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Copyright

© 2023 by Allan Kaster.

All rights reserved.

These short stories are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors’ right is appreciated.

Cover art © Maurizio Manzieri

Also Edited by Allan Kaster

The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories, # 1-6

The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories, # 1-3

The Year’s Top Tales of Space and Time, # 1-2

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction, # 1-10

The Year’s Top Short SF Novels, # 1-8

The 2020 Look at Space Opera Book

The 2020 Look at Mars Fiction Book

mini-Masterpieces of Science Fiction

Great Science Fiction Stories

Timeless Time Travel Tales

Steampunk Specs

Starship Vectors

We, Robots

Aliens Rule

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne M. Valente. Copyright © 2022 by Catherynne M. Valente. First published in Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Maryon’s Gift” by Paul McAuley. Copyright © 2022 by Paul McAuley. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March/April 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Goldie” by Sean Monaghan. Copyright © 2022 by Sean Monaghan. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, January/February 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Wine-Dark Deep” by Sheila Finch. Copyright © 2022 by Sheila Finch. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, May/June 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Lichens” by Nina Allan. Copyright © 2022 by Nina Allan. First published in Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Beneath the Surface, a Womb of Ice” by Deborah L. Davitt. Copyright © 2022 by Deborah L. Davitt. First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November/December 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Ploughshare and the Storm” by Gwyneth Jones. Copyright © 2022 by Gwyneth Jones. First published in New Worlds Issue #1 (PS Publishing Ltd.), edited by Nick Gevers and Peter Crowther. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Cloudchaser” by Tom Jolly. Copyright © 2022 by Tom Jolly. First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Critical Mass” by Peter Watts. Copyright © 2022 by Peter Watts. First published electronically on Lightspeed Magazine, July 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Nonstandard Candles” by Yoon Ha Lee. Copyright © 2022 by Yoon Ha Lee. First published electronically on The Sunday Morning Transport, March 6, 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Abacus and the Infinite Vessel” by Vikram Ramakrishnan. Copyright © 2022 by Vikram Ramakrishnan. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, May/June 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Timekeepers’ Symphony” by Ken Liu. Copyright © 2022 by Ken Liu. First published in Clarkesworld, September 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“I Give You the Moon” by Justina Robson. Copyright © 2022 by Justina Robson. First published in Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene (The MIT Press), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“A Stone’s Throw” by Gregory Feeley. Copyright © 2022 by Gregory Feeley. First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September/October 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Communion” by Jay Werkheiser & Frank Wu. Copyright © 2022 by Jay Werkheiser & Frank Wu. First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 2022. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Introduction

Allan Kaster

I like stories that push my reader buttons: characters done wrong; sense of wonder ignited; funny bone tickled; sense of justice thwarted; etc. So much the better when these buttons are being pushed within space adventures, time travels, and the many other subgenres of science fiction. In this regard, the past year was a particularly strong one for hard science fiction.

This year’s volume of The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories includes stories set on Earth, on Mars, on moons, on planets far away, and in space. There’s a wonderful mix of the sciences in these stories including botany, biology, microbiology, physics, chemistry, as well as biochemistry. Nine of the authors whose stories are featured here are new to this series, which bodes well for the future of this genre.

Story snapshots are below.

“The Lichens” by Nina Allan

—a 22nd century botanist asks a teacher in Scotland, at the time of Culloden, for help with her research.

“Beneath the Surface, a Womb of Ice” by Deborah L. Davitt

—a biochemist involved in the search for underground water on Mars finds refuge in the mechanics of science.

“A Stone’s Throw” by Gregory Feeley

—romance burns hot amidst the cold moons of Neptune.

“The Wine-Dark Deep” by Sheila Finch

—a cephalopod researcher discovers petroglyphs on the walls of a deep underwater cave.

“Cloudchaser” by Tom Jolly

—a collector of rare artifacts hides his valuables on darkworlds.

“The Ploughshare and the Storm” by Gwyneth Jones

—post-humans find a time capsule on Europa.

“Nonstandard Candles” by Yoon Ha Lee

—a cartographer and her apprentice map the outer darkness of space.

“Timekeepers’ Symphony” by Ken Liu

—the colonization of the cosmos transforms humanity’s sense of time.

“Maryon’s Gift” by Paul McAuley

—set in the author’s Jackaroo universe, monks fight to keep a newly discovered pristine world free of humans.

“Goldie” by Sean Monaghan

—scientists learn a lot about themselves while studying the ecosystems of an alien planet.

“The Abacus and the Infinite Vessel” by Vikram Ramakrishnan

—a scientist recalls the struggles of her and her mother after immigrating to Mars.

“I Give You the Moon” by Justina Robson

—a history student yearns for a dose of reality in an AR-immersed future.

“The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne M. Valente

—a woman has a relationship with the space-time continuum that’s a bit different than most of us.

“Critical Mass” by Peter Watts

—an avant-garde artist, past his prime, discovers his works are being vandalized.

“Communion” by Jay Werkheiser and Frank Wu

—a pilot is caught in a life and death struggle between his ship’s AI and an alien microbe after crash landing on an ice moon.

I hope you have as much fun reading these stories as I did. Get set to have some of your reader buttons pushed.

Allan Kaster

Houston, Texas

February, 2023

The Diffence Between Love and Time

Catherynne M. Valente

THE SPACE/TIME CONTINUUM is the sum total of all that ever was or will be or ever possibly could have been or might conceivably exist and/or occur, the constantly tangling braid of physical and theoretical reality, (steadily degrading) temporal processes, and the interactions between the aforementioned.

It is also left-handed.

It is, as you have probably always suspected, non-linear, non-anthropic, non-Euclidean, and wholly non-sensical.

In point of fact, it’s a complete goddamned mess.

It has severe social anxiety.

And a weakness for leather jackets.

◆◆◆

We first met when I was six. Our fathers arranged a playdate. The space/time continuum looked like a boy my own age, with thick glasses in plastic Army camouflage-printed frames, a cute little baby afro, and a faded T-shirt with the old mascot for the poison control hotline on it. Mr. Yuk, grimacing on the chest of time and space, sticking out his admonishing green Yuk-tongue. POISON HELP! 1-800-222-1222.

It smelled like lavender and bread baking in a stone oven.

I said I wanted to play Lego.

It looked helplessly at me with big brown eyes magnified into enormity by prescription lenses like hockey pucks.

It picked up a black block with an arch in it. Part of the drawbridge in my Medieval Castle Siege playset. The space/time continuum handed me the black arch and opened its mouth and the sound of a pulsar spinning, turning, thumping through silver-deafening radio static came out instead of “Where does this piece go?” or “It’s nice to meet you” or “The idea of your shitty Lego drawbridge amusing me for even a nanosecond is hilarious on a geological scale.”

◆◆◆

The space/time continuum is a manifold topology whose coordinates can and frequently do map onto certain physical states, events, bodies. But that map looks like one of those old paper diner menus with a giant squiggle on it labelled Enter Here on one side and You Win! on the other.

And it changes all the time.

And you can’t win.

And the crayon evaporates in your hand and rematerializes in your hospital bassinet under the Welcome Baby! card.

Or on the surface of the moon.

◆◆◆

It doesn’t care for television except for re-runs of Law & Order. It cannot get enough of predictability. It says every episode is a bizarre upside-down bubble universe in which justice exists and things make sense.

◆◆◆

The first real actual word the space/time continuum ever said to me was: “Nothing.”

The first words I said to it were: “You can’t just go around saying ‘nothing’ to people, it’s weird. Do you want my extra Capri Sun?”

The space/time continuum wrapped its skinny baby arms around me and whispered it again in my ear: “Nothing.”

I didn’t like being hugged then. I yelled for my mom. She didn’t come for a long time.

◆◆◆

In high school, the space/time continuum looked like a scene kid with a million flannels and ironic shirts, a long black undercut, and a patch on his backpack from some band called Timeclaw. It got in a lot of trouble for drawing or carving or scratching its initial in desks all over the place, this funky S that kinda also looks like a pointy figure 8. But not lying on its side like the infinity symbol. Infinity standing up.

I’ve seen them everywhere. Still do. The space/time continuum gets around.

You’ve probably seen it, too.

It failed all its classes but shop. It was always punctual at the circular saw. It never failed to make a perfect version of the assignment from oak, birch, ash, even plastic. Every day, it brought me the objects it had been compelled to make by Mr. Wooton. A model PT Cruiser. A wooden orchid. A puzzle shaped like an iguana. My favorite was this bare green circuit board with a little lightbulb on it that flared to life if you put your finger in the right place. It used you to complete the circuit.

The space/time continuum and I sat behind the bike racks for hours after school smoking weed and putting our fingers in the right places.

◆◆◆

Ocean Shores, WA is not the space/time continuum, though it is, of necessity, an inescapable part of it. Ocean Shores, WA is a city that used to be a pretty big deal and is now not even a little deal.

See, back in the sixties, the state of Washington thought maybe it would legalize gambling because fuck it, why not, and people started buying up all the land and building nightclubs and hotels and gold courses and bungalows and boardwalks so that when the legislature hit the buzzer, the good times would be ready to roll. All kinds of movie stars and rich people’s girlfriends and purveyors of semi-legal entertainment poured in from California. But then the state of Washington thought maybe it would not legalize gambling so now there’s just a lot of cold sand dunes and closed attractions and motels with names like Tides Inn or Mermaid’s Rest Motor Court and Weigh Station.

Ocean Shores is hollowed out like a gourd someone meant to make into a drum for a beautiful party. But they wandered off and maybe even forgot what drums are to begin with so now it’s just an empty scraped-out dead vegetable lying on a cold beach nobody would ever hold a party on.

And then a seagull shits in it.

My mom and my dad and me used to always drive down for the last weekend of summer. Dad would always give me a riddle that I had to solve by the end of the trip. Like the one with the wolf and the chicken and the bag of grain or what has a ring but no finger? I’d play the twenty-year old games on the last remaining boardwalk while my parents argued about what to do with me under the white noise of the waves.

Eventually dad left and it was just me and mom. We’d rent a bungalow that was once destined to be Jayne Mansfield’s fuck grotto or whatever and sit in the moldy jacuzzi freezing our asses off, singing showtunes to the seals and shipping freighters out at sea.

The space/time continuum thinks Ocean Shores was at its best when only dinosaurs lived there.

◆◆◆

I asked the space/time continuum who its mother was once. Did she have fluffy curly hair like mine, did she smell nice like mine, was her name Alice like mine, did she sniffle a lot like she was crying even though she usually wasn’t like mine, did she always pack a fruit and a vegetable in his lunchbox (a Lisa Frank purple-blue cosmic orca one that I secretly coveted)?

The space/time continuum glanced nervously at the ashy green blackboard at the front of our classroom. This made me dislike the space/time continuum, as at the time many of the children liked to make fun of me for being dimwitted, even though I do all right. But it gave no other answer, and only a long time later did I consider that it was not looking at the blackboard at all, but the eraser.

◆◆◆

When the space/time continuum stuck that black Lego arch over the scuffed blue moat pieces, it stopped being a Medieval Castle Siege playset and started being a Cartoon Sparkle Rainbow Geoduck playset.

Our dads didn’t notice. They just kept drinking beers, one after the other, lifting the red and white Ranier cans to their lips and setting them down automatically after each rhythmic sip like they were beer-drinking machines stuck in an infinite recursion function.

The space/time continuum in the Mr. Yuk shirt smiled at me shyly. It was giving me a gift. It wanted desperately to please me. I was not pleased. I liked my Medieval Castle Siege playset a lot. It came with four different colored horse minifigs. Geoducks are weird gross dumb giant clams that live in the mud for a thousand years and come with zero horse minifigs. Their shells aren’t rainbow-striped and they don’t have friendly eyes with big long eyelashes and smiling mouths and they definitely don’t sparkle.

I didn’t even think Lego made a Cartoon Sparkle Rainbow Geoduck playset.

But the space/time continuum’s eyelashes were very long, too. So I said thank you.

It made the pulsar sound again.

◆◆◆

You have to understand I was alone a lot of the time. It came and went as it pleased. But not because it was afraid to commit. The space/time continuum asked me to marry it when I was eight and we were pretending to fish with branches and string in the pond behind the primate research labs on the edge of town. I couldn’t figure out why the fish weren’t biting. I was going to bring my mom the biggest salmon you ever saw and she was gonna say how good I was and be so happy instead of staring at the dish soap for an hour while I watched the Muppets, but the stupid fish weren’t on board with my plan.

That time, the space/time continuum looked like a girl my age with a red NO NUKES shirt on under her overalls. It said: We didn’t bring any bait. Or hooks. And there are no fish in this pond because it’s not really a pond, it’s a big puddle that dries up as soon as there’s no rain for a week. Be my wife forever, limited puddle-being.

I said: Shut up, your face is a puddle.

The space/time continuum lay its pigtailed head on my shoulder as the sunset sloshed liquid pink and gold and said: We are a house and a hill.

Okay, weirdo.

But we were already holding hands so tight, without even noticing it.

So it’s not about commitment.

The space/time continuum just has a hard time with confined spaces. Like the public education system. And calendars. And apartments.

And bodies.

◆◆◆

Its favorite album is the iconic 1979 Breakfast in America by often underrated British prog-pop group Supertramp. But its favorite song is Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper.

I don’t really have anything to say in defense of its weakness for easy listening.

I guess it just wants something to be easy.

◆◆◆

The space/time continuum is holistically without gender.

Its pronouns are it/everything.

Or, to put it another way, it is a quivering, boiling mass of all physio-psychological states that will/are likely to/have develop/ed across every extinct/extant/unborn species, making the whole issue pointless, irrelevant, and none of my business. The seventy-fourth time we met it looked like an Estonian woman who had just graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, so you can see what I mean.

Butch on the streets, churning maelstrom of intersecting time and matter in the sheets.

Later, the space/time continuum told me that was only the second time we’d met in objectively perceived time. Which always meant its perception, never mine. It was freshly in love. I was forty and tired. It was July. Rain beat the streets down till they gave up. The puddle talk happened yesterday. Its hair was so long and fine I felt certain that if I touched it, it would all dissipate like smoke. But I really, really wanted to touch it anyway. It wore a pale blue leather jacket over a white T-shirt with a Frank Lloyd Wright quote on it in thin gray Arial letters. It looked so fucking cool. It was always so much cooler than me.

I took the continuum to that little Eritrean restaurant down on Oak. It ordered tsebhi derho with extra injera and ate like food had only just been invented, which, given the nature of this story, I feel I should stress it had not. I just had the yellow lentil soup. The space/time continuum cried in my arms. It thought it had lost track of me. I didn’t answer its text messages.

If it was a commercial cereal brand it would be Cap’n Crunch Oops All Genders.

I would be Cinnamon Toast Chump.

◆◆◆

Whatever it looks like, it always wears glasses. Safer that way. For all of us.

◆◆◆

The Frank Lloyd Wright quote was: No house should ever be on a hill or anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each the happier for the other.

◆◆◆

We had our first kiss in middle school.

The space/time continuum took me to the winter dance. It wore white. I wore black. We looked like winter, the wide deep snow and a bare tree. It picked me up at 6:45 and tied a corsage around my wrist. It said the flower was an odontoglossum orchid. Native to Argentina. Only grows in cold climates. Like me.

When the space/time continuum put its hands on my waist, lock-elbowed, stiff, uncertain, I smelled a lonely ultraviolet sea churning on a small world in the constellation of Taurus. It wasn’t winter in the constellation of Taurus. It was spring, and the sea on that planet was in love with a particular whale-plant living inside it, and I understood a lot of things just then. When Bryan Adams hit his guitar solo, the space/time continuum kissed me, and I knew why he’d been wearing that poison control shirt when we first met, and also what it felt like to be a whale who is also a flower, floating inside a desperate sea.

◆◆◆

The ninety-fourth time we met, the space/time continuum was on Tinder. It had a dog in its profile pic, even though it doesn’t have a dog in real life. Its other pics showed it fishing, hiking, doing a color run.

This was its profile:

S, Young at Heart

>0.1 miles away

Hi, baby.

I’m sorry. I was wrong. I’m an idiot. I love you. I’ll do better this time. I can be better. Come home.

But then I think it got nervous and confused because below that it said:

If you can’t handle me at the peak of my recursive timeline algorithm, you don’t deserve me when I’m an iguana.

The dog was a corgi. But not the orange kind, the black and white kind. Its name tag said Snack McCoy.

◆◆◆

That’s a pretty solid Law & Order joke. So it probably was the space/time continuum’s dog. Somewhen. Elsewise.

I wonder if there was a version of me in the Snack McCoy universe. I wonder if there was a version of you.

I wonder if everything there was made out of crunchy biscuit treats.

