Issue 63, April 2020

© Wyrm Publishing, 2020
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Introduction

Neil Clarke

I hope that this issue finds you all well, healthy, and safe. Since last month, the cases of Covid-19 exploded in New Jersey and pushed us to being the second most infected state in the country. Cases have started appearing in our small town and we’ve been in lockdown for over two weeks. Since I knew I was a high risk, I was paying slightly closer attention to things than my neighbors. We managed to stock up on food before the runs on the supermarkets cleared the shelves. (They’ve since restocked, but some foods and supplies are still thin. We’ve been out once out of necessity.) At this point, everyone is home and safe. It’s an adjustment having everyone here, but I’m not going to complain.

Stay safe. Find some happy distraction. We all need breaks. I’m going to take one now.

Until next time,

-Neil

Camouflage

Robert Reed

1

The human male had lived on the avenue for thirty-two years. Neighbors generally regarded him as a solitary creature, short-tempered on occasion, but never rude without cause. His dark wit was locally famous, and a withering intelligence was rumored to hide behind the brown-black eyes. Those with an appreciation of human beauty claimed that he was far from handsome, his face asymmetrical, the skin rough and fleshy, while his thick mahogany-brown hair looked as if it was cut with a knife and his own strong hands. Yet that homeliness made him intriguing to some human females, judging by the idle chatter. He wasn’t large for a human, but most considered him substantially built. Perhaps it was the way he walked, his back erect and shoulders squared while the face tilted slightly forwards, as if looking down from a great height. Some guessed he had been born on a high-gravity world, since the oldest habits never died. Or maybe this wasn’t his true body, and his soul still hungered for the days when he was a giant. Endless speculation was woven about the man’s past. He had a name and everyone knew the name. He had a biography, thorough and easily observed in the public records. But there were at least a dozen alternate versions of his past and left-behind troubles. He was a failed poet, or a dangerously successful poet, or a refugee who had escaped some political mess—unless he was some species of criminal, of course. One certainty was his financial security, but where his money came from was a subject of considerable debate. Inherited, some claimed. Others imagined gambling winnings or lucrative investments on now-distant colony worlds. Whatever the story, the man had the luxury of filling his days doing very little, and during his years on this obscure avenue, he had helped neighbors with unsolicited gifts of money and sometimes more impressive flavors of aid.

Thirty-two years was not a long time. Three decades was little different than an afternoon, and that’s why for another century or twenty, locals might still refer to a neighbor as the newcomer.

Such was life onboard the Great Ship. There were millions of avenues like this one. Some were short enough to walk in a day, while others stretched for thousands of uninterrupted kilometers. Many avenues remained empty, as dark and cold as when humans first discovered the Great Ship. But some had been awakened, made habitable to human owners or the oddest alien passengers.

This particular avenue was almost a hundred kilometers long and barely two hundred meters across. And it was tilted. Wastewater made a shallow river that sang its way across a floor of sugar-and-pepper granite. For fifty thousand years, the river had flowed without interruption, etching out a shallow channel. Locals built bridges at the likely places and along the banks erected tubs and pots filled with soils that mimicked countless worlds, giving roots and sessile feet happy places to stand. A large pot rested outside the man’s front door—the vessel made of ceramic foam trimmed with polished brass and covering nearly a tenth of a hectare. When he first arrived, the man poisoned the old jungle and planted another. But he wasn’t much of a gardener, apparently. The new foliage hadn’t prospered, weed species and odd volunteers emerging from the ruins.

Along the pot’s edge stood a ragged patch of llano-vibra—an alien flower famous for its wild haunting songs. “I should cut that weed out of there,” he would tell neighbors. “I pretty much hate the racket it’s making.” Yet he didn’t kill them or even tear out the little voice boxes. And after a decade or two of hearing his complaints, his neighbors began to understand that he secretly enjoyed their complicated, utterly alien melodies.

Most of his neighbors were sentient, fully mobile machines. Early in the voyage, a charitable foundation dedicated to finding homes and livelihoods for freed mechanical slaves leased the avenue. But recently organic species had begun cutting their own apartments into the walls, including a Janusian couple downstream, and upstream, an extended family of harum-scarums.

The human was a loner but by no means a hermit. True solitude was the easiest trick. Many billions of passengers were onboard, yet the great bulk of the Ship was full of hollow places and sprawling caves, seas of water and ammonia and methane, as well as moon-sized tanks filled with liquid hydrogen. Most locations were empty. Wilderness was everywhere, cheap and inviting. Indeed, a brief journey by cap-car could take the man to any of six wild places—alien environments and hidden sewage conduits as well as one maze-like catacomb rumored to never have been mapped. That was one advantage: He had more than one escape route. Another advantage was his neighbors. Machines were usually bright in easy ways, fountains of information if you knew how to employ them, but often indifferent to the subtleties of organic life.

There had been times with Pamir lived as a hermit. That was only sensible. Ship captains rarely abandoned their posts, and captains of his rank and great promise never made ruins out of an important facility—regardless whether they had good reasons or not. But that happened tens of thousands of years ago, and by most accounts, the Master Captain had stopped searching for him. Two or three or four possible escapes from the Ship had been recorded, each placing him on one the new colony worlds that humans had built while traveling through the galaxy. Or maybe he died in some ugly fashion. The best story put him inside a frigid little cavern, smugglers having killed his body, sealing the corpse inside a tomb of glass, and after centuries without food or air, the flesh had stopped trying to heal itself. Pamir was a blind brain trapped inside a frozen carcass, and the smugglers had been captured and interrogated by the best in that narrow field. According to coerced testimonies, they confessed to murdering the infamous captain, then as a further revenge, purging the precise location of their crime from their minds.

But Pamir was very much alive, and he had spent many thousand of years wandering, changing homes while remaking his face and name. He had worn nearly seventy identities, each elaborate enough to be believed, yet dull enough to escape notice. For good reasons, he found it helpful to wear an air of mystery, letting neighbors invent any odd story to explain gaps in his biography. Whatever was dreamed up, it fell far from the truth. Machines and men couldn’t imagine the turns and odd blessings of his life. Yet despite crimes and despite time, Pamir remained the good captain. A sense of obligation forced him to watch after the passengers and Ship. He might live on the run for the next two hundred millennia, but he would always be committed to this great machine and its precious, nearly countless inhabitants.

Now and again, the mysterious neighbor did large favors. Like with the harum-scarums next door. Giants by every measure, adorned with armored plates and spine-encrusted elbows, they were possessed by a well-deserved arrogance, born from millions of years of wandering among the stars. But this particular family was politically weak, and that was a bad way to be among harum-scarums. They had troubles with an old Mother-of-fathers, and seeing what was happening, Pamir interceded. Over the course of six months, by means both subtle and decisive, he put an end to the feud. The Mother-of-fathers came to her enemies’ home, walking backwards as a sign of total submission, and a plaintive voice begged for death, or at the very least, a forgetting of her sordid, graceless crimes.

Pamir’s hand was never obvious in this business. If he had been praised, he would have laughed it off, and moments later, he would have vanished, throwing himself into another identity inside a distant avenue.

Large deeds always demanded a complete change of life. A fresh face. The slightly rebuilt body. And another forgettable yet perfect name. That was how Pamir lived. And he had come to believe that it wasn’t a particularly bad way to live. Fate or some other woman-deity had given him this wondrous excuse to be alert at all times, to accept nothing as it first appears, helping those who deserved to be helped, and when the time came, remaking himself all over again.

And that time always came . . .

2

“Hello, my friend.”

“Hello to you.”

“And how are you this evening, my very good friend?”

Pamir was sitting beside the huge ceramic pot, listening to his llano-vibra. With a dry smirk, he mentioned, “I need to void my bowels.”

The machine laughed a little too enthusiastically. Its home was half a kilometer up the avenue, the apartment shared with twenty other legally sentient AIs who had escaped together from the same long-ago world. The rubber face and bright glass eyes worked themselves into a beaming smile, while a happy voice declared, “I am learning. You cannot shock me so easily with this organic dirty talk.” Then once again, he said, “My friend,” before using the fictitious name.

Pamir nodded, shrugged.

“It is a fine evening, is it not?”

“The best ever,” he deadpanned. Evening along this avenue was a question of the clock. The machines used the twenty-four hour ship-cycle, but with six hours of total darkness sandwiched between eighteen hours of brilliant, undiluted light. That same minimal aesthetics had kept remodeling to a minimum. The avenue walls were raw granite, save for the little places where organic tenants had applied wood or tile facades. The ceiling was a slick arch made of medium-grade hyperfiber wearing a thin coat of grime and lubricating oils and other residues. The lights were original, as old as the Ship and set in the thin dazzling bands running lengthwise along the ceiling. Evening brought no softening of brilliance or reddening of color. Evening was a precise moment, and when night came . . . in another few minutes . . . there would be three warning flashes, and then a perfect smothering blackness.

The machine continued to smile at him, meaning something by it. Cobalt-blue eyes were glowing, watching the human sit with the singing weeds.

“You want something,” Pamir guessed.

“Much or little. How can one objectively measure one’s wishes?”

“What do you want with me? Much, or little?”

“Very little.”

“Define your terms,” Pamir growled.

“There is a woman.”

Pamir said nothing, waiting now.

“A human woman, as it happens.” The face grinned, an honest delight leaking out of a mind no bigger than a fleck of sand. “She has hired me for a service. And the service is to arrange an introduction with you.”

With a flat, unaffected voice, Pamir said, “An introduction.” And through a string of secret nexuses, he brought his security systems up to full alert.

“She wishes to meet you.”

“Why?”

“Because she finds you fascinating, of course.”

“Am I?”

“Oh, yes. Everyone here believes you are most intriguing.” The flexible face spread wide as the mouth grinned, never-used white teeth shining in the last light. “But then again, we are an easily fascinated lot. What is the meaning of existence? What is the purpose of death? Where does slavery end and helplessness begin? And what kind of man lives down the path from my front door? I know his name, and I know nothing.”

“Who’s this woman?” Pamir asked.

The machine refused to answer him directly. “I explained to her what I knew about you. What I positively knew and what I could surmise. And while I was speaking, it occurred to me that after all of these nanoseconds of close proximity, you and I remain strangers.”

The surrounding landscape was unremarkable. Scans told Pamir that every face was known, and the nexus traffic was utterly ordinary, and when he extended his search, nothing was worth the smallest concern. Which made him uneasy. Every long look should find something suspicious.

“The woman admires you.”

“Does she?”

“Without question.” The false body was narrow and quite tall, dressed in a simple cream-colored robe. Four spidery arms emerged from under the folds of fabric, extending and then collapsing across the illusionary chest. “Human emotions are not my strength. But from what she says and what she does not say, I believe she has desired you for a very long time.”

The llano-vibra were falling silent now. Night was moments away. “All right,” Pamir said. He stood, boots planting themselves on the hard pale granite. “No offense meant. But why the hell would she hire you?”

“She is a shy lady,” the machine offered. And then he laughed, deeply amused by his own joke. “No, no. She is not at all shy. In fact, she is a very important soul. Perhaps this is why she demands an intermediary.”

“Important how?”

“In all ways,” his neighbor professed. Then with a genuine envy, he added, “You should feel honored by her attentions.”

A second array of security sensors was waiting. Pamir had never used them, and they were so deeply hidden no one could have noticed their presence. But they needed critical seconds to emerge from their slumber, and another half-second to calibrate and link together. And then, just as the first of three warning flashes rippled along the mirrored ceiling, what should have been obvious finally showed itself to him.

“You’re not just my neighbor,” he told the rubber face.

A second flash passed overhead, and he saw the shielded cap-car hovering nearby, a platoon of soldiers nestled in its belly.

“Who else stands in that body?” Pamir demanded.

“I shall show you,” the machine replied. Then two of the arms fell away, and the other two reached upwards, one violent jerk peeling back the rubber mask and the grit-sized brain, plus the elaborate shielding. A face lay behind the face. It was narrow, and in a fashion lovely, and it was austere, and it was allowing itself a knife-like smile as a new voice said to this mysterious man:

“Invite me inside your home.”

“Why should I?” he countered, expecting some kind of murderous threat.

But instead of threatening, Miocene said simply, “Because I would like your help. In a small matter that must remain—I will warn you—our intimate secret.”

3

Leading an army of captains was the Master Captain, and next in command was her loyal and infamous First Chair. Miocene was the second most powerful creature in this spectacular realm. She was tough and brutal, conniving and cold. And of all the impossible crap to happen, this was the worst. Pamir watched his guest peel away the last of her elaborate disguise. The AI was propped outside, set into a diagnostic mode. The soldiers remained hidden by the new darkness and their old tricks. It was just the two of them inside the apartment, which made no sense. If Miocene knew who he was, she would have simply told her soldiers to catch him and abuse him and then drag him to the Ship’s brig.

So she didn’t know who he was. Maybe.

The First Chair had a sharp face and black hair allowed to go a little white, and her body was tall and lanky and ageless and absolutely poised. She wore a simple uniform, mirrored in the fashion of all captains and decorated with a minimum of epaulets. For a long moment, she stared into the depths of Pamir’s home. Watching for something? No, just having a conversation through a nexus. Then she closed off every link with the outer world, and turning toward her host, she said his present name.

Pamir nodded.

She offered the name he used in his last life.

Again, he nodded.

And then with a question mark riding the end of it, she offered a third name.

He said, “Maybe.”

“It was or wasn’t you?”

“Maybe,” he said again.

She seemed amused. And then, there was nothing funny about any of this. The smile tightened, the mouth nearly vanishing. “I could look farther back in time,” she allowed. “Perhaps I would dig up the moment when you left your original identity behind.”

“Be my guest.”

“I am your guest, so you are safe.” She was taller than Pamir by a long measure—an artifact of his disguise. She moved closer to the wayward captain, saying, “Your origins don’t interest me.”

“Well then,” he said. And with a wink, he added, “So is it true, madam? Are you really in love with me?”

She laughed abruptly, harshly. Stepping away from him, Miocene studied the apartment again, this time focusing on furnishings and the rare decorations. The man kept a modest home—a single room barely a hundred meters deep and twenty wide, the walls paneled with living wood, the ceiling wearing the ruddy evening sky of a random world. With a calm voice, she announced, “I adore your talents, whoever you are.”

“My talents.”

“With the aliens.”

He said nothing.

“That mess with the harum-scarums . . . you found an elegant solution to a difficult problem. You couldn’t know it at the time, but you helped the Ship and my Master, and by consequence, you’ve earned my thanks.”

“What do you wish from me tonight, madam?”

“Tonight? Nothing. But tomorrow—early in the morning, I would hope—you will please apply your talents to a small matter. A relatively simple business, we can hope. Are you familiar with the J’Jal?”

Pamir held tight to his expression, his stance. Yet he couldn’t help but feel a hard kick to his heart, a well-trained paranoia screaming, “Run! Now!”

“I have some experience with that species,” he allowed. “Yes, madam.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Miocene.

As a fugitive, Pamir lived among the J’Jal on two separate occasions. Obviously, the First Chair knew much more about his past. The pressing question was if she knew only about his life five faces ago, or if she had seen back sixty-three faces—perilously close to the day when he permanently removed his captain’s uniform.

She knew his real identity, or she didn’t. Pamir strangled his paranoia and put on a wide grin, shoulders managing a shrug while the very calm voice said, “And why should I do this errand for you?”

Miocene had a cold way of smirking. “My request isn’t reason enough?”

He held his mouth closed.

“Your neighbors didn’t ask for your aid. Yet you gave it willingly, if rather covertly.” She acted angry though not entirely surprised. Behind those black eyes, calculations were being generated, and with a pragmatic tone, she said, “I promise not to investigate your past.”

“Because you already have,” he said.

“To a point, and maybe a little farther than I first implied. But I won’t use my considerable resources any more, if you help me.”

“No,” he said.

She seemed to flinch.

“I don’t know you,” he lied. “But madam, according to your reputation, you are a cold-razor bitch.”

In any given century, how many times did the First Chair hear an insult delivered to her face? Yet the tall woman absorbed the blow with poise, and then she mentioned a figure of money. “In an open account, and at your disposal,” she said. “Use the funds as you wish, and when you’ve finished, use some or all of the remaining wealth to vanish again. And you should hope to do a better job of it this time.”

She was offering a tidy fortune. But why would the second most powerful entity on the Ship dangle such a prize before him? Hidden machines were waiting to be triggered. Pamir went as far as activating a tiny nexus, using it to bring a battery of weapons into play. With a thought, he could temporarily kill Miocene. Then he would slip out of the apartment through one of three hidden routes, and with luck, escape the pursuing soldiers. And within a day, or two at most, he would inhabit a new existence in some other avenue . . . or better, he would stand alone in one of the very solitary places where he had stockpiled supplies.

Once again, Miocene confessed, “This is a confidential matter.” In other words, this was not official business for the First Chair. “More to the point, you won’t be helping me as much as you will come to the aid of another soul.”

Pamir deactivated the weapons, for the moment.

“Who deserves my help?”

“There is a young male you should meet,” Miocene replied. “A J’Jal man, of course.”

“I’m helping him?”

“I would think not,” she replied with a snort. Then through a private nexus, she fed an address to Pamir. It was in the Fall Away district—a popular home for many species, including the J’Jal.

“The alien is waiting for you at his home,” she continued. Then with her cold smirk, she added, “At this moment, he is lying on the floor of his backmost room, and he happens to be very much dead.”

4

Every portion of the Great Ship wore at least one bloodless designation left behind by the initial surveys, while the inhabited places might enjoy twenty names, poetic or blunt, simple or fabulously contrived. In most cases, the typical passenger remembered none of those labels. Every avenue and cavern and little sea was remarkable in its own right, but under that crush of novelty, few were unique enough to be famous.

Fall Away was an exception. For reasons known only to them, the Ship’s builders had fashioned a tube from mirrored hyperfiber and cold basalt—the great shaft beginning not far beneath the heavy armor of the ship’s bow and dropping for thousands of perfectly vertical kilometers. Myriad avenues funneled down to Fall Away. Ages ago, the Ship’s human engineers etched roads and paths in the cylinder’s surface, affording views to the curious. Ambitious crewmembers built homes perched on the endless brink, and they were followed by a wide array of passengers. Millions now lived along its spectacular length. Millions more pretended to live there. There were more famous destinations onboard the Great Ship, and several were arguably more beautiful. But no other address afforded residents an easier snobbery. “My home is on Fall Away,” they boasted. “Come enjoy my view, if you have a free month or an empty year.”

Pamir ignored the view, and when he was sure nobody was watching, he slipped inside the J’Jal’s apartment.

The Milky Way wasn’t the largest galaxy, but it was most definitely fertile. Experts routinely guessed that three million worlds had evolved their own intelligent, technologically adept life. Within that great burst of natural invention, certain patterns were obvious. Half a dozen metabolic systems were favored. The mass and composition of a home world often shoved evolution down the same inevitable pathways. Humanoids were common; human beings happened to be a young example of an ancient pattern. Harum-scarums was another, as were the Glory and Aabacks, the Mnotis and Striders. But even the most inexpert inorganic eye could tell those species apart. Each humanoid arose on different life-trees. Fur and plumage and armor and neatly folded fat enclosed the dissimilar bodies. Some were giants built for massive worlds, others frail little wisps that could barely survive the Ship’s gravity. Even among naked mock-primates, there was an enormous range when it came to hands and faces. “I am nothing like a human,” shouted the elegant bones, while the flesh itself was full of golden blood and XNA that proved its alienness.

And then, there were the J’Jals. They had a human walk and a very human face, particularly in the typically green eyes. Diurnal creatures, they were hunter-gatherers from a world much like the Earth, having roamed an open savanna for millions of years, using stone implements carved with hands that at first glance, and sometimes with a second glance, looked entirely human.

But these similarities reached even deeper. The J’Jal heart beat inside a spongy double-lung, and every breath pressed against a cage of rubbery white ribs, while the ancestral blood was a ruddy mix of salts with iron wrapped inside a iron-rich protein similar to hemoglobin. In fact, most of their proteins had a telltale resemblance to human types, as did great portions of their original DNA.

Convergence could happen when species evolved in similar environments, but mutation-by-mutation convergence was preposterous. A common origin, however unlikely, was ten million times more practical. The Earth and J’Jal must have been relatively close neighbors in the past. One world evolved simple, durable microbial life. Then a comet splashed into the ocean, and a piece of living crust rose into space. With a trillion sleeping passengers safely entombed, the wreckage drifted free of the solar system, and after a few light-years of cold oblivion, the crude ark slammed into a new world’s atmosphere where at least one microbe survived, happily eating every native pre-life ensemble of hydrocarbons as it and its children conquered the new realm.

Such things often happened in the galaxy’s early times. At least half a dozen other worlds shared biochemistries with the Earth. But only the J’Jal world took such a similar evolutionary pathway.

In effect, the J’Jal were distant cousins, and for many reasons, they were poor cousins, too.

Pamir stood over the body, examining its position and condition. Spider-legged machines did the same. Reaching inside the corpse with sound and soft bursts of x-rays, the machinery arrived at a rigorous conclusion they kept to themselves. With his own eyes and instincts, Pamir would first do his best, thank you.

It could have been a human male lying dead on the floor. The corpse was naked, on his back, legs together and his arms thrown up over his head with hands open and every finger extended. His flesh was a soft brown. His hair was short and bluish-black. The J’Jal didn’t have natural beards. But the hair on the body could have been human—a thin carpet on the nippled chest that thickened around the groin.

In death, his genitals had shriveled back into the body. No mark was visible, and Pamir guessed that if he rolled the body, there wouldn’t be a wound on the backside either. But the man was utterly dead. Sure of it, he knelt down low, gazing at the decidedly human face, flinching just a little when the narrow mouth opened, a shallow breath drawn into the dead man’s lungs.

Quietly, Pamir laughed at himself.

The machines stood motionless, waiting for encouragement.

“The brain’s gone,” he offered, touching the forehead with his left hand, feeling the faint warmth of a hibernating metabolism. “A shaped plasma bolt, something like that. Ate through the skull and cooked his soul.”

The machines rocked back and forth on long legs.

“It’s slag, the brain is. And some of the body got torched too. Sure.” He rose now, looking about the bedroom with a careful gaze.

A set of clothes stood nearby, waiting to dress their owner. Pamir disabled the clothes and laid them on the ground beside the corpse. “He lost ten or twelve kilos of flesh and bone, and he’s about ten centimeters shorter than he used to be.”

Death was a difficult trick to achieve with immortals. And even in this circumstance, with the brain reduced to ruined bioceramics and mindless glass, the body was persisting with life. The surviving flesh had healed itself, within limits. Emergency genetics had been unleashed, reweaving the original face and scalp and a full torso that couldn’t have seemed more lifelike. But when the genes had finished, no mind was found to interface with the rejuvenated body. So the J’Jal corpse fell into a stasis, and if no one had entered this apartment, it would remain where it was, sipping at the increasingly stale air, its lazy metabolism eating its own flesh until it was a skeleton and shriveled organs and a gaunt, deeply mummified face.

He had been a handsome man, Pamir could see. Regardless of the species, it was an elegant, tidy face.

“What do you see?” he finally asked.

The machines spoke, in words and raw data. Pamir listened, and then he stopped listening. Again, he thought about Miocene, asking why the First Chair would give one little shit about this very obscure man.

“Who is he?” asked Pamir, not for the first time.

A nexus was triggered. The latest, most thorough biography was delivered. The J’Jal had been born onboard the Ship, his parents wealthy enough to afford the luxury of propagation. His family’s money was made on a harum-scarum world, which explained his name: Sele’ium—a play on the harum-scarum convention of naming yourself after the elements. And just a youngster, barely five hundred years old, Sele’ium carried a life story that couldn’t seem more ordinary.

Pamir stared at the corpse, unsure what good that did. Then he forced himself to walk around the apartment. It wasn’t much larger than his home, but with a pricey view making it twenty times more expensive. The furnishings could have belonged to either species. The color schemes were equally ordinary. There were a few hundred books on display—a distinctly J’Jal touch—and Pamir set loose a little flat-scribe to read each volume from cover to cover. Then he lead his helpers to every corner and closet, to new rooms and back to the old rooms again, and he inventoried every surface and each object, including a sampling of dust. But there was little dust, which meant that the dead man was exceptionally neat, or somebody had carefully swept away every trace of his own presence, including bits of dried skin and careless hairs.

“Now what?”

He was asking himself that question, but the machines replied, “We do not know what is next, sir.”

Again, Pamir stood over the breathing corpse. “I’m not seeing something,” he complained. Then he shut his eyes and quietly laughed at himself. A small medical probe was requested and generated, and the probe was inserted, and through it the human delivered a teasing charge.

The dead penis pulled itself out of the body.

“Huh,” said Pamir, shaking his head. “All right. We’re going to search again, this place and the poor shit’s life. Mote by mote and day by day, if we have to.”

5

Built in the upper reaches of Fall Away, overlooking the permanent clouds of the Little-Lot, the facility was an expansive collection of natural caverns and minimal tunnels. Strictly speaking, the Faith of the Many Joinings wasn’t a church or holy site, though it was wrapped securely around an ancient faith. Nor was it a commercial house, though money and barter items were often given to its resident staff. And it wasn’t a brothel, as far as the Ship’s codes were concerned. Nothing sexual happened within its walls, and no one involved in its mysteries gave his or her body for anything as crass as income. Most passengers didn’t even realize that such a place existed. Among those who did, most regarded it as an elaborate and very strange meetinghouse—like-minded souls would pass through its massive wooden door to make friends, and when possible, fall in love. But for the purposes of taxes and law, the captains had decided on a much less romantic designation. Borrowing an ancient human word, the space was labeled to be an accredited library.

On the Great Ship, routine knowledge was preserved inside laser files and superconducting baths. Access might be restricted, but every word and captured image was within reach of buried nexuses. Libraries were an exception. What the books held was often unavailable anywhere else, making them precious, and that’s why they offered a kind of privacy difficult to match, as well as an almost religious holiness to the followers of the Faith.

“May I help you, sir?”

Pamir was standing before a set of tall shelves. His arms were crossed and his face wore a tight, furious expression. “Who are you?” he asked, not bothering to look at the speaker.

“My name is Leon’rd.”

“I’ve talked to others already,” Pamir said.

“I know, sir.”

“They came at me, one by one. But they weren’t important enough.” He turned, staring at the newcomer. “Are you important enough to help me, Leon’rd?”

“I hope so, sir. I do.”

The J’Jal man was a little taller than Pamir, wearing a purplish-black robe and long blue hair secured in back as a simple horsetail. His eyes were indistinguishable from a human’s green eyes. His skin was a pinkish brown. As the J’Jal preferred, his feet were bare. They could be human feet, plantigrade and narrow, with five toes and a similar architecture of bones, the long arches growing taller when nervous toes curled up. With a slight bow, the alien remarked, “I am the ranking librarian, sir. I have been at this post for ten millennia and eighty-eight years. Sir.”

Pamir had adapted his face and clothing. What the J’Jal saw was a security officer dressed in casual garb. A badge clung to his sleeve, and every roster search identified him as a man with honors and a certain clout. But his disguise reached deeper. The crossed arms flexed for a moment, hinting at lingering tensions. His new face tightened until the eyes were squinting, affecting a cop’s challenging stare. The pinched mouth looked ready to curse, but all he said was, “I’m looking for somebody.”

To his credit, the librarian barely winced.

“My wife,” Pamir said. “I want to know where she is.”

“No.”

“Pardon me?”

“I understand what you desire, but I cannot comply.”

At that moment, a giant figure stepped into the room. The harum-scarum noticed two males facing off, and with an embarrassment rare for the species, she carefully backed out of sight.

The librarian spoke to his colleagues, using a nexus. Every door to this chamber was quietly closed and securely locked.

“Listen,” Pamir said. Then he said nothing else.

After a few moments, the J’Jal said, “Our charter is clear. The law is defined. We offer our patrons privacy and opportunity, in that order. Without official clearance, sir, you may not enter this facility to obtain facts or insights of any type.”

“I’m looking for my wife,” he repeated.

“And I can appreciate your—“

“Quiet,” Pamir interrupted, arms unfolding, the right hand holding a small, illegal plasma torch. With a flourish, he aimed at his helpless target, and one last time, he said, “I am looking for my wife.”

“Don’t,” the librarian said.

The weapon was pointed at bound volumes. The smallest burst would vaporize untold pages.

“No,” Leon’rd begged, desperately trying to alert the room’s weapon suppression systems. But none were responding.

Again, the librarian said, “No.”

“I love her,” Pamir said.

“I understand.”

“Do you understand love?”

Leon’rd appeared offended. “Of course I understand—”

“Or does it have to be something ugly and sick before you can appreciate, even a little bit, what it means to be in love.”

The J’Jal refused to speak.

“She’s vanished,” Pamir said.

“And you think she has been here?”

“At least once, yes.”

The librarian was searching for a useful strategy. A general alarm was sounding, but the doors he had locked for good reasons suddenly refused to unlock. His staff and every other helping hand might as well have been on the far side of the Ship. And if the gun discharged, it would take critical seconds to fill the room with enough nitrogen to stop the fire and enough narcotics to shove a furious human to the floor.

Leon’rd had no choice. “Perhaps I can help you, yes.”

Pamir showed a thin, unpleasant grin. “That’s the attitude.”

“If you told me your wife’s name—”

“She wouldn’t use it,” he warned.

“Or show me a holo of her, perhaps.”

The angry husband shook his head. “She’s changed her appearance. At least once, maybe more times.”

“Of course.”

“And her gender, maybe.”

The librarian absorbed those complications. He had no intention of giving this stranger what he wanted, but if they could just draw this ugly business out for long enough, allowing a platoon of security troops to swoop in and take back their colleague . . .

“Here,” said Pamir, feeding him a minimal file.

“What is this?”

“Her boyfriend, from what I understand.”

Leon’rd stared at the image and the attached biography. Soft green eyes had barely read the name when they grew huge—a meaningful J’Jal expression—and with a sigh that sounded human, he admitted, “I know this man.”

“Did you?”

Slowly, the implication of those words was absorbed. “What do you mean? Is something wrong?”

“Yeah, like I said, my wife is missing. And this murdered piece of shit is the only one who can help me find her. Besides you, that is.”

Leon’rd asked for proof of the man’s death.

“Proof?” Pamir laughed. “Maybe I should call my boss and tell her that I found a deceased J’Jal, and you and I can ask the law do its important and loud and very public work.”

A moment later, with a silent command, the librarian put an end to the general alert. There was no problem here, he lied; and with the slightest bow, he asked, “May I trust you to keep this matter confidential, sir?”

“Do I look trustworthy?”

The J’Jal bristled but said nothing. Then he stared at shelves at the far end of the room, walking a straight line that took him to a slender volume that he withdrew and opened, elegant fingers beginning to flip through the thin plastic pages.

With a bully’s abruptness, Pamir grabbed the prize. The cover was a soft wood stained blue to identify its subject as being a relative novice. The pages were plastic, thin but dense, with a running account of the dead man’s progress. Over the course of the last century, librarians had met with Sele’ium on numerous occasions, recording his uneven progress with this very difficult faith. Audio transcripts drawn from a private journal let him explain his mind to himself and every interested party. “My species is corrupt and tiny,” Sele’ium had confessed with a remarkably human voice. “Every species is tiny and foul, and only together, joined in perfect union, can we create a worthy society—a universe genuinely united.”

Several pages held holos—stark, honest images of religious devotion that most of galaxy would look upon as abominations. Pamir barely lingered on any picture. He had a clear guess about what he was looking for, and it helped that only one of the J’Jal’s wives was human.

The final page was the key. Pamir stared at the last image, and with a low snort and a disgusted shake of the head, he announced, “This must be her.”

“But it isn’t,” said the librarian.

“No, it’s got to be,” he persisted. “A man should be able to recognize his own wife. Shouldn’t he?”

Leon’rd showed the barest of grins. “Except I know this woman rather well, and she is not—”

“Where’s her book?”

“No,” the librarian said. “Believe me, this is not someone you know.”

“Prove it.”

Silence.

“What’s her name?”

Leon’rd straightened, working hard to appear brave.

Then Pamir placed the plasma torch against a random shelf, allowing the tip of the barrel to heat up to where smoke rose as the red wood binding of a true believer began to smolder.

The woman’s journal was stored in a different room, far deeper inside the library. Leon’rd called for it to be brought to them, and then he stood close while Pamir went through the pages, committing most of it to a memory nexus. At one point, he said, “If you’d let me just borrow these things.”

The J’Jal face flushed, and a tight hateful voice replied, “If you tried to take them, you would have to kill me.”

Pamir showed him a wink.

“A word for the not-so-wise?” he said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t give my enemies easy ideas.”

6

How could one species prosper, growing in reach and wealth as well as numbers, while a second species, blessed with the same strengths, exists for a hundred times longer and still didn’t matter to the galaxy?

Scholars and bigots had deliberated that question for ages. The J’Jal evolved on a lush warm world, blue seas wrapped around green continents, the ground fat with metal ores and hydrocarbons, and a massive moon rode the sky, helping keep the axis tilted just enough to invite mild seasons. Perhaps that wealth had been a bad thing. Born on a somewhat poorer world, humans first evolved to live in tiny, adaptable bands of twenty or so—everyone related to everyone, by blood or by marriage. But the early J’Jals moved in troops of a hundred or more, which meant a society wrapped around a more tolerant politics. Harmony was a given. Conflicts were resolved quietly, since nothing was more precious to the troop than its own venerable peace. And with natural life spans reaching three centuries, change was a slow, fitful business brought on by consensus, or when absolutely necessary, by surrendering your will to the desires of the elders.

But quirks of nature are only one explanation for the future. Many great species had developed patiently. Some of the most famous, like the Ritkers and harum-scarums, were still tradition-bound creatures. Even humans had that sorry capacity: The wisdom of dead Greeks and lost Hebrews was followed long after their words had value. But the J’Jal were far more passionate than humans when it came to ancestors and their left-behind thoughts. The past was the greatest treasure, and their early civilizations were hide-bound and enduring machines that remembered every wrong turn and every quiet success.

Humans stepped into space after a couple hundred thousand years of flint and iron, but it took the J’Jal millions of years to contrive reasons for that kind of adventure. And that was a murderous bit of bad fortune. The J’Jal solar system had metal-rich worlds and watery moons, and its neighboring suns were mature G-class stars where intelligence arose many times. While the J’Jal sat at home, happily memorizing the speeches of old queens, three different alien species colonized their outer worlds—ignoring galactic law and ancient conventions in the process.

Unknown to the J’Jal, great wars were being waged in their sky.

The eventual winner was a tiny creature accustomed to light gravity and exotic technologies. Cybernetic and quick-lived, the K’Mal were creatures of fads and whims and sudden convulsive changes of government. By the time the J’Jal launched their first rocket, the K’Mal outnumbered them sixty-to-one inside their own solar system. This happened millions of years ago, but that historic moment still deserved shame. The J’Jal rocket rose into a low orbit, triggering a K’Mal fleet to lift from bases on the moon’s hidden face. The new rocket was destroyed, and suddenly the J’Jal went from being the masters of Paradise to an obscure creature locked on the surface of one little world.

Wars were fought, and won. Peace treaties held, and collapsed, and the new wars ended badly. True slavery didn’t exist for the losers, even in the worst stretches of the long Blackness. And the K’Mal weren’t wicked tyrants or unthinking administrators. But gradual decay stole away the wealth of the J’Jal world. Birth rates plunged. Citizens emigrated, forced to work in bad circumstances for a variety of alien species. Those left at home lived on an increasingly poisonous landscape, operating the deep mantle mines and the enormous railguns that spat the bones of their world into someone else’s space.

While humans were happily hamstringing mammoths on the plains of Asia, the J’Jal were a beaten species scattered thinly across a hundred worlds. Other species would have lost their culture, and with the ages, other species would have split into dozens of distinct, utterly obscure species. But the J’Jal proved capable in one extraordinary endeavor: Against every abuse, they managed to hold tight to their shared past, beautiful and otherwise; and in small ways, and then in slow large ways, they adapted to their far flung existence.

7

“You’ll be helping another soul.”

Miocene had promised that much and said little else. She knew the dead J’Jal would point him to the library, and she had to guess that he was bright enough to realize that the human woman mattered. Why the First Chair cared about an apparently unremarkable passenger, Pamir couldn’t guess. Or rather, he could guess too easily, drawing up long lists of motivations, each entry reasonable, and most if not all of them ridiculously wrong.

The human was named Sorrel, and it had been Sorrel since she was born two centuries ago. Unless she was older than that, and her biography was a masterful collection of inspired lies.

Like most of the library’s patrons, she made her home on Fall Away. Yet even among that wealthy company, she was blessed. Not one but two trust funds kept her economy well fed. Her rich father had immigrated to a colony world before she was born, leaving his local assets in her name. While the mother—a decorated member of the diplomatic corps—had died on the ill-fated Hakkaleen mission. In essence, Sorrel was an orphan. Yet by most signs, she didn’t suffer too badly, appearing happy and unremarkable through her early years of wealth.

What was the old harum-scarum saying? “Nothing is as massive as the universe, but nothing is half as large as a sentient, imaginative mind.”

Then the woman began to change. Like many young adults, Sorrel took an early vow of celibacy. With a million years of life stretching before her, why hurry into sex and love, disappointment and heartbreak? She had human friends, but because of her mother’s diplomatic roots, she knew quite a few aliens too. Her closest companions were a Janusian couple—double organisms where the male was a parasite rooted in his spouse’s back. Then her circle of alien friends widened, which again seemed perfectly normal. Pamir searched the archives of forgotten security eyes and amateur documentaries, finding glimpses of luncheons and shopping adventures in the company of oxygen breathers—the traditional human allies. Then came the luxury cruise across a string of little oceans spread through the Ship’s interior—a relatively brief voyage accomplished in the midst of the circumnavigation of the Milky Way—and near the end of that tame adventure, while drifting on a dim cold smooth-as-skin methane sea, she took her first lover.

He was a J’Jal, as it happened. Pamir saw enough on the security eyes to fill in the blanks. Cre’llan was a spectacularly wealthy individual, and ancient, and in a Faith that cherished its privacy, he flaunted his membership and his beliefs. Elaborate surgeries had reshaped his penis to its proper form. Everyone involved in the Many Joinings endured similar cosmetic work; a uniform code applied to both genders, and where no gender existed, one was invented for them. During his long life, Cre’llan had married hundreds if not thousands of aliens, and on that chill night he managed to seduce a young virginal human.

After the cruise, Sorrel tried to return to her old life. But three days later she visited the library, and within the week, she underwent her own physical reconfigurations.

Pamir had caught glimpses of the surgery in her journal—autodocs and J’Jal overseers hovering around a lanky pale body. And closing his eyes now, concentrating on the buried data reserve, he could slowly and carefully flip his way through the other pages of that elaborate yet still incomplete record. After a year as a novice, Sorrel purchased a bare rectangle of stone and hyperfiber some fifty kilometers directly beneath the library. The apartment she built was deep and elaborate, full of luxurious rooms as well as expansive chambers that could be configured to meet the needs of almost any biology. But while every environmental system was the best available, sometimes those fancy machines didn’t interact well with one another, and with the right touch, they were quite easy to sabotage.

“Is it a serious problem, sir?”

“Not for me,” Pamir allowed. “Not for you, I’d guess. But if you depend on peroxides, like the Ooloops do, then the air is going to taste sour. And after a few breaths, you’ll probably lose consciousness.”

“I understand,” the apartment offered.

Pamir was standing in the service hallway, wearing his normal rough face as well as the durable jersey and stiff back of a lifelong technician. “I’ll need to wander, if I’m going to find your trouble. Which is probably an eager filter, or a failed link of code, or a leak, or who knows what.”

“Do whatever is necessary,” the soft male voice replied.

“And thanks for this opportunity,” Pamir added. “I appreciate new business.”

“Of course, sir. Thank you for your diligence.”

The apartment’s usual repair firm was temporarily closed due to a bureaucratic war with the Office of Environments. A search of available candidates had steered the AI towards the best candidate. Pamir began by releasing a swarm of busy drones that vanished inside the walls, and he continued walking down the hallway, pausing at a tiny locked door.

“What’s past here?”

“A living chamber.”

“For a human?”

“Yes, sir.”

Pamir stepped back. “I don’t need to bother anyone.”

“No one will be.” The lock and seal broke. “My lady demands that her home is ready for any and all visitors. Your work is a priority.”

Pamir nodded, stepping through the narrow slot. His first thought was that captains didn’t live half as well as this. The room was enormous yet somehow intimate, carpeted with living furs, art treasures standing about waiting to be admired, chairs available for any kind of body, and as added feature, at least fifty elaborate games laid out on long boards, the pieces playing against each other until there was a winner, after which they would play again. Even the air tasted of wealth, scrubbed and filtered, perfumed and pheromoned. In that perfect atmosphere, the only sound was the quiet precise and distant singing of a certain alien flower.

Llano-vibra.

Pamir looked at monitors and spoke through nexuses, and he did absolutely nothing of substance. What he wanted to accomplish was already done, the apartment infested with hidden ears and eyes, and everything else was a show to lend him more credibility.

A tall diamond wall stood on the far side of the enormous bedroom, and beyond, five hectares of patio hung over the open air. A grove of highly bred llano-vibra was rooted in a patio pot, its music passing through a single open door. The young woman was sitting nearby, doing nothing. Pamir looked at Sorrel for a moment, and then she lifted her head to glance in his general direction. He worked to interpret what he was seeing. She was clothed but barefoot. She was strikingly lovely, but in an odd fashion that he couldn’t quite name. Her pale skin had a genuine glow, a capacity to swallow up the ambient light and cast it back into the world in a softer form. Her hair was silver-white and thick, with the tips suddenly turning to black. She had a smooth girlish face and a tiny nose and blue-white eyes pulled close together, and her mouth was broad and elegant and exceptionally sad.

It was the sadness that made her striking, Pamir decided.

Standing near the door, staring at her, he began to appreciate how nothing was simple about her sadness or his reactions. Sorrel glanced at him a second time. A moment later, the apartment inquired, “Is the lady a point of technical interest, sir?”

“Sure.” Pamir laughed and stepped back from the diamond wall.

“Have you found the problem? She wishes to know.”

“Two problems, and yes. They’re being fixed now.”

“Very well. Thank you.”

Pamir meant to mention his fee. Tradesmen always talked money. But there came a sound—the soft musical whine of a rope deploying—that quickly fell away into silence.

The apartment stopped speaking to him.

Pamir asked, “What?” while turning to look outside again. The woman wasn’t alone anymore. A second figure had appeared, dressed like a rock climber and running across the patio towards Sorrel. He was a human or J’Jal, and apparently male. From where Pamir stood, he couldn’t tell much more. But he saw the urgency in the intruder’s step and a right hand that was holding what could be a weapon, and an instant later, Pamir was running too, leaping through the open door as the stranger closed on the woman.

Sorrel stared at the newcomer.

“I don’t recognize his face,” the apartment warned her, shouting now. “My lady—!”

The inertia vanished from her body. Sorrel leapt up and took two steps backwards before deciding to stand and fight. It was her best hope, Pamir agreed. She lifted her arms and lowered them again. She was poised if a little blank in the face, as if she was surrendering her survival to a set of deeply buried instincts.

The stranger reached for her neck with his left hand. With a swift clean motion, she grabbed the open hand and twisted the wrist back. But the running body picked her off her feet, and both of them fell to the polished opal floor of the patio.

The man’s right hand held a knife. With a single plunge, the stranger pushed the blade into her chest, aiming for the heart. He was working with precision, perhaps by feel. He was trying to accomplish something very specific, and when she struggled, he would strike her face with the back of his free hand.

The blade dove deeper.

A small, satisfied moan leaked out of him, as if success was near, and then Pamir drove his boot into the smiling mouth.

The stranger was human, and furious. He climbed to his feet, fending off the next three blows, and then he pulled out a small railgun that he halfway aimed, letting loose a dozen flecks of supersonic iron.

Pamir dropped, the shoulder and arm punctured. The injured woman lay between them, bleeding and pained, the hilt of the knife standing inside her chest, a portion of the hyperfiber blade reflecting the brilliant red of the blood.

With his good arm, Pamir grabbed the hilt and tugged. There was a soft clatter as a Darmion crystal spilled out of her body along with the blade. This was what the thief wanted. Seeing the glittering shape, the man couldn’t resist the urge to grab at the prize. A small fortune was within reach, but suddenly his own knife was driven through his meaty forearm, and he screamed in pain and rage.

Pamir cut him twice again. The little railgun rose up and fired once, twice, and then twice more. Pamir’s body was dying, but he still had the focus and strength to lift the man—a bullish fellow with short limbs and seemingly an infinite supply of blood. Pamir kept slashing and pushing, and the railgun was dropped and left behind, and now the man struck him with a fist and his elbows and then tried to use his knee. Pamir grabbed the knee as it rose, borrowing its momentum as well as the last of his own strength to shove the thief against a railing of simple oak, and with a last grunt, flinging him over the edge.

Only Pamir was standing now. Really, it was a beautiful view. With his chest ripped open and a thousand emergency genes telling his body to rest, he gazed out into the open expanse of Fall Away. Thirty kilometers across and lit by a multitude of solar-bright lamps, this was a glory of engineering, and perhaps a masterpiece of art. The countless avenues that fed into Fall Away often brought water and other liquids, and the captains’ engineers had devised a system of airborne rivers—diamond tubes easing the fluids down in a tangle of spirals and rings, little lakes gathering in pools held aloft by invisible means. And there were flyers moving in the air—organic and not, alive and not—and there was the deep musical buzz of a million joyous voices, and there were forests of epiphytes clinging to the wall, and there was a wet wind that hadn’t ceased in eighty thousand years, and Pamir forgot why he was standing here. What was this place? Turning, he discovered a beautiful woman with a gruesome wound in her chest telling him to sit, please. Sit. Sir, she said, please, please, you need to rest.

8

The Faith of the Many Joinings.

Where it arose first was a subject of some contention. Several widely scattered solar systems were viable candidates, but no expert held the definitive evidence. Nor could one prophet or pervert take credit for this quasi-religious belief. But what some J’Jal believed was that every sentient soul had the same value. Bodies were facades, metabolisms were mere details, and social systems varied in the same way that individual lives varied, according to choice and whim and a deniable sense of right. What mattered were the souls within all of these odd packages. What a wise soul wished to do was to befriend entities from different histories, and when possible, fall in love with them, linking their spirits together through the ancient pleasures of the flesh.

There was no single prophet and the Faith had no birthplace, which were problems for the rational believers. How could such an intricate, odd faith arise simultaneously in such widely scattered places? Yet the flaw was also a blessing. Plainly, divine gears were turning the universe, and this unity was just further evidence of how right and perfect their beliefs had to be. Unless of course the Faith was the natural outgrowth of the J’Jal’s own nature: A social species is thrown across the sky, and every home belongs to more powerful species, and the entire game of becoming lovers to the greater ones is as inevitable and unremarkable as standing on their two bare feet.

Pamir held to that ordinary explanation. Glancing at his own bare feet, he sighed and then examined his arm and shoulder and chest. The wounds had healed to where nothing was visible. Unscarred flesh had spread over the holes, while the organs inside him were quickly pulling themselves back into perfect condition. He was fit enough to sit up, but he didn’t. Instead, he lay on the soft chaise set on the open-air patio, listening to the llano-vibra. He was alone for now, the diamond wall to the bedroom turned obsidian, and he spent his time thinking about what was obvious, then played with the subtle possibilities that sprang up from what was possible.

The thief—a registered felon with a long history of this exact work—had fallen for several kilometers before a routine security patrol took enough interest to pluck him out of the sky before he could spoil anybody else’s day.

The unlucky man was under arrest and would probably serve a century or two for his latest crime.

“This stinks,” Pamir muttered.

“Sir?” said the apartment. “Is there a problem? Might I help?”

Pamir considered, and said, “No.” He sat up and said, “Clothes,” and his technician’s uniform pulled itself around him. Its fabric had healed, if not quite so thoroughly as his body. He examined what could be a fleck of dried blood, and after a moment, he said, “Boots.”

“Under your seat, sir.”

Pamir was giving his feet to his boots when she walked out through the bedroom door.

“I have to thank you.” Sorrel was tall and elegant in a shopworn way, wearing a long gray robe and no shoes. In the face, she looked pretty but sorrowful, and up close, that sadness was a deep thing reaching well past today. “For everything you did for me, thank you.”

A marathon of tears had left her eyes red and puffy. He stared, and she stared back. For a moment, it was as if she saw nothing. Then Sorrel noticed his interest, and with a shiver, she told him, “Stay as long as you wish. My home will feed you, and if you want, you can take anything that interests you. As a memento . . . ”

“Where’s the crystal?” he asked.

She touched herself between the breasts. The Darmion was back home, resting beside her enduring heart. According to half a dozen species, the crystal gave its possessor a keen love of life and endless joy—a bit of mystic noise refuted by the depressed woman who was wearing it.

“I don’t want your little rock,” he muttered.

She didn’t act relieved or amused. “Thank you,” she said one last time, planning to end this here.

“You need a better security net,” Pamir remarked.

“Perhaps so,” she said, without interest.

“What’s your name?”

She said, “Sorrel,” and then the rest of it. Human names were long and complex to the point of unwielding. But she said it all and then looked at him in a new fashion. “What do I call you?”

He used his most recent identity.

“Are you any good with security systems?” Sorrel inquired.

“Better than most.”

She nodded.

“You want me to upgrade yours?”

That amused her somehow. A little smile broke across the milky face, and for a moment, the bright pink tip of her tongue pointed at him. Then she shook her head, saying, “No, not for me,” as if he should have realized as much. “I have a good friend . . . a dear old friend . . . who has some rather heavy fears . . . ”

“Can he pay?”

“I will pay. Tell him it’s my gift.”

“So who’s this worried fellow?”

In an alien language, she said, “Gallium.”

Genuinely surprised, Pamir asked, “What the hell is a harum-scarum doing, admitting he’s scared?”

Sorrel nodded appreciatively.

“He admits nothing,” she said. Then she smiled again . . . a warmer expression, this time. She looked fetching and sweet, even wonderful, and for Pamir, that expression seemed to last long after he walked out of the apartment and on to his next job.

9

The harum-scarum was nearly three meters tall, massive and thickly armored, loud and yet oddly serene at the same time, passionate about his endless bravery and completely transparent when he told lies. His home was close to Fall Away, tucked high inside one of the minor avenues. He was standing behind his final door—a slab of hyperfiber-braced diamond—and with a distinctly human gesture, he waved off the uninvited visitor. “I do not need any favors,” he claimed, speaking through his breathing mouth. “I am as secure as anyone and twelve times more competent than you when it comes to my defense.” Then with blatant rudeness, he allowed his eating mouth to deliver a long wet belch.

“Funny,” said Pamir. “A woman wishes to buy my services, and you are Gallium, her dear old friend. Is that correct?”

“What is the woman’s name?”

“Why? Didn’t you hear me the first time?”

“Sorrel, you claimed.” The giant pretended to concentrate, and with a little too much certainty said, “I do not know this ape-woman.”

“She knows you.”

“She is mistaken.”

“So then how did you know she was human? I hadn’t quite mentioned that detail yet.”

The question won a blustery glance from the big black eyes. “What are you implying to me, little ape-man?”

Pamir laughed at him. “Why? Can’t you figure it out for yourself?”

“Are you insulting me?”

“Sure.”

That earned deep silence. With a fist only a little larger than one of the alien’s knuckles, Pamir wrapped on the diamond door. “I’m insulting you and your ancestors. There. By the ship’s codes and your own painful customs, you are now free to step out here, in the open, and beat me until I am dead for a full week.”

The giant shook with fury, and nothing happened. One mouth expanded, gulping down deep long breaths, while the other mouth puckered into a tiny dimple—a harum-scarum on the brink of a pure vengeful rage. Yet Gallium forced himself to do nothing, and when the anger finally began to diminish, he gave an inaudible signal, causing the outer two doors to drop and seal tight.

Pamir looked left and then right. The narrow avenue was well-lit and empty, and by every appearance, it was safe. Yet the creature had been terrified. One more time, he paged his way through Sorrel’s journal. Among her Joinings were two harum-scarum husbands. No useful name had been mentioned in the journal, but it was obvious who Gallium was. Lying about his fear was in character for the species. But how could a confirmed practitioner of this singular faith deny that he had even met the woman?

Pamir needed to find other husbands. A hundred different routes lay before him. But as harum-scarums liked to say, “The shortest line stretches between points that touch.”

Gallium’s security system was ordinary, and it was porous, and with thousands of years of experience in these matters, it took Pamir less than a day to subvert codes and walk through the front doors.

“Who is with me?” a voice cried out from the farthest room. In J’Jal, curiously. Then in the human tongue, he asked, “Who’s there?”

Pamir said nothing.

And finally, as an afterthought, the alien shouted, “You are in my realm, and unwelcome.” In his own tongue, he promised, “I will forgive you, if you run away at this moment.”

“Sorrel won’t let me run,” Pamir replied.

The final room was a minor fortress buttressed with slabs of high-grade hyperfiber and bristling with weapons, legal and otherwise. A pair of rail-guns were tracking the invader’s head, ready to batter his mind if not quite kill it. Tightness built in Pamir’s throat, but he managed to keep the fear out of his voice.

“Is this where you live now, in a little room at the bottom of an ugly home?”

“You like to insult,” the harum-scarum observed.

“It passes my time,” he said.

From behind the hyperfiber, Gallium said, “I see an illegal weapon.”

“Good. Since I’m carrying one.”

“If you try to harm me, I will kill you. And I will destroy your mind, and you will be no more.”

“Understood,” Pamir said. Then the human sat—a gesture of submission on almost every world. He sat on the quasicrystal tiling on the floor of the bright hallway, glancing at the portraits on the nearby walls. Harum-scarums from past ages stood in defiant poses. Ancestors, presumably. Honorable men and woman who could look at their cowering descendant with nothing but fierce contempt.

After a few moments, Pamir said, “I’m pulling my weapon into plain view.”

“Throw it beside my door.”

The plasma gun earned a respectful silence. It slid across the floor and clattered to a stop, and then a mechanical arm unfolded, slapping a hyperfiber bowl over it and then covering the bowl with an explosive charge set to obliterate the first hand that tried to free the gun within. The hyperfiber door lifted. Standing in the middle of a closet jammed with supplies, Gallium halfway filled the room beyond, the armored plates of his body flexing, exposing their sharp edges.

“You must need this work,” he observed.

“Except I’m not doing my job,” Pamir replied. “Frankly, I’ve sort of lost interest in the project.”

Confused, the harum-scarum stood taller. “Then why have you gone to such enormous trouble?”

“What you need is a small, well-charged plasma gun. That makes a superior weapon.”

“They are illegal and hard to come by,” argued Gallium.

“Your rail-guns are criminal, too.” Just like with the front doors, there was a final door made of diamond reinforced with a visible meshwork of hyperfiber. “But I bet you appreciate what shaped plasma can do to a living mind.”

Silence.

“Funny,” Pamir continued. “Not that long ago, I found a corpse that ran into that exact kind of tool.”

The alien’s back couldn’t straighten anymore, and the armor plates were flexing to their limits. With a quiet voice—almost a begging voice—Gallium asked the human, “Who was the corpse?”

“Sele’ium.”

Again, silence.

“Who else has died that way?” Pamir asked. It was a guess, but not much of one. And when no answer was offered, he said, “You have never been this frightened. In your long, ample life, you have never imagined that fear could eat at you this way. Am I right?”

Now the defiant back began to collapse. A miserable little voice said, “It just worsens.”

“Why?”

The harum-scarum dipped his head.

“Why does the fear get worse and worse?”

“Seven of us now.”

“Seven?”

“Lost.” A human despair rode with that single word. “Eight, if you are telling the truth about the J’Jal.”

“What eight?”

Gallium refused to say.

“I know who you are,” Pamir said. “Eight of Sorrel’s Joining husbands, and you. Is that right?”

“Her past husbands,” the alien corrected.

“What about current lovers—?”

“There are none.”

“No?”

“She is celibate,” the giant said with deep longing. Then he dropped his gaze, adding, “When we began to die, she gave us up, physically as well as legally.”

Gallium missed his human wife. It showed in his stance and voice and how the great hand trembled, reaching up to touch the cool pane of diamond while he added, “She is trying to save us. But she doesn’t know how.”

He paused, and a ball of coherent plasma struck the pane. No larger than a human heart, the ball dissolved the diamond and the hand, and the grieving face, and everything that lay beyond those dark lonely eyes.

10

Pamir saw nothing but the flash, and then came a concussive blast that spun him off his feet. For an instant, he lay motionless. A cloud of atomized carbon and flesh filled the cramped hallway. He listened and heard nothing. He was completely deaf. Keeping low, he rolled until a wall blocked his way. Then he started to breathe, scalding his lungs, and he held his breath, remaining absolutely still, waiting for a second blast to shove past.

Nothing happened.

With his mouth to the floor, Pamir managed a hot but breathable sip of air. The cloud was thinning. His hearing was returning, accompanied by a tireless high-pitched hum. A figure swam into view, tall and menacing—a harum-scarum, presumably one of the Gallium’s honored ancestors. The hallway was littered with portraits of the dead. Pamir saw a second figure, a third. He was trying to recall how many images there had been . . . because he could see a fourth outline now, and that seemed like one too many . . .

The plasma gun fired again. But it hadn’t had time enough to build a killing charge, and the fantastic energies were wasted in a light show and a gust of blistering wind.

Again the air filled with dirt and gore. On elbows and feet, Pamir crawled away. Gallium was a nearly headless corpse, enormous even when mangled and stretched out on his back. The little room was made tinier with him on the floor. With their owner dead, the rail guns had dropped into their diagnostic mode, and waking them would take minutes, or days. The diamond door was shredded and useless. When the cloud fell away again, in another few moments, Pamir would be exposed and presumably killed.

Like Gallium, he first used the J’Jal language. “Hello,” he called out.

The outer hyperfiber door was open and still intact, and there were simple triggers on the walls and floor. Any one would react to pressure, but only from a familiar hand or foot. Staring out into the hallway, he once again shouted, “Hello.”

In the distance, a shape began to resolve itself.

“I am dead,” he continued. “You have me trapped here, my friend.”

Nothing.

“Do what you wish, but before you cook me, I’d love to know what this is about.”

The shape drifted one way, then back again. Pamir lifted one of the dead arms, trying to lay the broad palm against the wall, close to the door’s trigger. But that would be the easy part of this, of course.

“You’re a clever soul,” he said. “Allow the human to open the way for you. I outsmart the harum-scarum’s defenses, and you claim both of us.”

How much time before another recharge? A few seconds, he guessed. Suddenly the corpse flinched and the arm dropped with a massive thunk. “Shit,” Pamir muttered, in three languages. On a low shelf sat an ornate little dinner plate, pressed from nickel and covered with cooked blood. Taking hold of it, he made a few practice flings with his wrist, and once again called out, “I wish you would tell me what this is about, because I haven’t got a guess.”

Nothing.

In human, Pamir asked, “Who the hell are you?”

The cloud was clearing, revealing the outline of a biped standing in the hallway, maybe ten meters from him.

Kneeling, Pamir again grabbed the dead arm. Emergency genes and muscle memory began to fight against him, the strength of a giant forcing him to grunt as he pushed the hand until it was about the nearest trigger. He threw all of his weight on the hand, forcing it to stay in place. He panted. He grabbed the heavy plate with his left hand. And with a gasping voice, he said, “One last chance to explain.”

The biped was lifting both arms, aiming.

“Bye-bye, then.”

Pamir let the dead hand drop as he flipped the plate, aiming at a target three meters away. A slab of hyperfiber slid from the ceiling, and the final door was shut. It could withstand several blasts from a determined plasma gun, but eventually it would be gnawed away. Which was why he threw the plate onto the floor where it skipped and rolled, clipping the edge of the shaped charge of explosives that capped his own gun. Thunder struck, sudden and sharp. The door was jammed shut by the blast, and Pamir spent the next twenty minutes using a dead hand and every override to lift the door far enough to crawl underneath. But a perfectly symmetrical blast had left his own weapon where it lay, untouched beneath a bowl of mirror-bright hyperfiber.

His enemy would have been blown back up the hallway. Killed briefly, or at least scared away by the noise.

Pamir lingered for a few minutes, searching the dead man’s home for clues that refused to be found, and then he slipped back out into the public avenue—still vacant and safe to the eye, but possessing a palpable menace that he could feel for himself.

11

A ninety-second tube ride placed him beside Sorrel’s front door. The apartment addressed him by the only name it knew, and with alarm creeping into the officious voice, it asked, “Do you know how badly you are injured, sir?”

“I’ve got a fair guess,” said Pamir, an assortment of shrapnel still buried inside his leg and belly. “Where’s the lady?”

“On the patio, where you left her, sir.”

Everybody was terrified, except for Sorrel. But why would she worry? She had only been knifed by a quick-and-dirty thief, which on the scale of recent crimes was practically nothing.

“I’ll meet her in her bedroom.”

“Sir?”

“I’m not talking in the open anymore. Tell her.”

“What about her friend?”

“Another husband is dead.”

Silence.

“Will you tell her?” Pamir asked.

“She is already on her way, as you have requested.” Then after a pause, the apartment suggested, “About Gallium, please, I think you should deliver that sorry news.”

He told it. She was dressed in slacks and a silk blouse made by the communal spiders of the Kolochon district, and her bare feet wore black rings on every toe, and while she sat on one of the dozens of self-shaping chairs, listening to his recounting of the last brutal hour, her expression managed to grow even more sad as well as increasingly detached. Sorrel made no sound, but there was always the sense that she was about to speak. The sorry and pained and very pretty face would betray a new thought, or the pale eyes would recognize something meaningful. But the mouth never quite made noise. When she finally uttered a few words, Pamir nearly forgot to listen.

“Who are you?”

Did he hear the question correctly?

Again, she asked, “Who are you?” Then she leaned forward, the blouse dipping in front. “You aren’t like any environmental technician I’ve known, and I don’t think you’re a security specialist either.”

“No?”

“You wouldn’t have survived the fight, if you were just a fix-it man.” She tried to laugh, a little dimple showing high on the left cheek. “And even if you had survived, you’d still be running now.”

“I just want you to point me in the safest direction,” he said.

She didn’t respond, watching him for what seemed like an age. Then sitting back in the deep wide chair, she asked, “Who pays you?”

“You do.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“But I’m not pushing too hard for my wages,” he said.

“You won’t tell me who?”

“Share a few secrets first,” he said.

She had long hands, graceful and quick. The hands danced in her lap for a little while, and when they finally settled, she asked, “What can I tell you?”

“Everything you know about your dead husbands, and about those who just happen to be alive still.” Pamir leaned forward. “In particular, I want to hear about your first husband. And if you can, explain why the Faith of the Many Joinings seemed like such a reasonable idea.”

12

She had seen him earlier on the voyage and spoken with him on occasion—a tall and slender and distinguished J’Jal man with a fondness for human clothes, particularly red woolen suits and elaborately knotted white silk ties. Cre’llan seemed handsome, although not exceptionally so. He was obviously bright and engaging. Once, when their boat was exploring the luddite islands in the middle of the Gone-A-Long Sea, he asked if he might sit on the long chaise lounge beside hers. For the next little while—an hour, or perhaps the entire day—they chatted amiably about the most ordinary of things. There was gossip to share, mostly about their fellow passengers and the boat’s tiny crew. They made several attempts to list the oceans crossed to date, ranking them according to beauty and then history and finally by their inhabitants. Which was the most intriguing port? Which was the most ordinary? What aliens had each met for the first time? What were their first impressions, and second impressions, and what did they think today? And if they had to live the next thousand years in one of these little places, which would they choose?

That good day would have eventually been set aside, neglected if not forgotten. But a week later, Sorrel agreed to a side trip to Greenland.

“Do you know the island?”

“Not at all,” Pamir lied.

“I never understood that name,” Sorrel admitted, eyes narrowing as if to reexamine the entire question. “Except for some fringes of Martian moss, the climate is pure glacial. The island has to be cold, I was told. Upwellings in the ocean and the sea’s general health are at stake. Anyway, there is a warm current upwind, which brings the moisture, and the atmosphere is a hundred kilometers tall and braced with demon-ceilings. The snows are endless and fabulous, and you can’t sail across the Gone-A-Long Sea without visiting Greenland. At least that’s what my friends told me.”

“Was Cre’llan in your group?”

Somehow that amused her, a little laugh leaking free. “No, everybody was human, except for the guide, who was an AI with a human-facsimile body.”

Pamir nodded.

“We power skied up onto the ice. An incredibly hard snowfall was falling, but when we reached the glacier, our guide turned to us, mentioning that it was a clear day, as they went. And we should be thankful we could see so much.”

At most, they could see twenty meters in any direction. Sorrel was skiing with a good friend—a child of the Great Ship like her, but a thousand years older. Sorrel had known the woman her entire life, sharing endless conversations and attending the same fine parties, and their shopping adventures had stretched on for weeks at a time. They always traveled together. And in their combined lives, nothing real and substantive had ever found them.

The glacier was thick and swiftly built up by the waves of falling snow. Sorrel and her friend skied away from the rest of the group, scaling a tall ridge that placed them nearly a kilometer above the invisible sea. Then the snow began to fall harder—fat wet flakes joining into snowballs that plunged from the white sky. They were skiing close together, linked by a smart-rope. Sorrel claimed the lead. What happened next, she couldn’t say. Her first guess, and still her best guess, was that her friend thought of a little joke to play. She disabled the rope and untied herself, and where the ridge widened, she attempted to slip ahead of Sorrel, probably to scare her when she was most vulnerable.

Where the friend fell was a bit of a mystery. Later, coming to the end of the ridge, Sorrel discovered that she was alone. The natural assumption was that her friend had grown tired and gone back to rejoin the others. There wasn’t cause for worry, and she didn’t like worry, and so Sorrel didn’t give it another thought.

But the other tourists hadn’t seen the young woman, either. A search was launched but aborted when the heavy snowfall turned into what can only be described as an endless avalanche from the sky. The glacier rose twenty meters in the next hour. By the time rescue crews could set to work, it was obvious that the missing passenger had stumbled into one of the vast crevices, and her body was dead, and without knowing her location, the only reasonable course would be to wait for the ice to push to the sea and watch for her battered remains. In theory, a human brain could withstand that kind of abuse. But the AI guide didn’t believe in comforting theories. “What nobody tells you is that this fucking island was once an industrial site. Why do you think the engineers covered it up? To hide their wreckage, of course. Experimental hyperfibers, mostly. Very sharp and sloppy, and the island was built with their trash, and if you put enough pressure on even the best bioceramic head, it will crack. Shatter. Pop, and die, and come out into the sea as a few handfuls of fancy sand.”

Her friend was dead.

Sorrel and the woman hadn’t been lovers, and she didn’t feel any bond unique just to the two of them. Yet the loss was heavy and persistent, and for the next several weeks, the young woman thought about little else.

Meanwhile, their voyage through the Great Ship reached a new sea. One night, surrounded by a flat gray expanse of methane, Sorrel happened upon the J’Jal man wearing his red jacket and red slacks, and the fancy white tie beneath his nearly-human face. He smiled at her, his expression genuine with either species. Quietly, he asked, “What is wrong?”

Nobody in her own group had noticed her pain. Unlike her, they were convinced that their friend would soon return from oblivion.

Sorrel sat with the J’Jal. For a long while, they didn’t speak. She found herself staring at his bare feet, thinking about the fragility of life. Then with a dry low voice, she admitted, “I’m scared.”

“Is that so?” Cre’llan said.

“You know, at any moment, without warning, the Great Ship could collide with something enormous. At a third the speed of light, we might strike a sunless world or a small black hole, and billions would die inside this next instant.”

“That may be true,” her companion said. “But I have invested my considerable faith in the talents of our captains.”

“I haven’t,” she said.

“No?”

“My point here . . . ” She hesitated, shivering for every reason other than the cold. “I have lived for a few years, and I can’t remember ever grabbing life by the heart. Do you know what I mean?”

“Very well,” he claimed. His long toes curled and then relaxed again.

“Why don’t you wear shoes?” she finally asked.

And with the softest possible touch, Cre’llan laid his hand on hers. “I am an alien, Sorrel.” He spoke while smiling, quietly telling her, “And it would mean so much to me if you could somehow, in your soul, forget what I am.”

“We were lovers before the night was finished,” she admitted. A fond look passed into a self-deprecating chuckle. “I thought all J’Jal men were shaped like he was. But he explained that they aren’t and why he wasn’t, and that’s when I learned about the Faith of the Many Joinings.”

Pamir nodded, waited.

“You know, they did eventually find my lost friend.” A wise sorry laugh came out of her. “A few years later, a patrol working the edge of the glacier kicked up some dead bones and then the skull with her mind inside. Intact.” Sorrel sat back in her chair, breasts moving under the blouse. “She was reconstituted and back inside her old life within the month, and do you know what? In the decades since, I haven’t spoken to my old friend more than three times. Funny, isn’t it?”

“The Faith,” Pamir prompted.

She seemed to expect the subject. With a slow shrug of the shoulders, Sorrel observed, “Whoever you are, you weren’t born into comfort and wealth. That shows, I think. You’ve had to fight during your life . . . probably through much of your life . . . for things that any fool knows are important. While someone like me—not a fool, I hope—walks through paradise without once asking herself, ‘What matters?’”

“The Faith,” he repeated.

“Think of the challenge.” Staring through him, she asked, “Can you imagine how very difficult it is to be involved—romantically and emotionally linked—with another species?”

“It disgusts me,” he lied.

“It disgusts a lot of us,” she replied. For an instant, she wore a doubting gaze, perhaps wondering if he was telling the truth about his feelings. Then she let the mistrust fall aside. “I wasn’t exceptionally horrified by the idea of sex outside my species, which was why I wasn’t all that interested either. Somewhere in the indifferent middle, I was. But when I learned about this obscure J’Jal belief . . . how an assortment of like-minded souls had gathered, taking the first critical steps in what might well be the logical evolution of life in our universe . . . ”

Her voice drifted away.

“How many husbands did you take?”

She acted surprised. “Why? Don’t you know?”

Pamir let her stare at him.

Finally, she said, “Eleven.”

“You are Joined to all of them.”

“Until a few years ago, yes.” The eyes shrank, and with the tears, they grew brighter. “The first death looked like a random murder, horrible but imaginable. But the second killing was followed a few weeks later by a third. The same weapon was used in each tragedy, with the same manner of execution . . . ” Her voice trailed away, the mouth left open and empty. One long hand wiped at the tears, accomplishing little but pushing moisture across the sharp cheeks. “Since the dead belonged to different species, and since the members of the Faith . . . my husbands and myself . . . are sworn to secrecy—”

“Nobody noticed the pattern,” Pamir said.

“Oh, officials did see what was happening,” she said. “After the fifth or sixth death, security people made inquiries at the library. But no one there could admit anything. And then the killings slowed, and the investigation went away. No one was offered protection, and my name was never mentioned. At least that’s what I assume, since I wasn’t interviewed.” Then with a quiet, angry voice, Sorrel added, “After linking the murders to the library, no authority saw any further reason to care what happened next.”

“How do you know?”

She stared at Pamir as if he were a perfect idiot.

“Ship security assumes that this was some ugly internal business among the Joined. Is that what you think?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Or maybe they received orders telling them to stop caring.”

“Who gave those orders?”

She looked at a point above his head and carefully said, “No.”

“Who wouldn’t want these killings stopped?”

“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Ask all you want, but I won’t tell you anything more.”

“Do you consider yourself in danger?”

She sighed. “Hardly.”

“Why not?”

She said nothing.

“Two husbands are alive,” Pamir reminded her.

She worked him over with a suspicious expression. “I’m guessing you know which two,” she said.

“There’s the Glory.” Glories were bird-like creatures, roughly human-shaped but covered with a bright, lovely plumage. “One of your more recent husbands, isn’t he?”

Sorrel nodded. “Except he died last year, on the opposite side of the Great Ship. The body was discovered only yesterday.”

Pamir let the words fade. Then he said, “My condolences.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“And your first lover?”

“Yes.”

“The J’Jal in the red suit.”

“Cre’llan, yes. I know who you mean.”

“The last man standing,” he said.

That earned a withering stare from the pained cold face. “I don’t marry lightly, and I don’t care what you’re thinking.”

Pamir stood and walked up beside her, and using his best stare, he said, “You don’t know what I’m thinking. Because I sure as hell don’t know what I’ve got in my own soggy head.”

She dipped her eyes.

“The J’Jal,” he said. “I can track him down for myself, or you can make the introductions.”

“It isn’t Cre’llan,” she whispered.

“Then come with me,” Pamir replied. “Come and look him in the eye and ask the old man for yourself.”

13

As a species, the J’Jal were neither wealthy or powerful, but there certain individuals of enormous age who had prospered in a gradual, relentless fashion. On far flung worlds, they served as cautious traders and inconspicuous landowners and sometimes as the bearers of superior, profitable technologies; and while they would always be alien, they had adapted well enough to feel as if they were at home.

Then the Great Ship arrived, and their young, arrogant human cousins promised to carry them across the galaxy—for a fee. The boldest of these wealthy J’Jal left a hundred adopted worlds behind, spending fortunes for the honor of gathering together. They had no world of their own, yet it was easy to hope that a new planet was waiting, reminiscent of their cradle world, yet for some reason left empty, waiting to be claimed. Some of the J’Jal believed that time and small measures of luck would let them match the human accomplishments, blending into the ranks of their highly successful relatives.

“Except neither solution gives me pleasure,” said the gentleman wearing red. “The boundaries between the species are a lie and impermanent, and I hope for a radically different future.”

According to his official biography, Cre’llan was approximately the same age as Homo sapiens.

“What’s your chosen future?” Pamir inquired.

The smile was bright and a little cold. “My new friend,” the J’Jal said, his voice nearly human. “I think you already have a fair assessment of what I wish for. And more to the point, I think you could care nothing about any dreams or utopias that I happen to entertain.”

“I do have guesses,” Pamir agreed. “And you’re right, I don’t give a shit about your paradise.”

Sorrel sat beside her ancient husband, fondly holding his hand. Divorced or not, she missed his company. They looked like lovers waiting for the holo portrait to be taken. With a whisper, she warned Cre’llan, “He suspects you, darling.”

“Of course he does.”

“But I told him . . . I explained . . . you can’t be responsible for any of this . . . ”

“Which is the truth,” the J’Jal replied, his smile turning into a grim little sneer. “Why would I murder anyone? How could it possibly serve my needs?”

The J’Jal’s home was near the bottom of Fall Away, and it was enormous. This single room covered nearly a square kilometer carpeted with green timber and quick little streams, and the ceiling was so high that a dozen tame star-rocs could circle above and never brush wings. But all of that grandeur and wealth was dwarfed by the outside view: The braided rivers that ran down the middle of Fall Away had been set free some fifty kilometers above their heads, every diamond tube ending at the same point, their contents exploding forth under extraordinary pressure. A flow equal to ten Amazons roared past Cre’llan’s home, water and ammonia mixing with a spectacular array of chemical wastes and dying phytoplankton. Aggressive compounds battered each other and reacted, bleeding colors in the process. Shapes appeared inside the wild foam, and vanished again. The creative eye could see every face that he had ever met, and he could spend days watching for the faces that he had worn during his own long, strange life.

The window only seemed to be a window. In reality, Pamir was staring at a sheet of high-grade hyperfiber, thick and impervious to most any force nature could muster. The view was a projection, a convincing trick. Nodding, he said, “You must feel remarkably safe, I would think.”

“I sleep quite well,” Cre’llan replied.

“Most of the time, I can help people with their security matters. But not you.” Pamir was being entirely honest. “I don’t think the Master Captain has this much security. That hyperfiber. The AI watch dogs. Those blood-and-meat hounds that sniffed our butts on the way in.” He showed a wide smile, then mentioned, “If I’m not mistaken, you would never have to leave this one room. For the next ten thousand years, you could sit where you’re sitting today and eat what falls off these trees, and no one would be able to touch you.”

“If that was what I wished, yes.”

“But he is not the killer,” Sorrel insisted. Then she stood and stepped away from the ancient creature, her hand grudgingly releasing his grip. Pamir watched her approach, how she looked at him without looking, settling on the ground before him. Suddenly the woman was exceptionally young, serious and determined. “I know this man,” she said. “You have no idea what you’re suggesting, if you think that he could hurt anyone, for any reason.”

“I know the species,” Pamir said. “In fact, I once lived as a J’Jal.”

Sorrel leaned away from him, taken by surprise.

“I dyed my hair blue and tinkered with these bones, and I even doctored my genetics far enough to pass half-assed scans.” Pamir was telling too much. Nonetheless, he didn’t feel as if he had any choice. “I even kept a J’Jal lover. For a while, I made her happy. But she saw through my disguise, and I had to steal away in the middle of the night.”

The other two stared at him, bewildered and deeply curious.

“Anyway,” he continued. “During my stay with the J’Jal, a certain young woman came of age. She was very desirable. Extraordinarily beautiful, and her family was one of the wealthy hundred riding onboard the Ship. Before that year was finished, the woman had acquired three devoted husbands. But someone else fell in love with her, and he didn’t want to share. One of the new husbands was killed. After that, the remaining two husbands went to the public hall and divorced her. They never spoke to the girl again. She was left unattached, and alone. What rational soul would risk her love under those circumstances?” Pamir shook his head, studying Cre’llan. “As I mentioned, I ran away. But I kept track of the community, and several decades later, an elder J’Jal proposed to the widow. She was lonely, and he was not a bad man. Not wealthy, but powerful and ancient, and in some measure, pragmatically wise. So she accepted his offer, and when nothing tragic happened to her new husband, everyone understood who ordered the killing. And not only that, but they accepted the history too, in pure J’Jal fashion.”

With a flat, untroubled voice, Cre’llan said, “My soul has never been thought of as jealous.”

“Yet I am accusing you of jealousy,” Pamir countered.

Silence.

“Conflicts over females are ordinary business for some species,” he continued. “Monopolizing a valuable mate can be a good evolutionary strategy, for the J’Jal as well as others. And ten million years of civilization hasn’t changed what you are, or what you can be.”

Cre’llan snorted. “I would never embrace that old barbarism.”

“Agreed.”

The green gaze narrowed. “Excuse me, sir. I don’t think I understand. What are you accusing me of?”

“This is a beautiful, enormous fortress,” Pamir continued. “And as you claim, you’re not a jealous creature. But did you invite these other husbands to live with you? Did you offer even one of them your shelter and all of this expensive security?”

Sorrel glanced at the J’Jal, her breath catching.

Pamir said, “You didn’t offer because of a very reasonable fear: What if one of your houseguests wanted Sorrel for himself?”

The tension was physical, ugly.

“In your mind, every other husband was a suspect, with the two harum-scarums being the most obvious candidates.” He looked at Sorrel again. “Gallium would be his favorite—a relatively poor entity born into a biology of posturing and violence. His species is famous for stealing mates. Both sexes do it, every day. But now Gallium is dead, which leaves your husband with no one to worry about, it seems.”

“Except I am not the killer,” Cre’llan repeated.

“Oh, I agree,” Pamir said. “You’re innocent of that particular crime, yes.”

The statement angered both of them. Sorrel spoke first, asking, “When did you come to that conclusion?”

“Pretty much the moment I learned who your husbands were,” Pamir said, sitting forward in his chair, staring out at the churning waters. “No, Cre’llan isn’t the murderer.”

“You understand my nature?” the J’Jal asked.

“Maybe, but that doesn’t particularly matter.” Pamir laughed. “No, you’re too smart and far too old to attempt this sort of bullshit with a human woman. Talk all you want about every species being one and the same. But the hard sharp damning fact is that human beings are not J’Jal. Very few of us, even under the most difficult circumstances, will be able to ignore the fact that their spouse appears to be a brutal killer.”

Cre’llan gave a little nod, the barest smile showing.

Sorrel stood, nervous hands clenched into fists. She looked vulnerable and sweet and very sorry. The beginnings of recognition showed in the blue-white eyes, and she started to stare at the J’Jal, catching herself now and forcing her eyes to drop.

“And something else was obvious,” Pamir said.

With a dry little voice, Cre’llan asked, “What was obvious?”

Pamir said nothing.

“What do you mean?” Sorrel asked.

“Okay,” Pamir said, watching her face and the nervous fists. “Let us suppose that I’m killing your husbands. I want my rivals dead, and I want a reasonable chance of surviving to the end. Since Cre’llan enjoys the most security . . . better than everyone else combined, probably . . . I would hit him before he smelled the danger . . . ”

That earned cold silence.

Pamir waved one hand, then the other, as if brushing away some little irritant. “The killer wants the husbands out of your life. From the start, I think he knew exactly what was required. The other ten husbands had to be murdered, since they loved you deeply and you seemed to love them. But this gentleman J’Jal . . . well, he’s an entirely different conundrum.”

Cre’llan acted interested but distant. When he breathed, it was after a long breathless pause, and he sounded a little weak when he said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“You told me,” Pamir said to Sorrel.

“What did I tell you?”

“How you met him during the cruise. And what happened to you and your good friend just before you went to bed with this alien man.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Cre’llan said, “Be quiet.”

Pamir felt a pleasant nervousness in his belly. “Cre’llan wanted you, I’m guessing. He wanted you very badly. You were a wealthy, unattached human woman. The Joining can talk all they want about the equality of the species, but the J’Jal adore their cousins. And you would bring him a generous amount of status. But seducing you was going to be a challenge, which is why Cre’llan paid your friend to vanish on the ice in Greenland, faking her own death.”

She said, “No.”

“He wanted to expose you emotionally, with a dose of mortality.”

“Stop that,” she told him.

Cre’llan said, “Idiot,” and little more.

“The AI guide was right,” Pamir told her. “The chances of a mind surviving the weight of that ice and the grinding against the hyperfiber shards . . . well, I found it remarkable to learn that your good friend was found alive. So I made inquiries. I’ll show you, if you wish. A trail of camouflaged funds leads from that woman back to a company formed just hours before her apparent death. The mysterious company made one transfer of funds, declared bankruptcy and dissolved. Your skiing partner was the recipient. She was reborn as a very wealthy soul, and the principal stockholder in that short-lived business happened to be someone that your first lover and husband does quite a lot of business with.”

Sorrel’s mouth closed and opened, in slow motion, and then it began to close again. Her legs tried to find the strength to carry her away, but she looked about for another moment or two, finding no door or hatchway to slip through in the next little while. She was caught, trapped by the awful and true. And then, just as Pamir thought that she would crack into pieces, the young woman surprised him.

Calmly, she told Cre’llan, “I divorce you.”

“Darling?” he began.

“Forever,” she said. Then from a pocket she pulled an ordinary knife. A sapphire blade no longer than her hand was unfolded, and it took her ten seconds to cut the Darmion crystal out of her chest—ripped free for the second time in as many days—and before she collapsed, she flung the gory gift at the stunned, sorry face.

14

Pamir explained what had happened as he carried her into the apartment. Then he set her on a great round bed, pillows offering themselves to her head while a small autodoc spider walked its way across the pale blue sheets, studying her mostly-healed wound before opening more penetrating eyes, carefully examining the rest of her miserable body.

Quietly, the apartment said, “I have never known her to be this way.”

In his long life, Pamir had rarely seen any person as depressed, as forlorn. Sorrel was pale and motionless, lying on her back, and even with her eyes open, something in her gaze was profoundly blind. She saw blackness and heard silence. She was like a person flung off the topmost portion of Fall Away, tumbling out of control, gusts of wind occasionally slamming her against the hard walls, battering what couldn’t feel the abuse anymore.

“I am worried,” the apartment said.

“Utterly reasonable,” Pamir said.

“It must be a horrid thing, losing everyone who loves you.”

“But someone still loves her,” he countered. Then he paused, thinking hard about everything again.

“Tell me,” Pamir said. “What is your species-strain?”

“Is that important?”

“Probably not.”

The AI described its pedigree, in brief.

“What’s your lot number?”

“I do not see how that matters.”

“Never mind,” he said, walking away from their patient. “I know enough as it is.”

Pamir ate a small meal and drank some sweet alien nectar that left him feeling a little sloppy. When the head cleared, he slept for a minute or an hour, and then he returned to the bedroom and the giant bed. Sorrel was where he had left her. Her eyes were closed now, empty hands across her belly, rising and falling and rising with a slow steady rhythm that he couldn’t stop watching.

“Thank you.”

The voice didn’t seem to belong to anyone. The young woman’s mouth happened to be open, but this wasn’t the voice he expected. The words were sturdy and calm, the old sadness wiped away. It was a quiet polite and rather sweet voice that told him, “Thank you,” and then added, “For everything, sir.”

The eyes hadn’t opened. She had heard Pamir approach, or felt his presence. He sat on the bed beside her, and after a long moment he said, “You know. You’d be entitled to consider me—whoever I am—as being your main suspect. I could have killed the husbands, and I certainly put an end to you and Cre’llan.”

“It isn’t you.”

“Because you have another suspect in mind. Isn’t that right?”

She said nothing.

“Who do you believe is responsible?” he pressed.

Finally, the eyes pulled open, slowly, and they blinked twice, tears pooling but never quite reaching the depth where they would flow.

“My father,” she said.

“He killed your husbands.”

“Obviously.”

“He’s light-years behind us now.”

Silence.

Pamir nodded, and he waited until the moment felt right, and then he asked, “What do you know about your father?”

“Quite a lot,” she said.

“But you’ve never seen him,” he reminded her.

“But I’ve studied him.” She shook her head and closed her eyes again. “I’ve know his biography as well as I can, and I think I know the rest of him very well.”

“He isn’t here, Sorrel.”

“No?”

“He emigrated just before you were born.”

“That’s what my mother told me.”

Pamir leaned closer, adding, “What did she tell you about the man?”

“That he is strong and self-assured. That he knows what is right and best. And he loves me very much, but he couldn’t stay with me.” Sorrel chewed her lip. “He couldn’t stay here, but my father has agents and ways, and I would never be without him. Mother promised me.”

Pamir just nodded.

“My father doesn’t approve of the Faith.”

“I can believe that,” he said.

“My mother admitted, once or twice . . . that she loved him very much, but he didn’t have a diplomat’s ease with aliens. His heart can be hard, and he has a capacity to do awful things, if he sees the need . . . ”

“No,” Pamir whispered.

The pale blue eyes opened. “What do you mean?”

“Your father didn’t do any of this,” he said. Then he thought again, saying, “Well, maybe a piece of it.”

“What do you mean?”

Pamir set his hand on top of her mouth, lightly. Then as he began to pull his hand back, she took hold of his wrist and forearm, easing the palm back down against lips that pulled apart, teeth giving him a tiny swift bite.

A J’Jal gesture, that was.

He bent down and kissed the open eyes.

Sorrel told him, “You shouldn’t.”

“Probably not.”

“If the murderer knows you are with me . . . ”

He placed two fingers deep into her mouth, J’Jal fashion. And she sucked on them, not trying to speak now, eyes almost smiling as Pamir calmly and smoothly slid into bed beside her.

15

One of the plunging rivers pulled close to the wall, revealing what it carried. Inside the diamond tube was a school of finned creatures, not pseudofish nor pseudowhales, but teardrop-shaped machines that likely fused hydrogen in their hearts, producing the necessary power to hold their bodies steady inside a current that was relentlessly rapid, chaotic and turbulent and exceptionally unappealing. Watching the swimming machines, Pamir decided that this was how he had lived for ages now, and with a shrug and soft laugh, he continued the long walk up the path.

A collection of modest apartments ended, and the library was just a few meters farther along—a broad porch and and modest entranceway carved from the smooth black basaltic wall. The significance of this place was so well hidden that a thousand sightseers passed by every day, perhaps pausing at the edge of the precipice to look down, but more likely continuing on their walk, searching richer views. Pamir turned his eyes toward the closed door, pretending mild curiosity, hands on the simple basalt wall that bordered the outer edge of the trail, eyes gazing down at the dreamy shape of the Little-Lot.

The massive cloud was the color of butter and nearly as dense. A trillion trillion microbes thrived inside its aerogel matrix, supporting an ecosystem that would never touch any solid surface.

The library door opened slowly—J’Jal wood riding on creaky iron hinges.

Pamir opened a nexus and triggered an old, nearly forgotten captain’s channel. Then he turned towards the creaking sound and smiled. Sorrel was emerging from the library, dressed in a novice’s blue robe and blinking against the sudden glare.

The massive door fell shut again, and she quietly said, “All right.”

Pamir held a finger to his closed mouth.

She stepped closer, speaking on the captain’s channel.

“I did what you told me.”

“Show it.”

She produced the slender blue book.

“Put it on the ground here.”

This was her personal journal—the only volume she was allowed to remove. Setting it in front of her sandaled feet, she asked, “Was I noticed?”

“I promise. You were seen.”

“And do we wait now?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m too impatient for that game.” The plasma gun was barely awake when he fired, plastic pages and the wood binding consumed by a thin cloud of superheated ash.

Sorrel put her arms around herself, squeezing hard.

“Now we wait,” he advised.

Not for the first time, she admitted, “I don’t understand. Still. Who do you think is responsible?”

Again, the heavy door swung open.

Without looking, Pamir called out, “Hello, Leon’rd.”

The J’Jal librarian wore the same purplish-black robe and blue ponytail, and his expression hadn’t changed in the last few days—bilious outrage focused on those who would injure his helpless dependents. He stared at the ruins of the book, then glared at the two humans, focusing on the male face until a vague recognition tickled.

“Do I know you?” he began.

Pamir was wearing the same face he had worn for the last thirty-two years. A trace of a smile was showing, except around the dark eyes. Quietly, fiercely, he said, “I found my wife, and thanks for the help.”

Leon’rd stared at Sorrel, his face working its way through a tangle of wild emotions.

“Your wife,” he said. Then he tipped his head, saying, “No, she is not.”

“You know that?” Pamir asked.

The J’Jal didn’t respond.

“What do you know, Leon’rd?”

Leon’rd glanced backwards—not at the library door but at the nearby apartments. The man was at his limits. He seemed frail and tentative, hands pressing at the front of his robe while the long toes curled under his naked feet. Everything was apparent. Transparent. Obvious. And into this near-panic, Pamir said, “I know what you did.”

“No,” the J’Jal replied, without confidence.

“You learned something,” Pamir said. “A determined scholar and a talented student of other species, and some years ago, by design or idiot luck, you unraveled something. At the knot’s center was a secret that was supposed to remain a deep, impenetrable mystery.”

“No.”

“A mystery about my wife,” he said.

“What is it?” Sorrel asked.

Pamir laughed and said, “Tell her.”

The red blood had drained out of Leon’rd’s face.

“No, I agree,” Pamir continued. “Let’s keep this between you and me, shall we? Because the poor kid doesn’t have any idea what this means.”

“What means what?” she asked.

“She is not your wife,” the librarian said.

“The hell she isn’t.” He laughed. “Check the public records. Two hours ago, in a civil ceremony overseen by two Hyree monks, we were made woman and male-implement in the legally-binding Janusian manner.”

Sorrel stepped in front of him. “What do you know about me?”

Pamir stared only at the J’Jal. “But somebody else knows what we do. Doesn’t he? Because you told him. You said a few words in passing. Unless of course you were the one who dreamed up a simple, brutal plan, and he’s your simple accomplice.”

“No!” Leon’rd screamed. “I did not dream anything.”

“I might believe you.” Pamir looked at Sorrel, and winked. “When I showed this man one of your dead husbands, his reaction didn’t feel quite right. I saw the surprise, but the J’Jal eyes betrayed a little bit of pleasure, too. Or relief, was it? Leon’rd? Were you genuinely thrilled to believe that Sele’ium was dead and out of your proverbial hair?”

The librarian appeared pale and cold, arms clasped tight against his shivering body. Again, he glanced at the nearby apartments. His mouth opened and then pulled itself closed, and that’s when Pamir said, “Death.”

“What did you say?” Leon’rd asked.

“There are countless wonderful and inventive ways to fake your own death,” Pamir allowed. “But one of my favorites is to clone your body and cook an empty, soulless brain, and then stuff that brain inside that living body, mimicking a very specific kind of demise.”

“Sele’ium?” said Sorrel.

“What I believe.” Pamir was guessing, but none of the leaps were long or unlikely. “I believe is that your previous husband was a shrewd young man. He grew up in a family that had lived among the harum-scarums. That’s where his lineage came from, wasn’t it, Leon’rd? So it was perfectly natural, even inevitable, that he could entertain thoughts about killing the competition, including his own identity.”

“You don’t know,” Sorrel said.

“Very little,” Pamir agreed. “No, Leon’rd is the master carrying all the dark secrets on his back. Ask him.”

The J’Jal covered his face with his hands. “Go away.”

“Was Sele’ium a good friend and you were trying to help? Or did he bribe you for this useful information?” Pamir nodded. “Whatever happened, you pointed him toward Sorrel, and you must have explained, ‘That human is perhaps the most desirable mate anywhere on the Great Ship—’”

A sizzling blue bolt of plasma struck Pamir’s face, melting it and obliterating everything beyond.

The headless body wobbled for a moment and then slumped and dropped slowly, settling against the short black wall. Leon’rd leaped backwards, flattened hands waving in the bright air, while Sorrel stood over the remains of her newest husband, her expression tight but calm—like the face of a sailor who has already ridden through too many storms.

16

A pedestrian wandered past, his gaze distracted and his manner a little nervous. He seemed embarrassed by the drama that he had happened upon. He looked human. Cold blond hair and purplish-black skin were common on high-UV worlds, while the brown eyes were as ordinary as could be. He wore sandals and trousers and a loose-fitting shirt, and he stared at the destroyed body, seeing precisely what he expected to see. Then he glanced at Sorrel, and with nothing but warmth, he said, “You do not know . . . you cannot appreciate . . . how much I love you . . . “

“Sele’ium,” she said doubtfully.

He started to speak again, to explain.

“Stay away,” she said quietly. “Everyone, leave me alone.”

Sele-ium’s reaction was to shake his head with his mouth open—a J’Jal refusal—and then calmly and with considerable malice, he informed her, “I am an exceptionally patient individual.”

A bitter thin laugh came out of her.

“Not today, no, and possibly not for a thousand years,” he said. “But I will approach you with a new face and name—every so often, I will come into your life—and there will be an hour and a certain heartbeat when you come to understand that we belong to one another.”

There was a pause. Then the corpse suddenly kicked hard at the empty air. Sele’ium glanced at the distraction, and he began to realize that Pamir’s body was shrinking, as if it were a balloon slowly losing its breath. How odd. He stared at the mysterious phenomena, not quite able to piece together what should have been obvious. The headless ruin twitched hard and then harder, one shrinking leg flinging high. And then from blackened wound rose a puff of blue smoke, and with it, the stink of burnt rubber and cooked hydraulics.

With his left hand, Sele’ium yanked the plasma gun from inside his shirt—a commercial model meant to be used as a tool, but with safeties and trackers cut away—and turning in a quick circle, he searched for a valid target.

“What is this?” Leon’rd called out. “We have been fooled!”

More puzzled than worried, the young J’Jal refused to panic, his mind ticking off the possible answers, settling on what would be easiest and best.

Their enemy was hiding in the open air, of course.

“Just leave us,” Leon’rd begged. “I will not stand aside any longer!”

Sele’ium threw five little bolts into the basalt wall, punching out holes, making a rain of white-hot magma.

Somewhere below, a voice howled.

Sorrel ran to the wall and looked down, and Sele’ium crept up beside her, the gun in both hands, its reactor pumping energies into a tiny chamber, readying another blast that would obliterate every soul in its path.

He started to peer over and then thought better of it. One hand released the weapon and the free arm wrapped around Sorrel’s waist, and when she flung her elbow into his midsection, he bent low. He grunted and cursed softly and then told her, “No.”

With his full weight, he drove the woman against the smooth black wall, and with his chin on her left shoulder, they bent together and peered over the edge.

Pamir was already reaching, grabbing the plasma gun and yanking hard. And Sorrel tried to jump away. The two motions combined to lift her and Sele’ium off the path, over the edge and plummeting down. Pamir’s gecko-grip was ripped loose from the basalt, and he was falling with them, one hand on the gun, clinging desperately, while the other arm began to swing, throwing the fist into the killer’s belly and ribs. Within moments, they were falling as fast as possible. A damp singing wind blew past them, and the wall was a black smear to one side, while the rest of Fall Away was enormous and distant and almost changeless. Airborne rivers and a thousand flying machines were out of reach and useless. The three bodies fell and fell, and sometimes a voice would pass through the roaring wind—a spectator standing on another path, remarking in alarm, “Who were they?”

Three bodies were clinging and kicking. Sele’ium punished Pamir with his own free hand, and then he let himself get pulled close, and with a human mouth only a few days old, he bit down, chewing hard on a wrist, trying to force the stranger to release his hold on the gun. Pamir cried out and let go. But as Sele’ium aimed at his face, Pamir slammed at the man’s forearm and pushed it backwards again, and he put a hard knee into the elbow, and a weapon that didn’t have safeties released its stored energies a thin blinding beam that coalesced inside the dying man’s head, his brain turning to light and ash, a supersonic crack leaving the others temporarily deafened.

Pamir kicked the corpse away and clung to Sorrel, and she held tight to him, and after another few minutes, as they plunged toward the yellow depths of a living, thriving cloud, he shouted into her better ear, explaining a thing or two.

17

Again, it was nearly nightfall.

Once again, Pamir sat outside his apartment, listening to the wild songs of the llano-vibra. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Neighbors strolled past or ran past or flew by on gossamer wings. The Janusian couple paused long enough to ask where he had been these last days, and Pamir said a few murky words about taking care of family troubles. The harum-scarum family was outside their apartment, gathered around a cooking pit, eating a living passion ox in celebration of another day successfully crossed. A collection of machines stopped to ask about the facsimile that they had built for Pamir, as a favor. Did it serve its intended role? “Oh, sure,” he said with a nod. “Everybody was pretty much fooled, at least until the joke was finished.”

“Was there laughter?” asked one machine.

“Constant, breathless laughter,” Pamir said. And he mentioned nothing else about it.

A single figure was approaching. Pamir had been watching her for the last kilometer, and as the machines wandered away, he used three different means to study her gait and face and manner. Considering his options, he decided to remain seated, his back against the huge ceramic pot and his legs stretched out before him, one bare foot crossed over the other. She stopped a few steps short, watching him but saying nothing. “You’re thinking,” Pamir told her. “Throw me into the brig, or throw me off the Ship entirely. That’s what you’re thinking now.”

“But we had an agreement,” Miocene countered. “You were supposed to help somebody, and you have, and you most definitely have earned your payment as well as my thanks.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But I know you. And you’re asking yourself, ‘Why not get rid of him and be done with it?’”

The First Chair was wearing a passenger’s clothes and a face slightly disguised, eyes blue and the matching hair curled into countless tight knots, her cheeks and mouth widened but nothing about the present smile any warmer than any other smile that had ever come from this hard, hard creature.

“You know me,” she said.

A moment later, she asked, “Will you tell me who you are?”

“Don’t you know yet?”

She shook her head, honesty bringing the words, “Nor do I particularly care, one way or the other.”

Pamir grinned and leaned back a little more.

“I suppose I could place you into custody,” Miocene continued. “But a man with your skills and obvious luck . . . well, you probably have twelve different ways to escape from our detention centers. And if I sent you falling onto a colony world or an alien world . . . I suppose in another thousand years or so, you would find your way back again, like a dog or an ugly habit.”

“Fair points,” he said. Then with a serious, warm voice, he asked, “How is Sorrel?”

“The young woman? As I understand it, she has put her apartment up for sale, and she has already moved away. I’m not sure where.”

He said, “Bullshit.”

Miocene grinned, just for a moment. “Perhaps I do have an idea or two. About who you might be, I mean.”

“She knows now.”

The woman’s face seemed to narrow, the eyes growing larger and less secure. “Knows?”

“Who her father is,” said Pamir. “Her true father, I mean.”

“One man’s conjecture,” the First Chair reminded him. Then with a dismissive shake of the head, she added, “A young woman in a gullible moment might believe you. But she won’t find corroboration, not for the next eternity, and eventually she will have to believe what she has always believed.”

“Maybe.”

Miocene shrugged. “It’s hardly your concern now.”

“And it never was,” he allowed. Then as the overhead lights flickered for the first time, he sat up straighter. “The robbery was your idea. The thief who came to steal away the Darmion crystal?”

“And why would I arrange such a thing?”

“And what happened afterwards was exactly what you were hoping for,” he said. “The apparently random crime leaves Sorrel trusting me, the two of us emotionally linked.”

With a narrow grin, Miocene said, “I must be a exceptionally clever person.”

“And you assumed that the killer, whoever he was, would likely put an end to me. Exposing himself in the process, of course.”

“Wicked as well as clever,” she said.

A second ripple of darkness passed along the avenue. Pamir showed her a stern face, and quietly, he said, “Madam First Chair. You have always been a remarkable and wondrously treacherous brute.”

“I didn’t know it was Sele’ium,” she confessed. “And you didn’t know why he was killing the husbands, either.”

Pamir stood up slowly. “He was murdering them because the old librarian, Leon’rd, pieced together who Sorrel was. He told Sele’ium what he had learned, and he mentioned that the Sorrel’s father was a woman, and as it happens, that woman is the second most important person onboard the Great Ship.”

“There were some flaws in the public records, yes.” She nodded. “These are problems that have already been resolved.”

“Good,” he said.

Miocene narrowed her gaze.

“And yes, I am a difficult soul. The cold-razor bitch, and so on. But my life is enormous and very complicated, and for a multitude of reasons, selfless as well as selfish, it is best if my daughter remains apart from my life and from me.”

“Maybe so,” he said.

“Look at these last few days. Do you need more reasons than this?” Then she took a step closer, adding, “But you are wrong, in one critical matter. Whoever you are.”

“Where’s the error?”

“You assume I wanted you to be killed, and that’s a mistake. It was a possibility, yes, and a risk. Of course. But as a good captain, I had to consider every scenario and make contingency plans, just in case.” She took another little step, saying, “No, what all of this has been . . . in addition to everything else that it seems to have been . . . is what I must label as ‘an audition.’”

“An audition,” said Pamir, genuinely puzzled.

“You seem to be the master at disappearing,” Miocene admitted. Then she took one last step, and in a whisper, she said, “There may come a day when I cannot protect my daughter anymore, and she’ll need to vanish in some profound, eternal fashion.”

The third ripple of darkness came, followed by the full seamless black of night.

“That’s your task, if you wish to take it,” she said, speaking into the darkness. “Whoever you happen to be . . . are you there, can you hear me . . . ?”

18

Sorrel had been walking for weeks, crossing the Indigo Desert one step at a time. She traveled alone with her supplies in a floating pack tied to her waist. It was ten years later, or ten thousand. She had some trouble remembering how much time had passed, which was a good thing. She felt better in most ways, and the old pains had become familiar enough to be ignored. She was even happy, after a fashion, and while she strolled upon the fierce landscape of fire-blasted stone and purple succulents, she would sing, sometimes human songs and occasionally tunes that were much harder to manage and infinitely more beautiful.

One afternoon, she heard notes answering her notes. Coming over the crest of a sharp ridge, she saw something utterly unexpected—a thick luxurious stand of irrigated llano-vibra. Louder now, the vegetation sang to her. She approached with care. In the midst of the foliage, a shape was sitting. It was a human shape, perhaps. A male, by the looks of it. He was sitting with his back to her, his face obscured by the shaggy black hair. Yet he seemed rather familiar, for some peculiar reason. Familiar in the best ways, and Sorrel stepped faster now, and smiled, and with a parched voice, she tried to sing in time with the alien weed.

First published in Down These Dark Spaceways, edited by Mike Resnick. Revised version.

The Robots of Eden

Anil Menon

When Amma handed me Sollozzo’s collection of short stories, barnacled with the usual fervent endorsements and logos of obscure book awards, I respectfully ruffled the four-hundred page tome and reflected with pleasure how the Turk was now almost like a brother. Of course, we all live in the Age of Comity now, but Sollozzo and I had developed a friendship closer than that required by social norms or the fact that we both loved the same woman.

It had been quite different just sixteen months ago; when Amma informed me that my wife and daughter had returned from Boston, the news sweetened the day as elegantly as a sugar cube dissolving in chai. Padma and Bittu were home! Then my mother had casually added that “Padma’s Turkish fellow” was also in town. They were all returning to Boston in a week, and since the lovebirds were determined to proceed, it was high time our seven-year old Bittu was informed. Padma wanted us all to meet for lunch.

I wasn’t fooled by Amma’s weather-report tone; I knew my mother was dying to meet Sollozzo face to face.

I wasn’t in the mood for lunch, and told my mother so. I had my reasons. I was terribly busy. It was far easier for them to drop by my office than for me to cart Amma all the way to Bandra, where they were put up. Besides, they needed something from me, not I from them. Some people had no consideration for other people’s feelings—

I calmed down, of course. My mother also helped. She reminded me, as if I were a child, that moods were a very poor excuse. Yes, if I insisted, they would visit me at the office, but just because people adjusted didn’t mean one had to take advantage of them, not to mention the Turk was now part of the family, so a little hospitality wasn’t too much to ask, et cetera, et cetera.

Unlike his namesake in The Godfather, Sollozzo was a novelist, not a drug pusher (though I suppose novelists do push hallucinations in their own way). I hadn’t read his novels nor heard of him earlier, but he turned out to be famous enough. You had to be famous to get translated into Tamil.

“I couldn’t make head or tail,” said Amma, with relish. “One sentence in the opening chapter is eight pages long. Such vocabulary! It’s already a bestseller in Tamil. Padma deserves a lot of the credit, naturally.”

Naturally. Padma had been the one who had translated Sollozzo into Tamil. And given herself a serving of Turkish Delight in the process.

“If you like Pamuk, you will like him,” said Amma. “You have to like him.”

I did like Pamuk. As a teenager, I had read all of Pamuk’s works. The downside to that sort of thing is that one fails to develop a mind of one’s own. Still, he was indelibly linked to my youth, as indelibly as the memory of waiting in the rain for the school bus or the Class XII debate at S.I.E.S college on “Are Women More Rational Than Men?” and Padma’s sweet smile as she flashed me her breasts.

Actually, Amma’s lawyering on the fellow’s behalf was unnecessary; my Brain was already busy. My initial discomfort had all but dissolved.

I even looked forward to meeting Sollozzo. Bandra wasn’t all that far away. Nothing in Mumbai was far away. Amma and I lived in Sahyun, only about a twenty-minute walk from my beloved Jihran River, and all in all I had a good life, a happy life in fact, but good and happy don’t equal interesting. My life would be more interesting with a Turk in it, and this was as good an opportunity as any to acquire one.

However, I knew Amma’s pleasure would be all the more if she had to persuade me, so I raised various objections, made frowny faces, and smiled to myself as Amma demolished my wickets. Amma’s home-nurse Velli caught on and joined the game, her sweet round face alight with mischief:

“Ammachi, you were saying your back was aching,” said Velli in Tamil. “Do you really want to go all the way to Bandra just for lunch?”

“Yes wretch, now you also start,” said Amma. “Come here—arre, don’t be afraid—come here, let me show you how fit I am.”

As they had their fun, I pulled up my schedule, shuffled things around, and carved out a couple of hours on Sunday. It did cut things a bit fine. Amma was suspicious but I assured her I wasn’t trying to sabotage her bloody lunch. I really was drowning in work at Modern Textiles; the labor negotiations were at a delicate stage.

“As always, your mistress is more important than your family,” said Amma, sighing.

Amma’s voice, but I heard Padma’s tone. Either way, the disrespect was the same. If I had been a doctor and not a banker, would Amma still compare my work to a whore? I had every right to be furious. Yes, every right.

I calmed down, reflected that Amma wasn’t being disrespectful. On the contrary. She was reminding me to be the better man I could be. She was doing what good parents are supposed to do, namely, protect me.

“You’re right Amma. I’ll make some changes. Balance is always good.”

Unfortunately, I was as busy as ever when the weekend arrived, and with it Padma and Bittu, but I gladly set aside my work.

“You’ve become thin,” observed Padma, almost angrily. Then she smiled and put Bittu in my arms.

I made a huge fuss of Bittu, making monster sounds and threatening to eat her alive with kisses. Squeals. Shrieks. Stories. O, Bittu was bursting with true stories. She had seen snow in Boston. She had seen buildings this big. We put our heads together and Bittu shared with me the millions of photographs she had clicked. Bittu had a boo-boo on her index finger which she displayed with great pride and broke into peals of laughter when I pretend-moaned: doctor, doctor, Bittu better butter to make bitter boo-boo better. It is easy to make children happy. Then I noticed Velli had tears in her eyes.

“What’s wrong Velli?” I asked, quite concerned.

She just shook her head. The idiot was very sentimental, practically a Hindi movie in a frock, and it was with some trepidation that I introduced her to Padma. They seemed to get along. Padma was gracious, quite the empathic high-caste lady, and Velli declared enthusiastically that Padma-madam was exactly how Velli had imagined she would be.

Eventually, with Padma guiding the car’s autopilot, all of us, including Velli, set off from Sahyun. At first we kept the windows down, but it was a windy day, and the clear cool air from Jihran’s waters tugged and pulled at our clothes. Amma had taken the front seat, since Bittu wanted to sit in the back, between Velli and me. We would be gone for most of the day, and so Velli had asked us to drop her off at Dharavi so that she could visit her parents. We stopped at the busy intersection just after the old location of the MDMS sewage treatment plant and Velli got out.

“Velli, you’ll return in the—” I began, in Tamil.

“Yes, elder brother, of course I’ll be there in the evening, you can trust.” Velli kissed her fingers, transplanted the kiss onto Amma’s cheek, and then said in her broken English: “I see you in evening soon, okay Ammachi? Bye bye.”

The signal had changed and the car wanted to move. Velli somehow forgot to include Padma in her final set of goodbyes. She ran across the intersection. “She’s an innocent,” said Amma. “The girl’s heart is pure gold. Pure gold.”

“Yes, she is adorable,” said Padma, smiling.

“She was sad,” observed Bittu. “Is it because she is black?”

Amma laughed but when we looked at her, she said: “What? If Velli were here, she would’ve been the first to laugh.”

Maybe so. But two wrongs still didn’t make a right. Amma was setting a bad example for Bittu. It was all very well to laugh and be happy but the Enhanced had a responsibility to be happy about the right things. Padma explained to me that Bittu actually had been asking if Velli was sad because she wasn’t Enhanced. In their US visit, Bittu had noticed that most African-Americans weren’t Enhanced, and she’d concluded it was for the fair. Velli was dark, so.

I met Padma’s glance in the rear-view mirror and her wry smile said: did you really think I’d taught her to be racist?

“No, Bittu.” I put an arm around my daughter. “Velli is just sad to leave us. But now she can look forward to seeing us again.”

I too was looking forward, not backwards. Reclining in the back seat, listening to the happy chatter of the women in front, savoring the reality of my daughter in the crook of my arm, meeting the glances of my wife—I was still unused to thinking of Padma as my ex-wife—I realized, almost in the manner of a last wave at the railway station, that this could be the last time we were all physically together.

When she’d left for Boston with Bittu, I had hoped the six months would be enough to flush Sollozzo out of her system. But life with him must have been exciting in more ways than one. The Turk had given her the literary life Padma had always craved, a craving it seemed no amount of rationalization on her part or mine could fix.

With Padma gone for so long, I’d had to look for a nurse for Amma. It quickly became clear that I could forget about Enhanced nurses, since all such nurses were employed everywhere except in India. Fortunately, Rajan, a shop-floor supervisor at Modern Textiles, approached me saying his daughter Velli had a diploma in home care, he’d heard I was looking for a home-nurse, and that he was looking for someone he could trust.

Trust enabled all relations. As a banker, I’d learned this lesson over and over. I was enveloped in a subtle happiness, a kind of sadness infused with a delicate mix of fragrances: the car’s sunburnt leather, Amma’s coconut-oil loving white head, Padma’s vétiver, Velli’s jasmine, and Bittu’s pulsing animal scent. The sensory mix wasn’t something my Brain had composed. It must have arisen from the flower of the moment. I savored the essence before it could melt under introspection, but melt it did, leaving in its place the residue of a happiness without reasons.

Somewhat dazed, I leaned forward between the front seats and asked the ladies what they were talking about.

“Amma was saying she wanted to come for my wedding in Boston,” said Padma. “I want her there too. I’ll make all the arrangements. My happiness would be complete if she were there.”

“Then I will be there,” announced Amma. “Just book the plane ticket.”

“Amma, you can barely navigate to the bathroom by yourself, let alone Boston.”

“See Padma, see? This is his attitude.” Amma employed the old-beggar-woman voice she reserved for pathos. “Ever since you left, I’ve become the butt of his bad jokes.” Then Amma surprised me by turning and patting my cheek. “But it’s okay. He’s just trying to cheer me up, poor fellow.”

“That’s one of the hazards of living with him,” said Padma, smiling. “Amma, seriously, I’ll book your ticket. If he wants, your son can also come and crack his bad jokes there.”

“Yes, the more the merrier,” said Amma, good sport that she was. She then stoutly defended Padma’s choice, pooh-poohing moral issues no one had raised about Turkish-Tamil children, and saying things like what mattered was a person’s heart, not their origins, and that love multiplied under division, and wasn’t it telling that he loved red rice and avial. “I always thought Mammooty looks very Turkish,” said Amma, her intransigent tone indicating that Sollozzo, whom she had yet to meet, could draw at will from the affection she’d deposited over a lifetime for her favorite south-Indian actor. That’s how much she liked Turks, yes.

I liked him too. Sollozzo wasn’t anything like the gangster namesake from the classic movie. For one thing, he had a thin pencil moustache. I could have grown a similar moustache, but I couldn’t compete with his gaunt height or that ruined look of a cricket bat which had seen one too many innings. He came across as a decent fellow, very sharp, and his slow smile and thoughtful mien gave his words an extra weight.

He had brought me a gift. A signed copy of Pamuk’s Museum Of Innocence. It was strange to think this volume had been touched by the great one, physically touched, and the thought sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. A lovely, Unenhanced feeling. Two gifts in one. The volume was very expensive, no doubt. I touched the signature.

“My friend,” said Orhan Pamuk in my head, from across the bridge of time, “I hope you get as much joy reading this story as I had writing it.”

I touched the signature again, replaying its message. I looked up and saw Padma and Sollozzo watching me. It was touching to think they’d worried about finding me the right gift.

“I will cherish it.” I was totally sincere. “Thank you.”

“Mention not,” said Sollozzo, with that slow smile of his. “You owe me nothing. I did take your wife.”

We all laughed. We chatted all through lunch. I ordered the lamb; the others opted to share a vat of biryani. As I watched Bittu putting her little fingers to her mouth, I realized with a start that I’d quite missed her. Sollozzo ate with the gusto of a man on death row. Padma shook her head and I stopped staring. My habit of introspection sometimes interfered with my happiness, but I felt it also gave my happiness a more poignant quality. It is one thing to be happy but to know that one is happy because a beloved is happy makes happiness all the more sweet. Else, how would we be any different from animals? My head buzzing with that sweet feeling, I desired to make a genuine connection. I turned to Sollozzo.

“Are you working on a new novel? Your fans must be getting very impatient.”

“I haven’t written anything new for a decade,” said Sollozzo, with a smile. He stroked Padma’s cheek. “She’s worried.”

“I’m not!” Padma did look very unworried. “I’m not just your wife. I’m also a reader. If I feel a writer is cutting corners, that’s it, I close the book. You’re a perfectionist; I love that. Remember how you tortured me over the translation?”

Sollozzo nodded fondly. “She’s equally mad. She’ll happily spend a week over a comma.”

“How we fought over footnotes! He doesn’t like footnotes. But how can a translator clarify without footnotes? Nothing doing, I said. I put my foot down.”

I felt good watching them nuzzle. I admired their passion. I must have been deficient in passion. Still, if I’d been deficient, why hadn’t Padma told me? Marriages needed work. The American labor theory of love. That worked for me; I liked work. Work, work. If she’d wanted me to work at our relationship, I would have. Then, just so, I lost interest in the subject.

“I don’t read much fiction anymore,” I confessed. “I used to be a huge reader. Then I got Enhanced in my twenties. There was the adjustment phase and then somehow I lost touch, what with career and all. Same story with my friends. They mostly read what their children read. But even kids, it’s not much. Makes me wonder. Maybe we are outgrowing the need for fiction. I mean, children outgrow their imaginary friends. Do you think we posthumans are outgrowing the need for fiction?”

I waited for Sollozzo to respond. But he’d filled his mouth with biryani and was masticating with the placid dedication of a temple cow. Padma filled the silence with happy chatter. Sollozzo was working on a collection of his short stories. He was doing this, he was doing that. I sensed reproach in her cheer, which was, of course, ridiculous. Then she changed the topic: “Are you, are you, are you, finally done with Modern Textiles?”

“I am, I am, I am not,” I replied, and we both laughed. “The usual usual, Padma. I’m trying to make the workers see that control is possible without ownership. Tough, though. The Enhanced ones are easy; they get it immediately. But the ones who aren’t, especially the Marxist types. Sheesh.”

“Sounds super-challenging!”

On the contrary. Her interested expression said: Super-tedious. I hadn’t intended to elaborate. As a merchant banker, I’d learned early on that most artists, especially the writer-types, were put off by money talk.

It didn’t bother me. I just found it odd. Why weren’t they interested in capital, which had the power to transform the world more than any other force? But I was willing to bet Sollozzo’s novel wouldn’t spend a comma, let alone a footnote, on business. Even Padma, for all the time she spent with me, had never accepted that the strong poets she so admired were poets of action, not verbiage.

“I hate the word posthuman!” exclaimed Sollozzo, startling us. “It’s an excuse to claim we’re innocent of humanity’s sins. It’s a rejection of history. Are you so eager to return to Zion? If so, you are lost, my brother.”

Silence.

“I know the way to Sion,” I said finally, and when Padma burst out laughing, I explained to the puzzled Sollozzo that Sahyun, where I lived with my mother, had originally been called Sion and that it had been a cosmopolitan North-Indian intersection between two South-Indian enclaves, Chembur and Kingcircle. Then Sahyun had become a Muslim enclave. Now it was simply a wealthy enclave.

“Sahyun! That’s Zion in Arabic. You are living in Zion!”

“Exactly. I even have one of the rivers of Paradise not too far from my house. Imagine. And Padma still left.”

“There’s no keeping women in Zion.” Sollozzo gifted me one of his slow smiles.

“Of course,” said Padma, smiling. “The river Jihran is recent. There wasn’t any river anywhere near Sion. The place was a traffic nightmare. Everything’s changed in the last sixty years. Completely, utterly changed.”

“On the contrary—” I began, leaning forward to help myself to a second helping of lamb.

“My dear children,” interrupted my mother, in Tamil, “I understand you don’t want to, but you mustn’t postpone it any longer. You have to tell Bittu.”

“Yes, Bittu. Break her heart, then mend it.” Sollozzo didn’t understand Tamil very well, not yet, but he had recognized the key word: Bittu. This meeting was really about Bittu.

First, the preliminaries. I took the divorce papers from Padma, signed wherever I was required to sign; a quaint anachronism in this day and age, but necessary nonetheless. With that single stroke of my pen, I gave up the right to call Padma my wife. My ex-wife’s glance met mine, a tender exchange of unsaid benedictions and I felt a profound sadness roil inside me. Then it was accompanied with a white-hot anger that I wasn’t alone with my misery. The damn Brain was watching, protecting. But there is no protection against loss. Padma—Oh god, oh god, oh god. Then, just so, I relaxed.

“There’s a park outside,” said Padma, also smiling. “We’ll tell Bittu there.”

It began well. Bittu, bless her heart, wasn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box. It took her a long time to understand that her parents were divorcing. For good. She was going to live in Boston. Yes, she would lose all her friends. Yes, the uncle with the moustache was now her step-father. No, I wasn’t coming along. Yes, I would visit. Et cetera, et cetera. Then she asked all the same questions once more. Wobbling chin, high-pitched voice, but overall quite calm. We felt things were going well. Padma and I beamed at each other, Sollozzo nodded approvingly.

Amma was far smarter. She knew her grandchild, remembered better than us what it had been like not to be fully Enhanced. So when Bittu ran screaming towards the fence separating the park from the highway, Amma, my eighty-two-year-old mother, somehow sprinted after her and grabbed Bittu before she could hit the road. We caught up, smiling with panic. Hugs, more explanations. Bittu calmed. Then when we released her, she once again made a dash for it. This is just what we have pieced together after some debate, Padma, Sollozzo and I. None of us remember too much of what happened. But it must have been very stressful, because my Brain mercifully decided to bury it. I remember flashes of a nose-bleed, a frantic trip to the hospital, Bittu’s hysterical screams, Padma in Sollozzo’s arms. I remember Bittu’s Brain taking over, conferring with ours, and shutting down her reticular center. Bittu went to sleep.

“Please do not worry.” Bittu’s Brain broadcast directly to our heads. It had an airline-stewardess, voice, and it spoke first in English, then in Hindi. “She can be easily awakened at the nearest facility.”

I remember the doctor who handled Bittu’s case. She was very reassuring. I remember everything after the doctor took over. She was that reassuring.

“Bittu was Enhanced only last year, wasn’t she?” said the doctor.

She wanted to know the specifics of the unit. Did Bittu’s Brain regulate appetite? How quickly would it forget things? What was our policy on impulse control? That was especially important. How did her Brain handle uncertainty? Was it risk-averse or risk-neutral? Superfluous questions, of course. The information was all there in the medical report. I listened, marveling, a soaring happiness, as Padma answered every question, and thus answered what the doctor really needed to know: are you caring parents? Do you know what you have done to your child with this technology?

The doctor asked if we had encouraged Bittu to give her Brain a name. Did we know that Bittu referred to it as a “boo-boo?” Newly-Enhanced children often gave names to their Brains. Padma nodded, smiling, but I could tell she was worried. Boo-boo?

We got the It-Takes-Time-to-Adjust speech. Bittu was very young, the Brain still wasn’t an integral part of her. Her naming it was one symptom. Her Brain found it especially difficult to handle Bittu’s complex emotions. And Bittu found it difficult to deal with this thing in her head. We should have been more careful. It especially hadn’t been a good idea to mask the trial separation as a happy vacation in Boston. We hung our heads.

Relax, smiled the doctor. These things happen. It’s especially hard to remember just how chaotic their little minds are at this age. It’s not like raising children in the old days. Don’t worry. In a few weeks, Bittu wouldn’t even remember she’d had all these worries or anxieties. She would continue to have genuine concerns, yes, but fear, self-pity and other negative emotions wouldn’t complicate things. Those untainted concerns could be easily handled with love, kindness, patience and understanding. The doctor’s finger drew a cross with those four words.

“Yes, doctor!” said Padma, with the enthusiasm all mothers seem to have for a good medical lecture.

We all felt much better. Our appreciation would inform our Brains to rate this particular interaction highly on the appropriate feedback boards.

Outside, once Bittu had been placed—fast asleep, poor thing—into Sollozzo’s rental car, the time came to make our farewells. I embraced Padma and she swore various things. She would keep in touch. I was to do this and that. Bittu. Bittu. We smiled at each other. However, Amma was a mess, mediation or no mediation.

“Was it to see this day, I lived so long?” she asked piteously in Tamil, forgetting herself for a second, but then recovered when Padma and I laughed at her wobbly voice.

“That lady doctor liked the word ‘especially’, didn’t she?’ said Sollozzo, absentmindedly shaking and squeezing my hand. “I had a character like that. He liked to say: on the contrary. Even when there was nothing to be contrary about.” He encased our handshake with his other hand. “Friend, my answer to your question was stupid. Totally stupid. I failed. I’ve often thought about the same question. I will fail better. We must talk.”

What question? The relevance of fiction? I didn’t care. So. This was it. Padma was leaving. Bittu was leaving. My wife and daughter were gone forever. I felt something click in my head and I went all woozy. The music in my head made it impossible to think. I was so happy I had to leave immediately or I would have exploded with joy.

Amma and I had a good journey back to our apartment. We hooked our Brains, sang-along with old Tamil songs, discussed some of the entertaining ways in which our older relatives had died. She didn’t fall asleep and leave me to my devices. My mother, worn out from life, protecting me from myself, even now.

That evening, Velli made a great deal of fuss over Amma, chattering about the day she’d had, cracking silly jokes, and discussing her never-ending domestic soap opera. Amma sat silently through it all, smiling, nodding, blinking.

“Thank you for caring,” I told Velli, after she had put Amma to bed. “You look tired. Would you like a few days off next week?”

“I’m not going anywhere!” she burst out in her village Tamil. She grabbed my hand, crushed it against her large breasts. “You’re an inspiration to me. All of you! How sensibly you people handle life’s problems. Not like us. When my uncle’s wife ran away, you should have seen the fireworks, whereas you all—Please don’t take this the wrong way elder brother, but sometimes at night when I can’t sleep because of worries, I think of your smiling face and then I am at peace. How I wish I too could be free of emotions!”

It is not every day one is anointed the Buddha, and I tried to look suitably enlightened. But she had the usual misconception about mediation. Free of emotions! That was like thinking classical musicians were free of music because they’d moved beyond grunts and shrieks. We, the Enhanced, weren’t free of emotions. On the contrary! We had healthy psychological immune systems, that was all.

I could understand Velli’s confusion, but Sollozzo left me baffled. We chatted aperiodically, but often. Padma told me his scribbling was going better than ever, but his midmornings must have been fallow because that’s when he usually called. I welcomed his pings; his mornings were my evenings, and in the evenings I didn’t want to think about ESOPs, equities, or factory workers. It was quite cozy. Velli cutting vegetables for dinner, Amma alternating between bossing her and playing Sudoku, and Sollozzo and I arguing about something or the other. Indeed, the topic didn’t matter as long we could argue over it. We argued about the evils of capitalism, the rise of Ghana, the least imperfect way to cook biryani, the perfect way to educate children, and whether bellies were a must for belly dancers. Our most ferocious arguments were often about topics on which we completely concurred.

For example, fiction. I knew he knew that fiction was best suited for the Unenhanced. But would he admit it? Never! He’d kept his promise, offering me one reason after another why fiction, and by extension writers, were still relevant in this day and age. It amused me that Sollozzo needed reasons. As a storyteller he should’ve been immune to reasons.

When I told him that, he countered with a challenge. He offered two sentences. The first: Eve died, and Adam died of a heart attack. The second: Eve died, and Adam died of grief.

“Which of these two is more satisfying?” asked Sollozzo. “Which of these feels more meaningful? Now tell me you prefer causes over reasons.”

“It’s not important what I prefer. If Adam had been Enhanced, he could’ve still died of a heart attack. But he wouldn’t have died of grief. In time, no one will die of heart attacks either.”

Another time he tried the old argument that literature taught us to have empathy. This bit of early-21st century nonsense had been discredited even in those simple-minded times. For one thing, it could just as easily be argued that empathy had made literature possible.

In any case, why had empathy even been necessary for humans? Because people had been like books in a foreign language; the books had meaning, but an inaccessible meaning. Fortunately, science had stepped in, fixed that problem. There was no need to be constantly on edge about other people’s feelings. One knew how they felt. They felt happy, content, motivated, and relaxed. There was no more need to walk around in other people’s shoes than there was to inspect their armpits for signs of the bubonic plague.

“Exactly my point!” shouted Sollozzo. He calmed down, of course. “Exactly my point. Enhancement is straightening our crooked timber. If this continues, we’ll all become moral robots. I asked you once, are you so eager to return to Zion?”

“What is it with you and Zion?”

“Zion. Eden. Swarg. Sahyun. Paradise. Call it what you will. The book of Genesis, my brother. We were robots once. Why do you think we got kicked out of Zion? We lost our innocence when Adam and Eve broke God’s trust, ate from the tree and brought fiction into the world. We turned human. Now we have found a way to control the tree in our heads, become robots again, and regain the innocence that is the price of entry into Zion. Do you not see the connection between this and your disdain for fiction?”

I did not. But I had begun to see just how radically his European imagination differed from mine. He argued with me, but his struggles really were with dead white Europeans. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; Goethe, Baumgarten, and Karl Moritz; Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Mach, and Wittgenstein: I could only marvel at his erudition. I couldn’t comment on his philosophers or their fictions, but I was a banker and could make any collateral look inadequate.

In this case, it was obvious. His entire argument rested on the necessity of novels. But every novel argues against its own necessity. The world of any novel, no matter how realistic, differs from the actual world in that the novel’s world can’t contain one specific book: the novel itself. For example, the world of Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence didn’t contain a copy of The Museum of Innocence. If Pamuk’s fictional world was managing just fine without a copy of his novel, wasn’t the author—any author—revealing that the actual world didn’t need the novel either? Et cetera, et cetera.

“I have found my Barbicane!” said Sollozzo, after a long pause. “I need your skepticism about fiction. Fire away. It will help me construct a plate armor so thick not even your densest doubts can penetrate.”

All this, I later learned, was a reference to the legendary dispute in Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon between shot manufacturer Impey Barbicane and armor-plate manufacturer Captain Nicholls. Barbicane invented more and more powerful cannons, and Nicholls invented more and more impenetrable armor-plating. At least I was getting an education.

If his hypocrisy could have infuriated me, it would have. As long as his tribe had mediated for the reader, it had been about freedom, empathy, blah di blah blah. Sollozzo hadn’t worried about mediating for the reader when he’d written stories in English about Turkey. Stories in English by a non-Englishman about a non-English world! Jane Austen 1 might as well have written in Sanskrit about England.

It didn’t matter, not really, this game of ours. Men, even among the Enhanced, find it complicated to say how fond they are of one another. Sollozzo made Padma happy. I was glad to see my Padma happy. Yes, she was no longer mine. She’d never been mine, for the Enhanced belong to no one, perhaps not even to themselves. I was glad to see her happy and I believed Sollozzo, not her Brain, was the one responsible. Bittu was also adjusting well to life in Boston. Or perhaps it was that Bittu had adjusted to her Boo-boo. Same thing, no difference. Padma said that Bittu had stopped referring to her Brain entirely.

Padma was amused by my chit-chats with Sollozzo. “I am super-jealous! Are you two planning to run away together?”

“Yes, yes, married today, divorced tomorrow,” shouted Amma, who had been eavesdropping on our conversation. “What kind of world is this! No God, no morals. Do you care what the effect of your immoral behavior is on Bittu? Do you want her to become a dope addict? She needs to know who is going to be there when she gets back from school. She needs to have a mother and father. She needs a stable home. No technology can give her that. But go on, do what you like. Who am I to interfere? Nobody. Just a useless old woman who’ll die soon. I can’t wait. Every night I close my eyes and pray that I won’t wake up in the morning. Who wants to live like this? Only pets. No, not even pets.” She smiled, shifted gears. “Don’t mind me, dear. I know you have the best interests of Bittu at heart. Which mother doesn’t? Is it snowing in America?”

It’s all good brah, as the Americans say in the old movies. As I ruffled the pages of Sollozzo’s volume, The Robots of Eden and Other Stories, I wondered what Velli had made of the arguments I’d had with Sollozzo. I remember her listening, mouth open, trying to follow just what it was that got him so excited. She’d found Sollozzo highly entertaining. She used to call him ‘Professor-uncle’ with that innate respect for (a) white people, (b) Enhanced people and (c) people who spoke English very fluently. Sometimes she would imitate his dramatic hand-gestures and his accented English.

In retrospect, I should have anticipated that Sollozzo’s suicide would impact Velli the most. How could it not? The Unenhanced have little protection against life’s blows on their psyches. I had called Velli into my office, tried to break the news to her as gently as I could.

“Your professor-uncle, he killed himself. Don’t feel too bad. Amma is not to know, so you have to be strong. Okay, Velli?”

I had already counseled Padma on the legal formalities, chatted with Bittu, made her laugh, and everything went as smoothly as butter.

Padma and I decided we’d tell Amma the next day, if at all. Amma got tired very easily these days. Why add to her burdens?

“I have to handle his literary estate,” said Padma, smiling, her eyes ablaze with light. “There’s so much to do. So for now we’ll all stay put in Boston. Will you be all right? You’ll miss your conversations.”

Would I? I supposed I could miss him. I didn’t see the point however. I was all right. Hadn’t I handled worse? What had made her ask? Was I weeping? Rending my garments? Gnashing my teeth? Then, just so, the irritation slipped from my consciousness like rage-colored leaves scattering in the autumn wind. It was kind of her to be concerned.

“Why did professor-uncle kill himself?” asked Velli, already weeping.

“He took something that made his heart stop,” I explained.

“But why!”

Why what? Why did the why of anything matter? Sollozzo had swallowed pills to stop his heart, he’d walked into the path of a truck, he’d drowned, he’d thrown himself into the sun, he’d dissolved into the mist. He was dead. How had his Brain let it happen? I made a mental note to talk to my lawyer. The AI would have a good idea whether a lawsuit was worth the effort. Unless Sollozzo’s short-story collection contained an encoded message (and I wouldn’t put that past him), he hadn’t left any last words.

“Aiyyo, why didn’t he ask for help?” moaned Velli.

I glanced at her. She was obviously determined to be upset. Her quivering face did something to my own internals. I struggled to contain my smile, but it grew into a swell, a wave, and then a giant tsunami of a laugh exploded out of me, followed by another, and then another. I howled. I cackled. I drummed the floor with my feet. I laughed even after there was no reason to. Then, just so, I relaxed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t laughing at you. In fact, you could say I wasn’t the one laughing at all.’’

Velli looked at me, then looked away, her mouth working. Poor thing, it must all be so very confusing for her. I could empathize.

“Velli, why don’t you go down to the river? The walk will do you good and you can make an offering at the temple in professor-uncle’s name. You’ll feel better.”

I had felt it was sensible advice, and when she stepped out, I’d felt rather pleased with myself. But Velli never returned from the walk. I got a brief note later that night. She’d quit. No explanation, just like that. Her father Rajan came by to pick up her stuff, but he was vague, and worse, unapologetic. All rather inconvenient. All’s well that ends well. Padma and Bittu were happy in Boston. Perhaps they would soon return. I hoped they would; didn’t want Bittu to forget me. Sollozzo’s volume would get the praise hard work always deserved, irrespective of whether such work pursued utility or futility.

“You’ll spoil the book if you keep ruffling the pages like that,” complained Amma.

I returned the volume to Amma, marveling at her enthusiasm for reading. For novels. For stories. Dear Amma. Almost ninety years old, but what a will to live! Good. Good! Other people her age, they were already dead. They breathed, they ate, they moved about, but basically, they were vegetables with legs. Technology could enhance life, but it couldn’t do induce a will to live. Amma was a true inspiration. I could only hope I would have one-tenth the same enthusiasm when I was her age. I started to compliment Amma on this and other points, then realized she was already lost in the story. So I tiptoed away, disinclined to come between my beloved reader and the text.

Footnote:

[1]An English author, noted for her charming upper-class romances.

Originally published in New Suns, edited by Nisi Shawl.

Escape from Caring Seasons

Sarah Pinsker

The doctor was a nice young man, and Zora hated him. Hated the way he settled in the second chair beside Anya’s bed like a friend. Hated that he didn’t pull the privacy curtain between Anya’s bed and nosy Eleanor Grimm’s, when Eleanor was only pretending to sleep. Hated the way he directed everything he said toward Zora, the person in the chair, instead of Anya, the person he was talking about.

“Just because she can’t talk right now doesn’t mean she can’t understand you,” Zora told him. “She hears you fine.”

“ . . . where was I?” He reoriented, but didn’t apologize.

“You were telling us you weren’t ready to let Anya leave yet.”

He nodded. “Right.”

“Even though her vital signs are all stable, and she’s been meeting her rehab goals, other than speech. You’re not making sense.”

He smiled, which added to his patronizing impression. This was no time to smile. “I’m sorry if you think it doesn’t make sense. The algorithm is quite accurate. If it says the risk of your wife leaving the hospital is too great, then I’m powerless to do anything.”

Anya grunted, an angry sound, and Zora squeezed her hand. “But you’re a doctor. Can’t you override an algorithm if you disagree? We’ll be fine with a hospital bed and a home health aide. This community’s purpose is to keep people in their homes.”

“I can override if I’m prepared to defend my action before our medical board, but what if your wife has another stroke after I release her against DOC findings? I’m not willing to take that risk.”

Zora’s wrist chip pulsed a blood pressure warning. The chip was supposed to cue her to take calming breaths, but this time she slapped at it; she was upset for good reason, and willing to lose a few Keep Your Cool points. “But what if somebody entered something wrong, so your program is interpreting inaccurate data? What about the psychology of healing at home?”

“I can look over the data one more time to make sure nothing looks wrong, but most evaluative tools report directly in order to cut user error risk.” He held up placating hands. “Lives have been saved by the DOC program. It takes everything into account. If it says Ms. Stein should stay in the hospital another month—”

“You said week.”

“Either way. If it says she’d be better off under observation, I’d advise you to pay attention.”

“Can she go home against your wishes?”

“Sure, but you won’t get your hospital bed or your home health aide, and you’d be billed for any complications that occur while she’s under your care. I strongly advise you not to do that.” It was the first time he sounded sincere.

A tear ran down Anya’s cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her better hand.

“I’m sorry this upsets you,” the doctor said in non-apology.

“She’s not sad,” Zora said. “She’s angry. We moved to this community to be together as long as possible. Medical can get to us in minutes. It’s not right to keep her in the hospital when she’d probably recover faster in our home, which I can see out the window, by the way.”

He was the one human in the command chain, and he wasn’t wired to listen. He repeated his spiel as if she hadn’t spoken. She wanted him chastened, distraught, willing to fight the system on their behalf, but he didn’t look at all diminished.

“I’m sorry, love,” Zora said when he left.

Anya picked up the tablet on her lap and painstakingly spelled: GET ME OUT. She tapped each word for emphasis, her pale face flushing. Anger made her look healthier than she had in weeks.

“I will, love.”

The nurse’s station was unoccupied, but Zora passed room after room with names and charts on the door: Amelia Setzer, Wilf Ringgold, Bonnie Sola, their friends and neighbors. Were they all here out of necessity, or because an algorithm had decided they had to stay? Maybe the next time she returned she’d do a survey. For now, she had a mission. “GET ME OUT.”

She tried knocking on the hospital ombudsman’s door, but nobody answered. The rest of the hospital administrative system worked remotely, so she resorted to leaving messages.

When nobody on the hospital floors would listen, she tried the new complex administrator. Zora had known all the administrators before the complex’s sale overseas; odd now to walk through the offices and not recognize names on the doors. New activity coordinator, new facilities director, new librarian.

The business offices were all on the first floor, so Zora was surprised when the new receptionist directed her back up to the eighth for the administrator, Mrs. Ilyin. Sadie Ng rode the elevator with her.

“Gotta get those reps in.” Sadie pressed the button for the gym on ten. “If I do two more days in a row I get the Iron Warrior badge. I’m working on getting enough points for a new bathing suit.”

“I’m not familiar with that badge.”

“Part of the new batch introduced last month. Anya’s been in hospital, right? You must’ve missed it.”

Zora nodded. “Good luck.”

Their phones both chimed at once, but neither bothered to look. Social Butterfly points were easy to come by.

The door to Suite 805 opened as she approached. Inside, nobody. The faint odor of paint. A large walnut desk, three leather chairs, a screen on one dark blue wall, another wall all window. Zora looked out over the community garden and beyond to the stream, the woods, the wall hidden beneath the trees. An administrator working from this room could forget this place was about people.

“How can I help you, Ms. Stein?”

Zora turned to find the wall screen had activated. Wherever Mrs. Ilyin worked, it wasn’t here. Her image was enormous. Meant to intimidate, perhaps, but Zora wasn’t easily intimidated.

“The whole point of integrating hospital and supplemented home living is to keep people in their homes,” Zora said. “And to get people back into their homes as soon as possible.”

“We’re trying to do that, Ms. Stein.” Mrs. Ilyin’s giant face smiled, like the infuriating doctor.

“You’re not. Something is wrong with this system if I can’t take Anya home right now. She’d be fine at home.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“No, but she’s not on any monitors, it’s been a month since her stroke, and we live five hundred feet from the hospital. She’ll be more rested sleeping in her own bed, looking out her own window, eating my food.”

Mrs. Ilyin’s expression didn’t change. “I’m sure you think so, Ms. Stein, but the algorithm wouldn’t demand she stay without reason.”

“That may be, but there’s something wrong if no human can explain why it’s making this decision.”

Zora’s wrist buzzed another blood pressure warning, and she slapped it again in frustration. She wasn’t getting anywhere regarding Anya. “This room isn’t supposed to be an office. It’s designed to be a yoga studio. This view isn’t meant to be yours.”

Mrs. Ilyin’s smile wavered for the first time. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I was on the team that designed Caring Seasons, back when we called it Brighter Futures. This should be a community view, not a personal one. How did you end up in here?”

“When we bought your development, we repurposed the space. Uses change. Now if that’s all?”

It was, Zora supposed. Nothing had gone as planned. She’d been so excited about Brighter Futures—as designed—that they’d taken spots on the waiting list as part of her consultation fee. When they’d moved in, it had still felt like the right decision. It was only in the last year, since the sale, that things had started to fray. Little changes at first: increased automation, new bureaucracy; nothing that had raised alarms. Now a remote administrator stealing a yoga studio. Now an algorithm keeping Anya from coming home.

“It’s not often I’m at a loss for what to do,” she told Anya.

“I KNOW,” Anya wrote.

“I can’t tell whether nobody will listen because we’re wrong, or nobody will listen because we’re old.”

“Old,” said Eleanor Grimm from the next bed. “I’ve been asking to go home for days but they’re afraid I’ll fall again.”

Zora didn’t like when Eleanor butted in, but she agreed this time. So did Anya.

“OLD,” Anya wrote. “KEEP TRYING.”

Zora reached out to their lawyer next, their old friend Norman Lloyd, but the call wouldn’t connect. Neither would a call to their daughter, Jordan. She tried a pizza place back in Boston whose number she still had memorized, then hung up when it went through.

“Your stress levels are higher than usual,” said their house AI from the speaker embedded in the kitchen counter. “May I brew you some herbal tea?”

“Of course they are, and yes,” said Zora.

The hot water dispenser gurgled and spit into a cup. “Congratulations. You’ve earned another point toward your Healthy Decisions badge!”

“Go away, Mrs. Landingham.” They’d named their AI after an old TV character. It was useful, but Anya had always hated the feeling somebody else lived with them, and now Zora understood why. She missed Anya’s voice and wanted her home; anyone else was an intrusion.

“Mrs. L, why are my phone calls not going through?”

“You recently completed a call to Pizza Wow,” said the AI.

“And the calls before that?”

“I have no information on that subject.”

Zora collected her mug and stepped outside. Nick Castro waved from his porch next door, and she walked over to sit beside him. “Have you been having any trouble making phone calls?”

They’d been neighbors for ten years now, so she didn’t feel bad asking a question without preface.

“No, sorry. Why?”

“May I use your phone?”

He spoke to the porch. “Jeeves, call—?”

Zora showed him Norman’s number, and Nick repeated it aloud.

His AI responded. “I’m sorry, that call cannot be completed at this time.”

Nick cocked his head. “What’s going on?”

“Try this one.” She recited Jordan’s number.

Nothing. A moment later her phone buzzed and she grabbed for it, hoping Jordan had called back, but it was only a Being Neighborly point coming through.

“What’s going on?” Nick asked again.

She opened her mouth to explain, and then shut it again. If she said she thought the phone wasn’t letting her complete outside calls, she’d sound paranoid. Worse, the AI would hear. Who knew what it would do if it decided she was delusional.

“I’ll explain later,” she said, getting up to leave.

Her front door opened at a flick of her wrist. She sat at the kitchen counter and composed a message to Jordan, but after sending it, had the uneasy realization she had no way of knowing whether it had been delivered. Jordan lived in Portland and visited twice a year, but they didn’t talk on a schedule. How long until she noticed she hadn’t heard from her mothers?

“Mrs. L, is there any reason you’d prevent me from completing a phone call?”

“If it was bad for your health.”

Damn. What were they thinking? That hadn’t been part of the plan. “Mrs. L, is there any way for me to override that protocol?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to that question.”

Once upon a time, she’d had access to the code underpinning the development’s tech; coding hadn’t been her specialty, but the language they’d used wasn’t foreign to her. Or hadn’t been. She had to give up after a couple of attempts; her login no longer worked.

“Mrs. L, call the police,” Zora said.

There was a brief silence, then a human voice. “Caring Seasons Emergency Services. Is this a police or medical emergency?”

“Just testing. Mrs. L, hang up.” Maybe she was paranoid, or maybe the system didn’t want her complaining. Either way, she was more determined than ever to get Anya back.

21:30

Patient: A. Stein

Location: Hospital #743

Status: NREM Stage 3

HR: 88 bpm

Patient: Z. Stein

Location: Cottage #114 BR 1

Status: NREM Stage 1

HR: 100 bpm

22:00

Patient: A. Stein

Location: Hospital #743

Status: NREM Stage 2

HR: 85 bpm

Patient: Z. Stein

Location: Bathroom

Status: Awake/Sitting.

HR: 105 bpm

Toilet activated.

Analysis:

Achieved Urine Good Health badge!

22:30

Patient: A. Stein

Location: Hospital #743

Status: REM Sleep

HR: 85 bpm

Patient: Z. Stein

Location: Cottage 114 BR 1

Status: Awake/Prone

HR: 105 bpm

23:00

Patient: A. Stein

Location: Hospital #743

Status: NREM Stage 2

HR: 85 bpm

Patient: Z. Stein

Location: Cottage 114 BR 1

Status: Awake/Prone

HR: 110 bpm

ALERT

23:11

Patient: Z. Stein

Location: Bathroom

Status: Awake/Standing

HR: 131 bpm

ALERT

ALERT

23:12

Patient: Z. Stein

Location: Bathroom

Status: Awake/Standing

HR: 135 bpm

ALERT

ALERT

23:13

Patient: Z. Stein

Location: Bathroom

Status: Awake/Standing

HR: 138 bpm

ALERT

ALERT

23:14

Patient: Z. Stein

Location: Bathroom

Status: Awake/Standing

HR: 140 bpm

ALERT

ALERT

23:15

Patient: Z. Stein

Location: Bathroom

Status: Error

Status: ProneError

HR: Error

ALERT

Zora cut the spy out of her wrist. The cutting wasn’t the hard part: her arthritis pain-blockers took the edge off. Scraping the chip out wasn’t any worse than that one spot during her egret tattoo where the artist had crossed bone.

No, the harder part was keeping her hand from shaking as she went at her own wrist with their sharpest paring knife, sterilized as best she could. There were no cameras in the bathroom, out of respect for their privacy, but the mics and chip snooped as well as any eye.

She knew she only had a few minutes. The alert would start when the trauma spiked her blood pressure, and continue as she wadded the spy in tissue and buried it in the wastebasket so it could no longer read her. A thought flitted past: what would happen to all her points and badges? Who cared. Medical would arrive in minutes. Get out; ask silly questions later.

“Ms. Stein, do you need medical assistance? Please say yes or no.”

“No, I’m fine.” She kept her voice controlled.

The bathroom mirror was the most condescending of the appliances. Okay, maybe not, but she resented it more than the others, with its rewards for proper tooth brushing and moisturizing, like she was a child. They’d overstepped with the mirror; that hadn’t been in her design.

“Ms. Stein, your chip is giving anomalous readings. Medical is on its way. Estimated arrival 23:21. Don’t move if you’re injured.”

She used the same knife that had excised the spy to cut the window screen. She’d overridden the security warning and left the window open before bed. It was 72 degrees outside, the same temperature as the house, so that shouldn’t have rung any further alarms once she’d acknowledged the break-in risk. They didn’t consider breakouts. If she exited the front door they’d know, but management probably assumed they were all too frail to leave through a window.

She was still capable. She couldn’t figure out how their dream retirement situation had wound up as this pleasantly creepy Stepford senior village, but the time had come to bust out. She’d figure out how to rescue Anya once she’d freed herself. Anya would understand.

The knife left blood spatter on the white tile floor and the lintel. No time to wipe it off. She pushed the screen out, then tossed her purse and all their pillows. The stepstool they used to reach the higher cupboards got her high enough; she whispered a prayer for solid bones and climbed through.

It wasn’t a big drop. The bushes under the window broke her fall, and the pillows minimized their damage. Some scratches on her arms to add to the bleeding wrist, but nothing worth noticing. Before extricating herself, she reached up and closed the window. With any luck, they’d assume she couldn’t have gone out this way.

The bathroom window faced the walking path circling the village, and beyond that, the wall. As far as she knew, the lampposts along the path didn’t have cameras; if they did, that couldn’t be helped. Her safest bet was to stay within the tree line.

She slipped into the trees’ shadows, outside the lamplight, hugging close to the big oaks but careful to avoid stumbling over their roots. It wouldn’t do to get hurt now that she’d freed herself from the spy that could call help.

Headlights. She held her breath, her hand going to her wrist automatically, even though they weren’t looking for her yet. Medical was pulling up at the house. They’d knock, then override the lock.

She needed to move before they started searching. She wasn’t quick, but she wasn’t slow either. She still walked four miles a day, and she was fit for her age, as all the Urine Good Health and Eating Right and Heart-Happy badges attested.

From this distance, the houses all looked peaceful. Fourteen cul-de-sacs around the central complex of rec center/apartment building/hospital, store, pool, community garden. The most pleasant prison, this prison she had accidentally created.

The prison not built to be a prison, because prisons didn’t have rivers running through them. Rivers that had to pass under the wall.

She took off her clothes and wadded them into the collapsible shopping bag she kept in her purse. She’d kept the purse light: cash, untrackable; first aid for her bleeding wrist; tissues; protein bars.

She didn’t have a throwing arm anymore, but the purse and clothes sailed over the narrow wall without catching on top. So did both shoes. If she’d given any thought at all to going back, she’d committed to following through now. Wanderers were assigned drone escorts whenever they walked out their front door. Getting caught as a Wandererand naked would be even worse. No, this was it.

Anya had always been the one to test water before stepping in; Zora believed in jumping first. The anticipation was always worse than the plunge. She wasn’t sure this was deep enough for a plunge, so she waded in. Cold, but better a cold stream than a warm one. Less bacteria to worry about with her bleeding wrist. It woke her up more too, which was good. This would be a long night.

To her ankles, to her knees, to her thighs, to her waist. Not ice cold, but cold enough to raise goosebumps on a spring night. When had she last gone skinny-dipping? Thirty years? Forty? Too long.

She had to duck underwater to get through the wall cutout. Why hadn’t they considered a grating? It had never been discussed. Nobody would go to this effort to get into a compound of old people and their last personal treasures.

The riverbank outside the wall was steeper and slicker, or else it seemed so as she clawed her way up it. She grabbed a root and hoisted herself the last few feet, landing in an undignified heap.

The bag of clothing had unfurled. Her blouse lay on the ground, not far from her cardigan and slacks. Her socks were still knotted together, both shoes nearby, adorning a bush like practical orthotic Christmas ornaments. Her brassiere had snagged on a branch, too high to shake down. If she had to lose an item of clothing, that was the best one, she supposed. Better to walk braless than pantsless or shoeless.

She found her purse under a rhododendron, and pulled out some tissues to dab away water and mud. A damp outer layer wouldn’t kill her. So far so good.

It had been so long since she had been outside the wall, not counting the occasional field trip to a museum or concert. Groups didn’t count. When they’d stopped venturing out on their own, it was only because everything they needed existed in the community.

And it was perfect for Anya! Great that they could still live together, still share a bed, until now, and get help within minutes. Twice, the biometrics had called medical to help Anya before Zora even realized she needed help. Those had been scary moments, startled from sleep by strangers who knew Anya’s situation better than she did.

A full moon filtered through the branches. By her estimate, she was two hundred feet off the main road, down in the ravine. The woods followed the stream, parallel to the road but far below it, for a half mile, before intersecting a looped hiking trail. At that point, one arm of the trail picked up alongside the stream, while the other headed up toward the road in a long series of switchbacks. If she continued along the stream for another mile, she could climb a steeper path out where it crossed under the road and the woods thinned out. They’d hopefully not think to look for her that far away. People underestimated old women all the time. Maybe, for once, that could work to her advantage.

On the walking loop she averaged a seventeen-minute mile, but the woods demanded a slower approach. If she tripped over a root and injured herself, nobody would look for her here. The same underestimation that let her make her slow escape could also mean her death.

She didn’t have her watch or her cell phone, since either could be used for tracking, so she had no idea how long she’d walked. Zora followed the stream, using the moonlight reflecting off the water as her guide.

She was almost to the spot where she hoped the stream and road met, when something buzzed above the trees, a bat or an owl perhaps. It buzzed by again. Whirred. She whipped her head around, and spotted it over the stream, rotors gleaming. A drone, no bigger than a sparrow.

She didn’t think it had spotted her yet, but she couldn’t be sure. Couldn’t be sure, either, if it was a village drone. She had no idea of their range, and she thought maybe they were larger. She looked for a rock, wondering if she still had the aim she’d had as a child. Her clothes had made it over the wall, but that was more about trajectory than accuracy.

“Are you Zara Stein?” The voice was young, distorted by the tiny, tinny speaker. Zora strained to hear.

“No.” If it didn’t have her name right, maybe it wasn’t from the village. She kept walking.

The drone followed her.

“Are you sure? ‘Zara—sorry, Zora Stein, age 82, height five feet ten inches, weight 170 pounds, white hair, brown eyes, last seen at 11:15 p.m. at Caring Seasons of Tall Pines, which, by the way, is the world’s most terrible name for a rest home. It sounds like a bad translation.”

It wasn’t a rest home, but it was a bad translation, though Zora wasn’t about to say so. She hated the name change.

“We’ll get used to it,” Anya had said. “It’s not like the name matters. It’s our home.”

Anya had been right, of course. What mattered was they lived together in their own cozy cottage, with their own plot in the community garden, a favorite table in the café, friends nearby.

“So that isn’t you?” The drone sounded skeptical. It hovered above her head.

“Sorry. Not me. If I see her, I’ll tell her you’re looking for her. Goodnight.”

She walked on, hoping the drone wouldn’t follow. It followed.

“It’s just that I think you’re her,” the drone said. “I already searched all the roads within a two-mile radius of Caring Seasons of Tall Pines, and you’re the only person out walking tonight. It’s hard to estimate height, but you look like you’re the right age.”

Zora eyed the drone. If she managed to grab it without getting sliced by rotors, she might be able to drown it in the stream. But what if it was armed? Or the operator knew the last known coordinates and called her in anyway?

She sighed. “If I say that’s me—I’m not saying it is—can you wait to report me until I explain?”

The drone dipped closer. Zora reached out a casual hand, but it bobbed out of reach.

“I guess.” She heard the frown in the voice. “Do you promise you’re not in any immediate bodily danger? If you’re injured, I’ll have to doctor my logs so they don’t see I talked with you before reporting. If you’ve been kidnapped or hurt and I didn’t report, I’d get in trouble.”

“I wasn’t kidnapped, and I’m not hurt. No immediate danger.”

The drone backed off.

Zora stopped walking, to encourage the operator to listen to her instead of making an immediate call. A large, flat rock jutted out over the stream, and she sat down. “If you’re not from Caring Seasons, did they hire out?”

“No. I’m independent.”

“Independent? You’re obviously looking for me. You knew my name.”

“Missing Vulnerable Person report.”

“I’m not a ‘vulnerable person!’ And I’m not missing. I left.”

“It says ‘Likely wandered away from home. No threat to tracker. Treat as lost and confused.’ You don’t look lost or confused, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Zora gave a half-smile, before realizing she was smiling at a sparrow-sized helicopter as if it were a person. She rearranged her face to a neutral expression.

“You should. Most of the ‘vulnerable people’ I find are muttering to themselves, or crying, or sleeping. You’re muddy but you look like you know where you’re going.”

“I do, and you’re keeping me from getting there. So, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Mind what? I still need to report back.”

Zora sighed. “Why? I told you I’m not missing. I’m my own guardian. If I want to take a walk in the woods, that’s my business.”

“Look, I hear you, but how do I know this isn’t a lucid moment for someone who doesn’t have many? I need to make this call. I don’t know why I haven’t done it already. I’m losing points for every minute we talk.”

“Points?” Zora studied the drone in the moonlight. It must have an infrared camera, since it wasn’t running a headlight. She didn’t know too much about drone design, but it looked like a custom job. She wished it had a face, though she supposed that would be even weirder.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” Zora said when she didn’t get one. She tossed a pebble into the stream, and trailed fingers around the rock feeling for more.

“You sound like a teacher. Were you a teacher?”

“I lectured on environmental gerontology.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“The study of old people and the places they—we—live. Ironically enough.”

“That’s a job?”

Zora frowned and slipped her cardigan off. It was a little cooler than when she’d left the house, but still pleasant. “You still haven’t answered my question. I’ve answered yours. What did you mean by ‘losing points?’”

“Have you heard of SloothIt?”

“No, sorry.” She stood up, stretching.

“It’s an app. You can play it from anywhere, but it works best in communities where there aren’t enough law enforcement officers to go around, where they’re understaffed, or whatever, like here. Anybody can play the basic level. You don’t need a drone, just a phone or tablet or whatever. You get points for finding missing people, pets, stolen cars. You can spot people who are wanted for crimes too, but you’re not allowed to approach them, you know? And when you have ten thousand points, if you’re eighteen, you can level up to being allowed to follow people instead of just calling in tips. That’s if you have a drone.”

The voice gained enthusiasm. The drone dipped as if it were gesturing while it talked. “If you get ten thousand points in THAT one, and if you have no criminal record, and you’ve got first aid and CPR certification so you’ll recognize injuries, you can level up to SloothIt Pro and actually get paid bounties for all the stuff you were doing for free before! And when you get to a certain score with THAT, you can level up to ProPlus, where you’re basically a contractor, and you don’t have to compete for—”

The drone’s voice—the operator’s voice—died as Zora’s cardigan hit it.

“I’m sorry,” Zora said. “I’m not points in a game.”

She bashed it three times with the rock she’d picked up, until its rotors stopped beating under her fingers. Then she held the whole bundle underwater, and left the drone weighted down and tangled in her wet sweater on the rock.

She felt a bit sorry for the thing. No, for its operator. It had looked homemade. That was someone’s hard work she’d destroyed. Not her fault. The drone had come after her; its operator had to accept the job’s risks.

Obviously, the operator would report Zora’s current location based on where contact with the drone was lost. She had to get as far from these coordinates as possible, and quickly. If the police came into the woods, which way would they arrive from? They’d probably drive to the trailhead parking lot, far above her. That couldn’t be more than a quarter mile at this point, maybe a little more with the switchbacks, but she wasn’t beating anybody to anywhere. And if they didn’t find her here, they’d follow her up the other trail and catch her before she reached the bridge.

The only way to stay hidden was to cross the river and climb the steeper, trailless slope on the opposite side. She couldn’t remember what was at the top, but if she clambered up to whatever road or subdivision lay on that side, then hid somewhere other than the woods while they looked for her here, she’d probably be better off. Maybe someplace with less open air.

If one mercenary had found her, others could too. She pictured a drone-filled sky, all searching for her in a grid pattern, shooting each other down for the right to report her. Not that civilian drones were supposed to have guns, but she hadn’t thought they were allowed to go around looking for people either, so who knew anymore. The idea of people running around turning each other in for game points chilled her, too, but she didn’t have time to mull it over. Keep moving.

The stream was rocky and shallow here. She removed her socks, shoes, and pants again to keep them from getting wet. She imagined the little drone bobbing alongside her, asking her why she took off her pants instead of rolling up the legs, and didn’t she know people were watching? She shook the thought from her head and picked her way across the moss-slick rocks.

Was it her imagination, or was there a light bobbing down the slope on the side she’d just left? She pulled her pants and shoes back on. The ground underfoot was soft with fallen leaves and smelled like mulch. The trees were a mix of old growth and new. She aimed for the new, walking at angles to avoid the steepest parts, steadying herself on the sturdiest saplings. If she fell here, they’d never find her.

Anya would worry something had happened to Zora, but would anybody listen to her? Worse, nobody would be alerted to the problems she’d escaped to warn about. Anya would be stuck in the hospital forever. That was what drove Zora as she made her slow way up the hillside. She had to get somewhere. She had to fix this.

Approaching the ridge, she skirted tall wooden fences until she found an unfenced yard abutting the parkland. On another night she’d have paused to admire the view. If Anya were here with her, they’d make guesses at the house’s value, and who lived inside, and how they moved through the rooms. This wild yard blended into the woods, a stilted deck cantilevered out over the space. Another night, she might have wondered if the residents sky-watched or woods-watched. Tonight she just hoped they were sound sleepers, without perimeter alarms or drones or dogs.

The last meters were the hardest, the soil beneath the deck sandy and loose, with no trees to hold. She avoided the deck supports, in case they were alarmed, though she almost risked drinking from the spigot on the side of the house. Maybe if she had a guarantee that it was potable, but she’d risked enough tonight. She reached the street above and fought the urge to collapse onto the dewy grass. Keep going.

Zora vaguely recalled this subdivision’s existence, but she had no clue how it fit into any map. If she kept the ravine-backed houses on her right, she hoped she’d find her way to a main road. Nothing to do but keep walking.

“Wow!” said a voice beside her. “You’re still going.”

Zora spun around, but didn’t see anyone. With nothing to drink and no sleep and all that exertion, it figured she’d start hallucinating.

“You killed Tiny.”

Zora looked around again, more carefully this time. The drone hovered at forehead height, beyond reach. It was larger than the earlier one, more cumbersome.

“Is there anything left of her? My drone?”

“I don’t know,” Zora said. “I left her—it—wrapped in my sweater.”

“I know about the sweater. I only got any points at all because your sweater was there where I said you’d been. Clue points, not recovery points. Not enough to make up for if I have to rebuild Tiny. And how am I supposed to get her?”

“I don’t see how that’s my problem.”

“You killed her.”

“You were going to turn me in. You did turn me in. I’m sorry I had to smash your drone, and I hope you can rebuild. Please leave me alone now.” Absurd: she was apologizing to a drone about another drone. She started walking again.

“You’re heading toward a cul-de-sac.”

Zora squinted up ahead. She hadn’t considered cul-de-sacs. “Why tell me that?”

“They’ll find you faster if you’re on a main road when I call. You’re a missing person, not a criminal. Why don’t you want to be found? I’ve found other missing people from that place before, but they’d wandered away. I didn’t realize how badly you didn’t want them to catch up with you until you killed Tiny.”

“I wish you’d stop saying killed. And why would I have left if I did want them to catch up with me?”

“That isn’t an answer.”

Tell this person? Zora had no phone, and a hole in her wrist that marked her as self-destructive. She’d lost her bra up a tree and her sweater to a drone-murder. The sweat she’d worked up climbing from the ravine had dried on her skin and chilled her. She’d kill for water. If this road twisted it could be hours before she found her way to a main artery, and she’d still not be anywhere.

“I’ve met your drones,” Zora said. “Introduce yourself, and I’ll tell you why I’m out here.”

The drone sighed and bobbed along beside her as Zora backtracked to the last intersection. She considered asking if this road was better. It was wider, so maybe this was the through-street.

“My name is Gina.”

“And . . . ?”

“Youare a teacher, aren’t you.” Not a question. “I get points for finding lost people. I’m 253 points from leveling up to where I get paid actual money for doing this. 203 points. I got fifty points for your sweater.”

“Who’s looking for me?”

“I don’t know,” the drone said. “You’re still on our list. Too early for police. So it’s still Sloothers and whoever reported you to the app to begin with. They’re anxious to get you home, I guess.”

“That place isn’t home.”

“Sorry?”

“We live there, but it isn’t home. I thought it was, but it’s a mistake. That’s why I left. I want to talk to my lawyer. I want to talk to the newspaper. There’s bad stuff going on.”

“Why not let me tell the police, then? I can put a beacon out right now.”

“They’re going to treat me like a lost old woman, like somebody who needs to be talked down to but not someone who gets heard.”

“I don’t understand. What’s the emergency?”

“The village is blocking my calls. Monitoring emails. Anything I say that even hints at the problems we’re having never makes it out.”

“What? Whoa. Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Zora snapped. “Do you think I’d be out here on this jailbreak if I had other options? See? Nobody listens.”

“Okay, okay. I’m listening. I’m sorry. Take a right at the stop sign, if you’re trying to leave this neighborhood. It’s a maze. Why are they blocking your calls? I still don’t understand. And why do you live there if it’s so bad?”

Zora sighed. “It wasn’t bad at the beginning. I helped design it.”

“Wait, what?”

“I told you, my field is environmental gerontology. I signed on as a consultant on the development. It’s meant to be the perfect environment for seniors. Cottages for those who can still live independently. Assisted living and hospital for those who can’t live on their own anymore. Grounds to keep people active. Neighbors, great activities. AI monitoring. Incentives for healthy living and socializing. On paper, it’s perfect. Everyone who worked on it included a stipulation that we be reserved spots to retire there ourselves. Then it was sold last year, and the new company, well, let’s say they cut some corners.”

“What corners?”

“Why do you care? You’re keeping me talking so I won’t notice when they swoop in to take me back.”

“I haven’t called again yet.”

“Why not? You’ll get all your points.”

“You’ve got me curious now. I missed the first time-bonus, anyhow. The second one won’t be for another hour. So what corners are they cutting?”

“For starters, my house won’t let me phone my daughter or my lawyer because it decided the calls were causing stress.”

“So that’s why you’re out here?”

“That’s why I’m out here, yes, but that’s not the only problem. They track everything.”

“Track everything?”

“It was supposed to be a health benefit. Monitoring. But it’s constant, and now they’re using it against us.” She held up her wrist. The cut had stopped and started bleeding a few times already, and now just oozed. Dried blood stained her forearm. “They measure everything: sleep, urine, calorie intake. They track how we move around the house, if we’re active enough, if we’re too aimless. It’s more intrusive than it was supposed to be.”

“Huh.”

“Then they dismissed most of the human staff. Onboarded a new program called DOC—I don’t even know what it stands for—that synthesizes all the data coming in. Nothing matters but numbers anymore. And Anya’s numbers aren’t right, so now they say she can’t come home. She’d be fine in the house. We take care of each other.”

“Don’t you have the right to choose? To stay in the house?”

“They say if her numbers work, and they don’t right now.” Zora fought tears. She wouldn’t cry in front of a drone. “It should be our choice.”

“Was the monitoring program part of your design?”

Zora shook her head. “Not like that. The chip for home entry made sense, so nobody had to worry about losing keys. It can be loaded with money, so you don’t have to turn around if you get to the café and realize you forgot your wallet. The badges and points really work, like your Slooth program, I guess, but deciding if somebody gets to go home or not based on numbers makes no sense. There are some things that need a human touch. We didn’t mean for algorithms to make major life decisions.”

“Maybe algorithms make better life decisions. No emotions involved; just cold, hard facts.”

“Says you. You’re a bounty hunter with a drone.”

“I’m not a bounty hunter. I’ve already shown you I can make decisions based on emotion. If there weren’t a person behind this drone you’d already be on your way back to Big Brother. There are other Slooths who give their drones AIs. Takes out all the fun if you ask me, but they get results. If you don’t need to stop for sleep you can get way more points. You’re lucky you ran into me.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Duck.”

“What?”

“Get behind that tree on your right. There’s another drone coming.”

Zora did as she was told and watched as a clunky quad-copter made its way down the street. It was louder than the one trailing her, a headlight sweeping in front of it as it flew. It came from the direction they were traveling, and headed down the road toward where they’d come from.

“Okay, safe.”

“Thanks,” said Zora.

“You’re welcome. That was Tagg007. He’s at 18,000 points, and he wouldn’t have cared one bit to hear your story before calling you in. Just saying.”

“I said thank you.”

“I’m making sure you understand. I’m listening. I want to help.”

Zora looked at the machine bobbing in the air beside her. There were no expressions to read, no ways to measure sincerity. It had hidden her from the other drone, but that was still obviously self-interest. Nobody had dragged her back yet, and while she had no idea how much time had elapsed, she had a feeling it was enough for them to have caught up with her by now. Maybe she could trust this person.

“You want to help, for real? Or you want to help me get to a main road so they can pick me up faster, like you said earlier?”

The speaker crackled in what approximated a drone sigh. “I want to help. At least I got a few points for giving them a clue. I can get you out of this neighborhood, and maybe keep others from finding you for a while. For what good that’ll do. I’m still not sure what you think you can accomplish. Why didn’t you bring a phone to call your lawyer as soon as you got outside the wall?”

“I was afraid they’d track my phone.”

“Good point. So what’s the plan?”

Zora considered. “Find me a payphone so I can call Norman? I don’t know what to do from there, but at least that’s a start.”

“What’s a payphone?”

“Never mind. Hmm.”

They walked in silence for a minute. No, Zora walked; the drone kept pace.

“Look . . . I’m going to need to switch batteries soon in any case. If you can make it to my place, you can use my phone.”

“Really?”

“Really. It’s another mile by road. Any chance you can walk faster? I’ve got eight minutes’ battery left.”

“I couldn’t have done an eight-minute mile when I was twenty, let alone now.”

“Right. Hmm. It’s way shorter if I go over the rooftops. What if I leave you here, bring Junior home, swap out the battery, and come back for you? You’d need to hide from the other Slooths. I’ll be back in ten minutes, more or less.”

Before Zora answered, the drone spoke again. “I’ve got to go. Hovering next to you and talking drains me fast. I don’t have a third drone to send out if this one dies.”

The drone flitted away over the houses. Zora listened until its whir faded. She knew the general direction it had traveled in, but who knew how many twisty roads and cul-de-sacs lay in between. Or how many Slooth drones that wouldn’t stop to listen to her. The next yard had a low stone border. She sat down on the wall, as still as possible. If she heard a drone, she’d hide behind it, but for now she sat.

It felt like hours passed. The slab sent cold up through her bones, and got harder by the second. She rehearsed what she wanted to say to Norman. Hoped he’d answer his phone if a strange number called at this hour.

Twice lights swept past and she crouched behind the wall. One was a car, the other a drone like the one that had passed earlier.

When the friendly drone returned, relief surged through her. Relief, at this dubious rescuer.

“You’re still here!”

“You came back,” Zora said.

“I promised I would.”

“You aren’t exactly a reliable source.”

“Fair enough. Are you ready to walk a little further?”

Zora stretched her legs. “I’ll be honest. Everything is starting to hurt. I don’t have too much more in me, but I can make it one more slow mile.”

The slow mile took everything she had left. By the time they arrived at a bland sandstone rancher, only the shooting pains in her hips kept her awake.

“Around the back,” said the drone.

It didn’t look like a murderer’s house. If she’d had any concern, the time to escape would have been while the drone had disappeared for its battery change, anyway. She followed a wide walk around to the back door, which swung open.

“Come in.” A voice from inside, echoed by the drone.

The drone flitted in like a bird and alighted on a cluttered counter, sweeping papers away with rotor chop. Zora followed it into a small one-room apartment, kitchen galley on the left, where the drone had settled, a bed divided from a workstation by a single tall bookcase on the right.

“Don’t mind the mess.” No drone echo this time.

Zora looked up to find the voice’s source, then down, as a woman came around the bookcase in a wheelchair.

“Nice to meet you in person,” the woman said. “I’m Gina.”

“Zora.”

Gina was young, though Zora wasn’t good at assessing age anymore. Younger than Jordan, older than the undergrads she’d taught.

“Let me guess: I’m not what you expected?”

“I didn’t know what to expect. This explains why you said ‘how am I supposed to get Tiny back.’ I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t climb down to get it—her.”

“Yeah. I think I got lucky there. Her GPS says they took her with them when they took your sweater, so I’ll be able to claim her from someplace that doesn’t involve hiking. Anyway, you probably need to sit. You must be exhausted.”

Zora tried to rally. “A bathroom first, then water, then my phone call, then I’ll sit.”

“Priorities. I get it. The bathroom is over there.”

The door had been removed to clear room for the wheelchair, but Zora was beyond privacy. She didn’t use grab bars at the house, because the bathroom mirror always suggested she use them, and she hated the bathroom mirror. Tonight she grabbed, afraid she wouldn’t get back up again otherwise. When she came back out, Gina handed her a glass and a cell phone, then disappeared into the galley.

Zora guzzled the water, the best thing she had ever tasted. The phone still felt like a trap, but it was too late to worry.

Bless him, he answered, at four-thirty in the morning. “Norman, this is Zora Stein. Anya has been hospitalized against our wishes, and I can’t get her out.”

His voice on the other end radiated warmth and concern, instantly alert. She didn’t realize how worried she’d been that he wouldn’t believe her until she heard him swearing under his breath, punctuated by lawyerly phrases. She breathed a sigh of relief. If she was at home, Mrs. L would be throwing all the calming tea at her by now.

Gina wheeled back in a moment after she’d hung up. She’d probably been listening, but that was okay.

“Thank you,” Zora said.

“No problem. Being trapped in a situation is terrible. I’ve been there too.”

“Been there, but not anymore?”

“Working on it. I sell drones online. If I can get to the paid SloothIt levels I’ll be golden.”

“I’m sorry you’re losing points on me.”

Gina shrugged. “There’ll be others.”

“Is it easy?”

“Not the easiest. I’m limited by how far from here my drones can go and get back on their batteries. I’m working on making them more efficient, but the more power, the heavier the battery, the harder the rotors have to work . . . it’s a vicious cycle. I get enough cases, anyway.”

An idea crept into Zora’s tired brain. “Who puts the cases in the system?”

“There’s a portal. Anybody can, but you can’t find somebody or something you called in, or your own immediate family. If I called in my landlord as missing from upstairs, and then ‘found’ her, I’d be frozen out for a month.”

“What if you called in a missing person from Caring Seasons?”

“You, you mean?”

“No. My wife and the others who’ve been put in the hospital against their will. What if we called them in?”

Gina’s face twisted in contemplation, like she was sizing up a problem just beyond her view. “Can you imagine if we called the press to report all the local Slooths converging on Caring Seasons?”

Zora imagined. She pictured twenty Tinys and Juniors batting against the hospital floor windows, flying through the front door and up to the rooms to check on people. Operators behind the drones, asking questions and listening the way an algorithm couldn’t.

It was hilarious to think their AI doctor problem could be solved by a drone army, but she was tired, and it didn’t seem that far outside the realm of possibility anymore. The sun would be up soon, and everything already felt a little brighter. Like the life they had planned for was still within reach.

Originally Published in Twelve Tomorrows, edited by Wade Rousch.

About the Artist and Authors

Ron Guyatt (ronguyatt.com)

Ron Guyatt is a self-taught artist and professionally-taught graphic designer from Toronto Canada. He attended George Brown College for Design Foundation where he completed with Honors and then followed with his three-year diploma in graphic design at George Brown College.

Inspired by Art Deco, film and science fiction he loves to design posters & create illustrations. His work as been featured in magazines such as Games TM, Level, and Playstation Magazine and worked with clients like EA, Digital Devolver and Bioware.

His Forever cover art is available for purchase as part of his space poster series at: fabledcreative.bigcartel.com/category/space-posters

Robert Reed

Robert Reed is the author of nearly three hundred published stories, plus more than a dozen novels. He is best known for his Great Ship stories, including The Memory of Sky. And for the novella, “A Billion Eves,” which won the Hugo Award in 2007. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and daughter.

Anil Menon

Anil Menon’s most recent work Half Of What I Say (Bloomsbury, 2015) was shortlisted for the 2016 Hindu Literary Award. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines including Albedo One, Interzone, Interfictions, Jaggery Lit Review, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons. His stories have been translated into more than a dozen languages including Hebrew, Igbo, and Romanian. He can be reached at iam@anilmenon.com.

Sarah Pinsker

Sarah Pinsker is the author of the Nebula winning novelette, “Our Lady of the Open Road” and the Theodore Sturgeon Award winning novelette, “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind.” Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Uncanny, among others, as well as numerous anthologies, and have been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Eugie Foster awards. Her first collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea: Stories was published by Small Beer Press in March 2019, followed by a novel, A Song For A New Day, from Berkley. She lives with her wife and dog in Baltimore, Maryland.

About Forever

Forever Magazine is edited by Neil Clarke and published monthly by Wyrm Publishing. Subscription information is available on our website at forever-magazine.com.

Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine (clarkesworldmagazine.com), Forever Magazine; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a seven-time Hugo Award Finalist for Best Editor (short form). His anthologies include Upgraded, Galactic Empires, More Human Than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His latest anthology The Eagle has Landed, was published in July by Night Shade Books. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two sons.

Thank you for reading Forever Magazine.