Wings

Sarah A. Hoyt

A collection of short stories

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

Wings © 2008 by Sarah A. Hoyt

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY  10471

www.baen.com

eISBN: 978-1-61824-041-5

Introduction

Take off your shoes.

Here. Take these sturdy mountain boots instead. You may need these crampons too. And you'd best take this nomex suit. You are about to enter a wild and wonderful place. It’s not entirely safe or predictable. These stories are a doorway into the mind of Sarah Almeida Hoyt, and there is no place for ordinary shoes.

Oh yes, it can be very beautiful in this book. Parts of it will move you to tears, other parts to laughter. They are lovers and heroes here with you. There are fire and ice, there are gods and monsters, all crafted with a delicate but incisive hand. It is a special place, both ancient and so new that it has not yet come to be, filled with wonder. It is a complex place, as only a writer of depth and subtlety can will into being. The one thing you may be sure of is that you will not be quite the same person when you finish this book. And you will, because it will dig in and not release you until it is done with you.

Begin your journey as is fitting, in the darkness with Prometheus and a setting so cunningly woven as to seem right and natural, which takes a knowledge of history and skill beyond most historical writers.

Walk with the bard in various incarnations, sinister and brave. Travel to Carthage, with the general that almost humbled Rome, and changed the face of the world. See how those who make bargains with gods always get what they bargained for, but not always they thought they thought they’d get.

Be prepared for the fact that Hoyt takes on shibboleths -- oh, not the usual suspects, the nice, safe, near moribund ones, that tend to get the doyens of established literature to burble enthusiastically about ‘daring to speak truth to power." That requires all the courage that kicking a corpse in the face does, because things such as anti-feminism have lost power and barely survive among a handful of rednecks. No, instead she takes the bull by something a lot more tender than the horns, and she twists, with issues that make the new powers cringe. Of metaphysics. Of loyalties. Of those dirty words money and power - music to ears of dragons. She talks about love -- not lust, but love. Of death and what it means to be a creator. Of facing our weaknesses in the diner that is the antechamber to Hades, with a beautiful blend of myth and story, and of swimming the sea of tears. Of the real costs and rewards of drugs and revolution.

This anthology belongs in the collection of all fantasy and science fiction readers. And like Eurydice you will find yourself looking back on it, and forced to return.

Dave Freer

Titan

“Leonardo, we will be burned,” I said. “If anyone finds out, the church’s tribunal will have us burned.”

He looked back at me and didn’t say anything, but his lip curled up in a sneer that looked like the expression his grandfather, Ser Antonio, made when someone made a mistake in household accounts.

At ten, Leonardo was a handsome boy – I knew this for a fact because Ser Antonio would put his age-gnarled hand on Leonardo’s head and say, “Such a handsome boy. Such a pity.”

I didn’t understand the pity part but I understood handsome. He was larger than most of us, the children of Vinci, at his age, and he had gold-red hair, like newly polished copper, in a frill of curls around his head, and bright green eyes, like spring leaves. Those eyes glinted now by the light of the oil lamp I carried. It was covered almost entirely in a metal shade, to avoid showing the path of our walk through the fields. But I’d left the bottom just a little open so we could see the stones on the way and not fall on our faces.

“Fool,” Leonardo hissed at me, between clenched teeth. “Cover that lantern.”

“But it is dark,” I said

“It is darker where we’re going,” Leonardo said, his small voice acquiring a tone of great weight and thought.

“Leonardo,” I said, my voice trembling just a little at the thought of what we meant to do. “You know the priest says the old gods are truly demons and that–”

Leonardo shook his head, impatient. “He would say that, would he not? Come on, Antonio. Tonight we do magic.”

I trembled from head to foot, but I followed. I always followed Leonardo. It wasn’t just that he was the grandson of the wealthy Ser Antonio or the son of Ser Piero – a notary with a big business in Pisa – while I was just the son of a local farmer with mud between his toes. No, it was much more than that. Leonardo had life in him, a vitality, a hunger, a need I couldn’t either understand or resist. I followed him where he went. I did what he told me. His need was stronger than any of my smaller wants or thoughts. He needed to be noticed. He needed to be someone important.

***

I had realized why he had this need just a few months before. I was the same age as Leonardo and his playmate since we were both about five, when my father, hired to help with the harvest at the great house of Vinci, had taken me along. I’d never given Leonardo’s birth or his position much thought.

I’d known that Leonardo’s family was wealthier than mine, because his grandfather’s kitchen had piped in water and he had servants and fields that other people tended. But I hadn’t thought much about it, or about their allowing their grandson to play with me, till my parents talked about it.

It was at the dinner table, as we sipped soup from our coarse clay bowls, and ate bread mother had bought from the baker in Vinci. I’d come in disheveled and sweaty from running in the fields with Leonardo. Leonard was ever like that, active, restless, climbing walls and running through the fields, exploring caves, riding horses – his grandfather’s and anyone else’s he could get on.

My father had grunted – not exactly reproaching me – as I pulled a wooden stool to the table, and sat down.

My mother, setting the steaming bowl of soup in front of me, gave my father a sharp glance. “It’s Ser Piero’s boy,” she said. “He’s wild and Antonio will follow him.”

Father grunted again. He ate a spoonful of soup, then tore at the bread with his broad, calloused hands. “I suppose,” he said at last. “He’ll be going to live with his father in Pisa soon? And be apprenticed into his father’s trade?”

Mother clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, as if Father spoke great foolishness. She shook her head slightly and threw me a sharp glance.

“What?” Father said. He sounded somewhat annoyed.

Mother sighed. It was clear to me she didn’t wish to talk about it and hoped he would understand her expression. But Father was never good at subtle signals. Instead, he got annoyed when she spoke in a way that he didn’t fully understand. “What, woman? What’s this foolishness? Mean you to say the boy won’t be apprenticed to his father’s trade?”

Mother sighed again. “He is not...,” she said, "The son of his wife.” And then, as Father looked at her, she added, “The notaries will never accept him, his not being...,” she threw me a glance, "legitimate.”

Father looked as struck as I felt. Clearly the idea that Leonardo’s birth might have something to do with his future had never occurred to him. “What will they do with the boy, then?” he asked.

“None of the better guilds will take him,” my mother said. “He will have to learn some lower trade.”

“What?” Father asked. “Work the land? A boy raised as the son of his grandfather’s house as he has been?”

“A pity,” mother said. “And a great shame. He’s been taught to want more than he can have.”

And that was when I understood what drove Leonardo – why he talked of commanding armies, or of conquering cities, of creating great buildings, of changing the world and everything around him. So that his being born outside marriage wouldn’t matter and he could have the great destiny he’d been taught to expect.

***

In our explorations of the region, some time back, we’d found a cave where the gods lived.

Listen, I know what the priests say, and what has been written by great learned men: that the ancient gods never existed, that they were people’s ways of explaining the wind and the sun and those other things for which they lacked a cause.  I knew that back then, too. Like any other good Catholic boy I’d been taught there was only one God and he ruled all and the others were demons and monsters, ready to deceive and take one’s soul.

But Caterina, Leonardo’s mother, had a reputation in the villages around for being able to see the future. She had a bag of bones that she’d inherited from her mother, and which she could cast this way and that and tell you what lay in store for you in days not yet dawned.

Everyone knew it, in all the area. Probably even the priest knew it. But, by tacit consent, no one spoke of it. The girls would go to Caterina, now and then, when they were crossed in love. And sometimes wives went when they suspected their husbands played them false. Or old people would go to find out to which of their sons they should leave their fields and house. No one talked about it, but everyone knew there were supernatural powers beyond those of which the priest spoke in Mass.

Besides no boy, growing up in Tuscany, could doubt the existence of gods. Amid the steep hills, the precipitous crags, the low fields planted with sweet-fruited vines, who could doubt that some elemental power had thrown the rocks this way and that, and that some creature or other gave soul and heart to the twisted oak trees that projected the only shadow onto the soft, warm earth of the summer fields?

Leonardo and I walked along the beaten path around one of those fields – his grandfather’s – in the dark of a fall night, headed back to the cave we’d found.

“Do you really think there are gods in there, Leonardo?” I asked, half knowing what his answer would be, but needing his rebuke and certainty nonetheless.

He’d forced me to cover the lantern completely, and above the sky was dark, with only the merest pinpoints of stars showing, too distant and dim to give any light. Underfoot, my bare soles felt the pebbles and rocks smoothed by thousands of feet over the generations.   A breeze blowing from the south brought with it the tang of ripening wine. To the North, the ground fell away in crags and chasms, from the terraced field to the depths of a ravine, from which it climbed again, to someone else’s terraced field.

“Of course they were gods,” Leonardo said. “What else would they be?”

I could hear the sneer in his voice and, indeed, how could I think those figures, carved and drawn in the rock were anything else? There were powerful men painted on the dark granite of Tuscany, their faces suddenly emerging from the living rock as if they slumbered beneath it and could push forward, at any moment, like a man tossing off his covers and wakening.

We’d found them one drowsy summer afternoon, when Leonardo had fallen through an opening to the cave below. I’d thought him lost, or hurt, but he’d emerged laughing and called me below, to see his discovery. We’d walked down long corridors seemingly carved by a giant’s hand into the rock. Down and down and down.

“As if we’re going to the womb of the Earth,” Leonardo had muttered, at a point, down the corridor.

I’d followed in hushed silence, till we emerged into a vast cavern, echoing, with a domed ceiling like I imagined a Cathedral would look – having only heard one discussed and never having seen a larger church than Vinci’s tiny chapel. And like a Cathedral, it was peopled by statues and paintings, but such paintings had never been seen in the Christian churches.

A single ray of light coming in through a narrow shaft in the ceiling lit the interior and revealed ... art.

At first I got an impression of men, muscular men – mostly naked or near naked, painted in poses of movement. They were so realistic-looking that I jumped back, shocked…before I realized that they were not alive, and were not in fact human – not as such – but creatures that resembled humans as a rock or a tree grown in the right shape might resemble a human. Humans with the vitality and the feel of immutable Earth. And the scene painted on the wall was a dance.

Leonardo walked around the wall, fascinated, his fingers touching the paint which looked as fresh as if it had just been painted. “The gods, Antonio. It is the gods. They lived here.” He turned to me. “La Caterina said the ancient gods were worshiped in a cave, by initiates who found their way in and passed tests. And those who got to the cave could get anything they wanted. Anything, Antonio.”

His eyes glimmered with that nameless need of his, that need for more than his life could give him.

He walked around the cave, looking, beseeching. His mouth formed words I could not decipher from their movement. His fingers traced the figures. He seemed to be begging, asking for something.

When nothing happened, he looked back at me. He looked like a blind man trying to discern someone’s face.

At the time I didn’t know what to tell him. But I knew he’d asked for something. And that it had not come true.

Our entire friendship, I’d been the follower and he the leader, but now he looked exactly like a small child who asks his mother for a treat and is refused.

I said the first thing I could think of. “You probably have to do something,” I said. “Some sort of ritual. To…wake them up?”

Like that Leonardo’s eyes lit up. He punched his open palm with the closed fist of his other hand. “That’s it,” he said. “We’ll need to wake the gods. They’ve been sleeping too long.”

***

Two weeks after we’d found the cave, we had managed to slip away from Vinci and walk through the fields to see Leonardo’s mother in Campo Zeppi.

Leonardo never called Caterina "Mother.” He called her la Caterina. When he was just a year old, she’d given him to his grandparents to raise. Then she’d got married and had a brood of brats.

When we got to her home – a small farmhouse amid verdant fields – she was sitting in the yard, in the sun, mending clothes while her three younger children, a toddling boy and two crawling girls, played around her.

She looked up as we approached and smiled at us. She looked much like Leonardo – same high cheekbones, same straight nose, same leaf-green eyes and brassy red hair. But in Caterina the endless energy and ambition of her son had become a placid certainty and self-contentment.

She smiled and returned to her sewing without a word.

Leonardo moved to sit at her feet. The toddlers neared to play around him, never quite touching him, but staying close by. They were never fully at home near Leonardo, and yet he fascinated them.

Caterina sewed with uneven, broad stitches, and Leonardo sat at her feet. I sat on a low wall nearby that protected a flowerbed filled with late-blooming roses.

One of the spiny branches worried at my back, and I wondered how long it would take Caterina and Leonardo to talk. But their protocols moved in their own way, and in their own way were as prickly as the rites of any court.

After a long while, without seeming to take any more notice of us, Caterina reached over and laid her broad hand on Leonardo’s head.

He looked towards her and smiled. “Caterina, the gods,” he said at last. “The old gods you talked to me about…how were they worshiped? If they were asleep...how would you wake them?”

Caterina didn’t seem to hear. She removed her hand from his hair, and returned to her sewing. At length, she spoke, her voice slow and filled with the lilting accent my own mother’s voice had. “Well,” she said. “They’ve been sleeping a long time.” She sewed some more. “There are dates when it’s easier to wake them, but midsummer’s night is past. So you’d have to go in late autumn, when the time turns around to winter. The last day of October. You should go late at night, in reverence, expecting to be challenged, expecting to hear from them. You should fast beforehand.”

She went on, her voice even, as she gave him the instructions for waking the old ones.

It seemed to me as though it were all a lot of nonsense, and my mind fell into a drowsy half-dreaming. There was a twist to Caterina’s mouth, just at the corner, a placid smile that made me suspect that she was playing one of her practical jokes.

And I hoped I was wrong. Because I did not want to see the lost and confused look in Leonardo’s face ever again.

***

And thus we were on our way, through the darkened fields to the cave, once again.

As we neared it, the way got rougher. We left the fields behind altogether and went across an area of low scrub.  Nimble-footed shepherds herded goats in this place, the goats climbing and jumping across the uneven ground. Past that, we started getting into deeper and deeper forest, the trees growing increasingly thick all around.

Pasture I’d crossed unthinking hundreds of times in the day, forests where I played, now seemed a land of danger and fear.

A wolf howled in the distance, and I thought I heard a growl nearby. Was it a bear?

“You can uncover the lantern now, Antonio,” Leonardo said. “We’re far enough no one from my grandfather’s house will see us.”

Grateful, I pulled the tin cover up to allow the light to shine fully on the path underfoot. But the light only seemed to make the shadows more threatening, and the trees leaning towards us looked like the outstretched arms of some monster come to collect us.

Was this a test? Were the trees the guardians that Leonardo’s mother had talked of, who protected the approach to the sacred cave? “Are you quite sure you can find the cave again? In the dark?”

He looked over his shoulder and nodded once, and in that nod I knew he’d been to the cave often since our first visit together, worrying at the ancient portraits like a dog at a bone.

All too soon we got to the cave. Just at the entrance, it seemed to me something uncoiled and snarled. I did not know what it was, or even if there was anything. Leonardo whispered a word I did not understand, and the moonlight shone on an empty patch of ground and the cleft in the rock that led to the cave beyond.

We walked into the cleft and, in the dark, it seemed to me that shadows flitted and that dark beings or ghosts or animals ran just outside our field of vision. Rats, I thought to myself. It would be rats. But the thought was hardly reassuring. After all, one or two people could easily be eaten by a tribe of rats.

“It’s all right, Antonio,” Leonardo said, evenly. “It’s all right. We are protected. Caterina told me what to say.”

She had? I didn’t remember. Somewhere, amid the buzz of Caterina’s words, I’d lost track of what she’d told him.

But I stepped close to Leonardo’s heels, and I told myself I was imagining the movement, the scurrying. That it meant nothing. That I was a fool. My own heartbeat was so loud that it sounded like a drum in my ears.

We stepped into the cave and I stopped, drawing breath sharply. The cave was lit with a big bonfire. A fire, burning brightly. Someone had to have made the fire. How?

“What–” I said.

“I came earlier today,” Leonardo said. He whispered, as if we were at church. “I came at sunset and laid it all in readiness. It only needs a little stoking.” As he spoke, quietly, he added wood to the fire. The wood was laid by, in a neat pile, and my mind spun around this thought because I could neither imagine Leonardo cutting the wood nor making the fire. Leonardo, in the normal way of his life, avoided such tasks as much as he possibly could.

Then Leonardo pulled from his lambskin vest a packet of herbs, which he filtered between his fingers onto the fire. He murmured words, under his breath.

I didn’t understand the words and started to open my mouth to ask him about them, but he only shook his head, silently telling me to be quiet.

So I remained quiet and watched Leonardo throw herbs on the fire and mutter words in an increasing tone of exasperation.

The smoke from the burnt herbs writhed around me like incense at church, but much stronger.

I knew it. Caterina had made a joke. She’d lied to him, and now....

I realized I was sitting cross-legged on the rough ground of the cave, and there was music. I did not remember sitting, and where did the music come from? Who was making it?

Startled, I started to rise.  And then I realized that the figures in the wall were dancing – moving round and round with vigorous movements, stomping their feet into the ground with such enthusiasm the entire cave trembled.

I rose--confused, trembling. Was I dreaming? Leonardo stood, without moving, smiling a little with a curious but serene expression much like his mother’s.

“Leonardo,” I said, and grabbed for his sleeve. I wanted to tell him we must be out of here, we must run, we must– But this was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Didn’t he want to wake the gods?

I hadn’t wanted to see him disappointed. I’d never thought....

“What do you wish, pilgrims?” The voice that wasn’t a voice was all around us, demanding, absolute.

And in that voice, my own wishes rose up. I wanted to be like Leonardo. I wanted a life just like he had – to belong to a powerful family with a big house, and be wealthy enough to have piped water in the kitchen. Even if I were nothing but an illegitimate member. I wanted ... to be better than I was.

I heard my own voice say all this, fumblingly, but the god was waiting, was waiting – waiting, I realized for Leonardo. It sensed Leonardo’s greater hunger, his greater need, and it would hear from him.

“I want to be so important that everyone in the world knows me,” Leonardo said. “I want to be remembered long after I’m dead.”

The naked feet of the dancing creatures on the walls made a final stomp, and there was a sound like laughter. Not mocking laughter, but bitter laughter.

And out of the middle of the creatures, one walked who stood head and shoulders above the rest. He had flying white hair and beard, but his side was gashed open, bleeding. He pressed a hand to it, seemingly without any pain, and smiled at us, a smile full of curiosity and of a hunger at least as strong as Leonardo’s.

“Long ago,” he said, and spoke in a voice that seemed wholly human and echoed with the sing-song tone of the peasants of the region. “Long ago we could have granted you all that and more, little one. But we are old ones. Old. We were old when Rome was new. When their Jove shackled us. We are the gods who danced at the dawn of humanity.” He pointed with his free hand at the fire. “I gave humans fire and farming and letters. And for it I must be devoured endlessly by Jove’s eagle. My name is Prometheus and all those others–” he pointed to the wall, and to the other creatures now frozen in the act of dancing. “Those others, my brothers, my cousins, my uncles, all of them lie in their own prisons, unable to die, but unable to live. We have just life enough to present ourselves to you. But we are shadows... shadows and nothing more.”

He looked at me, and for a moment I read such nobility and humanity in his gaze, that I felt sorry for him.

And then he spoke. “And I cannot do what you wish... unless... you would allow us to merge with you?”

“Merge?” I asked, trembling.

This earned me a quick smile. “Yes,” he said. He picked a sharp sliver of stone to the ground and handed it to me. “If you prick your finger and let the blood drop into this fire, we’ll be able to come to you, to use your body to make you what you want to be. To make your wish come true.”

My mother had told me, long ago, that everything had a price. And so I asked, “What will it cost me?”

The noble features turned towards me and the mouth opened fully in a smile that revealed sharp, needle-like teeth. “To be devoured,” he said.

I let the sliver of stone drop. I heard it fall to the ground of the cave as if very far away. And I was already running, running, past the scurrying shadows and the darkness, past the narrow corridor to the outside, past the forest and the pasture and the vineyard, till I was snug and still in my pallet in my father’s house, crossing myself and muttering pater nosters to sleep, seeking to interpose the new God before the old.

Before going to sleep, I realized, I knew, that Leonardo had taken the bait and cut his finger. And I wondered what it would mean.

***

What it meant was that I lost my friend. Oh, nothing was changed, not really, not outwardly.

The scab in Leonardo’s finger healed. And instead of spending his days running wild in the fields, he started to draw. He would take pieces of his grandfather’s papers, the scrap left over from household accounts, and, with deft strokes draw a face, to the life. Or a horse so real it might have been running through the pasture outside. Or strange devices, machines that, he said, would one day fly through the skies.

I wondered if that was the gift the gods gave him, and sometimes I felt sorry that I had not done pricked my finger, but not sorry enough to return to the cave. Still, when Leonardo was taken to Florence, to become an apprentice painter, and when his painting and the costumes he designed for the elegant set in town became all the talk in tiny Vinci, I wondered why if I had missed my one chance of getting my wish. And what it meant being devoured. Leonardo seemed whole to me.

But life went on, in the way life does, and I acquired fields and married a woman who brought me a little in her stocking foot, with which I bought yet more fields. I had three sons, all strong men who married and gave me grandsons.

Two years ago my eldest grandson took me to Florence with him. Leonardo was there. He had been away a long while, but came back to finish a fresco under contract.

My grandson left me at the door to Leonardo’s workshop, while he went to talk to some notaries about the purchase of a vineyard.

I went in, hesitant, tapping my cane on the floor, more for reassurance than out of real need. My legs were yet steady enough.

The workshop was a busy place, full of apprentices of all ages, sketching and talking and calling to each other and making bawdy jokes. I asked the nearest one, an impish young man of maybe twenty, where Leonardo was.

He pointed me towards a wall where a man knelt, painting the hem of a cloak in small feathery strokes. Under his hand, the hem had the look of real silk, flowing in an unfelt wind.

“Leonardo,” I said.

He turned to look at me, and a look of recognition sparked in his eyes. “Antonio,” he said, softly. “I remember... long ago. You ran.”

I swallowed. I could not speak. Because the face looking at mine -- flying hair and white beard -- looked like a face in a cave, long ago. Not Leonardo’s.

When we got back to Vinci, I made my grandsons take me back to the cave, and I walked the great length of its corridors, tapping my cane as I went along.

We took lanterns. I was not about to light the old fire once again.

The figures were still there, one and the other arms linked, eternally frozen in their primeval dance.

But the figure with the flying white hair wasn’t there. Prometheus was gone. He had become Leonardo and was making Leonardo’s name immortal.

I walked back out and ordered my grandsons to seal the cave shut with the biggest boulders they could find.

To this day, it remains sealed.

Traveling, Traveling

The boys squatted in a circle in the middle of the dusty, unpaved road. There were six or seven of them, all at that age when the body grows too fast for the controlling mind and straggly hair appears on still-baby-soft faces. Their dirty-blond hair, pale blue eyes and hulking bodies revealed a genetic uniformity that startled, in the middle of the Twenty-Second Century with the world getting smaller and smaller by the minute.

Around them, their village slumbered in the midday heat. Somewhere, in the surrounding hills, a cricket chirped noisily breaking the still, glassy silence.

They turned from whatever had been holding their attention to stare at me, as I walked up to them.

They would turn and they would gawk, pale eyebrows rising beneath the lank wheat-colored hair.

I was a woman alone, a stranger, traveling on foot. They undoubtedly had seen flyers zip by overhead, but strangers on foot were a different thing. Or at least they would be, here, where the mountains echoed only stillness, the roads were unpaved and rough amid scraggly grass and there were no shops, no museums, no restaurants in sight.

Also, they all looked like they wore homespun, while my suit was a shiny, metallic silver — pants and jacket threaded through with bio-fibers, to whisk away perspiration and mold the body.

The latest fashion from London to Canberra.

They stared, and stood up, and moved apart a little. The tallest one of them slipped something into the back pocket of his frayed black pants. It looked like a magnifying glass that I'd seen in a museum, once.

That was when I noticed, on the yellow sandy road, in front of them, a palm-sized beetle, curled, its tiny feet turned in. Burned.

The eldest boy pulled the magnifying glass out of his pocket, shoved it back again, then pulled it out.

I felt my stomach turn, though I couldn't say why.  After over a hundred years of life, the mindless cruelties of early adolescence should not affect me.

But you'd think with all the holos oriented to non-violence, all the sensies preaching loving kindness to all the peoples of the world and every creature under the sun, people would be past this.

The taller boy fixed me with his slow, puzzled stare. "What do you want?"

If I'd been a bug he'd have fried me too. "My name is Traeena Schnell," I said. "I was on my way to an important conference in Paris, when the grid went down.” I gestured behind me. "My flyer is back there. I need a link."

The boy's brows knit. His boiled-gooseberry eyes took me in, from straight, platinum-blonde hair — my latest melanin change — to the curves — thank heavens for rejuv — displayed through the clingy suit.

His gaze had an almost physical presence. I felt myself blush.

"There are no links," he said. "In the village."

I sighed. Everyone had links. Everyone. Even religious fanatics and tribalist African sects.

Without a link, if you should have a medical emergency, you couldn't call for rescue. Without a link you wouldn't know of emergencies or disasters. Without a link, you might as well be living in the twentieth century, with all its isolationism. Without a link, you were screwed.

"Of course you have a link," I said. "You just might not be allowed to use it. Take me to your father.” My voice echoed, harsh, across the still hilltops.

The cricket stopped chirping.

The boy sighed, with superior fatigue. "All right," he said. "But my father don't have no link either."

He turned, nonetheless, and led the way up the narrow street, past a couple of dogs dozing in the sun, and into a back-yard gate to a small, whitewashed house.

The way to deal with petty pre-teen tyrants had always been intimidation. I remembered that much, whatever else I'd forgotten.

***

Minutes before I walked into the village, I'd been in my flyer, which was set up as a tiny business office.

My desk had been pulled out, the chair up to it, my fingers flying on the keyboard, while the hologram screen writhed and twisted in front of me, the symbols changing, the agenda for the meeting taking shape ahead of me.

I worked — had worked for years — for GuideNet, the principal of many national nets that kept the flyers in the air and guided them with micro waves along pre-programmed paths. It had taken over in the twenty first century, when the first flying cars had proven a nightmare of traffic control and well beyond the coordination of most mortals.

So the micro waves drove my flyer, while I worked on the program for a meeting that would change Guide Net and the world forever.

And then the power went out, the fail-safes of my flyer activated, and I was falling, falling gently like a leaf, onto a landscape of rolling green hills, with no civilization but a few stone buildings in sight.

I knew what had happened then, of course. This wasn't the first time.

The local Guide Net relay had got bombed by some nationalist group or another. And now I'd have a sweaty walk to the next link, to inform them of the problem.

Damn, I hated terrorists.

***

The tall boy opened a rusty metal gate, taller than both of us and painted green, but slowly losing its fight to rust.

I hadn't seen a metal gate in ages. Most of them had been replaced by cheap dimatough or ceramite, which neither rusted nor needed painting.

On the other side of the gate, the bucolic look continued, an exhibition of anachronisms in everyday use. An ox cart, such as I'd seen only in pictures, sat in the middle of a yard paved in broad stones. No oxen were coupled to it, but straw piled high in the back.

A young man looking like an older, pimply version of my guide had been unloading the straw with a pitchfork. When he saw us, he stopped, and stared, slowly wiping the sweat from his forehead on his tattered homespun sleeve.

A dog tied to a garden stake barked at me, pulling on his leash.

He stared at me, and blushed, then glared at the tall boy. "Gerald?" he asked.

The tall boy sulked. "She wants to see father. She wants to use our link."

The older youth frowned, earnest bewilderment in his pale blue eyes. "But--" he said.

We didn't stick around to hear his objection. Gerald — or at least I assumed this was Gerald — led me away from the yard, and across a narrow, vine-covered passage, past slipshod-looking wooden chicken coops, to the back door of a house.

The back door was open to a broad kitchen which, like the patio outside, was flagged in broad stones.

The kitchen had a table, a stove, and a tall refrigerator that hummed noisily.  At one of six chairs around the table, a man sat. He was reading... I had to blink to believe it -- a paper book with moldering leather covers. A cat dozed in his lap.

It transported me to my earliest memories, at the end of the twentieth century — my grandmother's farm kitchen, the door standing open to the vineyard and the flagged threshing yard. Chickens and dogs and cats.

But the man set his book down and looked at me, hands crossed on lap. He looked spare and lean and dry, like a saint carved, long ago, in wood that had since lain in a cold, dry place. His features had the sheen of long dried wood, impenetrable and hard as rock. His fine white hair stood on end and with his whiskers, it surrounded his face like a nimbus.

"She wants to use our link," Gerald said.

His father nodded once, gravelly, then stared at me, and asked, as if his son hadn't spoken. "What do you want?"

"My flyer went down," I said. "About a mile away. The net went down. If I may use your link, I can ask for a pick up."

He blinked. In the spare coldness of his face, every movement was exaggerated, so that something as simple as blinking his eyelids became as pronounced, as meaningful, as another man's broad wave. At length, the too-straight lips, in the narrow face, moved. "We have no link," he said. And, having spoken, looked back at his book.

I had been dismissed.

"Of course you have a link," I said. "Of course you have a link. Everyone has a link. How would you deal with a medical emergency, for instance, without one?"

He didn't raise his eyes from the book. He did not acknowledge my presence. Behind me, in the kitchen, flies swarmed and buzzed.

The dog barked outside in the yard.

***

I walked back out to the yard, where the older boy continued loading straw, in a desultory fashion.

He paused in his work, and stared after me, as I walked out the rusty gate, into the hot midday street.

Walking down it, I couldn't help thinking that people watched me from behind the closed curtains of their silent houses. Houses closed like that were like half-shut eyes, with an intelligence lurking behind.

Friendly or unfriendly? I couldn't tell.

Was this community truly as isolationist as it seemed to be? Would there be links in the other houses?

The silence of the hills reflected back at me, vacant, silent, as it had been for centuries.

It made the possibility of links, the possibility of anything as vital as current civilization a distant possibility.

I passed a small cemetery, marked with half-fallen tombstones, slumbering as firmly under a canopy of trees as the living, hid in their silent houses.

As for me, and my desire to return to the crowded, busy modern world, I'd have to do it on my own.

***

I was halfway to my fly car, on my sore feet, amid the silent hills, when the taller boy caught up with me.

"Lady," he said. "Lady."

I turned back and saw him approach, long legs working over the uneven terrain with the assurance and practice of a mountain goat.

"We really do not have a link," he said, as he followed me.

If he really didn't have a link, why was he following me? I nodded at him, but turned my back and walked away.

My fly glimmered in the distance, like a metallic egg, laid by a gigantic, mutated bird amid this bucolic landscape. I felt hot. My suit was supposed to adjust to temperature and keep me cool or warm no matter what.

But something about this unfiltered air, this strange place, must be interfering with the controls, because I felt hot, sweaty and prickly.

The steps behind me didn't slow down. The youth caught up with me. "It's only that--" he stopped, and swallowed, making his prominent Adam's apple bob, while he ran to keep up with me. "It's just that I can't have you thinking that.... I mean, my grandfather and a friend of his founded this village. Or perhaps I should say, returned to it, and they decided they would live as in the late twentieth century, because .... Well, they thought things were getting too fast for them. But — you must understand, we aren't being inhospitable, or anything, it's just that we don't have a link, or any of the conveniences of modern— Well, of your type of life."

I nodded. "You don't need to explain," I said, coldly. "Retro communities are nothing new. There are communities that live as anything from the seventeenth century onwards.” And all, but a few maintained for show, with the comforts of modernity available behind the scenes. And the real ones, the domain of zanies and crazies, often led by charismatic, insane leaders. But I couldn't tell this to the young man, since the leader was likely his father. He smelled faintly of sweat, a smell I almost didn't remember in this time of temperature controlling suits and super deodorizers.

His feet hopped and skipped over the uneven ground, as he kept up with me.

"You can tell me how to get to the next village," I said. "One that might have a link."

He swallowed. "It's miles and miles away," he said. "And we don't have cars. We don't have cars because father— because it has been agreed it would make the possibility of contamination from the outside too great."

"Oh," I said. "Then you may go. You've told me you're not inhospitable. What else can you do? You may go back.” We were now steps from my flyer. It would stultifying inside, what without the air conditioning functioning and all systems at minimal, power-saving levels.

But there was nothing for it. I might as well sit beside the fly and wait for it to come to life.

Unfortunately, if only the net in this part of the world had gone down, unpopulated and rural as it looked, it could be days before the controllers noticed the failure and corrected it.

"I came to tell you," he said. "That my father says you can spend the night at our farm. It's likely to be cold out here.” He looked at my flyer and blinked. "Is this your link?" he asked.

I had to laugh. "No. It's my flyer. The link is inside. It's a communications device. What drives it."

In my mind, I was figuring out that I might as well take the semi-hospitality of the farm as stay out here, in the cold, at night. They flyer was dead, and was likely to remain so for days. And, if it should come to life, I'd already missed my important meeting in Paris.

I might as well be a couple more hours late.

The company would have got the announcement of new technology, whatever it was, and would already be making what adjustments it could to the improved capacities without me.

To be honest, they didn't need me for it. I'd picked capable subordinates.

They would know what to do and, provided they knew I would be looking over their choices later, they weren't likely to do anything too foolish.

I hoped.

I turned to the youth, with his bad case of acne, and his too-long legs. "All right," I said. "I will spend the night at the farm."

He had his hand on the smooth, silvery side of my flyer, and it took him a few moments to realize I had accepted his invitation.

***

It was less unpleasant than I expected. Not to say it was pleasant. It wasn't that.

But the meal had been good and clean — of course, neither vegetables nor the sparse portion of meat would have been radiated for disease, nor examined for the necessary nutrients, so I might very well die of it. The conversation hadn't been lively, but it had been polite.

Well, I hadn't been allowed to say much of my life, and the world outside. I was cut off at every turn by the pater familias. But when he started talking about Alexander Dumas, I was able to join in, bolstered by the knowledge of novels I had read for the first time, almost a hundred years ago.

It occurred to me, long after, while I lay in the comfortable bed upstairs, in the dark, staring at the naked bulb hanging from the cracked plaster ceiling, that the father of this family was probably no older than I.

When the flyers had been introduced, when life extension technology emerged, I'd been twenty, and I'd embraced it wholeheartedly.

Others had run away from it.

I got up, restless. The lady of the house had offered to lend me a nightshirt, which I'd refused as politely as I could, afraid that if I let go of my suit they would burn it as part of the heretical outside culture, or something like that.

Standing by the window, I could feel the cool evening breeze on my hands and face, but not on the rest of my body. The temperature adjustors were working again.

It was very late at night, and the village slept.

The smell of the night was sweet — flowers and fruit and growing things. The village was very quiet, except for singing voice of a man in the distance. He sounded much the worse for the wear. The wind rustled in the trees. Crickets chirped, and things scurried not far away. An howl hooted.

And then, into all this calm, the strangest sound poured — a grating, popping sound.

It had been so many years since I'd heard it, that it took me the longest time to identify it.

A combustion engine. A car. An honest-to-goodness, pre-flyer car.

I tiptoed out of my room and into the night, in search of my possible salvation.

***

The barn was a good distance from the property. Anyone who'd not been fully awake and alert likely wouldn't have heard the motor.

The engine was set in a shiny red tractor of uncertain twentieth-century vintage.

I wasn't really surprised to see the older son of my hosts bending over the tractor's open front, staring at the popping, whirring engine with something like maternal love.

When I opened the door and came in, he jumped, and slammed the front cavity of the tractor shut, then blinked at me, in confusion.

"It is old," he said. "It was here. I painted it. I've been trying to make it work.” He swallowed, looking guilty. "It seems a shame to use animals and.... and our own sweat to till the fields, when we have this, right here. Course, there's not much gas, just a dozen cans or so I found outback, but I think it might be able to work with alcohol and there's plenty of that."

I smiled at him. "It's all right," I said, softly. The boy didn't seem to know when to be and when not to be afraid. "It's all right. I won't tell anyone. But if, please, you could take me to the next village, where I might use a link. There's this really important meeting that happened a few hours ago, and for all I know my office might be falling apart because of it."

He looked at me a long time, "My father wouldn't want me to use this. He wouldn't want me to go to the next village. We only go there if it's life or death and even then not every time."

"But you have the tractor running so well," I said, and batted my eyelashes at him, shamelessly. "You could take me there in no time at all, and be back before your father knew it."

***

Ultimately, it was his pride in his mechanical prowess, more than my meager attractions that lured him onto that road.

He spent the first half of the hour-long trip — through roads that had long since ceased being roads and were now well on the way to being absorbed by tall, sparse pine forest — telling me all about filters and batteries and who knew what else.

Even in the good old twentieth century, I'd never cared much for cars and motors. Now, they had become a bewilderment, even the terms a blur.

Then, halfway to the next village, he started asking questions: about healing drugs, rejuv, how fast you could get from there to a place halfway across the world.

I answered honestly, neither trying to lure him to our world, nor to scare him into staying in his. I told him of the wars, of religions that became fanatical cults when faced with competition coming near — at their doorstep. Of people so scared of technology that they were willing to bomb wave transmission towers to bring flyers down for a few moments, a few hours, a few days.

The tractor bounced us gently across the uneven road.

"And what do you do?" he asked.

Lights of the next village — obviously better lit, more modern, than his native one — shone in the distance through the brambly trees.

"I mean, the meeting you missed, your office.... What is it all about?"

"I work for GuideNet," I said. "The people who maintain the microwave net that guides every flyer.” I explained why flyers couldn't be driven by each user. "I'm the ... I supervise the integration of new technology. And there was something new, in the pipeline. We've bought the rights to it, but I still am not sure what it is. I only got the hype of the interoffice memos and it's supposed to revolutionize travel forever. But I've heard this before. It could be anything from a flyer with a more efficient bathroom, or an improved method of wave transmission."

He nodded gravely, his eyes worried. "My father would have been upset if he knew you worked for GuideNet. He says it's an abomination that will destroy the world. Everything that matters about the world. He says it's like a blender, and we're the peas being mashed in it."

This statement put a damper on the conversation until we got into the village.

There, under the lights, he extended his hand. "I'll go now, before anyone sees me. My name is Edward," he said. "And I'm pleased to have met you. I might.... I mean, you.... The world these days sounds fascinating. But I don't know if I'll ever leave the village. There is a lot to be said for it, you know. All the things you talk about, religious wars, fear of terrorism... we have none of that. But then, you live longer and....” He grinned. "I guess I might leave the village some day. But I'm glad the village exists. I mean, I'm glad some people have the option of living differently."

I thought of the night perfumed with flowers, the silence interrupted only by crickets and owls. In a way, I was glad too.

***

A few hours later, the alarm about the net having been sent and a fly having picked me up and taken me to my downed vehicle, I was on my way to Paris, and calling my assistant, Dewar, on the link.

"So, what's the new technology?" I asked him. "A new method to flush johns in flyers?"

But Dewar, whose holographic image smiled at me above my keyboard, shook his head, looking flushed, shocked, like a man who has taken a blow to the head and hasn't fully recovered. "No," he said. "No. Wait till you hear this. It's a teleportation device. One place to the other, with the coordinates. No net, no waves, no flyers. Instantaneous. And we have the rights.” He rustled the papers in front of him. "It's probably going to start being used by the end of the year. And, guess what? You can go anywhere, anywhere at all instantly. People will be able to live in Australia, work in New York. Or vice versa. Or.... anywhere at all. We are no longer bound by geographical coordinates. The world has become one large city."

I heard my own voice give instructions for how to proceed with the project. But in the back of my mind, I saw the village, with its secure, segregated calm.

They weren't safe anymore.

The Muses' Darling

"Everyone," Kit Marlowe proclaimed loudly, standing on the threshold of his open door, "who doesn't like boys and tobacco is a fool."

A few steps away, halfway across the sparsely furnished room, Will woke up and raised his head from the small oak table on which it had rested. Will had fallen asleep in Marlowe's room, waiting for Marlowe to return and read Will's first attempt at writing a play.

The candle Will had lit on entering the room was almost burned out. It would be near midnight.

Marlowe looked drunk. He grinned and said, "There is nothing to religion, you know. Just tricks and--"

Will rushed forward, toppling the stool on which he'd sat. He pulled his friend into the room and shut the door, before someone outside overheard words that could have them both jailed by tomorrow and executed the day after. In the England of Queen Elizabeth, protestant religion was mandatory, church services compulsory and blasphemy or vocal dissent a capital matter.

"Ah, friend Will," Kit Marlowe said and turned a dazzling smile in Will's direction, at the same time drowning Will in the vapors of expensive Spanish wine from his breath.

He reeled, and Will caught him and supported him.

"You came," Marlowe said, and hiccupped and giggled. "As you said you would, that I might look at your excellent... your excellent ... what's name? Play? Titus whatsis? Andronic... nic... nic."

Will flinched. He'd come, indeed, as Kit Marlowe had bid him, searching for instruction from Kit, the great playwright, the muses' darling, the toast of the London stage. Kit's landlady had let Will in. Will was a constant presence, an habitual petitioner of Marlowe's.

But Kit obviously had forgotten his promise to look at Titus Andronicus, the fifty mangled pages that lay where Will's head had rested.

Will supported Marlowe all the way to the inner door of the room. He put his hand on the knob, but it would not turn.

"Have you a key to this door?" he asked Marlowe.

Marlowe giggled and said, confidentially, "Know you that I studied theology, Will? At--" Hiccup. "Bloody Cambridge. And now I write plays. Bloody plays. Great work for a scholar, is it not? Doubtless my masters are astonished."

Will cursed under his breath. It was obvious he would get no answer about the key. He felt Kit's sleeves for the key the playwright must have secreted somewhere around himself.

He knew well enough that Marlowe had attended Cambridge. It was one of the many things he envied his friend and mentor.

Though they were both the sons of respectable craftsmen, Kit had attended university on a scholarship, a luxury Will could not afford.

And though they were both of an age, Kit Marlowe's plays -- Tamburlaine and Faustus and Dido -- were the talk of London, the delight of all. Meanwhile, Will, despite his earnest attempts to write for the theater, had got no nearer it than guarding the horses of theater-goers.

Even their appearances were unequal. Kit, slim and good-looking, with his russet hair caught back in a pony tail, his sculpted beard, his thin moustache, wore pearly-grey velvet doublet and pants, the sleeves slashed through to show golden silk beneath. At collar and cuffs, lace peeked.

Will, ruddy and strong, with black hair already receding at the temples, had nothing to wear but the same old, much-mended wool suit he'd brought with him from Stratford-upon-Avon, three years ago.

Yet, truly, Will didn't resent Marlowe. He was grateful that Kit was willing to help him, that Kit was willing to teach him.

Finding the key to the locked door dangling from a chain at Marlowe's neck, Will pulled the chain over Marlowe's head.

"St. Paul," Kit whispered confidentially," was a juggler, a fraud, the only educated man among the apostles, who were all rude fellows of the lowest class. He blinkered them with tricks. He--"

Will shivered at Kit's dangerous talk. Kit was mad. The small, golden key he'd got from around Kit's neck fit the keyhole on the door. Whether Kit knew it or not, he courted death. Aye, and he would win her, if he persisted.

Will turned the key in the lock and opened the door. In the dark space beyond, Will could distinguish nothing, save some shining dust twirling midair -- magical fireflies in the gloom.

What was this? What enchantment was here?

Kit shook himself, as though wakening. He stood on his own two feet, not leaning on Will, and put an arm in front of Will to prevent his entering the room. "Thank you, friend Will. Thank you, but I'll go into my room by myself.” Thus speaking, still unsteady on his feet, he skipped into his room, retrieving the golden key from the lock in passing. In a swift movement, he slammed the thick oak door in Will's face.

Will jumped back, startled. The devil take the man. The devil take Kit Marlowe, great poet or not.

In his three years in London, Will had made but two friends who could be called such. One was a former Franciscan friar who dabbled in herbs and philosophy and whom people called mad. The other was Kit Marlowe, apparently the madder of the two.

Will had waited for Kit, for a moment of attention, for his cursory reading of Will's lines and perhaps his giving Will a word of encouragement or two. Instead, he got this -- the risk of being taken in for listening to blasphemous words and a door shut in his face. Even if Kit were too drunk to read, he could have behaved more courteously.

Will picked up his manuscript.

From Marlowe's room, all the while, came a low, steady muttering, the continuous, senseless monologue of a drunk man.

Will tightened his hand around the pages of Titus Andronicus, the play he hoped would rival Marlowe's Tamburlaine. He'd talk to Marlowe tomorrow when he hoped Marlowe would have come to his senses.

A sound like that of new, strong cloth ripping under great force came from the bedroom. Its intensity was such that the only cloth that could make that sound would be the size of the world -- a winding sheet for the universe.

Will stopped, hesitated, turned to look at the locked door. Did Kit need help?

"At Sestos, Hero dwelt; Hero the fair, whom young Apollo courted for her hair," a woman's voice said. "And offered as a dower his burning throne, Where she should sit for men to gaze upon."

No. Not a woman's voice. The creature uttering those words sounded like liquid fire and fluid ice. A female it must be, yes, but a female angel, the queen of fairies, a creature of primeval force, of undying passion.

It went on speaking, while Will listened.

In such a voice had Eve, sweetly, convinced Adam to taste the fatal apple. In such a voice had the sirens called to Ulysses whilst, tied to the mast, he steered his ship past their temptations.

"Some say for her the fairest Cupid pined and looking in her face was stricken blind."

The words, beautiful enough in themselves, said in that voice, became pure ambrosia that flowed through Will's ears to his mind, and gave him a taste of heaven and immortality.

Tears of joy and confusion flowed down Will's face.

When the voice stopped talking, when the room was silent, he woke as a man who opens his eyes from a beautiful dream and knows not where he is.

Had he been awake or sleeping?

"I have had," he whispered to himself. "A most rare vision. I have had a dream -- beyond the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was."

Yet, how could Will have slept? He'd never before slept standing up and he still stood in front of Marlowe's door.

What man sleeps standing? And what man, further, holds a manuscript in his hand while he sleeps?

Still, Will must have been sleeping. For how else could these wonders be? Oh, surely he'd been asleep and that dreamed voice must be an echo of paradise lost, remaining in the heart of fallen man.

The room was quiet. Marlowe must be asleep. Will rushed out of the room, closing the door behind himself. He hurried out of the house, past the door of Marlowe's landlady, firmly closed at this late an hour.

Outside the front door lay a narrow lane, paved in beaten dirt mixed in with refuse thrown down over generations to form a dark, foul-smelling mud.

Night was advanced, but here in Shoreditch, it might have been full day. No, better than day, for in the day the inhabitants of this newest and shoddiest of London suburbs slept. At night they crept out of their dens and plied their trades.

Through the open doors of the taverns that dotted the area, the light of many candles and the smell of roasted mutton spilled.

Apprentices in large, noisy groups walked by. Whores, in bright clothing, laughed and sang.

The smell of ale cloaked the area like a fog.

Outside a tavern a man shouted loudly for one and all to come and watch the whipping of the blind bear -- till the blood runs down his hoary sides, a most entertaining and amusing spectacle.

What if Will hadn't dreamed the voice? What if what he'd heard was true? What if Marlowe had someone in there? A woman?

It was fantastical. It was impossible.

Yet, now calmer, he knew that the poetry he'd heard had the ring and sound of Marlowe's own creation.

While he walked the narrow streets of Shoreditch, five-story buildings on either side of him blocking all sight of the sky and penning smells of sweat and rancid food and old ale all around him, Will couldn't help forming a very strange idea in his mind.

What if Marlowe weren't the one who wrote Marlowe's plays? What if they were the work of some noblewoman, some female scholar that Marlowe kept in his room, writing plays for Marlowe's credit and profit?

Part of Will protested that Marlowe would never do that. Madcap and sometimes dangerous Marlowe might be, but his sins were those of the hothead, of the intemperate man. He pulled knives on men in the heat of argument, or he made devastatingly cutting statements about this one's mother and that one's wife. Or boys and tobacco.

But he'd been kind to Will and, more than anyone else in the theater, had treated Will as an equal, offered him help with his poetry and aid in storming the stage where Marlowe's words ruled supreme.

Surely he couldn't be an evil man.

And yet, wasn't it strange how Marlowe never worked at his writing? He never seemed to make an effort at anything.

His life, such as Will saw it, was one long feast. Kit caroused with artists and got drunk with nobleman.

Where did he find time for the prodigious reading, the careful editing required by his monumental historical plays that beggared the Earth and stormed the skies?

While Will read and studied and applied his every waking moment to his work and yet had trouble giving wings to his leaden prose.

Will shook his head. Baseless envy. Let it be his own baseless envy engendering these wretched thoughts.

Yet the worm of suspicion gnawed at his heart.

When he gained his lodging and in his single, small room, lay down upon his pallet and covered himself with his worn blanket, he found that sleep eluded his belabored mind.

Tossing and turning, between exhaustion and dream, well past one and shy of the other he knew that he must find what Marlowe kept in that locked room.

He must know.

In the morning, Kit Marlowe would go out, to break his fast at the Mermaid, the tavern where actors and theater people gathered.

Then, Will could look inside and bid to satisfy his curiosity.

The lock was a problem, but Will would try to conquer it with the tip of his old dagger. If he failed, then curiosity would have to rest unsatisfied. But if he managed to spring the lock and open the door, then he would for sure know whether his mentor was a monster or whether Will, himself, had become as mad as those around him.

On that thought, he fell asleep and dreamt of the liquid fire voice reciting divine poetry.

***

Morning found Will standing across from Marlowe's lodging, in the narrow space between two buildings, his dark hat pulled down over his face -- trying to meld with the surroundings and vanish.

After a short wait, he saw Marlowe come out of his lodgings, resplendent in violet velvet and brand-new lace. Marlowe turned left to the Mermaid, and Will hurried across the street.

Convincing Marlowe's landlady, who, from her open room, watched, that he had been told to wait here for the great playwright was the work of a moment.

Will stole up the stairs on winged feet, his heart beating within his chest like a hammer upon a great anvil.

In Marlowe's antechamber, the outer door closed, Will drew his dagger and knelt in front of the inner door.

He had an hour, maybe. No more.

Will should be there when Marlowe came back, since the landlady might talk. But he should be but sitting at the table, ready to drink the muses' wisdom from his teacher's lips. He should not be caught attempting to violate Marlowe's privacy.

Will inserted the dagger in the keyhole and moved it around, trying to loosen the lock. At first, it seemed his efforts were vain. Just when he was about to give up -- sweat flowing down his fast-balding head to sting his eyes -- the lock sprang and the room opened.

Will's first thought was disappointment. He could not account for the golden firefly lights he'd thought he'd seen the night before.

This room -- what he could see of it through the half-open door -- looked all too normal. A narrow bed lay beneath the lead-paned window, and dust motes danced in the shaft of morning light that revealed disarrayed blankets on the bed and dusty rushes upon the floor.

The only thing that made it Marlowe's room and not an anonymous lodging was an array of suits hanging from the far wall -- velvet and satin and silk, each in a more vivid color than the other.

Will smiled at his friend's vanity and pushed the door wholly open, to satisfy himself.

On opening the door fully, he saw to his left a bookstand. Not a desk, but a bookstand, tall and narrow and golden, with a single, thick and ancient-looking book open atop it.

Will crept into the room and read the words written in faded ink on the open page: "Spell to summon the muses."

What was this? What sorcery?

His heart pounding, his vision blurring, Will read on, a string of senseless words, whispering them to himself as he read.

At the senseless but well-sounding words, the air in front of Will shimmered as it had the night before.

Had he heard the voice of a muse, then? The voice of one of those goddesses of antiquity who could bring life and glory to any poet's words, any musician's music, any sculptor's chisel?

As he dreamed and spoke half enthralled, the air in front of him shimmered and roiled until from the maelstrom three women formed, dressed in Ancient Greek fashion.

"Hail, stranger," one of them said -- a creature with the face of an angel and golden hair flowing on either side of her smiling face. "Hail stranger, well met."

"Hail our deliverer," a dark-haired woman who stood shoulder to shoulder with the blonde said. Her tresses were braided, framing a face steady and grave.

"Hail the man who's freed us from ignoble slavery. Hail," a third Muse said. Her chestnut hair lent a soft appearance to her sad features.

"Slavery?" Will asked.

"For ten years, that man Marlowe has kept us in his thrall. He knows magic enough that he only calls us when he is protected by powerful spells inherited from his forefathers. Thus we must work for him, but we get not the payment prescribed in the ancient laws. Like slaves we toil, with no reward," the third woman said.

Will trembled. These women were so fair, their voices so harmonious. Artistically draped tunics hid bodies such as men dreamt of but seldom saw. Their high breasts, their soft curves made Will weak with desire. They sounded like angels. How could Kit have borne to keep them thus enslaved? For his base gain.

Oh, miserable wretch, who kept angels in chains.

"But you, by summoning us without baseless tricks or evil protection spells, have opened the shackles of our magical servitude," the blonde said.

"We are grateful to you, Master Will," the grave woman said.

"And for your help we'll give you reward," the brown haired one said.

The blonde advanced, flowing clothes and graceful steps, and handed Will something -- a small square of paper.

A glance at it and Will could see, written upon the paper cabalistic incantations and strange symbols.

"If you call on us with those words," the brunette said. "We'll come. Call us if you need help writing plays that inflame man's minds."

"But I thought," Will said, "that you despised helping write--"

The blonde smiled. "You're not like him, who has so long avoided paying the price of what we generously provided.” Her voice, still liquid fire, acquired a cutting edge, like a blade drawn and glinting in the sun.

Will took a step back, surprised at the change.

And saw the brunette smile and say. "Now, he will pay, sisters. Kit will pay."

And on that word, they all smiled and Will noticed for the first time that all three classical beauties had teeth as sharp and pointed as a wild animal's, ready to bite and gnaw and tear.

***

Will didn't remember returning to the antechamber, but he was there, sitting at the table, when Marlowe came in.

Were those the Muses? Had Marlowe summoned them? What was the price they spoke of?

"Will, you do not look well," Kit said, coming in the door. "You're pale as milk curd and twice as wan."

Kit closed the door behind himself, self-assured and looking, for all the world, like a new man in this light of day.

His narrow, long hand, clad in a white suede glove that Will knew cost a small fortune, came to rest on Will's shoulder. "You must take care. I hear the plague is abroad and people dying of it. Would you like something? Some wine? I have some cherry sac arrived only yesterday in a ship from Spain."

Will nodded, not knowing what he did. Should he tell Marlowe? Should he tell him what he'd done and thus prevent whatever horrible consequences would come from Will's transgression?

But if he told, what would Kit do? At best, Kit would grow violent. Will eyed, wearily, the bright handle of the expensive dagger whose sheath hung from Marlowe's belt. At worst... at worst Kit would stop all the help he'd given Will.

No more listening to and correcting Will's poetry, no more talks about the theater and its ways, no more introductions to theater owners and actors. And then there was the paper from the muses. Would it not be worth it to use magic, to have words such as Marlowe's credited to one's fame and glory?

The price might be nothing at all, compared to such poetry. But if Will spoke, he'd lose the paper.

Will couldn't bear the thought. He remained quiet.

"Ah, wait till you taste this. It could revive the dead.” On that, Kit opened the small trunk by the window, and brought out a bottle and two cups, poured bright red wine into each cup, and set one in front of Will.

"Partake of my wine," he said. "I'll be gone out of the town for a while, for a holiday. But I'll return in time, and we'll look at your play together, your magnificent Titus Andronicus.” He smiled, a kindly smile that made his small, impish face look innocent and too young. "I'll tell you, it will well outshine my Tamburlaine."

Will wanted to believe Marlowe. But what did Marlowe know of human effort and human art, if the Muses wrote for him?

The wine seemed to warm Will's frozen body, but his heart remained encased in cold and distance.

If he'd brought real danger on Marlowe, Will should warn him. Yet how could he warn him when he didn't know what the women meant by payment?

Nothing in the old writings spoke of vengeful nymphs or hungry Muses, did it? Here Will's small learning failed him, and he wished he knew.

Friar Laurence would know, he thought. The Friar knew more mythology and legends than anyone living. And he lived a few streets away, here in Shoreditch, where he used his herbal remedies to help the poor. So, Will would go to him and ask what such creatures were and what they might want for payment.

If they meant ill to Marlowe, Will would spend all his money -- all of it, that he had saved to send home to Anne and his three children -- and rent a horse to follow Marlowe and warn him of the danger.

"Where are you going today?" he asked Kit. He must know, in case he had to catch up with Kit.

Marlowe, ready to leave, cleared away the wine and cups and half pushed Will out the door ahead of him.

"Oh, to Deptford.” Kit smiled. "Just games of tables with some friends, in a boarding house -- Mistress Bull's.”

Outside, in the busy, bustling street, Kit offered Will his hand. "I'm tired. Run down from all the work and bustle of the city. A day of gaming and drinking and friendly conversation will replenish my heart and soul. You take the like remedy, friend Will, and I'll talk to you of Titus as soon as I return."Marlowe smiled and waved and thus they parted.

***

Friar Laurence's den was a long, dark room that smelled green and spicy. When Will came in, he heard scraping sounds from the back room, and the friar's voice called out, "Hello?"

"It's Will, Father."

"Ah, Will." The friar came to the middle of the room to welcome him. He was a small, smiling man so thin that his cheekbones seemed to peek -- a skeletal forewarning of death -- through his parchment-thin skin. "Come in, come in.” He wore his old habit still, now grey and sooty with ash and dirt. That he dared wear it in these times was a mark of the man he was and the respect the locals held him.

In the inner sanctum, to which Will had often been admitted, retorts bubbled and spirit lamps glowed and all the equipment of alchemical work lay on a long bench. Friar Laurence picked up some herbs and commenced chopping them.

Will sat upon a stool.

"Morrow, Will," the friar said. "The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night. Now, ‘ere the sun advance his burning eye, the day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, I must fill this osier cage of ours with baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. Oh, mickle is the precious grace that lies in plants, herbs and stones, their true qualities, for nothing so vile on the earth doth live but to the earth some special good give.” The friar picked up a bulb and showed it to Will. "Nor aught so good but strayed from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse; virtue itself turns vice being misapplied. And vice sometime by action is dignified. Within the infant rind of this weak flower poison hath residence and medicine power."

Will endured like chatter but his mind dwelt on Kit. Had Will, like the innocent flower, harbored poison to kill his friend?

No, it could not be. There must be another, simpler explanation. Could Will have dreamed it all?

He felt the square of paper within his sleeve. No. He hadn't dreamed it.

Perhaps he was going mad.

Upon the friar's drawing breath, Will said, "Father, I must ask you what you think. Did the gods of old ever exist? We have such detailed records of their existence... their help to both sides in the war at Troy, for instance. All written down by reputable historians, men of much learning."

The friar turned baleful green eyes on Will and for a moment seemed to stare through the young man. "The church," he said, as though speaking out of a dream. "Would say that they existed, but they were all demons, tempting men to perdition. Why ask you?"

"Oh," Will said, forcing his voice to lightness. "Everyone calls Kit Marlowe the Muses' darling, and I wondered if it might be true, if there were indeed such creatures and what kind of sprites they might be."

This time the friar's gaze dwelt intently indeed on Will. "Aye, and Marlowe would be fool enough to trifle with the Muses, too. I've heard of him. He is said to be a madman. Besides, it is said he is descended from Merlin himself, the heir, no doubt, of foul books. While at Cambridge, he ever signed himself Merlin, of which Marlowe is but the corruption. And there's no worse thing than dabbling in magic without sufficient knowledge and with no protection.” His gaze became softer. "But I see you're troubled. What brings this question on, Will? What makes you think on muses and on gods, aspire to supernatural not of religion?"

Will sighed.

Friar Laurence had such eyes -- green as leeks and shining, like the eyes of a cat that peeks out of the dark and spies a mouse. The friar threw some seeds down into a glass tube wherein the transparent liquid bubbled bright green. "Out with it, Will. Though you're not of the old religion and wouldn't trust me with your confession, I warrant you can trust in me."

Will sighed again and out it came -- the glimmer in the air, and the muses with their sharp, odd teeth.

When he talked of the muses saying that Marlowe would pay, Friar Laurence drew a sharp breath, like a man suddenly stricken. "There's no time to lose," he said. "You've freed the evil creatures into the ether, Will. They will find him and collect their fee, and the fee of old pagan gods is always life. They take your life to feed their strength and with that strength they grant you boons.” Thus speaking, he extinguished all flames from beneath the various tubes, sealed a few containers. "Aye, there's no time to lose. The thing to remember with them, Will, is that they ever require payment for their boons. And that payment is always life. Think you on all the sacrifices of old. They were payment for the favors of the gods."

Now Will's throat constricted. He saw in his mind the nymphs saying now they'd get their payment from Marlowe. "Thank you, Father," he said.

"Give me the paper, Will," the friar said, softly. "Give me the paper they gave you."

Will reached into his sleeve, but on touching the paper, again felt the odd reluctance he'd felt about telling Marlowe what he'd done.

He had worked at his craft so many years, and yet his words remained slow and lifeless upon the paper on which he wrote them. With this paper, he could be the best playwright of London, and his plays could make money to send home, to buy a better house for his family and honor and power for himself.

He felt the paper, but he let it go. What did the friar know? Perhaps he was wrong about the price.

"I see," the friar said. "I see.” He looked sad, like a child betrayed.

Will thought of Marlowe. He must go and save Marlowe, if Marlowe needed saving. And if not, Will must go and ascertain for himself what the price of the Muses' words was and if he wished to pay it.

Pursued by Friar Laurence's, "Wait, Will, I must...," Will ran out the door to hire a horse.

But when, having hired his horse -- a mere bag of bones, the best he could afford -- Will took the road to Deptford, he found Friar Laurence waiting at the city gates.

Riding an old, broken-down donkey and still clad in his banned habit, the friar looked like something out of the Middle Ages, a creature who went through centuries undisturbed and brought a touch of the past to the present enlightened age.

"I'll go with you," he said. "As you might need my help."

Will could not imagine why a man such as him should need the help of this decrepit friar. He also could not remember having told the friar where Marlowe had gone. But perhaps Friar Laurence had heard of it elsewhere.

***

The best horse Will's money could buy was slow. Night had fallen when Will tied his horse in front of Mistress Bull's house, a broad and sprawling habitation facing the river in Deptford.

Friar Laurence remained on his donkey, beside the horse, and made no move to dismount. His brow knit in a frown. "We came too late," he said.

Will shivered at those words, so sepulchrally pronounced, but shook his head. The friar was mad. What could he know?

Will turned his back on his travel companion and knocked at the door.

A woman, still buxom but doubtless past forty, answered.

"I must see Master Marlowe," Will said, his tiredness letting no more than those words forth.

At this, the woman gave a little cry. "Aye, Master Marlowe, poor Master Marlowe, the grave diggers have taken him already."

The world seemed to circle round Will, like the stars around the fixed Earth, as his head went faint. "Grave diggers?"

The woman produced a handkerchief from her sleeve and touched her dry eyes with it. "Aye, the poor man. So quiet, he was, and his friends, Master Frizer, and Master Skeres and Master Poley, drinking and playing tables all day. And then, over the reckoning, Master Marlowe grew enraged and pulled his dagger, and Master Frizer, defending himself, stabbed Master Marlowe through the eye and thus he died, the great playwright, the Muses' darling.” She looked worried. "And his friends all say they don't know what came over any of them to end the day thus, in fighting and sudden death."

She twisted her handkerchief in her hands still, as Will turned away.

The muses' darling.

In his mind, Will saw the muses, freed and wild, unseen, provoking the tempers of Marlowe's gaming companions and Marlowe's quick-fire rage. He could see them, with their sharp teeth and lapping tongues savoring the blood that spilled like red wine from Marlowe's pierced eye to tinge with red his violet velvet suit.

He turned his back on the woman, discourteously, and returned to the Friar. "He's paid," he said, in a voice that didn't sound like his own. "He's already paid."

"Yes," Friar Laurence said.

He didn't sound surprised. He wasn't surprised. Will's mind put together facts, sluggishly. Friar Laurence had known Marlowe was dead when they got to the house. He'd known where Marlowe had gone without asking. He'd known.

This revelation was like the sudden, sharp-toothed smile of the muses. Will felt sick. "Who are you?"

The friar opened his hands, displaying his palms in the old gesture of non-aggression. "I am who I am," he said. "I am Friar Laurence."

Will's throat felt dry. He swallowed, but could get no moisture. "But you knew all about this grief in advance. How did you know?"

Friar Laurence smiled. "There are certain studies that go with my avocation of alchemy, Will. There are more things in heaven and earth, Will, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Will felt the square of paper in his sleeve. The muses' paper.

"Aye, your gift," Friar Laurence said. "If you want to use it, Will, there are things you can do to avoid payment.” Friar Laurence's eyes looked more like a cat's eyes, spying, spying, hoping to catch something. "I could teach you those things, if you wish to know."

But Will thought of Marlowe's curses, his heretical talk, his restless search for untimely death.

Had the Muses' price been more terrible than their gift? Or had their gift, itself, made Marlowe long to die?

How would it feel to be acclaimed for words you knew were not truly yours? How would it feel to see your fame grow, lie on lie, and to know yourself small and empty beside the works the world accounted your own?

"No," Will said. "No. Of certain things, I can't know too little."

The Friar smiled, as if, somehow, Will's decision pleased him.

Will didn't care. He knew his decision was right. His guilt for Marlowe's death, Will would never forget. But he could avoid a like fate. There were prices not worth paying, not even for words like Marlowe's.

As soon as he got back to London, Will would burn the paper.

Will had rather spend his life holding horses outside the theater, than bargain with his life for words with which to conquer the stage.

William Shakespeare would become a great playwright on the strength of his own talent and work or not at all.

Stock Management

Look, detective, my name is George Drake. My parents had a sense of humor, which — I see, from your blank expression — you don't appreciate.

You stare at me, from the side of your beat-up grey desk. Your eyes peek, menacing and dark, above your reports. How can you stand to eat your greasy fish sandwich and drink that bitter, acid-smelling coffee?

You're not here to answer any questions.

True. But what good is me answering yours?

Oh, you saw the scene in that hotel as well as I did.

No, maybe you saw it better since I was busy fighting with all my might, with open mouth and flashing tooth and furled wings...

But do you remember what you saw?

You don't think so.

Your little ape-brain, working in the way your ancestors learned when they peeked out of their dark caves and saw something that defied their reason — your little ape-brain, I say, has erased all traces of what you saw.

You and your trained investigators will have collected charred bodies, and bitten bodies and bloodless bodies, and people in inexplicable comatose states.

Yet, you're treating this as a typical gangland killing.

Oh, you lean back and snicker at me, your best mocking-ape laughter, exposing those ridiculous stubby teeth of yours that are not good for chewing anything except cooked meat, and you tell me, "Try me, just try me."

Oh. I'll try you all right, because otherwise they will win and if they do—

What did you scribble on that pad? Paranoid delusions?

The paranoid part is true, I suppose. I do feel I'm being persecuted. So would you. So should you, because both of us are being chased down a blind alley — herded into death. Both of us and humanity, besides.

But the only deluded ones are you and your kind, thinking you're safe, and the night terrors banished forever, even while they control your every move.

I suppose your granny didn't tell you about dragons, or werewolves, fairies, vampires.... No, she wouldn't have.

But you must have heard about these creatures. In comic books, cheap novels, late-night movies—

I'm sure you think all those creatures are imaginary, dreamed up by your ape-ancestors, with their little ape-brains—

Evolution, yes, of course I believe in evolution. Most of your science is on target — if incomplete. It's not that evolution isn't true, just woefully narrow. Scientists, sifting through bones and digs, choose the evidence they think makes sense, ignoring all other: the human footprint on a million-year-old rock; the five-hundred-thousand-year-old Homo sapiens skeleton.

They don't fit the picture and so off they go, treated as so much white noise in the beautiful music of evolution.

Only suppose, detective, suppose, for a moment that this weren't true. Suppose that humans — not necessarily Homo sapiens — came from the stars, long ago, while nothing but a few pathetic mammals skittered about sucking dinosaur eggs. Suppose they then created Homo sapiens—

No, I don't read the Enquirer, either.

Last night's events. Ah. Last night's events. It will be hard to explain without telling you what came before.

My — uh — in your terms, the family I belong to got a summons, six months or so back. A summons to a summit.

This was important, because my family has had the ruling of human history these last two hundred years.

How, you ask? Oh, nothing illegal. Patient scouting out of opportunities, patient waiting, like a cat by a mouse hole. It is said that of all of ... the families, ours is the most patient, the most articulate. It probably doesn't hurt that we're not inclined to eat human flesh — yes, I mean that literally — and that we live long. Very long. Longer than any other sentient.

So, when we — the Drakes — got the summons, it came as an unpleasant shock. For obvious reasons, when one family assumes prominence, it tries to sweep the other ones from positions of power, to drive them to the dark never-never of half-legality and mythical existence. There are several ways to do this, among them assassination. The Lupus clan ruled the Middle Ages. The burning piles of the Inquisition were their last attempt at keeping power, but they'd lost the battle long before it came to that. They'd lost it when people started reading about Greece and Rome and rediscovering an age before the sword and blood were the mightier—

Yes, the summons came from the Lupus and, in your blessedly enlightened age — thanks to us, Drakes — it came by fax.

Our... my father... our ruler, looked it over and evaluated it. It was his opinion — and how right it was — that it was a trap, and therefore he decided to put as many of our people as he could around the location of the meeting.

I didn't know exactly where our people were — you understand — I'm the hundredth son — no, such profuse spawning isn't rare — and as such I have no need to be informed of all decisions.

In fact, it was decided I shouldn't know, just in case something went wrong and I was capture by the other side.

We had reason to suspect the Puck family might be in with the Lupus, as might the Vlads — they've long ago shed the other name that confused them with us.

Anyway, I was expendable, so I was sent to the meeting as my father's representative. The other side has trouble telling us apart and would never be able to distinguish me from my older brother, the heir, or even, maybe from my father. As I said, we age slower than the other races.

Mind if I smoke? A cigarette, I mean. Thank you. It is a comfort. My mouth still tastes foul from the flaming last night. And tell me, detective, have you never found it odd that on the Internet the term flaming was so widely used for destructive attacks? Our fingerprint, if only you could see it.

The meeting took place at the Garth-Nemes. Owned by a relative of mine. We do own most of the wealth in the world. And create most of it. That is our sustenance, wealth, and we've learned to accumulate it.

You'd never think it, to look at him, but a computer tycoon who surprised the world with his meteoric rise to success in recent years — and some Drake's hoard he's accumulated — is, of course, one of us, as are others — others you'd be shocked should I disclose it.

No, I don't intend to. No use challenging me. Not because it's such a secret, but because you wouldn't believe it anymore than you would believe anything else.

I went confidently to the meeting, knowing our people would be in the area and, besides, my father had assured me that there wasn't much the damn wolves could do to bring us down.

Our fortresses are secure, the prominent members of our race well sheltered and guarded. And we are, physically, larger than any of the werewolves, or the fairies, or even the damn vampires.

Yes, of course, that's the families I referred to. Those are their natures and their family names: Lupus, Puck, Vlad.

Although, understand, very few of them go under those names in the real world. And very few of them can be spotted, when in human form.

Certainly no one in the lobby of that expensive hotel looked other than human.

The valets and maids slid around on the high-pile white carpeting like ships across a smooth sea. And none of them — not one — smelled.

And right at the entrance, as I asked the help where the room 3F was, where I was supposed to meet the others, the lack of smell bothered me.

When one of the valets — a small, blond young man — smiled at me, I noticed he had sharp, small teeth. Not enough to deviate alarmingly from pattern human but... it scared me, made me feel uneasy.

None of them seemed to see anything wrong with me. No. I wasn't naked. I only lost my clothes when I shifted shape.

When I went into the hotel, I wore a jade-green suit. Our family wears jade-green a lot. Look at the cover of computer magazines and you'll see that he, too, wears them.

I walked down an unexceptionable corridor, to an unexceptionable hotel meeting room.

Furniture, of the massive and pseudo-Mediterranean type — dressers and chairs in pickled oak — cluttered the hallway.

The meeting room was also massive: a salon with oatmeal-colored textured-fabric walls, oatmeal-colored Berber carpeting, an oval golden-oak table, and oatmeal-upholstered arm chairs around it.

On the chairs sat, definitely not your average people — although your eye might not have spotted their strangeness.

I knew I had trouble the moment I saw them.

Unlike us — egg-spawned and therefore running in similar-looking groups — look at any computer company in the country — werewolves have a definite hierarchy that can be gauged on sight. Their rulers are always the largest of the pack.

The werewolf present... well, he stood at least six-eight, perhaps six-nine. He had sharp vulpine features, a mass of black hair that grew not only on his head but also on his arms, and across the backs of his hands. Tufts of black hair burst between the barely-joined-together front halves of his shirt. His gold watch band just showed amid the black forest.

He grinned at me, as I entered, a wolf-grin displaying his prominent canines.

Beside him, the Vlad — no one you'd know, they avoid the limelight...listen to me!  They avoid all light, of course. She was a mousy woman, with dark hair caught up in a bun, and spectacles, and she looked at me and smiled, displaying her fangs.

I didn't like the smiles, but what I liked even less was the representative of the Puck family. You'd recognize him instantly. His amiable face has gazed at you from a thousand photographs in a thousand magazine covers — his winsome smile has graced supermarket-checkout scandal sheets and serious publications dealing with policy. Particularly after his recent marital difficulties.

Oh, your eyes widen. You didn't recognize his corpse, then?

He was one of the first I flamed, but perhaps I flamed him too thoroughly. I'm amazed, though, that his disappearance hasn't been noted yet. But then, the Pucks, too, tend to be born in large pods, and perhaps one of his brothers has taken his place. Or perhaps this was one of his pod-brothers who died.

Anyway, when I saw him, I knew I was in trouble. This was not a meeting to challenge my family's supremacy. It was a meeting to inform us that we'd already lost the battle.

I started sweating and my change-reflexes attempted to take over.

I swear I'd never guessed the Pucks were in any way making a bid for power. Of their own accord, they can't organize anything, not even themselves. For most of humanity's history, the power balance has gone between our family and the Lupus, with the other two families shifting alliances as needed.

The French revolution was probably the only bid the Vlads ever made for power, and though they weren't exactly our allies, their eruption allowed us to overturn the werewolves for good and all.

They did rule the countries behind the Iron Curtain, too, but only for seventy years, a flick of a finger on the eternal dial and the long life-spans of our families.

So... I didn't suspect the Pucks of ruling ambitions, and I never recognized him for one of them. Though I suppose only the glamoury of which his kind is capable can explain his survival in power this long, particularly given the lack of organization that is also typical of his kind.

As I said, they all stood and smiled at me.

I was sweating and shaking, but I managed to say, "I am Drake. You have summoned me."

The werewolf smiled and said, "Yes. We have summoned you to give you a chance to cut a deal. As you can see we have allies in high places." He gestured towards the Puck, who smiled his slickly persuasive smile in my direction.

"Wait," I said. "Wait.” My skin had started beading with the peculiar ichor sweat that lubricated the way for the scales that would follow my transformation. My incipient stump of a tail twitched impatiently within my well-tailored pants. Stumps of wings beat at the back of my shirt, between my shoulders. They had the highest political offices. I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself, trying to avert panic, trying not to show my fear. "Wait, you can't be so sure of your position. Yes, you might have the politics, but we have business and in this dual world we live in, politics are no longer the hinge of it all. It's not like your benighted Middle Ages when taking the king meant taking it all. The chess game has changed a little, Lupus, my friend."

He laughed. It is something awful to see one of them laugh. "Oh, yes, you have the business. But do you, now? Your people might hold the high offices and rake in the money, but aren't they dependent on hundreds of humbler servants?” He smiled at the Vlad. "Drake, while your people took over the computer industry and built your vaunted Internet and started talking of taking humanity out of the planet and into space, we have been working. We, and our allies.” The Vlad smiled back, her little black eyes twinkling behind pince-nez glasses. "One by one, at our request, the Vlads have penetrated, subverted, taken over offices everywhere. They abandoned their blood banks to join forces with us. You even find them all over your computer companies. Not every office worker is a Vlad, only the influential ones. And influence and power isn't always where you expect them. They're secretaries, humble file clerks, bureaucrats. And they hold the real power.”

He grinned at me. "If you don't believe me, think why else office buildings would be forests of little cubicles, lit only by artificial light. In how many office buildings have you seen partitions blocking out daylight from the broad windows? All the work of the Vlads. They've worked in other ways, too, promoting the political power of the Pucks. The Pucks started infiltrating politics in the beginning of the twentieth century. Now they dominate all countries and most parties. We haven't changed much. The wolves remain the military might of the world. Some of us might have made inroads in politics and religion — you'll recognize us, if you think about it, by the hairiness and the disposition, but mostly we stayed in the shadow. This time we're working through our allies. And we're ready to give you an ultimatum.”

He grinned wolfishly. "We only demand a share of the stock management.” His beetling eyebrows rose and fell. "The livestock management. You are the smart ones, the clever ones, cook us up a war or a rebellion, a confusion large enough to create many corpses on which the rest of us can feed, unseen. It is a lamentable thing that my race needs human blood to survive, as do the Vlads. Oh, they have their blood banks, for everyday sustenance, but they still crave and need the living blood.” He shrugged, apologetically, huge shoulders rising and falling and causing the hair to poke out further between the over-strained halves of his checkered shirt. "And blood of live humans is in short supply in your sanitized, demographically accurate modern societies. There's only so many trips one can take to third world countries. As for the Pucks, they do not need blood, but they appreciate the turmoil and feeling that comes from wars, revolutions. Feeding on human feeling, as they do, they like the raw emotions better than the bland ones. So provide us with wars and revolutions, with sieges and devastation enough on a regular basis, so we can feed, and we'll leave your little wealth-creating empire alone. Otherwise, you've seen we have the power to crush you. We'll bring the anti-monopoly laws down on your computer megaliths, and the Vlads will sabotage you from the inside, ensuring that your released products are full of bugs. So, tell me, Drake, which will it be?"

All right, so I reacted without thinking — or without thinking it through. My panic at the realization that I'd been trapped, my paranoid fear that my own family had known just what would happen and had sent me in, as a sacrificial lamb, to give themselves the time to think through and negotiate a better deal... All those emotions caught up in me in a knot.

A little war, a little revolution...

But my family needed stable times for the computer era to continue flourishing. We needed our wealth as much as the other races needed their odd fodder.

My wings, growing to their full seven-foot span, tore though my shirt, brushing the chandelier on the ceiling. My forked tail poked through the pants at the back. The rest of my suit and my expensive white silk shirt…well, my guess is that they tore as my body expanded to ten times its normal size.

Since the mass remains the same — only more spread out — this made it possible for me to fly to the ceiling of the room and flame, left and right.

The Puck was the first one to go — an expression of extreme wounded surprise in his blue-grey eyes — engulfed in flames and burned away. I took out the Vlad, too, though I had to flame her longer to ensure she was truly dead.

The werewolf made it out of the room, though.

I was right. There was something wrong about the valets. Most of them were Pucks, I think, with a few carefully shaved Lupus thrown in. However, my people had taken over the maids and, if my people had truly decided to sacrifice me, yet they helped me fight.

The battle was nasty, though I don't know — and you probably can't remember — how nasty.

I have no idea how I escaped unharmed. I bit and clawed, and flamed. Oh, boy, did I flame. Not even the fire sprinklers could prevent my burning half the treacherous bastards who would wrest power from my family and send all races of humans into primordial violence to satisfy their animal hungers....

I woke up with you putting handcuffs on me, while I sat, dazed, on the floor of a hallway that had been charred, flooded and bloodied beyond recognition.

Do you mind if I smoke another cigarette?

Thank you.

You see, I'm not exactly afraid of your justice, detective. Your ape-peace-enforcement doesn't scare me.

I've rested long enough. When I'm done with this cigarette, I shall change form, rush out of the station and fly through the clear blue air to my family home.

Conspicuous? Nah. No one, not even yourself, will actually believe what he sees. Faced with what it has been taught is only mythological, Homo sapiens edits it out. It's a defense mechanism, like possums playing dead. Doesn't always work, but it's comforting enough.

No, I don't fear your justice.

No, what I fear is that my father, savvy creature of the world that he is, will have cut a deal...a deal involving a few disasters, a few revolutions, a few wars.

He won't realize this is just the slippery slope into a new dark age that will allow the werewolves to rage amid the humans once more and raise their bloodied muzzles to the sky in triumph.

Which is why I decided to speak frankly to you, detective. All the supernaturals are allied against the Drakes but, as I said, we're the ones who don't feed on human flesh or human suffering — we could forget that once our ancestors created you from the native life forms. We might be willing to treat you as humans, as allies, if you put aside your ape-fears and stand beside us and help us.

We could start with you, and your closest friends; quietly spread the word of what is really going on. Drag the Vlads out of the offices into the full noon-day sun. Surround your local politician with cold metal... no need for knives, just wrap them in iron chain. As for the werewolves, lock your doors at night, secure them, do not allow hairy strangers in.

The apes and the drakes, allied, we can do great things. The apes and the serpents....

So, take a sip of your coffee, detective, and tell me what are you going to do?

While Horse And Hero Fell

I was a computer nerd and she was the world's most beautiful witch.  She was in trouble bad and I had to save her.

Which did not really explain why I was crawling on my belly along the second floor of the headquarters of the Magical Legion. Nor did it explain the mackarov in my hands, the Glock in my underarm holster and the two tempered blades on ankle holders.

I was not a man of action. All right, I was – through a series of mistakes – a member of the magical legion. But my job was to sort, file and enter into the computer four hundred years' worth of records on legionaries, on operations, on supernatural outbreaks combated without ever disturbing the normal world.

I did not go out into battle, I did not throw hexes, I would not know how to weave a spell, and I had absolutely no power with which to fuel a jinx.

What I did have was the gun butt growing warm in my hands and an intimate knowledge of the layout of headquarters. It wasn't as easy as it might seem, since the thaumaturgically expanded space connected the sixteenth floor of a high-rise in Denver, the attic of a townhouse in Vienna, a warehouse in Madrid, the backroom of a restaurant in France and who knew how many other forgotten, lost or invisible spaces.

I was crawling on my belly because I knew – from diagrams and records I'd entered – that the magical sensors started at knee level and went all the way to the ceiling. They would give an alarm at my unauthorized entry. And then they would activate spells to make me into a pile of steaming cinders. But the floor couldn't be activated because that would make the joined spaces fall apart.

I wriggled down the hallway connecting to the Madrid space and felt the tiny magical jolt – like a low-wattage shock – as my body made it over the partition and each half of my body was, for a moment, in different continents. And then I was over it and crawling along a smooth cement floor.

The Madrid warehouse had been divided with the sort of partition used to make multiple cubes out of vast offices. The only light came from above, from skylights set into what looked like a corrugated tin ceiling.  In the middle was an empty area, which was set up exactly the same way as the hallway back in Denver. Sensors at ankle level and above. I crept on my belly and counted the doors set into the openings of the cube.

Three, four, five. The sixth belonged to Lyon Zaragoza, the greatest invoker in the legion. The man I needed. The man who – whether he knew it or not, was going to help me.

I took a deep breath. There would be no sensors on the door or the wall opposite. Just in case a magician woke up sleep-befogged and forgot to turn on his own personal protection before opening the door. If he were so crazy as to take a step down the hallway like that, then he would die. But there was no reason to thin the personnel more than the operations already did.

The narrow space in front of the door being safe, I pulled all of myself into it, till I was kneeling in front of the door. Most mages were paranoid enough that they had their own personal alarms in this area – ethereal eyes, roving above and watching for intruders, ears that amplified every sound, or simply a floor hex that rang of intrusion.

So it had to be done quickly. I'd dressed carefully, for quick movements, in loose black sweat pants and a black t-shirt. The elastic fabric molded to me as I jumped and, in a smooth movement, kicked the door open. I didn't hear any alarms, but then I wouldn't. The alarm would be tuned for Lyon Zaragoza's ears only.

I don't know if that's what woke him or the sound I made as I slammed the door open. But he sat up in bed, with a spring-like motion, as I entered his room. And I had my gun out, and pointed at him.

He'd made his room cozy by moving it to another time and another continent. Once through the door, I was in an all-stone cell, from which the rounded window of a medieval building opened onto endless fields and vineyards in gently rolling hills. I glanced at it and had a hard time not staring at the pastoral scene in the moonlight. There was no way in hell that was anywhere in the world in the twenty first century. Damn it, they weren't supposed to do that. I'd read – and archived – the regulations about time travel. Strictly forbidden. Almost as forbidden as making your fellow legionaries practice their magic at gun point.

A trickle of sweat formed somewhere at my hairline and drifted down my forehead. I held my gun in front of me, arms just slack enough to accommodate the kick if I had to fire it. My father, who was a wiser man than I'd ever been, had told me when I was little more than a boy never to point a gun at a man unless I intended to use it.

I didn't want to have to use it. Dead, Lyon wouldn't actually do me any good. But if I had to – if I absolutely must – I'd splash the brains in that handsome Spanish gentleman blinking confusedly at me against the stylish stone walls of his dormitory. And if that left me stranded in the Middle Ages, so be it. I couldn't live in the twenty first century and let Gwen be killed.

"Who are you?" Lyon asked, more in puzzled tiredness than in shock. "What are you doing in my room?” His dark eyes, beneath the straight black eyebrows, were staring above and to the side of me. Trying to see my magical aura with his second sight. More the fool he, as I had none.

"I'm George Martin," I said. "Legionary third class."

He frowned harder, bristling his luxuriant black moustache and glared down at my gun. "Why can't I see your magic, boy? And why are you pointing that toy at me?"

"You can't see my magic because I don't have any," I said. "I'm the archiver.” It all had to do with my foolishly answering an ad for a computer wizard, and their being so desperate for someone who actually would archive that they hadn't checked my pattern. They assumed I was powerful enough to hide it. But I wasn't about to explain it to Lyon, if he didn't know it.

He made a sound of disgust. "The paper pusher?” he asked. "Bah. And you dare wake me?"

He had some reason for his outrage, as he was a captain of the Legion. Which meant that, since the commander had died last week in the Hell gate closing, he was one of the three leaders of the legion. And I was as low a rank as one could be and still be called a Legionary.

But I was long past paying attention to rank or propriety. You have to understand, Gwen Arcana, the world's most beautiful witch, wasn't my girlfriend. She wasn't even a friend. Friendly acquaintance, perhaps, as she smiled at me as she walked past my vast, paper-choked office. And she would never expect me to rescue her. But she was... wondrous, with her thick, red hair that fell to the middle of her back, her sparkling green eyes, her quick intelligence, her musical laughter.  At twenty years old, she didn't deserve to be left to the lack of mercy of a drunken centaur band. To be honest, no one did. But if it weren't Gwen, I might not have summoned the courage to act.

"I need you," I answered Lyon's irate expression. "I need information from you, and your help."

He waved his hand. Like that – without warning, my gun vanished from my hand. Damn. Of course I anticipated that and before he could move again, I'd reached into my shoulder holster and brought out the Glock. Small and deadly like a viper, it fit into my hand, filled with a sense of viciousness. I'd gotten it from the archives where it rested as evidence of a magical crime. It was spelled to stay with the person who said certain words over it.

Lyon must have seen the spell, because he didn't even try. Instead he said, very slowly, as though speaking to a small child, "What will you get if you shoot? Do you think I don't have life protection and healing spells?"

"Silver bullets," I said. "And I know enough anatomy to know where your heart is."

"But you know then you'll be lost in eleventh century Saxony."

"Indeed. And isn't that forbidden?"

"I'm one of the three principals. Who'll punish me?"

And this was exactly what was wrong since the commander had bought his peace everlasting. "I will," I said, between clenched teeth. "I will, right now, unless you agree to do what you must to help me find Gwen Arcana and get her back."

He got out of bed, revealing that he was wearing an ankle-length night-shirt which billowed around hairy ankles and large feet. "But, my dear man, Gwen Arcana was taken by centaurs. We didn't count on them when there was that supernatural outbreak in Italy. We counted on a dragon or an out-of-control saint. Instead, it was the damn centaurs and their ancient magic. Only the commander knew that type of magic. He's dead. We haven't recruited a replacement classical magician. Until we do–"

"Stop," I yelled. He'd been edging towards me as he spoke in a soothing tone. "Stop, or I will shoot off your right hand."

"How do you know I'm right handed?"

I laughed. I couldn't help myself. "How not? I'm the archiver.” I made my voice slow and thoughtful. "I know all about you, captain Zaragoza.” I saw his minimal flinch, as he realized that I knew the reason he was in the legion. He'd been tracked down and brought to ground by the magical authorities after a streak of animating recently-deceased people who were then forced to make wills in his favor. I wondered how he'd feel about having other people know about it. "And you're going to help me bring Commander Lars Oktober back, so we can figure out how to get Gwen."

He looked at me, his dark eyes so wide open they appeared to be bulging. "You want to reanimate the commander?"

"No," I said. "I'd do quite well with calling his shade."

He grumbled something under his breath, then said, "And if we manage that, what do you think you can do? A ghost cannot wage magical war. And the girl was captured by centaurs, not ghosts."

"And you'd just leave her behind..." I said. I'd heard the discussion between Lyon Zaragoza, Maria Alsas and Pierre Grenoir, the three highest ranking captains in the Legion, and equally sharing command since the commander had died. I'd hate to say it, but though it was rumored the three of them couldn't agree that the sun rose in the east, there had been no complaints about leaving Gwen behind after the lost skirmish against the centaurs.

Lyon shrugged, and in that moment I almost let fly with the Glock. Except my being left behind in medieval Europe wouldn't help her. "You do what you have to do. Should we have risked the life of other legionaries to save her when she was as good as lost?"

"And yet," I said. "When I enter the records of past raids and past battles, time after time the legion doesn't leave one of its own behind, when it can save them. We don't. There was the journey of a detachment across the parched deserts of Africa where the natural magic of the land didn't allow the opening of magical portals. One by one they fell unconscious, victims to thirst and been dragged or carried by other legionaries scarcely less stricken than themselves, till they'd come upon a secret oasis and all been saved. And we're not afraid of dying. In 1643, in the battle against the forces of hell, the Dutch detachment died, one by one and man by man, until the last one of them directed his power outward to kill all of the enemy and died from it."

Lyon looked at me with the look a sane man might give a fool or a child. "Those are very pretty stories," he said. "But the truth is, no one joins the legion because he wants to. We are all rogues, we all have a past."

He looked at me with the sort of look that meant surely I, also, had one. I wasn't buying. I'd joined the legion because I'd been determined to get a job during the computer-job bust a few years ago. Somehow, in a way no one could explain, this had caused me to see the invisible sixteenth floor in the building. It hadn't occurred anyone I wasn't a magician until I'd had the job for two weeks.

So I stared at Lyon and said, simply, "We're not going to leave Gwen with the centaurs."

He sat back on his bed and looked at me. "It's been two hours," he said, "since she was taken. She might be dead."

"Or she might not," I said. "We don't leave her."

He blinked. "Why won't a spell take on you, Martin?" he asked.

"What are you talking about?"

"I've tried to cast a spell on you three times now. Oblivion spell, aversion spell and even a disappearance spell. And yet there you are, holding your little gun and telling me we won't leave Gwen Arcana behind. How? You have no magic."

I shrugged. "We won't leave Gwen behind," I said.

He opened his hands. "So be it," he said.

Ten minutes later, he was walking ahead of me – far enough ahead that I judged he couldn't just turn around and take my gun. He'd deactivated the spells in the hallway and walked me down it, till the floor changed to dark red tile, the far-off roof of the warehouse to a rounded brick tunnel.  "Tuscany," Lyon told me. "Maria lives here."

I must have looked blank because he added, "Sangre Dios," he said. "Are you stupid. Even if we wake the commander and he tells us what the hexes are we need to immobilize the centaurs long enough to get Gwen. Maria will understand the language, at least, even if ancient magic is not one of her specialties."

"And will she cooperate?"

He gave me an askance look. "If she can't spell you," he said. "And if I can't, I don't see why she should be able to."

***

But Maria couldn't. Or at least I'll assume so from the fact that she fell in, next to Lyon. Her incongruous pink robe was only slightly less strange than her pink, fluffy slippers. Not exactly what one expected the most powerful witch in the world to wear at night. She shuffled along, her small, peaked face showing above the pink robe with an expression like an angry bantam hen. She muttered things – mostly, I think, curses at Lyon, who gave back as good as he got. The source of her anger seemed to lie in the fact that he couldn't spell me. "Well, why can't you?" she said, at one point and, to his shrug, "All Spanish men are impotent."

"You can't either," he said and I realized part of the reason he'd insisted on her presence was that he hoped she would be able to spell me.

"I'm a woman," she said, darkly, as if that explained everything.

"We must get the commander to speak," I said. "And tell us how to get Gwen. Until you do, I'll be holding both of you at gunpoint."

This started another round of bickering, but in the middle of it several rational facts emerged: we didn't have the commander's body, so spelling near his body or ashes, or even thinking of reanimating him, was pointless.  However, we did have his portrait in the grand gallery. And Lyon said the portrait would help his concentration. "Candles," he said. "We need candles. There will be some in the larder."

***

A few minutes later, after what seemed like much too long a trudge through bits of headquarters located in several other countries, we found ourselves in the gallery, the candles lit in a complex pattern on the floor.

For a minute or so, I was accidentally in the middle of the central pattern of candles, but when Lyon started muttering incantations, I stepped out. He looked a little surprised, making me wonder whether he'd been trying something magical again. I really had no idea why it wasn't working, if he was.

And then I started wondering whether the same raid in which Gwen had been lost had, somehow, damaged Lyon's powers and that he wouldn't be able to summon Lars Oktober.

I shouldn't have worried. After a few words and half a dozen incantations, the commander appeared. He was, or rather he'd been a tall man, spare and blond, with the sort of features that speak of fjords and ships departing through ice-choked waters.

He wore his hair very short and he always dressed in black. I knew, because I had access to his file, that he'd come to the legion after his youthful enthusiasms had made him the right hand man to the dark Lord that controlled most of the magical world of Europe for seventy years – and, incidentally, by the principle of sympathetic reflection, made the Soviet Union possible. However, as I'd known him, he'd seemed like a totally different person, one always ready to fight for justice and proper treatment for his legionaries – one who'd managed to keep even the smoldering rivalry between Lyon and Maria in check.

Even now, as his form spiraled out of thin air, seeming to assemble pale hair, long face and square shoulders from the shadows and the scant light of candles, Maria and Lyon stopped their bickering.

"You dared summon me," Commander Oktober spoke. It wasn't so much a voice, as a normal thing, made of sounds. It was a whisper of dark, and intimation of shadows, the sound light would make rubbing on dark, if either of those could be heard. And yet it was his voice, down to the Eastern German accent. His pale blue eyes – not really there but looking as substantial as a reflection in a clear mirror – stared at Maria and Lyon.

I cleared my throat. "I made him summon you," I said.

He turned to me. Did I imagine that a smile creased his lips? We'd always got along. He'd told me I could stay in the legion even if I wasn't a true wizard. He'd told me I fitted in better than I thought. I hadn't understood him, but I appreciated his acceptance.

"Ah, George," he said. "And why would you interrupt my well-deserved rest?"

"Gwen Arcana was left behind in a raid on centaurs," I said.

"It was just a magical eruption," Lyon said. "We didn't know what it was."

"In Italy it's more likely to be an out-of-control saint these days," Maria put in.

"And we didn't have the knowledge to deal with centaurs," Lyon said.

"We were retreating," Maria said. "Well, not us personally, of course, but the small raiding party that we'd sent."

"And they grabbed Gwen and galloped away with her."

"And it wasn't worth it to try to rescue her," Maria said. "The whole party could have died. And if we'd sent people after her, they could have died."

Lars looked towards me, "And yet you woke me?" he said, gravely.

"A Legionary doesn't leave a Legionary behind," I said. "We're all rogues or orphans.” In my case an orphan since my mother had died when I was a child and my father just before I joined the legion. "Or both. We're all the others have. We have to stand up for each other, because no one else will."

"Well, Lyon," Commander Oktober asked.

"The young man is clearly a romantic," Lyon said.

"An armed romantic," Commander Oktober said and again the not-quite-a-smile crossed his ghostly lips. "And I'd say you'd best do as he wishes, or he will not let any of us rest. What you need," he said. "Is the apollo invocation, Maria. Done properly, to break through their magical defenses. I can't give you anything to bring them physically down, though. They are almost pure magical creatures and, to have survived these last two millennia and still be able to manifest in the flesh, amazingly strong ones. So, they will fight. I can give you the spells to pull down the magic around their hideout. The rest will have to be fought out by you with your hands and brains and wits. And you will need more people.” He looked at me. "George, I would advise you to keep the gun on Lyon and threaten to kill him, and get an assault party ready.” And, waving aside Lyon's protest. "I don't know how much they care about him, but it will give them an excuse to obey you. I will guess the men and women in the ranks won't be too happy about leaving one of them behind. And Maria, take it two hours back in time. Get her just as they pull her into their hideout. Or it will be too late."

"We can't use time travel," she said, virtuously.

"Oh, really?" Commander Oktober asked and looked first at her and then at him. I knew his room was in violation of that statute, but I wouldn't even guess at what she had done. "Right," he said. And then he started talking in what was, in effect, a foreign language, giving Maria instructions on how to deal with centaur magic.

***

The raiding party was much larger than we'd expected. Almost a hundred people had claimed a great concern for the life of Captain Zaragoza – whom I was still holding at gun point – and offered to go rescue Gwen.

Most of them opened their own portals from the bland and utilitarian inside of the part of headquarters that was located in Denver and which looked like a beige-carpet-and-blonde-wood office of the twenty first century.

I crossed through the one Maria opened, with Lyon just ahead of me.

On the other side of the portal it was night in some rural part of Italy. It was summer – the sky above velvety blue shot through with stars, the air warm and carrying with it a smell of flowers and ripening fruits.

The place where we'd come through was at the base of a small hillock. At the top of the hillock stood what looked like Roman ruins. Bits of columns and remnants of wall covered in ivy seemed incongruously animated. Light shone from the middle of them, and song in an ancient language burst forth.

We were so far from civilization that those songs, and the distant barking of a dog were the only sounds. But I could see far in the horizon the lighted ribbon of a highway stretching. From this distance it looked like a flickering strand of light crossing the darkness. Humans. Who might very well fall prey to these centaurs, since the centaurs were so strong as to manifest even now, millennia after anyone had last believed in them.

And they had Gwen, I thought, and shuddered.

I shoved the gun in the middle of Lyon's back. I'd taken the precaution of binding his hands, particularly the right one. "Forward," I said.

In face, I could sense, more than I saw, the whole group of people – who had crossed over in a big circle ringing the hillock – start to move forward, like a noose closing on the ruins.

Behind us, Maria was chanting in Latin so old that no historian or priest would recognize it. She had an instrument made from animal horns and played it with a plaintive effect, while calling on Apollo. The smell of strange herbs emanated from her general vicinity.

And we stumbled up the hill in the night, stumbling on rocks, but moving ever forward, slowly, slowly approaching the hill.

We were halfway up the hill when the singing stopped at the top.

"They know we're here," Lyon said, and tried to throw himself back against me and push us both over down the hill.

"Good," I said, and pressed the glock against the middle of his back. "We know they're there too. Your point is? Gwen is still up there and we're going to get her."

He made a sound of terror. "You don't know what they're like."

"Then it's just as well they don't know what I'm like," I said, and pushed him forward. Truth was I was scared. But if I was scared, what would Gwen be feeling? After all, the centaurs' reputation with women was still well known in my time.

We had stumbled forward another ten steps when out of the skies, in a noise like sheets unfolding, a fury of Pegasus descended. For those of you out there so little acquainted with arcane art that Pegasus remind you of cute and cuddly plush toys favored by little girls, let me assure you these Pegasus were quite different.

For one, they smelled. It was a smell of fresh kills, a smell of spilled blood and ravaged flesh. And then, they dove out of the sky, in a flurry, aiming at our men, teeth bared, hooves kicking. They were as large horses with black, glossy wings which, in the dark night, looked like barely glimpsed phantoms.

I had a second to think. Maria was far back behind us. And Lyon was in front of me. I didn't know if there was anything we could do to physically banish the Pegasus or if the Pegasus were material or not. But I knew that no one was actually in command of this mission and that was a bad thing. Commander Oktober would be disappointed in me if I let any other legionaries be hurt or captured.

Before the thought had fully run through my mind, I yelled, "Everyone duck."

There was the sound of several bodies hitting the turfed ground just in time for the Pegasus to fly over them and miss them. And then a scream, from my right.

I turned. It was Helen, a young Legionary from Ireland. A Pegasus had grabbed her by the back of her jacket and was lifting her up in the air, feet kicking, blond hair gleaming in the moonlight.

I didn't think. I aimed and fired. The Pegasus shrieked. Helen fell – fortunately only about five feet – and landed with the grace of someone who'd been through the legion's bootcamp. And then the Pegasus gave a sort of cry.

I thought that meant they would attack us again, but instead, they fell on their stricken brother. I didn't look. The sounds were as of a several hungry mouths tearing at prey. "Move," I yelled out. "Move forward, all of you."

They did. Legionaries were well trained. Legionaries obeyed.

We went twenty steps and then the rain of arrows started. The one thing I can say for the centaurs was that they were lousy shots, though perhaps that had something to do with their being drunk. The smell, even that far, was unbelievable. It stank of overheated horse slathered in liquor – that's the best way I can explain it. It was clear they'd found some wine reserve to raid.

They ran at us, firing their bows, then retreated, then ran again. From the crowd, I started hearing weapons fire. Every legionary was armed with a gun of course, a gun loaded with silver bullets. Silver, for whatever reason, was immune to magic and could kill even the most magical of creatures.

Centaurs started falling, left and right. Some ran back into the building, though.

And then a centaur emerged. He was holding Gwen in front of him. She looked like she was in a trance. "You will let us go," he shouted. He looked, to be honest like an Italian peasant, even if an Italian peasant built on two and a half times the normal scale. "And you will not follow us. Or the girl will die."

He wore only a loose red vest on his bare trunk, so it was easy enough to see his huge, muscular arm holding Gwen around the waist, while his right hand held a knife to her throat.

Our entire group stopped its advance. "He'll kill her," Lyon said. "He'll kill her."

"I don't think so," I said. My dad had taught me several things. One of them was accurate shooting. The other was that a gun could be far quicker than a knife. Of course, I'd never risked so much.

Gwen looked lovely, even then. Her eyes were wide-open, unseeing, but it seemed to me that she was looking straight at me, hoping... I didn't know what she was hoping.

I let out a quick prayer to whichever local saint might be listening. To believe the others, in Italy there was always a saint listening. And then I raised the Glock, quickly, and fired.

The centaur looked surprise. The knife clattered to the ground. And Gwen snapped awake and ran. Towards us. Towards me.

The rest of the rescuers took aim and fired at the centaurs.

Gwen hit me mid-body, her lips touched my skin, "thank you," she said.

I  barely noticed Lyon's sound of disgust.

***

Of course, when Gwen thanked me it was just for her immediate rescue, not for having assembled the rescue party and forced them to go back for her. That she found out about two weeks later, through office gossip. Which is when she asked me out for the first time.

That was six months ago, and since then we've received a note from higher up – the Council of Magic, a group of wise magicians that governs us as well as the thaumaturgic police and all the other branches of supernatural authority – dictating that I was to become commander in place of Commander Oktober. It seems that my inability to perform magic was outweighed by my organizational aptitude and by the fact that I was so stubborn that hexes and spells slid off me. And perhaps, the note said, stubbornness of that order was almost magical.

So, next week I'll be putting an advertisement out. Looking for a computer wizard with good administrative skills.

Something Worse Hereafter

Dying is easy. It's staying alive afterwards that's hard.

The dark portals open in front of you. You cross them. It's like a reverse birth, from light to pain and constriction and the darkness beyond. No escape.

You emerge into smoky darkness lit by a tremulous red glare. Fears of fire and damnation flee with all your memories of another life and leave you empty, vacant, alone.

You smell sulfur, but you lack a name for it. And your new eyes don't know how strange the landscape looks, how the buildings in the distance, looming and dark and diamantine, look like nothing you've ever seen. Like skyscrapers made of wax caught in the flame of a candle. Like architecture writhing in pain. Like maddened claws tearing at the crimson sky.

And then they slither out of the darkness. The creatures. To call them devils would sully a perfectly good word. They are worse than any bogeymen, more heinous than any monster, scarier than any nightmare the living mind can conjure.

They come with open maw, with dripping fang, with tearing claw and screaming hatred. Towards you.

In the new body you haven't even learned you have yet, you fight back. You fight back with your bare hands, your cunning, your monkey-mind, your puny being.

Only the strong survive the slashes and cuts and bites. Only the determined run past that first gauntlet. Only the merciless kill the demons and drink their life force.

Only those who can fight ever survive to enter Hell.

***

"It wasn't always like that," Len said. "It wasn't always sink or swim, survive or disappear."

Beneath our feet, the train rocked steadily on the track. It was an early-twentieth-century type train, with lots of iron work and uncomfortable leather seats. Not that we'd ever taken the seats. No. We stood in the space between two carriages, where one sort of little balcony abutted another and there was a gate between the two. The carriages inside and their seats were always full. Most often with desperate people. And you didn't want to sit amid hungry people when your own life force was full and glowing. As ours was, because we hunted every day.

Len's glowed around his head, its vaguely red shine probably an artifact of the smoky red light that glowed night and day from the sunless sky. Len's hair was blond, a pale silvery tone, cut short. For reasons that evaded me, he'd pierced his left eyebrow. A silvery stud shone there, when he took a deep drag on his cigarette and flung it, still burning, into the darkness around the rails.

"It used to be different," he said. His grey-blue eyes shone, almost as silver as his stud, and his face -- a small face with regular features and a perhaps too-sharp nose -- had a dreaming look that wasn't normal in him. "In the old days."

"How would you know?" I asked, as I reached casually into the pocket of his black one-piece suit for the cigarettes and pulled one out of his pack. He pulled another one out, himself, before I had a chance to put it back.

"I've read books," he said. And shook his head and corrected, "I used to read books. When I....” His voice trailed off.

We didn't talk about when we were alive. I'd been together with Len for years. Or perhaps millennia or eons or however one should measure time in hell. Hard to tell when no sun rose or fell and the sky was always a smoky red.

But you could count on the fingers of one hand the times we'd mentioned a previous existence. Our relationship had started when we crossed the dark portal together. He'd saved me from the first creature to attack me, and let me get my breath long enough that I'd saved him from the one trying to get him after that.

Acts of kindness are rare in hell. Acts of kindness reciprocated are even rarer. We'd been bonded by those acts -- male and female, him blond and lean and muscular, me rounded and dark haired and vaguely Mediterranean. Friends and hunt mates and lovers.

Friendship was rare here. It was that we watched for each other's back that had allowed us to survive all this time. A kindness in hell.

"You know, the Romans said it was just an arid landscape, where you wandered alone. Or your shade did. And the medieval theologians thought it was possible to escape hell by swimming on tears of pure repentance."

I snorted and sucked in a mouth full of the cigarette smoke. Everyone smoked in hell. I didn't know why, save that it cut down on the taste of sulfur in your mouth, the tang of burning flesh in your nostrils. You never saw anyone burning, but you could smell it all over hell. "And the Romans would know how? I assume the ones writing this would be pre-dead? And the theologians?"

He grinned at me, a flash of white in the surrounding darkness. "Well," he said. "You think it's always been like this? You have to survive to enter and once here you have to keep killing other creatures, and other people -- just to... stay here?"

"Probably," I said. "Though I think the train is recent. More recent than Rome. Unless hell invented trains."

He chuckled as if I'd made a joke.

And then the train pulled into what looked like a deep, dark, cavernous tunnel. And stopped. The doors slid open, in a whoosh of vapor and a smell of burning.

"Time to go," Len said as he flashed me a smile and reached for the weapon strapped to his back. It was no gun known on Earth. It was big and black and bulky, but it managed to have a serpentine and dark appearance to it, anyway. What it did was it sucked the energy -- the life -- out of the demons coming after you. It stored it until you got to your pad, your hangout, your safe place. Where you could then inject that life essence into yourself. And earn another day, another week, another month here. In hell.

***

After a while, the killing grounds become a habit. A routine. Just outside the dark portals, they extend what feels like a couple of miles -- geography here is often a matter of opinion -- through dark sulfurous country. There is the road, and you're safe on the road, as a rule. If nothing else, because there's such a constant stream of people walking down that dark pathway that the chances of anything reaching out and snatching you out of all the others are next to none. This is not the road least traveled.

But step off the road, into the caved-up dirt, the mounded mess outside, and you get surrounded by creatures very quickly. These are the cowardly ones. Not quite the type to try to go and snatch a soul at the dark portals -- where souls are known to fight desperately -- but getting them here, where the souls come already tired, sometimes wounded, bleeding life force and strength. But still vital enough from the other side that their life force will last a demon for weeks.

These are the creatures we hunt -- we, the ones who survive any time at all in hell.

When you get there, you step off the road and your partner, if you're lucky enough to have one, steps off with you. You're together, each watching the other's back, guns at the ready, scanning the landscape for the monstrous shapes that would come after you. And for human shapes, too, because some people get desperate.

***

Len and I had it down to an art. To be down there at all, when our patterns were full, meant that we enjoyed the hunt, the chase, more than anything else.

Well, at least Len did and I went along with him. There was no point arguing. And it kept us safe. There was a legend that if you stored too much life force some horrible being, some avenger would come after you to balance the scales. An invincible being. But we'd never heard of this happening to anyone we knew or even anyone our acquaintances knew directly.

It was always something that happened to a friend of a friend, a nebulous acquaintance, a fire flicker of legend around the bars and hangouts of hell.

And, as Len always said, every time we crossed the road to get to the killing fields, "Every one we get is one less. One less to attack the newcomers."

Put like that it was almost our civic duty. If there were civic duties in hell.

We jumped off the road, together, me watching his back, his watching mine. The feel of the ground underneath was like that of a freshly plowed field in summer. The memory came to me, sharp and sweet, of a plowed field and the ground warm beneath, and of me, barefoot, running through it.

I had no idea how old I'd been or when this had happened. Memories are fragmentary here. Another reason you don't talk about your living days much.

But this one came with a feeling of male hands around my waist, with the memory of a kiss. I'd have sworn it was Len. I'd have--

"Look out," Len yelled.

I'd been distracted.  The movement of the ground beneath my feet threw me and I fell on my back as a gross green thing -- all fangs and claws and purple venom -- slithered from the depths to loom over me, its little yellow eyes gloating at my helplessness, before it took a bite. Before it sucked in my life force. Before it left me, empty and discarded, like a shell, by the wayside. Gone. Dropped into oblivion.

I heard the whoosh, as Len activated his weapon, and then the thing contorted. For a moment, it looked like the gun was going to suck all of the creature -- flesh and all -- into its dark vortex. But then the creature withered and screamed. I saw the halo of life force leave it.

What remained slumped to the ground, giving me barely the time to roll away from where it thumped, making the ground tremble.

"What was that?" Len asked. "What were you thinking?"

I shrugged. "Memory," I said. "From before."

He gave me a worried gaze.

But a dark thing with too many eyes crept up on us. And I vacuumed it away.

***

Our room was small and not particularly nice. Just a room with a wooden floor, a metal bed, a sagging armchair and two French doors that served as windows, opening only to balconies too small for us to stand up in.

Oh, we had enough life force-- that was the only real currency in hell -- but we'd got this room years ago and we'd been oddly happy here. We didn't count on happiness in hell, and we were afraid of doing anything to spoil it.

So now we sat, in our narrow little room, in what looked like a nineteenth-century rooming house. It was in a section of human-style architecture and most of the buildings here were just like that -- vintage nineteenth, eighteenth, early twentieth century. For a moment I wondered if the only buildings in hell were the ghosts of buildings that had once existed on Earth. But the thought slid away from me. What could a building do to end in hell? And what had we done, Len and I?

I looked at my lover who sat on the bed, stripped to the waist, the ratty white bedspread gathered around his lower body, hiding just enough. His life force aura shone brighter than ever, brilliant and golden.

We'd shared the energy of the monsters we'd captured. Between us, it was enough for... a long time.

I was naked, standing by the window, looking down on the all-too-human cobbled street. Someone, sometime, had put in gas lights, which added their quivering, wavering yellow to the immutable shining red of the sky. "Do you wonder what brought us here?" I asked Len. I turned around.

"The train," Len said, automatically, while he reached from the bed for his underwear, which we'd dropped to the floor sometime before making love.

"Idiot," I said. "I meant here. To hell."

He gazed at me -- or rather, at my breasts -- and smiled. "There were a lot of things that could have done it," he said, and shrugged. "But I'm thinking in my case, probably concupiscence."

"Yes?"

He sighed, dropped his underwear on the floor again. "Lust," he said, and leapt out of the bed, towards me. His lips searched mine, his hands ran over my body.

Power-shots always made Len amorous.

Sometime afterwards, we lounged on the bed, together, my head on his chest, black hair against the pale skin. He stroked my hair absently with his long, thin fingers. A memory or something like a memory of his doing this while I lay on a plowed field came to me -- a memory, a dream or a piece of imagining. I didn't know which.

"What was that, back in the killing grounds?" Len asked, as if only then remembering.

I shrugged. I didn't want to explain, the ground under my feet, warm from the summer sun, the male hands -- Len's? -- on me, the feeling, the heady feeling of a beating heart, of being alive.

This flesh we had here, this new body, was of some serviceable substance. I enjoyed Len's touch and I liked our lovemaking, and his mouth on mine, and his warmth on my skin. But it wasn't the same. My mouth still tasted like sulfur and nothing made my heart beat faster.

And then there were the horrors. The things that could happen if you ran out of life force. Oh, I'd never experienced it, but I had seen others suffer it. The pain, the craving, the mindless hunger. In that state, people -- souls? -- here who would attack everything, everyone, in search of energy.

And those who were too timid, those who were too scared to kill demons or other humans, did the most degrading things for the life force to survive one day to the next. Outside our window, across the street, a big neon sign scrolled, advertising "Boys, boys, boys" and "Girls, girls, girls" and then other, darker promises. Its red light came through our window and stained our floor like blood.

"Why do we fight so hard to stay here?" I asked. "Why do we have to fight so hard to stay in hell?"

Len's hand stopped, halfway through stroking my hair. I felt the muscles of his chest move as he shrugged. "Because we're afraid. As the play said, something worse hereafter.” He paused, then spoke dreamily, like someone describing a cherished fantasy. "I mean, if we knew for sure that there was no life after this... if there were nothing... just silence and darkness and oblivion, don't you think most of us would gladly go to that rest? That most of us would gladly die again and rest in peace?” He paused. His long fingers trailed down, caressing my face with a butterfly touch. "But what if what's after this is so horrible, more horrible than anything we can imagine here? The true hell where everything is torture and there's no pause, no love, no comfort. Do you know what happens to the things we kill? To the people who vanish for lack of power?"

"No."

"Neither do I," he said, and reached for his cigarette pack, on the bedside table. He gave me a cigarette, took another one for himself, and lit them both.

I took a deep breath of the smoke and nicotine. Cleaner than the sulfur and burn in the air.

We knew hell. We knew the hurts, the fears, the monsters. We did not know what would happen if we let ourselves go. If we slid away.

I smoked, and stubbed my cigarette, and slept, with my head on Len's chest.

***

I was in a room, but it wasn't my familiar room, in hell. There was a moment of disorientation before I realized it was a room in the other world. A room in the world before -- a frilly, girly room with a pink curtain and pink, frilly bedspread. The casement window was open to soft spring breezes. The air didn't smell of sulfur and the sky outside was blue, with the spring sun shining high up, and a bird singing somewhere.

But the only person in the room sat on the edge of the frilly bed and cried. On her hand was a note. Even from here, I could recognize the angular, exact handwriting. Len's.

And I could recognize the person crying too. Myself. Myself as I'd been once -- softer and younger and somehow more vulnerable. Alive. Someone who'd never held a demon down and watched it die as its life force left it.

The two recognitions felt like a blow.

And then I remembered Len, in a uniform. He'd come through my village. His regiment had been quartered there.

The name of the country, the exact time, the war and what they were fighting or fighting for, all of it had disappeared into an oblivion of forgetfulness. But I remembered Len, his hair soft as silk under my hand. And memories of a dance, and a kiss came back to me. And the memory of the plowed fields, warm against my naked back. And Len's body, smelling of clean sweat overlaid with alcohol. And the smell of the just-harvested crop warm and earthy in the air.

I remembered his body against mine, the lovemaking of which our lovemaking in hell was a pale shadow.

And then the letter. I remembered that letter. It would have been easier -- also cleaner -- if he'd simply plunged a dagger into my heart.  But the letter. He'd told me that he was leaving. Leaving for the front. He'd been called up. And he thanked me for the good times. The good times.

I'd thought he would marry me. Those silvery eyes, that facile tongue, that body that wrapped itself around mine as if he meant to protect me from the world, from anything bad ever happening to me.

In my dream, the girl on the bed went on crying. And I thought of the heartbreak, the sheer, searing heartbreak. And I--she'd missed a period.

He'd marched to war.

Villages are unforgiving. In a city one can hide lost honor and lost hope. But the only city she knew -- the only city I knew -- was a ruin, shattered by the war. It was a den of conflicting armies, a battleground. There, death or worse than death would meet her.

And here, her life was as good as gone.

In my dream, she went down the stairs of the quiet, comfortable house, to the garden, and got the rope and tied it securely to the branch of the old peach tree, and made a noose. I remembered the rope against the neck, the sudden drop as she jumped from the branch and the frantic moment before her neck snapped -- will against instinct, a moment for regrets.

And then the portals. Len and I had arrived at the same time.

***

The window broke. I woke, startled, lost, and rolled off the bed, without looking, without thinking, screaming, "Len, wake up, damn you."

Dimly, against the blood red background of the sky, I saw creatures like men-bats -- dark creatures with vast, leathery wings and only a sketch of a face, like features seen out of a nightmare.

They looked like men or like birds, or like bats, and I was on my knees, scrabbling on the wooden floor, scooting backwards away from them, trying to escape, trying....

My mind had accelerated, and asked questions I could not answer. Who were they? Why were they here? Sometimes you could be attacked in the street or in your lodgings, but Len and I had never been. You heard of things like that, but--

One of the dark creatures reached for me, and I reached backwards looking for my gun. I found the cold metal of it with relief, and I grabbed it hard in my hand, and I swung around, catching the thing in the face.

It made a sound like a vulture screaming, and it let off a stench like a two-week-rotted corpse, but it backed away a little.

And I scooted backwards, holding onto the gun, lifting it, reaching for the trigger and the controls.

Len had wedged himself behind the bed, with his own gun. I heard a whoosh, and one of the bad guys vanished.

I scooted beside Len. "Who are they?" I yelled. "Who are they? Why have they come?"

"Nemesis," he said. "Or harpies. I've heard of this. When you kill too many of them. Too many... demons."

"Yes?" I asked.

"They come for you," he said.

And the space behind the first row of beings that had come into the room was packed -- shoulder to shoulder packed with them.

Len was sucking them into his gun, one at a time, making them implode. But more were coming in, more were taking their place.

We had no chance. No chance at all.

***

"More expensive living quarters are warded," I screamed at Len, while I activated my gun and got one of the intruders. It hissed as its life force got sucked away, but its body just disappeared, like a soap bubble.

Another one took its place. There was no difference at all.

Holding my gun, sucking at the life force of any being that got too close, I got up and started backing towards the door.

Len cackled. "Yes," he said. "But even spells and wards can't keep these things away. From what I've heard and read, they're like the balance keepers of hell. You can't be allowed to get too much life force"

"Then why did we?" I asked, as I swept another the bastards and another took its place and--

"Because then there were fewer of them," he said. "I had to fight the good fight."

I thought of the village, his promises, our whirlwind romance. "No," I said.

I scrabbled for the door behind me, ready to open it, ready to run out into the hallway beyond. Where Len could follow me or not, as he pleased.

He'd gone off to war and left me a note thanking me for the good times. He'd gone without asking, without caring what would become of me once he'd left.

"Catrina," he yelled. "Don't."

Just as he yelled it, I felt it, behind me, through the wood of the door -- claws scratching. And the sound like a bird-bat-human crying beyond.

I leaned against the door, but I'd unlocked it, and I could feel the pressure there.

There were too many of them. Too many of them all around. Some had wedged between Len and me.  I was grabbing all of them I could, but it was never enough, and more and more came.

"Catrina," Len screamed. I couldn't see him.

"Yes," I said, my voice calm and distant and no more belonging to me than the crying of that girl on the bed, long ago. So, this is how it ended. How I found out what was there, hereafter. What we'd been fighting so hard to evade.

"I'm going to reverse power on the gun," he said.

It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. I remembered, vaguely, dimly, the explanation the person -- demon? -- in the weapon shop had given us. Something about power being reversed, creating an explosion of power, igniting the life force of everything it touched. Like powder and gasoline, I remembered the thing saying.

I remembered it because at the time I'd wondered exactly what it could mean, and whether the creature talking about it had used fire and gasoline at some time, in life.

Matches and gasoline.

"Take cover," Len's voice yelled, from beyond the wall of slick, black, reptilian bodies.

I threw myself down. There was a flare.

And screams, and a smell like a charnel house, or an open coffin.

I opened my eyes, and only one creature stood in front of me. Just one, looking disoriented.

I lifted my gun and sucked it up into it. And then looked around the room, where all the rest of them had vanished. Soap bubbles in the air.

"Len."

He sat in the middle of the room, his head and shoulders against the metal of the bed. And he looked all right. No wounds, no hurts. Just the pale, muscular body I'd come to know so well, in this world and the one before.

But the silver eyes that focused on mine were strangely opaque and scared. Very scared.

"I was a stupid boy," he said. "Oh, I'm sure I could have married you," he said, as if I'd asked him a question. "But I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to ask for permission from my commanders. And I had no idea what I could do with you when I went back home."

His voice faltered, as if too full of tears or as if he were too short on breath. "My parents would have been very bewildered if I brought a foreigner home. Funny, I don't even remember what they looked like, but I remember that."

His life force, around his head, was almost gone. Pale and vague like the gas lights outside the window.

"And so I left. I was so scared.” He shrugged. "I was so stupid. First battle, next day, and I was dead. And then...."

"You've known it all along?" I asked, creeping near him, on my knees, reaching for his hand, which was cold and clammy in mine.

He nodded. And smiled, a faint smile. "There are things I forgot, but none of them were you, Catrina."

His hand reached up, weakly, and tangled in my long black hair. "None of them were you."

The silver-grey eyes were distant, lost. His life force was burning out. He'd ignited it when he'd killed the demons. Fire and gasoline.

I grabbed at his wrist. "Len, don't leave me again."

And then I realized what he was doing. This time, he hadn't left me. Oh, there were things he might have done. He could have reversed that gun power and thrown it, as a grenade, to the midst of the things, and he'd probably have survived.

Probably.

But he'd chosen to ignite his huge life force reserve, to make himself into a human bomb, so that all the creatures would be wiped out. So he could save me.

"I want you to... go on," he said, his voice faint and distant, like a breeze through trees, like the echoing steps of a retreating regiment. "I will find out, now, if there is something worse...."

I'd taken the way out once, rather than face disapproval and dark glares, and fingers pointed at me. I'd forfeited my life to save my honor.

What had I done to those I'd left behind, to the family I didn't even remember?

I'd destroyed their lives to escape.

And now Len would destroy himself for me.

***

The guns are not needed. They're a refinement. They're a way of storing power, of trading power, of giving it to someone beyond the person who harvests it.

In fact, when Len and I got them we got them on credit, on promise of giving our first harvest to the shop keeper. And we had.

But before that we had killed creatures and gotten their force.

Which means, you can give your force. To someone. And someone whose life force is burning so low that they're near oblivion, can't help but take it.

***

"Catrina," Len said. It would have been a scream, but he simply didn't have the strength.

I brought my hand down squarely over his heart. When drinking -- or giving away -- life force, contact close to the heart helped.

Len tried to dislodge my hand with his. I could feel his nails scrabbling feebly at my skin, but he was too weak to do much damage.

He probably thought I was going to kill him, to take away the very little energy force he had left. To send him faster to oblivion.

As what?

A revenge against the foolish young man in that other world I only dimly remembered?

He was my hunt mate.

"Idiot," I told him, tenderly, and, with my free hand, smoothed back his hair.

And then I willed my life force into him.

***

There is this about life force transfer. Once you start taking it -- particularly if you're weak and near the end of your reserve -- you can't stop.

I heard it time and again, in the train to the killing grounds or on the street, or in the dim, dark bars where those like us who could no longer taste anything, gathered to pretend to drink liquor and try to revive our memories of what would never return.

I'd heard how someone had started stealing a little life force off a friend, just to stabilize themselves, and found they couldn't stop, until the friend was gone, disappeared. Dead again. Gone to oblivion

No, once you start taking life force you can't stop at just a little.

***

Even after he realized I was giving him my life force, Len struggled at first. Famished for life force as he must be, with his life force almost burned to nothing, he tried to push it away.

The young man might have been foolish. The young man might have been selfish. He might have deserved hell. But my friend/lover in hell was neither foolish, nor selfish.

"It's okay," I told him, and continued pushing. Pushing the life force at him, until he couldn't help but take it.

His body absorbed my life-force, his hand grasped mine. His lips formed my name. His eyes shone with regret and fear.

And this time I wasn't wasting my life. I was giving it for someone else. I was trying to pay back, somehow, to erase the hurt to those people I'd left behind, those people I couldn't remember. The child whom I'd never given a chance to be born.

To pay back to Len for the years of love, the millennia of care, the eons of watching my back.

This time I would not leave someone else to pay for my mistakes. I'd have died without Len's help that first day. It was right I should go now, to whatever worse fate could wait me after hell. It was right I should go and let Len live after me.

For a moment we merged -- me and him. I was Len, he was me.

His mind, clear and protecting and mine -- fearful, desperate, clinging to his.

But love shone in both.

And then I started fading, dimming, mind and memory and thought going, going, going, like a tide receding on a shore.

There would be oblivion, now, I thought.

But Len struggled. He tried to shove the life force back. It wouldn't come back. It just leaked, out of both of us, into the surroundings.

For a moment, I opened my eyes and saw him there, still pale, his silvery eyes still opaque.

"Not this time," he said. "Not this time. I will not let you go and face trouble alone. I am not that foolish."

"Foolish enough," I told him, and my voice was a whisper of wind on trees. "Foolish enough. Now we'll both go.” I felt the life force seeping out of us. I was vaguely aware of creatures coming into the room, called by it.

I felt Len's hand close around mine.

***

And we're in water. Warm water. I start dog paddling, without thinking.

Len is swimming beside me, looking bewildered.

Above the sky is blue and -- on the horizon -- there's a clear white light shining brightly. Not the sun, but what the sun would be if it were supernatural.

Len raises his eyebrows at me. He lifts his hand to his mouth, tastes. "It's salty," he says.

Like tears.

We swim towards the light.

Touch

I hurt.

Pain crawled through me like a flesh-eating worm, ravaging my nerve endings, nesting on my sinews, etching acid-bright paths through my bones and shriveling my flesh.

I'd never felt pain like this. None of my bots was programmed for it.

From somewhere nearby, a voice said, "Calm. Calm. There was an accident. An...explosion."

Explosion? A pod explosion? Pods didn't explode. Through my pain, thoughts drummed, distracting me.

"Damn," I thought. "Damn bot.” But I couldn't remember programming a bot for anything like this. I couldn't remember programming pain. I wouldn't. Not since the last time Taj had killed me, on...what was that thought-world? Cullocant.

My mind retrieved the word, and brought it to me, quivering and bleeding in its mouth, like a hunting bot with freshly killed prey, wagging its tail at the pleasure of overpowering the helpless creatures, at the sweet-hot taste of blood in its mouth, at the joy of pursuit fulfilled.

With it came images, feelings, a vague, pulsing memory of Taj. That last time, Taj's body-bot had been female, and mine had been male, and we played a game of loving in a world filled with green forest and white stone castles, and... Taj had killed me, in a dungeon, with exquisite, never ending pain.

Taj. My oldest contact, my closest node-companion, brought up in a pod next to mine, in the Life Center. I reached for his mind with mine, but nothing came. Nothing. Frantically, I dialed through the spider web of connections in my brain, reaching, reaching, trying for the rest of my node: Nin and Pem and Covan. Nothing. I reached for my connections, the bots that did my bidding in endless mind-spun worlds. Nothing there, either. I remembered what it felt like when a bot lost a limb, what it felt like to try to move the limb that wasn't there. It felt like it moved, but, at the same time it was too light, too easy, too... not there.

Lonely nothing echoed back all my calls and left me isolated, adrift. Just me and no pod. Lonely.

"Kel?" the voice asked. Something pushed at my arm. "Kel? Don't die. The pod... exploded. The Center burned."

Again, the impossible words, the impossible thought. I squirmed and felt something harsh, strange beneath me. Something cold. So... Not my pod. I was out of my pod. Opening my mouth, reaching for the pap with eager tongue brought no nourishment.

I smelled something acrid and unpleasant. Burning? I'd smelled burning before, through bot-sensors, but never like this, never this acrid, horrid smell with hints of burning meat.

"Kel, open your eyes."

My eyes? How could I open my eyes without a bot?

"Your body eyes, Kel. You can. You remember how."

Did I? I struggled through the mind-path to my own eyes, fought against them. Did I know? Oh, like all the rest of humanity, in my early pod-stage, beyond the reach of conscious memory, my nervous system had been imprinted with the knowledge that had served our savage ancestors well: body-talking, body-moving, body-walking. Besides, it wasn't all that different to do it with bots. Just different neural pathways.

It seemed simple. Yet I struggled, and struggled, and felt like I was lifting an immense weight.

Slowly, painfully, my eyes opened, revealing a scant slice of view: something burning in the background, bricks and scattered debris close at hand, and closer, closer, a human face that didn't look like any bot.

Male, I thought, though it was hard to say. So pale, that it might have been a maggot that had crawled, helpless, from beneath a rock. Smudges of something like coal marred the horrible whiteness, and, above it, dark red hair that looked as if it had been half torn by the roots and half burned away.

Improbable brown eyes blinked from amid the whiteness, and blinked tears down the smudged cheeks, and impossibly grey-white lips opened and trembled, and a sob tore through them, followed by the one word, "Kel.”

My name. This... thing knew my name. I struggled to move my own lips and tongue scraping and hurting,pronouncing the words, "Who? Who are—?"

"Taj," the creature said. "I am Taj."

Taj? Taj, pale and weak-looking? And crying? I stared, with open disbelief. I'd known Taj as a tall golden female and a dark, powerful male. I'd gone diving with Taj in blue-ocean worlds, together we'd hunted in sand deserts, and together we'd killed and died, and celebrated victory and rued defeat. I'd hunted Taj, and brought him down, and watched him die.

But cry? Taj? I knew him. I knew him, damn it. I'd tasted the flavor of his soul, and gotten to know the frailty of my own. But damn it, this pale thing, with trembling lips, crying, couldn't be Taj. Wouldn't be Taj.

If I'd had the strength, I'd have spat his lie back at him. But my eyes, that I'd fought so much to open, closed down of their own weight. And all I managed was "Taj?" said in an incredulous tone, before I took the image of his trembling lips, his soft, crying eyes into the sleep that overpowered me like a bot malfunction.

***

The pain no longer dazzled across my skin, no longer sang through my nerves. Instead, it burned low, like an ill-fed fire, and I could think. I could remember.

I woke up feeling a weight over me, a light weight, as if my bot were covered with a blanket. It felt better. Warm.

The burning smell lingered, but other smells joined it. Cool smell of grass, warm smells of flowers.

Something wet and cool dabbed at my face.

I remembered waking up before. I remembered the creature-who-couldn't-be-Taj.

I opened my eyes and there he was, still pale, still unlikely, wearing something silver that looked like a blanket hastily slashed to make a hole for his head, and then just as shoddily cinched around his waist with something black and plastic-looking. He held a transparent plastic piece of something, filled with water, and dipped a bit of silver cloth into it, and dabbed at my face. Water dripped down my neck, soaked my hair, made me shiver.

He smiled, a crooked, infantile smile. "I thought I'd clean some of the worst of it away."

The worst of what? I looked at his face, where the smudges had disappeared, been washed way, leaving it looking still more juvenile, more naked.

"Who are--"

"Taj."

"You're not Taj."

He laughed, a sudden sound with no music, like the sound of blades scraping together when I'd fought Taj in a duel, in a thought-world that bristled with sudden death and easy revenge.

"I am Taj. I was thrown clear by the explosion, and crawled back. I remembered from the mind-touch where your pod was. I dug you out and dragged you away before you burned.” He held up his hands, the tips of which were scraped raw, their fingernails broken and dirty. "I didn't have tools. No bots.” His lips trembled again, and his eyes filled once more.

I wasn't ready for a fragile Taj. I sat up, and the blanket that had covered me — a silver blanket, like Taj's improvised garment — flowed down my body, to reveal.... I looked down, at the pale, scratched-up mounds on my chest. Oh. So my natural body was female. I'd never known. The educators don't tell us, of course. No use making you feel constricted to be this or that, when you can be all, feel all through the bots.

I felt hungry and something else, an odd, prickling urgency that some long-buried pathway training from infancy told me was an urge to empty my bladder. Bots didn't have bladders. And your pod takes care of that for your natural body.

I stumbled out of my blanket. Taj's eyes widened, and I felt amused. We'd pursued each other in so many different bodies, been loved by and loved so many perfect reflections of the other, and now he'd look — what? Aroused or shocked? — at my pale, scratched nudity. "I need to piss," I said. And, for some reason, atavistic training more than likely, I didn't feel like doing it in front of Taj.

Standing brought dizziness, an unaccustomed weakness of suffering flesh that had reclined too long -- reclined for most of its life, unless the pod had been designed to, sometimes, stand me upright. I wouldn't know.

I reeled and grabbed, and Taj was there, standing, supporting me. "It's hard the first time," he said. "I don't know how injured you got. You were buried in rubble, but I don't know--but I know it's hard standing up the first time."

He held my hand and steadied me with his hand on my shoulder until the world stopped spinning, until Earth quieted beneath my feet, until I drew breath calmly and didn't feel as if I were going to fall on my face.

Slowly, I pulled away from him, took a step, two. I stood facing ruins, of cement and bricks and something else that looked like black melted glass. Amid the ruins, oblong objects of the black-glass thing smoldered -- pods. From some of them human arms or legs protruded.

I shivered and looked away. On the other side, the debris was sparser, as if it had been thrown there by the explosion, and fallen on green grass and spring flowers. And farther away was a forest, thick with green trees.

I walked towards it, slowly, my feet feeling the grass beneath too strongly, like an ill-attuned bot, relaying too strong a sensation.

Avoiding the shards of stone and glass carefully, I made it to the trees, and, amid them, squatted and peed.

When I emerged from the trees, Taj was waiting, with the silver-blanket thing that had covered me, now slit for my head. I allowed him to put it over me, to cinch it at the waist with I now saw was a length of black cord.

"Is it so attractive, then?" I asked. "My body? That you can't help yourself?"

He looked down at me, puzzled. Strange for Taj to be taller than me. Male and female, in every body, we'd been the same size. But not now. Were females always shorter than males? Or was I an exception? No one had told me. Then he shook his head. "Hypothermia.” But he didn't smile.

"I'm hungry," I said. "Food?"

And Taj's face melted again, and he shook his head, and his lips trembled. "They should come to rescue us soon," he said. "They have to know the pod exploded. They will come to get us."

Maybe, but I was hungry now, with gut twisting starvation. I hadn't been this hungry since I'd been a feline-like hunting bot in a foliage-dense, hot thought-world.

I remembered seeing fruit in the trees around me. Hell, some of it ought to be edible. I led Taj by the hand to the trees, and we tasted three kinds of fruit before we found a round, firm green one which we ate.

That was the first surprise. The food tasted so much better than the virtual food eaten by bots, of the sugared pap swilled in rare moments of natural-body consciousness.

The sweet tartness of the food exploded on my tongue, while the juice ran down my chin, and the feeling and sensuous pleasure of eating filled me with a joy I hadn't known in many years.

I found myself laughing, laughing, and, looking at Taj, I saw his too-pale face brighten up with a smile I knew well from all his bots, and before you knew it, we were both laughing, laughing like children on an educational bot expedition.

In the trees around us, a sound stopped, a sound I hadn't been aware of hearing until it stopped. Bird songs. I grinned silently at Taj while I ate.

After a while, the birds sang again.

***

On the third day, I stopped hurting. I think all of that pain, that terrible torment must have just come from bruises and abraded skin. Never having felt pain before, I felt it with an impossible intensity.

Surely, I felt everything else with much more intensity than any bot had ever relayed to me. The grass smelled cool and green, and the flowers had a variety of smells, from spicy-hot to softly cloying. The trees, even, had their own smells, as did the birds that nestled upon them.

The smell of rotting flesh became unbearable.

Both Taj and I had been well taught. We knew there were better reasons than cultural or religious imperatives to bury your dead. And we did. With pieces scavenged from masonry and melted fragments of pods, we dug a grave in the soft earth, at the edge of the forest.

Shuddering with horror, we returned to what had been our life center, and collected bodies or — mostly — body parts, and carried them to the hole, to bury.

In a war-torn thought-world, I'd once walked across a battlefield for three days, and smelled the stench of rotting meat, and seen corpses balloon with the gases of decomposition.

But I'd never done it in reality, and I wasn't ready for the true smell, the true horror of it. I buried Nin and Pem and Covan, not knowing who they were, nor which of these anonymous parts belonged to them.

Crying, as much with disgust as with pain, I buried everyone I'd ever known. These pathetic fragments of flesh would never again hunt the thought-worlds, or carry out games of love and joy in rich mythic landscapes.

Afterwards, while the sun was setting in front of us, in a splendor of red and orange that was nothing like what the thought-worlds had allowed me, Taj and I filled the common grave that hid our friends, and the possible contagion of their death.

When the grave was full, and tramped back and forth by our bare feet to prevent scavengers from smelling the corpses and undoing our work, I stood in front of Taj, crying.

Crying. I, who had died a thousand deaths without a tear.

Taj reached for me, held me to him. He cried too, and I felt his sobs through my blanket, and his. "I know," he said.

But he couldn't know. His touch — his hands on my bare arms, his lips briefly on my forehead — felt like nothing the bots had prepared me for. And joy sang along my veins.

We'd made love in a thousand different ways, but his one touch undid my reserves, and I would have done anything, given him anything, for more of it.

"Come," he said. "Come to the river, where I first got water. We'll get washed."

He walked to the river. After a while, I followed.

***

In the next few days, we explored the forest, all around us, all the way to the river and found only small animals, so tame that they didn't run from us.

We fished in the river, with improvised tackle, and got fish and roasted them over an open fire. We gathered fruit.

But always, always, we returned to the site where the life center had been. We slept there, at night, fearful that a rescue team would come and not find us there. During the day we walked and talked, and fished, and harvested, always, always with an eye to the sky, for the flycar that would come to rescue us.

But no one came. For months, and months, no one came.

Gradually, the skies darkened and eventually snow fell, and we lived from our stored fruit, inside a crude hut put together from the scavenged remains of the Life Center.

And we saw nothing. Not even the caretaker droids that were supposed to look after us and keep us fed, in the life center. Perhaps they, too, had perished in the explosion.

***

"Maybe we were the last ones," Taj said. "Maybe this Life Center was the last one. Maybe....” He let the sentence hang, unfinished. We were outside our hut, in the warming spring weather, picking wild berries from bushes that had sprung all over.

"No, don't be stupid," I said. I looked around the bush at him, and shifted my tiptoes on the ground, while I sat on my heels. He looked anything but stupid. His dark brown-red hair had grown back as had his beard, which obscured his face and most of his neck. His skin was darker than it had been just a year — it must be almost a year — ago, and he looked healthy and strong, and offensively male. "The life centers were built because there were so many humans, and it was easier to look after them this way, and keep the environment pristine. The droids only got what was needed to keep humans alive. Nothing was wasted. But there were too many of them. Of us. Of humans. That was the whole point. We didn't see more than... what? A hundred pods?"

He shook his head. "Yes, but, Kel, that was what? Three hundred years ago? Since then reproduction has been dictated by planners, not individuals. The human race has been husbanded…could have happened."

His eyes looked infinitely sad.

"You mean we might be the only humans?"

He nodded.

I never knew how it happened, but suddenly Taj stood by me, lending me his hand, helping me stand.

We'd touched very little in all this time. No more than necessary. But now he was touching me, touching me of his own volition, and his hands felt the planes of my face, caressed my shoulders, found the pathways of my arms and legs, the unknown territory of my middle.

Oh, we'd coupled so many times before, and in so many different ways, but nothing compared to this true-body touching, this entwining of flesh and blood and all too-frail skin.

Where before nothing but the most exquisite pain, the greatest pleasure had done to satisfy us, now the touching was almost too much, muddling my brain, confusing my thoughts. Taj filled my senses.

It was all I needed.

Afterwards, we lay entwined, each in the other's sweaty arms. His head rested on my chest, my back on the sweet grass and I thought what fools our ancestors had been, to agree to be podded.

***

That's when we heard the sound of the flycars overhead.

They landed, dark and oval, and somehow strange, like eggs laid by some alien bird, near our hut, a few yards from us.

We sat up and watched, bewildered.

The doors opened. The droids came out — glass-smooth, and man-like in their shape, things of beauty to my newfound eyes.

They poked around, examined the tomb. They hadn't noticed us, yet.

Taj stirred, stood.

"Be still, love," I said, in a whisper. "Let them leave. You and I can have all this world for ourselves."

He looked at me, as if from very far off, so far off that he had trouble making out my features from that distance.

Then he turned, and ran, still naked.

The droids noticed him, when he got close, and I heard him say something, in a great hurry, of having survived the explosion, of being so glad he'd been rescued.

I got up, I backed away into the forest. I climbed a tree, and sat there, on a branch.

They didn't look for me. When Taj pointed to where I'd been, they came just to the edge of the forest.

They said things, in their soothing droid voices, about Taj having hallucinated me.

They weren't equipped, you see, to trace scent or even sight of humans. They'd been designed to look after quiescent humans, not to hunt runaway ones.

I watched their flycars fly into the sky, gilded by the setting sun. Taj left aboard the first one.

And I'll sit here, till night falls, just in case. Then I'll eat some berries, and I'll set out, on foot.

There's no reason to remain near the ruins, anymore. Tomorrow, I'll walk through the forest, see what's on the other side.

Someone, somewhere, must need a human touch.

For Whose Dear Sake

I remember it well, the night I met him and the darkened tavern, small and close-confined by twentieth century standards.

I didn't think it was confined then, of course. Nay, or dark. Why, there were tapers aplenty on the twelve long pine tables, casting their flickering light upon drunkards and bawds and the sweating, hard-working serving wenches.

The tapers must have been made from old bacon grease. The lingering smell of their burning mixed with the scent of scorched mutton fat from the carcass roasting over the broad hearth at the back. Through it all, the smell of sweaty bodies and the reek of old, spilled ale wove, like a familiar thread.

I remember all this now. Back then I didn't think about it. Unwashed bodies were the norm, aye, and bacon tapers too.

Besides, I was too excited, rushed, feverish, almost drunk with my own triumph and the unaccustomed setting.

I was a Cambridge divinity student, and I'd come up to London without permission from my masters. Having finished my English translation of Ovid's Amores, I had received enough gold with it to buy a second-hand suit — dark velvet slashed through at the sleeves to show the flame-colored silk commonly called harlot leg, all of it ornamented with more golden buttons at sleeve and down the middle of the doublet, as I'd never seen together in one place before. In a fit of daring, I'd allowed a friend, Tom Watson who lived in London and wrote plays for the theater, to dye my mouse-brown hair to a deep auburn, with ill-smelling henna.

And I had enough money left to buy my supper at a tavern, though a dubious, low-class tavern where writers and actors gathered and such that my pious father — a cobbler and a lay deacon in Canterbury cathedral — would have shuddered to think of my frequenting.

Which was what made my pulse race and my own daring sing like sweet music upon my ears and dazzle, like intoxicating wine, within my veins.

I sat at that tavern table that night and wished for something to happen, something.

It did.

On my second cup of ale, my second bite of stale bread that yet tasted better than anything I could buy in Cambridge buttery, I felt a hand on my shoulder, heard a deep, masculine voice behind me. "Master.... Marlowe? We have common friends."

I turned and beheld the most unusual man I would ever meet in the centuries of life that waited ahead of my unsuspecting self.

He had an elongated face, almost Italian, I'd say.

More Italian yet was the feeling of secretiveness about it, the feeling of closed knowledge that made my pulse pound. I thought of what I'd heard of the city-states of Italy, their murderous feuds, their efficacious secret poisons, their instructed, enlightened leaders who murdered with a smile and stole with a kind word and always, always ended up as the victors. His long face, with its heavy-lidded eyes, reminded me of an inscrutable saint glancing out of a darkened portrait.

He wore a beard, close-trimmed to a point, and a short moustache. Beneath it, his skin was an odd tone of ivory, as if it had been designed to be swarthy but its owner had kept out of the sun for too long. Not to mean he looked unhealthy. His dark-brown eyes shone with enough vitality to shame the most athletic dancer, the most exalted athlete.

I realized I'd been staring into those eyes, and that my pulse had quickened and my face flushed.

The stranger smiled at me, without opening his broad, sensuous lips. "May I sit down?" he asked, looking significantly at the seat next to mine.

"Yes. Yes," I answered, my voice breaking as it hadn't in years.

"Thank you.” He sat down with easy elegance, which made the gesture seem like he'd accepted a throne instead of a poor tavern bench.

He tapped the thick white ceramic mug in front of me and wrinkled his nose.

"Thin ale, master Marlowe?" he asked.

I nodded, not knowing what else to do. Thin the ale might be, but it had more alcohol than anything I'd ever tasted at Cambridge or in the poor, Puritan household to which I'd been born. Enough alcohol to turn my head.

My new friend lifted a hand and, as if he'd shouted or thrown gold, a wench appeared, smiling at him.

"Get my friend some cherris sack," the stranger said. "And make it good."

"Sir," I said, the title coming easily to my tongue. He had all the demeanor of gentility about him. "Sir, it's not needed."

I'd never tasted cherris sack — that fine Spanish wine — before, nor did I know how my brain would react to it.

Already, the thin ale and this man's presence seemed to be acting together to intoxicate me. He smelled of sandalwood, I thought. As he turned to look at me, the black curls that fell to his shoulders moved, revealing a very small golden ring on his left ear lobe.

"You will like it," he said, and smiled again, his closed-lipped smile that seemed to hint at secrets and vast, unfathomable knowledge. "I promise you that."

The wench brought a pewter cup filled with red liquid, and he pushed the cup in front of me. "Try it," he said.

You'd think him the serpent tempting Eve. Yet, when I tasted the cup no lightening bolts flew from heaven, no enraged God expelled me from paradise. Not then. Not yet.

The wine filled my mouth with a taste similar to honey but full of alcohol like mead, and I drank it down in a surprised gulp, then another.

My companion smiled. "I told you you'd like it," he said.

I took another sip. My head swam. "You said we had common acquaintances," I said.

He grinned, his close-lipped grin. "A master Watson told me about you. He said you're a most pious divinity student.” An unholy amusement danced in his deep, dark eyes.

The thought that he was laughing at me, at my chosen course of study, filled me with a need to explain. "I'm a scholarship boy," I explained. "My only chance for attending university was to promise to take orders. It is a condition of scholarship."

He was quiet then, and looked at me for a long time, his dark, dark eyes unreadable. "Really?" he asked at last. "Really? And had you not gone to University, what would you have become, Master Marlowe?"

"A cobbler," the word escaped my lips. I would have called it back if I could. I wanted anything, but for this stranger to look at me with the scorn that better-born, students reserved for my origins. I felt my blood flame into my cheeks, but my mouth would not be stopped. "A cobbler like my sire."

He laughed then, throwing his head back. "A cobbler? No. I cannot see you as a cobbler."

He raised his hand again and commanded the wench to refill my empty cup.

The evening slid into a confusion of strong, sweet wine on my tongue, and the stranger's arm encircling my back, the stranger's hand supporting me.

I don't remember leaving the tavern. I don't remember paying.

But I remember the dark interior of a carriage, trundling at full speed on a rutty road, and my new friend sitting by my side on a narrow bench, speaking of Dante and Machiavelli and the lights of the Italian renaissance that shone upon the world in such a dazzling way that they eclipsed the old incense-scented mustiness of the church.

I made what answers I could. I remember that too. I tried to speak knowledgeably, though my head was by then whirling around, with a mingle of the wine I'd drunk, and this man's nearness.

The latter puzzled me, as no man had ever made my pulse race. Nay, no woman either. Raised carefully by a father who wished me in the church, I'd grown up in a world of intellect, quite unused to the pleasures of the flesh.

But something to his smell of sandalwood, something to his soft, glossy dark curls, the velvet of his jacket, even his dark beard intoxicated me. Now and then, when he leaned close to talk to me his hair or beard tickled my own cheek where beard was only starting to appear and made my mind tread upon unwonted pathways and my body tense with an energy I knew not how to release.

Yet he seemed impressed by my barely rational responses. He leaned close and whispered in my ear, "Ah, we are kindred minds, Master Marlowe."

His breath tickled my ear, warm and intimate. I looked out of the corner of my eye, and saw his great dark eyes very close to mine.

For a moment I thought he would kiss me. My vision blurred, while my mind argued, in confusion, that carnal knowledge of another man was illegal, that it could bring death on both of us. Yet, my body desired it oh, so very much.

But he withdrew and presently the carriage stopped. "I believe this is where we part, Master Marlowe."

I felt tears prickle, hot behind my eyes. The wine I'd drunk, the sensitivity of every sense brought on by the man's proximity, filled me with maudlin emotion. "Kit," I whispered. "Call me Kit.” And then, with eager, unstoppable passion, "When will I see you again? I don't even know your name."

He laughed again, his laughter metallic and cold, like a dagger glinting in the moonlight, and yet as coldly sensuous, as coiling and unavoidable as a snake's passion.

"You will see me again, and call me Will. It's as good a name as any," he said. He took my wrist, then, and traced a circle around it with his index finger, slowly.

It shouldn't have been a sensuous gesture but it was. My body responded to it as if he'd embraced me, entire, as if he'd claimed me for his own.

I heard a soft mewl escape my lips, and saw in his eyes an amused sense of mastery. He stopped, with his index finger over my wrist. "You will see me again."

He lifted my wrist to his lips in a sudden movement, and his lips touched my skin. They were very cold, and yet acted upon my body like flame.

My mouth fell open, my jaw went slack, and my eyes half-shut with the pleasure of that small touch.

The mischievous dark eyes smiled at me over the slightly-too-aquiline nose.

A quick pain surprised me, like twin lancets piercing my wrist, but before I had time to wonder at it, pleasure surged through me such as I'd never felt.

My spine arched, my mouth opened in inarticulate scream, breath caught in my chest, sweat sprang at once from all my pores. My mind stopped.

When I became aware of my surroundings again, the stranger had let go of my wrist and watched me with amused, benevolent eyes. A high flush tinted his cheeks.

"I'm sorry," I said, thinking only I'd disgraced myself with my reaction to his caress.

He smiled. "Nothing to be sorry for, little one.” His hand caressed my newly dyed hair. "Nothing at all."

And like that, the door to the carriage was opened by a coachman and I stepped down on shaky legs. The door closed, the carriage started again, and I was left standing, dazzled and weak, beside a high wall.

In the state I was in, I'd have been neither surprised nor shocked had my seducer let me out in the middle of unpopulated land, as easy prey for highwaymen. But he'd left me beside the gates of Cambridge, and I hastened through them and into my lodgings.

***

I woke up the next morning with my head pounding, my throat dry and my roommate, Marcus Helkins, lecturing me on the sins of wine and loose women.

For a moment I almost laughed and threw his own folly in his face, for I remembered well that no woman had been involved in my sins.

But I was fortunately too tired and too sore to speak.

I'd slept in my shirt and, lumbering up, I slipped into the drab puce wool suit that I wore to classes in Cambridge.

Remembering the night past, I thought what a fool I'd been.

No doubt, my handsome Italian stranger had emptied my purse in the carriage. I could find no other reason for his kindness to me.

But when I checked the purse, I found it overflowing with coin. That and the two, small scabs on my wrist were the only reminders of my night of madness.

And yet already, less than one day past, I longed to see him again.

***

I did not see him for three months. Three months, slowly counted with agonizing monotony.

And then, late at night, while returning from a solitary walk around Cambridge, dreaming of dark strangers and their profane love, I heard a carriage behind me.

Instinctively, with the training of a plebeian boy, I stepped out of the way and knit myself with the wall to allow the wealthy burgher or mighty nobleman to drive by, unmindful of my presence.

But the carriage stopped right beside me. It was a strange carriage, unmarked, with no crest on the door or the dark curtains that veiled its windows. The coachman too was dark and turned his face away from me, as I looked up at him.

The door to the carriage opened. "Kit," a voice all velvet and sandalwood called from the shadows within.

I leapt up on the step. I rushed inside the carriage.

He was inside and received me with open arms, enveloping me in a tight embrace.

That night I knew sins that I lacked names for — all of them pleasing, all of them sweet, all making my body sing and my heart rejoice.

I don't know how many hours I remained in that carriage, nor how far we drove through what must have been country roads.

The carriage jolted and bounced beneath. I knew not where we drove. And yet, I'd never felt so safe and never so happy, naked and innocent in my lover's arms.

After a long time, I sat beside him, naked, his arms still wrapped around me. He wasn't naked and the feel of his velvet sleeves around my naked torso made me shiver — a hot shiver like a feverish seizure.

"Listen," he said. "Listen. You must listen. Last time I took what I shouldn't have, without your permission or your consent. But now I must ask. I am a man like you, Kit, or I was once. I was born long ago--"

"In Italy," I whispered dreamily.

He chuckled and tightened his arms around my body. "No Kit. When I was born Italy didn't exist. Nay, nor Rome. Not even Egypt had grown from a cow-herder outpost to her fabled glory. I was born in a land whose name has been forgotten, as a fisherman's son."

I looked at him, not knowing which should shock me more, that this sophisticated, obviously refined creature was a fisherman's son, or that he claimed to have lived since before Rome.

"How I lived to the age of twenty two matters not. But at twenty two I met a man — he was powerful and rich and worldly, and he told me if I let him drink my blood and feed on me as men feed on meat, he would make it so I'd live forever."

I drew breath and it hurt to breathe. "Forever? But how...."

"Some say we are the spawn of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, that she had sons with that power and the capacity to make the sons of Eve like them. But I don't know. I've lived long enough to doubt Lilith and Eve, and even...it matters not. Whatever we are, we are immortal, provided only we forsake human food and human sun, and feed on the blood of mortals.” His hand, soft and gentle, caressed my hair. "Only uncover your neck and let me feed on the fountain of life there.” His long fingertip trembled, poised over the large vein on the side of my neck. "And after a while I'll perform the ritual that will make you one of us. Then shall we live together for all eternity."

Eternity, and his touch. How could I say no?

My auburn hair had got loose from my pony tail. I reached back and pulled it away from my neck.

"Take what you need," I said.

How can I describe it -- the sweet, impossible pleasure of his teeth on my neck, his tongue lapping at my blood?

Mere physical sensation could not contain it, nor could words encompass it.

It felt as though time had stopped and the world shrank and upon it, enthroned, the two of us reigned as kings — no, as immortal gods.

***

Thus started the sweet years, the happy years, when we lived for each other and thus, twined, seemed to be united for all eternity.

He didn't perform the rites of immortality upon me, but it signified little. I was in no hurry. He said he loved the life in me.

He would always arrive unexpectedly and always at night. When he arrived, whenever and however, I would always be happy and grateful to see him. Even if only a few days had passed since I'd last seen him, it always felt like much too long.

I missed more classes than I should have and, with him, I visited Paris and Venice. He taught me their tongues, also, and Spanish, in long, laughing sessions in his well-appointed rooms in London.

When my graduation came up and I was told that I would not be allowed to receive my Masters degree without taking orders, he told me he would take care of it, and — behold — a letter arrived to the college, from the Queen herself, demanding that I be allowed to graduate with no requirements.

Done with my studies, I lived in London, in Will's rooms, like a drunkard locked in a wine cellar.

The more I had of him the less my satiety and the more enslaved I became.

I loved all about him: his touch, his looks, his soft lips and the fangs beneath.

I can't even tell when he began to be tired of me. I can only say that his eyes stopped shining softly when he looked at me, that his lips no longer sought mine at every moment. Rather he kissed me as a man who, absent, performs an obligation while his mind wanders.

I was then twenty-two and had lost the soft innocence of youth, or even that counterfeit of innocence which youth gives.

***

The boy was young. Probably sixteen or seventeen, thickset, straw-blond, with large, bulging blue eyes. He looked like — and probably was — a farm boy come to London to look for his fortune.

Will had got him stumblingly drunk before he brought him up the stairs to our lodging.

I was in the other room, waiting for Will who'd gone out carousing, visiting taverns, watching bear baiting or cock fighting or some other blood sport. I'd attempted to cool my blood with reading, yet the dullest sermon couldn't stop the pounding in my veins and my longing for him.

I heard the sounds from the bedroom and — aghast — came upon them on the bed, together, locked in embrace, Will's lips on the farm boy's neck.

It is customary, I believe, for mortal lovers of mortal men in such situations to fetch a dagger and kill both offenders. But my lover was not mortal, nor was I his equal.

As rage thundered to my brain so did a strange, resigned submission. He preferred someone else to me, and I should rejoice in his choice for it was for my master's pleasure.

Master.

This was the first time the word crossed my mind and, searingly aware of his power for the first time, I stood in that room in with its brocade-curtained bed, its walls hung with ancient portraits, its every space crammed with priceless antiques.

I stood, and watched Will make love to another, and felt, with shuddering disgust, the completeness of my servitude.

For even then I wanted him, even then I would have done all to have his lips at my neck, his fangs in my veins.

Now and then he looked at me and smiled, an assured smile, as though he knew.

Of course he knew.

Afterwards, when they lay, sweaty and sodden upon the bed, he'd gestured for me, "Kit," he said. "Bring Richard some wine."

And I'd fetched the wine, obediently, for this creature who'd stolen my lover, already knowing that this was not the only one or the last.

Though my heart broke at the thought of leaving Will, I knew I must.

***

The next morning, I left with my meager possessions, sold the few jewels Will had given me during the happy times, and arranged to share rooms in Southwark — the vast, new slums of London — with a starving playwright named Tom Kyd.

And, by necessity and economic imperative, soon I was writing plays like Kyd's. Or not like Kyd's, for mine contained the cold-blooded cruelty I'd tasted at a remove, the swiftness of change, the treacherousness of emotion, all played out upon a stage where God was blind, and no moral right prevailed.

Strangely, my blank verse fell upon London ears like music, and my plays and poems were sought and praised by all. I was proclaimed the Muses' darling, the greatest poet of the age.

And through it all, even when I stood in a tavern receiving the congratulations of the better minds, my body pounded with need, with remembered craving for those fangs that pierced my heart, those hands that could touch my body with the knowledge of centuries, the soft black curls tickling my face, the immense, all knowing, secretive eyes in which I could drown.

Soon it was noticed that in taverns or brothels, Kit Marlowe remained alone, and people whispered about me and sneered behind their hands at this playwright who obviously preferred painted boys to women.

Not that Will had abandoned me completely. Like a child with a no-longer-prized toy that yet he can't allow to go to another child, he would come and see me, once every few months. Just enough to rekindle the fires, just enough to prove to himself that he could set my soul aflame with a single touch.

And yet I wrote, and in the writing I found a palliative and consolation for Will's absence and sometimes when he visited I didn't offer myself quite so eagerly, didn't seek his attentions with the desperate hunger that he expected — or at least I disguised that hunger when I felt it.

It was one of those days, standing in my small room, looking out my unshuttered window at the pouring rain, that he said, "I think I will write plays, Kit."

I stared at him, uncomprehending.

"If they can like of your rough constructions, they'll love mine," he said, and grinned. His fangs glinted by the moonlight.

Kyd was away for the night, I didn't know where. Will always arranged for Kyd to be gone when he visited, though I knew not how he did it, since pious, credulous Kyd would not know something like Will. His bed, empty in the moonlight, made me think of how famous, how big Kyd had been — how his Spanish Tragedy had been thought the best theater could achieve, until my play — Tamburlaine — knocked his castle into ashes.

Will laughed, softly. "If your plays can bring you such pleasure, I must try them. It ought to be easy for me."

Easy for him and soon, soon, my supplanted plays would be forgotten.

"Perhaps I owe it to the name," Will said. And looked at my blank face, with a small, sly grin. "I met Will Shakespeare while you were at Cambridge. Just before I met you. An aspiring playwright, newly come to London, having left wife and children in Stratford-upon-Avon. I seduced him. It wasn't hard. But he broke too easily. He submitted too completely. One day, by accident, I drank too much. I drank too deep. He died in my arms.” Will grinned at me. "I took his name, and perhaps I should ensure his name is indeed on playbills."

He smiled at me, but all I could see was that other Will Shakespeare, the real one, dead so long ago and no one knowing, dead of those glittering fangs, those soft lips, that lapping tongue.

I envied him most heartily.

***

Will did write plays, of course. He was not a man to threaten in vain. And he knew how much pain he could extract from my defeat, and how I'd berate myself in silence for my loss.

But he didn't know what force remained in me.

Nor did I.

His taking over the stage and taking from me the one consolation for my dreary existence, woke me as from a long dream into a naked, relentless nightmare.

I could no longer go back home. My taint was obvious, or so it felt. I had been marked by the creature of the night. My father would sense it in me, hear it in my every word.

I could not take orders. That too had been stolen by my immortal lover.

As for the poetry that had so relieved my fears and my boredom and allowed me enough to live on, that too was now gone, sneered at, disdained by theater owners when compared to Will Shakespeare's immortal poetry, his fiery words that compassed all stations in life, all times, with the same graceful ease.

Oh, sometimes he got confused. It's too easy, as I've found, to get confused when you've lived those many centuries. Cities and names ran together in his plays, centuries overlapped.

But, thought by thought, his characters ran true, and word per word his words glittered while mine fell to earth like dull pebbles.

Desperate, insane with rage and jealousy and envy, I plunged into a world of intrigue, a world of espionage. I spied on the Catholics for the Queen, on the Queen for the Catholics, on the Scots for the Spaniards and on the Spaniards for the Scots.

I need not say more. It is in all the history books; look it up. The miserable years, the arrests, the assassinations, the plots. All with which I tainted my soul and in which I wallowed like a pig in the mud that yet cools not its hide.

Late at night, in taverns, I started speaking. I hardly know all I said, but it was enough, should a government informer have taken it down, to convict me many times over of many crimes.

Will didn't come to see me after six months. Nor a year. Nor a year and a half.

Once, at a theater, I glimpsed him sitting beside a fair, delicate youth in expensive velvet, and smiling and laughing upon him. But when I climbed up the steps to those seats, they were not there. He'd spotted me and left.

I drank more and more and, maddened by wine and loneliness, I started talking of the things Will had told me — the drinking of blood, the civilizations that men knew nothing of and that extended far beyond the church-approved six thousand years Earth was supposed to have existed.

My madness had its effect. He came for me.

In an alley, late at night, while I staggered home, full of wine and dizzy with my own pain, I found strong arms around me. "You shouldn't have talked, Kit," he said.

I felt his lips at my neck, soft fangs piercing my skin, and I thought to die of bliss and to faint of terror.

I knew, oh, I knew full well that he would drain me empty of blood, drain me dead as he had that Will Shakespeare whose name he'd taken.

But I didn't care. Or maybe that was what I'd longed for all along. To die in bliss, in my true love's arms.

My sight blurred, my legs grew week. Only his strong arms held me up, while my life passed onto his tongue, onto his well beloved body, and the smell of sandalwood surrounded me in an aromatic dream.

He would have killed me then, I knew it, but, at the very edge of death, while my breath labored in and out of my chest, I heard steps and a voice calling, "Holla, what's here?"

Will turned around. He said something.

He let go of my neck. I felt unbearable loneliness as I fell to the ground, the world growing dim around me.

"Oh, y'll not fool us," one of the men's voices said. "You're a cursed thing, ye are."

They spoke in thick Scottish accents, and I know not who they were. But they told Will they knew all about his kind, that they'd been searching for him throughout London.

I don't know what happened next, or how he left them or them him.

I know I woke next morning, alone and half-dead on the mud of the alley.

How I made my way home, I do not know, nor can I describe how harsh sunlight felt in my eyes, how painful every step, how aching and horrible every breath.

In a well, in a courtyard, I drank three buckets full of water and poured the rest over my head.

Thus awakened, my preservation instinct asserted itself. I needed to get out of the country, go somewhere where Will would not think of seeking me out, find a different name, a different occupation, and be someone else. Someone else allowed to live a normal life.

Gathering what little money I had, in the safety of sunlight, I made my way to Mistress Bull's house in Deptford. This was a secret service safe house and there I thought to find some mission that would take me abroad.

I'd forgotten how brazen and how loose my tongue had got of late. I'd forgotten how dangerous I'd become for a branch of the government that thrived on secrecy.

Three men — Nicholas Skeres, Robert Poley and Ingram Frizer met me at that house, and engineered some plot, some appearance of a quarrel.

I only realized what was happening when my own dagger, in Ingram Frizer's hand, pierced my left eye.

I fell down dead — or at least was taken for dead by all, even the coroner who examined me.

***

I woke beside a grave, which two grave diggers were working, while talking humorously.

"I hear he was a poet, pray," one of them said. "Aye the toast of London."

"He doesn't look like a poet to me, for it is this, see, that all men in death are carrion."

I heard them, and realized they thought me dead.

My left eye was blinded, but out of the right I saw the night sky above, dark blue with pinpoints of stars.

I crawled away from my intended grave, wondering how I'd survived such a sure attack.

It wasn't till many weeks after, when my fear of light increased, my phobia of all food grew, that I realized what Will had done to me — draining me almost to death but not quite must be what I needed — what I required — to become a vampire.

I took my unwanted gift of eternal life and vanished.

***

These last four hundred years I've been rich and poor, powerful and powerless.

I've never been happy.

Oh, I'm immortal, but I never grew used to drinking victims' blood. I do it because I must as the dog must howl to the moon, but never have I found in it that satisfaction I felt when his teeth pierced my skin.

My longing for him is such that recently I've gotten careless. I've dyed my hair auburn again. I've allowed myself to be photographed in nightclubs and fashionable restaurants, allowed my chosen name to be bandied about in society, my address known.

I've even, with the excuse of a medieval fair, posed in renaissance attire.

Today all my efforts came to fruition. I got an e-mail from Will.

"Hello Kit," it reads. "Meet me in Stratford on Avon, Tuesday a week, by the tomb."

It's not signed, nor does it need to be. Amazing how vampires have adapted to new technology, and amazing how the computer's cold screen seems infused with Will's personality, his unwavering command.

I will go, of course, and by that tomb -- where, who knows which poor sod is buried under the name of Will Shakespeare — I shall meet my destiny.

Will shall come for me, and when he asks me to consent to his fangs in my neck, his lips drinking my life, I shall bare my neck, and I shall say, "Take all you want."

For what's immortality without joy, and what joy is there, if I can't be Will's?

Wings

The small mountain rose, dark and jagged ahead of me, a splintered tooth of rock threatening the lowering clouds, the stormy spring sky.

The maps this hillock Kerames that rose out of the even, green farms around it. The locals called it death.

Even from the base of it, I could smell the horse manure and rotted flesh on top. Even from the base of it, I could hear the eerie cries of the creatures that sounded less like horse whinnies and more like the shrieks of damned souls attempting to break down the doors of Hades. And I could see, darker against the dark sky, the shadows of overspreading wings.

Short of breath, dizzy with fever and tiredness, I stopped at the foot of the mountain and looked up at the jagged rocks, climbing end on end, scarp on scarp.

My bare feet hurt, as did my wrists, where my hands had been severed. To even attempt to climb this mountain without hands was insanity. I would fall and dash my brains against one of the many rocks.

But that, of course, was what I sought. Of course. Either death by breaking my head, or death at the winged horses' maws. What did it matter?

Only it mattered and, standing there, looking up at the desolate, manure-flecked rocks, I knew it mattered. If I fell and broke what remained of my body but didn't die, I could last many days there, in a barren crevice, in a cruel wasteland with no one to listen to my cries, no one to rescue me.

For a moment I hesitated and shivered in the wind that had picked up force. A warm wind, it must be, this being the end of spring and edging on into summer, but it felt frigid to my fevered skin.

I pulled my cloak around myself clumsily, lacking the fingers that would have adjusted the rough wool mantel in place, or refastened the fibula that held it together. Beneath it I wore only a linen exomis, the simple, sleeveless tunic that left half the chest and the right arm unencumbered -- just like the exomis that Hephaestus and Daedalus wore in the statues in their temples.

A working garment, for artisans who needed the free use of their arm.

And yet I'd never be working again, and my truncated, useless arm served me no more.

Six months ago, I'd been a wealthy young man, with a prosperous future ahead of me, an asset and credit to my hometown, the city-state of Karyae. My sculptures -- everyone has seen them -- in temples and palaces and great market towns: I gave new breath to holy Aphrodite. In clay and finely veined marble and that harder grey granite, I made her form rise, divine and lovely as it once rose from the softly foaming sea. That sea I sculpted too, crested and heaving, beneath Poseidon's flung trident.

To me came the great ones who wished for their loves to be immortalized at the peak of youth, the joy of loveliness. To me came parents who, by my art, sought to have their lost children live again in funerary sculptures. To me came the athletes wishing their victory commemorated in deathless stone.

To me came the town of Brindisia. They begged me to erect a statue in their market place. Zeus, they said. It should be my best work, they said.

The sum they offered was a fortune, enough to keep me in style the rest of my days, even if I never sculpted again.

Even then -- I will not pretend otherwise -- wiser heads than mine warned me. Those lands of the North, they said, had their own peculiar customs and rarely laid out money for an artist's work. Almost barbarians they were, untouched by civilization and harsh in their ways. Who knew what they might not do to me if I failed their expectations?

Some of them even warned me of this mountain, Keramis, so close to Brindisia, where it was said ferocious winged horses lived, who ate the unwary traveler.

In my arrogance, I'd laughed it all off. I was but twenty and had been a master of sculpture for four years, and knew nothing at which I had failed.

I would fulfill the greatest hopes of Brindisia.

Now at the foot of the desolate mountain that rose in defiance against the sky, I shook my head at the arrogance of that other Kimon, those six months -- was it only six months? -- past.

The wind ruffled my imperfectly closed cloak and caressed my body with its cold fingers.

I set my bare foot against the rock, balanced with my other foot on the relatively flat surface further up, and leaned with my whole body against the irregular, jagged rock, feeling its hard, cold texture

The wind carried the smell of fresh grass and growing fruit from fields and orchards around.

But the ripening and growing of things no longer mattered to me.

I'd made my decision. I'd reside in Hades before I lived on Earth like a new Daedalus, forever aware of the object of my thirst, forever unable to attain relief.

For the inhabitants of Brindisia had drugged me with herb-laced wine on the night I had completed my work. To ensure that this would be indeed my masterpiece, and that I would never exceed it, with later years and growing skill, they'd severed both my hands.

Oh, they'd had them tended by a surgeon, and I had enough money to buy a farm back home, and take a pretty wife and live in some state.

But what did it matter if I could no longer feel the vein of marble, no longer wield the chisel and shape life out of inanimate rock?

They might as well have severed my soul from my body.

I leaned against the rock and climbed, my arms hugging the incline, my feet finding now this resting place, now that.

The jagged rock cut at the soles of my feet but didn't matter.

The wind picked up speed and whistled around me, a mournful cry like souls from the underworld swearing vengeance upon the living. It didn't matter.

Cold leached warmth from my body and made my teeth chatter with shock, and yet I sweated with fever. My vision trembled with that fever, as if fever were a veil held in front of my aching eyes, a fluttering veil that made rocks and crags and jagged stretches of mountain look like a mirage undulating in the heat of a summer day.

Up and up and up I climbed, driven by nothing except the need not to be, the need to rest.

Like a child after a long day, like a bride after long courtship, I longed for that eternal, dusty bed that would be my grave.

The sound of the wings from above, the smell of manure and rotting flesh called to me like a meal to a starving man, like a cure to a man mortally ill.

I'd get to the top and -- local legends being true, as the smell seemed to proclaim them -- I'd find there death and rest everlasting.

The locals said no man escaped unscathed from that mountain that the winged horses, once the mount of muses, had become renegade and fed on the flesh of any man who came near.

I looked up at the sky, I looked at the dark outstretched wings against the thunder-pregnant clouds, and I knew in my heart it was true, and I longed for teeth that would rend my flesh, that would rend what remained of my life, that would let me die, as my art had died on the day they'd severed my hands.

I climbed and climbed, like a man possessed, my heart thundering near my mouth, my breath stinging my lungs when I took it in.

When I was halfway up the mountain, the bolt of Zeus split the thunderclouds with bright zigzagging light. For a moment the mountain ceased being black and revealed itself shades of brown, intercut by tufts of scraggly grass.

And above me.... I drew in breath and almost lost my footing in shock.

Above me, a creature of dream, of poetry, of magical freedom and amazing beauty took wing. It was a horse, sure, such a horse as no man would disdain keeping, strong of body, elegant of leg, white as the first snows, winged like mind's wishes.

It screamed as it flew and in that moment, by the light of Zeus' bolt that lasted no more than a heartbeat, I thought what it would look like sculpted in creamy marble, lifting its head in that scream.

Then darkness closed in again. Sheets of cold rain washed over me, lashing my body like a cruel whip.

I leaned against the cold, wet rock of the mountain and felt tears streak down my cheeks.

I would not be sculpting anything. Never again.

Driven by new frenzy, I started up the mountain once more.

Above, more horses cried.

Perhaps my presence disturbed them.

The whole herd of them took wing. I saw them, now and then, in the glimmer of the bolts.

Beautiful as dreams, cruel as nightmares, they flew and cried, and circled their mountain, like sparrows whose nest has been disrupted and who circle it and circle it in confusion.

I climbed. Madly, I climbed.

My feet bled where I had cut them in a hundred crags, scraped them raw in a thousand rocks. The blood made it slippery, but I climbed, nonetheless, and climbed, and climbed, even when I encountered the first piles of dung, the first reeking scraps of this and that -- a this and that with teeth and fragments of hair, that might be part of a human being, or else a hare, or some other animal scavenged from the countryside.

In the darkness it was hard to tell, nor did I care. I, Kimon, was in no state to help the dying or bury the dead.

I, Kimon, was but a man walking in the land of the living by mistake, an animated corpse that moved still, that moved, invariably, towards his certain end.

My climbing stopped. I'd reached the top of the mountain, a roughly circular, irregular top, flat and barren and rocky, littered with many bundles, some shapeless and some looking suspiciously human.

It looked -- by the light of the blinding, sudden flash of Zeus's wrath -- barely large enough to fit two people such as me lying down end to end, but on the far end the dark maw of a cave yawned, a cave that no doubt led deeper into the Earth, a cave from which rank smells of death issued.

From the cave, winged horses emerged, one by one, and, with frightful screams, joined the swarm of their brothers circling the mountain.

Then one, and then the other, came down and pushed with their noses at one of the bundles on the ground.

I screamed, "Come to me. Kill me."

They ignored me. Again and again one of the beautiful creatures would dive down from the circle circling the mountain. Again and again, it would push at the bundle on the ground, drawing it, ever so slowly, closer to the edge of the mountain, closer to the jagged edges below.

I wondered if this was their last victim, if they were thus cleaning the mountain top of his corpse, and I wondered what that meant.

I'd been told they ate travelers.

"Devour me," I screamed, sounding like a drunkard in a tavern, my voice high and shrill.

The horses all screamed but none came towards me; they pushed at the bundle on the ground.

A flash of thunder, and I saw that the bundle -- an unmistakably human shape, the size of a boy at the edge of manhood -- had hands and feet that protruded from beneath a tattered, grey cloak. And the hands and feet dug at the rock and prevented each push of the horses' noses from pushing him right over the edge of the mountain, now no more than two hand spans away.

Before the light faded, my supposed corpse lifted his head and let out a single, despairing scream. He didn't turn towards me; as though he as well as the horses, were unaware of my presence.

But I knew he was there, I knew he was alive, and this -- this of all things -- roused me from the stupor I'd lived in since I'd lost my hands.

In the darkness, I saw the shadow of the next horse as it dove, saw it push with its nose at the screaming bundle and, all unthinking, dove forward, dove forward and -- unthinking -- pushed the stump of my arm towards the boy's grasping hand.

His hand found it and closed on it with force that made me scream as loudly as the horses, a scream of agony.

But I controlled myself, and pulled back, back, back, dragging the bundle with me away from the edge.

My foot stepped on something soft and springy. A human body, I thought, but it did not move, and it felt cold beneath my bleeding sole. I stepped on it, and then again, and then was over it, walking backwards.

A horse's nose touched me on the shoulder, pushed hard against me, and I pushed back against it.

All the horses converged on us, now, as the bundle -- the boy -- stepped over the edge of the abyss and stumbled forward on his two feet, balancing himself against me.

I put both arms around him, and leaned, feeling his warmth, his human, vital warmth, and determining that he would not be allowed to die. I'd come to seek death, I. But one so young...one so young could not wish to die.

He keened something into the baying wind, the lashing rain.

I couldn't understand him, could make out no words, except for the feeling of fear and pain.

I pulled him backwards with me, towards the other edge of the rock, looking for a crevice, for some place we could hide where the horses could not get at us.

They flew around and I felt now the graze of a hoof, now the touch of teeth upon my shoulder. They nipped my arms. Playing, I thought. Playing with me like a cat with a mouse. Just as they had played with this boy.

My feet faltered, the sky brightened with Zeus' wrath, and I saw beneath my feet just what I'd been looking for -- a cleft between the rocks, just large enough for the boy and me to hide, for us to crouch and recover our breath. For me to send him back down the mountain.

I pulled him down with me into the crevice, and pushed with my arms until he laid low between the rocks.

There I took a deep breath and tried to think of a way of explaining to him that he must go down the mountain on his own, that he must let me die. Instead, I heard myself say, "What are you doing on this mountain, boy?"

Another high keening sound answered me, a scream of anguish. For a moment I thought the boy was either mute or mad, and could make no sounds more human than these screams.

But on the heels of the scream came a whisper, a low murmur, hoarse and uncertain as from vocal chords shaped by uncertain manhood. "I wanted to die," he said, and shuddered, and took a deep breath and screamed again. "I wanted to die."

He wanted to die. I remembered his hands digging into the rock, to resist the push of the horses, and I had trouble believing him.

But he whispered, "Why did you rescue me? I wanted to die."

I remembered his grip upon my stump. No. "Why would you want to die?"

Just then the thunder echoed, and he turned and looked at me. He had dark curls, just shy of shoulder length, and pale skin and would have been beautiful, except that the eyes he turned to me were bloody and inflamed wounds -- as ill-treated as the end of my stumps.

"My master was teaching me his trade as a painter," he said. "But he thought I was better than he, and didn't wish me to surpass him.” He spoke very softly. "What good is life if I can no longer see?"

Which was nonsense. What good was life, indeed? He could enjoy the taste of wine, the softness of the ground beneath his feet and someday, maybe, the love of a woman. And he would throw all that away?

"You have so much to live for," I said. "You've hardly tasted life yet. Are you destitute?” I thought of the money the town had paid me, the golden coins left behind at my lodgings. I could give them to him and ensure he lived a full life with all he needed, while I sought the oblivion of death.

He shook his head, then shrugged. "My master said he'd support me, and I could still do chores around the house. But I can't paint.” He made soft sounds, like crying.

Above us the horses screamed and hooves hit the rock on either side of us, as their fury sought us out.

"We must go back down," I said, wondering how I'd manage this, with no hands and leading a blind boy. It was a miracle in itself that I'd made it up. "We must go or the horses will surely kill us."

He made a stifled little sound, but no protest that he wished to die. I remembered his hands, clawing for salvation, while his feet dangled over the abyss.

Would I too have found that little courage to die, had it come to it?

"Why didn't you seek a cleaner death?" I asked, as much to him as to myself.

"Without my eyes.... I couldn't see how to contrive it," he said.

Just as I would have answered that I needed hands to seek death by other means. And yet, couldn't either of us have fallen on our daggers as easily as we could climb a mountain?

I shook my head. No. We'd sought something else on this mountaintop. Something, but not death.

The boy shivered again. The light of a thunderbolt showed him in his soaked, dirty linen cloak, his black hair plastered to his face by rain.

"We must climb down," I said, and essayed to guide him with my stumps.

His hand felt for my arm, and held onto it, and hesitantly reached for where there should be a hand that wasn't there.

He drew in breath, sharply. "You're the sculptor," he said. "I heard.... My master told me...."

"I am Kimon," I said. I felt his hand hold on tight, and I guided his other hand to take hold of the ledge.

"And you came looking for death," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"And yet you want to leave."

"Yes," I said. I couldn't explain it any better than that, even to myself.

Guiding him, trying to steer clear of the flying horses, trying to stay within vertical crevices, where rocks on each side protected us from the hooves and teeth of the creatures, I climbed down slowly, helping the boy down.

His hands held onto ledges where I couldn't hold the rock. My eyes showed me where he should hold, and I instructed him.

"You have gold," he said, halfway down, while the wind lashed at us. "And you're free. Why would you wish to die?"

I shrugged, forgetting he couldn't see it. "I can't feel the marble, or hold the chisel."

He laughed, a strangled laughter in his throat, while he steadied me with his free hand, and held onto the rock with the other, until both our feet found flat resting space. "And I can no longer see colors. And yet, why do we fear death?"

"Hades," I said, short of breath, climbing down yet more. "Think of eternity like this. Or worse."

"You believe in Hades?" he asked.

"I don't know.” But I believed in lost opportunities, in throwing away the sweetness of life. Rain fell like a cold caress upon my brow. It was only the fever that had made me think of death, I told myself.

And the boy's eyes.... The flesh around them looked burned red. He must have been blinded by hot coals. I must get a priest of Aesculapius to look at them. "I'll take care of you," I said. "I'll buy you from your master. I have enough money to buy a farm back home. You can live there. I'll adopt you. You'll be my son. My heir. You'll not need your eyes. You'll learn to taste the joy of life through your fingers, to see the forms of things through your fingerprints, to enjoy the ripening fruits of the Earth with your tongue, to know the seasons with your nose."

He made that sound, not quite laughter again. "Why?"

"Because I found you at the place of death, and brought you forth as much as father brings a son, into life."

We'd reached the flat ground, and I steadied him, and turned him towards the fields we'd have to cross with our bare, bleeding feet.

Above us, the winged horses still beat the sky.

"I think that would be well," he said. And then in a low, hesitating tone, "My name is Elpis."

"Then, Elpis, let's go home to my lodgings. I'll buy you from your master in the morning and then we'll set out, back to my hometown."

The fields were muddy beneath our feet; the rain lashed about us; the wind carried the scents of harvest and ripening.

The winged horses had disappeared, presumably back into their cave.

A sliver of pink tinged the horizon.

I thought of the winged horses and the statue I'd like to sculpt, and gurgled in laughter to myself, sounding much like Elpis had on the mountain. Laughter of relief, of comprehension.

I could teach Elpis to wield the chisels, and my eyes could guide him as he sculpted. When we got back home, I'd start teaching him.

Perhaps the winged horses still carried the muses upon their backs and inspiration upon their flesh-eating muzzles.

The Play And The Thing

When the guest came in, I had just knelt behind the counter in the lobby to try to fix the log-in computer.

Hearing steps, I dropped the data gems and circuit nodes and stood up, thinking as I did so that I would give the poor tourist the fright of his life, shooting up from my hidden recess like a jack-in-the-box.

But I couldn't tell whether I'd frightened him or not. No earthling could. Though he was mostly humanoid — he had a head, body, two arms, two legs, a trunk — his face looked like a kid's modeling-clay attempt at a human face.

Spheroid, it had two black-button eyes, two holes for a nose, two holes for the ears, a lipless gash for the mouth; and it was light green, the color of leaves in spring. No hair. It had been a long time since I'd seen an alien in Stratford-upon-Avon.

They had come by the dozen when I was a kid, and my father the proprietor and manager of the Swann-Of-Avon, our then-prosperous hotel.

Bird aliens, reptile aliens, insect aliens, even tall, mobile sentient bushes from Proxima Centauri, they'd all paraded through Stratford, and I'd seen them all before I was even ten.

They had come and seen the sights, and gone to the Royal Shakespeare Theater, and taken their spaceships home, leaving me to wonder how a hermaphrodite slug from Proxima Centauri could enjoy Romeo and Juliet.

But, little by little, they'd stopped coming, leaving the occasional alien visitor as an oddity.

Still, a guest was a guest, was a guest, and that too an oddity, these days.

So I smiled wide at modeling-clay man and said, in my best slow-and-carefully-enunciated-voice, "Hello, do you wish to check in?” Of course, I didn't even know if he could hear — though he had those conveniently placed holes on the side of his face, much less that he had a concept of speech — I'd seen aliens communicate through sound, telepathy, sign language, even colored light flashes.

But the gash-mouth opened and closed, forming remarkably clear English, with remarkably little accent. "Yes, I need lodgings."

I wiped my hands on my pants, keeping my smile broad and reassuring.

In every guide book to the universe, they always referred to the non-aggressive gesture of humans, and I wanted him to know that the messy process was not a form of aggression. Because checking in should have been a matter of his putting his finger in the hole of the check-in computer, getting assigned a room, and being given directions to it.

But that had been back when the check-in computer worked, months ago.

I grabbed a pad from my littered counter, and thumbed it on, then onto a new file — and away from the letter my sister had sent me from Proxima 20, telling me she'd found the land of milk-and-honey. "What is your name, please?" I asked.

He looked puzzled, giving the impression of raising the eyebrows he didn't have. "I am—" The gash-mouth opened and closed, closed and opened, in silence. "I am he-who-comes-to-see," he said, at last.

All right. Was that their word for "tourist"? Whatever. I scribbled the name down on the pad, and a room assignment, room three.

Fortunately, I didn't need the assistance of the check-in computer to tell me what rooms were empty. All of them were, except the little apartment at the back of the ground floor, where I lived in spacious solitude.

I assigned he-who-comes a room on the ground floor, too, because the lev-it, like the computer, had given up the ghost some months ago and I wasn't even sure how the top three floors fared, or if they were still livable. The autumn rains, last month, had leaked into rooms one and two, which led me to believe the rooms above them had to be sieves.

"Do you wish to know our rates?" I asked my guest, surprised he hadn't asked.

He waved his green hand. "No.” He pulled something from the depths of his light-green tunic, and dropped it on the counter with a rattle. "I'll be staying a week, and this is my payment."

"This" was Proxima gems — their encoded form of currency. Small, and transparent, like marbles with golden flecks within, they had a recognizable enough pattern to be known, even without a computer to read them. But I knew enough about Proxima — my sister having immigrated to one of its colonies — to know that they didn't encode currency below ten thousand hydras. And any human child, throughout the universe, knew that the Proxima hydra was the strongest currency in the human worlds, and the fastest-climbing one.

I picked up the smooth, cool spheres, running them through my hand, like the proverbial miser with his treasure. Only, it wasn't so much the treasure that I caressed. Visions of a working computer and lev-it danced in my head.

My smile at the alien had become a manic grin as I walked from behind the counter and said, trying not to giggle, "If you'll follow me, sir, I'll show you to your room."

He didn't run when he saw the hallway — molded ceramite, the colors that had been ingrained into it long-since faded to a colorless petroleum-jelly colorlessness. He didn't run when he saw the room: small, with a sagging bed, a tiny dresser, and a one-person fresher whose appliances had seen better days. "The massager doesn't work, but the flusher does, and the air jets are kind of slow, but they will dry you," I said, keeping my grin wide. Oh, please, please, let him stay. The gems jangled in the pocket where I'd put them and I imagined myself already their proprietor. I didn't want to have to give them back.

He-who-comes nodded, slow and sagely.

I dared go on, "And the face recognition lock on the door doesn't work, either, but you can have the pass-key.” I handed him the small wand. If I got another guest, this might be a problem, but if I got another guest in the next week, it would also be a miracle. I'd never had more than one guest at a time in the last twenty years, and more often than not I had no guests at all.

He-Who waved his eight-fingered hand, and turned his back.

I took this to be my dismissal, and walked back to the check-in computer, my heart singing.

Staring down at the mess of nodes and gems, I wondered if I should give it up for a bad job, and wait until I had enough money to summon a computer doctor. But the gems, though in my pocket, were not definitely mine, and I didn't want to lose time on the computer.

Besides, fixing the computer gave me something to do, something other than standing at the door of my hotel and staring out at the melancholy, empty streets of Stratford-upon-Avon.

I remembered in my childhood, those streets had been thronged with tourists from the most remote colonies, their panoply of clothing and skin colors making the street seem like a circus.

I remembered standing at the door and watching.

But even back then, my father had told me that what I remembered as a flood of tourists was no more than a meager trickle, compared to the days of his childhood.

As more and more people left Earth for space, no one stayed behind except the old, the feeble, the scared. And no one came back. They'd found better pastures.

I thought of my sister's letter, in the pad, and grimaced. When it wasn't her, it was my brother, asking me to join him in Arcturus. My brother — my twin brother — Polydeuces, was a computer technician.

I sighed, staring at the mess on the dusty wooden floor behind the check-in desk. I wished I were one. Instead, my father had trained me to follow his footsteps — and the footsteps of my grandfather, and my great-grandfather, and my great-great grandfather before him, as innkeeper at the Swann-of-Avon.

I started assembling nodes, as I best remembered their configuration, though my visual memory had never been any great shakes.

The modeling-clay face peeked in on me, as its owner bent over the counter. "I'll be going to visit the birthplace and the Gildhall schoolroom," he said. "Guidebook says that's where Shakespeare was born and spent a portion of his childhood. Is this right?” He waved a weird-looking spherical pad at me.

On the shimmering surface of the pad, glowing characters writhed and entwined like tortured earthworms. "The birthplace and the Guildhall are the places of Shakespeare's childhood."

He waved again, that odd-motion of his eight fingers.

I grabbed the pad, and sent a quick message to Welty, down the road. One of the other ten people left in Stratford, Welty must be ninety if he was a day, and he was the official curator of the birthplace and the guildhall. Twenty years ago, he'd kept them open every day, but his advancing age and the dearth of tourists had made him open only on demand. Well, this was demand, and when my alien got to Henley Street to see the old Shakespeare house, I didn't want him to think it was closed most of the time.

So I told Welty to look sharp, and told him the alien seemed to have plenty of money and be free with it.

I went back to my assembling the nodes. One of them had been burned out — as I expected — and it was one of the principal memory ones. I was hoping that if I switched one of the secondary ones to that spot, it would take care of it.

You couldn't buy these nodes anymore. Perhaps, if this came through and the alien stayed the full week, and the gems truly became mine, I could ask my brother to send me a new check-in computer from Arcturus.

Just then, the pad trilled. I had mail. It must be Welty, telling me he had received my message.

But as I thumbed the pad on, I saw it was a letter from my brother, instead. "Cas," he said. "If you wish to come and visit, Marisha and I would be happy to show you around. Marisha and the kids send their love. Marisha says her sisters would love to meet you. Best, Pol."

Marisha's sisters would love to meet me, would they? And Pol would love to show me around Arcturus.

I glared at the broken-down nodes, the mess at my feet.

Damn.

Why could Pol never understand that I didn't want to leave Earth — that I couldn't leave, even if I wanted to.

Our father, and our grandfather and our great-grandfather before him, had all lived here, one after the other, for five hundred years — all the way back to the twenty-first century, when a Bard-struck ancestor had bought the hotel, changed its name to the family name, and settled down to write what would be the ultimate Shakespearean biography. He'd never written it, but he had left an enduring legacy, nonetheless, a long trail of Swann men, extending through the mists of time.

I'd been born in that apartment at the back of the hotel. My son would— I shook my head. Nearing forty and not having found a woman to marry, I should probably give up on the idea of a son. Although, maybe someday a nice female tourist....

My hands were sweaty and I wiped them on my pants, making the gems jingle in my pocket.

Ten gems of at least ten thousand hydras each was a hundred thousand hydras. Enough to buy a passage aboard a spaceship to Arcturus. I shook my head. No. My family had tended the Shakespeare cult for generations. It would yet become profitable again.

I looked around the shabby hotel lobby, with its moldy wood paneling, its foot-worn wooden floor. With ten thousand hydras I could refurbish the place, so that when any tourists came they'd come here first. And they'd tell their friends. And then maybe a nice lady-tourist would come in...I grinned at the thought.

I was still grinning when a child tripped through the door. I started out from behind the counter to meet him. On Earth, children were even rarer than aliens.

Before I could recover the power of speech, he — a boy, about eight, maybe ten, with a thin face, dark curls and intense brown eyes — oozed towards the desk. I don't know how else to describe his approach, which was neither a run nor a walk, but a flowing of his lower — breech-and-stocking-encased — body. He wore Elizabethan boy's attire in dull grey.

"He isn't there," the creature-boy wailed. His face melted, changing shapes like wax in the hot sun. His features went from intent and smart to dull and heavy, then to playful and impish. His eye-color fluttered pale blue to dark blue, dark blue to brown, to black, then blue again. His hair wavered between light brown and dark brown, then black.

I retreated behind my desk.

It followed me, putting forward a hand to the counter, and holding it there. "I've felt the feel/thought of people passing through, but not his feel/thought. He's not there. I came across the galaxy to meet him, this man-with-words that humans talk about, but he isn't here."

I stared down at the counter. The small, child-like hand had eight fingers.

I looked up at the small face, now melting into familiar modeling-clay outlines. The pale-green face climbed up and up and up, as the body grew to my guest's outlines.

A shape changer. And he'd expected to meet Shakespeare? "Uhm...," I said. The ten gems in my pocket got lighter, as though ready to take flight. "William Shakespeare has been dead for over a thousand years."

He nodded vigorously, now fully-alien face bobbing up and down like a mutant jack-o'-lantern. "I know his body is gone, but his impression is gone too. I could not find it. Only thoughts/opinions of other people coming through. No man. No impression-before-the-impression.” The gash-mouth opened and closed. "Not even in the place of his birth."

"Uhm...," I repeated, proving by my eloquence that words had indeed departed Stratford-upon-Avon. "You know, half of his birthplace burned, years ago and no one knows for sure... maybe that was the half he was actually born in. And no one is sure he attended the school, or that it was there. Maybe he was home-schooled, or had a tutor. Maybe his parents were wealthier than we thought."

"You mean you don't know?" he asked.

"No.” I shook my head for emphasis, before thinking whether he might not understand the gesture. His gestures had been so human. "In his day there weren't many records kept," I said.

"Oh," he said, in a very human way. "You didn't have a Come-See attached to him when he died?"

A camera? "No. They didn't—" I stopped short of telling him they hadn't been invented. That would have meant telling him all of the technological progress of humanity, at least if he should prove slow in understanding things. "No one knew he would be this famous," I said, instead.

He nodded, sagely. "Places...do you have other places he might have been? He was?"

I didn't even want to consider which of the two homes — Anne Hathaway's or Mary Arden's might be the true one. I remembered reading in a Shakespeare biography that one of them was almost surely spurious, but I couldn't remember which. So I gave him careful directions to New Place and its gardens, being careful to tell him it was ruins — I didn't want him disappointed. He had said that this made no difference, and trooped out, a gallant modeling-clay man in search of Shakespeare thoughts/feelings. Whatever that might be, I prayed that he find them and that I could keep the gems. I would have the lev-it fixed and go see how much of the upper floors could be salvaged. I would install larger, better-equipped freshers. I would buy a new check-in computer. I'd get my brother to advertise Stratford-upon-Avon and the fine Swann hotel in far-off, rich Arcturus. I'd turn it all around.

Impatient, restless, I slipped my pad into my pants pocket and went out the front door, following my guest.

But where he turned left, on Sheep Street, I turned right, down to Waterside Street, with its fine view of the ancient Clopton Bridge, which Shakespeare surely had known.

I never tired of the Stratford landscape that I'd known all my life. Walking, without paying much attention past the late-twentieth-century centennial fountain, that depicted two swans in a mating dance, I walked down onto Southern Lane, past The Other Place Theater.

The Avon flowed tranquilly, in eddies of pale blue, and the trees on its margins made a fine display: the golden oaks set against the vivid evergreens that retained their summer coloration. Up Oldtown Street, I passed Hall's croft, the fine Tudor Mansion, and along Church Street, I made it to Chapel Street, and back home to Sheep Street, where the dilapidated early-twenty-first Swann Hotel glared at me with its colorless molded-ceramite facade.

As I walked, I imagined this street thronged with tourists, once more. I would advertise in Arcturus and Proxima first, since I had relatives there, and then I would trust word of mouth to spread it further. Through Stratford-upon-Avon's renaissance, Earth itself would be born anew. People would come from distant worlds to see the cradle of humanity and some would stay. Not so many that Earth became as burdened as it had been in the late twenty-first century when the space diaspora formed, but people enough to make the abandoned towns flourish anew.

A trill from my pad, and I brought it out. Another message from my brother. The Lyceum near him was looking for a teacher who could tell the young children about life on Earth. The best candidates so far were a man who had left Earth at twenty, and my brother, who had left Earth at twenty-two but had no interest in teaching. Pol was sure that if I applied—

I thumbed the pad off. I wasn't going anywhere. Earth would flourish anew, and I with it. Ah. Pol could come to me if he wished.

In my mind, I designed the advertisements. I'd need to tell the colonials as much about Earth as about Shakespeare — and I'd better attach bits and pieces of recorded Shakespearean plays to those advertisements, his words being the best advertisement.

The gems jangling in my pocket, I stopped at the door to my hotel, as Shakespeare himself oozed towards me. Or at least a portly— no, consumptive— no, just inspiration-devoured— no, haggard and tired, gentleman in Elizabethan clothing, made for me as though his feet moved on casters.

Before I looked down at the eight-fingered hands, I knew that this was my guest, and before he opened his mouth, I could foretell the wail that would follow.

"He isn't—" he started.

"There?" I asked, disbelieving, my hand going into my pocket and clenching on the ten gems. Mine. Mine. I needed them to make Earth flourish.

He shook his head. His hair color wavered between salt-and-pepper and dark brown. "Not there, not in these streets. Nowhere I find him. Are you sure he lived here?"

A twinge of doubt tweaked my mind for the first time in centuries. What if those who said the Earl of Oxford had written the plays were right? But no, it couldn't be. They'd been discredited too long ago. I nodded. "We are sure."

"But his thought/feel has been washed out, then," the guest said. "And I can't see how it can be. How many people have visited this place?"

My turn to open my mouth and close it, in stellar imitation of a fish drowning on air. "Many," I said. "Millions used to come every year."

He sank back, as his body, slowly, regained its play-dough impression. "But then it's all gone," he said. "He's all gone. He-who-comes-to-see can't see. There is nothing here for me. I shall leave, for London where they say in the tower..."

I didn't hear the rest of it. The gems in my pocket were now very light. He wouldn't stay the week.

The disgraceful thought that I could keep the gems, anyway, crossed my mind, but I shook it. Not only would it be dishonest, but stupid, too. Aliens had their ways of punishing breeches of contract, and some of those could be fearsome.

I shook my head, put my hand in my pocket, brought out the gems. "Here, then," I said. "Since you won't stay the week."

He nodded, reached over. His hand snatched the gems from my hand. The brush of his eight fingers was icy, almost burning in its coldness.

I watched him ooze down the street, now fully a modeling-clay man.

He would have a shuttle parked somewhere. Or perhaps he would teleport. No matter. He would leave.

And my dreams left with him.

Sighing heavily, I went back to the entrails of my pulled-apart computer, and tried to put it together. Not that it mattered. My next guest might be ten days from now. Or a year.

My pad blurped.

I turned it on. The screen glowed at me:  "Cas, I have checked and there's a flight leaving London for Arcturus at ten-forty-five tonight. Why don't you come and check out the place. If you decide to stay, you can have a job and can buy a house in no time at all, and Marisha's sisters really want to meet you. Pol."

I turned it off.

I couldn't leave, could I?

My ancestors had lived here long enough for their particles to be part of the soil and water. My existence — all that I was — was interwoven with the Stratford landscape: the blue-flowing river, the Sir Hugh Clompton Bridge, the quiet sultriness of Anne Hathaway's cottage, the monuments to Shakespeare, the various theaters now used only for holographic projections of the plays, but still used, nonetheless.

In my mind, the alien wailed, "He isn't here."

But how could he not be here, in a town that was so imbued with his presence?

Getting up, off my knees, I walked out the front door, again.

Outside, I almost collided with a beaming Welty. Or with the advance prong of his walker-balancer that he tilted forward at a perilous angle. "I've done it, Cas," he told me. "Or your alien did. Ten thousand hydras for showing him the birthplace and the guild-chapel. Enough to join my daughter in Centaur 2."

Oh. Welty would be leaving, then. The birthplace and the guild-chapel, the Shakespeare foundation building, would all be abandoned. I don't know what I told Welty.

In a numb fog, I walked down Sheep Street and stopped by the brass-and-steel memorial fountain. The two swans raised their heads in their mating dance, still, as I always remembered them, but when had they got so corroded and time-worn?

People had washed out the Bard's thoughts and presence, with their impressions of the Bard.

Tears filled my eyes, and I blinked at the swans' rusted necks.

The Swanns of Avon were about as rusted, as corroded.

And what had we been preserving, all this time? Just a faded memory, a nothing, an opinion of an opinion of an opinion?

He-who-comes-to-see had found nothing.

Maybe I stood sentry to an empty tomb.

My pad beeped. I turned it on.

"Cas, I've made reservations for you in the shuttle. I'll unmake them if you tell me to, but I want you know I'll be glad to pay your ticket, if you only come. There's a new world out here, waiting for you."

I stared at the pad a long time.

I looked up from it, at the swans and the aged buildings behind them, the oaks and ever-greens by the river, and they all seemed to have the thin transparency of painted scenery. I'd heard that in Arcturus they had multicolored trees, and that golden birds flew among them. All of a sudden, I wanted to see those trees and those birds, wanted to experience something that my ancestors hadn't seen or felt.

I understood my brother and my sister. They might have loved Stratford as much as I did, but maybe they'd felt that it was worn thin, like a sea-rolled pebble.

It seemed to be a device peculiar to Shakespeare that his plays often contained another play within them: Hamlet, The Taming Of The Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream....

Perhaps I'd been living only in the play within the play, in my worn hotel, in my worn town.

I wanted to see the rest of the stage.

I found a stylus in my pocket. "Thanks, Pol," I wrote on the pad. "I'll catch that ship."

Sugarbush Soul

Lindy Bradmer, plenipotentiary inspector for the Bureau of Narcotics on Earth, walked across the receiving area of Madrasta's InterWorld Spaceport, with its towering columns and broad arches that fairly screamed "colonial architecture."

Outside the wide gates of the Spaceport, she blinked in surprise.

"Is it always like this?" she asked me, as her shocked gaze swept around the dirt street, the gaggles of begging children who clustered around her, the grown beggars — all of them looking old — who sat by the street-side, barely out of the path of the speeding, smoking ground cars, and all too close to the overflowing open gutters.

She'd given me the same disbelieving look when I'd introduced myself as Eustacio Reis, superintendent and representative of the Horticultural Cooperative of Aguas Quentes.

She'd stared at me as if I were not what she expected; as if I were, in fact, some strange alien being. Of course, it was too early to tell the source of her surprise: my mocha complexion, my straight black hair — both rare in an Earth from which all non-Caucasians had emigrated or been deported — or the fact that I wore an impeccable white suit, of good cut. Perhaps she expected colonials to go about dressed in fur and tatters.

I also couldn't tell which way she meant her question about this scene, her first exposure to Madrasta. Immediately outside the spaceport lay a large street, busy with speeding traffic, but shaded by tall buildings with elaborate and colorful -- if decrepit -- tile facades. Peddlers swarmed the space between road and gutter, stepping gingerly amid seated beggars, and offering everything and anything for sale, from lynkcoms to handfuls of dusty grapes.

At midday, it was a good ninety degrees in the shade, and clouds of flies swarmed all around, forming a moving curtain that hid the worst details of the scene: the sores on the beggars' faces, the suppurating ulcers on the legs of unemployed farm workers. Above the buildings, fat letters formed ephemeral skysigns, their neon-colors advertising all manner of products, most of them imports from Earth. They cast an eerily colorful glow over the dirt of the street and the speeding cars.

"No," I said, curtly as I picked up Lindy's suitcase that she'd set on the ground, beside herself, and that a half-naked urchin had started lifting. I waved away the rest of the pack of little human scavengers. "It's not always like this. Sometimes it's worse.”

I spoke curtly because she was not what I'd expected. To begin with, there was the gender thing. Every other inspector we'd endured in our lifetime had been male. Then there was the fact that this particular woman was exotically blond, slim, fragile, and very pretty, with a face like a china doll's and wide, enamel-blue eyes.

Sometimes one wondered what the government of Earth played at, and what they thought the colonies were. A recreation camp for the bored daughters of diplomats? Didn't they know there were revolutionaries, wild-eyed idealists planning all sorts of things in these far-flung colonies? Didn't they know that every once in a while an envoy from Earth -- inspector, ambassador, missionary -- got killed, just because he came from Earth? Didn't they know they were endangering her?

I thought of Miguel and Paulo, and the rest of our little band, and the careful, secret plans we'd made, and looked at this woman, who wore a knee-length dress in some shimmery pink fabric and matching thin-strap sandals.

I felt my mouth go dry.

Dragging Lindy, I carried her suitcase across the street at a trot, just after a dusty grey ground car had passed and before the next mad speeder could run us over.

The car I'd driven into the city was a farm worker transport vehicle. Large enough to seat twelve, the boxy, squarish contraption sat on six much-too-high wheels. This brand had a deserved reputation for rolling over, but they were Madrastan-made, and, therefore, affordable. At least affordable to the Cooperatives, of course, not to any particular individual.

Even I, a middle-aged and relatively well-off manager of a twenty-farm Cooperative, couldn't hope to own one. But I got to drive my plantation's third-hand model. Wouldn't want to bring a prettier or more modern car into the city, anyway. It would have been stripped in no time. Even this old can had to be protected with repulsion fields, alarms and automated theft taggers.

I turned off the car's repulsion fields with the command I wore on my watchband, and, working fast, before any of the ever-present beggars and hoodlums could push in and steal it, opened the door to my passenger and then clambered in, squeezing past her, as she flinched away, into the ratty brown seat. I closed the door, threw her suitcase in the back, turned on the repulsion shields again and watched them push the crowding masses away with the violence of a good shove. Even then, one or two burly unemployed, young, able-bodied men who, for whatever reason, couldn't or wouldn't work, pushed forward, against the fields, with persistence that would overcome them, given enough time. One, burlier than the others, with pitch black eyes and greasy black hair, reached for the door handle.

"Buckle up," I said, as I dropped onto the dusty brown seat, feeling the give of the broken springs. The seatbelt on the driver's side had been cut by some idiot who'd owned the car previously, so I made do with a length of rope that held to the seat with hooks.

The woman, though she had a perfectly good seat belt, seemed to have trouble buckling it, as if she'd never seen anything similar. I supposed on Earth they used anti-grav fields, or whatever, no doubt more comfortable and activated effortlessly when needed. Hard to tell.

All I had to go on about Earth was the word of my great-grandparents who'd been transported and who, at any rate, had never come close to state-of-the-art technology. They'd told me over and over how Earth had only one moon, and contented themselves with this one wonder, to capture my Madrasta-born imagination.

I took off at full speed, the only way to ensure that no hijackers could get hold of the car. It was getting so that it simply wasn't safe to drive in the city at all. One heard about people murdered — murdered — at stop lights. Murdered for the few car parts and pocket change their attackers could grab before the Colonial Police arrived — and took the remainder.

As we drove in a cloud of dust down the shady streets, hemmed in by the very tall, stone buildings, the Earther said, "Why such tall constructions? Porto Novo has a population of what? A hundred thousand people?”

I nodded. Porto Novo, capital and largest city of the world of Madrasta, did, indeed, have only a hundred thousand souls. "It was the colonization bureau," I told her, as I swerved to avoid a kid in a ragged shirt who crossed the street in front of us without looking. Not that the little beggar would have much to live for, but then again, maybe he would, if the Liberation succeeded. I thought of Miguel again. I would have to tell him the inspector was a woman and pretty, and I could almost hear him laugh at me. But she was a woman and she was pretty and I didn't think we could get the sympathy of any of our colonial brothers by killing pretty blonde women. We'd have to keep our secret some other way.

I came perilously close to the gutters and the line of beggars along them, then swerved again to the main stream of traffic. "When Madrasta was first colonized, the officials in charge of the project had only so much money to prepare advance accommodations for the first colonists. They could either build a thousand small farmhouses, out in the middle of land that had yet to be cleared of alien plants, or they could build a couple hundred really tall buildings in the city. They thought the buildings were better. They showed better to their superiors. Encouraged tourism."

Lindy took my irony without smiling. Her hair shone, a startling white-gold, even under the attenuated light coming through the refracting windows. She smelled of something light and flowery. "Oh," she said. "Do you have much tourism?"

"No," I said, and my voice almost tasted the bitterness in the word, a taste of unripe fruit and the ashes of long lost dreams.

She looked at me, her enamel-blue eyes immense, then she twisted her lips in a funny way and sat in silence until we got out of the city.

Most changes in landscape came abruptly in this colony that had existed for less than a hundred years. Between one breath and the next, at the turn of a curve, we left streets hemmed in by walls, destitute beggars, dirty children and glowing skysigns, and emerged into unconfined wilderness. The street below our wheels showed as the only sign of human occupation. On either side of that black strip of dimatough paving, the primeval jungle of this world reigned. Out here, dimatough had to be used; it was the only material that held jungle growth at bay.

We'd never understood much about the local flora — of course, neither we, the natives, nor our ancestors who had unwillingly been shipped to this world, were paid to study the environment. Instead, our livelihood depended on slashing it and burning it so that vineyards and coffee plantations could flourish instead.

Most of the native plants seemed to be some odd sort of fungoid. They came in all the colors of the rainbow, from baby blue to bright, screaming red, and in a multitude of forms ranging from your classic mushroom to an odd bush composed of tentacles.

My passenger came to life, and leaned towards the wide, refracting side window, staring out with something akin to hunger. She laid both her hands flat, palm out, on the windows. "Do you think there's sugarbush out there?" she asked.

"No, ma'am," I told her, and added, for the sake of verisimilitude, "Sugarbush is an Earth plant."

And to her wide, unbelieving eyes, I sighed. "Some sort of bush that someone brought, either by accident, like they brought the flies and the rats, or because they thought it was pretty."

"But we don't have sugarbush on Earth," she said.

"Um...look it up. Bet you do. They'd just have changed the name, now that sugarbush from Madrasta is causing that much trouble.” She still looked disbelieving. Oh, Lord. You'd think an inspector come to make sure that the farmers in Madrasta weren't cultivating sugarbush would know something of the history of the plant. "It mutated in Madrasta," I said. "Some things do. I don't know what Sugarbush was like on Earth, but the fruit here is poisonous. Can be used to make a hallucinogen."

She looked at me long and hard, as if suspecting me of fibbing, and I sighed and concentrated on driving. No use to anybody my showing her that I knew a lot about sugarbush. No use my showing her I knew a lot about anything. Had I already said too much?

As abruptly as we had left the city, we left the native jungle behind. The riotous profusion of pastel colors and wild forms gave way to bare black Earth planted with row upon neat row of vines. Amid the vines, the workers of the cooperative worked -- the women in their colorful blouses and head scarves, the men in bright embroidered vests, each carrying a tall basket for the grape harvest.

Lindy leaned towards the window. "How pretty," she said, and inhaled deeply. "Nothing like... nothing at all like Porto Novo."

I kept my mouth shut. Sometimes starvation was just not quite so obvious. But let her keep her illusions. They hurt nobody.

***

"How long till the harvest?" I asked Miguel.

We walked in a field tall with sugarbush, row upon row upon row of it, the berries glowing fat and red against the dark green leaves.

Miguel, thirty years old but looking fifty, small and brown and almost completely bald, pulled one of the berries off the branch, smashed it between his thumb and forefinger. Red juice stained his fingers like blood. "Another two days," he said. "Should be another two days. If you can keep Long-legs out of here long enough, she won't find no sugarbush to incriminate us."

I nodded. For all that I had a higher post in the Cooperative, Miguel was the soul of the movement of Liberation in this area. His thirty years had been hard lived, since he'd started as the son of an indentured worker, almost a slave. Without ever getting enough to eat — always difficult in Madrasta but even more difficult in the lower classes — or education of any kind, he'd taught himself to read and, somewhere, stumbled on enough ideas on economy and politics to know that Madrasta would be poor as long as Earth controlled us and fed upon us.

Like fat leeches, he'd said, feeding on a wounded animal.

Now he looked at me, by the reddish light of the twin moons. "You're not afraid, are you?" he asked.

I shook my head. Not afraid. Worried. We needed money to start our revolution, so that an independent Madrasta could one day feed its own children. But if the inspector found the sugarbush, Earth would refuse the stipend that Madrasta counted on to keep its people from starving.

***

Lindy laughed as we drove down the road, taking in the vineyards, the people picking grapes, the far-distant dots of white stone plantation houses. "I do believe you wish to spend time with me, superintendent."

She had on a white dress, and looked now at the landscape, now at me, with a small smile.

I smiled back, wondering if my smile looked natural. I felt as if the tension lines in my face would make my skin crack. "Why do you say that?" I asked, in my best tone of light-hearted flirting. Not a very good light-hearted tone, I was afraid. I hadn't courted anyone since I'd courted Ana, and won her, when we were both just seventeen. I'd been married for fifteen years, before I'd lost Ana, two years ago. She'd died in childbirth with our tenth child. Third living one. Her family had taken the children to raise. My small house echoed, too empty and seemingly too large without her.

I was too old to flirt. But let the Earther think I was a lecherous old man.

"Oh," she said. "Just because.” The tone of her voice made my stomach contract. Who had she talked to? What had she done? I'd spent the night at home, in one of the outbuildings of the plantation. She'd spent the night in the plantation main house — a large foursquare stone building, a good half a mile from the employee lodgings. When I'd got there in the morning, I'd found that she'd gotten up earlier and had been wandering about the plantation yards and the grape pressing warehouses, talking to people.

But I couldn't afford to ask her what she suspected. So I chuckled and shook my head. "You Earthers. Too sophisticated for me."

She'd asked to go up in a flycar, of course. The cooperative owned one flycar, and we had to offer it to her. But if she went up in the flycar, she would see the sugarbush plantation ensconced between the vineyards and the forest. I'd fed her some line about the flycar being out of order. Just another couple of days. Another couple of days.

"Do you know why I became an inspector with the controlled substances bureau, Eustacio?" she asked, looking at the landscape, the workers waving at her from the fields.

I shook my head.

"I'm the older of two sisters," she said. "Or used to be. I was the outgoing party girl. My sister was quiet, shy. She never had many friends. When she was fifteen, she started doing Madrastan sugar. We never found out until it was too late. She died at eighteen. I was in college then, and I chose diplomacy, immediately. I graduated last year and applied to the CSB."

"I am sorry," I said, "about your sister.” Did she know how many fifteen-year-olds died everyday in Madrastan streets, because they just couldn't get enough to eat? Or how many lived on, having done unthinkable things to stay alive — begging, prostitution, robbery, murder? How many lived on with tainted souls, more tainted than a body could be, by sugarbush? All because Earth controlled the price at which we could sell our products and which products we cultivated — mainly coffee and wine — while everything else had to come from Earth at a prohibitive price?

We'd reached the inhabited end of Aguas Quentes and, before reaching the forest, I turned around.

"Do you ever go into the forest?" she asked, her eyes on the distant blur of pink and blue tentacles and fungoids.

I felt hair rise at the back of my neck. "No. Nobody does. No one ventures into the jungle here. Leastwise not without a flame thrower ahead of him. Some of those plants are carnivorous and most of them just plain poisonous to humans."

All of which was true, but with the right clothing you could cross a small strip of the forest, and — with a flame thrower — clear a space within the forest for sugarbush.

She raised her pale eyebrow, but only said, "It seems such a waste," she said. "To live in an alien world and know nothing of it."

I smiled, despite myself. "My grandparents weren't sent here as botanists or xenobiologists. And the rest of us are much too busy surviving."

She smiled, in return, but her smile hid something else, something brittle, odd. "You speak like an educated man.” Her smile hesitated, flickered off, flickered back on, in an appeasing mode, "Don't misunderstand me. I meant, considering that the people deported here were not educated people.” Her face was all soft planes covered in rosy-fair skin shining with something like peach fuzz. Like the fine peaches the rich imported from Earth, once a year as a special treat. I'd had one, once, as a child, at my uncle's house.

They were especially treated, of course, so they couldn't be planted in Madrasta. Wouldn't grow. Earth said it was to prevent ecological damage to Madrasta. Wine and coffee plantations, apparently, caused no harm at all.

"We have a library," I said. "And all the writings of mankind on gem. We can learn. If we're willing to."

"If you're willing to learn...” She spoke in a dreamy tone, and she smelled of peach, too, a warm, fruity smell.

***

Miguel and Pedro and I wore our heavy clothing, three layers of it, the outer layer the ceramic weave we wore when spraying insecticide on the vineyards.

Miguel felt the sugarbush berry between his thumb and forefinger, and squashed it, red juice flowing.

"Is it ripe?" I asked.

"Yes, yes.” He frowned.

"But..."

He shook his head. "Just one more day and it would be perfect."

"Not one more day," I said. "Not one more hour. Now, now. The woman suspects, I tell you."

Miguel looked at me, his eyes hard as pebbles. "You like the woman, do you?"

Did I like the woman? I looked at Miguel and at Pedro, who looked much like Miguel, and who, like him, had been born to indentured servants, though he'd paid off his indenture and was now a free farmer. Well... as free as anyone who worked for the cooperative, which is to say, for Earth.

"She doesn't matter," Miguel said. "She'll be gone. Only Madrasta matters."

"She says her sister died from sugarbush.” I knew it was stupid before I said it, and the stupidity of it just echoed back to my own ears.

"Her sister died of being too wealthy," Pedro said. "It is the wealthy Earthers that keep up the demand for sugarbush. We just supply the demand. If we didn't, someone else would."

We harvested the sugarbush through the night. By dawn, we'd collected every single berry, set it in a deep pit at the edge of the forest.

"Who collects it?" I asked Miguel.

He shrugged. "You don't know, I don't know. Someone does. Someone else working for the liberation of Madrasta. That's all you need to know. That way, they question you, you don't babble."

"Those berries," I said. "So many basketfuls. How much... how many dosages does it make, you think?"

He shrugged. "I don't make the Madrastan sugar," he said. "Someone else does.” He looked at me with curious, wondering eyes. "But it would make a lot, I think. I think a dosage is just a drop."

I slept for an hour or two, after going home and washing. In my too-large bed, in the coolness of dawn, I dreamed of many, many pretty golden-haired Earth girls, each dead from a drop of sugarbush.

***

"Have you ever seen a long-time addict?" Lindy asked.

I still stalled on the flycar. One more day. Let someone collect the berries in peace. We wouldn't want them observed. So, she'd insisted on going out, amid the vineyards, and taking random samples of the soil. She said her tests could tell her if there were sugarbush growing nearby. She wore tight black pants, a loose white top and a broad-brimmed hat and looked like something in an antique illustration from a book about Earth. She carried a large bag with vials and, every time she stopped, she took a sample of dirt into her vial. Her arms, exposed to the sun, were turning a deep shade of pink, and sweat beaded her small nose.

"No," I said. "There are no addicts in Madrasta. Madrastans can't afford to use sugar.” I wondered how accurate those tests would be. The sugarbush grew a good three miles down the road. Surely, she couldn't detect it from this far.

"At first it's imperceptible," she said. She squatted to get a soil sample into a vial and corked it. "Then you start ... fading. Madrastan sugar eats away at the muscles, the major organs. In the end you're nothing but a shell, eaten away.” She spoke in a distant voice, like someone reading an obituary.

I remembered my dreams in the night, and I shook. So many pretty, golden-haired Earth girls, with small breasts and skin that burned easily in the sun — and they would all die from the sugarbush berries we'd harvested last night. But the revolution needed the money, the liberation did. Without the liberation, my sons would be prisoners forever. They'd grow up to be slaves to Earth, to grow wine and coffee for the elites of Earth, but never to enjoy any of it themselves.

Lindy stood up, and stared at me, as though reading my thoughts, then sighed. "After seeing all those beggars in Porto Novo, you know what I thought?"

I shook my head, slowly.

"I thought, it is the revenge of Madrasta on Earth. Madrastan sugar is. I didn't know Madrasta was so poor."

"Few people do," I said, and looked away, unable to bear the intent scrutiny of those intense enamel-blue eyes.

***

"She's been to the field, I tell you," Miguel said. We met at his house, in his living room. Like me, he lived alone. Unlike me, he'd never married. The liberation was his only spouse, his only love. His house was spare, as all of our houses were, the walls made of native stone, the floor paved with fine sheets of a clay-like material, also local. It all glowed golden by the light of the fire in the fireplace.

"How?" I asked. "I was with her, all day."

"Then she went at night.” Miguel said, and his mouth closed hard, like a trapdoor.

"You're asking me to believe that an Earth woman went traipsing around an alien planet at night, that she crossed the forest, for no reason, that she—"

"Idiot," Miguel said. "Idiot. You believe she's innocent because she's female and young and pretty. She's an inspector. They have equipment that tells them where the sugarbush is. They know...."

I thought of how innocent she'd looked when I'd told her that sugarbush had originated on Earth. Had she been faking? Why? To make me feel confident?

"And besides, there were marks on the field," Miguel said. His hard, black eyes looked like pebbles, hard and dead. "The marks of her shoes. No one on Madrasta owns shoes with sculpted soles like that."

"What does it matter?" I almost shouted. The idea that I might have been taken for a dupe stung. She looked so innocent. She seemed to like me. She had flirted with me. "I thought you said that your friends would torch the field, in the night."

"Yes," Miguel said. "And that would be fine to prevent it being seen from the air. But not if she came down and took samples of the ash. Then she'll know. She'll have evidence."

Evidence. Evidence enough to put Miguel and Pedro and me, too, away for a good many years. Evidence enough to deny the money that Madrasta desperately needed, to keep its population alive. They called it cultural development subsidies, but most of it went to medicine and childcare, and milk for babies whose mothers died giving birth.

***

"Thank you for finally showing me Aguas Quentes from the air, supervisor," she said. She sat in my office, holding a cup of tea in her small, almost transparent fingers.

The bone-white cup was one of the few luxuries Ana had ever bought — a porcelain tea set for my office. Tea was another of my luxuries, a vice, an indulgence.

Lindy's fingers shone against the cup, just a shade darker than it.

She hadn't mentioned sugarbush. If she knew about it, she said nothing. She just drank my tea, and looked gravely at me across my old, cluttered desk — a large wooden desk, imported from Earth by who knows whom, to serve one of my predecessors.

"When I get back to Earth...," she said, and hesitated. She sat on an antique white canvas folding chair, smeared and grey from many years of use.

"Yes?" My heart beat near my throat. She left the next day, early morning. What was she about to say? That our trade was ended? I shifted on my own chair, an old plastic chair that shifted oddly on legs that had worn unevenly.

"When I get back to Earth, I might...I'd like to use my contacts, make the plight of Madrasta known. Perhaps...a charitable organization could...."

"We don't want charity.” My own vehemence astonished me. I sounded like Miguel in one of his mad moments. "Madrasta doesn't need charity. We have good black soil, and we produce good coffee, good wine. If Earth allowed us to trade with the other colonies...if all the ships didn't go to Earth first...if we were allowed to grow our own food, we wouldn't need Earth's charity."

She looked at me a long time, her enamel-blue eyes showing nothing, no offense at my outburst, no shock at being yelled at.

"I'm sorry," I said.

She shook her head. "You might want to know," she said, "that the Madrastan sugar trade on Earth has increased five times in the last five years. Analysts have tracked it to the spread of the movement of liberation in Madrasta. The pattern seems to be that the movement penetrates into a new area, recruits a few idealistic souls, gets them to aid and abet the growing of sugarbush for the good of the liberation. And then the head traffickers in Madrasta cash out on the crop, and send it to Earth, with the aid of their secret network, and put the money in secret bank accounts, presumably on Earth. Not a cent of it goes to the liberation movement, which is always the same, always a grassroots movement struggling for money. And none of the locals can get revenge or turn the swindlers in, because of the structure of the movement, where no one knows all the principals, no one knows who they really work for."

"Why are you telling me this?"

She looked at me over the rim of her porcelain cup, intently grave, then suddenly lowered the cup and smiled. "Oh, because you talked of having spaceships, establishing your own trading contracts. Don't you see that Madrastan sugar sells for astronomical amounts on Earth, that a harvest basket full of sugarbush berries would be enough to buy a spaceship? If that was intended....” She nodded to me. "I thought you'd want to know, because you're a good man, and idealistic.” She stood up, set the cup down on the edge of my desk, stretched. "I'll go up to bed now. Tomorrow I'll leave early to go to the city. Will you be driving me?"

"No. I have to stay in the plantation. Someone else will drive you.” Miguel had insisted on it, insisted on driving her. So he could interrogate her, he said, and find out how much she really knew. I was an idiot, he said, and blinded by the woman's charms.

For just a moment, watching her walk out of my office, I thought to warn her, to tell her that Miguel was idealistic, too, but more of a fanatic than I'd ever be. That I worked for the liberation because of my sons, but Miguel worked for the liberation for its own sake, and it was the first thing to excite his interest, ever, like no human being ever had.

I almost told her that Miguel was dangerous.

But she turned, at the door, and smiled at me. "I'm sure you wouldn't get involved with something like that anyway. Not you, Eustacio. You have too good a heart to live with the sacrifice of anonymous Earthers, even for a good cause.” She wore a tight red dress, and her blonde hair, pulled back, gave her face slightly severe lines, that made her look like an eternal icon, something not quite human.

On Earth, they took prisoners accused of drug trafficking and brain-washed them, with a combination of drugs that erased all memory, all knowledge. And then they sent them to a different colony, adult babies who could only do the dullest manual labor.

If I spoke, she would know I knew.

"You're right," I said. "Good night, Lindy."

***

It wasn't so much of a surprise when the car overturned, on the way to Porto Novo. The damn things overturned all the time. Earth didn't even bat an eye at the news. They wouldn't, anyway, since Miguel, the native driver, died with Lindy, and Earthers, with their soft ways, their self-serving culture, have trouble envisioning sacrifice for a cause.

I never saw Lindy after death. Functionaries from Porto Novo came and took her away, back to Earth, presumably back to her family.

Sometimes, late at night, I wonder if she had any brothers or if, in losing her, her parents lost their last child.

And sometimes, in my office, laboring over accounts, I look across the paper-strewn desk and could swear I see her there, on the dirty folding chair, holding a porcelain cup between her too-white fingers.

For many months I waited for some big event, something important to be done by the liberation movement. Something that would justify all those Earth girls dying of Madrastan sugar. I was never sure what the big action would be, but I would have settled for anything: armed fighting, demonstrations, alternative space ports operating from the country side, food and learning materials secretly distributed to the starving children of indentured servants.

After a year I stopped waiting.

Life goes on, but I feel curiously dried up. My boys are growing, but I'm not raising them, and they don't have much future to look forward to. If they're lucky and smart and hard working they'll be like me, white collar workers in the hierarchy of the wine-growing cooperatives of Madrasta, serving the bureaucracy of Earth.

But none of it matters much. Perhaps it's all as it should be. Nothing seems to matter anymore.

I remember what Lindy said about the effects of sugarbush. I feel as if I, too, wasted away from that sugarbush I helped grow. But it was not my body or my muscles that it ate. It was my soul.

Never Look Back

I'd only been working at Pythia's for a month, and already the little hole-in-the-wall diner felt like home away from home.

Each night at ten, when I came in from the cold city street outside to work my shift, the smoky atmosphere enveloped me like an embrace. I shrugged into the green-vinyl booths pockmarked with cigarette burns, the cheap, plastic stand-alone tables, as one might shrug into a well-worn, well-loved coat.

It had been so long -- twenty years -- since I'd last held a job of any kind. And, what with my bachelor's degree in ancient studies and my checkered mental record, I hadn't found myself in great demand when I looked for work.

So, here I was serving tables at a diner. But, damn it, it was good to work, good to receive a paycheck, good to be good for something.

That night was a Friday and, when I came in, the diner was bursting at the seams with students -- blonde, beautiful, all-American girl students; edgy, dark-haired artsy male students; late-generation flower-child students and everything in between.

They crowded in noisy gaggles around the tables. Brassy and colorful like tropical birds, they shoved three to a narrow vinyl booth seat, filling the smoky air above with their mating calls, their shrieked arguments, the cackle of their laughter.

They ran me off my feet for two hours, back and forth, for an order of coffee, and an order of pie, and a plate of olives, and a small pastry, and the like — all of it small-change orders, but the massing quantity of them probably enough to justify opening the diner for the night.

Tele, my boss, sat at the cash register, ringing up the bills with a steady hand, and grinning all over his mustachioed, bearded face. He managed to live down, with considerable aplomb, the fact that his parents had named him Telemachus.

Truth be told, I don't think parents, or family, or anything else meant much to him. Watching him look fondly at the crowd of students and the odd, older loner, I had the creeping feeling that Tele was married to the diner, and Pythia's was his true mate.

His dark eyes met mine and a slow smile parted his abundant moustache like a curtain. "Sandra, go, girl. Table eight is signaling for you. You can rest in the slow hour."

The slow hour was actually three hours -- the time between one and four in the morning when the downtown street outside stood empty of all but the barest trickle of traffic and the late-partying students trickled out, leaving the tables empty for use by a handful of regulars — old neighborhood residents, whiling away hours of insomnia; young, haunted would-be artists; a couple of writers with notebooks and vari-colored pens. All of them would order coffee and lots of pastries, but seldom a full meal. Meanwhile, the staff relaxed and talked, and sometimes — rarely — clustered around Tele's register perch, for a chat.

Around four, the morning crowd of early risers and people with early-starting jobs trickled in, ordering breakfast.

The slow hour was a good hour away. "You're all heart, Tele," I flung in the general direction of his amused dark eyes. "Can't a woman be tired? I'm serving double the tables here. Couldn't you have scheduled someone else to work tonight?"

"Hey, don't blame me. I did schedule someone. Your buddy Colin is late."

I just shrugged, and adjusted my dark-purple apron with "Pythia's Place" printed in green on the chest, went to collect two pieces of pie and five coffees from the kitchen, and, with them all balanced on a broad tray, edged my way amid gesturing students.

Colin wasn't my buddy. At least no more than people who'd known each other for only a month could be buddies. He'd worked at Pythia's for six months when I'd started, and he'd shown me the ropes on where stuff was, and exactly how insistent you could be with the kitchen stuff to get your orders expedited without being branded obnoxious and finding yourself at the bottom of the waiting list of chores -- just after polishing silverware.

Of course, all of this was easier for Colin, who was only twenty-something, very easy on the eye, and had an eager, disarming manner to him, than it was for me, a forty-year-old ex-academic, with mousy brown hair and spare features that bore every wrinkle and mark of my years of anguish and guilt.

Colin had laughed when I told him that and dug an elbow into my ribs, and pulled his overlong blond bangs out of his eyes and started demonstrating how to smile, until I cracked up.

That boy could be dangerous. Despite his being young enough to be my son, I might very well have fallen for him as I'd never fallen for anyone since Gene. I could have. But Colin was, rather obviously, not interested in women. Not that he talked about it, but the tension -- the subtle tightening of nerves and expectations -- just wasn't there, not even when he flirted with me, not even when clumsy, artsy young women students made darting passes at him.

So...maybe we were buddies.

And Colin had never been late. Never. He usually came in early enough that he started work at ten with the purple apron securely tied around his limber, tall frame, and his irresistible smile played on that face that still showed babyish features beneath the roughness of a not-too-closely shaven beard.

Worried, I kept an eye on the door, waiting for Colin. After a while, I noticed Tele was watching too. He would never admit to worrying about Colin, with whom he maintained a relationship of strained politeness, as if he were afraid of finding himself too charmed by Colin's smile. But I saw him look. And I saw the shadow of worry in his dark eyes.

Colin finally appeared just after midnight. He arrived on foot. I first saw him through the plate glass window, as he ran down the deserted, dark street, the lone street lights shining on his pale blond hair. I released breath I hadn't been aware of holding.

Tele muttered, "About damn time," then turned away.

When Colin, in a black turtleneck sweater and jeans, flung open the glass door with a tinkling of bells, and said, "Sorry, Tele," Tele, sitting at the register a hand span from the door, just said, "Yeah."

And that was it:  "Yeah."

Seconds later, as I was carrying a heavy tray to one of the last student tables, Colin came up behind me. "Shit, Sandra. That's my table. Want me to take over?"

"You just want the tip," I said, and smiled over my shoulder at him. "Look, I know who ordered what. Let me do it."

But, this being only one of two tables still occupied by groups, Colin followed me and helped me get the food off the tray and onto the table. "You can have the tip," he said as we walked away. He smiled at me, but it wasn't his usual smile. His mouth insisted on pulling slightly down at the corners and his dark brown eyes showed not a hint of the spark I'd come to expect. Dark circles surrounded them making Colin look...ill, or tired, or perhaps hung over. We'd talked so little about our personal lives that I didn't even know if he ever drank.

"You look like hell," I said, helpfully. Carrying the round wooden tray down, dangling beside my legs, I headed back to the kitchen.

Colin stayed by my side down the narrow corridor, although, strictly speaking, he should have stayed in the dining room, ready to help any new customers. The flow was slowing towards slow hour, but you never knew. And he had no reason to follow me to the kitchen. No reason at all.

Except maybe he needed to talk. As I set the tray down on top of a pile of similar ones, and one of three big, burly cooks turned from the deep fryer to look at us, Colin whispered, "Yeah. I feel like hell."

This was so non-Colin that I stared at him.

He was pale. Weirdly pale. I've heard of people saying someone was so pale he looked translucent, but I'd never seen it before. Now I did. Colin looked as though, at any minute, he might wink out of existence.

One of the cooks dropped a basket of fries into the fryer with a whoosh. The smell of hot grease engulfed us like a fog.

"You sick?" I asked. Like I could do anything if he were. Like what? Take him home and make him chicken soup? I smiled at the thought. Hell, oh hell. Platonic and useless it might be, but it might be better than going home to an empty studio apartment every morning. On the other hand, I hadn't shared living space with anyone since Gene, and Gene...an image of my late husband flashed in my mind, vivid with his wild red beard and mane of red hair, his more-distinguished-than-handsome features. I chided myself. I wouldn't think of the accident again.

I looked up, to see Colin visibly struggle to express himself. Another first. He wrinkled his forehead, then his nose, drew his eyebrows low over his eyes, sighed. "No," he finally said. "At least I don't think so. Not physical, anyway. I'm...I couldn't sleep for more than about ten minutes at a time. Kept having...not quite...not nightmares, but...."

Oh, boy. Not quite nightmares, but....had initiated at least three of my own bouts of ill health. They'd ended with me in a hospital, under full medication, recovering from suicide attempts. Perhaps that wasn't what Colin meant. Perhaps that wasn't his problem. It certainly wasn't my problem, but....

I looked up at his bruised eyes, his pale face bleached almost to the color of his spun-sugar hair. He hadn't left my side, as if he needed someone near him, as if he were afraid. Afraid of what? Afraid the nightmares wouldn't leave him alone, even though he was awake? "Come on," I said. I put my hand on his shoulder because I sensed he needed it, and pushed him forward, down the narrow hallway, towards the dining area. "I'll buy you a coffee."

He didn't answer, but he walked forward when I pushed him, and he stopped beside the coffee machine, when I stopped to pour us each a cup from the carafe in the server. "Sugar? Cream?" I asked.

"Black," he said.

I put sugar and cream in mine while casting a quick eye over the dining room. The students at the large tables had gone, and only one customer remained — an older man of stately presence and aggressively Mediterranean features -- one of our regulars. He sat at one of the smaller booths, with a coffee and a newspaper printed in odd characters.

I guided Colin to stand by one of the booths. I wasn't sure it would be okay for us to sit. He'd just come on duty. We surely couldn't both take a break at the same time. But I'd deal with that later. I left him standing and told him, "Wait.” Setting my coffee down on the green laminate table, I rushed to clean both tables and take the dishes to the kitchen.

When I returned, Colin was pretty much were I had left him. He leaned on his elbow, propped against the high back of the green-vinyl booth seat. He looked at the cup in his hand, as if not quite sure where it had come from.

Oh, boy.

"Sit," I told him because he was a bit taller than I, and I wasn't sure I could talk to him while he stared into space over my head.

He sat. And I sat across from him and took a sip of my now-lukewarm coffee. "These nightmares. What are they?” Go to enough psychiatrists and you too can put on a decent imitation. "Want to talk about it?"

He nodded, once, then shrugged. "But they're not nightmares," he said.

"All right. What are they?"

"Dreams.” He frowned. "Pretty good dreams, only....only the person I'm dreaming about is dead."

I raised my eyebrows at him.

He looked at me and seemed to wake up at last. Chuckling, he grabbed his cup, and took a sip, and set it down with something more resembling his usual energy. "He was my lover," he said. The words were casual but the tiniest sharpening of his gaze gave away that he was watching me for something, some reaction, a hint of shock. He smiled, at the absence of it, just the smallest of smiles, appearing and then gone. "When I got out of college. He was older than I by ten years. He...his name was Peter. He was a classical composer. Fairly well known. We...traveled all over.” He shook his head, shrugged. "We lived together for three years. He died a year ago."

"How?" My voice came out funny and I cleared my throat. Mutatis mutandis, he could have been telling me my own life story. Only Gene hadn't died a year ago. It had been twenty years since that awful day when I'd stood by his open tomb and flung the handful of dirt down, to splatter the polished rosewood coffin. And Gene and I had been married, of course, for our brief three years of happiness. But that wasn't an option for Colin.

Which, I supposed, left him in worse financial straits than the strained but quietly comfortable ones I'd found myself in when Gene died. But that might have given him an advantage. Had I needed to work for a living when Gene died, maybe I wouldn't have become so depressed, maybe.... I dragged myself away from the thought and looked at Colin. "How did he die, I mean? None of my business, but...."

He shrugged. "No big secret. We were in a car accident. He died. I walked away with bruises and scrapes."

"You were driving?" My voice caught with sympathy and horror, while I wondered how he, so much younger, so much more seemingly vulnerable, could carry with such ease the burden I'd never grown accustomed to. He smiled and laughed, and flirted with customers. Maybe it was being a male. Maybe they felt less.

But he shook his head again. "No. Pete was."

I let out breath I had held in. Yes, that would make a difference. Grief, but no guilt. That would change it all. I managed to ask, in a semblance of calm, "And you dreamed about him?"

"It started right after the accident," Colin said. "The night I spent in the hospital. I dreamed that I'd died, that it had been Pete who'd been uninjured, that he...that he was very angry at himself."

He would be. I'd been angry, angry at myself for twenty years now. Even now, I wanted to punish the little idiot who'd been driving that car, ran a stop sign without noticing, and caused her husband's death. At the back of my mind, the idea seemed to lodge and grow that if only I punished myself enough, I'd be able to go back, re-enact those crucial few minutes. But it never happened. I just ended up in another psychiatric ward.

I realized Colin was still talking and tried to pay attention.

"...he always drank. But not...not to excess. He'd get drunk twice a year or so, usually a happy drunk, and he'd play the piano for me...he played ten instruments and he—" Colin shook his head, and drank what was left of his probably now cold coffee. "But in my dreams, he started drinking more and more and often  It was as if...as if in my dreams, I were following him in some other world, where he was still alive. And he felt so guilty. It was...exhausting and frustrating to see him become more and more depressed, more and more...bitter? That was why I got this job here, six months ago. It helped, because I worked at night, and then, when I slept during the day, if I dreamed, I could always open the windows, and see the sun outside, and the people in the streets — I live a couple of blocks away from here — and know, know for sure that it was just a dream."

"Hey, are you two on break?” Tele's solid form loomed over us. "And who's paying for that coffee?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, we're on break, and I'm paying for the coffee."

"If you're both on break, who's tending the tables?" Tele asked.

"There's no one at the tables, Tele. For God's sake, lay off," Colin said.

It was the first time, to my knowledge, that he raised his voice to anyone in the diner, much less to Tele.

Tele looked at the one table where our regular still drank his coffee and read his foreign language newspaper, then looked at Colin who glared back at him. "Well, your break better be done soon. Old Philip is going to need a refill."

He walked away with an expression of injured righteousness.

"Old Phillip?" I looked at Colin.

He smiled, a shadow of his former smile. "The old guy with the Greek newspaper. At that, I suppose he does need a refill, but maybe you should do it. He gropes."

"Not me," I said.

He grinned and winked. "Well, yeah."

So much for the innocence of youth.

He got up, picked up his empty cup, reached for mine. I grabbed his wrist just below his black sleeve. "Tonight. Your dreams tonight? You said you've been dreaming all this for a year, so what was so bad about tonight?"

I felt him tense. He took a deep breath, expelled it noisily. "The damn thing is that I don't know," he said. "I just don't know. I know I dreamed of Pete, again. I know he was in it, and he felt guilty and was furious, and depressed and drinking and...I don't know how to explain it, he was...explosive. Like he was about to do something dangerous."

I remembered that mood. The beat of lonely, terrible guilt within you, horrible and tempestuous like a stormy sea. I knew the shores of futility it broke against, those shores of what had happened that could not be changed, that could never be changed.

The rock solidity of never being able to go back and undo the damage of one careless moment. Eventually, the sea overwhelmed the rock, made it crumble, and I lost my moorings in time and forgot what had happened, and when and how, and who I was, and fell headlong into sweet insanity. I shuddered. "Maybe you should see someone?" I asked him. "A shrink?” Which was stupid, because shrinks, all the shrinks I'd seen, had never done that much for me. I'd found my own peace despite them, not because of them.

Colin sighed. "Nah. I don't believe in psychiatry.” He grinned. "Always had trouble with these prophetic religions. Go refill old Phillip's cup and I'll take care of those people.” Two older couples — not regulars — came in and colonized one of the booths near us.

I got the coffee, refilled Phillip's cup and, while I was doing so, a younger man who looked much like him came in and Phillip nodded. "Ah, Alexander. So, your mother finally let you come."

Alexander answered in a language I couldn't identify. Though some clients always spoke Greek, this didn't sound like it. Alexander sat down across from...his father? Moments later, their voices rose in obvious argument. Tele went over and muttered something. They quieted down for a while.

"So, what's worrying our little ray of sunshine?" Tele asked me, so much irony in his voice that I almost lashed out.

But I controlled myself because, if Colin didn't take offense at Tele's moods, it was none of my business. And I liked this job, and Tele was pretty nice to me, most of the time. "He's been having trouble sleeping," I said. And broke it off, with the excuse that young Alexander was waving for me. I got him his order — some roasted lamb with a side of olives — and went to attend to another of our regulars, a young woman who always brought in a sketch pad but never sketched anything.

I was bringing her a coffee and a slice of her customary lemon-meringue pie when the bell behind the door tinkled loudly, as the door was thrown open.

I looked up, startled. I supposed Pythia's had been held up before. I supposed it was always a possibility in this kind of downtown neighborhood of cheap apartments and run-down shops.

To be honest, though, this didn't feel like a robbery. I expected to see someone...well, like the lone gunslinger who quiets the western bar with his entrance.

It mustn't have been only me who felt that, because everyone in the diner stopped talking, or breathing, or whatever they were doing at that moment. Even Tele stood, silent, as if at attention behind his register.

The stranger who walked into this sudden hush was tall and dark-haired and, somehow, stormy. He glared at everything and everyone, from me, standing near the next table, holding onto a small empty tray, to the sparse clientele, to Colin, who had been halfway through refilling the foursome's cups, and who stood, as if frozen in place, the carafe lowered but not pouring.

The intruder's curly hair stood in disarray, as if he'd come in through a wind tunnel, and he dressed much too well for this place, in pants and a dress shirt open at the neck. He carried a large, glossy instrument case in his right hand. And he just stood there, holding the glass door open with his sullen bulk, and allowing the cold air to blow in from the street outside.

From the kitchen came the sound of a timer going, and outside, far away, a siren sounded.

Tele recovered his presence of mind first. He drew himself up, seeming to grow and become even more patriarchal, with his wind-blown salt-and-pepper beard. He lifted the hand that had been resting by the side of the register, pointed at the newcomer.

I thought Tele would tell the newcomer he had already called the police, or perhaps growl at him to get out of the door and let it the hell close because Tele didn't have the money to heat the entire neighborhood.

But, instead, he said, "How did you get in?"

The strangeness of this question percolated slowly through my brain.

The stranger lifted his instrument case, as if this answered everything.

Tele took a step back.

"I came to get him," the stranger said, and looked at Colin who -- seemingly wakening -- stood up and set the carafe down with infinite care, on the edge of the table, and stared at the stranger, and knit his pale eyebrows together in slow, puzzled wonder.

"I came to get him back," the man said. "You don't have a right to him. Not yet."

Tele looked at Colin. Tele seemed, I thought, very sad, his expression drawing itself into a deep shroud of mourning. "But my dear sir," he said, all politeness and awkward appeasing. "He came in. He belongs on this side."

The stranger wasn't having any of this argument. He curled his lip in sneering disdain. "Not the hell without me, he doesn't."

In my mind, a soap opera formed, in which Tele had alienated Colin's affections from someone. But whom? Colin had said his lover had died. He hadn't mentioned acquiring a new one, though I supposed he might have.

I looked at Colin, to see how he reacted to all this, but, after putting the carafe down, he'd just stayed where he was, his hands linked in front of him, staring, staring, as if he couldn't believe any of this.

Understandable, as none of the rest of us seemed to believe it. The sparse clientele and the three cooks who'd made their way from the kitchen to stand shoulder-to-shoulder wedged into the entrance to the narrow hallway, all seemed mesmerized by the confrontation between Tele and this intruder.

Tele, visibly struggling, stepped from behind his register, and stood, his hands open and spread in the ancient look, ma, no weapons gesture. "But, there is a way for you to be with him. I mean...."

"Shut up," the dark haired man said. "I've tried. But then modern medicine is a marvel, isn't it? Can bring a man from the brink of death. Over and over and over again."

Tele raised his eyebrows and opened his hands just a little farther, apologetically.

"Shut up, I said," the dark haired man shouted, as if Tele had spoken. "I came to get him, and he's going back with me. Colin, take that damned apron off."

Colin opened his mouth as if he were going to argue, but didn't. On the other hand, he also didn't remove his apron. He just looked at the newcomer and said, "Pete?” He looked more transparent, more ethereal than ever.

His dead lover? Now I was at a loss.

"My dear sir," Tele said. "The road goes only one way. You can leave. You should leave. You don't belong here. But he—"

"I claim the Eurydice exception," The presumed Pete lifted the instrument case. "The Orpheus precedent."

"Ah.” Tele drew himself up again, and smiled, a little superior smile. "But Orpheus had a divine gift to trade on," he said. "And even he didn't succeed. She looked back, you know. And none of the others who've tried it were gifted enough. Your gift must be worth what you're claiming.” Tele looked at Colin. "And he's worth a lot. He's very young. Very vital."

Pete set his case atop one of the green laminate tables, started unlatching the metal clasps with feverishly shaking hands, and made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort. Under his breath, he muttered, "Good enough, I'll fucking show you good enough."

Colin moved then. I didn't remember seeing him walk near, but suddenly he was there, his hand tightening around the man's wrist. "Pete. Pete, this is all nuts, but trust me, I know this, I studied mythology in college, and if I understand what's happening...even you being here and alive is insane, but I....I know this — you're not just being asked to play. If you— if you do that and succeed, it will be gone. Your music will be gone. No more music."

Pete shook Colin's hand away, impatiently. "Idiot," he said. "Idiot. You think I don't know that? I read the books you left. I researched. I know."

"But your music," Colin looked up at Pete, and his eyes, always a dark brown, looked even darker. "You can't do that. Not your music. I am not worth—"

"Idiot.” Pete grabbed Colin's shoulder, and shook him, like someone shaking someone else awake. "I'll find something else to do. But I have to have you there. I can't without you.... I can't--with you, I can do anything."

"But--"

"No. Take the damn apron off. And don't you look back or I—I'll never talk to you again." The last was said with force, but softened by a smile. "Come. Come back. Don't look back. Remember Eurydice."

And, while Colin reached back, to untie his apron, Pete removed his instrument — a shining, golden saxophone, from its case. He checked it over, with quick, experienced fingers. He brushed the curving golden bell in a caress at least as tender as an embrace, and then, tears forming in his eyes, took the mouthpiece to his mouth.

Only to find Colin's hand on his wrist. "Pete? Are you sure?"

Pete pulled the mouthpiece away. "Sure. I won't look back."

In the next second, music surged forth from the instrument. Music as golden as the instrument -- a curved, sweeping looping rhythm, tangled and clear as the course of true love.

That music wrapped around each of us and pulled, and lifted, and took us as though on a ride through the convoluted turnings of its emotion. It flogged long forgotten memories from my mind, showed me scenes of the past: Gene and me walking in a sunlight garden; our marriage ceremony with us standing side by side, in our street clothes, in front of a preacher we'd hired for the occasion, in a deserted church with two randomly-selected passerby as witnesses; tea in our little house, with the jam glistening in the sunlight, and Gene's large, clumsy-looking hands, holding the delicate Sevres porcelain teapot, and pouring golden liquid into my cup; the evening, with the shades drawn in, and Gene's fingers dancing on the piano.

At first, the coffin kept appearing -- the incredible, wrenching grief of that moment when I'd stood and watched all-too-solid dirt splatter on Gene's coffin. The scene, the thought, the grief, the smell of freshly dug-up Earth mingled with the tea, and the walks in the park. Then, little by little, the grief faded, and the music took on a glorious, triumphant feel. By its light I saw what had never happened, what would have happened if I hadn't run that stupid stop sign: the joyful maturity of grown-up love, the teas and walks turning to accustomed ways, all the more cherished for their familiarity. I saw Gene's red hair turning grey, saw him smiling at me with the assurance that only twenty years together could bring.

My eyes filled with tears as each golden note of sound wrapped around me, its embrace as warm and comforting as Gene's arms had been.

I drew breath into an aching chest, and wanted that other future, wanted it so badly I almost could believe it was possible. Almost.

The music stopped, abruptly.

I looked up, shocked, injured — a child dropped from a golden merry-go-round, an adult awakened from a joyful dream.

For just a moment, I saw them still there. Pete held his saxophone in one hand, had the other arm wrapped around Colin's shoulder. And Colin looked up at him and smiled, his sparkling smile, only more sparkling, more mischievous than before.

I realized the smile I'd known was, in itself, a shadow, just as the Colin I'd known had been a shade of his former self. Oh, if that was a shade, what wouldn't someone do for the reality? And how impossible it would be to live without that shining vitality once you'd tasted it.

As I thought that, the two of them flickered. For a moment, I could see through them, see the street behind them, dimly lit by the streetlights, and see the great green neon sign that announced "Pythia's — ALL NITE, EVERY NITE."

"Let's go," Colin said.

And, like that, I was looking at the solid sign and the street lights, and nothing was left of the two of them, except the saxophone, which, in blatant defiance of the laws of physics, fluttered to the ground with the light grace of a falling leaf.

In my mind, at the same time, I saw them walk, side by side, down a bleak corridor. My eyes stared at the space where they disappeared, at the saxophone falling, slowly, slowly. But my mind saw Pete and Colin walking amid threatening, unimaginable monsters, the music, their protection, a golden, fragile shell between them and the venom-dripping fangs of looming demons. At first Colin lagged a little behind but, as they rushed towards the distant glimmer of daylight, he started walking faster. Pete put his arm over Colin's shoulder as, together, they passed a sleeping, black, three-headed Doberman.

The saxophone hit the floor with a metallic sound.

They never looked back.

"Christ," Tele said, coming away from his register. "Where am I going to find another waiter? Good help doesn't grow on trees. But do they care?” He grabbed the saxophone and cradled it into its red-velvet lined case. It seemed to sparkle with more than the light reflected from metal. "Mortals and their love affairs.” He spoke briskly enough that I almost — almost — didn't notice that his eyes sparkled with tears and that a smile kept trying to break through his moustache. "Cassandra, girl, get going. The morning shift will be here soon. I suppose I can always pawn this for something.” He carried the case, reverently, to stick it behind the register stand. "What are you looking at Sandra? What's wrong?"

"They.... Colin. His lover...his dead lover....” I couldn't wrap my mind around the unbelievable enough to translate it into words.

The customers, I noticed, had gone back to their meals as if nothing had taken place. Was it just, I thought, the good old human quality of pretending the impossible hadn't happened?

I remembered the names that Pete had called out. Orpheus had been an ancient musician gifted with divine talent. Using it, he'd tried to rescue his wife, Eurydice from Hades. But she'd hesitated. She'd looked back. He'd lost her.

I thought of the accident that had claimed Gene's life. So many years I'd spent thinking about it, and all I could think of was running that stop sign. But now, when I tried, when I tried to remember the accident itself, I remembered the push that had lifted me, thrown me through the windshield. I hadn't worn a seat belt. But when I'd woken, a day later, I'd only had light cuts. And Gene was dead. Cautious Gene who always buckled in.

"What?" Tele asked, much the same way he'd talked to the stranger.

"I am dead, aren't I?" I asked. "And you're Pluto."

Tele opened his mouth, looked like he was going to deny it, then sighed. "Not Pluto. One of his...servitors. And 'dead' is relative. No human ever really dies. No human ever believes in his own death."

I ignored the double talk. "This is hell? Pythia's?"

"Not hell. Hades. For those who don't believe.... You couldn't go to hell, or heaven. You don't believe in either." Tele chewed on his moustache thoughtfully. "And not the diner. I mean, the diner isn't Hades. All this is. Hades exists side by side with the world of mortals, and only touches—" He looked at the place where Colin and Pete had disappeared. "And only touches when an idiotic mortal forces it to.” The smile came again, under his moustache. "Now, go, girl, you have customers to attend to."

I noticed that three of the large tables were occupied by grave, expectant people. Nothing strange about them, they were the type of people who came to Pythia's: middle-aged, in worn down clothes. I took their orders and gave those to the cooks who'd returned to the kitchen.

Alexander left, and Phillip called to me, and I saw in his wallet a card in the name of Phillip Macedon.

Phillip and Alexander of Macedonia, still trying to resolve their differences. I ran up his charge and he went to Tele, to pay. They spoke the odd language — ancient Greek? — to each other.

I felt oddly happy for Colin, and oddly bruised inside. Bruised and aching, because Gene had never thought to rescue me. He hadn't loved me enough. Well, I'd been the stupid idiot who'd crashed the car, hadn't I?

"Why down in the mouth, little girl? Miss your buddy?" Tele asked during a lull, when I had nothing to do but lean against the plate glass window and look out at the deserted street, at the distant horizon just turning pink over the far row of sky scrapers.

"It's been twenty years," I said. "He never came for me."

Tele patted my shoulder, awkwardly. "It's been no time at all," he said. "Time is not the same in both worlds and time is what you believe it is, nothing more.” He took a deep breath, and then added, in a whisper, as if afraid someone would hear him. "The worlds are very close here in Pythia's," he said. "Customers and employees are always people who've not yet let go, who have something they must do."

I looked back at his urgent expression as he added, "But the employees are always people who are deeply mourned, deeply loved by someone on the other side.” He nodded at me, as if to make sure I understood the import of what he had said.

Someone called from one of the tables, and I went to take their order and refill their coffees.

My legs moved with the effortless ease of twenty years ago and there was a spring in my step. Deeply loved. And if time didn't matter, any day now, any minute now....

Turning to go to the kitchen, I thought I saw a man walking along the street outside, a man with wild red hair, a wild red beard, wearing Gene's dark blue overcoat. He walked like Gene too, in a brisk step, and he looked through the window, looked anxiously, like a man who's lost something and doesn't know where to find it.

Then the impression was gone and the street was deserted.

But one day it would be true.

What She Left Behind

Pedro was twelve the first time he saw his mother.

It was a frosty winter night and he lay in bed, turned away from the door to his bedroom and towards the window that looked out over the garden.

His room was dark, the oil lamp on the bedside blown out. On the other side of the bed, his father was putting his pants on, composing himself.

And Pedro was trying to forget his father was there, trying to forget what happened. It happened every night and every night he forgot about it, by making himself Pedro and the other.

Pedro was his mind and his thoughts, and the inside of his mind where he lived in any way he wished. The other was the body on the narrow bed, between the too-stiff linen sheets, in the smell of freshly sawn wood that his father brought home from his carpentry workshop and the smell of semen thick in the air.

That night the game wasn't working. Pedro and the other remained stubbornly the same, stubbornly aware of violation and intrusion.

He turned towards his window and listened to the wind whistle outside, and looked at the jeweled frost patterns and told himself his father wasn't there. Not at all. Not there.

And then he saw her.

She looked like an angel, he thought. And then, on the heels of that, that she looked like his own face glimpsed in the mirror and magically transformed into a female face of ethereal beauty.

She had the same oval face, the same broad grey eyes, the same gently arched eyebrows. But the dark-blonde hair that streamed around her face was curly and wild, and on her head — incongruous in the winter frost and the snow — rested a crown of tiny pink roses, woven together, twisted, holding her hair back.

She tapped on the window with tapered fingers and dragged them on the frost patterns, putting long, clean streaks through the white.

Had he fallen asleep? Was he dreaming?

His window, on the second floor of the house, could not be reached from any nearby wall. There were no tall trees nearby.

And yet, her face was at his window and her small, rosebud mouth formed words, words he couldn't understand — as if she spoke another language.

Behind him, he felt his father stand up — the mattress bouncing back from the weight.

Normally this was the moment of relief, the moment when he was left alone in his bed. Alone with his thoughts and his dreams. Alone, to be Pedro once more.

But today his heart beat faster, and his hand clutched the sheet tight, and his eyes clenched shut for just a moment.

If his father turned. If his father looked....

He didn't know what or why but he knew, in his rushing heart, his clenching muscles, that something awful would happen. Something...

His father shuffled to the door. The door opened and closed, softly, carefully, so as not to wake the housekeeper and maid on the floor below.

And Pedro was out of the bed and rushing to the window, and Pedro was hungry and desperate, wanting to see the woman, wanting to know, wanting to draw her close, to ask who she was and how she had the freedom to come and go through the air and look through second-floor windows.

But when he threw open the window and the frosty air blew into his room, there was nothing there.

He'd seen the woman, clear as day, and her finger marks remained, clear on the frosty glass of the window.

But outside, the fields that separated Pedro's house from the river were empty and silent, covered in a mantle of frost, like a brittle shell over the dried grass of autumn.

The river, itself, murmured in the distance, too deep and fast-running to be silenced by any winter frost.

And the trees on its banks were stripped of leaves, desolate, lifting their arms to the heavens like despairing penitents.

Pedro's eyes searched the trees and the thorny wild blackberry bushes beneath them, the unbroken layer of ice upon the fields and the river below.

If he'd not dreamed... If he'd not dreamed...

His heart beat in his chest, hammering, hammering, and the cold of the outside air could not cool the heat on his nerves, his need to know who that woman was and how she could come like that, through the air.

What had she seen? What did she know? How could he forget what happened every night if anyone knew? And why couldn't he fly away? Why couldn't he?

Impatient, irritated, he started to close the window.

A tinkle of metal, a shine of something in the dark room, and he looked down to see a small ring fall at his feet.

It was gold and plain — a flat metal band, suitable for a man's finger. Or a boy's.

On the top side, the engraving of a rose, done in exquisite detail, recalled the crown on the woman's head.

And inside, there were two names, miniature and yet flowing and curly as though done by an unhurried hand with a weightless pen: Rosa Silva.

His mother.

He opened the window again. He leaned out of it and almost called, "Mother."

But that would only bring his father into the room, screaming and yelling and pounding.

Pedro had made that mistake once. He was three and he'd asked his father why he didn't have a mother — why he didn't have a mother like other boys did.

He remembered the expression on his father's eyes — a mix of blinding rage and pain. And he remembered his father's fists....

The housekeeper had pulled his father away.

Later, dabbing a cool towel against Pedro's cheek, the housekeeper, a plump, motherly woman with a soft voice, had whispered that Pedro must not mention his mother. Ever.

"She left the day of your birth," the housekeeper had said, and Pedro could remember her whisper so well it might have been whispering in his ear now. "She left the day of your birth and you should never mention her. It hurts your father."

Now, ten years later, hurting his father was the least of Pedro's worries. But he didn't want his father to come into the room. He didn't want his father to know.

He looked at the empty, desolate garden, and he formed his mother's name with his lips.

If his mother could fly through the air, why hadn't she taken him?

***

The second time Pedro saw his mother he was fifteen and he was walking back home from the school, from seeing the results of his ninth grade exam.

It was a June afternoon, at the beginning of the summer vacation. Where he lived, in a village on the outskirts of Porto, Portugal, this meant green wheat planted in broad fields, birds singing in thickets of pine and blackberry and gnarled oaks covered in leaves, providing shade for reading and dreaming.

He walked home through the fields, his hands raking the green wheat stalks and tearing off unripe grains as he walked.

His grades had been better than he expected. Better than anyone could have anticipated. That wild poetry that often ran through his mind uninvited, carving wide channels in his emotions, had proven a tool for understanding the poetry of others. The speech that flowed easy through his tongue and his pen had convinced someone that he should be studying literature.

The village schoolmaster, a poor man with only his salary to live from, was prepared to stake his retirement money and send Pedro to college.

But the money wasn't needed. The money was immaterial. Pedro's father was a specialized carpenter — expert at carving saints whose ecstatic expressions and flowing limbs called business from far and wide. His saints were displayed in churches as far away as Brazil across the Atlantic.

Money was no object, if Pedro's father could be convinced to let his son go to college.

Pedro walked through the fields, rehearsing in his mind how to explain to his father, "Father, they say I'm smart."

"Father, I can do it."

"Father, I could be a doctor of philosophy."

"Father--"

The words died on his lips.

Standing in front of him was the same woman he'd glimpsed, that frosty night so many years ago — flowing hair and oval face and wide, startled-looking grey eyes.

Her hair flowed on the afternoon breeze, as did her clothes — odd vestments white and so diaphanous and sparkling that they looked as though they'd been spun from fog and woven from fireflies.

He clutched her ring upon his finger, the ring she'd given him three years ago. He felt it cold and solid.

She put out and her hand — soft velvet and cold, tapered fingers — met it.

Afraid to speak, he heard her say, "Pedro. Pedrito."

He blinked and stared, his voice for once stilled.

"Pedro," she said. "I didn't want to leave you. But you were just a baby and I couldn't— I couldn't— You were of theirs, had their blood. I couldn't bring you with me. But now you can come with me. You can come."

Still he stood mute, dumbfounded. He could feel his mouth open, actually open, sagging in an expression of utter dumbness.

She took her hand away from his and smiled, hesitantly. "Your father met me by the river and I gave him my troth to live with him and bear his children until he should strike me three times. And then I was free to go. But I couldn't take you until you were old enough to choose. Now you are free to come with me.” She waved her hand over the wheat. "I'm a king's daughter. You are a prince of the air kingdoms."

But he stepped away, he backed away from her amid the tall, rustling wheat stalks.

A prince was he? And she a king's daughter? A king's daughter of some magical kingdom?

It wasn't the magic he had trouble believing. The land he lived in was an old land, inhabited by Celts and Carthaginians, invaded by Romans and Germanic tribes and Arabs and then Germanic tribes again. Each people had inhabited the land, called it its own. Its dead had turned to dust in these fertile fields, poured their blood in great battles on the rushing river sides. Their blood and bones made up the wheat stalks, the soft loam under foot, the rugose trunks of shade-giving trees.

Their ghosts and their dreams walked the landscape, their gods and their demons followed the living and whispered in their ears.

Anything was possible.

But if Pedro's mother truly were such — a free spirit of the air, a princess, a being of light and fog, why had she left her baby behind? She had told Pedro no more than what he knew. She had left him. She'd not given him any convincing reason, any reasoned explanation.

And he felt his gorge rise at the sight of her smooth skin, her oval face, her blonde hair streaming in the summer wind.

The heat of the sun pricked at his back, calling a river of sweat from beneath his shirt, and he felt hot, he felt mad, he felt repelled by her diaphanous beauty.

She'd known what his father was. She'd known what would happen. He was sure of it as he hoped one day to be sure of salvation.

She'd left him behind as a sacrificial victim. In her place.

He turned his back on her and ran through the fields, a formless scream escaping his lips to echo over the silent fields, the too-still afternoon.

Half an hour later, when he got home, he was sweaty and exhausted and gasping. His legs hurt, his arms felt as though they would drop off and he felt numb from tiredness and anger.

And when his father told him, "I don't need a doctor of philosophy in the family. You shall learn my trade," it didn't even hurt.

It didn't hurt because he was so angry. So angry that he could have killed them both — his angry, intrusive, domineering father, his beautiful, ethereal mother.

Instead, he went out with school friends. He'd never had many friends, growing up. He'd been the strange one, the outside one. Pedro of the poetry and the dreams. Pedro who knew words others didn't know, who could call to his tongue the name of every bird in the field, every fish in the brook.

But he went out with his school fellows, anyway.

They were celebrating their freedom from books and pens an paper. And he was saying goodbye to learning and poetry. They went from tavern to tavern, singing and laughing, calling at unknown women in the street and drinking. Drinking a lot.

When he got home, sodden drunk, to fall half in, half out of his front door, so insensible that he barely felt the rain of kicks on his side, barely heard his father screaming at him to explain himself, he'd found a kind of peace.

***

Pedro didn't love Mariana. Oh, she was beautiful enough. Twenty years old, just two years younger than he, she had midnight-black hair and pale, white-silk skin.

And perhaps he found in her regular features, her soft fingers, her musical voice an echo of his long-lost mother's.

But he didn't love her.

He'd just been happy to be here, in this small village. The village was called Alem, which, in archaic language, meant "beyond," and it was remote enough, far enough from everything to be, indeed, beyond.

Pedro liked the remoteness, the distance, where he could invent himself a new name, a new attitude.

He'd taken a contract to restore the village church, and he'd bought brand-new, crisp clothes and he played the city dandy to the locals' credulous gazes.

The church, enormous, set amid a straggle of tiny, rough-stone houses and hard-scrabble fields, good for oats and cabbage and little else, was the votive payment of some ancient king for some forgotten victory.

Inside it, gilded panels and exquisitely carved, suffering saints, had corroded with time, darkened with humidity, lost shape and splendor.

And the village had saved enough money, over who knew how many years, to have a master carpenter restore it.

Pedro had taken the contract, as much to be away from home as to make the money.

And he'd spent months, happily, restoring the lacy wooden carvings that lined the walls of the church, re-gilding the wood work, giving this saint his nose back and that one the keys to heaven that time and weather had turned to dust in the carved wooden hand.

He'd seen Mariana in the church first — her head bowed and a lacy shawl over her black hair.

And he'd seen her dark-blue eyes watching him.

From there it had been a step to the warmth of her bed, the enjoyment of her charms behind the church, where the sun warmed the stone benches and where no one could spy them save maybe the ghosts of the graveyard that stretched beyond.

It was because he didn't love her that he loved their time together. It was because he only craved her soft flesh, her yielding body; because they had nothing to talk about, nothing in common, that he could enjoy her.

And that was why it shocked him so much when the man came to the church, one afternoon, while Pedro was working on a carving of St. Anthony, with his book and the chubby baby sitting, smiling and round upon it.

"Pedro Silva," the man said.

Pedro had looked up. He knew who the man was, though he'd never talked to him. He'd have known who he was even if he'd never seen him before. He had the same dark hair and pale skin as Mariana. But his face was round, his cheeks red. And he stood taller than Pedro, his shoulders broad and massive — the shoulders of a man who worked, sun to sun, in his vast fields. And the fists he clenched, one on either side of his body, were fists the size of shovels — broad and big and immense, each giving the impression of a heavy weight, a senseless rage.

"Yes?" Pedro had said, looking up and trying to keep his face impassive. He'd grown up like his mother — slender and small, with his oval face, his too-wide eyes. The women thought him handsome, but men were likely to have different opinions.

"My daughter loves you," the man said.

Pedro nodded, though he wasn't agreeing. Did Mariana love him? He very much doubted it.

"Do you love her?"

Pedro shrugged.  Pedro didn't love anyone. He'd realized sometime ago that he wasn't a man — a human being, made of the things that made other human beings.

Men loved their mothers and their fathers, their sisters and their brothers. They nurtured tender feelings for their teachers, their neighbors, their friends.

But Pedro was himself, alone. Neither human nor a child of the air, neither loving nor loved. A creature of flesh and blood with a spirit that longed to soar and vanish.

How could he attach himself to anyone?

His shrug didn't satisfy the man. The man came closer, fists clenched and his voice, when he spoke, had tightened into a growl. "Do you love my daughter?" he asked again.

Pedro opened his mouth and would deny it, but he saw the huge fist and he'd been struck often enough to know how it hurt.

If his father had struck him hard enough to hurt that badly, hard enough to crack ribs and break fingers, what wouldn't this stranger do?

"Yes," he said, and swallowed to make his lie more palatable. "Yes."

The man smiled, showing broad teeth. "Good. That's good. She said so. You'll marry her next month, then, as soon as we can run the bans."

Pedro opened his mouth to ask why so soon, why in such a hurry. Her father grinned and spoke softly, "You must, you know. People have seen you together. People have talked. And my Mariana has no dowry. Next to nothing, save her beauty and her reputation. And you've tainted her reputation."

***

When the man left, Pedro came to himself. What had he done? What had he done?

Had he just agreed to marry a woman he didn't love? Worse — he thought of Mariana's sweet but vacuous eyes, her empty words, her babble, her simple-minded opinions — had he just agreed to marry a woman he couldn't love? And a woman without money and without any sense to save money.

Pedro knew his father's own money had long vanished into taverns and drinking, into extravagances and compensations for the love who'd left him.

If Pedro married Mariana, he'd be consigning himself to a life of poverty, a life of struggling drudgery and squalor.

He picked up his tools, which lay scattered on the wooden floor of the church. Looking up at St. Anthony, the new side of the saints face a swirl of oak knots, the old side mellow paint showing pale skin and a dark, rolling eye, he thought that St. Anthony was the saint of dumb animals. And dumb animal seemed to be his state now.

He begged St. Anthony's help in escaping, while he carefully nestled his tools in their leather pouch.

Mariana wasn't for him, or he for Mariana. He'd lost his chance at attending school his chance at learning. He'd lost his chance at being a prince of the air kingdoms. He'd lost any chance at loving.

He would not, now, give up his remaining freedom — the swirling liberty of taverns and drinking and friends, for the sake of a woman with whom he couldn't even talk.

He decided to forgo his clothes, left in his narrow room at the local hostelry. Two pairs of pants and two shirts were little to pay for his escape.

He had his tools and his trade. He had money in his pocket. He could get a horse in the next village and cross the country to where no one would ever have heard of him or of his involvement in Mariana.

And in time Mariana would forget him and find another victim. Or another lover. Someone better suited to love and marriage than Pedro would ever be.

He shoved his tools in the back pocket of his working pants and set off across the fields towards the windows beyond.

***

The third time Pedro saw his mother was on the evening of the second day after his flight from Alem.

He was crossing a field of ripe golden wheat, as the sun sank low on the horizon. He'd stolen some apples as he walked, and he was hungry and tired both.

But he didn't want to stop to buy food. Not until he was much farther from Alem.

Doubtless Mariana's friends and relatives had sent out word. Doubtless people were looking out for him, ready to force him to go back and shackle himself to a loveless marriage.

Tired and hungry, he walked, towards the splendor of the setting sun that put a reddish tint upon the ripe wheat, making it look like bloodied gold.

His mother appeared out of nowhere, forming in the air in front of him: oval face and large eyes and smiling rosebud mouth.

This time there was a fragrance around her, too, the fragrance and smell of a ripening, opening rose.

"Come with me," she said. "Come with me. There is no reason for you to struggle in this world. You don't belong to them. You are of us. A prince of the air, a thing of beauty and light. Come with me."

She touched his hand. He held hers — small and soft and cold, very cold, in his.

And in that moment of grasping her hand, the world shifted around him.

Suddenly, where the wheat field had been, there was a field of roses — low bushes woven together, spreading to the horizon. Low bushes woven together so tightly that they formed a flat pavement upon which he could walk.

And walk he did, beside his beautiful mother.

From everywhere, people materialized, dressed in garments of fog and light. And he, himself, wore fog and light that floated around him and sparkled as though fireflies had been woven into the fabric.

And his feet moved effortlessly, and his mind felt like soaring into poetry and song. The aches and pains of a mortal body had left him, and in leaving him had made him feel light and cleansed and ... good.

In the distance, a castle stood. Not a castle in stone and earth, iron and wood, like the ones that dotted the Portuguese countryside, witnesses to past battles and desperate mortal struggles.

No, this was a castle such as exists only in dreams and the pages of books. It stood against the blue sky, streaming red and gold flags.

In effortless walk over the rose fields, they were there in no time at all and entering through the door, they floated effortlessly along a gilt-and-marble salon to a high throne set atop a flight of marble stairs.

"Oh, you've come to us at last," the man on the throne said. He looked like Pedro. An aged Pedro, with frosty snow in his hair. "You've come to us, grandson. We've waited long."

The king gestured with a golden scepter and spoke to a mass of courtiers that stood behind his throne. "Put a mantle on his back and a signet on his finger. He's your prince who was lost so long in the land of men."

And Pedro blinked, sure he was sleeping but knowing he was awake while a cloak was draped over his shoulders and a light, slim creature — a girl that seemed woven of air, herself — knelt to slip a signet ring on his finger.

Pedro's mother stood on his other side, and held his hand tight and smiled proudly.

"All hail my grandson," the man on the throne said. "Who finally made the right decision, leaving behind the mortal woman and her babe and coming to us, where he belongs."

And on that word, as the cold signet ring touched his fingertip, feeling icier, colder than anything Pedro had ever felt, he heard babe.

His hand recoiled from the signet ring, and he turned, bewildered, to face the creature on the throne. His grandfather?

And it seemed to him the whole scene around him wavered — throne and marble castle walls, thronged courtiers and his mother, herself, standing smiling and proud next to him.

"Babe?" he asked.

The man on the throne either didn't hear or couldn't understand the coldness in Pedro's voice, the fear in Pedro's heart.

"The babe," he said. "Your get upon this woman. You did well to leave it. It was but a third of our kind and all the rest mortal stuff."

Mortal stuff.

A mingle of mortal and people of the air.

Pedro had impregnated Mariana. He'd set his own seed within her womb and made his likeness within her.The child would be a creature of air and mortal — human and other — himself, in whatever proportion.

And it would grow up alone, at the mercy of whoever married Mariana; at the mercy of Mariana's revenge for lost love, for the failure of her dreams of air and enchantment.

Pedro didn't know what love was or if he could ever love. But he was no longer alone. There was another of himself, growing in a womb in Alem.

"I must return," he said, and stepped back from the fantastical court. "I must return to Alem."

He pulled his hand away from his mother's and he saw his mother's face — her mouth opening wide and horrified, and her eyes too, calling to him as clearly as if she'd spoken.

"Pedro," she said. "Pedro."

"No," he said. "No. I must go.” And he was running, running back over the fields of tightly-woven roses, their pink petals becoming harsher and more real as he ran, till he could feel the thorns beneath the petals, tearing at his soles, scratching him.

His mother flew behind him, a fond wraith, and her hands clutched at him, but could not hold him.

"Pedro," she screamed. "You are mine. I've waited for you so long."

So long had she left him alone, struggling alone and without protection. He wouldn't do that to a child of his.

And his mother was in his hair and on his shoulders, her hands touching him and attempting to hold him, yet feeling like no more than a whisper of breeze on his flesh.

"Pedro," she said, her voice as faint as the wind.

He woke up in the field of wheat, with the stars shining overhead.

Footsore and hungry, he made his way back to Alem.

***

Fifty years later, Pedro's house was small and dismal, set in a fashionable sixteenth-century suburb that had fallen into despair and disrepute.

The road, on either side, was filled with ruined and half-ruined houses, sometimes little more than random piles of rocks. But from those piles, a straggle of children would emerge, begging and screaming. And from those stones the smell of cabbage soup and human waste emerged, so deeply ingrained into the neighborhood that it seemed as solid as the crumbling mortar, the irregular stones that made up the houses.

The house where Pedro had lived was different. Small — comprising a room, a kitchen and a bedroom — and relying on an outhouse for plumbing, it nonetheless was kept in good repair. And every spring, the rose bushes he kept in containers and flowerbeds gave the patio the look of an enchanted place.

It was spring now, and the children had come back — all the children and their children. They had his quick wit and Mariana's beauty and sometimes Pedro marveled that such misfit beings, such creatures melded of two substances could do as well as his children had in the world.

A doctor, an engineer and two artists had come from his humble cottage and grown up, sharing a bed in the living room.

Looking at his children's sprawling houses, sometimes Pedro marveled that they came back at all, to visit the place where they'd grown up. That they'd admit to it.

But there they were, on this spring evening, talking and giggling inside, and telling stories of their childhood that seemed much funnier now, than when need had to make do and drove them to extremes for new clothing or better food.

And Pedro was outside, listening to them and enjoying a feeling he wasn't sure he could name.

Contentment? Acceptance?

Whatever it was, it allowed him to stand in his yard, smelling his outhouse and his roses, and hearing the heavy traffic of cars and buses outside his window and not feel pain. It allowed him to know he'd never own a car, never to fly through the air in an air plane. Never to see other lands, never do any of the things that were open to his children and grandchildren in this brave century in which he'd grown but not been born — and not feel pain.

He'd aged well and the back he leaned against the warm stone wall of his house was straight and unbowed. His large grey eyes, too, still worked well enough for him to discern someone sitting by the pink rose bush.

For a moment he started, because he thought it was his mother. Same streaming hair, though darker, same oval face, same large eyes. But this girl's eyes were much darker and she was a child, nine years old. Euridice, his youngest grand-daughter.

She had a book on her lap and was looking at him with a puzzled expression.

He enjoyed helping his children and grandchildren with his homework. "Euridice?" he said. "Something you don't understand?"

"Oh, all of it," she said, and lifted her book, showing a cover with a familiar castle and a diaphanously attired princess. "What happens when Cinderella runs away? What happens when the selky wife returns to her people? What happens when the nymph slips into her tree again?"

For a moment Pedro didn't understand. He frowned at Euridice, thinking of his mother slipping away into the night.

What had happened?

Fear and pain and revenge for what couldn't be, what couldn't happen, for the enchantment that had never be true.

He shaped his lips to say that mortals remained behind. That mortals remained behind in pain, in hunger, in need.

But then Euridice looked at him, dark eyes serious. "See, that's why I don't like fairytales," this child of the new century said. "Because they're silly. They never tell us what happens after the magic is gone."

Pedro put his hand down on her head. Its calloused skin touched silky hair. He looked down at her large, wondering eyes.

And suddenly a bubbling laughter came over him. He'd thought he'd given up his kingdom, his place as prince of the air. He'd thought he'd tied himself needlessly to need and poverty and a life without love.

For many years, struggling from day to day, he'd thought he was a fool not to have run -- not to have run and been a prince in the wide kingdoms beyond, rather than staying here with the wife he didn't love, the children for whom he'd had to provide with daily toil.

And instead...

"The magic is never gone," he said, and it seemed to him that at the edge of his vision he saw rose fields extending to a never-ending perfect castle. And his body felt light, full of magic and youth. "The magic is within."

But World Enough

The Gods sell all that they give.

Fernando Pessoa

The one-eyed man sat at the table and rolled the knuckle bones of the sacrificed ox. Outside, the wind blew from the mountains, and the dry and cold Winter of Bythinia settled upon the land. Hannibal Barca's house was deserted. Hannibal had made his way down from his bedroom, with its wide balcony and easy point of access to the vast, empty kitchen, where he sat at the much-scrubbed pine table and rolled his knuckle bones by the light of the dying fire. And still he couldn't get an answer.

He'd sent the servants out, long ago. No reason to endanger them as well as himself. At any rate, they were foreigners, who could not speak the Punic language and who had no personal loyalty to this man, but served him only for coin.

And yet, it seemed like yesterday that Hannibal had commanded the loyalty of crowds, multitudes, of armies and followers. If he closed his eye now, he could almost see behind it Carthaginians and Africans – and Celts and Greeks too – marching side by side, in massed ranks, a hundred thousand of them marching with horses and elephants over the Alps, attempting the impossibly daring feat of conquering Rome itself.

Was it the echo of their footsteps he heard when he rolled the knuckle bones and heard them hit the scrubbed pine table with a hollow sound? Was it the sound of their shouts in the wind?

No. He pulled his cloak tighter around himself. He knew his hair was streaked with more white than black, his once-sharp features made blurry by age and wrinkles. And he knew his arms could no longer hold the sword throughout endless combat. And his legs would no longer allow him to ride over half a continent....

And yet, he thought, frowning into the dying fire in his fireplace. And yet, the gods had promised him a great empire. How could he achieve it now? What did it all mean?

He rolled the knuckle bones and stared in confusion at the result. The combination of bones, the way they'd fallen, meant nothing. Or nothing he could understand.

He gathered them again into their ivory cup, and flung them once again onto the table. Tanit had promised. And now she must answer him.

***

"Hannibal," Hamilcar's voice echoed, anguished, somewhere above his nine year old son.

Hannibal felt his father's calloused hand on his arm. The emotion in his father's voice shook him. He fought back from the intense light and confusion in his mind, struggled for control of the legs that had given out under him. He held onto his father's hand; he drew himself up. He opened his eyes.

And faced the sacrifice – a young bullock that the priest of Tanit had butchered upon the altar. The altar was in a courtyard, where the whitewashed walls of the other rooms of the temple – the reception room, the holy inner room, the priest's area, formed three sides of it. The other side was open, on the side of the mountain that faced the city of Carthage.

Brilliant sunlight of summer shone from whitewashed wall upon whitewashed wall of the great African city, making it glare like a shameless jewel. Amid the houses, people moved, dark-haired and light of limb. Farmers and merchants and scholars. Phoenician and Lybian and Carthaginian and half a dozen other nationalities.

Beyond the city, in the sparkling blue bay, boats of many lands sat at anchor, come to sell and buy and trade with the greatest traders on Earth.

In that moment, a great engulfing love for Carthage came to Hannibal. He understood just enough, dimly, to know it wasn't his, but the love of something...something that linked to him, that was in his mind, that made him long for Carthage as men longed for women, as a hungry child might long for a sweet. All this, a voice in his mind said. All this might have been lost. And more.

It wasn't a voice, really, more of a buzz, a tension, a feeling like...like what happened when thunderbolt threatened and your hair stood out from your head. Hannibal's head seemed to vibrate with it, to become filled by it. And his legs failed him again.

"Hannibal," his father, Hamilcar, said. This time he was grasping his son by both arms, trying to make him stand.

As from a great distance, Hannibal heard the priest speak. "It will be demons. You didn't have a child pass through the fire and now demons will take your oldest son. You mark my words."

Nonsense, the voice-feeling in Hannibal's mind buzzed. Nonsense. Not demons.

Things that Hannibal's too-young mind – more schooled, as well-born Carthaginians were, in the traditions of Greece than in those of his own people – had never known flooded him, as he looked around as through a dazzling light shining behind his eyes; and his head pounded with an ache that wasn't an ache.

This morning he'd come to the sacrifice glad only that his father thought him old enough to go with him. Now he knew everything about it in a way he could never have dreamed. They were here to offer sacrifice and beg the lady to grant his father, Hamilcar, and his brother-in-law Hasdrubal a good start to their new colonies – what they hoped would be their new empire – in Spain. Hannibal had just been admitted to the rites, though perhaps a little too young for them.

The linen robe they'd made him wear, so different from the Greek chiton he normally wore at home, seamless and long-sleeved, had made him feel stupid when they'd walked to the temple. It no longer did. He knew it was proper to wear Punic attire to address a Punic goddess, come to Carthage from ancestral Phoenicia with Queen Dido centuries ago. And he knew the voice in his head was the goddess addressing him – him, personally.

He would have been overwhelmed by the honor, only the goddess didn't seem to be trying to honor him. She, whose image was so sacred that she was usually represented by a circle with two lines for upraised arms, had a message for him. A message she'd been trying to convey when, as the bull lay dying, she'd entered his mind and made his legs weak and his head spin.

But the message wasn't real words, and Hannibal had to struggle to make them words. It was, Hannibal suddenly understood, the problem of an eternal being trying to speak to a mortal one.

"Now he'll twist in a fit," the priest said. He was a small, bald man, his eyes narrow and spiteful. "And he'll forever be possessed by demons."

"Not ... demons," Hannibal managed. The words seemed to take up his whole breath, and he had to struggle for more.

"... too young for this," Hasdrubal, Hannibal's brother-in-law said. "He's just too young."

And no doubt, Hannibal thought, running his gaze over his brother-in-law's black-bearded countenance, middle-aged and already running to fat, it would suit Hasdrubal very well if I were too young. It would suit him even better if I were truly in the grip of a demon. Because Hannibal was the oldest son of the great general Hamilcar. The real heir to the great fortune of the Barca family. His brother, Hanno, was but an infant, and yet subject to the many forms of demon likely to take a baby suddenly, in the night. Until their late births, Hasdrubal, handpicked by Hamilcar to marry his oldest daughter, had been Hamilcar's right hand and stood in place of an heir to him.

This Hannibal knew, suddenly, without surprise, though there should have been surprise. Up till now, it had never occurred to the boy that Hasdrubal would benefit by having him out of the way. He'd always thought Hasdrubal merely a kindly older man, with sons already close to Hannibal's age.

Now, as he struggled for breath under the weight of revelations, Hannibal looked at his father, Hamilcar – an older man, tanned and beaten by a thousand storms, a million battles. Hamilcar had fought the endless, punishing war against the Romans. And he'd come home to quell a military revolt which had cost him the life of his second in command and best friend, Gisgo. Now, his hair white, his eyes burning with bitterness amid a nest of wrinkles, he looked at his oldest son, the hope of his old age.

Hamilcar was setting out, away from Carthage, away from the senate of Carthage which had thwarted his campaign against the Romans with insufficient funds. The senate, which had caused the mercenaries to revolt by trying to cheat them of their pay at the end of the war.  He was setting out, at an age when most of his peers would be settling into contented senescence, cradling grandchildren in their arms, to try yet again to create a place where he could stand free and defend himself without the constraints of the week-kneed senate.

And Hannibal knew what the goddess had told him, in the words that were no words. You must go to Spain with your father. You must not leave him. You must learn from him the art of war. You must attack Rome, relentlessly.

"Why?" he asked the clear air, the voice inside his head, the terrace-built houses of Carthage. "Why?"

Because you will create a great empire, an empire that will mold all of the future, the voice in his head said. Because you will be remembered forever. Immortal. Like Dido.

"Why?" the boy asked again – even as his elders looked at him, with varying degrees of amusement and shock. The priest was babbling something about speaking to no one.

Because it is your fate, the voice said.

And on that, Hannibal's mind and eyes cleared, his legs stood beneath him, his once more. And he looked at his brother, at his father, at the still-babbling priest.

"Quiet," he said to the priest. His voice echoed with the steel and fire of battle, with the command of a great general. It was his father's voice in the piping tones of a young boy. The priest stopped, mouth, agape. Hannibal turned to his father, whose hands still held Hannibal's shoulders, holding him up. "I am well, father, it is only that in the moment the sacrifice died I knew my fate."

"Your fate?" Hamilcar asked, letting go of Hannibal's shoulder.

Hannibal nodded. "My fate is to go with you to Spain, to learn to command your army from you. And when I'm a man, I shall make war on Rome. Rome shall never know peace while I live. And I shall make Carthage a great empire that will echo to the end of history and make men remember..." He realized suddenly what moved his father, and he smiled. "…your name forever."

There was a moment of silence, and Hamilcar looked at his son, eyes wide. For just a moment, Hannibal wondered if his father was going to order him put to the fire – his throat slit, his body burned, his ashes buried in the shrine of goddess – as was often done to children who proved defective. They were given as sacrifice, to keep the other children healthy.

But then Hamilcar threw his head back and laughed, an uproarious laughter rare in the man who had spent his entire life battling ruthless enemies, and half within his own city. "The goddess has given you a grand fate, has she not, Hannibal?" he said.

Hasdrubal huffed, impatiently. "He is but a child," he said. "And we are not taking him to Spain with us. He will stay here, with his mother, learn the traditions of Carthage, and become a proper man before he joins us.

And by then, Hannibal thought, Hamilcar would be dead, Hasdrubal would have seized control of the colonies in Spain, and he would be Hamilcar's heir for good.

"No," he said, the force of his new knowledge behind him. "No. You will take me."

And his father, a smile playing on his lips, looked at Hasdrubal. "Do not forget," he said, "who is the head of the family and the general of all-mighty Carthage.” Then he smiled at his son. "I think I will take you with me, Hannibal, I think I will."

Hannibal bowed solemnly. "Then I can promise you I'll always be an enemy of Rome," he said. As he spoke, he could feel the goddess withdrawing from his mind, leaving behind the feeling of a job completed.

***

"You are out of your head," twenty-five-year-old Hannibal told Hasdrubal. "To be accepting Roman treaties."

They were in Hasdrubal's house, a broad house, built of stone and whitewashed, like the houses of Carthage – with a vast terrace open to the breezes of the Mediterranean.

Hasdrubal sat on this terrace, upon a low-slung chair with broad arms. He wore Greek clothing – as did they all except when addressing the gods – which in his case consisted of a very fine chiton of what seemed like a most delicate peach color and – from the bit showing on the left shoulder – either silk from the Orient or the finely-spun byssos from the isle of Amorgos, for which the ladies of Greece pined and swooned. The himation was of just-as-fine stuff and embroidered all over in tiny, red flowers.

He'd been reading a scroll when Hannibal stormed in, and now he let the scroll fall from his fingers, and looked up at Hannibal with the half smile with which an adult might indulge the tantrum of a spoiled child. "Hannibal," he said, in a voice of soft censure.

Hannibal threw his head back and squared his shoulders. "No, answer me this, brother.” The title which, under the law he was supposed to use for his brother-in-law dripped from his lips laced with sarcasm, reminding Hasdrubal that however close to the family he might be, he was no Barca. "I heard you received Roman envoys. And you agreed to conquer nothing north of the river Ebro. Why are you accepting limitations from the Romans on your building of your own empire, brother?"

Hasdrubal sighed. He rose from his chair in a jangle of the silver bracelets on his arm. He pulled the himation looser over his broad pouch. "Hannibal," he said. "You are young."

Hannibal glared. He could feel the glare burning out of his eyes. "I might be young, but I'm my father's son," he said. "My father would not want us to deal with the Romans. Ever."

"Your father," Hasdrubal said, speaking softly, "dealt with the Romans, Hannibal. He signed the treaty of Catulus, ending the war."

"But you would sign a treaty without even warring.” Hannibal paced in front of his brother-in-law, who stood, stock-still and watched him, frowning. "You signed the treaty in vile submission before anyone demanded that you submit."

"Hannibal," Hasdrubal said, and put his hand on Hannibal's shoulder where his chalmys – a short soldier's garment – fastened, leaving his skin uncovered and his shoulder and arm free to wield the sword. "We have enough of an army to worry the Romans. We have enough of an army that they're not demanding we leave Spain. That, I know, is in great part your doing. You've trained them. You've led them. And the Romans are not trying to attack us. They merely want assurances we will not attack their precious Saguntum, the city they consider a friend of Rome; all else, we're free to do. Unspoken in the treaty is the understood fact that we're allowed to control all of the territory south of the Ebro. They will not hinder us in this. And then, perhaps we can strike at Rome. Or perhaps simply squeeze her out for commerce."

Hannibal glared at Hasdrubal and shook Hasdrubal's hand from his shoulder. He could understand the truth of his brother-in-law's statement. He could understand the facts behind his talk. In some ways what Hasdrubal proposed was more of a Punic way. To slowly strangle the enemy with commerce. To reduce the enemy to dependence with smart bargaining.

But it was not what Hannibal wanted. And it did not accord with what he remembered of the goddess inside his head. You will create a great empire, she'd said. Your name will be remembered.

If they went with Hasdrubal's plan they would, undoubtedly, eventually win out. Or, at least, perhaps they would. The Romans were in many ways a plodding people, less flexible and certainly less adept at winning the loyalty of those in whose lands they had colonies.

Carthage stood at least an even chance of taking over all of Spain, of colonizing the vast land and converting the Greeks and Celts already living here to the Carthaginian way of living and Carthaginian culture.

But by the time that soft victory came, Hannibal would be long dead, his name forever forgotten. "It is not what my father would want," Hannibal said. "It is not what my brothers would want. My brothers and I–"

"Your brother Hanno is sixteen, Hannibal, and your brother Mago is twelve and still with his teachers. What can they have to do with this?"

And now Hannibal lost the temper he had long held back, and stomped hard with his sandal-clad foot upon the polished rock of Hasdrubal's terrace. "They are sons of Hamilcar, as I am. And they know he would want us to make incessant war upon the Romans."

"No," Hasdrubal said softly. "No, Hannibal. You want that. Your father never did. And Hannibal," Hasdrubal drew himself up, pulling himself so that despite his growing corpulence he affected a military and proud bearing. "I am the commander of the armies, by election. And you are just my younger brother-in-law."

Hannibal took a good five breaths, in offended silence, before he could collect himself enough to fling himself out of Hasdrubal's house, in a temper.

***

The temper carried him all the way into his own house, where he ignored the soft voice of his wife, Imilce, calling his name, and ran up the stone stairs to his own quarters, his own room. There he took deep breaths, to calm himself, but in vain.

Instead, he started pacing, hands clenched. He'd made the army. He'd made it what it was. An amalgamation of mercenaries, of Lybians, of recruits from nearby friendly Celtic tribes, it stood at near to forty thousand men, and it was far from the rag-tag mercenary force his father had once commanded against the Romans. These men knew Hannibal, had seen him grow up and trusted him – were loyal to him with their own lives.

He'd always thought that was the gift of the goddess to him, that he had the ability to attach men's hearts and souls, to win them to his side with his words, to follow him with his enthusiasm. He certainly was better than his father at it.

And yet the one man that Hannibal couldn't persuade was Hasdrubal. And Hasdrubal had been elected to command the army when Hamilcar had died, because Hannibal had been only seventeen and too young to be in charge. Now Hasdrubal was in charge until he died. And though he looked older, and going to fat, he was only twenty years older than Hannibal. By the time he died, if he lived long, Hannibal himself would be well advanced in middle age, and not in the state to do any of the war on Rome he'd promised the goddess he would do.

Leaning on the cool wall of his chamber, he pressed his closed fists hard against his temples, where pain burned as though something were trying to burrow in. Or his anger were trying to crawl out. He pushed his hands hard, knuckles biting into his skin. Please, he thought. Please. Lady. I want but to serve you. But how can I when this... soft merchant bars my way and would barter away our chances at empire?

From outside the house came a sound of screaming, a sound that grew nearer. Someone pounded on the front door. It was opened, then closed again, hurried steps upon the stairs. Imilce screaming, a short scream and then, "I'll tell him."

His room door open. "Hannibal, Hannibal," Imilce said. "Your brother Hasdrubal is dead."

Hannibal opened his eyes and brought his hands down. "Hasdrubal?” Hasdrubal had looked no more likely to die soon than he'd looked likely to take flight. "Dead?"

"A Celt killed him," Imilce said, dark her eyes brimming with tears, her dark hair disheveled as though she'd torn at it, though she'd had little contact with Hamilcar and had little reason to mourn him. "With a silver knife."

"Hasdrubal?" Hannibal asked again. "Dead?” In his mind he thought of the goddess reaching out her powerful arm. Now Hannibal would be the commander of the armies. And he could do her will.

***

"There are Romans," Imilce told Hannibal as he returned, muddied and bone-tired from his campaign north, as far as the river Douro, to consolidate his holdings and solidify his domain over the loose confederation of tribes that occupied that wild land.

It was fall now and the steady-falling rain of that region, with the bone-chilling cold that accompanied it, had got into Hannibal's body so much that even the week back to his more southerly domains, as he approached Carthage, hadn't seemed to dispel the chill. Indeed he'd ridden back faster than he surely should, more desirous of warmth than even of his wife's company.

Now he stood in the entrance room to his house, his brother Hanno just behind him, still chilled and covered in mud. He wanted his bath and his bed. He wanted Imilce and calm. Instead there was this.

"Romans?" he asked.

"A delegation of them. All very proper," Imilce said. "Important people."

"What want they with me?" he asked. That the Romans might be alarmed at his relentless campaigns since Hasdrubal had died, he didn't doubt. That they might find this sudden Carthaginian obsession with war and fighting – when before they'd been all ready to deal – disquieting, Hannibal could well imagine. But why would they send him a delegation? Did they not know – was it not the word everywhere? – that he was a sworn enemy of Rome?

"They will wait," he said, "until I've had my bath.” He walked past Imilce before she could object, and all the way up the stairs to his chambers, where the servants had set warm water and oils and his clothing.  He unwound his cloak from his chilled body and bathed, with the aid of two body-servants.

When he was done, he rejected the clothes laid out for him – a chiton and soft himation, which he might very well have worn in the house. In their place he demanded just the rough wool chiton which he wore in battle, and which he fastened to his shoulder and side with a serviceable fibula. He'd go to see these Romans dressed as a soldier.

Outside his door, already bathed and similarly dressed, Hanno waited.

Together they went to face the Romans, who looked like fat merchants and who introduced themselves as Publius Quintus Sanguntinus and Marcus Illius Sextus.

Imilce, ever the housewife and hostess, had served them olives and pomegranates in dishes made from silver mined in the region. One of the romans had dripped pomegranate juice down the front of his tunic, staining it purple.

"You wish to see me," he said, sitting down.

"Yes my lord," Sanguntinus said. "We come with a charge of the Roman people."

"The Roman people will always have my ear," Hannibal said. And said it without irony. After all, hatred was, much like love, a devotion, a constant attention to the other.

Sextus fidgeted. "We would like to request, milord, that you not…that you leave Sanguntum in peace. For it is a friend of Rome."

Sanguntum. Through Hannibal's mind, several thoughts ran, discordant. Sanguntum was, after all, on the south side of the Ebro, and Hasdrubal had said that the contract left that to the Carthaginians. And the Romans were asking for peace for Sanguntum. That meant that they believed he would be within his rights to attack it.

He stood up and smiled. "I will grant you, gentlemen, that I've not in the least changed my intentions towards Sanguntum this last year."

One of the Romans opened his mouth, as though to ask what those intentions were, and what it all meant, but Hannibal was smiling, the smile so broad on his face that it almost made his features crack. "But you've waited long, and you're probably tired. Let me call my wife, and she will make sure slave girls bring you wine and food and whatever else you desire."

They couldn't ask while he was being hospitable, and in two hours they were too drunk to ask. By the time they sobered all they would remember was that Hannibal had been welcoming, and therefore that he cannot possibly mean to attack Roman interests. They would only remember he was a friend.

"And what mean you to do about Sanguntum?" Hanno asked while he and Hannibal walked amid Hannibal's olive trees.

"I mean to take it," Hannibal said. "It is to the south of the Ebro, and even by Hasdrubal's dealing, ours to take."

Hanno gave Hannibal a worried look. "The Romans aren't likely to take it calmly."

"The Romans," Hannibal said, "can take it as they will."

***

"Carthage has been given an ultimatum by Rome," Hanno said, breathless, coming into Hannibal's study, where Hannibal was playing with his year-old-son Hamilcar. "They said they can let fall from their breast either war or peace."

Hannibal scarcely looked up. His decision, if such it was, had been made long ago, when the goddess had told him that he must always be an enemy of Rome and that it was his fate. "Well, then we'll snatch at the war and let the peace go.” He positioned Hamilcar on his knee, and bounced him up and down gently, in a motion like horse riding. The baby smiled, letting a thin tendril of drool fall, which Hannibal wiped on the back of his hand.

Even while doing it, he was aware that his brother had stopped, unnaturally still, like a statue.

"But," Hanno said, "you can't mean it. We've lost two wars against Rome. We are not prepared...."

Hannibal smiled. "But we are. I've had it all planned a long time. We will do what no one has ever done. We will attack Rome marching into Italy."

"Into Italy?" Hanno asked. "What ships will take us there?"

"None. We will march by land, over the mountains."

"You are mad, brother."

Hannibal looked up. "If madness is greatness, then I am. But the Celts cross the mountains all the time, to raid the northern part of Italy. Don't fret. It can be done.” He grinned wide. "We shall do it with elephants."

Hanno backed up blindly, to sit on a chair near Hannibal. "With elephants?" he said.

Hannibal laughed at his tone of surprise, and – on his knee – Hamilcar giggled, the rounded giggle of a contented baby.

My son will be master of an empire, Hannibal thought. The goddess had promised, and he trusted.

***

Hannibal crossed the mountains, with horses and elephants, and forty thousand followers. Some elephants and some men had died in the crossing, but Hannibal could hardly regard it as important. His decision had been made and long ago, and if the goddess was with him, then these losses were inconsequential.

As though to prove his blessing from Tanit, almost immediately men from nearby tribes attached themselves to him. They more than compensated for the ones he'd lost. He pushed on.

In the marches of the Arno, he lost an eye to a chill that became a raging fever. This too, though marring forever the countenance that his wife had loved, meant nothing. He must continue. It was his fate.

He plundered Arretium. The city of Capua, second only to Rome in glory, deserted to Hannibal's field. Latins, Umbrians, Sabines and Picentines stood against him in vain.

In Rome, human sacrifice was practiced for the first time in centuries – two Gauls and two slaves killed to appease the gods. It meant nothing. They could not stand against the power of Tanit.

In the shores of Lake Trasimene, he won a great victory and near Cannae in early August – with Magus's help – he defeated the Roman legions and cut them to pieces.

But the Romans were in Spain now, and laying waste to the careful empire that Hannibal had started building there. And Hannibal didn't have enough men. Never enough men.

It was then that he started using the knuckle bones, from an animal sacrificed to Tanit. He would roll the bones, and read the result.

Since the goddess was no longer in his head, he had to roll the dice to find what she meant him to do.

He rolled the dice when, early one summer, news came to him that his wife and son had been killed by a fever – a result of the confusion of war reigning in Spain. And the knucklebones told him to press on. He expounded to the goddess on his lack of men, on the fact that not enough Celts were crossing over to his side and that the Italianite tribes remained deaf to his appeals.

But the knuckle bones said, Press on.

He rolled them again when Syracuse rebelled and aligned itself with Carthage. And again when news of his brothers' deaths reached him. And again when the pestilence swept the Carthaginian camp and destroyed their fighting force, leaving Hannibal with yet fewer men.

And he rolled them, yet again, when, trying to protect Capua he attempted to divert troops from laying siege on his allied city by making sorties on Rome itself, with elephants. This failed. The Roman Senate apparently knew that the walls were far too strong to be breached.

At long last, bitter at heart, Hannibal left Italy. He left it to defend Carthage itself. The knuckle bones could not be lying. As they could not be lying when they told him that he must sue for peace, after the defeat.

Hannibal hadn't understood – he still didn't understand – but he knew the goddess could not deceive him.

An enemy of Rome, not forgotten by the wrath of her people and her rulers, he moved from principality to principality, trying to hide, trying to live a little longer, trying to spy an opportunity from which to charge again. Because it was his fate to make war on Rome and to win and to create a name for himself.

***

In Bythinia, at the end of the world, the winters were as cold as the summers were parched, and before the snows fell, blanketing the mountains, the wind came, carrying just a few flakes, biting to the bone of the old man Hannibal had become.

For a couple of years – he, himself, disdained to count the years of his exile – he'd lived here, with his comfortable house that contained nothing of himself, served by men who worked for the money alone and did not know, nor could they care, whom they served.

And then there had been rumors of Romans. Romans had tracked him down and with Bythinian complicity or indifference paving their way, they had gathered in the nearby city. One by one they'd trickled up, over the last few days. There was a veritable detachment of them, surrounding his home.

They thought – and he wouldn't say they were wrong – that he had been encouraging the king of Bythinia to rebellion.

And now there were dozens of them outside. Dozens to kill an old man.

Hannibal had sent his servants away. A great general, as he remembered his father teaching him, risked men when risk was necessary. And the rest of the time, he tried to save the lives of those who served him. Even if their service involved lighting fires and cooking meat, and their loyalty was to gold and not to him.

All alone here, in his empty kitchen, he rolled the knucklebones. And he got no answer. Or no answer that he could understand. The symbols the bones formed on the scrubbed pine were always the same. The symbol for completion. The image of something done.

Hannibal shook his head. He wasn't done. If he were done Rome would be defeated and Carthage would be the power in the world. Or at least that offshoot of Carthage which was his beloved Cartagena in Spain.

But he wasn't. He got up and got wine from a flagon hanging on the wall of his kitchen and poured himself a cup. It tasted sour, and not like the wine he'd drunk in Italy while he commanded his troops. But he drank it, anyway, against the bone-biting cold.

Without the goddess and her promises, he would have stayed in Cartagena, by the Mediterranean sea. He could imagine it now – even in this season – bathed by mild breezes and the warm waters of the ocean. He could imagine the terraced houses – which might now be all destroyed by the Romans – reflecting the sunlight. And children running and playing in the dusty streets.

If he hadn't undertaken to fulfill his promise to the goddess, his son might have been one of those children. But no. By now Hamilcar the younger would have had children, and perhaps given his father a cloud of grandchildren to play with and bounce on his aged knee.

Hannibal surveyed his knee where it showed, bony and scarred beneath his chiton. He drank another cup of wine and tossed the knuckle bones again.

And again the symbol was for "completed.” And for accomplishment. He'd accomplished nothing. From outside, he could hear the steps of the enemies and voices calling, as they walked around the shuttered house, seeking entrance.

Was that the front door giving, as they applied shoulders to it? And how long till they decided to fire the house and roast their old enemy alive? And what could the goddess mean by all of it.

I mean you're done, a voice said. And well done. You have fulfilled your fate, Hannibal Barca.

His head hurt. As it had those many years ago in Carthage, his eyes seemed blinded by a light that shone behind them. "I have done nothing," he said, his voice reedy and wavering. "I have done nothing, save cause the loss of Carthage and of all my family."

The light resolved itself into a figure. A female figure, the draperies enveloping the voluptuous curves, the arms raised as the arms of the goddess were in the only, sketchy representations of her that Carthage allowed.

Hannibal's mouth felt dry and tight. The wine, he thought. One of the hired servants poisoned my wine. It was such a Roman trick to buy the demise of enemies by bribing their servants that he could almost have laughed. Only he couldn't laugh past the tightness at his throat, and it was too late, and his chest hurt when he inhaled.

Oh, but you have done everything I told you, Tanit said, her voice sweet and soft in Hannibal's years like the voice of his Imilce in the too short years of their living together.

He tried to shake his head, though it hurt him. He fought with all his might against the workings of the poison in his body. He wouldn't die. He didn't have an Empire. He was not ready to die.

By your actions Carthage was lost, Tanit said. By your actions Rome learned the power of final conquest, of total destruction of an enemy. It has shown them how to be ruthless. And how to win. From now on, nation after nation will fall under the heel of Rome. And Rome will last long enough to forever be part of the civilization of men.

In Hannibal's mind's eye, he saw Roman statues, Roman clothing, Roman poetry in lands beyond those he could even imagine. He saw many languages from the Latin.

"But you promised I...," he said as he could no longer talk.

I promised you would never be forgotten. And you won't. Wherever Rome is mentioned, so will be the name of her greatest enemy.

Hannibal wanted to laugh or cry or scream at the depth of his betrayal. But his mind, working fast, and with all it had left, reminded him that he was Carthaginian. Carthaginians were first of all merchants. In any deal, you had to watch that you were getting what you thought you were.

Hannibal and Carthage itself, Hannibal now realized, had been nothing but a sacrifice in the gods' games of power.

But if he'd lost a bargain, he'd lose it like a Carthaginian. He shrugged off his flesh like an ill fitting cloak and crossed over to the arms of the radiant goddess, laughing at his own foolishness.

He'd got exactly what he'd bargained for.

Super Lamb Banana

John Lennon thought he was going to be mugged.

And it shouldn't happen here. He was at Liverpool docks where the tourists were as thick on the ground as muck in a back alley. He thought he'd be safer than near his rent-subsidized flat. But these days there was nowhere safe.

John peered with near-sighted anxiety at the man approaching through the foggy evening. He looked taller than John and big and approached with the sort of purposeful confidence only criminals had.

Turning away, John tried to use his cane to steady himself on the cobblestones that the fog turned slippery.

The steps got closer.

Tap, tap, tap, John pushed his cane against the cobblestones, balancing himself, desperately trying to move faster, to–

The water slap-slapped against the moorings of Albert Dock. The brackish smell of river water surrounded him. Somewhere, far away, noise of women laughing and glasses tinkling echoed, so faintly that it might as well have come from another world. Probably at the Liverpool Tate gallery. Or the Beatles Museum.

But out here, John was alone with his pursuer.

John had nothing that anyone could want. He wore an old turtleneck and threadbare jeans and, in his pocket, kept his return bus ticket back to his flat. None of which would be worth much, even at a flea market.

But it didn't matter. The mugger might lose his temper. He might kill John for kicks. Or for nothing.

John tried to walk faster. His heart sped up and his breath came in short puffs.

The steps behind him neared, relentless. John tried to run.

His feet went out from under him, as the too-worn shoe lost purchase on the slick cobblestone. He gave a faint cry and struggled to hold himself upright with his cane. Somehow he could not set it firmly on the pavement.

The ground rushed up to meet him. He hit on the side of his face. His bad hip sent a vibrating pain through his body that made him curl in a ball and keen.

Behind him, the steps turned into a run. Jackals always got excited when prey fell.

John tried to get up, scrabbling to his aching knees. Cold breeze blew where his jeans had torn against the stone. In front of him, a blurred yellow glare like a boulder painted an unholy color offered a grip to help him get up. He couldn't quite see what the thing was, since his glasses were badly out of prescription. But he reached out, anyway, and scrabbled with his hands at smooth cement, trying to find a handhold.

"Sir, are you all right?" a man's voice asked. Strong hands on John's shoulders pulled him up, helped him balance against the yellow thing.

John rested against it, panting, the sweat from his exertions cooling fast on his body.

"Mr. Lennon, did you hurt yourself?"

Dizzy, his head aching, his skin abraded, John turned to look at the man. Was this the same person who'd followed him through the fog?

He sounded like a Yank. And, up close, he had that well-scrubbed, clean-shaven look that so many Yanks had these days – always giving the impression they were overgrown school boys. Couldn't look less like a mugger.

"I'm fine," John said. "Perfectly fine.” The last word faltered, as he realized that the man had called him by his name. The man had recognized – John.

Which – considering how difficult John found it to recognize himself when he looked in his mirror and saw his domed, balding head, his rheumy eyes, his sagging chin -- must rate as some sort of a miracle.

The Yank seized hold of John's hand and shook it up and down with much unnecessary vigor. "I'm Richard Sforzi," he said. "I'm so glad to meet you at last. I was hoping you'd be coming to the reception at the Beatles Museum."

He stopped, doubtless because he couldn't fail to notice how John's eyes had narrowed at the mention of the Beatles.

John knew that when anyone said he was a great fan of John's, he actually meant he was a great fan of the Beatles. He'd probably flown all the way across the Atlantic to go to the reception at the Beatles Museum – which celebrated the fact that Paul had given the museum his gold-plated Rolls Royce, or perhaps the gold plated thong underwear of his young wife.

John felt his lip curl into a snarl, and controlled it by an effort of will.  These fans – his or not – were often good for a pint of beer, or – rarely – two fingers of something stronger. Really rarely they would have other, illegal substances they were willing to share.

John forced a slightly daft smile upon his lips, and looked at the man with what he hoped was an encouraging gaze.  "So, a great fan of the Beatles, are you?" he asked. "I was going to the museum me'self. To have a gander at what not that McCartney has donated now. Good old Paul McCartney, that, always finding way to make money out of the three notes he knows, no?"

"I always thought you were a much better musician than McCartney.” Sforzi swallowed. He grabbed John around the wrist and spoke in a great rush. "You probably still are, er... if you're still playing... The only reason I came England was that I hoped to meet you, and the Beatles museum seemed like a place to find you."

It was, of course. Not just because it allowed John to get away from his lonely flat for a few hours. Not just because there would be free food, and there was always the hope of a fan to touch for a drink or a handout.

No. Most of all, Lennon came to these things for the same reason one's tongue dwells upon an aching tooth. Because sometimes the pain is too great to do anything else.

There was a time he'd been as well known, as famous, and as wealthy as Paul. Where had he gone wrong?

He looked through the fog, towards the subterranean entrance to the Beatles Museum – marked by an iron arch. It was all so long ago. And so few people remembered him. Really remembered him. They remembered the Beatles. That was all they remembered. John had sunk from their consciousness.

"Well, I was thinking," Richard Sforzi said. "I'm not very interested in the museum, now that I've met you. If you'd let me take you out for tea and some cakes, or– " He looked around, with a stranger's helpful certainty that a tea room will materialize in front of him, and spoke with the Yanks' assurance that there was nothing a Brit ever needed more than a cup of tea.

"Make it a pint or two and you've got a deal," John said. "My cane fell down, somewhere.” He held onto the big yellow bulk behind him.

This close up, he identified it as Super Lamb Banana – a sculpture erected back in the Eighties to – the artist said – symbolize the perils of genetic engineering. It had the front of a lamb, the end of a banana and an idiotic expression on its near-featureless face. For some reason, it always reminded Lennon of Paul McCartney. Perhaps it was the air of great self-satisfaction.

John let go of the statue, as Sforzi handed him his cane.

He smiled as Sforzi said, "The super lamb banana. I couldn't believe it when I heard about it. It's the sort of empty-headed, feel-good commercial art that takes up too much space in the real world."

It was going to be a fine evening.

***

The pub was the kind of upper-class pub – all shadowy nooks and heavy oak tables, and a roaring fireplace located so it could be seen from almost anywhere -- where no man would dream of meeting his mates or having a friendly game of darts.

These days, it was a world closed to John – a place of money and privilege where he simply could not enter. So he relished his moment back in, remembering those days – now like a dream – when he could have bought the place twice over.

Sforzi navigated amid the tiny, candle-lit tables with the assurance of a man to whom this type of place was all too common and sat down at a white-cloth-draped table.

When the slick and blonde waitress approached, Lennon ordered two fingers of single-malt -- amber in the thick-walled glass. Sforzi ordered something thick and bright green.

"Absinthe," he told John. "Though they don't make it with wormwood, anymore. No madness...."

Sforzi started speaking. John just sat there, contented to have his drink and stare at the roaring flames in the fireplace. He concentrated on appearing to listen, but he knew there was not much point. Fans always raved, and Yanks were the worst of all.

There was that woman, three years ago, who'd told John that if only he'd married her, instead of marrying Yoko, everything would have been fine. Forgetting, of course, that John had once been in love with Yoko and that the fan-woman didn't have even a tenth of Yoko's personality.

At first Sforzi's conversation seemed headed in a similar – if less romantic – direction. What John would have filed under "how great you could have been, if only."

Did the fans really think that these things had never occurred to him? That he didn't run through his memories in the night, trying to figure out where all his fame and all his power could have gone?

But then he heard, "In most worlds, of course, you did not make it so big, you know. But I'm sure there must be one.  If you change just one thing and manage to make that world real, it could make you the biggest ever – bigger than Jesus, you know, as you said."

John blinked at the man. "Worlds?" he asked.

"Yeah, I was telling you," Sforzi looked around, like a spy who fears being followed. Having satisfied himself that no one was listening in, Sforzi turned back to John. By the light of the candle, his blue eyes shone unnaturally bright. "I work for NASA," he said. "On a secret project. You see, every time that you make a decision.... every time one of us makes a decision, it generates another universe... another world. All these worlds, going on forever, compressed together like pages in a book, but never touching."

John lifted his eyebrows. Ah, it was not a madman but his near cousin: a science fiction chappie. John himself had watched Star Trek religiously once upon a time. He understood this. Besides, at least, the bloke was not saying John should have married him and not Yoko.

"Parallel worlds," John said, firmly, to show he understood. Also to prevent the conversation from getting stranger. "I understand that. Now, if there were a way to find a better one, eh?"

Sforzi's eyes shone brighter. He leaned forward across the table. "There is," he said. "There is.” He looked weirdly Mephistophelian with the candle lighting him from behind as he hesitated. "At least, there is a way of going back in time to the fork in the road and taking a different one from the one that's led you here – and if you find the right fork...."

"Time travel?" John asked.

"It's actually a quantum uncertainty mech–” Sforzi stopped, waved his hand expansively. "Close enough. Yes. Time travel."

"So I can go back to my younger self and–" John said, helpfully. The man was insane, of course, but it was an entertaining form of insanity.

"Warn him. Tell him what to do, what not to do. And then he can...change."

"Why would my younger self believe me?" he asked. "I don't even look like myself, anymore."

"Well," Sforzi scratched his head. "Well... is there something you could give him? Something that could prove you are...him?"

"My journals," Lennon said, happy to solve this hypothetical puzzle.

"Journals?"

"I've written them since I was fourteen or so," he said. "So if I were to meet myself anytime after that, he'd see that the first journals were his. Also, he would know where my life went wrong without my needing to tell him all of it."

"You don't have the journals with you, right? I could take you back in time right now. Car is outside."

"Car?" Lennon had been so carried away with the fictional puzzle, he'd forgotten this man believed it. But a car? He expected them to travel back in a car?

Sforzi shrugged. "I built the quantum device into it. Makes it easier. Just a rental car. I'll remove the device when I return it."

"Ah...."

"Why don't I take you to your flat now, and we get your journals and go back in time?"

Why not? Because Sforzi was delusional? Because John had no time for this?

But John had all the time in the world, and even if he got nothing more out of this adventure, the lark allowed him to spend a longer time in Sforzi's brand new BMW with its leather upholstery. It would be a few moments away from the squalor John's life had become.

***

He'd gotten the journals – twenty red-cover notebooks in a box. John had been slapdash in journal-keeping after he and Yoko had been deported by American immigration authorities back in the Seventies.  He wrote almost every week.  Well, sometimes every month. Definitely at least once a year.

There wasn't much to write about.  Yoko hadn't been able to endure England for very long and it seemed like only a few minutes before she filed for divorce and left for Paris with most of John's money and copyrights and....

Not that John begrudged them to her. He'd always admired the way she looked out for herself. And besides, she'd left him plenty to live on until he issued the next big album.

But then, there had been parties – he was free, after all – and drinking and... other stuff, and somehow the album never got made, and, by degrees, so slowly he hardly knew how, he'd found himself living alone and forgotten in a bloody state-subsidized flat. And the world had gone on. Twenty year olds didn't even know his name.

"Well," Sforzi said. "Do you know where you want to go?"

"Yes," John said. He'd thought about it, all the while he was making his rickety way down the eight flights of stairs from his flat to ground level. The elevator was on the blink again. He knew where he wanted to go, on the off chance this worked. "I know exactly where I want to go. I want to go back and never get involved with Super Lamb Banana."

"Super–"

"McCartney. Paul. We'll see how far he goes without me, shall we? We'll see how Super Lamb Banana does without the real artist to make it all seem important. We'll see about his albums and his concerts then."

He held the cardboard box on his skinny, withered legs and thought maybe, maybe another world existed in which John had a chance to be the artist he should have been without Paul grinning around him, fuzzy, undefined and vaguely benevolent -- like Super Lamb Banana.

And then, John wouldn't need drugs and alcohol to dull the pain of his stolen art. And he could have kept on. He would still be wealthy. He would be famous. He would be the greatest artist in the world.

***

Seventeen-year-old John Lennon stood outside the Quarry Bank public school. School was over for the day.

He wore his Teddy Boy tight pants and flamboyant jacket, but he felt as if he was quite a different creature from the teenage boy who had left the school yesterday. Yesterday, when the old man had handed him a box full of tattered diaries.

At first he'd thought the old man was a bum. Then he'd noticed a certain air of family resemblance – the sharp nose, the angular chin, and he'd thought it was his father, come to reclaim him after all this time.

But, while anger and bewilderment and relief all rose in John together, rendering him mute at seeing this long lost father, the stranger spoke. He said he was not Freddie. He was John himself, come from the future.

John had spent the night awake, reading those diaries – at first euphoric as the diaries "predicted" that he would be one of the greatest musicians of all time. But then the tone of the journals had changed. John had become bewildered by the constant betrayals by friends and lovers. And then shocked at his abandonment, his disappearing from the public mind.

The old man – his old self? – had scribbled a note at the end of the journals, telling John to steer clear of Super Lamb Banana. Super Lamb? Banana?

John had no idea what that meant. But he did understand the other things the old man had told him, "McCartney is no good for you. McCartney will only live off your art."

From the diaries written in the last years of the band, John understood that Paul McCartney had taken over John's music, that he'd overpowered John's greatest creativity and cheapened John's art. Made John irrelevant.

John frowned. And Paul seemed so nice, too. In fact, John had just about decided he would let Paul join the Quarry Men. Well, forget that. John would take the Quarry Men to glory all on his own.

He saw Paul walking towards him down the sunlit street, a smile on his face. Right. Time to stop that friendship before it went anywhere.

***

John Lennon straightened his tie, self-consciously. He'd been retired from his teaching job for twenty years now, and he'd grown unaccustomed to his tie. But businessmen always wore ties. And suits. And John was meeting with an important movie producer, after all. A man who wanted to make a movie about the Quarry Men.

Bloody time, too. Rock-and-roll had been an important form of music, even if now defunct. Though it had come from the Americas and had petered out without reaching most Europeans, those it had reached, it had marked deeply. It was about time someone realized what a great thing the Quarry Men and other groups like them had been and how their experimental sound could have changed the world. Perhaps even introduced a new way of thinking to a generation -- broken the bonds of Puritan morality that still encased British society.

John had heard that in America sometimes men went to work without their ties, but that would be unthinkable anywhere in Europe.

Which is how John spotted the Yank who was supposed to meet him. He got out of his BMW, looking florid and well-scrubbed, wearing a grey suit of the best cut and a shirt open at the collar. No tie.

John stood near the absurdly yellow sculpture of Super Lamb Banana.  Built in the Eighties, it seemed to Lennon to embody all that was phony about the commercial art that surrounded him now. If only he'd got a chance. If more people had appreciated rock music. If it could have reached the masses.

"Hello," the man said. "I'm Richard Sforzi."

"I'm John Lennon," John said, stepping forward.

"Oh, Mr. Lennon," the man said. "I know."

***

"Of course I remember the old man, when I was in school," John said, leaning across the table. "He was the reason I never took in that chappy... Paul McCartney. Fellow went on to make himself a pretty good album or two, I think. Made some money, dropped out of music, immigrated. I heard he's a building magnate somewhere in Canada."

The American waited, on the other side of the table, staring – as if there were something obvious that John should be realizing.

"You mean, his story was real?" John asked. "That he...that I...time travel?"

"If you didn't think it was real, why did you turn Paul down, when he tried to join the Quarry men?"

John shrugged. "Well, back then I thought it was real. I thought– " He shrugged again. "But then... nothing happened that the diaries talked about. No flower power. Nothing. I mean, the yan– the people in your country got pretty wild there for a while, but it seemed it never reached the children of the middle class, and it all...” He shrugged again, unable to convey the impossibility of sons and daughters of the middle class prancing about in velvets and silks, with flowers in their hair, experimenting with different substances and different ideas. Oh, they'd all dressed a little wildly in their youth, but then they'd settled down to careers. They'd settled in. Even John, when he'd got his job as an art teacher–

"Don't you miss playing?" the yank asked. "Don't you think you could have been much greater in music? Much, much greater?"

"Do you still have the diaries?" Sforzi asked.

"Somewhere, back at my flat," John said. He'd never married. Every time a girl got close enough, he thought they might turn out like the two wives, mentioned in those disturbing diaries. He lived alone in a neat little flat that contained everything he'd ever acquired – carefully catalogued and itemized. "I think under the desk in the parlor."

"Well, why don't you go and read them and tell me where you'd like to go to try the next fork in the road to greatness."

"Travel back in time?" John asked. "Really?"

"You've done it before," Sforzi said.

"But I don't remember that," John protested. "I mean, I don't remember being the person to go back. So... how come you..."

Sforzi shook his head, as if forced to explain something elementary. "Because you grew up in this reality. I didn't go back. I just came here. To see if it had worked out."

"Oh."

"I have the car right outside," Sforzi said. "Waiting for you."

***

John didn't know why he believed the man. Or rather, he did. Too well. The man had left the impressions of his fingers on John's glass, when he'd bought John a drink, after school. And John had looked at those prints, and his own. They were the same.

Then the man had given John diaries, the earlier ones of which were exact replicas of the little red notebooks in John's room at Aunt Mimi's house – Mendips in Menlove road.

So, either the impossible had happened or John had traveled back in time to warn himself. He was not to stick with the Quarry Men. The Quarry Men would never go anywhere.

Oh, the man had given John a sheaf of diaries, too, but John had yet to get past the first two diaries – those that described the events in the next year or so. The diaries seemed to talk of a fictional future in which John and the Quarry Men  changed their name to The Beatles – why not the Rockroaches? Or perhaps the Loco-usts? – and went on to change music and the world.

But though that diary and the part of the second John had read sounded so hopeful, he knew how it would all end. He'd heard the older John talk about it. The Quarrymen – and thus, probably the Beatles – would go nowhere. It was time John found a better way to express his art. A way to change the world and make himself known.

He'd stashed the diaries away in his room at Mendips. And he would drop the foolishness of music, he decided. He would stick with art, stay with it. He could do great things in art.

***

John Lennon thought he was about to get mugged, when the man came at him out of the fog. John was just walking from the Liverpool Tate to the car park and was just walking past Super Lamb Banana, when he saw the man come at him, full of confidence and certainty, like a man who has a purpose in life.

Most of the time, this sort of purpose is to mug someone.

John stood, trembling in his cashmere turtleneck, his hands deep the pockets of his well-cut pants – his artist uniform. To run or not to run. Well, he had only a few pounds on him, and a handful of cards all easily cancelled and reissued. He put a hand out, to hold on to the Super Lamb Banana, which stared idiotically next to him.

The man walked briskly towards John, and stopped a few steps away, looking as little like a mugger as it was possible for a man to look. He looked well-scrubbed and eager, like an overgrown boy scout. "Mr. Lennon," he said, and Lennon placed the look and the accent together. A yank?

The man waited a moment, as though he felt that Lennon should know him. Lennon didn't, of course, and the man registered that minimal let-down that people did when their favorite artist did not recognize them at first sight.

He rallied admirably, though, smiling wide and extending a clean, square-fingertipped hand. "Richard Sforzi, Mr. Lennon. I'm one of your greatest fans."

Lennon nodded and refused to show any surprise, though so far as he knew all his fans were British. He made a decent living and all, and his art – canvases suffused with light from which emerged creatures as strange and distorted as everything had looked when Lennon had refused to wear glasses, back in adolescence – sold very well to a cultured elite, appreciative of the outre.

But he'd never made much inroad into other countries. Other countries were more conservative than Britain. Since WWII there had been a tendency to conformity worldwide. A closing of the ranks against the strange. And John's originality wasn't appreciated. In fact, this was something that nagged at him, as he rounded his mid-sixties.

He shook the man's hand. "You're an American dealer, then?"

But the man had grinned, a strange, crooked grin as though he felt guilty for something for which he could not apologize. "I'm an American, though my work...."

"You're an artist?" John asked, impatient, sure that this was only a fledgling come asking for advice or help.

The man shook his head. "No, not at all. Look.” He hesitated. "I think I can help you. Make your art have more impact, make you better known, make you the influence you were supposed be in the world at large."

Well, that was more like it, John thought, as he put his hand in his jacket pocket and absent-mindedly jiggled the keys there to the tune of Three Blind Mice. Maybe this was one of those mad Yanks that made their money in sugar beets and then spent it all in promoting a baseball team. This one wanted to promote John's art.

John gave a look over the man's impeccably tailored grey suit, his well-cut hair.  He thought very few muggers dressed that well. And John was not a well-known enough artist to attract a kidnapper.

"Would you come with me and have a drink?" Richard Sforzi said. "I'll explain it all to you."

John shrugged. "Right, why don't we walk?"

The man was probably not a kidnapper, but there was no point being stupid.

***

"You're bloody mad," John said, as he sat back, with the whiskey in his hand. "I mean, of course I remember the man. And he said... Well, let's see – that he was from the future. Let's say he was. And that you're the one who helped him time travel. What are you saying? That I still haven't got it right?"

He twirled his glass around, with minimal movements of the wrist, imparting a swirling motion to the amber liquid within. "Why would you think that? My art is well liked. Critics say it burst upon the British art scene like a breath of fresh air. I sell enough to support myself, and Cynthia. And our boy...well, he's married now. But I raised him decently. Nice little house. I never had any real problems making ends meet.” He gave the man across the table an appraising glance. "So, even if you're telling me the truth... why should I trade this success I have on the off chance of something bigger? The chap – myself, I guess – who gave me those diaries didn't look like much of anything. I'd say I've improved considerably upon his fate. Why should you think I can do better?"

Richard Sforzi looked anxious and exasperated, all the while attempting to look endearing. He looked, in fact, like a little boy in need of going to the loo while his busy mother drags him on a shopping trip. "But... haven't you read the diaries," he said.

"Oh, the beginning. Till it became clear the Quarry Men would go nowhere," he said.

Richard Sforzi leaned across the table, "But they did," he said. "They did go somewhere. Not the Quarry Men, really, but the other group that came from them. The Beatles. They– "

"Beatles? That's an idiotic name for a group. Why not the crickets?"

Sforzi just shook his head. "The Beatles," he said, putting great emphasis on the word. "Changed the world of music. The world of everything. Their music, at first innocuous enough to penetrate into middle class homes, attracted fans from every walk of life. And then, when they got experimental, their entire generation followed them. They created a freer world, a more creative world than had ever been before. They changed the world in their image and semblance."

John grimaced. "You make it sound like a messianic religion."

"It was. In a way. You– I mean, him...I mean, you in another alternate world, said in an interview that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. And for just a moment it looked that way. You were certainly bigger than any other man in recent memory. I just thought you could have been bigger. I still think...."

"Right," John said, and tossed back his drink in a single gulp. "Listen, I really have to get back. Cynthia is expecting me. It was fascinating to– "

He got up, and started to walk out of the expensive little pub. But Sforzi grabbed at his arm. "No. Listen. You may go if you want. But promise me one thing. Promise me you'll go home and read those diaries. You still have those diaries, right? Why don't you go and read them? Just so you see how much bigger you were in that world? That first world. How your art, your... critical acclaim pale beside the kind of revolution you helped start once...."

"I can't really promise–" John started.

"Come on. Are you afraid of finding how short you've fallen of your potential?"

"No. You see, the grandchildren–"

"You still do have the diaries, right?"

"I'm sure they're in the attic, somewhere."

"Why don't you read them, tonight?" Sforzi asked. "I'll be here tomorrow," Sforzi said. "If you should find you want to travel back in time and change anything."

John frowned and, without dignifying that with an answer, he turned around and walked back to the carpark. But by the time he got to his car he was already thinking – his art was good, but he'd never set the world on fire. He'd always felt deep within that there was something he was supposed to do. Something big he was supposed to accomplish.

He wondered if that feeling came because some part of his subconscious mind knew how much bigger he could have been if only....

There had been an ache within him all along and the stranger's words had ignited it into excruciating pain. He could imagine greatness that even he had never dared dream of. And it was all lost.

That night, after Cynthia lay asleep, he'd crept up to the attic and found the diaries, together with the collection of biographies of famous people that he'd brought there from Aunt Mimi's when Aunt Mimi had died and he'd sold Mendips. Now, sitting on the dusty floor of the attic, by the increasingly weaker beam of a flashlight, he read diary after diary.

How great a man he'd been, in that other reality. But then... why had he looked so much like a retired school teacher? And if he'd been all that famous, all that wealthy – if he'd had fame and power to change the way an entire generation perceived the world, why had he tried to go back in time and warn himself?

John read on. Little by little, it started to make sense. The bad relationships, the betrayals, the substances required to dull the pain. He read, half-cringing, about his deportation from the States for drug use. The deportation he'd never thought to fight because he really, secretly, wanted to go back to England and this was the only way Yoko would allow it. Of course, she had divorced him soon after the deportation. But the end of his marriage hadn't freed him. Instead, it had started his slow spiral into penury and irrelevance.

If only he could have held on. If only he could have continued. If only he could have remained at his peak forever.

But how? How could he ensure that?

He was willing to suffer for his art. He was willing to endure the friendship gone sour, the love gone bad. But was there anything he could do to stay famous and influential forever?

By morning, he thought he had it. From the tension between his pride in his art and the nagging certainty he could have been much better, a huge plan blossomed. A crazy, risky plan.

He kissed Cynthia after breakfast, as he had every day of their marriage. A dutiful kiss, not meaning much.

Afterwards, instead of going to his studio in the back of the garden, he walked out of his tidy little suburban home to his car. He would not be coming back. Sometimes a sacrifice was required to achieve something really great.

***

John Lennon followed Yoko Ono out of their limousine and into the Dakota.

He'd been working all evening on their last joint album. Double Fantasy. After this he was going to tape something all his own – to reclaim his solo career. And it would be great. It would be the culmination of all his plans

He was glad that the man who'd met him – so many years ago outside his public school – had told him that marrying Yoko would be worth it in publicity, even if sometimes she would seem strange. And he'd told John that it was important to make sure he didn't get deported. Because Yoko couldn't stand to live in England. And if she divorced him, she'd take him to the cleaners.

In fact, he'd outlined an entire life plan for John, till John knew everything he was supposed to do, down to the last minutia of promoting this album. The other John, the older John, had said he'd worked it all out with the inventor of time travel. He'd worked to make sure John got what he wanted. At last. He would remain forever great.

Now, on this cold autumn morning, John walked half-bent over, carrying in his hands the tapes for Yoko's session, and he followed his wife towards the building where they'd lived for so long.

He barely saw the little man that approached from the right. He half-registered by the corner of his eye that it was a pudgy young man, well scrubbed and neat, like an old boy scout.

He had barely registered the object in the man's hand as a gun, when the bullet ripped into his chest.

John staggered, as burning pain and a blazing cold tore into him. He tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come. Another bullet. Another. Time seemed very slow. He couldn't escape.

With a sort of distancing numbness, he was aware of his body's tripping, staggering away from the gunman, stumbling through the glass doors onto the floor of the foyer and falling. He thought of saving the tapes, but his hands couldn't hold them.

He fell on the floor of the foyer and heard the doorman yell hysterically. "Shot.” "Hurt.” "Emergency.” Those words emerged, clear, from others John could not understand.

Far away sirens wailed.

John felt cold. Very cold. Someone threw a blanket over him.

Idiots.  That would do nothing.

He tried to take a breath, but the air had nowhere to go, and blood oozed in his mouth. He inhaled it, drowning in blood. Curiously, he wasn't in pain. It all felt very distant.

He was aware of Yoko, and the doormen, and other people, touching, lifting him. But it didn't matter. This did.   Because for the first time – in pain and shock -- John could see the implications, the ramifications, the exquisite detail of the plan the older John had formed and got this John to follow, unawares.

Everything, from fighting deportation back in the seventies and staying in the States – where crazed murders of celebrities were so much more likely – to the right interview given in the right tone to inflame the fanatic who'd think John had sold out. It had been a gamble, all designed to achieve this end. And it had paid off.

John would die before he could destroy his power, his influence, the memory of his art.

He coughed once.

"It will be all right," someone said, from nearby.

John tried to nod. It would be all right. His art would live, after him, untouched and all the stronger for his having died so suddenly. Everything he had done would acquire even greater meaning. He'd remain true to himself. He'd never become irrelevant or embarrassing like Super Lamb Banana.

He fell into the darkness and there found peace at last.

Ganymede

"Sister, please let me in.” He pressed against the black dimatough wall of the shelter. His chest rose and fell in short breaths of panic. The eyes he turned to me were all pupil.

Behind him, the ice warehouses rose, shiny-black and towering against the pale grey sky of Ganymede.

"My Order doesn't have legal rights of sanctuary," I told him. We didn't have legal rights of anything. No one did. Ganymede was a Free Anarchy, which meant if you had the gun you had the rights. All my order did was operate an unofficial shelter for the down-and-out, supported by a private philanthropist. If my mother superior knew about this bio even seeking asylum, she would wonder what I'd done to encourage it and she would--

I shook my head.

He mistook my gesture for a negative and made a sound that was not quite a whimper. His already pale face turned a transparent grey, like congealed oil.  "They're tearing us apart, Sister," he said. "Limb from limb, they're tearing bios apart.” His Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. "In Marius Regius three hundred were killed. A couple of hours ago.”

A tear had frozen to his beardless cheek. Whether he cried for his congeners or in fear for his own safety, I couldn't tell.

His large feet, in their spiked ice-miner boots, did a — seemingly unconscious — shuffle against the wall, as though if he pushed hard enough, if he shoved hard enough, he could melt his solid, muscular body into the smooth black dimatough.

"You're not one of us, child. I'm supposed to help God's children, not—” My voice echoed the smooth, patronizing tones of my mother superior's speech. In my mind, the voice went on to talk of throwing pearls before swine. My lips moved soundlessly as I stared at his perfect features, the black-blue curls escaping from beneath his miner's hat, the abject fear in his blue-grey eyes.

I hissed out breath, half in anger at myself.

I had made my peace with the whole bio matter ten years ago, in 2254, when the multitudes of Earth had turned on bios and massacred all of them that couldn't leave the planet in time — when I'd seen my own creations destroyed in their creches and hunted on the streets.

I'd left my bio-engineering behind then, and, when the howling mobs of Earth had started seeking out bio-designers, I'd sought refuge in the faith of my childhood and the convent of the Lucias.

There, I'd come to realize I'd sinned. My sin of pride had made me try to go the Creator one better, made me try to improve on His work.  In expiation, I'd taken the veil of the Sisters of Saint Lucia of the Spaceways. I'd accepted my assignment to Ganymede as part of that expiation.

Ganymede was full of bios. Those -- both owned and free -- who'd escaped the riots had been sent or escaped into space, and thus from world to world until they'd come to forsaken Ganymede, where half were owned by the mining companies and the other half hired out to them.

Yet, the bios had stayed away from the shelter, and I'd been happy, serving the poor, almost forgetting my guilt, for the last ten years. But my guilt had come to seek me out in my sanctuary in the shape of this young, scared bio.

And I knew I couldn't save him. Not any more than I'd been able to save the ones I'd created.

I pulled my habit's blue skirt taut in my right hand, took a step back, prepared to hurl the door closed.

An explosion lit up the sky. To eyes used to the thicker atmosphere of Earth, the fiery tendrils of the explosion expanded in slow motion.

It sounded and looked as though something had blown up just behind the building across the street from the shelter. One step away from us.

Screaming and calling followed hard on the hard on the explosion, and laughter and song right behind it.

The bio outside the door turned to face me. "Sister," he said. The vapor of his exhalation formed bluish sculptures in the thin, freezing air. "Please. Please. I don't want to die."

Any human, any natural creature who was that frightened would tramp me down in his fear, trying to burrow into the warmth and relative safety of the shelter. But he couldn't. He was a bio. Their brains weren't made that way.

I could close the door in his face, and he'd do no more than knock and whimper and claw at it even while the mob caught him and killed him.

I could close the door and go inside, and protect my brood of three whores, a dying miner and a half-mad retired pilot turned philanthropist. It was my duty.

The mob howled louder, moving behind the row of buildings opposite. Soon they would round the corner and be on us.

With my unremarkable face and my blobby middle-aged body, I would be safe enough, even without the habit of the Lucias. But the bio would be dead a second after being sighted. "Pearls and swine," I muttered. I stepped out of the doorway. "Get your butt in here, and keep your hands in your pockets."

The bio hesitated for only a second and then he was inside, his hands deep in the pockets of his worksuit. Not that it helped. No one needed to see the ring of servitude embedded on the third finger of his right hand to know exactly what he was.

Fortunately, the only person in the anteroom was Joe, our resident benefactor. Though I'd never asked Joe's opinion on bios, I could not imagine him hating a living being.

Joe straightened out from where he'd been kneeling on the ceramite floor, cleaning the black dimatough stove in the corner of the entrance room. Half-standing, his hands smudged with the grey ash-like particles of the solar stove, Joe stared at the bio.

The expression in his amber eyes was unreadable. Fear? Betrayal?

I closed the door with one hand, ready for the argument. As our patron and a self-described penitent, Joe helped with the chores and fed the invalids and argued my decisions every chance he got.

"Do you want me to take him to the back?” Joe asked, his voice raspy.

"What?" I'd expected many things, but not wholehearted cooperation. Not after that look.

"Do you want me to take him to the back?" Joe repeated. "To my room. Someone will look in this room. But maybe not in mine.” His upper-class moon-native accent, clipped and harsh, seemed more pronounced than ever. Somewhere in Joe's past was a well-to-do clan of ethnic Italian moon merchants, the scattered members of which still sent copious letters by every mail ship. And all of whom wondered what he was doing in forsaken Ganymede, last-ditch refuge of criminals and paupers almost from the day of its terraforming.

He shrugged. "Unless you know somewhere else to hide him—"

"No, I mean, yes. Do take him out back. Yes. Thank you, Joe.” Outside, the approaching mob sounded louder than ever. Any minute now....

"G.T.?" Joe said.

The bio, who'd been standing in the middle of the room, seemingly too dumb to react, turned meekly to follow Joe.

G.T.? I shrugged. The extent and strangeness of Joe's connections and acquaintances wasn't worth probing or tracing. Not now.He seemed to know half of Ganymede and two thirds of everywhere else.

Someone pounded on the door.

I hurried to open it, trying to compose my face into a reasonable semblance of how I thought a nun should look: calm, collected, with no fears of anything in this world and absolute certainty about my fate in the next.

About as fitting on me as shoes on a snake.

Outside the door a multitude crowded, too large for the eye to focus on any given person. I caught an impression of ruddy faces and grinning mouths, of men and women carried away by their own passions. I smelled blood and saw it on their clothes, splattered on the rough suits of miners and the cheaper stuff of their whores' finery.

"What do you want?" I asked, standing prim and proper in my blue habit. I was too average to be intimidating. But being average was my shield now.

"We want to look in there," a man at the front said, leaning close, poking a sausage-like finger towards my face.

I smelled angel juice on his breath — hotter and more pungent than alcohol — but I managed to keep my face straight. "This is a shelter run by the sisters of St. Lucia of the Spaceways. We provide a place for the dying. I can't allow you to disturb the moribund."

"Look here—" the man started. The sausage finger waved in my face.

The indistinct portion of the mob nearest him resolved itself into a young ice miner, who removed his cap and elbowed his companion in the ribs. "They're all right, the Lucias," he said. He spoke in the accent of an asteroid guttersnipe who'd learned Glaish too late in life for it to make a difference. "They raised me and my brothers when our old man got blasted in forty-five."

Thirty-five, I thought. The clean up of space-pirate operations.

He grinned at me, a lopsided, vapid grin. He, too, smelled of angel juice. "Begging your pardon, Sister. We're just looking for them unnaturals, that's all."

"We provide for humans here," I said. "Children of God."

The bigger guy's finger still hovered mid-air, in front of my face, but more and more men in the crowd had doffed their hats. Their female bits of fluff — as fluffy as they could be expected to be in ‘mede's frozen wastes — had gone still and sober.

Thank heavens, I thought, for my sisters' work with poor children. It had never been my calling, but it did come in handy now.

Murmurs from the crowd reached me:

"They wouldn't let one of them in."

"Unnaturals ain't got no souls."

"No use searching there."

"Let's go look elsewhere."

"Yeah, them nuns do good work."

The crowd didn't so much retreat as melt, one by one and two by two, straggling away into the nearby streets. As the last one left, they had re-grouped farther on. Hats were clapped back on heads. The calling and screaming, the singing and laughing resumed. I realized that some of them carried heads on sticks. Bios' heads, I assumed. My stomach turned.

How close we humans were, at every turn, to howling savagely into our own hells and making life and death a hell for others.

I wiped my hands on my skirt, resumed breath I wasn't aware of having suspended.

Closing the door and locking it, I said a prayer begging protection against the next group that might not be polite or angel-juice-mellowed enough to knock before attempting to enter.

The two dying members of the household, Tradny and Kedna, were in their small rooms and safely asleep on their foldable cots. The old miner, not quite dead but ambling towards it with the same sort of lackadaisical interest that I fancied he'd shown towards life, had fallen asleep on his chair, with a science glossy glowing on his knees.

I heard Joe's voice raised in anger, "... come to me?"

"To whom should I go?” A much-too-young-sounding male voice answered him. "Who would shelter me?"

Why was Joe angry? Was the bio somehow threatening him? Pushing him?

My hand shook, but I thumbed the miner's glossy off and put it on the table and settled him comfortably in his chair.

Then I headed for Joe's room.

I had to face the situation; I had to see what exactly I'd let into my safe haven, bringing danger to all my other stray lambs.

Joe's room had once been a storage room next to the kitchen. There, away from my room and the rooms of our lodgers, he'd made himself as uncomfortable as a monk in a cell with only a narrow cot, a hard wooden chair, a bare crucifix.

A statue of St. Lucia, with her star-spangled habit and her crown of stars looked upon this spareness from a niche over the bed.

Mornings and nights, I would find Joe kneeling in front of that statue, his face contorted with a pain I couldn't understand and wouldn't dare probe.

I was no father confessor, and though I'd been given the authority to shrive the dying, my faith fell much too short for me to expel the demons that tormented the living.

Approaching Joe's room, I heard the young male voice again.  I assumed it was the bio's, though it raised itself to tones of petulant complaint I'd never heard — couldn't imagine hearing — from a bio. "No, of course it's not your responsibility. You sent me out to sink or swim, but it has nothing to do with you."

"G.T.," Joe sounded tired, earnestly beaten as I'd never heard him. "I couldn't predict that the riots would reach here. I tried to keep you safe. I watched over you. What else did you want me to do?"

"Oh, I wanted you to kill me," the bio said. "Killing me would have been more merciful than sending me away from you, to—"

The bio stopped, suddenly, as I entered the room. He looked at me, color burning in two red spots on his cheeks.

He sat at the end of Joe's bed.

Joe sat in his chair, staring at the bio.

They leaned forward, one towards the other, as people do when involved in earnest argument.

In Joe's face, too, the color climbed, though slower. He swallowed audibly and turned to me. "Are they gone, Maggie?"

No use reminding him my name was Sister Mary Magdalene. If I were good and he in an exceptionally compliant mood, he might say, "Sister Maggie."

But this was no time to argue etiquette. I answered Joe's question with a nod and stood beside his chair, facing the bio.

"They're gone," I said. "But if this goes as it did on Earth, they'll be back. These same ones or their near cousins. And this time there might not be enough Catholics in the mix to leaven it.” I tapped Joe on the shoulder. "Joe, who is this... your friend?"

Joe took a deep breath and I could almost hear his teeth grinding at my choice of words.

I sighed. I hadn't meant to say it that way. Of course, it made no sense. A man couldn't be friends with a bio, any more than he could be friends with a cat or a dog.

They could be companions, protector and protected, owner and pet, but not friends. The equality of circumstances required for true friendship never applied.

Joe glanced at the bio. "Ganymede Tros."

Tros. Each of the last names of the bios was a brand name, and often specified what the bio was created for, what his function was. And, as an ex-designer, I should have known Tros.

"I don't recall Tros from--” I stopped. The last name was innocuous but Ganymede wasn't. I knew enough mythology to get unpleasant ideas.

"Custom," the bio said, startling me by talking without being addressed. His eyes, intent on my face, gave the impression of reading my thoughts. "I am one of a kind."

Joe made a sound like a groan that turned into a fit of laughter. That, in turn, he quickly buried in fake coughing, as he brought his wrinkled hands up to his face. "One of a kind," he repeated. "Oh, God, yes, one of a kind."

I felt currents in the conversation, currents in the room, that I couldn't really understand. But Ganymede Tros....

The original Ganymede, the shepherd kidnapped by mighty Zeus to be his cupbearer and favorite, had been from Troy. Troyan. Tros. No doubt about it, the name was a reference to the legend.

Oh my. Oh no.

Though I'd thought I was used to human folly, the idea forming itself in my mind made me want to cross myself in an exorcizing gesture.

The church, in its slow-grinding compassion, had come to terms with homosexuality in the late Twenty-first. It even provided marriage of a sort for same-sex couples, though they were required to jump through a few more hoops than male-female couples.

But a human and a bio, created and creator—

No. It couldn't be true. It was no more and no better than bestiality.

Yet I looked from Joe to the bio and couldn't deny my own thoughts.

They sat, still hunched forward, as though continuing with their expressions the argument they couldn't have spoken — not in front of me; perhaps not at all.

"Well," I said, trying for brisk efficiency to banish the insalubrious turn of my mind. "Well, the thing is to get G.T. away from here. Away as soon as possible, as fast as possible. Now, how are we going to do that?"

They both glared at me.

"Away where?" Joe asked.

"How?" the bio asked.

"I don't know. But there has to be an answer. There always is. The Lord our God doesn't provide us with problems without solution.” Even as I said them, I cringed from the trite sound of my words. The solution would be to turn the bio out on the street and go on with life. I'd done that once and accepted the pain of it as a punishment for my having dared to create human beings. "We could," I said, frantically rushing on, "disfigure G.T. somehow.” I gave the bio my brightest smile. "It might hurt, but you'll live and that—"

"Sister," Joe said.

The novelty of the address stopped me.

Joe's amber eyes challenged me. Despite the tension still visible on his face, his wrinkles of humor were visible again at the corners of his mouth and eyes.  "Before you rush on to talk of hands that offend and must be cast off... even supposing someone doesn't pull a gen reader on him — and that mob won't — we can't change G.T. enough to pass. Even if we cut or burn his face to disfigure it, we can't at the same time make sure the finger with the ring is missing. It would be too suspicious. Add to it, that for a male his age, he has no facial hair. And ... his palms."

G.T. turned his hands upward. The palm had calluses and scars enough, but it was as devoid of lines as newly poured ceramite.

"Granted, we could rid him of his hands, too," Joe said.

I looked down at the compliantly extended palm, and up at the fearful, expectant face, and I knew we couldn't.

Noises of explosions reached us, barely damped by the poured dimatough of the walls.

Joe stood up. "No," he said. "No. It was my doing and it's my problem. I'll go up to the spaceport. I still know people there. See if we can find him a ship, send him away."

"Where?" I asked. Cursed ‘mede had been the last refuge of every one of the bios who had survived riots elsewhere. And it was inevitable that people's enthrallment with man's genetic purity, and the crazy need to destroy others who worked for less money, would have reached everywhere.

Joe knew that too. He'd been the first to mention there was nowhere else to hide.

Joe shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Anywhere. Perhaps—" he looked G.T. over. "Deep sleep and a slow orbit around the system. Maybe when he wakes, maybe when the ship lands, it will be late enough that no one remembers bios or knows what that damned ring means."

I looked at the ring. Black. The sign of a freed bio.  G.T. was, at least nominally, a free citizen. For what that was worth.

Joe grabbed his jacket from the neat pile of his clothes beneath his bunk. He spread his large, radiation-tanned hand on G.T.'s shoulder. "I'll be back. You'll be all right."

"Be careful," I said.

Joe gave me a big grin, making all his wrinkles stand out in sharp relief. Space pilots, because of imperfect radiation shields, always got wrinkled early, but the wrinkles fit Joe's face like no other. "No one will bother me, Maggie. Not with this mug. I know most of them, anyway. Stupid fools, but no worse than that."

He strode out of the room. I heard the front door open and close.

Alone with the bio, I gave him a thin, plastic smile and said, "You'll pardon me. I have work.”

These many years after my time designing bios, these many years after I'd come to believe their creation had been sinful — an overreaching of hubris — even someone like G.T. discomfited me, made me nervous.

And his connection with Joe— I flinched away from it.

In the front room, which also served as a kitchen, I started peeling potatoes and carrots. Hydroponically grown, they lacked the flavor and probably the vitamin content of Earth vegetables. But they would do well enough to feed the inmates of this shelter.

How much did the bio eat? Their requirements varied with their purpose.

From his suit, I assumed he'd been working as a miner. So, he must be a high-body-strength, high-input model. I'd better supplement the vegetables with meat. Which meant dipping into our store of freeze-dried protein. I'd need those supplies soon enough, anyway, if this riot took as long as the bio-riots in other worlds. We'd be cut off from regular supplies for a month, maybe more.

I was scraping the last carrot when I realized I wasn't alone.

G.T. stood by the entrance to the inner corridor, his eyes wide, his face expectant.

What did he want?

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and told myself that he was a thing made, not born, a creature fashioned for the conveniences — or in his case, perhaps the grossest amusements — of humans.

And yet, his face, for all its chiseled masculinity, molded itself into that of a young child.

He waited, wanting to please, wanting to belong.

His grey-blue eyes fastened on me. "May I help?" he asked. His hands, held mid-body, twisted around each other. "Is there something I can do?"

I shoved the carrots towards him, showed him the cutting board, got the knife from the drawer and handed it to him. "Cut those in slices. Not too thin. That's good."

His hands shook as he gripped the knife, but he managed to turn out perfect rounds, one after the other.

I knelt to look for meat in the storage drawer beneath the work counter.

"I was Joe's," he said. "Built for him."

I remained kneeling, my hands in the drawer, rummaging through sealed freeze-dried packages. Blood pounded in my ears. I didn't want to hear.

I didn't need to know the sins of my friends. Mine were enough of a burden.

"Had me custom built," he sounded distant, impersonal, as though this recitation didn't concern him at all. "He visited at the creche as I was growing up. Once a month or so, when he chanced to be between trips. I... I liked him. A lot. He picked me up when I was fifteen — fully mature."

"He'd be a good master. Joe would.” The words scratched my throat. I picked a package, blindly, and managed to plaster a convincing smile on my features, though every muscle in my face hurt with the effort. Joe. How could he have had a sentient creature created for his pleasure and nothing more? How could he turn his love to a bio, forfeiting God's creations, his equals, for a creation of his own? And then, how could he let G.T. go, when Joe was tired, let G.T. go into the world alone, when he'd been created to love and serve?

I didn't know which disturbed me more. The whole thing set my nerves on edge and made me feel like someone had rubbed fingernails across the blackboard of my soul. Would no human ever be worthy of my trust?

G.T. cut the carrots with mincing precision, his large hands still shaking. "He didn't— I mean, he wasn't-- I mean, he didn't want me. When he picked me up, he didn't want me. He gave me my freedom and money.... And when the riots came, he helped me get away from Earth."

"That's good," I said, "that he protected you.” I couldn't read the letters on the package I'd got, because my vision swam and they ran together. I tore it open. It was full of tofu. Not what I'd wanted, but it would have to do. I dropped the tofu into the pot of water boiling on the back burner.

"And now he'll send me off again, he'll... protect me again. But he never wanted me. Why have me made if he didn't want me?” His voice caught.

I showed him how to cube the potatoes. "Maybe he wanted you too much," I said. "Maybe he—" I didn't know what to say, how to explain the complexity of human feeling to this creature who, in some ways, was too innocent. The phrase "born without sin" crossed my mind and I grimaced.

G.T. gave me an uncomprehending glance.

Side by side, we assembled the pottage.

He worked eagerly like a child; neatly like an adult.

Between us, we checked on the bed-bound inmates of the shelter and fed them as much as they would take.

His large hands held their frail heads up, while I fed them. He adjusted their covers with gentle care.

I looked at the softness that glazed his eyes as he worked. He'd been created for love. For lust, maybe, but for love, too.

Disappointed love. Refused love. A creature pleading in vain with his creator. It made me shiver to think we too might come to this. We might all come to this.

We set the table, cajoled the old miner to sit at it with us.

I said the accustomed grace, "For what we're about to eat, we thank you, Father."

G.T. repeated the words dutifully. Who was his Father?

He ate his soup and chatted with the miner, man to man — two seasoned professionals comparing notes. I caught their conversation, something about a mine and a meltdown flood that had happened in the miner's heyday.

G.T. sat at the table next to me and spoke with the earnestness of a grown man who had worked for years in the grimy, freezing ice mines. He was a man who'd done forsaken work among the damned.

The realization that he had been a competent professional shocked me. He had done a human's work.

His hands, despite their smooth palms, held the bread and broke it, raised the spoon to his lips. He ate the soup he'd helped make, while his words comforted a man too old and too lonely to care what G.T. was.

We'd made bios with our hands, our hearts and our intelligence — in our image and semblance.

God help them.

Twenty minutes into the meal, the door opened and Joe came in. He looked as if he'd aged years in the hour he'd been gone. "It's a mess out there," he said, sounding like an earther in a snow storm. "But I think I've fixed it. I got a long-distance ship set up, G.T. You'll be put in deep sleep. It will circumnavigate the system, and then bring you here again in a hundred years or so.” He made a face. "When this madness must have subdued."

"Then I won't see you again?" G.T. asked.

Joe blinked. "What?” He grinned, a tired grin that created new wrinkles on his skin. "No, I expect I'll be long gone by the time you come back. Long gone to rest. You'll not age at all, of course, in the sleep."

"Oh," G.T. said. He got a bowl from the cupboard and filled it, and set it on the molded ceramite table, across from me, closest to where Joe stood.

Joe sat in front of the bowl with his back to the door, and dipped his spoon in the soup.

The rioters must have meant to be quiet, because there was no sound until that sudden, crushing impact on the door.

I stood up, and so did G.T., and Joe half-stood, looking over his shoulder, surprised.

The door gave, wrenched off its hinges. "He's the one," a man in a pilot's uniform screamed to the mob behind him. "He's the one who wanted to send a dirty bio out of ‘mede and paid for it, too. And we all know what people like that—"

He pointed at Joe, and so did a dozen or so burners flourished by the crowd of rough pilots and miners that crowded in the narrow doorway.

I saw the triggers being pressed and I knew we would all be massacred, all killed for my stupidity in letting a bio in.

But before fire issued from any of the weapons, G.T. jumped.I'd forgotten, in my years away from them, the unnatural quickness of bios, and how fast they could move when scared. How fast and how unerringly.

G.T. jumped over the table, vaulted in front of Joe. When the burner met its mark, it was his broad, designed-to-be-perfect chest. And it was his body that fell to the floor and crumpled between Joe and the mob, like a line separating two camps.

The mob stopped, surprised. Some people at the back said that this was the dirty bio. Others claimed it wasn't.

I found voice and movement, all of a sudden, though the inspiration must have come from elsewhere. Right then, my brain could no more think than a tin can could fill itself.

Something poured into me, some alien strength and I heard words form in my mouth, and from my lips. "You've done enough," I said. "And your vengeance is done. Now go. He won't threaten you anymore. Go.” I herded them to the door and they went before me, like unruly sheep being returned to the corral. "Go and pray that when you meet your own Maker, He'll have more mercy on you."

Joe knelt beside the body, his eyes full of tears, a wrinkled hand stroking the black curls away from the immobile face.

G.T.'s chest showed five, six burn holes.

The smell of scorched flesh hung in the air.

The old miner held the door up while I fused the hinges with the kitchen lighter, until the door could close.

When I turned back to Joe, he still cradled his dead. A male pietá, contemplating the loss of...what?

He looked up, met my eyes, smiled, despite the tears running through the radiation-carved channels in his skin. "No man creates perfection willingly," he said. "And I didn't. Oh, I ordered him with this and that and the other. I wanted-- I was tired of humans and their failings. You don't need to tell me— My cursed sin of pride--  But he was perfect. He was.... I visited him in the creche, you see, and he was a baby, and then a child. All innocence, all grace. I didn't mean it, but when it was said and done he was more mine than I'd meant him to be. My own. The child of my creation.” He opened his mouth, closed it. "It wasn't that I didn't love him, you see. But I wanted him to go. I wanted him to grow to be like me, to be free, to grow up...."

Ah, yes, and who, kicked out of Eden, would believe it was for his own good?

Folly. Human folly. But no worse. Human folly on both parts.

Yet why must the one to expiate it be the innocent one? "Come," I said. "Come, Joe. We'll lay him out and we'll pray the rosary for his rest. Tomorrow we'll give him a proper burial out in the back."

Joe looked up, surprised. "The rosary? His rest? Bury him in the cemetery? It's consecrated. He was—"

I sighed. Sometimes truth must be rent and torn and chewed on, incorporated and digested and made a coarse thing like us, before being appreciated.

He who created us knew that. But we needed to learn it, over and over again, over the blood of martyrs.

So we'd created bios. Overweening pride, certainly I'd done it out of overweening pride.... I'd burst with pride of my creations and my own cleverness in designing them. And I'd stood in trembling terror of their end that I couldn't prevent.

And Joe, my friend, my fellow sinner, had a human being made to order for his love, perhaps for his lust.

And maybe it would have been fine, had that been all.

But we'd both done more than we'd meant to. We'd both, imperfect beings that we were, become enamored of perfection.

"It will be all right," I said. If anyone was worthy of immortality, then who more so than those who loved innocently?

I looked at Joe, cradling G.T.'s head. G.T.'s perfect features had set in empty repose.

"We're all creations," I said.

Waiting For Juliette

It was the first summer of the Twenty-first Century, and I was looking for a way to forget.

The sanctuary had looked good two hours ago, from the other end of Denver. It had looked like sweet respite wrapped up in what the doctor ordered. Here, up close and personal, from the corner of Colfax and oblivion, it didn't seem like such a sure bet.

I should have gone straight to the sanctuary. I'd made an appointment. But the impenetrable brick facade with no windows and only one broad door, the word Sanctuary painted in a discreet shade of gray above it had looked too much like the entrance to the tomb.

And I'd detoured to the diner across the street, where I sat, drinking cheap coffee, while the afternoon shadows elongated on the sidewalk, and the solar street lights flickered hesitantly on.

The problem was a girl. Her name was Juliette Jones. Mine was Romeo Smith. You could say it was destiny. I say it was proof that someone up there had a sense of humor. A nasty one.

"What will it be, honey?" the waitress asked, taking the order pad out of her apron pocket.

"Just... coffee," I said.

"Come on," she said. "You need something more. That coffee will eat your stomach lining if you don't get some food to go with it. The souvlaki is good."

I considered telling her I couldn't eat because I was going into the sanctuary. But that wasn't even true. They'd told me they didn't care much what I did, provided I was neither drunk nor drugged. In full command of my faculties, in fact.

Of course, I hadn't slept in two days. I rubbed my hand across my face, to chase away the spiderwebs that seemed to veil my vision. But sleep deprivation didn't count. "Yeah, the souvlaki will do," I said. Trying to shut her up, as much as anything else.

And I tried to think through my predicament, with a brain that didn't seem disposed to do anything much.

Don't make jokes. We've heard them all. I suppose I'd have heard the jokes long before meeting Juliette, while working at the moon-launch pad in Denver. Only I was born and raised in Luna. Mom was a romantic, Dad indulged her. And when they both died in the Tycho disaster, I was brought up in a Luna city orphanage – where no one knew enough about Shakespeare to make a single joke.

They called me "Rom," "guy" or "hey you" until it became clear my grades were good enough for a scholarship to Earth's space center. And then they called me "ours.” Not that they wanted to keep me, rather they wanted to flaunt me.

By the time I finished my space medicine degree, with honors, I was known as The Luna City kid and people I'd never heard of were sending me gifts from Lunaward. I was their boy who made good.

And then I met Juliette. Okay. No enmity of houses. But she was from old Earth money. And she'd trained to be an astronaut. Heck, her mom had her enhanced in womb to improve her chances of being an astronaut. She was the best of the best. And she was going to be the first woman on Mars. And then, when she came back we were going to get married.

I swilled a bit more of the coffee and frowned at the street outside, at the sanctuary with its blank facade.

The waitress put a souvlaki platter in front of me, and I ate a couple of fries.

There were no passersby that I could see, only now and then a lone car. And yet people trickled into the diner, workmen from the nearby warehouses, students, cops.

They sat around the tables and talked. Fries whooshed into the deep fryer. Hamburgers hissed on the grill.

Perhaps I didn't need to cold-sleep. I eyed the entrance to the sanctuary. Perhaps I could get over it in the normal way. Surely people would stop talking about it eventually. Surely....

The eight o'clock moon ship roared overhead, and the windows of the diner rattled.  Someone turned on the TV.

And there, in grainy color, the capsule was flaming on reentry. It was supposed to flame. They'd told us it would happen. What they hadn't told us about was the complete loss of communications – the capsule splashing into the sea, sinking, sinking. And nothing, nothing at all. Twenty four hours of nothing. Before even the most optimistic had to admit everyone on board was dead.

Shocked, I looked at the replay of the scene that I saw behind my eyelids every time I closed my eyes. I was too far away to hear the words, but I didn't need to. All around me, the working class people who frequented the diner were talking, buzzing with sympathy, with horror.

"All dead."

"Tragic."

"Great loss."

The tube changed, flickered. A picture of Juliette flashed up – red hair neatly caught into a braid at her back, her dark-brown eyes – smiling. I stared at it, feeling my eyes swim with tears.

"First woman on Mars," a woman at the next table said, and sighed.

"They say they're going to name the next expedition after her," a man said further on.

"Very pretty," another man said.

"I hear she was engaged to be married," said his girl.

And I realized my nails had bit into my hands so hard they'd left half-circles of blood.  I needed to get over it. I needed to go on.

Juliette and I had been together for years. I couldn't look at anything anywhere around and not see her. We'd walked every street in Denver. The moon-launch pad base was our normal workplace. All our friends knew about the engagement. I'd already received more than my share of condolences. And they would go on.

"Here's your bill," the waitress said. And then, as I looked down at the slip of paper she'd dropped on the greasy table, "Oh my."

I looked up. She was staring at the TV, at the image that filled the screen. The picture of myself and Juliette that had been used to announce our engagement in the paper.

"You're him," she said. "No wonder you look so tired. I'm sorry, honey."

It would go on, like this. Our story had captured enough imaginations. "Orphanage kid to marry Earth heiress" was a surefire eye grabber. And now, in the biopics, the stories played out over the next half century, everyone would see those pictures, hear that story.

Total strangers would give me their condolences and speak in hushed tones around me. I would never be free to live my own life as anything but the fiancé of a dead space exploration hero. Even any other girlfriends I might have would know. I would never be able to forget.

"It's okay," I told the waitress, my mind finally made up, and I dropped the money on the table. "I'll feel better after a sleep."

She nodded sympathetically and I walked across the street and into the sanctuary.

***

Whatever I'd been expecting, it wasn't this. Not cheerful pink walls, decorated with the sort of inspirational posters that turn most office buildings into veritable madhouses of positive thinking.

There were children flying kites, and women running atop gently stepped hills against improbably sunny skies. Sitting on the sofa upholstered in a white fabric emblazoned with bold slipcovers, I read all the posters. "Sleep away your cares.” "Gone today; back tomorrow, The Future is Better."

"Mr. Smith?" a pale blond woman with sweet features called. I got up.

She shook my hand. "I'm Elizabeth Ryes, your counselor," she said, and in the adjoining office – painted in pale blue and furnished with two chairs upholstered in robin's-egg blue – she proceeded to question me. "You will pardon me," she said. "But you seem too young and healthy to be doing this."

"I thought it was volitional," I said. "Provided one had the money to pay for the sleep – and I do – and wanted to sleep, one was allowed to."

She smiled, the smile of an angel faced with a madman. "It is that," she said. "But the sanctuary doesn't wish to be exposed to lawsuits. So I verify that you're not doing this on the spur of the moment and for no good cause."

"Lawsuits?"

"Your mom, your dad, your girlfriend, any of them could sue us."

It hit too close to home. I sucked in breath like a man drowning and then I said, "They're all dead."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Accident? Recently?"

"My parents died in the Tycho accident in sixty-eight," I said.

"And your girlfriend?" she had the blank look of someone too young for the Tycho accident to mean anything. The hundreds of people dead when the dome cracked, the public mourning, all of it would have happened when she was still in diapers. More than twenty five years ago. Ancient history.

Which is what I was counting on.

And in the next second, she looked up, looked at my face as though seeing it for the first time, and her hand went up to cover her mouth. "Juliette Jones," she said. "You're her fiancé. That's why you looked familiar."

I nodded. It was then very easy to explain why I couldn't stay in this time. How the emotional wound was a half of it, the other half the fact that it would blight my whole life.

She signed all the papers, and accompanied me to the first step of the procedure – to the room where they anaesthetized me, preparing my body to sleep for fifty years – to be on the safe side.

I was holding her hand as the IV started dripping soporific into my veins, and my eyes weighed down. I took the image of her blonde loveliness with me into sleep. When I woke up, that little oval face, looking down at me with sympathetic anguish would be lined and sagging. She would be a grandmother.

***

The first question I asked when they woke me – after the long period in which I couldn't talk at all – was, "Do you remember Juliette Jones?"

The slim, dark-haired young woman who had been massaging my shoulders – while I lay on my stomach on the heated bed, enduring one of the many days of conditioning that would be needed before I was restored to normal life – wrinkled her pretty forehead and said, "Who?” Then, after about thirty seconds. "Isn't she that new Sensie star? Didn't she play Margaret in Vina Does Venus?"

And I knew I was safe. I endured the next two weeks in quiet despair. Oh, sleeping away fifty years didn't make the memory of Juliette more distant, nor make me miss her less. Only now, no one around me knew who she was.

I mean, she was in the history books as first female to walk on Mars. I checked. But she was not the first human – that distinction belonged to Joseph McDonald – and if she came up at all it was as the bonus credit question on a test, or a bit of interesting trivia.

I would be able to heal here. I would be able to survive. I received subconscious updating for society manners and morals, read the medical journals voraciously, and prepared to return to college to learn the other stuff they'd discovered while I slept.

There were colonies in Mars now. And not one but two artificial cities, in space, one orbiting the Earth and one orbiting the moon. You could call the moon using some technology I didn't understand, and you wouldn't know you weren't talking to your aunt upstate.

It was a brave new world and I was dying to discover it.

The day I was discharged, they handed me my personal effects – my suit, now fifty years out of date but, if I was lucky at all, perhaps retro chic, and my ATM card that gave me access to an account that had grown wildly as I slept. And a letter. Sealed.

My heart flopped in my chest at the handwriting. My name on the front. Hers on the back. Juliette Jones.

It was a mistake. It had to be a mistake. Perhaps a letter she'd written me before leaving for Mars? Or a letter she'd left with her mother, in case something happened.

But the first line of the letter disabused me.  Dear Romeo, it said. The sanctuary won't tell how long you signed up to sleep. I only managed to trace the sanctuary and that you signed up for sleep with the help of a detective. They wouldn't even admit to that. They cite privacy rules. You're probably very surprised to read this. I know we were declared dead and were publicly mourned for two weeks before it was found out the sensors were wrong. We came down blind and without instruments, it's true, but we didn't sink. And we managed to get out and swim to a nearby island. Which only made it harder to find us.

I wish I could be mad at you, but I heard what it was like – with the entire country wallowing in a grief fest. I understand what that must have been like after all the public mourning for your parents.

And yet, the fact remains that I can't marry you while you're in cold sleep. And I really don't want to marry anyone else. So, when I finish writing this, I'm going to go in and sign up for cold sleep for a hundred years. I figure you won't have chosen to sleep that long, but when you wake they'll give you this letter. And then you can go in for however needed to wake up at the same time I do. And then we can get married.

She'd signed with a little heart. But my own heart sank. Another fifty years before I could see her.

And yet, if I went back in, I could sleep those years away as though they were nothing.

Without bothering to put my suit back on, still in the hospital gown – and how come fifty years later the hospital gowns still left your behind uncovered? – I trudged out one door and around the building to the front again.

The diner across the street was still going, I saw. I wondered if the clientele was still of the same type, but I had no wish to check it out.

Inside the sanctuary the decor had changed. The front room now had been painted in bright yellow and was upholstered in something dun that looked like beanbag chairs but which – from what I'd seen in the sensies from my recovery bed – was actually a biological chair of some sort. It was supposed to warm you and accommodate you.

I wasn't prepared to sit on living things, so I stood, moving from foot to foot.

Some things don't change, not in fifty years. Possibly never. Another blond counselor – who could be the other woman's granddaughter –  came out to meet me, led me gently inside and demanded to know why I'd sign up to sleep again, right after being awakened.

I showed her Juliette's letter. "She was presumed dead when I went to sleep," I said. "That's why I went to sleep. Till people stopped talking about it."

She tilted her head sideways. "I see. And you're sure you want to cold sleep again till she wakes?"

"Of course," I said. "Of course.” The idea of Juliette being awakened and my being an old, wrinkled man was unbearable. Even worse, the idea of my trying to live a normal life, trying to marry and raise a family while I knew that Juliette was asleep and waiting for me was ridiculous.

"I want to be awakened when she is," I said.

"Well, that is a problem," the counselor answered. She'd been fidgeting with a computer while she spoke and now frowned at the screen.  "You see, she didn't leave us permission to tell anyone when she'd wake. It's possible she didn't know or, considering that there seems to have been a media furor around her at the time, she might have thought someone would be here the day she woke up. So we don't know when exactly she'll wake."

It didn't matter. Two or three days either way didn't make a difference. Or two or three months. That much we could afford to lose. I thought I'd sleep another fifty years, but add another six months, as she had. On the principle that she would get a note from me when she woke, and then know when to wait for me.

I calculated the date painstakingly and wrote a note which I sealed and handed to the counselor. Juliette would get my note when she woke up. And she would know exactly the date when I'd wake.

She could be there waiting for me.

I fell asleep feeling much better than I had last time.

***

And woke up alone.

Through the almost twenty four hours when I couldn't talk, I champed at the bit, wondering where Juliette was. Had I miscalculated? Or had she changed her mind?

In a fever of expectation I waited, till I could ask, "Isn't there a lady waiting for me? A Juliette Jones?"

The nurse who'd been adjusting my IV shook her head. Then she gasped, and her hand went to her mouth. "Juliette?" she asked. "Jones?"

She touched something on the side of my bed, and images – three d images – formed at the foot, floating in mid air.

It was like a TV screen without the TV or the screen. And it was showing a blue vehicle erupting into flames.

"It was the first extra solar expedition," the nurse said. "They think the quantum engine malfunctioned on return to the solar system. It... exploded."

I felt as if I were living a nightmare. They said you didn't dream in cold sleep, but I wondered if it was true. This could not be happening again. Juliette could not be dead – again.

"Everyone died?" I asked, with a sinking feeling.

"Oh no," the nurse said. "Oh, no. They saved them all. But the injuries... You know, we don't think they'll be able to live till the regeneration of tissues is more advanced. It's still in its infancy, just now."

"So they'll die?"

She looked at me as if I were insane. She had eyes the same molten-chocolate color as Juliette's. "Of course not. They've been put into cold sleep till the technology can be developed."

Ah. Cold sleep. "And how long do you think that will be?" I asked.

"Ten years or so."

On the way down to restart the process – the nurse insisted on wheeling me: or rather propelling me in a chair that hovered three feet off the ground – the nurse told me Juliette had awakened six months ago and, once she was in shape again, had been accepted for the first extra-solar expedition. She was to be, the nurse said, the first cold-sleeper to go to space.

They wouldn't let me see her, of course. I made my painful calculations. Perhaps science would be slower than we expected. I would allow twenty years.

"Is there anyway to let her know exactly when I'll awake?" I asked. "Can you let her know?"

"Only if it's reciprocal," the counselor said. She brought up what looked like tri-dimensional letters writhing midair in front of her face.

"But she was put in cold sleep for medical reasons," I said.

"She was conscious when she came in.” The woman looked at the computer some more.

Why would it be reciprocal, I wondered? I tried to imagine Juliette wounded, suffering. Only the greatest of loves would remember me in those circumstances. We'd pursued each other through time, but would we ever meet again?

"Oh, there it is," the counselor said. "She has asked that if you go into cold sleep you be permitted to be awakened when she is."

"And is that possible?"

"It is if both consent," the woman – who could be a clone of the first counselor – said. And she handed me something.

It was a small note. It said, Dear Romeo, I'm writing this on paper – though they all think I'm crazy – because I want you to have something to hold onto when you go back in, to wait for me. I asked this time that you be awakened when I am. We will meet again.

Two hours later, I was falling asleep with her note clutched in my hand. It was the winter of 2100 and I had not the slightest intention of forgetting.

I would meet my love again, when I woke up.

About the Author

Sarah A Hoyt has published over twenty novels and a hundred short stories.  If you enjoyed this book, please look in Baen's webscriptions page for her Shifter's series (Draw One In The Dark, Gentleman Takes a Chance) or her science fiction (Darkship Thieves.)  For more of her fantasy, look for Heart of Light, Soul of Fire and Heart and Soul.  Those interested in historic mystery might wish to check out Sarah's Musketeer Mysteries, under the pen name Sarah D'Almeida.  Her contemporary mysteries, under the name Elise Hyatt are Dipped, Stripped and Dead and A French Polished Murder.

For samples of all of Sarah's work, check out Sarah's website at http://sarahahoyt.com.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Titan

Traveling, Traveling

The Muses' Darling

Stock Management

While Horse And Hero Fell

Something Worse Hereafter

Touch

For Whose Dear Sake

Wings

The Play And The Thing

Sugarbush Soul

Never Look Back

What She Left Behind

But World Enough

Super Lamb Banana

Ganymede

Waiting For Juliette

About the Author