Not so much head around the eyes. Flatter. Miranda leaned back, took a careful look at the Holn floating in her computer field. Need to lower the tentacle group.
When her number finally came up five years ago, she had prepared her list of questions, only to have most struck; redundancy was a waste of precious time. Still, that left a large hole, so she improvised others:
Do you understand the concept of art?
Do you create simply for the joy of it?
Do you create music, harmonic sound in rhythmic pulses, to soothe the mind or to feel emotions, or just because it is pleasurable? Do you sing to each other?
Do you create representations of other things in manipulative media, just for the pleasure of seeing or creating something beautiful, or of making a statement in metaphor?
Do you tell stories to each other? Do you act out these stories, taking the parts of the characters?
Three months later, she sat before the main screen in the communications building not far from the ship. The first half-hour the Holn representative and the human representative discussed her scientific questions—neuron structure, neuron firing rate, neuron pathways—but then Alpha reached down with a big tentacle and hefted a flat, glasslike octagonal sheet. As she watched, colors flowed across the surface, shapes formed but changed constantly, swirling and breaking, making absolutely no sense to her.
"I created this," the voice from the speaker intoned carefully. "This is my imagination. It has no . . ." (she wondered whether Alpha was struggling for a definition) " . . . purpose . . . except I like to look at it. My friends like it. I am . . . proud . . . of it."
Most of the answers to the art questions were the same: "yes," except for music. A whole new line of discussion suddenly opened up. She rose in the hierarchy, evidently catching Avram's eye in the process. And now, her "personal message" was flying toward the receding ship—all because she got Alpha to show a side of the Holn no human had asked about before.
As she peered at the image through narrowed eyes, someone knocked at her door. Few did that, but one person always did.
"Come in, Samuel." She turned and watched as the broad-shouldered man stepped in. "I enjoyed our tete-a-tete on TV last night."
"So did I, Miranda, actually." Dr. Innes tugged at his already well-fitting coat as he came over to her desk. "I thought I'd—oh, did you draw that?"
"Uh, yes. A sketch I started in Albuquerque that got a little more complex than I'd expected."
"Would that perchance be the Holn you discussed art with?"
"The very same. I think. My memory might be fading on the details."
"That's your drawing, too, isn't it, of that rather remarkable-looking woman?" He nodded toward a picture on her desk.
"My mother, yes, I drew that."
He turned toward the wall behind her. "The landscape?"
"Yes."
"The style is obvious after seeing one in progress." Dr. Innes stepped over to the painting. "There were a lot of barbed comments about us scientific types ignoring the artistic side of human nature. They forget it was a scientist who gleaned that side of the Holn." He gestured at the painting. "Now I see how it came to be. I am discovering many delightful things about you."
That she almost blushed irritated her. "I learned something last night, too."
He turned to her, a frown on his craggy face. "I am going to announce today I am backing off my position about these people not being human. Careful study of the available information—including Constance Peterson's data, I might add—has not shown that thesis to be correct. I apologize, I know my ten days have long passed."
"You didn't have to come here to tell me this. That's what the meeting's for."
Dr. Innes turned back to the painting, hands behind his back. "Do you know why I said those things last night?"
She studied his back, the gray hair, the tailored suit jacket. "Because you're afraid you're responsible for six deaths."
"Do you think so?"
"I do not and never have."
Dr. Innes turned back to her. "Thank you. I watched helplessly as what I was saying was being construed as a call for their destruction. Last night I had had enough. I should've taken action sooner." He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "I used to admire Lakewood."
"I hope the bad publicity is not the reason you're modifying your position—"
"No. I am faced with incontrovertible evidence and therefore must reevaluate my postulates. It is the correct thing to do. While it does not erase my responsibility completely, I am grateful for your support."
"I am trying to keep a valued and esteemed colleague on the team." And when did this happen, she wondered. "One who should not have to bear the blame for everyone who distorts his conclusions for their own ends."
"An ancient tradition. We scientists often think what we learn is so obvious, so logical, we are totally unprepared for the distortion and passion those truths, so-called, can engender."
"That's because we are now so good at sorting data we tend to look at that process as the guiding force behind everything," Miranda said as she toyed with the drawing stylus. "Thanks to tools like this"—she jerked a thumb toward her computer monitor—"we can reduce everything to A-B-C processes. Human passion does not follow that order, often taking us empiricists by surprise."
"And that human passion is faced with its most important challenge since—huh." Dr. Innes turned his head aside. "I was going to say the birth of Christ." He turned his gaze back to her. "Lakewood's labeling me a Biblical scholar was a little exaggerated. I wrote on the Bible, arguing a scientific basis for some of the events described. For Lakewood, though, and many others of his ilk, this is a disaster. A disaster that started when we got the first signals from the Holn. Not just their world, but their whole universe and the structure it was founded upon is turned completely upside down. Lakewood and Brigman and their ilk are barely hanging on by their fingernails." He rubbed his face with both hands. Miranda thought she caught a glimpse of an old man just then. "I have read the Bible again during the months we have been studying this group. I am afraid I cannot find room for the Holn in it. And, God help me, I cannot find room for the seventeen, either."
"I don't quite agree," Miranda said slowly. "But then, I've been doing a good job of avoiding the question myself." She glanced at the clock. "I guess we'd better get to the meeting." She saved the drawing, turned off the computer.
"You're left-handed," he said as he stepped to her desk.
"Uh, yes."
"Two of the group are left-handed, did you know that?"
Miranda stopped, looked at Dr. Innes. "No, I did not."
"Handedness has been overlooked. I didn't know myself until a sharp-eyed left-handed graduate assistant pointed out Mr. Othberg using his left hand to play catch with some young visitors in a video shot at his nursing home. We looked at the other personal pre-event photos and found Mr. Fairfax holding an expensive pen, a gift from his bosses, in his left hand. We wanted to follow up to see if this characteristic had been changed, but videos of the two men post-event are not conclusive. We'd like to get with them to determine the outcome."
"We're working toward getting with at least some of them again, somehow." Miranda picked up her notebook and walked toward the door. "It'll be tricky because we've hit a good-sized wall in getting follow-up examinations. Only a couple have cooperated, and then in a very limited manner. Plus, Mr. Fairfax is still missing."
"Speaking of ways people are treated," Dr. Innes said as he held the door open for her, "I would imagine you have been rather upset with me."
"Let's just say a couple of headaches had your name on them."
Dr. Innes smiled. "I am sorry, Dr. Sena. As—"
Constance Peterson suddenly turned a corner. "Oh. You're together already. Well, I'll just run along, then. Uh, see you." She kept her word literally by dashing ahead.
"What was that all about?" he asked.
"I have no idea. I've given up trying to figure out the quirks and whims of this rabble."
They found out what it was about when they opened the door to the auditorium and the room erupted into cheers. The entire task force rose to its feet, applauding. Two men held up a banner that read WE SALUTE OUR HEROES, while another closer in waved a giant fax blowup of the lead headline from that day's electronic Village Voice: HOLN SCIENTISTS GETTING PISSED OFF. Miranda and Dr. Innes looked at each other. She shook her head as he laughed, the skin around his eyes crinkling.
Miranda stepped up to the podium, and after the noise abated, said, "All right, that's it. You're all fired." In the ensuing laughter she saw a familiar face, just arrived from Washington. "And that includes you, Avram Rolstein. Especially you."
The whole thing was silly, but she felt good, mostly because everyone else seemed to be in a good mood. "Wanda demanded she be given the first spot. So, here she is. Wanda Bettemeyer of NASA/JPL."
Wanda bounced up to the podium. "Gosh, what a thrill to be introduced by a genuine celebrity—"
"Oh, be quiet!" Miranda hollered as she sat down in the first row.
"Well, I guess some people just can't handle fame. Anyhow," she said as the laughter died down, "I'm here with some new data we believe will be a help. By the way, they didn't call themselves Holn, or the Holn. What they said in the initial contacts was 'We are from the home.' That's home, h-o-m-e, their name for the mother ship. Evidently someone on Earth either misunderstood or felt it needed jazzing up, so it became 'We are from the Holn.'
"This is significant because, to them, the mother ship is home. No other place carries that designation, not even their originating planetary systems."
Wanda turned some pages in a paper notebook. "In our crash program, we threw everything we had from their visit into one humongous data base and let the big computers crunch it, then we fed that into the Nimbus FLS at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at Illinois. The FLS part means fuzzy logic sorter. With this machine, we can set some fairly wide parameters and have the machine look for connections, no matter how tenuous."
She looked at the blank screen window behind her. "I have only one visual aid today, so you'll have to bear with me. Can I have image A-27, disk eight, please? Again, I'm going to skim the surface. Details are in the database." She grinned. "A monster database, I might add."
A graphic appeared behind her, a Holn in three sizes, largest on the left. "Here we have the three genomes of the Holn." She stepped over, pointed to the middle one. "The planet Earth genome as we know it." She pointed to the left image. "The original planet genome, a body three times as big and six times the mass of the Earth genome. An organism ideally suited for a planet with the gravitational pull around that of Neptune." She pointed to the one on the right. "The mother ship genome. Just over half as big and just under half the mass. This genome," she pointed to the largest, "was practically unknown to us because most of what we learned about the Holn is based upon the mother ship genome. This threw us off the track because some of the data they gave us was about the original genome, but we didn't catch on. In other words, they had been giving us two different sets of data. The difference got shuffled under 'stuff to know later.' Much to our regret."
She looked out at the rapt audience, then back. "You see, these are modifications. They modify themselves to match the place. This"—she pointed to the mother ship genome—"is the way they are ninety-nine percent of the time. Small, agile, able to live in a zero-to-half gee environment. When they came here, they changed their physical size, bulked up, as sportswriters say. And this was just a guess, an intermediate step if necessary. They could have bulked up to this"—she pointed to the original genome—"if it became necessary. They never had a clear idea of their destination until they reached Pluto's outer orbit, so they were prepared to match whatever they ran into. When they get back to the mother ship—home—they either will return to home size, or will already be in that state."
"Now," she said over the rustling that passed through the assembled group, "two things I want to emphasize. One, age. The lifespans Ben described last summer are for the original genome. Our friends here, as near as we can tell, are a little longer-lived. On the order of a thousand to two thousand Earth years."
Again the sound passed through the crowd like dry leaves rustling in a breeze. "Two. Look at the original genome. Something is missing. These, the large tentacles on the second segment. This is not a natural condition. The Holn evolved this after they joined the mother ship, but it is not the result of many generations of adaptations. They added them to themselves right away. And every Holn born since then has had this characteristic. You see? Not only did they add this appendage to help them get around in zero-gee, they added the coding to their genes to continue it in succeeding generations."
"Not to sound like a broken record," said a voice, "but how?"
"That's still speculation. It's one of the questions we keep beaming at them, hoping they'll find it in their three-part hearts to answer." She gazed at the image a moment, then turned to the audience. "Our best bet—and I'm sorry for having just a guess, we've tried to find out, honest, if you want to lash me with a wet noodle I'll submit—our best guess is still nanotechnology. The nanotech theorists are split into two camps, those who say the molecular machines were organic and those who favor inorganic."
She tapped the podium as she studied her notes. "At any rate, that's my main presentation. Questions?"
Miranda, as she headed to the podium, remembered a colleague once suggesting a room full of separate minds thinking alike could charge the atmosphere and send sparks leaping between each, reinforcing the emotions, forming a hydra of mind. At this point, she wasn't ready to dismiss the idea completely.
"Some nice bombs you tossed."
Wanda laughed.
Miranda turned to the group. "Where do we go from here?"
Dr. Innes stood up.
"A few months ago, I criticized some of you for looking upon humans as mere vats of chemicals. I argued long and hard for an alien aspect to these people. I am setting aside that hypothesis. We have these seventeen so far incontrovertibly human people in front of us—down to eleven living, I guess—and while I'm not quite willing to give up on the idea that something unique makes up the human mind, we must proceed with that as a basis. They, the Holn, had to have malleable material. It looks as though a cauldron of chemicals in human form is that material."
"In four days?" Lindsey asked as Dr. Innes sat down. "I still have big problems with that timing. Four days, actually three and a half if you consider the spacecraft didn't close until late morning, to take what they have learned and completely change a human."
"Remember, we gave them all we knew about ourselves," Dr. Innes said from his seat. "They had six years to analyze and formulate. This technology"—he gestured toward the screen still showing the three Holn—"suggests knowledge much deeper and advanced than our own. Child's play, I would think."
"Their expertise would go back even farther than six years," said Timothy Jenkins. "It would go back millions of years of travel, exploration. So we live in a different atmosphere. It wouldn't take much to adjust the reactions a bit. Think of the database they must have."
Anna Lowry, who'd been conferring with members of her staff, now waved a hand. "Lab reports on blood, stool, and urine samples on the seventeen just after the ship left last year showed heightened levels of certain substances. Phosphates, for example, and some unusual amino acids and other organic compounds. None of it harmful, but the thing is, the levels dropped within hours. We believe this is tied in with the process of recession."
"Wait, wait . . . um, OK, fine, all right, I'll assume they had molecular machinery," said Orlando Tousee. "What I'm still having trouble with is this whole idea of adults being turned into children. Yes, I've studied the reports on the children, but all I see are healthy kids. What I don't see, except in my mind, is the process, the change from adult to smaller adult to teenager to child. I have this vision of someone sprawled across a table like the evening sky as the poet says with tubes and stuff all leading to and from and liquids and gelatins flowing mostly out and the body shrinking like a balloon slowly deflating." He shook his head. "It is just so inconceivable."
"I know what you mean," Wanda said. "I didn't give it much thought until lately when we started talking about itty-bitty bugs. I suddenly envision the adults slowly immersed into this roiling mass of microscopic bugs, which are swarming and twisting like—like maggots on dead meat. Oh, lord"—she rubbed her forehead—"forgive me, I get goose bumps just thinking about it. It's just—in every square inch of skin, bone and organs, billions, trillions, skadillions of these things had to be swarming, moving at fantastic speeds to fulfill the program."
"And what a program!" Anna said. "Every cell, every nuclei, every piece of DNA, in every part of the body, these things move with solid purpose, taking apart, removing, restructuring and all the while keeping things functioning—heart, liver, pancreas, all of it. Swarming into a eyeball and shrinking it to just the right size and shape, redoing heart muscle so it still fibrillates properly, building a bladder that functions perfectly. How could they have built, re-engineered, such perfect humans? Mind-boggling is woefully short as a term of description."
"What did we give them to work with?" Avram said. "A blueprint, but a blueprint of the ideal of a human, without bad teeth, or warts on the butt, or missing fingers or a lopsided spine."
"They could've done anything," Constance said. "They could've given them three feet or four arms, or a set of tentacles where neck meets collarbone, they could have changed their skin color, or their IQ. If they know so much about the human genome, the possibilities are endless."
"They did change hair color," someone in the back pointed out.
"Yeah, they did. And they practiced remarkable restraint if that's all they did."
"At least," Jake Skettles's Australian-accented voice called out, "they didn't leave us with infants, unable to talk, to tell us who they are, and give us some description of the place where . . . it happened."
"What about that?" Timothy Jenkins said. "Have we gotten any kind of conception of the place or procedure from the ki-people?"
"Nothing concrete," Olive said, removing her glasses. "Just generalities common to all descriptions: oval rooms, generally gray, a light source directly overhead, long armaturelike devices moving, a sound of chimes and whispers. Two of the group mentioned the surface of the room above or in front of their faces seemed close enough to touch. Wanda, a small space like this would suggest an immersion of some sort."
"Oooh," Wanda said, hugging herself. "I'm going to have a bad dream tonight."
Light laughter filtered around the room.
"Well, all this talk about what the group might have seen or not still doesn't answer the big question," Orlando said. "Why? Why did they do this?"
"We don't know the human mind yet," Miranda said, "and you expect us to divine an extraterrestrial one? My bias toward my field of study makes me wonder how they could keep the patterns of memory, personality and autonomic functions intact as they changed the mass and size of the brain. It seems to suggest those patterns aren't quite as dependent on physical structure as we'd assumed."
"I believe it's possible to at least get a basic idea on why," Matt said as he stood up. "Wanda, you said you gave the Holn the entire book on our physiology. What about the other half? What did you tell them about our culture?"
"Everything they asked about." Wanda leaned against the podium. "Human culture, the various types, the differing lifestyles, structure of community, the whole spectrum of human life on Earth. However, they seemed to show a greater interest in the developed cultures, ones with technology, complex infrastructure, and complex social patterns. This might be bias on their part, being a technological culture themselves. The great books, writings on religion and philosophy, both Eastern and Western, technological development—they got it all. And our popular culture, comics, movies, television, books, theater, the sports culture, the art culture, music, the whole enchilada. Mostly after our own Miranda Sena brought that part up, of course. If you remember, one of the most famous images to come out of the ship was of them watching an episode of Star Trek."
"Advertising?"
"Oh, yes."
Matt looked down at his foot doing something behind the chair in front of him. "All right, here we are, an intelligent species, doing all sorts of clever stuff. In comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom, though, we look a bit immature. Well, after all, we are all born three months premature because our swelled heads won't fit through the female pelvis otherwise. So parents have an extra three months to watch their child develop.
"I'm sure all of you have heard of neoteny, where the adult retains juvenile characteristics: pushed-in face, big eyes, hairless body. As our brains have grown, humans have retained characteristics of young ancestors, and it's a big reason why we prefer puppies to the adult dog, kittens to the adult cat—even baby warthogs are sort of cute. This carries to our response to infants and children because the childlike qualities catch our inborn—"
"Oh, I think you're pretty cute right now," a female voice said from somewhere to the side.
The room exploded into laughter. Matt, frozen in mid-gesture and mouth open, turned slowly in the direction of the voice and cocked an eyebrow. He interlaced his fingers, brought the backs of his hands against his cheek and snuggled his head into the notch.
"You should have seen me when I was a baby." He batted his eyes. "I was so adorable."
More hearty laughter.
"Taking that as a cue, let's consider something," Matt said as the laughter subsided. "The Group of Seventeen, each individual. Except for Othberg, because of his age, but picture the others. How many here think these people look better now than they did pre-event? Leave aside the absence of wrinkles, the disappearance of acne, the elimination of moles, warts and other blemishes. Just consider the structure of the face. How many think these people look better now than they did before?"
He waited a moment as the room rustled. "Well, let me put it this way: How many here think they look worse than they did?"
No hands went up.
"How many here envy the group at least that?"
Hands appeared all over the room.
"Fine," Matt said, smiling. "I say there's more than casual connection between the action of the Holn and our relentless drive to stay young, to act young, to think young. What is our main pursuit in this culture? Youth. Our entire cultural milieu reflects that quest. Even in the great literature, there's a sorrow for the passing of time and degradations of old age. And look at the stuff today, the ads, the TV shows, the movies, contemporary books, all glorifying the physical ideal of youth even though the current population as a whole is older. That was the not-so-subliminal message the Holn picked up on."
He tapped his foot. "Turn seventeen people into children and fulfill almost a universal dream. Are they trying to tell us something?"
The buzz this time swelled into high volume.
* * *
Two hours, thirty-seven minutes later, Avram said, "Deep thoughts, Dr. Gunnarson, deep thoughts," as he, Miranda, and Matt headed back to Miranda's office.
"And I was amazed by the level of intensity today," Miranda said. "I haven't had such a freewheeling discussion with this group since it began. With perfect hindsight, we can say too bad Wanda's data were buried for so long."
"Except it casts these creatures as benevolent sages, traveling through the galaxy dispensing youth elixir."
"Perhaps that's what—"
Avram was cut off by a woman stepping forward. "Three people are waiting in your office, Miranda. One identified himself as Jack Theodoric."
"Great. Thank you, Bonnie." She picked up her pace.
"Did you find them?" she said as soon as she got her door open.
"What did I tell you?" Jack said to a woman and man standing to one side. "I have nothing to report," he said to Miranda. "We've hit a dead end, we're stuck."
Miranda dropped her laptop on her desk. "Then get unstuck, damnit. You're FBI, for God's sake, you've got power."
"We're not giving up. I promise. In fact, the attorney general has authorized the bureau to supply security for the remaining group. He took this action unilaterally."
Miranda sighed. "Well, that's something."
"Now that we've got that out of the way, may I introduce representatives of the MacAlister Foundation. They've come with a proposal about the Rewound Children."
A woman in her late thirties, shorter than Miranda but not as slim, with auburn hair cut short and styled around a high forehead and round, friendly face, stepped forward.
"Hello, Dr. Sena, I'm Alexandria Roth, known as Alex," she said.
"Giles Lassiter." The man, probably in his forties, was tall and thin, with long fingers.
"Avram Rolstein."
"Matt Gunnarson."
"Good to meet you," Giles said.
"Please, have a seat," Miranda said, taking the chair at her desk.
"This is Wynona MacAlister's proposal, but we understand you made the suggestion first, Dr. Sena," Alex said. For the next hour, the scientists listened, read information on electronic notebooks, and asked several questions.
Finally, Miranda turned to Avram. "Are these people legit?"
"Wynona MacAlister and I go back a few years, and while I can't count myself as a personal friend, I do know whatever Wynona MacAlister decides to do, she does it with class and better than anyone else could," he said. "She is one of smartest, cagiest, and most powerful women in this country, and places beyond. I intend to give it my full support. It is an answer to a vexing problem."
"The question is, will the survivors go along?" Matt said.
"I don't want these people to become sideshow freaks," Miranda said. "I don't want them to become guinea pigs, I don't want them locked away forever. Six are dead and two are missing—"
"That is why the foundation is moving," Alex said. "Wynona and the board have been discussing it on and off for weeks, but after watching your impassioned plea last night, she's melted a few phone lines ordering us to get on the ball. She thinks she has a way to help and she won't let anything get in the way. Even so, however, she will defer to you and Dr. Rolstein."
Miranda sighed, sat back. "Avram, I'm going to follow your lead on this. If you think it's good, then let's do it. What do you want from me?"
"To continue your research," Giles said. "We, the foundation, will handle all the details. If you have any trouble with anything, call us. Wynona will use all the resources she has to clear the way."
"I will make myself available as a go-between," Avram said. "In fact, I'll go up and see the old girl myself, charm her a bit, then warn her that if she crosses Miranda she'll be hit with a firestorm."
"Thank you very much. That'll really endear her to me."
"There is one thing you can do," Alex said. "We would like to recruit one of the group to help us talk to the others. Any recommendations?"
Miranda looked at Matt.
"Five of the people are above-average intelligence," he said. "Tom Cathen, Earl Othberg, Cheryl Vroman, Marian Athlington and Aaron Fairfax. Any of them would be good."
"Two are missing, though, right Jack?" Miranda said.
"Yes, they are, aren't they?"
"I don't quite understand how someone can just drop out of sight," Avram said. "Especially these people."
"It's not that difficult if you're underage," Jack said. "If you don't have a credit card, or bank account, or welfare account, or net credit, your name doesn't show up. And these people have been stripped out. They've been fired, so their contributions to Social Security have stopped, along with tax money to the IRS. Their bank accounts have been dissolved into someone else's, and their credit cards have been canceled. It's what you were saying last night, Miranda, about children. Until they become adults, the only thing that marks a child in the corporate and government nets is her Social Security number."
Jack rubbed an arm. "And that's all they have now. We have electronic watchdogs on the nets. If either number pops in, the dogs'll bark. So far, though, the only growls from either number since last June was a car-rental agency looking for the auto Athlington had used."
"What about relatives?" Avram said.
"Athlington's sister and Fairfax's ex-wife aren't talking, but we think they're involved in some underhanded dealings. Fairfax's sister, who lives in the remotest part of Alaska buried under tons of snow—at least according to the Alaskan agent who had to fly from Fairbanks, then take a two-hour snowmobile ride—says she has not heard a thing from her brother."
Jack changed position in the chair, told them about Marian's landlord and her surviving cat. "The hospital staff kept the cat for a few days, but some homeless veteran took it and an envelope of money the woman had shipped with the animal. The staff didn't know about the money, so now they're assuming the cat's gone and the money spent." He spread his hands. "And that, Dr. Sena, is as far as we've gotten."
The group sat in silence.
"Earl Othberg would be your best bet," Matt said suddenly.
"And where can we find him?" Alex said.
"Relax. He's in Hawaii, not Al—"
"Miranda!" The shout and the door slamming open came simultaneously. Wanda charged across the carpet. "The Holn! An answer! It's coming!" She stopped next to Miranda's chair. "They're answering!"
"What—"
"Ben called. They just got a precursor message. The Holn say they'll send a reply in about ten hours. They're—" Wanda stopped, looked around at the group. "Oh, am I interrupting something? I'm sorry." She grabbed Miranda's hand. "You have to come, Miranda, to JPL, when it arrives. Two A.M. tomorrow morning."
"Well, all right, that's great. I'll consider going—"
Wanda placed her other hand on Miranda's. "You don't quite understand. It's your message they're replying to. Yours, Miranda."