◆◆◆

I don’t know why the space/time continuum stopped loving me. Maybe I worked too much, too hard, too late. Maybe it wanted more than cozy taco nights in a rooftop apartment above, in descending order, a comedy club, a Planned Parenthood, and a laundromat. Maybe it wanted less. Was I overly critical? (Why the fuck do people just STOP at completely unpredictable points, what’s wrong with you, why would you set it up that way? Sleep on the goddamned couch, you narcissist.) Did I just consistently fail to put my dishes in the dishwasher right away? I could’ve done it any time I wanted. Cups go in rack not on counter. Easy. And yet. Did I not support its interests? Maybe I didn’t understand its love language. Or how to set up a retirement account. Maybe I took too long to lose the baby weight. Maybe I didn’t let it have enough me-time.

Maybe I stopped really listening. Maybe the nexus of spatial and temporal possibilities was just sick of my shit.

Maybe I don’t deserve to be loved.

That’s probably it.

◆◆◆

One time it showed our first-grade teacher, Mrs. Aldritch, the drawing it made during quiet period and she cried spinal fluid out of her eyes so that was pretty intense.

It refused to show me. Even though it borrowed my black crayon to color with in the first place.

◆◆◆

The space/time continuum’s father looked very much like Mr. Clark, who used to run Dazzle Dan’s Vintage Diner by the train tracks. Mr. Clark’s name was not Dan. It was Clarence Peter Clark. But the previous owner wasn’t named Dan either. He was named Roderigo R. Rodriguez, which I am not making up. But it was pretty hard to be Mexican around here back then, especially if you wanted to sell all-American nostalgia burgers with lettuce, tomato, onion, and mayo, so he just went by Roddy.

Roddy was from Guadalajara. There’s a cathedral there called the Catedral de la Asunción de Maria Santísima with two golden spires standing up into the sky and the birds together, completely identical. Clarence Peter Clark was from Yakima. There’s nothing much in Yakima.

Nobody knows where Dazzle Dan came from.

◆◆◆

By the time I was thirteen I was pretty sure the space/time continuum didn’t actually have a father, just a thing in its house like one of those old drinky bird toys that sat on the lip of a glass and rocked back and forth more or less forever, once you set it going. It needed a father to make sure no one suspected it wasn’t actually a boy with glasses or a girl with pigtails or an Estonian exchange student. But it didn’t need a person. Just a bobbing blob of weighted plastic wearing Mr. Clark’s face, lifting can after red and white can of Ranier beer to its mouth in the background until the death of all matter in a fiery entropic abyss.

◆◆◆

On our second playdate we tried to play Cowboys and Indians. I heard the other kids doing it. Cowboys had horses, and I loved horses more than candy, so I was pretty excited.

But I never ever got to be the cowboy. The space/time continuum said cowboy is just another word for the generational trauma inflicted by the colonizer’s whole-ass inability to access empathy for anyone but himself and the debt to entropy incurred by his solipsistic commitment to almost unimaginable violence as an expression of personal potency.

Then it poured the living memory of the surrender of the Nez Perce in the Bear Paw Mountains like molten platinum into my brain and blood shot out of my nose and my eyes at the same time and my pinky toe turned into a Suciasaurus rex tooth. The space/time continuum panicked, whispering oh shit, oh shit, I’m sorry, I’ll fix it, whereupon it flooded my gray matter with golden retrievers and the smell of chocolate cookies baking and the exact emotional sensations experienced in the moment of era-defining scientific discoveries and a few old Bob Ross episodes just in case.

My appendix ruptured and I didn’t speak again for ten months.

My parents sent me to specialists.

A lot of them.

◆◆◆

The space/time continuum is a total slob and a nightmare roommate. It leaves its wadded-up proto-stars all over the floor. It won’t do the dishes even when I cook, since it only pretends to eat. It washes clothes we haven’t bought yet, then forgets to put them away for weeks. It has taken a moral stance against both mowing the lawn and dusting. It says doing so would only appropriate the culture of sequential cause and effect, which it has no right to wear like a costume.

It leaves a ring of quantum foam around the bathtub to just get crustier and crustier until I give in and scrub it off myself. Stare for fifteen minutes while my knees get sore on the badly grouted tile thinking about equal division of labor and if maybe we should get a chore chart, if that would even help, or if it just thinks this is my work because I’m the one who’s going to die someday so it bothers me more. Finally, run the water and watch it all swirl down the silver drain into the waste infrastructure dimension.

“An alarm clock,” I whisper to the slowly rotating water. “An alarm clock has a ring but no finger.”

◆◆◆

Every Valentine’s Day, the space/time continuum wraps my gift in pink and red paper with hearts or baby angels or birds or radio signals all over it and practically climbs the walls with excitement waiting for me to open it.

Those are some of the best times I remember. The moments before I rip the baby angel bird hearts open.

There’s never anything inside the box. It’s just that after I open the box, I know a story about love I didn’t know before I opened the box. And I mean I know it like it happened to me. Like it’s my own story.

One year it was this: the Loch Ness monster was absolutely real. She lived to be about five hundred years old like that one ugly Greenland shark they found before a Swiss tourist hit her in the head with a boat propeller in 1951. There used to be two of them, even. A mating pair. Nessie had a single baby around the time of the Great Fire of London and I felt her love that baby monster fishosaur down in the dark and the cold that wasn’t dark or cold to her at all. I felt the absolute safety and security of thousands of pounds of water pressure like one of those weighted vests for anxious dogs. I felt Nessie love her baby so much the temperature of the whole lake rose by one degree.

◆◆◆

My gifts aren’t as good. My gifts do not come from the time-pit out of which springs the Pleiades and ring-tailed lemurs and the Battle of Tours and Loch Ness, they come from my checking account.

Last year I gave it cufflinks. I don’t fucking know, you try buying for a space/time continuum who definitionally has everything.

◆◆◆

Here is an abridged list of things the space/time continuum and I fought about:

What movie to watch.

Whether or not I had a hostile tone this morning.

The exact dictionary definition of narcissist.

If it’s technically gaslighting to make a fight never have happened.

Where it goes when we’re not together.

Why it won’t let anything last.

The whole thing about it allowing death to exist.

If it ever thought for one minute about consent before fucking about with my Lego and/or timestream.

Whether it has to pay rent.

Why it didn’t tell me to go to the hospital that night because we both know it had to have known.

Why it is the way it is.

Why it refuses to change.

Why it decided capitalism had to be a thing.

Why everything sucks so much all the time.

Why I don’t think a baby is a good idea.

◆◆◆

This is what it looks like when the space/time continuum is mad at you. You wake up in the morning already late because your alarm clock now reads 1-800-222-1222. The auto-set coffee machine isn’t left on for you and the taco leftovers from last night are all gone and its car isn’t in the overnight guest spot and you can’t find your phone and there’s no dishes in the cupboards and there’s no cute little post-it note on the fridge telling you to have a nice day (PS we’re out of milk) but there definitely is lipstick scrawled on the bathroom mirror. The expensive stuff, MAC Saint Germain, big swooping letters that read: The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers regardless of the directionality of the light source. Asshole.

You’ll have to wait a few weeks for the space/time continuum to cool off and get a little cheeky over a couple of bottles of bodega rosé to find out that it one hundred percent ate all the leftovers, just to spite you. But then it got sick and spewed total paralyzing awareness of causality all over the 98 bus and, like, everyone on that route is now loaded up with heavy sedation or Fields Medals but ANYWAY it’s just maybe possible your phone is embedded in an extremely put-out pachycephlosaurus’s eye socket.

But either way, you have to stop freaking out about the car.

The continuum doesn’t have a car. It’s never had a car. It doesn’t drive. It doesn’t even have a license so much as it contains everyone else’s licenses. It’s just that sometimes a pocket universe containing a reality in which Monet was never born looks a lot like a 2005 Inca Gold Pearlcoat PT Cruiser with a faded COEXIST bumper sticker half-peeled off the back and a leather frog keychain swinging from the rear-view.

Then the space/time continuum starts acting way too nice. It lets you pick the movie and what kind of takeout to order and gives you a foot rub before admitting that your patterned cups and soup bowls and novelty pink octopus mug are currently making a long lonely pilgrimage around the frigid ring system of Saturn. Yes, it knows they were your mother’s, and it’s very sorry, it doesn’t know what gets into it sometimes. It just loves you so much and, well, you know how you can be. So immature. So self-centered. So finite. You don’t appreciate the emotional labor the space/time continuum puts into this relationship.

But that octopus mug is gonna make big news in about a hundred years, so let’s focus on the positive, also don’t be mad but your coffee ended up in the butt of Malmsey that drowned George Plantagenet. Because fuck you that’s why. It was upset. You shouldn’t have said that thing about the invention of death. There are just some things you do not say to someone you love.

But you make up. Always. Until you don’t. And when your duck pad see ew with extra broccoli arrives in its pure white styrofoam container, twenty minutes before you put the order in, there’s a pastel violet post-it note inside that says: please don’t leave me.

◆◆◆

The space/time continuum enjoys baking, but you can’t eat the pale green prinsesstårta it has worked so hard to perfect after seeing it on that reality cake show. You can only have eaten it. Or be going to eat it. Or sometimes one day will have been never eating it. That’s pretty much how it goes for all its hobbies. It swears it knit me a gorgeous mauve cabled cardigan for my fifteenth birthday because I’m always cold.

I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen it.

Coming up on my sixtieth.

Still cold.

Dick.

◆◆◆

The space/time continuum is not a dick.

Mostly.

◆◆◆

My mom—you remember Alice, with the curly hair and the fruits and vegetables in every lunch? Well, Alice died a little while after the whole David and Susan thing. Paranasal tumors. I didn’t even know you could get nose cancer. By the time they found it, Alice hadn’t been able to smell or taste anything in years.

That’s the worst part, she told me after the diagnosis, home, in bed with a couple of bottles of Ignoring Our Problems juice. I can’t smell anything. Not even you. I used to smell your head when you were a baby and it was the most amazing smell, better than Chanel No 5, I swear. Like lavender and bread baking in a stone oven. And sometimes, just once in a while, when you got older, you would be running out the door for a date with that kid in the flannel or putting groceries away or watching TV and I’d get a whiff of it again, like you were still so tiny and all mine and nothing bad could ever happen to us. And it’s gone. I’ll never smell you again ever.

She hated hospitals so by the time I managed to convince her to get her butt in a paper gown it was just all through her. It couldn’t wait. Had somewhere important to be, I guess.

But she was wrong. The worst part was that I wasn’t there. I wanted to be. But I had to work. I missed it. The last words my mother ever said to me were days and days before.

“Those things are rigged, honey.”

But by then she was mostly morphine by volume, so.

◆◆◆

One time the space/time continuum and I went to Mr. Clark’s diner for burgers and floats. I was eleven. It looked eleven enough. I felt so grown up in that red vinyl booth all to ourselves, with my own money in my own wallet like some kind of real adult human who mattered. My dad had taken his curtain call three years before. But mom and I were fine. Really. We carried the Christmas tree inside and set it up just the two of us. No men required.

I ordered a peppermint milkshake from Mr. Clark and there was a chocolate ribbon time loop inside it. I didn’t find my way out until the school year was mostly over. I’ve been hard of hearing ever since.

I guess a lot of us spend middle school stuck in a time loop. I’m not special.

Never have been.

◆◆◆

The thirty-ninth time I met the space/time continuum it was a three-and-a-half-foot-long rhinoceros iguana named Waffles. Waffles was lounging on fresh shredded newspapers in the display window of Jungle Friends Exotic Pet Store and Bubble Tea Café. Waffles was marked down seventy percent for Presidents’ Day weekend.

I ordered a black milk bubble tea from the counter wedged into the large parrots section.

The scarlet macaw said: the problem with Einstein-Rosen wormholes is that the “hallway” they create between two singularities is too small and open too briefly to ever permit transit by a living person.

The African gray said: You be good I love you see you tomorrow.

The blue hyacinth said: Fuckshit, Susan.

Then it sang a few bars of The Entertainer and cracked up laughing.

Not everything means something.

Waffles watched the parrots. Waffles slurped up a strand of wilted collard greens. Waffles licked his eyeball.

The owner-operator of Jungle Friends Exotic Pet Store and Bubble Tea Café brought me my drink and swapped the 70% Off! sign for an 80% Off! one. So I took Waffles home. I put him in a plastic sun-faded Rainbow Brite kiddie pool with the contents of a Sensible Plan brand EZ Ceezar Salad bag and some flat rocks from the last trip I took with my mother to the Ocean Shores boardwalk, when I won every prize in the shitty Happy Claw prize machine one after the other. I warmed the rocks up in the microwave so Waffles could rest his belly on them. Then I sat back on my couch and drank the better part of a bottle of Bombay Sapphire because fuck George Plantagenet that’s why.

That hadn’t happened yet. But if you spend long enough around the space/time continuum you get this thing where your head turns into a Tetris game and all the falling pieces are memories spinning around, upside down, out of order, mostly missing the sweet spot so they can just pile up uselessly while the music goes faster and faster the closer you get to this person you love so much who is no less your life partner for being an iguana right now.

Also cancer.

Waffles stared at me for a long time. Then the space/time continuum chomped down on a ranch-seasoning crouton and said: The traveler and their vessel would have to be smaller than an atom, far faster than light.

P.S. We’re out of milk.

That was probably our best date.

◆◆◆

I married someone else. For a while. Right after college. Trying to get away, I suppose. Find out who I even was apart from the space/time continuum. High school relationships never last anyway, right? He was just a guy. Let’s say his name was David. It doesn’t matter.

The space/time continuum told me not to. It said we were not compatible because my cells were contaminated by long-term non-consecutive exposure to excited superliminal mass fields and David’s cells were contaminated by long term exposure to being a douchebag.

By that time the space/time continuum wasn’t an iguana anymore. It was a mid-market talk radio host of one of those raunchy-advice-for-the-unemployed-and-lovelorn shows they used to pump out like Xerox copies of Xerox copies. Tune in to KHRT 101.5 to hear the velvet voice of my ex, the unstably enfleshed and endlessly repeating moment of creation and destruction, give you hot tips for better oral sex. The trick is know to your core that nothing means anything and all life and feeling will end.

The space/time continuum was working through some stuff.

◆◆◆

The seventh time we met, the space/time continuum was this gangly ginger kid who got hit bad with the freckle-gun and a broken arm. The cast had everyone’s messy kid-handwriting all over it.

You should see the other guy.

You’re cute!

That events do indeed occur sequentially is perhaps the greatest lie of all.

See you this summer.

“You wanna see something?” the space/time continuum asked me just as the lunch bell rang. Seventh grade. We were gonna be discussing The Westing Game next period and I was so excited I could barely breathe. But I said okay anyway because it was wearing a shirt that said DON’T PANIC, so I figured the space/time continuum was on the up and up.

It took me to the teachers’ lounge. It had a special key on a leather frog keychain. I didn’t know what to think. The teachers’ lounge was forbidden territory. As thrilling and terrifying as peeking in a cross-hatched window at the surface of Mars.

“It’s okay,” the space/time continuum said. “I’m allowed.”

Inside the teachers’ lounge it wasn’t the teachers’ lounge. It was 1958 and we were outside and it was so hot. A man and a little boy were walking across a huge courtyard toward Catedral de la Asunción de Maria Santísima. Birds exploded into the air before them. The little boy was the most beautiful child I’ve ever seen, with the curliest hair and the biggest eyes. He practically glowed.

His father knelt down next to his baby and kissed his tiny cheek. He pointed toward the two golden spires.

“Look, Daniel!” Roderigo R. Roderick said. “Two of them! Just like you and me, mijo, forever and ever.”

“It’s Dazzle Dan,” I whispered.

“Happy birthday,” the space/time continuum answered. I said it wasn’t my birthday. It shrugged. “It’s always your birthday.”

And then it wasn’t 1958 anymore and it wasn’t Guadalajara, it was the teachers’ lounge and it smelled like old pencils.

But the space/time continuum didn’t do that kind of thing very often because it made my teeth bleed.

◆◆◆

Anyway, David cheated on me eight or nine weeks after the wedding. Let’s say her name was Susan. It doesn’t matter. Let’s say she looked just like me but younger and prettier and less contaminated by excited mass fields.

Fuckshit, Susan.

◆◆◆

As far as I can tell, the space/time continuum owns every self-help book ever published. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The Power of Now. The 4-Hour Work Week. Hypatia’s Commentary on Diophantus’s Arithmatica. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Summa Theologicae. Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation. Awaken the Giant Within. Opticks, or, A Treatise on the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light. The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. Gödel, Escher, Bach. A Brief History of Time.

But I don’t think it ever actually read any of them. It longed to improve itself, to access its trauma, discover its full potential, and rise above its faults. But it was terrified of actually changing anything.

I remember once, when we were moving from the yellow apartment downtown to a bigger place over the river, the space/time continuum and me plunked down on cardboard boxes full of its comfort reading. I’d optimistically labelled them Books to Donate, but it was an arch lie and we both knew it. We ate cold pineapple pizza and drank warm merlot straight from the box. And the totality of existence said to me, with sauce on the tip of its nose and not a little chagrin:

For me, self-care is like the grandfather paradox. It might feel good in the moment, but at what cost? No butterfly could imagine the changes to the timeline that would go down if I truly discarded everything that does not spark joy.

Do you really want to live in a universe where the space/time continuum has become fully self-actualized?

◆◆◆

The Suciasaurus rex is a two-legged carnivorous theropod, a cousin of the more famous Tyrannosaurus rex. It is the only dinosaur ever found in the state of Washington.

◆◆◆

Once, we were lying naked at three in the afternoon in the uptown loft apartment we had for six months when I was twenty-five and the owner was on sabbatical in Paris.

I kissed the space/time continuum’s chin and said, in that extra-soft voice that only comes out of you when you’re just so happy: Why me?

What do you mean why you?

By definition, you could have chosen anyone, anywhere, in the whole cosmos. Why me? I’m just a person like everybody else.

The space/time continuum rubbed its nose tenderly against mine.

Because it’s you. It’s you because it’s you because it’s you because it’s you. Haven’t you ever been stuck in a stable time dome before?

Plus you smell really good. And you offered me your Capri Sun even though it was your favorite flavor.

And we laughed and snuggled and ordered sushi and champagne and watched the traffic go by in the snow thirty stories down. You got a point for every blue car.

Two for red.

But why are you here? Why are you in bodies and minutes and places at all?

The space/time continuum frowned. It finished the bottle.

Everyone gets stuck sometimes. Red car.

◆◆◆

I went to a small liberal arts college upstate. Double major psych/physics. A very calculated choice. Inside/Out, I used to say.

The space/time continuum wasn’t allowed on campus. It would sit by the University sign on the bumper of its crumbling pickup truck chain-smoking angrily and reading through copies of Omni (for the articles) until I was out of class. I’d run out every day like a movie montage, all long hair and long skirts and the long half-life of first love.

I was really pretty then. I don’t know why I want you to know that. It’s not important in any way. But I was.

The problem was that college isn’t part of the normal timestream. Way too much angst and intersecting choice matrices. Warps the gravity fields and fucks with beta decay. It’s an unsettling pocket universe of weird smells, meaningless gold stars, protective self-delusion, and leaking bodily liquid. Go ahead and try the double slit experiment on Friday night in a freshman dorm. You’re safer with a Ouija board.

But the space/time continuum wanted to support my goals.

Ultimately, I ended up a bartender. Basically what I studied, in a roundabout way. And I only really do roundabouts anymore. Fluid dynamics. Classical conditioning. A festive arrangement of personality disorders and lost time. But I can make a mean Hammerhead Bowl, so who’s to say I didn’t come out on top?

We broke up junior year. It said we weren’t putting the same effort into the relationship. I didn’t make time for it. I laughed. It didn’t.

Then David and Susan and my mom and student loans and better blow jobs through the power of drive-time radio and I didn’t see the space/time continuum again for almost five years.

Sometimes things just don’t work out. You want them to, but they don’t want to, and their vote counts for more than yours, so they don’t.

The space/time continuum says that no matter what, there is always a place where they did work out. So even if you’re suffering, there’s a version of yourself somewhere who isn’t, maybe older, maybe younger, maybe she has one of those naked cats or something, and if you can’t be happy, you can at least be happy for her.

I replied: Fuck that bitch I hope she drowns.

◆◆◆

The one hundred and seventeenth time I met the space/time continuum it was my mother’s doctor. It had kind eyes and bifocals and a little felt bunny stuck onto the tip of its pen, just the perfect dusting of authoritative gray at the temples.

I cried and I cried and I told it to fucking stop, it wasn’t cute anymore. It never was. Fix her or get out. What is the point of all this if it can’t even fix one lousy directionally locked material entity?

It got out.

The hallway was so long and white and clean and quiet. The cool blue price display on the vending machine flashed on and off, on and off, like a lonely lighthouse in an antiseptic sea.

1.99.

Card only.

◆◆◆

I thought I didn’t see the space/time continuum for five years.

I got this idea in my head that having plants around would help my anxiety and ground me in the now. So I bought the first orchid I liked, one that promised spectacular colors that would last for weeks. I put it in the window and watered it and loved it and it died immediately.

So I got another one that looked just like it. The way you swap out a kid’s dead goldfish for a ziplocked new one from the shop while they’re at school and they never notice because who gives a fuck it’s a goldfish.

That orchid also died. So fast it honestly felt kind of personal.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

All in all I had seventeen Odontoglossa pulchella and a lot of new, more interesting anxiety about maybe being the grim reaper of plants somehow. Or at least fundamentally incompatible with life.

The space/time continuum was all of them. It didn’t mind waiting. Five years was nothing at all. Barely a ripple in a puddle that isn’t a pond.

◆◆◆

I wonder if the universe where everything worked out okay for me is also the Snack McCoy universe and the reason things can work out there but not here is because civilization is all or mostly corgis so there’s fundamentally no real problems and also no climate change.

I wonder if I’m a corgi in the Snack McCoy universe.

The space/time continuum says I’m not.

I’m a cagey fucking greyhound and I still have anxiety.

◆◆◆

The space/time continuum left me for good a couple years back. It was so ugly. Those scenes are always so ugly. It’s your last chance to say the worst things you’ve ever thought about a person, so get it all out while you can, right?

But some things you can’t come back from.

Maybe it was my fault. I said it first.

I’m not your fucking emotional support human. I just want the infinite embodiment of reality I fell in love with back. I just want everything to be like it was.

And the space/time continuum sneered at me. I am exactly who you fell in love with! For me, the moment when I touched your Medieval Castle Siege drawbridge was half a second ago. I kissed you at the dance tomorrow. You’re the one who’s changed. But I don’t have to sit here and take this. In a million other shards of reality beyond this completely stupid one, everything is precisely like it was. So fuck you very much. I don’t want you like this. I can go find all the other versions of you in all the other timelines and love them and hold them close and give them everything while you stay here alone and drink yourself to death in this shitty town. And yes, I’m including the one where you’re a greyhound. I’m going to pet her so good, and brush her and walk her and feed her organic raw food artisanal treats. We’re going to enter agility competitions together and chase cars and have a trillion puppies. And wait till you see what we do in the one where you’re a lamp. Yes there’s one where you’re a lamp, shut up! Stay here and have another drink, I’m going to go where everything is just as sweet and good and new as it was in the beginning and you’re not fucking invited.

It looked stricken. It put its hand over its mouth. But like I said, there’s some things you can’t come back from. Eventually, all loops degrade and fall apart and a way out of the squiggle opens up.

◆◆◆

So that happened.

Or will happen. Or is happening. Or someday might inevitably be unhappened.

Maybe.

◆◆◆

Nowadays I work the bar at the Neptune Room, home of the Hammerhead Bowl and extremely understated jewel of the Tides Inn Hotel. Too broke to retire, too stubborn to die.

It is distinctly shit here.

I am distinctly shit as well. And old. And angry a lot of the time.

The decor is wall-to-wall plastic fish, seaweed garlands, and discount Christmas lights. The clientele come in drunk already when we open at four. The kitchen offers a limited menu of mystery bisque, French fries, and despair.

My knees hurt. I have a lot of time to think. Nobody bothers me except to grunt for another of whatever they’ve chosen to hurt themselves with tonight. I look out the picture windows at the town Ocean Shores was supposed to be and I think about the Suciasaurus rex and Mr. Yuk and corgis with lawyer names and David and Susan and the constellation of Taurus.

In the end, I get this place. We understand each other. I was supposed to be something better, too.

Today, I am mixing Hammerhead Bowls in the back. Don’t get excited. It’s just whatever’s left in last night’s well drunk bottles, Coke, and the syrup from the maraschino jar all dumped into a turquoise plastic tub shaped like a shark with two straws in it. I finish up and head out to flip over the CLOSED sign.

There’s a box on the bar. Wrapped in pink paper with hearts and baby angels on it. But it’s not Valentine’s Day. My hands settle down on the ribbons. I look around for orchids or iguanas or whatever, but I’m alone.

The box is sitting on top of a hand knitted mauve cabled cardigan.

Maybe I won’t open it. Maybe I just let this be over for once. I’m tired. I don’t believe in anything anymore.

Of course I open it.

◆◆◆

I’m fourteen years old. Mom and I get in her little yellow Jeep and drive down the coast to Ocean Shores. It’s the first year after Dad left. She’s nervous about doing it all on her own from here forward into always, so she’s smoking again, and interfering with the radio like there’s some tuning on the dial that will bring back the life she thought she was going to have. But there isn’t. She’s alone. He’s gone and she’s alone.

But she’s trying. Alice is trying.

So she gives me my riddle for the trip instead of Dad, instead of the man who couldn’t handle us at the peak of our reclusive timeline algorithm, and my mother’s riddle is this: What is the difference between love and time?

I’m stumped.

We get salt water taffy and hit the boardwalk, walking lazily down the rows of purple and pink and green neon flashing lights and tinny arcade machine action music. Tickets spit out of the bank of Skee Ball machines like cheeky blue tongues. A rusted out mechanical pony plays The Entertainer as we stroll by. I say low tide stinks something awful. Alice laughs. She doesn’t smell anything.

Mom gives me $5 and says I can play whatever I want. We pass the Happy Time Entertainment Inc Treasure Claw Machine, whose decal stickers have peeled and blistered in the reeking salt wind until it just says Time Claw.

I stop.

“Those things are always rigged, honey,” Alice says then, and later in a narrow white room with tubes coming out of her nose, and I hear it in both memories, in the same tone, at the same time.

But I promise her I can do it. I’m good at claw machines, always have been. I look over at her, at Alice, her face washed in all the colored electric lights, and she is so beautiful, she really is, so beautiful and so unfathomably young. You never think of your parents as young, but god, she’s just a baby. And so am I.

I drop a couple of silver coins into the slot and press the glowing buttons with authority—left, right, over, just a little more. Release.

The claw descends.

It comes back up with a crappy stuffed starfish. Mom and I start screaming like I just won the MegaBucks, jumping up and down and hugging each other and she’s kissing the top of my head and the WINNER lights are going soundlessly crazy because the machine’s speakers are broken and then suddenly there’s this kid standing next to me in a puffer vest and a Nirvana shirt and glasses and I know before I turn around who it is and was and will be.

“Wow,” says the space/time continuum. “That was amazing! Can you win one for me?”

“Probably not,” I say sadly. “Two in a row is pretty tough. And I’m out of money.”

The space/time continuum hands me a dollar in quarters.

“I’ll probably lose,” I protest.

“It’s okay if you lose,” it says.

I look at my mom and she nods encouragingly. So in the money goes. I push the buttons again. I drop the Time Claw.

And what do you know? It comes up desperately clutching a giant toy it absolutely should not be able to lift with those pitiful skinny silver prongs. The claw looks like it’s gonna break off the suspension for a minute. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t. It glides smoothly home.

I retrieve the mass of fluff from the prize bin.

It’s a Cartoon Sparkle Rainbow Geoduck. With big friendly eyes and long lashes and a wide, smiling mouth. Geoducks are endemic to this coast. Some bright idea factory must have had a lot made up special for this specific arcade, in this specific, tiny, trash clam town.

I stare at it. Because this really happened and I forgot it ever did. I am both then and now, myself in the Neptune Room with shaky swollen hands and myself at fourteen, frantic with hope and hormones and I forgot this happened, because forgetting is so easy, little holes open up in the fabric of reality and you drop parts of yourself into them and you forget that your mother ever looked so pretty and so worried and so young, you forget that you won this ridiculous thing for a stranger in a tawdry arcade and Alice was so impressed. She looked at you like she was seeing you for the first time. Like you were a real live grown-up separate person and she only just noticed.

And then the Time Claw is gone and it’s the end of the weekend and Alice and I are sitting in a hot tub with mold in every jet on a gray beach full of gray sand and hidden ancient clams. We finish singing Don’t Cry for Me Argentina and she smiles at me.

“Have you figured out my riddle yet, Miss Grand Prize Winner?”

She turns to me in the water and wraps up my cheeks in her wet hands and god, her eyes are so green, it is impossible that any human’s eyes have ever been so green. Alice’s face takes up the whole of the universe. She barely gets the first few words out before those green improbable eyes fill up with tears and she’s crying and lying in that future bed listening to the radio and holding my hand while she whispers:

“Baby, the difference between love and time is nothing. Nothing. There is no difference. The love we give to each other is the time we give to each other, and the time we spend together is the whole of love. Things will get better, sweetheart, I promise. I love you so much. My darling baby. I love you. Don’t forget. No matter what happens. The answer is nothing.”

She hugs me and there is no difference. All the time spent in love is one time, happening simultaneously, a closed timeline curve of infinite gentleness. The continuum hiding in all the faces of people I have needed and wanted and cared for and grieved, the faces through which I loved the world, all one, all at once, memory and dreaming and regret and desire, injera bread and lentil soup and sushi and champagne and running toward a pickup truck in the yellow afternoon, red and white Rainier beer cans and rhinoceros iguanas and orchids and plastic army camouflage-print glasses and psychology and physics and circular saws and Dazzle Dan feeding the birds in front of the Catedral and the Loch Ness monster’s ancient reptile heart beggared with love for her baby in the dark. And plants that are whales and whales that are plants and Suciasaurus rex and middle school and the countless infinite loops we get stuck in like tar and an octopus mug in orbit around Saturn and the Washington State Legislature and KHRT 101.5 and golden retrievers and red cars and Bob Ross and the emerald dish soap on the sink that made Alice remember her bridesmaids’ dresses and just stop like a watch in her pain and the puddle that comes and goes with the rain and a house that belongs to a hill and Cartoon Sparkle Rainbow Geoducks and the smell of a newborn’s head and Snack McCoy running after a ball of light in a universe without pain and there is no difference, no difference between any of it at all, it is all one thing, the only thing small enough to fit through an Einstein-Rosen wormhole—all dumped together into a blue plastic shark bowl with two straws.

Love in the vessel of time.

That’s where Alice left her loop. Not in that bed twenty years later not knowing who I was or where she was going, but there with her baby in Ocean Shores, WA, at twilight, somewhere between the water and the Time Claw, promising me ice cream for dinner while the space/time continuum looked on and kept the tourists at bay.

When she could still smell me a little.

When I was old and sorry, just so sorry.

There is no difference. There never was.

Nothing.

Nothing.

◆◆◆

The lights twinkle in the Neptune Room. The space/time continuum looks like the Mr. Yuk kid all grown up, my own age still. It smiles from the doorway, silhouetted by sundown.

I’m holding something old and ratty and sodden with seawater in my hand. I don’t even look at it, just sniff awkwardly and hand over the Cartoon Sparkle Rainbow Geoduck to the kid in the puffer vest.

“I won it for you, after all.”

“Keep it,” says the space/time continuum. “Happy birthday.”

“It’s not my birthday.”

The space/time continuum looks just like it did in the beginning. And the end. And all points in between. It shines. And so do I and so does Alice and so does blasted, cursed Ocean Shores, WA and geoducks and regret and all the ships at sea.

Cyndi Lauper starts playing on the long-defunct sound system because the space/time continuum is a cheesy fool and always will be. It takes off its glasses.

“It’s always your birthday. Keep it. Keep it all. It’s yours. I love you. I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I love you. This you. Infinitely better than the lamp or the greyhound or the one I never made any mistakes with. I’ll do better this time. I can be better. Come home.”

Maryon’s Gift

Paul McAuley

“IT IS A beautiful blue world at the far end of a blind and sundered spur. Discovered by the redoubtable Iryna Ivakhiv, who was famous, in her day, for exploring hard-to-reach stars and their worlds. Most stars in the galaxy-spanning network you call the Second Empire possess clusters of wormholes that are links in chains spanning a hundred stars or more, with branching spurs and connections to other chains. But blind spurs link no more than two stars together; at the far end of one of these cul-de-sacs the traveler has no choice but to return the way they came. The wormhole that leads to the star of Maryon’s Gift is one such, and it is also one of the so-called sundered or solitary links, sometimes called for reasons I can’t be bothered to fathom an Easter Egg. Its mouth orbits a red dwarf star that’s the distant companion of a hot white F5 star boasting an interchange of more than a hundred wormhole mouths; although ships travelling through one of those mouths can traverse thousands of light-years in a tail flick, the only way to reach that sundered link is to cross the gulf of more than twenty billion kilometers of actual space that separates the two stars.

“Even with her heavily modified clipper and the Ghajar bias drive, it took Iryna more than five weeks to make that journey, following nothing more than a hunch based on the observation of the abrupt termination of the tail of atmospheric gases boiling off the red dwarf’s only planet, a hot Jupiter in a close, scorching orbit. She correctly suspected that this was evidence of an active wormhole mouth, and at the end of her long voyage her ship spun a sunshield mirror to protect it from irradiation, spiraled in to the star and its planet, plunged like an unerring arrow through the wormhole mouth that trailed the planet at its L5 point, and emerged in a faint ring of translocated gas around a G4 star slightly smaller and cooler than the sun of your home world.

“A sky survey revealed at once that the star was not in the Milky Way but at the edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies. Until then, no one had found a wormhole that linked the two. There were five planets, including the stripped core of a former mini-Neptune orbiting close in, two ice giants and a gas giant with a spectacular ring system further out, and in between, orbiting at the inner edge of the star’s habitable zone, a blue water world Iryna named Maryon’s Gift, for her niece.

“By the time her ship achieved orbit around that blue world, swarms of throwaway drones had already mapped it. It was about one and a half times Earth’s size and considerably warmer, with an average temperature of sixty degrees Celsius at its steamy equator, but it possessed a breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and although it lacked major land masses, there were chains of volcanic islands scattered at its iceless south pole. Tropical paradises clad in dense forests, with extensive beachfronts ripe for development.

“Before the Jackaroo’s first contact with your species, the fifteen worlds linked by the small wormhole network they gave to you and the many worlds in the much larger network you later discovered had been settled by a succession of client species that had also benefitted from the Jackaroo’s charity. Almost everywhere humans went, others had been before, leaving fossils and ruins, introducing new species into ecosystems, even spinning up worlds that otherwise would be tidally locked in their close orbits around their cool, red dwarf stars. But if any of the client species of the Jackaroo had ever settled Maryon’s Gift, they had left no trace that neither the throwaway drones nor Iryna’s orbital survey could find. No sign of ruins or flora and fauna associated with the usual suspects—Boxbuilders, Grey Ghosts, and so on—on the polar archipelagos; none of the characteristic long-lived chemical signatures left in the atmosphere or the world-girdling ocean. The planet appeared to be untouched. Unspoiled, uncorrupted. And after she had completed her survey, Iryna did something that she had never done before in her long career. She did not deorbit and land. Did not set foot on that new blue world, did not breathe its air, drink its water, light a fire as she had, ritually, on the other worlds she had discovered. Instead, as she told me later, she decided that she would do her best to preserve its immaculate chastity, its perfect solitude.

“Yes, I met her. I love to talk to eccentric travelers, listen to their stories, try to understand the restlessness, wanderlust, mislike of civilization, call it what you will, that drives them. Some have compared us !Cha to certain species of flying creatures on your home world, which collect shiny objects to decorate their mating bowers or hatchlings’ nests. It is not an especially accurate simile, but if it helps you to accept our inquisitiveness I don’t mind it.

“Anyway, Iryna told me that shortly before her discovery of Maryon’s Gift, she had been diagnosed with a wildfire cancer that had probably been triggered by cosmic-ray exposure during her travels. It had spread through her vital organs, was beyond any hope of treatment or cure. That was one reason why she had decided to try to make sure that the pristine ocean world would remain untouched: its discovery seemed to her like a miracle, a chance to atone for selling colonization rights to all of the other worlds she had discovered. And she confessed that there was a baser motive, too. That she wanted to infuriate and frustrate her greatest rival, to thumb her nose at him from the grave. Who was he, her rival? We will come to that in the right place.

“With that in mind, and because she had no children of her own, Iryna registered the claim to what would be her last discovery in her niece’s name. The niece for whom she had named it. She retired from the world-hunting business, gave away much of her wealth and bought a vineyard in the Crimean Peninsula, close to where she had been born. That was where she told me her story. Treating me, as some of you do, as an impartial confessor. She had been living there for a little over a year, and died three weeks after we met.

“Her niece, Maryon, never visited the world her aunt had given her, and never profited from it either. At least, not in the normal sense of the word. And she did not sell it to a corporation or nation state either, or lease it to settlers or license any kind of exploitation. Any of these things would have made her immensely rich, but she belonged to a Gaian sect whose members renounced personal possessions and believed that the complex self-regulating systems of life-bearing planets, the interactions between organisms, geologic processes and atmospheric and hydrospheric chemistries, not only maintain optimal conditions for life but generates a kind of planetary consciousness. Precious and unique godlings. Colonization and exploitation of these godlings were, according to the Gaians, unholy violations. Sins against the Pantocrator who had quickened life on a myriad worlds across the Universe.

“So, as Iryna had hoped and expected, Maryon handed over to her sect all rights to her gift, and the sect’s gurus immediately set about establishing a cordon sanitaire to protect it, constructing an orbital station and manufacturing and dispatching a phalanx of drones to police the wormhole mouth. There may be billions of habitable worlds orbiting stars outside the wormhole network—your star was one such, until the Jackaroo arrived—but here was one that was within reach yet had never been settled. A world entire and unbesmirched, ineffably precious, extraordinarily holy. The Gaians believed that even a single footprint on the smallest beach of the least of its island would be a catastrophic fall from grace, and vowed to defend it with their lives.

“It wasn’t possible to keep Maryon’s Gift secret. The register of worlds is open to all, and soon enough people found out about this unique planet, and some of them set out on the long voyage to the wormhole that led to it. So-called world-collectors who want to be the first to stamp their bootprints on new territory; libertarians, pirate nations, and others who for various reasons want to establish settlements on worlds that are hard to reach (it goes without saying that those settlements usually fail in horribly interesting ways); religious cults who believe that the spread of humankind across the galaxy is the will of their god. ‘Conquering worlds.’ ‘Fulfilling human destiny.’ So forth. The kind of ideology that drove settlement of the fifteen worlds the Jackaroo gave you. Your restlessness and thirst for novelty. The belief that temporary habitation of a world somehow gives you possession of it. The belief that you have an immutable right to that claim.

“So for various bad or foolish reasons people came. Some died when their ships lost thermal integrity while trying to make that difficult and dangerous rendezvous with the wormhole mouth that shared the hot Jupiter’s close, fast orbit around the red dwarf star. And those who made it through the wormhole immediately encountered the drones the Gaians had placed at the far side, and if they did not heed warnings broadcast on every frequency and turn back, the drones attacked and disabled their ships, towed them through the wormhole, and abandoned them in orbit around the red dwarf star, to await rescue or a lonely death.

“The only visitors the Gaian monks allowed through were a crew of astronomers who wanted to use the perspective of the Large Magellanic Cloud to study and map stars and their planetary systems in previously hidden regions of the Milky Way. The astronomers were careful to keep their ship far from Maryon’s Gift, and their research complimented the Gaians’ belief that the billions of worlds beyond the reach of humanity were a sign that the wormhole network was a kind of quarantine. A galactic zoo containing and restraining the ambition and spread of reckless species.

“What’s that? Do I think it is a zoo, and the Jackaroo are its keepers? You will have to ask the Jackaroo, and good luck with getting an answer. As for me, I cannot possibly comment.

“Only two intruders ever got close to Maryon’s Gift. One was a crazily ingenious young fellow who smuggled himself onto one of the Gaians’ supply ships by hiding inside a crate with an aeroshell that would allow him to deorbit and ride like a surfer through the planet’s atmosphere to one of its islands. He never got his chance: the Gaian monks discovered his hiding place and put him in a coma and sent him back as a warning to others who might try the same trick. I tried to find him, hear his side of the story, but he had disappeared without trace. He was one of those vagabonds who move from star to star, world to world, driven by romantic notions of fulfillment, searching for something they have difficulty describing, even to themselves. You humans are not especially complicated creatures, except when it comes to making up stories to explain your motives. Which is, of course, why I find you so endearing. Why you are much more fun than, say, the Grey Ghosts, who justified everything with ponderous logic that was as untruthful as your fictions, but a lot less interesting.

“So much, anyway, for the first intruder who managed to get close, but not close enough, to Maryon’s Gift. The second was far better prepared and possessed far greater resources. Yes, this is where Iryna’s rival comes in. He was a world-hunter, too. The greatest there ever was or ever would be, according to him. He was certainly the most flamboyant.

“He called himself the Admiral, although he had never held that rank, having only briefly served as a rating in the Commons police. He was around a hundred and fifty years old and claimed to be much older, and had spun a cocoon of vivid stories about himself, for he was not only a skilled and fearless explorer, but also a tireless self-mythologizer. We knew each other quite well—I had once travelled with him and the circus of his entourage for a couple of years—but even I do not know his true name or origin. Fame had displaced everything he had once been. No one believed the stories he had spun about himself more than he did, and as Iryna predicted, he was supremely irritated when he heard that she had discovered a habitable but untouched world and had taken steps to ensure that it would remain pristine. It was forbidden fruit, as in one of your myths, and there was nothing more that he craved, for he was a full-blown believer in the fitness of humanity to claim all the worlds in the galactic network, and the worlds beyond it, too. To step from star to star, galaxy to galaxy. To prove that humans were greater than any other client species and might even be their secret masters—he liked to promote the story that the Jackaroo were the distant descendants of the human species and had used tweaked wormholes to travel back in time to ensure their eventual triumph on the galactic stage.

“Well, perhaps. Who knows? Only the Jackaroo, and they are famously unforthcoming. Even we !Cha don’t know, and we certainly know better than to try to find out who the Jackaroo are, where they come from, why they do what they do, and what happened to their other client species. It is one of the reasons why they tolerate us.

“Anyway, the Admiral was sorely provoked by the cordon around Maryon’s Gift, torn between making the first footfall on one of its footprintless beaches and disproving Iryna’s claim that it had never been colonized by any of the Jackaroo’s client species. He made overtures to the Gaians, first by proxy and then directly, and after they refused his every offer and shrugged off his threats, he resorted to blunt force. He had studied the Gaians’ defenses by examining recordings of encounters between their drones and would-be trespassers—some of whom he had sponsored—and made his plans accordingly.

“His first move was the dispatch of a carryall, the largest of all the Ghajar ships, through the wormhole. Crewed by hired mercenaries, it scattered thousands of cubesats across a huge volume as soon as it exited the wormhole mouth. Some of the cubesats used repeaters to return replicas of radar signals of Ghajar ships to attract the Gaian drones, or broadcast jamming signals to prevent the drones’ overseers from overriding their hardwired behavior. Others exploded in spectacular light shows, or fired clouds of hypervelocity darts from one-shot railguns at any drones that came near. In less than an hour, the carryall was at the center of a pitched battle that encompassed billions of cubic kilometers, fending off drones with its own railguns and taking advantage of the confusion to launch autonomous pods directly toward Maryon’s Gift or on trajectories that would skim around the planet’s star and close on it from a variety of directions.

“The entire first wave of Gaian drones was taken out by the cubesats and the carryall, but enough drones in the second wave survived to reach the carryall, paralyze its nervous system, and release ballbots that punched through its hull, infiltrated the life system, and forced the crew to surrender. Meanwhile, as interceptors launched from the Gaians’ orbital habitat raced out to intercept the autonomous pods, a score of ships flew through the wormhole mouth, and the second stage of the Admiral’s siege began.

“The ships were matryoshka craft: nests of shells that they shed one by one, each shell spoofing the radar profiles of larger, fully functional craft as they scattered across the sky, distracting the surviving Gaian drones. And at the cores of the matryoshkas, revealed when the innermost shells were shed, were missiles that flung themselves toward the orbital habitat. As soon as these were detected, the surviving drones bent toward them, half of the Gaian interceptors heading toward rendezvous with the pods made radical course changes, and the monks of the orbital habitat began to prepare for evacuation in case the final layers of their defenses failed. They did not. They were tough and practical, those monks. Drones and redirected interceptors destroyed the missiles before they were more than halfway to their target, the rest of the interceptors dealt with the pods, and the shells of the matryoshka craft were left to fall harmlessly around the star on long orbits which would never intersect with Maryon’s Gift. Or so it seemed.

“One of those shells contained a lifepod. Stealthed, equipped with throwaway boosters, it broke free when it was on the far side of the star from Maryon’s Gift, altering its orbit and falling on a long slow ellipse that would rendezvous with the planet more than a hundred days after the noise and clamor of the short, sharp little war, most of it fake, all of it designed to distract from that solitary lifepod, had faded completely.

“Inside the lifepod, sedated, cooled, comatose, was, of course, the Admiral. He woke when his little craft was a day out from Maryon’s Gift. It looked lovely as always, and especially lovely to him, no doubt. He had successfully hacked through the thorn brakes of the Gaians’ defenses, and his heart’s desire lay open and undefended before him. All he had to do was pierce its atmosphere, glide toward an island in one of its archipelagos, splash down in its unpolluted waters, swim ashore, and take a triumphant first step that would rival the first step that was the pinnacle of your primitive, faltering adventures in space, before the Jackaroo came with their promises to help and their gift of easy travel to other planets of other suns.

“The Admiral believed that he had been tricky; the monks turned out to be trickier. His lifepod was less than an hour from descent when a black flower bloomed ahead of it, silhouetted against the achingly blue ocean of Maryon’s Gift. It was a net woven from cords of fullerene, the same stuff from which the lifepod had been fabricated. Three kilometers across, strung between drones that spun anticlockwise to keep it rigid, it was closing fast, would fold around the Admiral’s little craft in less than a minute. And instead of surrendering, instead of submitting to capture and humiliation, he fired up the lifepod’s last booster. A desperate maneuver which almost but not quite succeeded. For although he evaded the net, skimming a bare kilometer past its outer edge, the lifepod struck the planet’s atmosphere at slightly the wrong angle and burned up like a meteorite. If any fragments reached the surface of Maryon’s Gift, they fell into the endless waves of the world-girdling ocean far from land and any chance of footfall.

“I have never visited Maryon’s Gift myself—never visited the orbital habitat, that is—but I did once talk to one of the Gaians’ most revered sadhus. I asked her if she and her people ever felt that, by appointing themselves guardians of Maryon’s Gift and other worlds, they were as guilty of hubris and self-aggrandizement as the Admiral. Even if he had managed to make landfall, his footsteps would have been washed away by the next tide or by rain, or blown away on the wind. Were not the efforts of the Gaians equally insignificant?

“The sadhu said that she and her people were aware of what they called ego sin. But while the actions of any individual counted for very little, the recent history of the human home world showed that sheer numbers of people, combined with foolishness, carelessness, and greed, could cause immense damage. Her sect hoped that their actions and example would teach others reverence and respect for the autonomy of worlds, so that eventually it would no longer be necessary to defend them.

“Even so, I said, was it not the case that attempts like those were ultimately futile? Even the fierce battle to protect Maryon’s Gift from the Admiral’s desire to violate its virginity might be considered a failure. For although the Admiral had not succeeded in setting foot on the planet, the debris of his lifepod and traces of his body—sooty char, greasy smoke, atoms and molecules—circulated still in its water and atmosphere. Were they not an indelible besmirchment of the kind her sect had fought so hard to prevent?

“The sadhu laughed and said that after attempting to ridicule her sect by pointing out its insignificance, I was now trying to ridicule it by exaggerating the significance of the Admiral’s last fall. Meteors burn up in the atmosphere of Maryon’s Gift every day, she said. Cosmic rays smash into molecules of oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide of its atmosphere, a steady flux of stellar neutrinos ghosts through its entire mass, and the light and heat of its star falls like a blessing, driving its weather and the intricate cycles of its biosphere. Planets, like people, are not islands. Their geological and biological cycles are part of the greater cycle of their star’s system, and that in turn is part of the hypercycles of the Milky Way, the local group of galaxies, and the Universe beyond. And because the lifepod had been constructed from fullerenes and other materials mined from the asteroid on which the Admiral’s shipyard was situated, it was no different to one of the comets and rocks that wander the space between stars, and sometimes, coming close to one of those stars, terminates its billion-year voyages in a planet’s atmosphere.

“So the answer to your question is no, the sadhu told me. The smashed and burnt remains of the Admiral and his lifepod were vanishingly small compared to the harvest of starstuff that Maryon’s Gift collects as it sweeps out its orbital path. And the Gaians had made certain that the story of his fall had spread far and wide, a warning to others who might think that their little actions and ambitions counted for anything.

“I suppose that is as true as anything you might learn, as you range through stars linked by the galactic network and settle their worlds and believe them to be yours. And even if they truly are, it will be only for a little while. Like all the other client species, you’ll eventually pass away or pass on. Don’t ask me or my brothers about that. We have promised that we will never talk about it. That’s another reason why the Jackaroo tolerate us. Perhaps the most important reason. All I can tell you is that even if you conquer the thousands of stars and planets in the network, your empire will contain only a fraction of the myriad stars and planets in just this one galaxy, and eventually you will be gone and your works will decay, leaving no more than a few tantalizing traces for the next client species to puzzle over, and the galaxy will go on turning as it always has, magnificently indifferent to even the Jackaroo. But perhaps those Gaians are right, and their respect for the undefiled purity of Maryon’s Gift and the integrity of all life-bearing planets, pointless though it may seem, will convert a majority of you to their belief in the sacredness of synergistic planetary intelligences, and the human species will leave a better legacy than most of the Jackaroo’s clients, and perhaps even win some kind of karmic reward. Or perhaps that righteous moral integrity will be forgotten, or at best considered by those who come after you to be no more than an amusing foible, like so many of your stories.

“Who knows? Not me. But whether they’re saints or sinners, fools or servants of a just cause, those monks are still there, laying down their lives and devoting vast resources to protect a world that may not need nor care for protection. And so far, after the Admiral’s defeat, no one else has tried to put their fierce fidelity to the test. So far. I do know a little about stories, and I reckon that this one may not yet be over.

“So,” the !Cha said, its tank pivoting on its multijointed legs, surveying the listeners who sat around the campfire, under a night sky where the crescents of three moons hung, one high, two low. “Now you’ve heard my tale, it is time for you to tell me one of yours!”

Goldie

Sean Monaghan

One

UP HERE, AT the edge of the biggest of the table mountains, had to be the best running track ever. Up here, Charlotte could really breathe.

And sharpen her wits at the same time.

Her apron shoes pounded in along the rocky track. She’d brought them from Earth and just as well, since the camp really didn’t have much in the way of decent manufacturing.

Charlotte ran at an easy pace, watching her footing. On her left, the forest started, scraggly at first and growing quickly into the substantial trees that occupied this part of Malale. Little birds darted out, mollusks chirruped, and puffs of petaled pollen made swelling yellowish clouds.

On her right was a cliff. Almost a sheer drop twelve hundred meters to the lush thick rain forest that filled the valley. A very different kind of forest, that one. Filled with creepers and bogs and things that could make you dead real quick.

Charlotte kept a good ten meters from the edge. Back where the last of the twisting roots and thin humus grasped at the bare rock. It was old, hardened sandstone that had become quartzite from eons buried deep. Or quartz arenite? Niall knew that stuff, but it was hard to keep track of.

Karella was still tectonically active. Other parts of the planet had volcanoes that blasted ash clouds kilometers high. Some places suffered earthquakes that would level even a modern city.

It was good hanging with Niall. His knowledge was bottomless.

Millions of years back this whole shield had been lifted up—continental crust floating over magma, in response to oceanic crust elsewhere sinking deeper. It was a stunning piece of geography. An area the size of a small country—sixty-eight thousand square kilometers—almost all on two levels; the table mountains, hundreds of them, and the dense, green valleys and plains, filled with nutrient rich sediments, supporting rainforest ecosystems that would take more decades to catalogue and understand.

Overhead a big bird screeched, gliding on thermals out above the valley. Charlotte slowed and watched. It was like a condor, with wide wings and a pointed head looking this way and that. Deep maroon feathers glistened in the sunlight.

Serge would tell her that it wasn’t a bird, strictly speaking. Convergent evolution, or standard solutions—feathers and light bones and so on—to the problem of flight. As far as she was concerned, birds were birds. The things that looked like monkeys were monkeys, the peccaries were peccaries, the snakes were snakes.

Insects were a whole other matter, of course. And the teppus.

The bird screeched again. It turned, hard, bringing in its left wing and dropping.

Its sharp eyes had spotted something. Some movement in the deep forest below.

Charlotte stopped, but couldn’t see anything moving down there. Maybe just the afternoon mist hanging over the canopy. Anyway, her eyes had nothing like the acuity of the bird’s.

It pulled out of its descent and rode through into level flight again.

Charlotte started running once more. It really was good to get away, to get her blood pumping. Another four kilometers back around to her starting point. So luscious to get out and smell the succulent scent of the forest, carried up on the same updrafts the bird was exploiting.

She stopped again. This time she did see movement.

Out on the vines. There was something big. Hanging below. Moving closer.

Charlotte grinned. Becs was going to be so happy. So happy.

Charlotte started racing back. The teppu was returning. The teppu. After so long.

Crawling along the vast, crowded vines that hung out across the valleys, linking mountain to mountain. Another whole area of study.

Becs would be thrilled. She’d been waiting. Hoping. About ready to give up.

Charlotte missed her footing. Stumbled on a root. Fell hard. Fell the wrong way.

She felt the sudden sharp pain of bones breaking in her right ankle. She tumbled on the rocks. He leg sparked at her. Felt as if she’d been lanced. Agony.

She came to rest maybe halfway to the edge, staring up into the wide, bright sky. Asaphaa, the big blue moon, hung there, gibbous and staring back at her.

Staring as if to say, Well, honey, you know you need to concentrate on where you put your feet when you’re out exercising.

“Very funny,” she whispered. Stars fluttered in her vision. She lay, breathing hard, letting the pain ebb. They were going to have to get her to the doc.

“Belt,” she said. “Could you call Becs and tell her that a teppu is coming?”

“You are hurt,” her belt said.

“Yes.” Charlotte sucked in breath. She tried some of the fade exercises from the meditation spa Indra had dragged her along to a few years back. The ankle still hurt, still took practically all her focus.

“I will tell them you are hurt.”

“Make sure you tell them about the teppu.”

“I will tell them that, too.”

“Did you see it?” Her belt was a simple thing. Low grade observer AI with a bunch of sensors feeding back into the data collection systems.

“I saw the teppu. I will tell them about the teppu.”

“Tell them that first. Then tell them about me.” Charlotte closed her eyes and tried to fade the pain.

“I have told them. I did not tell them in that order.”

At least they knew. At least they would come and get her. She wasn’t walking a single meter, let alone a whole kilometer

“I can administer pain relief,” the belt said.

“Would you?”

“I would.”

Through the pain, Charlotte smiled. The belt was very literal.

“Please do,” she said. “Please administer pain relief.”

Something tiny pricked her, right at the belt’s buckle. A warm feeling spread from the spot.

“Pain relief administered.”

“Thank you.”

Charlotte rolled onto her belly. She looked out across the valley. The next mountain over, Ikenni, was smaller than Malale, maybe fifty square kilometers. Almost two kilometers away, its sheer cliffs stood bronze and gray in the afternoon light. Some of the valley vegetation crept up the side. As with all the others, the talus slope was covered in forest. Fragmented in places, where more recent falls had torn through the growth.

Eventually, the mountains would all crumble to the ground. It would take millions of years, but they would go, part of the endless cycling of the topography.

Ikenni’s forest fringe looked thin against the height of the cliffs. There were no people over there. Everyone on the planet resided on Malale.

The gray-white vines stretched out, long catenaries, swooping down, then back up, connecting the edge of Ikenni with the edge of Malale. As the teppu crawled along, its hands would be refreshing and strengthening the vines.

Charlotte crawled closer to the edge for a better view. The pain from her ankle was ebbing, drifting away courtesy of the belt’s injection.

The vines were as thick as the deck of one of those eight lane bridges that connected headlands across harbors.

The teppu was a big one. The size of a whale. She was beautiful. Her downy, furry hide was a greenish shade of beige. Her long, convex body hung beneath the vines, thick strong arms clinging on above. Tentacles and fingers gripping, spinnerets releasing thin filaments.

“Belt,” Charlotte said. “You can’t see this, can you?”

“I am underneath you. It is dark here.”

“Funny.”

“No. Dark.”

Charlotte smiled. The ankle was a faraway thing now. Distant. Maybe sore, but it would be all right.

And it meant she could lie and watch the teppu. She felt a bit fuzzy. Perhaps the painkiller fogging her head. Should it do that?

The teppu was only just beyond the edge of the precipice on Ikenni. Wouldn’t it have been remarkable to have seen it clamber over? Getting from the forest floor and rocky edge around and down below the vines must have been quite the operation.

They migrated, according to Becs. Traveled from north to south and back with the seasons. Or something.

There were about thirty or so vines in this bundle, with a whole, gentle ecosystem of their own. Mosses and lichens, grasses and shrubs growing all along the top. Most of the mountains were connected.

Niall was still trying to figure out how the geology worked. He’d shown her maps of them, the whole area of the shield laid out like the patterning on a giraffe’s hide, or like cracked mud in a dried-out lake’s bottom, with black lines penciled in where the orbital surveys had shown the vine connections.

There were similar mountains on Earth. In South America. Tepuis, and they made a good analogue for here on Karella. Except that there were no connections between the mountains on Earth. And their separation was much greater, and so the ecosystems on the top of each were essentially islanded from each other.

Here, with the vines as pathways, there were two ecosystems, really. The mountain tops, and the valleys.

The teppu was moving ever so slowly. Like a slowed-down sloth from Earth. No hurry about anything.

“They are coming,” the belt said. “They are bringing a vehicle. They will be here soon. They will help you.”

“Great news.”

“They are also sending fliers to observe the environment.”

Meaning the teppu.

“That’s good,” she said. “Thank you.”

The teppu was so far off, but still so magnificent. She could lie and watch it for hours.

Two

Becs stared at the imagery on the table. They’d gathered around in the main shed, right in the middle of the camp. It had been hard to find a spot atop the mountain where they wouldn’t cause too much damage setting up camp.

“Nice, huh?” Charlotte said, leaning on the table. It was a cubic meter and showed depth footage taken by fliers.

“Why are you even here?” Niall said. “You should be lying in the infirmary getting checked.”

Niall sipped from his coffee cup. It was gray and had text on the side that read Metamorphism! that was only visible when the cup was hot. Some kind of geology joke or something.

The room in the shed was big and airy. One of the landing ship AIs had folded and printed the complex in the space of sixteen hours. They’d all gone to sleep in inflatable tents and woken up to find the camp practically finished. Ten cabins, one each, arrayed around the central two-story shed in the middle, with their research rooms, rec room, mess and galley, garage, and an extendible observation tower.

Charlotte loved the place. Within a day she’d gone from lonely and bored on the leap ship to excited and happy. It was as if she’d come home.

She understood now why Becs had come back. Her fifth trip. The woman was in her seventies, but she’d probably spent half her life here on the mountains of Karella.

“He’s got a point,” Serge said. “You need to look after that ankle.” As well as a biology tech, Serge was the crew’s medic. His solution to anything was basically aspirin and rest. Go lie down for a while, he would say. Preferrable, really, to the AI system, which was far too clinical and analytical.

“I’m here because look,” Charlotte said, tapping the images on the table. It had a solid glass top, but the imagery inside was three dimensional.

“I’m looking,” Niall said. “An animal.”

“Big animal,” Jody said. “Real big.”

“It’s a teppu,” Charlotte said. “It’s coming here. Crawling across the vines.”

“Teppu?” Jody said. She adjusted her glasses and peered closer. “That’s its name?”

She had her long blonde hair tied back in a high ponytail. She had the kind of pretty smile and cute eyes that distracted Serge and Niall too often. Not only that, but she could outthink either of them on anything. Not a muser; a quick thinker.

“It comes from the tepui,” Becs said, still staring into the display. The view kept shifting as the recording played. The remote had been quick. A clever little flier with about thirty times the smarts of her belt.

The feeds showed great views over the temperate mountaintop forest.

“I get it,” Jody said. “We talked about it before.”

“We just haven’t seen one yet,” Niall said. “Most of us.”

There were eight of them now. Birget and Geoffrey had gone home on a passing leap ship. No one had relieved them. That just made Charlotte’s job tougher, without someone else to help wrangle the datasets. The outpost was bringing in petabytes a day. Most of it got parsed by the AIs, but there was still a lot for her to do.

Becs, though, clearly had liked the way their absence effectively extended the funding. She would spend the rest of her life here if allowed. An extra few months were welcome, that was obvious to the rest of them.

“Sienna has,” Jody said.

Sienna, Cain, and Therassa were a hundred kilometers away on one of the other mountains. Sienna was on her third trip here. There was the vague possibility she and Jody were lovers, but it was hard to be sure. Charlotte did try to stay out of other people’s business if they weren’t being obvious and annoying.

“This is Goldie,” Becs said, still staring into the display. Were her eyes glistening?

“Goldie?” Niall said.

Becs coughed. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Are you okay?” Charlotte said.

“I’m fine,” Becs said. “Goldie was born on my first trip here.” Becs looked up and around at the others. “She was one of two from the litter, that survived. The other one died a few years later. She didn’t even live long enough to raise a brood. But Goldie still comes back every year, following the pattern.”

“Your first trip?” Serge said. “That would make her . . . what? Three hundred?”

“You’re funny,” Becs said with a smile. “More like forty-eight years. And our data suggests that the teppu have a natural life span of thirty-five to forty.”

“So she’s old, too, huh?”

“Not funny, Serge,” Niall said.

“I . . .” Serge trailed off.

Becs was looking into the display again. “I didn’t think I’d see her again,” she whispered. “Look at her. So beautiful.”

“Yes,” Charlotte said, looking into the display as the recording cycled back to the start, the first, distant view. “She’s amazing.”

Three

Charlotte’s cabin was decorated in a faux-Scandinavian style. Cross-hatched windows, exposed beams, polished wooden floor with rugs. Tapestries on the walls and a hearth with a flickering fire. Some nights the mountaintop could get real cold. Having a fire was cozy.

Serge had ordered her back to bed, but she’d gotten as far as the lumpy sofa in front of the fire. The kitchenette had offered her fried chicken with biscuit, or makhani dahl with a roti. She’d told it to wait.

With plump cushions behind her back and her busted ankle raised on the sofa’s arm—the ankle had a bright blue webwork of bracing Serge’s FAB had spun to keep the joint cast—she read off her slate about the teppu.

Most of the work had been authored or coauthored by Becs. Dr. Rebecca A. Wrightson. The world authority on the ecosystems here, and the most knowledgeable about the teppu.

And most everything in the papers was so stripped back to definitions and observations it was almost a catalogue. Charlotte had read her share of scientific papers over the years, but these had to be among the most difficult to read. That was saying something.

“A visitor,” the front door said. “It is Doctor Niall Buderckon.”

“You can just say ‘Niall,’ you know?”

“Yes. I believe that Doctor Niall Buderckon has an infatuation with you.”

“Right. I believe you are so wrong. Still, would you let him in please?”

The door said nothing more, but it did open.

A whippet of cool air swept in with Niall, flickering around the room.

“A fire,” Niall said. “I wish I’d thought of that!”

They’d all dialed in their own choice of decor for the cabins long ago, back in flight before arrival. She hadn’t seen Niall’s, but it was easy to imagine a bachelor pad with a focus on beer and entertainment displays.

“You can change, you know,” Charlotte said. It took patience while the cabin reconfigured over a few days, but it was possible.

“Yeah, I don’t know where I’d put it. Maybe I’ll just come visit you.”

The door made a sound, almost like someone clearing their throat.

Niall glanced around at it and back at Charlotte. He was wearing dark green shorts, a white T-shirt, and a blue jacket.

“If you’d wear long trousers,” Charlotte said, “you wouldn’t need a fire.”

Niall came around and stood close to the flames. They were fake, but warmth still radiated from them.

“What did you make of today?” he said. “Wait. I mean, how’s your ankle?”

Charlotte smiled back at his half-embarrassed grin. “My ankle feels much better,” she said. “Thank you for asking.”

“Good. Up and about in no time, huh.” Funny, he was kind of nervous and goofy with it.

“Well, not no time. Couple of days laid up at least. Which is kind of disappointing. I wanted to watch Goldie traverse the vines.”

Niall looked at her slate. “Reading up on them? Becs’s papers?”

“They are so dry I’ve actually had to take sips of water while I read.”

Niall laughed.

He rubbed his hands together and held them closer to the fire.

“Did you eat already?” he said. “I could whip something up. You know, so you don’t have to get off the couch.”

“The thing offered me chicken or Indian.”

“Indian sounds good. Mine made me a Masala Dosa a few days back. Great big pancake.”

“Nice. You do realize that I don’t have to get up? It will make it and bring it to me.”

The kitchenette’s little table could wheel itself around to her when the meal was done.

Niall sighed. “I figured you might like the company. Anyway, Becs says that the teppu will—”

“Goldie.”

“What? Oh, right. She says it’ll take Goldie six or seven days to cross the vines. You’ll be able to go see. Easy.”

“I want to watch it all.”

Niall said nothing. He stared into the fire.

“All right,” Charlotte said. “Go whip me something up.”

Soon they were eating, Niall sitting cross-legged on the rug near her. The curry was delicious, and Charlotte surprised herself by consuming the whole thing.

“You’re hungry because you’re hurt,” Niall said, taking her empty plate to the cycler. “Your body needs the calories.”

“Are you saying I eat too much?”

“No! I just . . .” Niall trailed off, then, “Ha. Ha.”

After he’d gone and Charlotte was drifting off to sleep on the sofa, and the fire was dying down, the door murmured, “Infatuated.”

“You,” Charlotte told it, “can shut right up.”

Four

Heavy bursts and sheets of rain swept across the mountaintop, hiding the dawn. Charlotte’s cabin wound open the shades and widened the main window so she could watch. The sound of the drops on the glass was a brilliant pattering symphony.

It was amazing that any topsoil formed at all on the rocky plateaus. It felt as if the weather was doing everything it could to strip the mountain back to the sea.

It would be amazing to see from her chosen running route. Charlotte kind of smiled, with the irony. Running in rain like this was a bad idea, but with a busted ankle she wasn’t going to be running anytime soon.

“Visitor,” the door said. It could be kind of cranky in the mornings.

“Thank you.” Charlotte scooped another mouthful of breakfast cereal into her mouth. Oaty and sweet. She might have to have this more often.

“You can open up,” she said, and swallowed. The door offered security as well as protection from the weather, but there simply weren’t strangers to keep locked out.

The door swung open, and Niall stepped in, soaking wet and grinning.

“Come on,” he said. “Becs is getting the landing ship and setting it to take us on a flight to see the teppu.”

“Shouldn’t we leave it alone?”

“Becs knows what she’s doing. Come on. Ship’s warming up.”

The ship didn’t need to warm up, but Charlotte did, suffering the indignity of having Niall piggyback her through the muddy compound to the vessel.

The landing ship was shaped like a porcupine that had grown horns and wings. A clever thing that could reconfigure itself in a number of different ways. Right now it was extending its wings slowly, and slimming down its chubby porcupine body fuselage. Niall struggled up the stairway into the cabin.

“Idiot,” Jody said as he stepped through, shucking Charlotte to the cabin floor. She hopped.

“What are you talking about?” Niall said.

The others were all there, arrayed along the sides of the cabin. They sat in plush comfy chairs that doubled as acceleration couches for when they made the return to orbit.

“Umbrella,” Jody said. “Stasis field. Raincoat. Getting one of us to help.”

“It’s all right,” Charlotte said. “I’m here. The rain’s refreshing.”

“It’s cold,” Niall said.

Serge came running up behind them, wearing a coat. He stopped at the doorway, took off the coat and shook it. The moisture misted off, and the coat balled itself up.

“Look at the two of you,” he said. “You’re drenched.”

Jody had retrieved some towels from somewhere, and she gave them to Niall and Charlotte. Becs told them all to take their seats.

The ship closed up, with a puff of sweet lavender scent, as if it was trying to soothe them in the face of the storm, and soon they were in the air.

The vistas were extraordinary, even with the driving rain. The subtly rolling forest of the mountaintop, the sudden drop off to the valleys. The ship cruised effortlessly through the buffeting weather.

The ship banked and brought them into the valley. They traveled at an economical hover. Waterfalls splashed down through notches and grooves, glowing white even in the gloom.

Soon the ship was approaching the vines. The sides of the vessel shifted and grew transparent, turning into long picture windows. Some of the porcupine-quill appendages were visible, hanging from above. The seats turned to face out. The vines stretched above them like hanging gardens. More waterfalls dropped from parts of the vines, cohesive for a short way, before shredding in the wind and simply joining the rain in its fall toward the valley forest.

“How could these things grow?” Niall said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“The teppu cubs are tiny,” Charlotte said. “They spin thready web.”

“Like baby spiders ballooning,” Jody said.

“Yeah, but over that distance?” Niall said. “Hundreds of meters!”

Becs just smiled, listening.

“Just because you didn’t watch an oak tree grow from an acorn,” Serge said, “doesn’t mean that an acorn wasn’t the start.”

“This is not a tree,” Niall said. “It’s a kilometers-long strand. It’s hard to imagine it being natural.”

“There are hundreds of them,” Jody said. “Are you suggesting ancient aliens? You know, they flew in and built protein-based vine strands while the locals erected pyramids in their honor?”

“Pyramids?” Niall said. “There are no pyramids.”

“Don’t take it all so literally,” Charlotte said. “She’s baiting you.”

Karella had no indigenous sentients. There were some pretty smart primates in the deep rain forests that were starting to build shelters, and lots of tool use among the birds and rodent-like critters.

Niall smiled. “I know. I’m baiting back.”

“Sure you are,” Jody said.

“After this,” Becs said, “we’ll swing north to Tarantara and we’ll take a look at something. I think it’s important.”

The ship flew slow and low over the trees. From this angle, the catenary sweep of the vines was even more obvious. The middle was probably just five hundred meters above the treetops.

The vines made a twisted tangle, wound one over the others. Parts were joined by sheets and tendrils. There were clumps of vegetation growing in places. The whole cluster of vines had to be over thirty meters wide. Twisted and braided inside.

Next to them—well, below—the teppu looked small. It was almost hard to imagine that it was as big as ten elephants.

The ship drew in closer. Becs sat by the window, working on a slate to control their flight.

The teppu was like an inverted table, but with a garden. Maybe like one of those basket planters that Charlotte’s mother so loved. Strong thick legs clung to the vine, the fat head was almost buried in the shoulders, a thin tail flicked around at the back—thin was relative; it probably had more girth than Charlotte.

On the teppu’s back, leafy green shrubs grew, with flowers and grasses. It was remarkable to see this close up.

“Is that symbiotic?” Jody said. “I mean, do the plants root themselves into the teppu’s body, or is there just soil stored there?”

“Soil,” Becs said. “Goldie gathers it when she’s worming her way along the mountaintop. Uses her own waste as fertilizer.”

“Why?” Niall said. “Is it like, you know, a window box or something?”

“Habitat for her young. Nutrient exchange. Cooling.”

“Oh.”

“She’s coming back to nest, isn’t she?” Charlotte said.

“I didn’t think she would,” Becs said. “As you can see, she’s old and tired. I’d imagined we’d seen the last of her.”

The ship continued to draw closer, and the rain cleared for a moment.

Some birds fluttered around the teppu’s legs, black things with bright yellow crowns. They darted back into the shrubbery.

Becs stared. She whispered something Charlotte didn’t catch.

“She’s bigger than the others,” Charlotte said. “Isn’t she?”

“They don’t seem to stop growing. And at some point they’re just too big to sustain themselves. Let me watch for a few minutes, then we’ll go look at some of the other sites.”

“We have work to do,” Niall said.

“Urgent geological work?” Jody said. “Really? Can’t you just enjoy this?”

“I am, of course. I just don’t . . .” He trailed off and stared out the window. “Never was good with animals,” he muttered. “Animals and people. Rocks, I understand. You can tell what they’re going to do.”

Charlotte reached over and gave him a playful punch on the upper arm.

“Like that!” he said, but he was smiling.

Five

After watching Goldie and her slow progression across the vines for a while longer, Becs had the lander fly above the rain and the clouds. The vessel sped north.

The day was bright and clear and Jody coaxed the little food dispenser into delivering them coffees and chocolatey mini-croissants.

Becs didn’t speak. She sat watching imagery on her slate from the flyover of Goldie.

“Everything all right?” Charlotte said, sipping on her coffee. She’d dried out in the warmth of the cabin.

Becs kept watching the images for a moment. She looked up and out at the clouds, and around at Charlotte as if just noticing her.

“Becs?” Charlotte said.

Becs shook her head. “It’s all right. We’ll be there soon. You’ll be interested.”

“I know. Everything is interesting here.”

Becs managed a smile, but her eyes were far away.

The skies cleared and below, the mountaintop temperate forests became visible. On over a valley, where steaming mist rolled from the rain forest canopy.

The vessel crossed another mountain, a smaller one, with large areas of bare rock, and slowed along the edge, dipping down.

“Here we are,” Becs said. “Tarantara. It’s a pity about the name, actually.”

The landing ship slowed, gliding low over the valley forest. Bushy, buoyant green foliage stretched up, uneven and lush. A flock of brilliant teal and orange birds swirled around like a miniature tornado, spreading out at the top.

“Look at that,” Serge said, pointing ahead.

There was a gouge through the forest. A deep black strip, like a canyon of its own. It stretched for hundreds of meters, with a break near the far mountain, where it picked up again. As if whatever had made the gash had bounced and landed once more.

Or where the separate tips of the broken vine complex had ended in their fall.

“This happened about fifteen years ago,” Becs said. “We didn’t have any local sensors, but the orbital cubes picked it up and mapped and extrapolated and created a good picture of what happened.”

“What happened?” Serge said.

“A vine complex broke,” Jody said. “Isn’t that obvious?”

“Oh. Right. Of course.”

The vessel continued its flyover. Charlotte peered down into the tear in the forest. It was dark down there, but the forest was regenerating. Like any rain forest, it was vigorous in the warmth and the wet. Maybe another fifteen or thirty years, and there would be no sign that there had been any incident here at all.

“Over this way,” Becs said, “you can see the remains of the vines where they fell.”

The vessel was turning, slowly coming back to face the mountain they’d flown over. The cliffs were the same as back at Malale; sheer quartzite bluffs, with a few patches of hardy plants, the rugged, vegetated talus slope, and the crown of temperate forest, patchy as it was.

And something gray-green streaked down the side. As the vessel drew closer, it was clear that this was the drape of the vine where it had fallen.

Some of its little gardens still grew, shrubs with twisted trunks, clinging on, ragged and hardy. The vessel flew in low and close.

“Bones,” Jody said. “There.”

Charlotte followed the line of Jody’s pointing finger and saw fat white shafts and curves poking out from one side of the collapsed vine. Crushed in against the rock.

“I thought they would be gone by now,” Becs said, and drew a deep breath.

“No you didn’t,” Niall said. “You knew. You’re showing us.”

“Hush,” Serge said.

“It’s a teppu, isn’t it?” Charlotte said. They looked like dinosaur bones. There was one that was knobby at the end, like a femur.

What a terrible death. Walking along your own highway and getting crushed when it fell.

“A teppu, yes,” Becs said. “Manaka. She was younger. Maybe ten years old. And yes, I wanted you to see, but also to see this.”

Becs worked on the slate and the vessel banked away, circling higher. It came around again, closer to the mountain’s edge, almost level with the plateau, perhaps a kilometer or more from where the fallen vine lay with poor Manaka.

“Here it is,” Becs said. “We have to be real careful with the landing ship.”

The ship brought itself into a hover. The maneuver was expensive on fuel, so Becs must have thought it worthwhile.

“What are we looking at?” Serge said. “The cliff edge?”

The rocks stood out sharply. Some facets shone in the sunlight, now that the rain had been left far behind. The ship was close enough that the fractures and irregularities were visible.

“There,” Jody said. “See that?”

Again Charlotte followed the imaginary line from Jody’s pointing fingertip.

Rolling clouds far off toward the horizon, and another of the big condor-like birds gliding around. The cliff there with something catching some sunlight. Something wafting.

“A line,” Charlotte said. “A web.”

“Weblike,” Becs said. “There are teppu cubs there. Still very tiny. Spinning out the strands. The strands bunch and twine. They have their own feathery vanes. Even a nervous system.”

“No,” Niall said.

“You would know,” Jody said.

“Easy,” Serge said. “He was just expressing incredulity.”

“The threads float and waft and bind. They float like kite strings across the valley. When they make it there, they bind on. Cling to the rocks. Weave their way on inland across the mountaintop plateau. They grow stronger. The young, they work their way back and forth, adding thread and strengthening it all.”

“I’m trying to find the evolutionary process that forms this,” Serge said. “As with Niall, I’m feeling some incredulity.”

“That’s what we’re here for, right?” Charlotte said. “Understanding the ecosystems.”

“I’ve been studying the ecosystems for decades,” Becs said, barely audible, “and still they mystify me. But this is what you see.”

“How did you know?” Charlotte said, watching the threads waft. “How did you know that we would see this?”

“Exactly,” Jody said. “Surely this is not happening all the time.”

“It happens a lot.” Becs held up her slate. “But I did have the AI look for possible sites. You young ones need to see some of this. You get so focused on data and publishing and papers and getting your names around that you forget to look at the world.”

No one spoke for a moment.

Charlotte took a sip from her coffee. Found it cold and set it back down.

“It does happen a lot,” Niall said. “It happens all the time.”

“All the time?” Jody said. “Again, how would you know?”

“She’s ribbing you,” Serge said. “You know, on account of you being a geologist rather than—”

“I know that it happens,” Niall said, “because that makes sense. There’s no extant vine here. Ipso facto, they need one. Otherwise their migration routes are interrupted. It’s like a mature oak tree must make hundreds of thousands of acorns through its lifetime. How many make it to maturity?”

“And it’s more than just that,” Charlotte said. “More than just producing hundreds so that a few will survive. We can’t apply the tropes of Earth ecosystems to those here. There will be distinct differences.”

“Right,” Niall said. “It’s not as if there’s a set pattern for survival. No set way, just that whatever works is what keeps working.”

The threads kept wafting. Becs had directed the vessel away from the rock wall, following the line of the threads, but keeping some distance.

“I’d like to see them,” Niall said. “The young. I take it they’re much smaller than the adults.”

“Standard with young,” Serge said.

“No, I mean, proportionally. A whale has live young that are bigger at birth than I am now.”

“Tiny,” Becs said. “Less than one ten millionth of the teppu’s adult size.”

“No,” Serge said. “I mean. Okay, but I can’t wrap my head around a number like that.”

“The teppu are big,” Charlotte said. “Goldie must be around a hundred seventy-five metric tons. A ten millionth of that would be seventeen and a half grams.”

“Say the size of a mouse,” Niall said, smiling at her. “If that.”

“See,” Jody said. “Charlotte’s good with numbers.”

Niall was still smiling at Charlotte. She smiled back.

“Another time,” Becs said. “Let’s head back. We’re here for a while. There will be other moments to watch these things.”

Six

The rain had cleared and the ground glistened around the camp buildings when they returned. The landing ship settled to the ground, whirring and hissing. Warm, moist air swept in when the external door opened.

Niall helped Charlotte back to her cabin, one arm over her shoulder, his arm around her back as she hobbled along.

“A crutch,” he said. “Or a walking stick. The system can make you one.”

“Okay.”

The door greeted her and swung open. There was the smell of tea and sweet cookies inside. The kitchenette had prepared for her arrival.

“I guess you’ll spend the afternoon data processing,” Niall said.

“Yes. The advantage of my role, I suppose, is that I don’t have to be out in the field like the rest of you.”

“I don’t have to be out in the field. Once I’ve got samples, there’s plenty to do in the lab. I mean. I. There’s work that I can . . . I mean, if you want company, I can hang around.”

Charlotte smiled. It was cute seeing him tongue-tied.

“Those vines are something, huh?” she said. “Stretched across that distance, but still able to support a creature that weighs close to two hundred tons.”

“Yes. But not always. You saw Manaka’s bones there. Crushed in the fall. Her body trapped there.”

“Let’s not talk about that.”

“Yeah.” Niall stood for a moment. “Well, work to do. I’ll . . . drop by later, see how you’re doing.”

“I’d like that.”

He grinned like a kid and stepped back out the door, just as the rain started up again.

Charlotte sipped on the tea and nibbled on the sweet cookies—chocolate chip, as if the cabin knew her inside out—and worked on datasets. She used the whole tabletop and set the AIs on routines ordering and extrapolating and making connections.

The AIs were smart, but there were so many systems out there gathering data, there were always bottlenecks and choke points in getting useful information from them. Despite their intelligence, the AIs still needed some corralling from outside.

The uncanny valley, where robots that looked close to human creeped people out, was rooted deep in the brain. There was something similar with AI; a valley they’d never crossed to intuition and hunches and guesswork. Maybe someday.

Charlotte had always liked the old trope of how wisdom came from knowledge, knowledge came from information and information came from data. Levels of interpretation at each step up from data. Someday, she might even have a little wisdom. Say, with men for example, so she didn’t end up with the head-shaking from her mother and the eye rolls from her sister. Gillian, with another baby coming, and the father still sticking around. Gillian was good with men.

Later in the afternoon, the front door said, “A visitor. It is Doctor Niall Buderckon.”

“Just ‘Niall.’”

“You indicated as such earlier. I will try to remember. I believe that Doctor Niall Buderckon has an infatuation with you.”

Seated at the table, Charlotte laughed. “You might even be right. And would you let him in, please?”

“As you command.” Sometimes the door could have a sense of humor.

Niall stepped through as the door swung wide. “You gotta come,” he said, without any to-do. “Come now. Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Charlotte stood, favoring her busted ankle.

“Jody found a nest in the data. We want to go see the babies.”

Niall was holding up a crutch. It had some kind of fat, clawed foot on the end, and a curved slot for her arm.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re serious.”

Seven

The landing ship surged high across the terrain. The vessel followed almost a parabolic flight path, up, then down. West, leaving the sun behind. The ship’s flight systems—the combination of aerodynamics and gravity resistance—allowed for quick trips this way.

Charlotte watched the ground below as they descended.

“We’ve come a long way,” she said. “Clear across the whole shield?”

“Not quite,” Jody said. She was directing the craft, on the slate. There were just the three of them, Jody, Niall, and Charlotte herself. Serge had stayed back and no one had mentioned it to Becs. Apparently they were afraid she would veto it and tell them just to get on with their jobs; the funding was tight enough as it was.

But there was a buffer. There always was.

“It’s mountain A397cy,” Jody said. “No actual name. Just here toward the edge.”

She showed Charlotte the slate, with the map displayed on the face. The shield area was highlighted and broken up with all the valleys, more of them, and wider to the south. The giraffe patterning.

“It makes you wonder,” she said. “Why do they come so far? The living vines must get very stressed stretching over such distances.”

“I know.”

“They migrate,” Niall said. “Summer in the north, winter in the south. Hatchlings come at the start of spring. The adult teppu depart as things warm up. Big bodies like that must generate a whole lot of heat, they need to get to cooler climes.”

"Really?"

He frowned at her. "What?" he said.

"I thought you were just a geologist."

He shrugged. "Well since they're your thing, I did some reading." He gave her a cute, sheepish smile.

How about that? A genuine interest.

"Well," Charlotte said. "You still have some surprises." She chewed on a piece of dried fruit the landing ship’s dispenser had supplied. The trip had taken a couple of hours, and it was good to have tasty snacks.

They’d flown across almost the same latitude, but mountain A397cy was toward the edges of the shield area. Beyond, there were a couple of smaller mountains— almost spikes, really, towers. They were quite a distance off, and farther south from them was just deep rain forest, then a wide flat savannah for hundreds of kilometers, and then one of the oceans.

The mountaintop plateau was perhaps ten square kilometers. Small compared to a lot of them, but still enough to have quite a stand of forest across it. It was a deeper green than back at Malale, with some tall trees that had speckles of bright white blossoms, or fruit.

There was just one old vine between A397cy and the next mountain over, A281mm. Some of the vegetation on the vine was dead and brown.

The exposed rock area between the edge of the forest and the edge of the cliffs was much wider than elsewhere, and Jody set the landing ship down in the space.

They exited and trooped along for about a half a kilometer, to near where the vine connected. Charlotte’s crutch was almost like an extra leg. It had its own AI, and the foot stood well and the curve on her arm gripped and adjusted with each step. It was surprisingly easy to get along.

From all around came the twitter of birds. A whole cacophony of sounds, from deep-throated almost croaks, to long, complex high-pitched melodies. Birds fluttered in and out of the trees. Some glided higher, just like back at Malale.

The smells were rich, too, humus and pollen and other things she couldn’t identify. It was such a dynamic forest.

Charlotte hadn’t seen a point where a vine complex joined to the rock before. Not close up. She was simply stunned by the extent of it. The complex was thinner than the one where they’d observed Goldie, but up close it still seemed huge. The ashy gray vines stood around two meters high at the point where they crossed the edge.

Like a mound, on this side, but stringy and complex. Mosses and other plants grew across it. Things that might have been fungus, too. There was still a lot of identification to do on the way the living systems here worked.

The mound shape of the vine complex quickly shallowed on the inland side, but it spread out at the same time.

“It’s like an alluvial fan,” Niall said. “It expands out with braids and getting thinner. Same amount of material, but a greater area to cover.”

“Geologist!” Jody said, as if the word was an insult.

“Well, technically, an alluvial fan is physical geography,” Niall said. “It’s made of rock debris, but it’s a macro-structure rather than . . .”

Jody was grinning. Charlotte had to grin, too.

“Hey,” Niall said, half-offended, half-amused at himself. “We’re all scientists here, right?”

“Guess so.” Jody pointed beyond the spread of the vines. “It’s that way.”

Charlotte found herself looking at her feet as they traversed the edges of the vine. There were hundreds of tendrils—roots, really—spreading out in all directions. Clinging to the rocks, burying themselves into the cracks and crevices.

“Kelp,” Jody said. “And other seaweeds, they kind of do this. They have strong feet that grip at the rock.”

“On this scale?”

Jody laughed. “Nothing like it.”

They picked their way across, trying to avoid standing on the roots. Mosses grew in the niches around the edges, and insects scurried along. Some of the roots stretched right across the rocky area and into the margins of the forest.

Charlotte was going to have to follow one sometime. Figure out how deep it went. It was impossible to avoid imagining it all as interconnected. Not like a Gaia thing, but with interdependencies. Nutrient sharing and so on. Vesicles from one connecting with the systems of another.

Becs had probably already done all that work years ago anyway, but it was still interesting to explore.

“Come on,” Niall said. “Don’t dawdle.”

Soon they’d left the vine behind. Jody used the slate to help guide them on toward the nest. It was less than a hundred meters beyond the last fringes of the vine’s grip.

The vegetation at the forest margin was thicker and stronger than back on Malale, though it hadn’t grown closer to the mountain’s edge.

Of course, they were hundreds of kilometers away. Even at the same latitude, there were variations in the way the flora worked. And certainly there would be differences in the geology. Niall would know about that.

“There,” Jody said. “You can see where she’s crawled in.”

Where Jody was pointing, there was an area of crushed and shoved-aside plants. Like a pathway into the forest. As if someone had dragged a giant carcass through using cables and pulleys.

“I don’t think they go in very far,” Jody said. She was carrying the slate and looked at it again. She started into the forest, following the damage.

The height of the canopy increased quickly, and soon they were in trees that stood well above their heads. It was darker and there was sparse undergrowth.

The trail was more obvious, if anything. Squeezing between trunks in places, crushing saplings in others.

“Do they use the same nest?” Niall said. “Returning every year?”

“That’s what the journals say,” Jody said. “I mean, you know, the articles and papers Becs has written.”

A shiny gold bug buzzed at Charlotte, circling her head for a moment. It was the size of her thumb and had huge compound eyes, with few lenses. It darted away into the trees.

Ahead, there was something gray-white on the forest floor. Maybe thirty meters off.

“There,” Charlotte said, pointing with her free hand. Her other arm was growing sore from operating the crutch.

“That’s her,” Jody said, moving ahead, picking up the pace.

“You have an incoming communication,” Charlotte’s belt said. “It is Doctor Rebecca A. Wrightson.”

“Oh,” Charlotte said. “Becs, go ahead.”

“Jody,” Niall called. “Wait up.”

“Charlotte,” Becs said from the belt. “Where are you?”

“Ah. A397cy. Out west.”

“Jody is with you?”

“And Niall.” Becs would know all that anyway. Where they were, who had come. It would all be on the manifests in the data systems.

“I think you should come back now,” Becs said.

“It’s right here,” Jody said. “I can see them! Come look.”

There was movement through the trees. The teppu. Its arms were splayed out. It was smaller than Goldie. Maybe the equivalent of three elephants. No wonder it had caused so much damage through the forest.

Jody moved closer with her slate.

The teppu made a growl. Deep and resonant. Like something from far below the ground.

As Charlotte looked through the trees, it was obvious now that this was the path that the teppu took with each migration cycle. The forest floor had regenerated in the year it had been gone—Karella’s year was closer to twenty Earth months—but then was damaged with her new passage. Beyond the trail, the trees were stronger, thicker, denser. There would be trails like this all over the mountains.

Jody stepped closer. Nearer the head.

The teppu’s big eyes stared at her. Blinked.

“Please tell Jody to move back,” Becs said. “You all need to return to the vessel and return at once to our camp.”

“Jody,” Niall called. “Let’s go.”

“Give me a minute. I want to get some imagery.” Jody waved the slate around to encourage it to gather photos and other information.

Another growl from the teppu.

“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” Charlotte said.

“We’ll talk when you return. Please stop Jody now. Get her back aboard the vessel.”

“By force?” Niall said.

“If that’s what it takes.”

It didn’t take force. The teppu’s left arm swatted Jody. She tumbled away into the brush.

The teppu made a soft lowing sound and lowered its arm.

Charlotte and Niall had to carry Jody back to the landing craft. Charlotte’s healing ankle screamed at her all the way.

Eight

The sun was high by the time they got back. Lunchtime. As well as a longer year than Earth’s, Karella had a longer day, by about forty minutes. Still within that duration of daytime heating versus night-time cooling that allowed for flourishing ecologies.

Charlotte and Jody and Niall sat in the main shed’s rec room, sharing one of the dumpy sofas. Charlotte was thirsty, but she waited. Her ankle throbbed.

Charlotte had never seen Becs angry before. And had never seen anyone be so incredibly angry.

It was quite an education, really.

Becs was like a matriarch. Endlessly patient with them. But they were still adults. Right now it didn’t feel like it.

Charlotte felt about three, having broken an heirloom vase, or sixteen and having shorted the family aircar’s AI, gone ahead and crashed it into a field outside of Woodville.

Those had been harrowing moments, facing her parents. In very different ways.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” Jody said. She’d regained consciousness halfway back. Sore and kind of apologetic.

Actually, Jody should just shut up. Anything she said only raised Becs’s ire.

At least Serge and the others weren’t here. It would be embarrassing to have them sitting in on this.

“You’re a scientist,” Becs said. “Everything we do here causes harm. Look at our camp. Look at our ship. We mitigate that harm. We take care. We do it on the balance of how much we can learn.”

Jody swallowed. “I get that. But there’s got to be heart to it, too. There has to be some connection with the world. Otherwise we’re all just like Charlotte. Sitting around processing numbers.”

Charlotte held her tongue. Anything she said would just make it worse. Would her cabin’s kitchenette make fire chili coffee? Maybe she could invite Jody over later and offer her some. That might come close to evening out the insult.

“Or me,” Niall said. “Right? Looking at the rocks. Where’s the heart in rocks, right?”

“Exactly,” Jody said.

“Which only makes my point stronger,” Becs said. “There’s so much to learn and understand here. As a biologist, Jody, you understand that biology is fragile.”

“Unlike, say, rocks,” Niall said.

“You clam it!” Becs said, knobby finger pointed his way. “You are as culpable in this as she is. You’re like children, the three of you. Crashing your way around the planet like it’s your personal playground.”

None of them spoke.

“Jody. You’re going home. Next leap ship that passes by you’ll be—”

“What!” Jody yelped. “You can’t do that. I’m the lead biol—”

“You’re done. This isn’t your first transgression. And you’re merrily setting back the work here by years. You’re done. Until there’s passage offworld, you’re confined to your cabin. You can assist Charlotte with data processing.”

Well, that would be fun. Charlotte sighed.

“Not to diminish the work Charlotte does,” Niall said. “Treating it as a punishment.”

“Shh,” Charlotte whispered.

Becs’s finger shifted to drill straight at Niall. “Yes, and if it was Charlotte who’d instigated this little excursion, she would get a different kind of punishment. Probably gathering biological samples from mud bogs.”

Charlotte held back her smile, barely. Jody would love mud bogs.

“And get that smile off your face,” Becs said, her finger’s muzzle aimed right between Charlotte’s eyes. “You’ve already gotten yourself hurt, which sets things back, too. To go out there with your busted foot ties you up in this, too.”

“I’m fired?” Jody said.

“Keep up,” Charlotte said. “That happened. I’ll miss you.”

Becs looked over the three of them with the stern eye teachers reserved for the most frustrating of their class members.

She took a deep breath. Holding up her right index finger and thumb with about a half-millimeter gap, she said, “This close. The two of you.”

Charlotte nodded, a stone settling in her gut.

“Go home,” Becs said. “All of you. Back to your cabins now. I can’t stand the sight of you.”

She turned and left the rec room. She stopped at the door and looked back for a moment.

“You two.” She jabbed her finger at Charlotte and Niall. “Don’t think this is over. I just haven’t thought of an appropriate reprimand for you yet.”

She slipped out and the door closed.

Jody uttered a filthy epithet. She cursed Becs and her parentage, yelled at Charlotte for even having her belt active on the trip.

“You’re looking for someone to blame,” Charlotte said. “I understand. I’m sorry. It’s—”

“You’re not the one getting sent home!” Jody hurled herself up from the sofa and charged out. The sofa creaked and shook.

The room seemed suddenly quiet. From outside came the chirrups of birds.

“Well,” Niall said. “That went well.”

Charlotte stood. “What? How can you . . . oh. You’re joking.” She followed after Jody.

“Yeah. I make jokes when I’m nervous.” Niall stayed on the sofa.

“Stupid. Get out of here, I can’t stand the sight of you.” But she was smiling.

“Oh, really,” he said. “Can’t stand the sight of me?”

He was trying to be funny. It didn’t work.

“You’re a bad influence. You dragged me along. You even made me a crutch so I could get around easily.”

“I thought the crutch was pretty good.”

“It is.”

“So I . . .” Niall trailed off as Charlotte reached the door.

“See you in the morning, maybe,” she said. “I’m guessing that Becs is going to hold a meeting with us all.”

Nine

The night was cool, and Charlotte let the fire blaze through. It was the only light in her cabin. The table and kitchenette had folded away, leaving her with just the comfy bed platform. The whole cabin reconfigured so easily that it felt like a privilege to be able to live in it.

With the rug pulled up over her, head cradled in the soft pillow, she stared at the ceiling. Her injured ankle throbbed.

Of course it was irresponsible to just take off like that. Of course.

Like children, Becs had said, and she was right. Childish.

And now Jody was getting sent away. On account of enthusiasm, really.

And there would be consequences for Niall and Charlotte herself.

None of which was good for being here. None of which was good for future trips. What did they say? That won’t look good on a resumé.

She found herself drifting in and out of sleep. She jerked awake when the door made an announcement.

“A visitor,” it said. “It is Doctor Rebecca A. Wrightson.”

Charlotte blinked. “What time is it?” The stone came back, heavy and hard in her belly.

“The time is two forty-two A.M. It will be—”

“Thank you. Let her in, please.”

The door creaked and opened.

Becs stepped in, dripping wet from the rain, looking all golden in the flickery firelight.

Charlotte sat up. The door closed. “Towel,” it said, as a towel unwound from the dispenser slot beside it. Set up like this, plenty of times you would step in dripping from inclement weather.

“Becs,” Charlotte said. “It’s very late.”

Becs took the towel and dried off her head. “Can’t sleep,” she said. She continued with the towel, patting down her shoulders. Water still pooled on the floor.

“Lights,” Charlotte said. “Sofa, please.”

She got off the platform, and it folded away. Parts of the floor shifted, and the sofa inflated up, foamy and cushioned.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Becs said.

“It’s very late. Is this part of my . . .” She trailed off, about to say “punishment,” but the look on Becs’s face said something different.

“Tea please,” Charlotte said. A panel opened, revealing the bench, and the kitchenette began whirring.

Becs stood holding the towel, looking bewildered and old and lost. Charlotte went and took her elbow.

Becs gave her a sharp look. “I’m not doddery, you know. Tired, yes. Soaked through, yes, but just because I’m old doesn’t mean . . .”

“I’m sorry.”

Becs sighed. “I should be sorry. Snapping at you.”

“No, please. Let’s talk.”

They sat, the sofa adjusting to their shapes. The firelight glinted at them.

“I was twenty-two when I first came here,” Becs said. “I was starting in on my master’s. Field work, with a view to perhaps extending or converting it to a doctorate.”

“Which you did.” The sweet smell of the brewing tea swam through the room.

“Which I did.” Becs drew a deep breath. “I think that I’m more at home here than back on Earth.”

“I’d noticed.”

Becs smiled. “I’m that obvious?”

“You changed. Back when we were prepping for the trip you were focused and driven. On the flight you were distant. But when we landed it was as if all your tension melted away.”

The kitchenette pinged. The tea was ready.

Charlotte got up and served. The cabin folded out a small table in front of the sofa, and she set the cups down. They clinked.

Becs picked up one of the delicate cups and sipped. “Mmm,” she said. “Thank you. It’s getting cooler outside.”

“We’re here because of Goldie, aren’t we?” Charlotte said.

“Because of the whole ecosystem. There are what, two hundred worlds now, with living ecosystems.”

“More like three hundred. Anything we do feels like a drop in an ocean.”

The leap ships kept getting better. Able to leap farther and faster. Accuracy was a big deal, apparently. Some of the new ones were able to reach, in reasonable times, worlds that had simply been specks when Charlotte had been a kid. Nothing more than images from the remote probes or Earth-based telescopes.

“Three hundred,” Becs said. “I can’t even keep up.”

Charlotte sipped from her tea, too. Chamomile. Sweet and floral. Good for being able to get back to sleep after.

She waited. Becs had come for more than just an apology. From outside came the pattering sound of the rain.

Becs sat in silence for a long time. Minutes.

Eventually, Charlotte said, “I didn’t expect so much rain. I mean, I guess I read the rainfall figures. I did. I worked on compiling them. But it’s still different looking at a jagged chart on a screen and feeling it pound down on the cabin.”

Becs smiled. She nodded. She took another sip from her cup and set it back on the table.

“Thank you,” she said, standing. “It’s been elucidating.”

“It has?”

Becs said nothing more. She went back to the cabin’s door and stepped out into the rain.

The door closed and the fire continued to flicker. It took Charlotte a long time to get back to sleep.

Ten

The day after Jody departed dawned bright and clear. The sky shone with the odd off-blue that Charlotte still wasn’t used to. She sat on the step of her cabin and fixed her boots on. The right boot had expanded itself to accommodate the cast. She still needed Niall’s crutch.

The ground was damp and smelled of mud and humus. Another thing that was taking some getting used to.

Niall had already left, hustling away before sunrise, across the camp to his own cabin. With everything in a circle, there was a fair chance that someone had seen him. And if Jody had figured it out, then everyone else would. Hard to keep that kind of thing secret in a community of eight people.

Seven people.

Jody had gone.

Charlotte had heard the sound of the landing ship taking to the air, heading for orbit, not long after she and Niall had gone to bed.

Mixed feelings now. Something warm and glowing—Niall had stayed over—but cold shards left from Jody’s departure.

“Charls!” Therassa called, heading across from her own cabin. Therassa’s skin was a couple of shades darker than Charlotte’s own, but her hair was as blonde as a cockatoo’s feathers, and her eyes were a wonderful green-blue, unlike Charlotte’s dull brown.

Therassa, Cain, and Sienna had returned from their jaunt the previous afternoon. There had been a quiet dinner with all of them to say farewell to Jody. A nice attempt at formality and celebration, but of course tinged with the situation.

Becs had not attended.

“Hi, Therassa,” Charlotte said.

Therassa wore a tan overall, with wide panels of yellow trim down the sleeves and legs and waist. She was carrying a slate, shrunk down to a ball.

“Details,” Therassa said.

“Um. We’re going to see Goldie. She’s almost reached the mountainside. We’ll see her crawl up onto the—”

“Not that! Niall! Tell me everything.” Therassa smiled, bright and welcoming. “You can’t keep me out of that.”

“Oh, that. And, yes, my ankle is feeling much better, thanks for asking.”

Therassa laughed, a loud deep booming sound. It was impossible to feel less than joyous around the woman. She was a good decade older than Charlotte, but exuded so much energy she could probably power the whole camp on her own. Maybe even recharge the landing ship.

“You, my friend,” Therassa said. “Could never stay down long. What’s a few broken bones? You go off gallivanting and get into trouble. You know that’s on your permanent record? And you get yourself a lover into the bargain. This is amazing. So, details, please.”

Charlotte sighed. Irrepressible energy could sometimes be exhausting.

Therassa put out her hand. Charlotte took it and let Therassa pull her upright.

“Come on,” Therassa said. “I’ll buy breakfast. I’m thinking hash browns, omelet, and some of that guava juice I just found out about. Have you had it? It’s great.”

“Mm-hm. The shed’s kitchen does a great job. I guess your trip was worthwhile?”

They walked together across to the shed. Serge waved from nearby, working on one of the wheeled trolleys, loading up gear ready for whatever next assignment of research he was off to.

“Worthwhile?” Therassa put her arm through the crook of Charlotte’s. “I missed all the action. Goldie arriving on the vine, you lot going off on your excursion. Romance!”

“I wish you’d leave all that alone,” Charlotte said. “One, who knows what’ll happen with me and Niall?”

“Oh. My. Gosh! Don’t worry. Maybe you’ll have children. Maybe he’ll turn out to be a rat like every other man and you can shoot him in the chest. I can get you a gun.”

“Hey!” Serge said, at the same time as Charlotte said, “Sheesh, Therassa, take it easy.”

“Sorry,” Therassa said. She gave Serge a wave. “Sorry, sorry.”

“Right,” he said. “Right.” He looked away and carried on with loading.

“Also,” Charlotte said. “With the excursion, less said the better.”

“Yes, yes.” Therassa gave her a glum smile.

They reached the shed’s entry, and the door wound open for them. Charlotte wiped her boots off on the bristly mat, getting a twinge from her ankle as she pushed the wrong way.

“Listen,” Therassa said, wiping her feet, too. “I guess I’ve just been burned so many times. So many times. I’m happy for you.”

“It’s new,” Charlotte said. “So leave it alone. Who knows? I enjoy him. He’s a bit of a klutz, but he’s sweet. We have fun, but the pool is small, right?”

“Right. Cain? Serge? I don’t think so. And Sienna’s gotta be the most asexual person I’ve ever come across. And that’s saying something.”

“Sure.” Intriguing, that wasn’t obvious at all. Sienna was quite feminine, though she had a slight, boyish figure and she did work out. Perhaps Therassa thought a woman needed hips and boobs—like her own—to be sexual.

They found Becs with Cain in one of the lab rooms. The smell of reagents drifted around. There were racks of glassware on the walls, and benches with centrifuges and AI scopes.

“Look who’s up and about!” Therassa said, grabbing Charlotte’s arm. “Talk about a speedy recovery. Who’d have thought? Are we all going to watch this teppu do her thing?”

Becs took a deep breath, without looking over. She found Therassa exhausting. Becs and Cain were working with some glass slides. Prepping samples for the scopes.

Becs handed Cain something and looked over. She tapped at the bench, and a display showed on the wall.

An AI extrapolated view from around the cliff wall, showing where the vine complex arrived. Goldie hanging there, not far away. One slow arm creeping along, the tendrils and tentacles rippling as the hand part made progress.

“Two more hours,” Becs said. “You did good work out there, Therassa. Cain’s going to be able to make some useful conclusions from the data.”

Becs took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped at her nose. Dabbed. She crushed the kerchief in her hand and stuffed it back into a pocket.

“Another paper?” Therassa said.

“Maybe two,” Cain said. “But it’s all building on years of work, of course.”

This was Cain’s second trip to Karella. He’d already established a lot of lines and experiments that had operated in his absence.

“He writes,” Therassa said. “Writes and writes and writes. We love him for it.” Therassa slung her arm around Cain’s shoulders.

“Hey,” he said.

“He makes us all look good. Those of us who are left, anyway.”

Becs’s mouth formed a thin line.

“Should we fly?” Charlotte said. “To watch Goldie? Or take one of the vehicles?”

They had four ground vehicles available, from the small monocycle, up to the six-wheeler that could just about drive down the cliff into the valley.

“The ship won’t be back from orbit,” Becs said. “I did think that we could walk. It’s only a kilometer or so. Assuming, Charlotte, that your ankle would be up to that?”

“It will,” she said. She could down a couple of painkillers and force herself. There was no way she was going to miss the event, and at the same time, no way she was going to risk irritating Becs.

It felt like a fine line, some days. Perhaps Jody was better off, heading away across the light-years.

“Twenty minutes,” Becs said. She glanced at her slate. “We’ll get underway then.”

Eleven

They ended up taking the six-wheeler. It had a long, spidery undercarriage, so the wheels could pick their way through the foliage without causing too much damage. At one point they did disturb a hive of some kind, and tiny blue insects swarmed around, buzzing at the vehicle’s canopy.

“Look at the stingers!” Therassa said. “That’d do some damage.”

“They’re lexingries,” Cain said. “They don’t sting. Maybe you’re seeing mouth parts.”

“Maybe I just don’t want to get stung.”

The six-wheeler guided them along to the cliff edge and on around to where the vines came up over. They were different from the one on A397cy. Far thicker and more developed. Insects crept along the exterior, and plants grew. Different than the plants on the mountaintop forest, and different than the rain forest below.

It would be a lifetime’s work to study all this.

The sky was bright and clear, with rain clouds building across to the east, dark and brooding. There would be another cloudburst in the afternoon.

The six-wheeler came to a stop a good hundred meters away, and the group got out. Charlotte’s crutch grabbed at the rock as she lost her balance momentarily.

“All right?” Niall said.

“Yes.”

Serge had them rope up—simple harnesses that grabbed them like a spider around the back and shoulders and crotch, all looped on thin filament back to the vehicle. Charlotte’s harness was snug but comfortable. She adjusted the shoulder strap.

“Just in case,” Becs said. “We wouldn’t want anyone going too close to the edge and losing their balance now.”

She stared at Charlotte, who did her best to hold the stare, but still had to look away after a moment.

The group trooped back and along near the edge. They went around the vine and looked.

Goldie was there. Hanging below. Maybe fifteen meters away. She looked huge this close. Well, she was huge, but still. One of the condor-like birds glided closer to the forest tops, looking tiny compared, and in the distance.

Becs sighed.

“What’s up?” Serge said.

“She’s made it, but . . .” Becs trailed off.

“We should be farther away, shouldn’t we?” Niall said. “After all, isn’t this sightseeing?”

“Sightseeing is fine when it’s putting you more in touch with things,” Becs said. “I feel it’s important.”

“Do you?”

Charlotte thumped Niall’s arm as Becs threw him a sharp look.

“Becs has sanctioned this,” Charlotte whispered to him.

“Yeah,” he whispered back. “I suppose that’s a key difference.”

“It is,” Becs said. “You only had to ask, you know that. ‘Can we head over to A397cy to look at the nest?’ you could have said. Simple.”

Charlotte and Niall said nothing.

One of Goldie’s arms released from the vine. Or almost-released. There were still fine fibers connecting the fingerish tendrils at her hand, back to the vine’s surface.

It was all symbiotic. The vine was effectively alive. The web fibers the teppus spun integrated into the system, connecting through to the roots and into the plants both on the mountaintop and those in pockets on the vine itself.

“Smell that?” Serge said. “What is that? Methane?”

“It is!” Therassa said. “Oh my, this thing farts!”

Becs sighed once more.

Goldie’s head sat up between her shoulders. Almost no neck, but huge dinner plate eyes. She had a mouth above and another below the eyes. She grazed on both the growth on the vine’s base, when creeping across, and on the ground vegetation when on land.

Inside of fifteen minutes, Goldie had the first of her legs within reach of the edge. It was so slow to watch. There was no hurry.

“She’s old,” Becs said. “I mean . . . well, none of them are athletic, but she’s definitely slowing down.”

Soon Goldie reached and took hold of the rock edge. Her gnarled, furry fingers seemed to blur as tentacles flickered out from them, seeking purchase on the rock. She pulled on forward.

Her head moved. She stared at Charlotte and the others. Double membranes of lids closed and opened slowly. She stared for a moment, still and watching.

Her eyes were so huge. It was like looking into some fortune teller’s crystal ball. Even with the gloom of the rain, there was so much light and depth in there between the lens and the retina.

Perhaps that’s where Goldie’s name had come from. The eyes were like amber, deep and rich.

“We should set up deck chairs,” Therassa said. “This is going to take all day.”

“All day and all night,” Becs said. “We’ll come back in the morning.”

She stood, staring at Goldie. The teppu’s languorous motion continued. She began to pull around the vine, pulling up the side. Pieces of the vegetation on the teppu’s belly—or was it her back?—were knocked away by the motion. Tumbling and falling down the cliff.

“We have all the monitoring set up,” Cain said. “We’ll get good imagery and data on the whole process.”

“We can speed it up and watch it on a table tomorrow?” Therassa said. “Ten times speed? Or twenty?”

Becs said nothing.

“It’s data,” Cain said. “Why would you want to do that?”

Therassa looked over at Charlotte, who lifted her hand in a small wave and mouthed I get it. Therassa grinned. Charlotte was the data specialist here, but she did get it. This amazing animal did not move in step with human time frames.

Cain and Serge set up some tripods and other pieces with recording equipment. They sent up some little remote fliers to circle and gather more data. Becs had everyone load back into the six-wheeler, and they made for camp.

“Want to take a trip?” Niall said to Charlotte, quietly, as Therassa waxed on about how clever the teppus were and how much she wished she’d spent more time here.

“A trip?” Charlotte said.

“Becs has authorized it. Maybe in the next few days, but it’s overnight. We’ll be back in time to see Goldie nesting.”

“Of course,” Charlotte said. “Sure.”

Therassa caught her eye and winked, as if in all her spouting, she was still listening and knew everything that was going on.

Twelve

Getting away, if briefly, was good. Charlotte and Niall slept in the landing craft. They gathered samples and let the fliers zip around collecting imagery and other data.

They had their first fight—over clothes, of all things—and returned in silence, though Niall managed a muttered apology as they swung in over Malale. Could be a bit of a dick, but he was sweet and mostly knew when to keep his distance and when to get close.

Actually, it was good to see other aspects of each other. Probably.

Becs wasn’t at camp when Charlotte and Niall landed.

No one was.

The place was left to the birds and the butterflies. They flittered and danced, colorful and bright. It was as if nature took over the moment people left.

The mountaintop forest was covered in mist, hanging low and sending fingers into the canopy trees. It made for an odd light, dark in the understory, but letting the silvers and crimsons of the flying creatures shine.

“Belt,” Charlotte said, standing at the edge of camp. Behind her the landing ship pinked, cooling from their hurried flight.

“How can I help?” the belt said.

“Please call Therassa.”

“Connected.”

“Therassa. Where are you?”

“You’re back. That’s good. We’re all out with Goldie. I . . . I think you should talk with Becs. She’s not in a good way.”

“Why? What’s happening? Is Goldie hurt? Or dying? Or is Becs?”

A pause.

“Niall,” Charlotte said. “Get the monocycle.”

“On it,” he said.

“She’s not hurt. Just . . . you’ll see.”

The monocycle was a two-meter diameter wheel, with a central power plant, two seats in front and a counterweight in back. It seemed strangely impractical for a location like this, but there you go. It moved surprisingly quickly through the foliage, the counterweight shifting instantly to manage bumps and turns, and soon they arrived at the small half-clearing where the six-wheeler was parked.

There was a swath through the forest, leading back toward the vine complex. Cut—or rather pushed aside—by Goldie as she’d slid and crawled through.

Charlotte and Niall had watched the footage Therassa had sped up, of Goldie making her way off the vine and into the forest. It had been a kind of creepy experience, as Goldie’s joints and body moved in odd and impossible-seeming ways. Sometimes the human brain didn’t deal well with watching dislocations and shifting lumps under furry skin. Like those films of big octopuses squeezing their way through pipes that were remarkably narrow.

Cain came over to meet them. He seemed tired. The cuffs of his pants were muddy, likewise his boots.

“This way,” he said. “How do you like the monocycle? Bit of a ride, huh?”

“It’s fine,” Charlotte said.

Cain led them through. The ground was rockier than back at the camp. Lots of grey stacks exposed in places. The old sedimentary layers showing from uneven weathering. Serge and Therassa were standing watching something. Beyond them, the white-green mass of Goldie lay in a mess of mud and branches and leaves.

She was breathing slowly, her huge bulk slowly rising and falling. There was vegetation still on her back—which looked like her back now. Her enormous legs lay by her side. Her head was stretched out on the ground—the lack of a neck clearly had been an illusion.

Becs sat by Goldie’s head.

There was mucus around Goldie’s eyes, globs of it. Charlotte felt a little bile rise in her throat and had to swallow.

Goldie was old. Was that kind of thing normal? Was she dying?

“What are we doing here?” Charlotte said. She stepped around the others. They formed a loose half circle maybe ten meters back from Becs and the teppu.

It was strange looking at the teppu—at Goldie—from here. There was still a lot of vegetation on her back. All of that work that Becs and others had done over the years showed how the symbiosis worked there, but it was very different looking at this damaged but tended garden, to how it had been examining the data.

This was a truly remarkable creature.

Charlotte stepped forward.

“Charlotte,” Cain said.

And Therassa grabbed her arm. When Charlotte looked around, Therassa just shook her head. So unusual for her to have nothing to say.

“Let me,” Charlotte said. She caught Niall’s eye and he gave her a nod.

From somewhere off in the trees something screeched. Some monkey thing, or a bird of some kind. The place never let you forget where you were.

Charlotte stepped over roots and leaf litter and crouched near Becs.

Becs blinked at her, almost as if not registering that Charlotte was there.

Goldie had an odd smell to her. Sweet and floral, mixed with decay and fetid breath. That was the thing with a lot of animals; fabulously attractive until you got hit with their odor.

“Becs?” Charlotte said. It seemed somewhat at odds with Becs’s reaction to the jaunt over to A397cy. Jody had been sent home for getting too close to a nesting teppu.

“She’s struggling,” Becs said. “I don’t know if she’ll manage to have a litter this year.”

Goldie made a deep, long, lowing sound. Almost like a minor chord. Something played on a cello or double bass. Lingering and resonant. When you had lungs the size of a cabin, those were the kind of sounds you could make.

“We should let her get on, then,” Charlotte said. “Leave her to it.”

“We may have to help.”

Charlotte glanced back at Therassa and the others. No one spoke, but it was clear they’d all heard her.

“You’re tired,” Charlotte said.

Becs managed a half-smile. “I’m old is what I am. People my age shouldn’t be leaping around in those fancy ships, from planet to planet.”

“Is there something else you’d rather do?”

Now a real smile.

“No,” Becs said. “Of course not.”

“Come on then,” Charlotte said. “Let’s get back to camp. Cain and Sienna can set up all the equipment to monitor her. We don’t need to be here.”

“We do.” Becs drew a deep breath. “I do.”

“Late,” Charlotte said. “Let’s leave it for now. