ask, that's all. So it was almost as if permission had been 
granted, and I went on as if it had. The reasoning behind this is tricky, I 
admit, but as I said, Carnival would have understood.
"Well," Halo said, not really overjoyed at the idea, "where would we go?"
"How about to Old Archimedes?" Again, that was a big surprise to me. I had had 
no idea I wanted to go there.
Halo was really shocked. I jolted her right out of her new mannerisms. She 
reacted just like the old Halo would have, with a dopey face and open mouth. 
Then she tried on other reactions: covering her mouth with her hands and wilting 
a little. First-time Changers are like that; new women tend to mince around like 
something out of a gothic novel, and new men swagger and grunt like Marlon 
Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. They get over it.
Halo got over it right in front of my eyes. She stared at me, scratching her 
head.
"Are you crazy? Old Archimedes is on the Nearside. They don't let anybody go 
over there."
"Don't they?" I asked, suddenly interested. "Do you know that for a fact? And if 
so, why not?"
"Well, I mean everybody knows..."
"Do they? Who is 'they' that won't let us go?"
"The Central Computer, I guess."
"Well, the only way to find out is to try it. Come on, let's go." I grabbed her 
arm. I could see she was confused, and I wanted it to remain that way until I 
could get my own thoughts together.
 
"I'd like a flight plan to Old Archimedes on the Nearside," I said, trying to 
sound as grownup and unworried as possible. We had packed a lunch and reached 
the field in ten minutes, due largely to my frantic prodding.
"That's a little imprecise, Fox," said the CC. "Old Archimedes is a big place. 
Would you like to try again?"
"Ah..." I drew a blank. Damn all computers and their literal-mindedness! What 
did I know about Old Archimedes? About as much as I knew about Old New York or 
Old Bombay.
"Give me a flight plan to the main landing field."
"That's better. The data are..." It reeled off the string of numbers. I fed them 
into the pilot and tried to relax.
"Here goes," I said to Halo. "This is Fox-Carnival-Joule, piloting private 
jumper AX1453, based at King City. I hereby file a flight plan to Old 
Archimedes' main landing field, described as follows..." I repeated the numbers 
the CC had given me. "Filed on the seventeenth lune of the fourth lunation of 
the year 214 of the Occupation of Earth. I request an initiation time."
"Granted. Time as follows: thirty seconds from mark. Mark."
I was stunned. "That's all there is to it?"
It chuckled. Damn maternalistic machine. "What did you expect, Fox? Marshals 
converging on your jumper?"
"I don't know. I guess I thought you wouldn't allow us to go to the Nearside."
"A popular misconception. You are a free citizen, although a minor, and able to 
go where you wish on the lunar surface. You are subject only to the laws of the 
state and the specific wishes of your parent as programmed into me. I... do you 
wish me to start the burn for you?"
"Mind your own business." I watched the tick and pressed the button when it 
reached zero. The acceleration was mild, but went on for a long time. Hell, Old 
Archimedes is at the antipodes.
"I have the responsibility to see that you do not endanger yourself through 
youthful ignorance or forgetfulness. I must also see that you obey the wishes of 
your mother. Other than that, you are on your own."
"You mean Carnival gave me permission to go to the Nearside?"
"I didn't say that. I have received no instruction from Carnival not to permit 
you to go to Nearside. There are no unusual dangers to your safety on Nearside. 
So I had no choice but to approve your flight plan." It paused, significantly. 
"It is my experience that few parents consider it necessary to instruct me to 
deny such permission. I infer that it's because so few people ever ask to go 
there. I also note that your parent is at the present moment unreachable; she 
has left instructions not to be disturbed. Fox," the CC said, accusingly, "it 
occurs to me that this is no accident. Did you have this planned?"
I hadn't! But if I'd known...
"No."
"I suppose you want a return flight plan?"
"Why? I'll ask you when I'm ready to come back."
"I'm afraid that won't be possible," it said, smugly. "In another five minutes 
you'll be out of range of my last receptor. I don't extend to the Nearside, you 
know. Haven't in decades. You're going out of contact, Fox. You'll be on your 
own. Think about it."
I did. For a queasy moment I wanted to turn back. Without the CC to monitor us, 
kids wouldn't be allowed on the surface for years.
Was I that confident? I know how hostile the surface is if it ever gets the drop 
on you. I thought I had all the mistakes trained out of me by now, but did I?
"How exciting," Halo gushed. She was off in the clouds again, completely over 
her shock at where we were going. She was bubble-headed like that for three 
lunes after her Change. Well, so was I, later, when I had my first.
"Hush, numbskull," I said, not unkindly. Nor was she insulted. She just grinned 
at me and gawked out the window as we approached the terminator.
I checked the supply of consumables; they were in perfect shape for a stay of a 
full lunation if need be, though I had larked off without a glance at the 
delta-vee.
"All right, smart-ass, give me the data for the return."
"Incomplete request," the CC drawled.
"Damn you, I want a flight plan Old Archimedes-King City, and no back talk."
"Noted. Assimilated." It gave me that data. Its voice was getting fainter.
"I don't suppose," it said, diffidently, "that you'd care to give me an 
indication of when you plan to return?"
Ha! I had it where it hurt. Carnival wouldn't be happy with the CC's 
explanation, I was sure of that.
"Tell her I've decided to start my own colony and I'll never come back."
"As you wish."
 
Old Archimedes was bigger than I had expected. I knew that even in its heyday it 
had not been as populated as King City is, but they built more above the surface 
in those days. King City is not much more than a landing field and a few domes. 
Old Archimedes was chock-a-block with structures, all clustered around the 
central landing field. Halo pointed out some interesting buildings to the south, 
and so I went over there and set down next to them.
She opened the door and threw out the tent, then jumped after it. I followed, 
taking the ladder since I seemed elected to carry the lunch. She took a quick 
look around and started unpacking the tent.
"We'll go exploring later," she said, breathlessly. "Right now let's get in the 
tent and eat. I'm hungry."
All right, all right, I said to myself. I've got to face it sooner or later. I 
didn't think she was really all that hungry—not for the picnic lunch, anyway. 
This was still going too fast for me. I had no idea what our relationship would 
be when we crawled out of that tent.
While she was setting it up, I took a more leisurely look around. Before long I 
was wishing we had gone to Tranquillity Base instead. It wouldn't have been as 
private, but there are no spooks at Tranquillity. Come to think of it, 
Tranquillity Base used to be on the Nearside, before they moved it.
About Old Archimedes:
I couldn't put my finger on what disturbed me about the place. Not the silence. 
The race has had to adjust to silence since we were forced off the Earth and 
took to growing up on the junk planets of the system. Not the lack of people. I 
was accustomed to long walks on the surface where I might not see anyone for 
hours. I don't know. Maybe it was the Earth hanging there a little above the 
horizon.
It was in crescent phase, and I wished uselessly for the old days when that dark 
portion would have been sprayed with points of light that were the cities of 
mankind. Now there was only the primitive night and the dolphins in the sea and 
the aliens—bogies cooked up to ruin the sleep of a child, but now I was not so 
sure. If humans still survive down there, we have no way of knowing it.
They say that's what drove people to the Farside: the constant reminder of what 
they had lost, always there in the sky. It must have been hard, especially to 
the Earthborn. Whatever the reason, no one had lived on the Nearside for almost 
a century. All the original settlements had dwindled as people migrated to the 
comforting empty sky of Farside.
I think that's what I felt, hanging over the old buildings like some invisible 
moss. It was the aura of fear and despair left by all the people who had buried 
their hopes here and moved away to the forgetfulness of Farside. There were 
ghosts here, all right: the shades of unfulfilled dreams and endless longing. 
And over it all a bottomless sadness.
I shook myself and came back to the present. Halo had the tent ready. It bulged 
up on the empty field, a clear bubble just a little higher than my head. She was 
already inside. I crawled through the sphincter, and she sealed it behind me.
Halo's tent is a good one. The floor is about three meters in diameter, plenty 
of room for six people if you don't mind an occasional kick. It had a stove, a 
stereo set, and a compact toilet. It recycled water, scavenged CO2, controlled 
temperature, and could provide hydroponic oxygen for three lunations. And it all 
folded into a cube thirty centimeters on a side.
Halo had skinned out of her suit as soon as the door was sealed and was bustling 
about, setting up the kitchen. She took the lunch hamper from me and started to 
work.
I watched her with keen interest as she prepared the food. I wanted to get an 
insight into what she was feeling. It wasn't easy. Every fuse in her head seemed 
to have blown.
First-timers often overreact, seeking a new identity for themselves before it 
dawns on them there was nothing wrong with the old one. Since our society offers 
so little differentiation between the sex roles, they reach back to where the 
differences are so vivid and startling: novels, dramas, films, and tapes from 
the old days on Earth and the early years on the moon. They have the vague idea 
that since they have this new body and it lacks a penis or vagina, they should 
behave differently.
I recognized the character she had fallen into; I'm as interested in old culture 
as the next kid. She was Blondie and I was supposed to be Dagwood. The 
Bumsteads, you know. Typical domestic nineteenth-century couple. She had spread 
a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and set two places with dishes, napkins, 
washbowls, and a tiny electric candelabra.
I had to smile at her, kneeling at the tiny stove, trying to put three pans on 
the same burner. She was trying so hard to please me with a role I was 
completely uninterested in. She was humming as she worked.
After the meal, I offered to clean up for her (well, Dagwood would have), but 
Blondie said no, that's all right, dear, I'll take care of everything. I lay 
flat on my back, holding my belly, and watched the Earth. Presently I felt a 
warm body cuddle up, half beside me and half on top of me, and press close from 
toenails to eyebrows. She had left Blondie over among the dirty dishes. The 
woman who breathed in my ear now was—Helen of Troy? Greta Garbo?—someone new, 
anyway. I wished fervently that Halo would come back. I was beginning to think 
Halo and I could screw like the very devil if this feverish creature that 
contained her would only give us a chance. Meantime, I had to be raped by Helen 
of Troy. I raised my head.
"What's it like, Halo?"
She slowed her foreplay slightly, but it never really stopped. She propped 
herself up on one elbow.
"I don't think I can describe it to you."
"Please try."
She dimpled. "I don't really know what it's all like," she said. "I'm still a 
virgin, you know."
I sat up. "You got that, too?"
"Sure, why not? But don't worry about it. I'm not afraid."
"What about making love?"
"Oh, Fox, Fox! Yes, yes. I..."
"No, no! Wait a minute." I squirmed beneath her, trying to hold her off a little 
longer. "What I meant was, wasn't there any problem in making the shift? I mean, 
do you have any aversion to having sex with boys now?" It was sure a stupid 
question, but she took it seriously.
"I haven't noticed any problem so far," she said, thoughtfully, as her hand 
reached down and fumbled, inexpertly trying to guide me in. I helped her get it 
right, and she poised, squatting on her toes. "I thought about that before the 
Change, but it sort of melted away. Now I don't feel any qualms at all. Ahhhhh!" 
She had thrust herself down, brutally hard, and we were off and running.
It was the most unsatisfactory sex act I ever had. It was not entirely the fault 
of either of us; external events were about to mess us up totally. But it wasn't 
very good even without that.
A first-time female Changer is liable to be in delirious oblivion through the 
entire first sex act, which may last all of sixty seconds. The fact that she is 
playing the game from the other court with a different set of rules and a new 
set of equipment does not handicap her. Rather, it provides a tremendous erotic 
stimulus.
That's what happened to Halo. I began to wonder if she'd wait for me. I never 
found out. I looked away from her face and got the shock of my life. There was 
someone standing outside the tent, watching us.
Halo felt the change in me and looked at my face, which must have been a sight, 
then looked over her shoulder. She fainted; out like a light.
Hell, I almost fainted myself. Would have, but when she did, it scared me even 
more, and I decided I couldn't indulge it. So I stayed awake to see what was 
going on.
It looked way too much like one of the ghosts my imagination had been walking 
through the abandoned city ever since we got there. The figure was short and 
dressed in a suit that might have been stolen from the museum at Kepler, except 
that it was more patches than suit. I could tell little about who might be in 
it, not even the sex. It was bulky, and the helmet was reflective.
I don't know how long I stared at it; long enough for the spook to walk around 
the tent three or four times. I reached for the bottle of white wine we had been 
drinking and took a long pull. I found out that's an old movie cliché; it didn't 
make anything any better. But it sure did things for Halo when I poured it in 
her face.
"Get in your suit," I said, as she sat up, sputtering. "I think that character 
wants to talk to us." He was waving at us and pointing to what might have been a 
radio on his suit.
We suited up and crawled through the sphincter. I kept saying hello as I ran 
through the channels on my suit. Nothing worked. Then he came over and touched 
helmets. He sounded far away.
"What're you doin' here?"
I had thought that would have been obvious.
"Sir, we just came over here for a picnic. Are we on your land or something? If 
so, I'm sorry, and..."
"No, no," he waved it off. "You can do as you please. I ain't your ma. As to 
owning, I guess I own this whole city, but you're welcome to do as you please 
with most of it. Do as you please, that's my philosophy. That's why I'm still 
here. They couldn't get old Lester to move out. I'm old Lester."
"I'm Fox, sir," I said.
"And I'm Halo." She heard us over my radio.
He turned and looked at her.
"Halo," he said, quietly. "A Halo for an angel. Nice name, miss." I was wishing 
I could see his face. He sounded like an adult, but he was sure a small one. 
Both of us were taller than he was, and we're not much above average for our 
age.
He coughed. "I, ah, I'm sorry I disturbed you folks... ah," he seemed 
embarrassed. "I just couldn't help myself. I haven't seen any people for a long 
time—oh, ten years, I guess—and I just had to get a closer look. And I, uh, I 
needed to ask you something."
"And what's that, sir?"
"You can knock off the 'sir.' I ain't your pa. I wanted to know if you folks had 
any medicine?"
"There's a first-aid kit in the jumper," I said. "Is there someone in need of 
help? I'd be glad to take them to a hospital in King City."
He was waving his arms frantically.
"No, no, no. I don't want doctors poking around. I just need a little medicine. 
Uh, say, could you take that first-aid kit out of the jumper and come to my 
warren for a bit? Maybe you got something in there I could use."
We agreed, and followed him across the field.
 
He led us into an unpressurized building at the edge of the field. We threaded 
our way through dark corridors.
We came to a big cargo lock, stepped inside, and he cycled it. Then we went 
through the inner door and into his warren.
It was quite a place, more like a jungle than a home. It was as big as the Civic 
Auditorium at King City and overgrown with trees, vines, flowers, and bushes. It 
looked like it had been tended at one time, but allowed to go wild. There were a 
bed and a few chairs in one corner, and several tall stacks of books. And heaps 
of junk; barrels of leak sealant, empty O2 cylinders, salvaged instruments, 
buggy tires.
Halo and I had our helmets off and were half out of our suits when we got our 
first look at him. He was incredible! I'm afraid I gasped, purely from reflex; 
Halo just stared. Then we politely tried to pretend there was nothing unusual.
He looked like he made a habit of going out without his suit. His face was 
grooved and pitted like a plowed field after an artillery barrage. His skin 
looked as tough as leather. His eyes were sunk into deep pits.
"Well, let me see it," he said, sticking out a thin hand. His knuckles were 
swollen and knobby.
I handed him the first-aid kit, and he fumbled with the catches, then got it 
open. He sat in a chair and carefully read the label on each item. He mumbled 
while he read.
Halo wandered among the plants, but I was more curious about old Lester than 
about his home. I watched him handle the contents of the kit with stiff, clumsy 
fingers. All his movements seemed stiff. I couldn't imagine what might be wrong 
with him and wondered why he hadn't sought medical help long ago, before 
whatever was afflicting him could go this far.
At last he put everything back in the kit but two tubes of cream. He sighed and 
looked at us.
"How old are you?" he asked, suspiciously.
"I'm twenty," I said. I don't know why. I'm not a liar, usually, unless I have a 
good reason. I was just beginning to get a funny feeling about old Lester, and I 
followed my instincts.
"Me, too," Halo volunteered.
He seemed satisfied, which surprised me. I was realizing he had been out of 
touch for a long time. Just how long I didn't know yet.
"There ain't much here that'll be of use to me, but I'd like to buy these here 
items, if you're willin' to sell. Says here they're for 'topical anesthesia,' 
and I could use some of that in the mornings. How much?"
I told him he could have them for nothing, but he insisted; so I told him to set 
his own price and reached for my credit meter in my suit pouch. He was holding 
out some rectangular slips of paper. They were units of paper currency, issued 
by the old Lunar Free State in the year 76 O.E. They had not been used in over a 
century. They were worth a fortune to a collector.
"Lester," I said, slowly, "these are worth more than you probably realize. I 
could sell them in King City for..."
He cackled. "Good man. I know what them bills is worth. I'm decrepit, but I 
ain't senile. They're worth thousands to one what wants 'em, but they're 
worthless to me. Except for one thing. They're a damn good test for findin' an 
honest man. They let me know if somebody'd take advantage of a sick, senile ol' 
hermit like me. Pardon me, son, but I had you pegged for a liar when you come in 
here. I was wrong. So you keep the bills. Otherwise, I'd a took 'em back."
He threw something on the floor in front of us, something he'd had in his hand 
and I hadn't even seen. It was a gun. I had never seen one.
Halo picked it up, gingerly, but I didn't want to touch it. This old Lester 
character seemed a lot less funny to me now. We were quiet.
"Now I've gone and scared you," he said. "I guess I've forgot all my manners. 
And I've forgot how you folks live on the other side." He picked up the gun and 
opened it. The charge chamber was empty. "But you wouldn't of knowed it, would 
you? Anyways, I'm not a killer. I just pick my friends real careful. Can I make 
up the fright I've caused you by inviting you to dinner? I haven't had any 
guests for ten years."
We told him we'd just eaten, and he asked if we could stay and just talk for a 
while. He seemed awfully eager. We said okay.
"You want some clothes? I don't expect you figured on visiting when you come 
here."
"Whatever your custom is," Halo said, diplomatically.
"I got no customs," he said, with a toothless grin. "If you don't feel funny 
naked, it ain't no business of mine. Do as you please, I say." It was a stock 
phrase with him.
So we lay on the grass, and he got some very strong, clear liquor and poured us 
all drinks.
"Moonshine," he laughed. "The genuine article. I make it myself. Best liquor on 
the Nearside."
We talked, and we drank.
Before I got too drunk to remember anything, a few interesting facts emerged 
about old Lester. For one thing, he really was old. He said he was two hundred 
and fifty-seven, and he was Earthborn. He had come to the moon when he was 
twenty-eight, several years before the Invasion.
I know several people in that age range, though none quite that old. Carnival's 
great-grandmother is two twenty-one, but she's moonborn, and doesn't remember 
the Invasion. There's virtually nothing left of the flesh she was born with. 
She's transferred her memories to a new brain twice.
I was prepared to believe that old Lester had gone a long time without medical 
care, but I couldn't accept what he told us at first. He said that, barring one 
new heart eighty years ago, he was unreconstructed since his birth! I'm young 
and naive—I freely admit it now—but I couldn't swallow that. But I believed it 
eventually, and I believe it now.
He had a million stories to tell, all of them at least eighty years old because 
that's how long he had been a hermit. He had stories of Earth, and of the early 
years on the moon. He told us about the hard years after the Invasion. Everyone 
who lived through that has a story to tell. I drew a blank before the evening 
was over, and the only thing I remember clearly is the three of us standing in a 
circle, arms around each other, singing a song old Lester had taught us. We 
swayed against each other and bumped foreheads and broke up laughing. I remember 
his hand resting on my shoulder. It was hard as rock.
 
The next day Halo became Florence Nightingale and nursed old Lester back to 
life. She was as firm as any nurse, getting him out of his clothes over his 
feeble protests, then giving him a massage. In the soberness of the morning I 
wondered how she could bring herself to touch his wrinkled old body, but as I 
watched, I slowly understood. He was beautiful.
The best thing to compare old Lester to is the surface. There is nothing older, 
or more abused, than the surface of the moon. But I have always loved it. It's 
the most beautiful place in the system, including Saturn's Rings. Old Lester was 
like that. I imagined he was the moon. He had become part of it.
Though I came to accept his age, I could still see that he was in terrible 
shape. The drinking had taken a lot out of him, but he wouldn't be kept down. 
The first thing he wanted in the morning was another drink. I brought him one, 
then I cooked a big breakfast: eggs and sausage and bread and orange juice, all 
from his garden. Then we were off and drinking again.
I didn't even have time to worry about what Carnival and Halo's mother might be 
thinking by now. Old Lester had plainly adopted us. He said he'd be our father, 
which struck me as a funny thing to say since who the hell ever knows who their 
father is? But he began behaving in the manner I would call maternal, and he 
evidently thought of it as paternal.
We did a lot of things that day. He taught us about gardening.
He showed me how to cross-fertilize the egg plants and how to tell when they 
were ripe without breaking the shells to see. He told us the secrets of how to 
grow breadfruit trees so they'd yield loaves of dark-brown, hard, whole wheat or 
the strangely different rye variety by grafting branches. I had never had rye 
before. And we learned to dig for potatoes and steakroots. We learned how to 
harvest honey and cheese and tomatoes. We stripped bacon from the surface of the 
porktree trunks.
And we'd drink his moonshine while we worked, and laugh a lot, and he'd throw in 
more of his stories between the garden lore.
Old Lester was not the fool he seemed at first. His speech pattern was largely 
affected, something he did to amuse himself over the years. He could speak as 
correctly as anyone when he wanted to. He had read much and remembered it all. 
He was a first-rate engineer and botanist, but his education and skills had to 
be qualified by this fact: everything he knew was eighty years out of date. It 
didn't matter much: the old methods worked well enough.
In social matters it was a different story.
He didn't know much about Changing, except that he didn't like it. It was 
Changing that finally decided him to separate himself from society. He said he 
had been having his doubts about joining the migration to Farside, and the 
sex-change issue had been the final factor. He shocked us more than he knew when 
he revealed that he had never been a woman. I thought his lack of curiosity must 
be monumental, but I was wrong. It turned out that he had some queer notions 
about the morality of the whole process, ideas he had gotten from some weirdly 
aberrant religion in his childhood. I had heard of the cult, as you can hardly 
avoid it if you know any history. It had said little about ethics, being more 
interested in arbitrary regulations.
Old Lester still believed in it, though. His home was littered with primitive 
icons. There was a central symbol he cherished above the others: a simple wooden 
fetish in the shape of a plus sign with a long stem. He wore one around his 
neck, and others sprouted like weeds.
I came to realize that this religion was at the bottom of the puzzling 
inconsistencies I began to notice about him. His "do as you please" may have 
been sincere, but he did not entirely live by it. It became clear that, though 
he thought people should have freedom of choice, he condemned them if the choice 
they made was not his own.
My spur-of-the-moment decision to lie about my age had been borne out, though 
I'm not sure the truth wouldn't have been better. It might have kept us out of 
the further lies we told or implied, and I always prefer honesty to deception. 
But I still don't know if old Lester could have been our friend without the 
lies.
He knew something of life on Farside and made it clear he disapproved of most of 
it. And he had deluded himself (with our help) that we weren't like that. In 
particular, he thought people should not have sex until they reached a "decent 
age." He never defined that, but Halo and I, at "twenty," were safely past it.
It was a puzzling notion. Even Carnival, who is a bit old-fashioned, would have 
been shocked. Granted, we speed up puberty now—I have been sexually potent since 
I was seven—but he felt that even after puberty people should abstain. I 
couldn't make any sense out of it. I mean, what would you do?
Then there was a word he used, "incest," that I had to look up when I got home 
to be sure I'd understood him. I had. He was against it. I guess it had a basis 
back in the dawn of time, when procreation and genetics were so tied up with 
sex, but how could it matter now? The only place Carnival and I get along at all 
is in bed; without that, we would have very little in common.
It went on and on, the list of regulations. Luckily, it didn't sour me on old 
Lester. All I disliked was the lies we had trapped ourselves into. I'm willing 
to let people have all sorts of screwball notions as long as they don't force 
them on me, like Carnival was doing about the Change. That I found myself 
expressing agreement with old Lester's ideas was my own fault, not his. I think.
The days went by, marred by only one thing. I had not broken any laws, but I 
knew I was being searched for. And I knew I was treating Carnival badly. I tried 
to figure out just how badly, and what I should do about it, but kept getting 
fogged up by the moonshine and good times.
Carnival had come to the Nearside. Halo and I had watched them from the shadows 
when old Lester's radar had picked them up coming in. There had been six or 
seven figures in the distance. They had entered the jumper and made a search. 
They had cast around at the edge of the field for our tracks, found them, and 
followed them to where they disappeared on concrete. I would have liked to have 
listened in, but didn't dare because they were sure to have detection apparatus 
for that.
And they left. They left the jumper, which was nice of them, since they could 
have taken it and rendered us helpless to wait for their return.
I thought about it, and talked it over with Halo. Several times we were ready to 
give up and go back. After all, we hadn't really set out to run away from home. 
We had only been defying authority, and it had never entered my head that we 
would stay as long as we had. But now that we were here we found it hard to go 
back. The trip to Nearside had acquired an inertia of its own, and we didn't 
have the strength to stop it.
In the end we went to the other extreme. We decided to stay on Nearside forever. 
I think we were giddy with the sense of power a decision like that made us feel. 
So we covered up our doubts with backslapping encouragement, a lot of giggling, 
and inflated notions of what we and old Lester would do at Archimedes.
We wrote a note—which proved we still felt responsible to someone—and taped it 
to the ladder of the jumper; then Halo went in and turned on the outside lights 
and pointed them straight up. We retired to a hiding place and waited.
Sure enough, another ship returned in two hours. They had been watching from 
close orbit and landed on the next pass when they noticed the change. One person 
got out of the ship and read the note. It was a crazy note, saying not to worry, 
we were all right. It went on to say we intended to stay, and some more things 
I'd rather not remember. It also said she should take the jumper. I was 
regretting that even as she read it. We must have been crazy.
I could see her slump even from so far away. She looked all around her, then 
began signaling in semaphore language.
"Do what you have to," she signaled. "I don't understand you, but I love you. 
I'm leaving the jumper in case you change your mind."
Well. I gulped, and was halfway up on my way out to her when, to my great 
surprise, Halo pulled me down. I had thought she was only going along with me to 
avoid having to point out how wrong I was. This hadn't been her idea; she had 
not been in her right mind when I hustled her over here. But she had settled 
down from all that lunes ago and was now as level-headed as ever. And was more 
taken with our adventure than I was.
"Dope!" she hissed, touching helmets. "I thought you'd do something like that. 
Think it through. Do you want to give up so easy? We haven't even tried this 
yet."
Her face wasn't as certain as her words, but I was in no shape to argue her out 
of it. Then Carnival was gone, and I felt better. It was true that we had an out 
if it turned sour. Pretty soon we were intrepid pioneers, and I didn't think of 
Carnival or the Farside until things did start to go sour.
For a long time, almost a lunation, we were happy. We worked hard every day with 
old Lester. I learned that in his kind of life the work was never done; there 
was always an air duct to repair, flowers to pollinate, machinery to regulate. 
It was primitive, and I could usually see ways to improve the methods but never 
thought of suggesting them. It wouldn't have fit with our crazy pioneer ideas. 
Things had to be hard to feel right.
We built a grass lean-to like one we had seen in a movie and moved in. It was 
across the chamber from old Lester, which was silly, but it meant we could visit 
each other. And I learned an interesting thing about sin.
Old Lester would watch us make love in our raggedy shack, a grin across his 
leathery face. Then one day he implied that lovemaking should be a private act. 
It was a sin to do it in front of others, and a sin to watch. But he still 
watched.
So I asked Halo about it.
"He needs a little sin, Fox."
"Huh?"
"I know it isn't logical, but you must have seen by now that his religion is 
mixed up."
"That's for sure. But I still don't get it."
"Well, I don't either, but I try to respect. He thinks drinking is sinful, and 
until we came along it was the only sin he could practice. Now he can do the sin 
of lust, too. I think he needs to be forgiven for things, and he can't be 
forgiven until he does them."
"That's the craziest thing I ever heard. But even crazier, if lust is a sin to 
him, why doesn't he go all the way and make love with you? I've been dead sure 
he wants to, but as far as I know, he's never done it. Has he?"
She looked at me pityingly. "You don't know, do you?"
"You mean he has?"
"No. I don't mean that. We haven't. And not because I haven't tried. And not 
because he doesn't want to. He looks, looks, looks; he never takes his eyes off 
me. And it isn't because he thinks it's a sin. He knows it's a sin, but he'd do 
it if he could."
"I still don't understand, then."
"What do you mean? I just told you. He can't. He's too old. His equipment won't 
function anymore."
"That's terrible!" I was almost sick. I knew there was a word for his condition, 
but I had to look it up a long time afterward. The word is crippled. It means 
some part of your body doesn't work right. Old Lester had been sexually crippled 
for over a century.
I seriously considered going home then. I was not at all sure he was the kind of 
person I wanted to be around. The lies were getting more galling every day, and 
now this.
But things got much worse, and still I stayed.
He was ill. I don't mean the way we think of ill; some petty malfunction to be 
cleared up by a ten-minute visit to the bioengineers. He was wearing out.
It was partly our fault. Even that first morning he was not very quick out of 
bed. Each lune—after a long night of drinking and general hell-raising—he was a 
little slower to get up. It got to where Halo was spending an hour each morning 
just massaging him into shape to stand erect. I thought at first he was just 
cannily malingering because he liked the massage and Halo's intimacy when she 
worked him over. That was not the case. When he did get up, he hobbled, bent 
over from pains in his belly. He would forget things. He would stumble, fall, 
and get up very slowly.
"I'm dying," he said one night. I gasped; Halo blinked rapidly. I tried to cover 
my embarrassment by pretending he hadn't said it.
"I know it's a bad word now, and I'm sorry if I offended you. But I ain't lived 
this long without being able to look it in the eye.
"I'm dying, all right, and I'll be dead pretty soon. I didn't think it'd come so 
sudden. Everything seems to be quittin' on me."
We tried to convince him that he was wrong and, when that didn't work, to 
convince him that he should take a short hop to Farside and get straightened 
out. But we couldn't get through his superstition. He was awfully afraid of the 
engineers on Farside. We would try to show him that periodic repairs still left 
the mind— he called it the "soul"—unchanged, but he'd get philosophical.
The next day he didn't get up at all. Halo rubbed his old limbs until she was 
stiff. It was no good. His breathing became irregular, and his pulse was hard to 
find.
So we were faced with the toughest decision ever. Should we allow him to die, or 
carry him to the jumper and rush him to a repair shop? We sweated over it all 
lune. Neither course felt right, but I found myself arguing to take him back, 
and Halo said we shouldn't. He could not hear us except for brief periods when 
he'd rouse himself and try to sit up. Then he'd ask us questions or say things 
that seemed totally random. His brain must have been pretty well scrambled by 
then.
"You kids aren't really twenty, are you?" he said once.
"How did you know?"
He cackled, weakly.
"Old Lester ain't no dummy. You said that to cover up what I caught you doin' 
so's I wouldn't tell your folks. But I won't tell. That's your business. Just 
wanted you to know you didn't fool me, not for a minute." He lapsed into labored 
breathing.
We never did settle the argument, unless by default. What I wanted to do took 
some action, and in the end I didn't have it in me to get up and do it. I wasn't 
sure enough of myself. So we sat there on his bed, waiting for him to die and 
talking to him when he needed it. Halo held his hand.
I went through hell. I cursed him for a vacuum-skulled, mentally defective, 
prehistoric poop, and almost decided to help him out in his pea-brained search 
for death. Then I went the other way; loving him almost like he loved his crazy 
God. I imagined he was the mother that Carnival had never really been to me and 
that my world would have no purpose when he was dead. Both those reactions were 
crazy, of course; old Lester was just a person. He was a little crazy and a 
little saintly, and hardly a person you should either love or hate. It was Death 
that had me going in circles: the creepy black-robed skeletal figure old Lester 
had told us about, straight out of his superstition.
He opened one bleary eye after hours of no movement.
"Don't ever," he said. "You shouldn't ever. You, I mean. Halo. Don't ever get a 
Change. You always been a girl, you always should be. The Lord intended it that 
way."
Halo shot a quick glance at me. She was crying, and her eyes told me: don't 
breathe a word. Let him believe it. She needn't have worried.
Then he started coughing. Blood came from his lips, and as soon as I saw it, I 
passed out. I thought he would literally fall apart and rot into some awful 
green slime, slime that I could never wash off.
Halo wouldn't let me stay out. She slapped me until my ears were ringing, and 
when I was awake, we gave up. We couldn't make a meaningful decision in the face 
of this. We had to give it to someone else.
So twenty-five minutes later I was over the pole, just coming into range of the 
CC's outer transmitters.
"Well, the black sheep return," the CC began in a superior tone. "I must say you 
outlasted the usual Nearside stay, in fact..."
"Shut up!" I bawled. "You shut up and listen to me. I want to contact Carnival, 
and I want her now, crash priority, emergency status. Get on it!"
The CC was all business, dropping the in loco parentis program and operating 
with the astonishing speed it's capable of in an emergency. Carnival was on the 
line in three seconds.
"Fox," she said, "I don't want to start this off on a bad footing; so, first of 
all, I thank you for giving me a chance to settle this with you face-to-face. 
I've retained a family arbiter, and I'd like for us to present our separate 
cases to him on this Change you want, and I'll agree to abide by his decision. 
Is that fair for a beginning?" She sounded anxious. I knew there was anger 
beneath it—there always is—but she was sincere.
"We can talk about that later, Mom," I sobbed. "Right now you've got to get to 
the field, as quick as you can."
"Fox, is Halo with you? Is she all right?"
"She's all right."
"I'll be there in five minutes."
It was too late, of course. Old Lester had died shortly after I lifted off, and 
Halo had been there with a dead body for almost two hours.
She was calm about it. She held Carnival and me together while she explained 
what had to be done, and even got us to help her. We buried him, as he had 
wanted, on the surface, in a spot that would always be in the light of Old 
Earth.
 
Carnival never would tell me what she would have done if he had been alive when 
we got there. It was an ethical question, and both of us are usually very 
opinionated on ethical matters. But I suspect we agreed for once. The will of 
the individual must be respected, and if I face it again, I'll know what to do. 
I think.
I got my Change without family arbitration. Credit me with a little sense; if 
our case had ever come up before a family arbiter, I'm sure he would have 
recommended divorce. And that would have been tough, because difficult as 
Carnival is, I love her, and I need her for at least a few more years. I'm not 
as grownup as I thought I was.
It didn't really surprise me that Carnival was right about the Change, either. 
In another lunation I was male again, then female, male; back and forth for a 
year. There's no sense in that. I'm female now, and I think I'll stick with it 
for a few years and see what it's about. I was born female, you know, but only 
lasted two hours in that sex because Carnival wanted a boy.
And Halo's a male, which makes it perfect. We've found that we do better as 
opposites than we did as boyfriends. I'm thinking about having my child in a few 
years, with Halo as the father. Carnival says wait, but I think I'm right this 
time. I still believe most of our troubles come from her inability to remember 
the swiftly moving present a child lives in. Then Halo can have her child—I'd be 
flattered if she chose me to father it—and...
We're moving to Nearside. Halo and me, that is, and Carnival and Chord are 
thinking about it, and they'll go, I think. If only to shut up Adagio.
Why are we going? I've thought about it a long time. Not because of old Lester. 
I hate to speak unkindly of him, but he was inarguably a fool. A fool with 
dignity, and the strength of his convictions; a likable old fool, but a fool all 
the same. It would be silly to talk of "carrying on his dream" or some of the 
things I think Halo has in mind.
But, coincidentally, his dream and mine are pretty close, though for different 
reasons. He couldn't bear to see the Nearside abandoned out of fear, and he 
feared the new human society. So he became a hermit. I want to go there simply 
because the fear is gone for my generation, and it's a lot of beautiful real 
estate. And we won't be alone. We'll be the vanguard, but the days of clustering 
in the Farside warrens and ignoring Old Earth are over. The human race came from 
Earth, and it was ours until it was taken from us. To tell the truth, I've been 
wondering if the aliens are really as invincible as the old stories say.
It sure is a pretty planet. I wonder if we could go back?
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
"Bagatelle," copyright © 1976 by Universal Publications and Distributing 
Corporation for Galaxy Magazine, August 1974.
"The Funhouse Effect," copyright © 1976 by Mercury Press Inc. for The Magazine 
of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1976.
"The Barbie Murders," copyright © 1978 by Davis Publications for Isaac Asimov's 
Science Fiction Magazine, February 1978.
"Equinoctial," copyright © 1977 by David Gerrold from Ascents of Wonder, 
published by Popular Library.
"Manikins," copyright © 1976 by Ultimate Publishing Company for Amazing Science 
Fiction Story Magazine, January 1976.
"Beatnik Bayou," copyright © 1980 by John Varley from NEW VOICES III, published 
by Berkley Publishing Corporation, April 1980.
"Good-bye, Robinson Crusoe," copyright © 1977 by Davis Publications for Isaac 
Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Spring 1977.
"Lollipop and the Tar Baby," copyright © 1977 by Damon Knight from ORBIT 19, 
published by Harper & Row, Inc.
"Picnic on Nearside," copyright © 1974 by Mercury Press Inc. for The Magazine of 
Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1974.
 
Copyright © 1980 by John Varley.
Cover illustration by Barclay Shaw.
ISBN: 0-425-07120-0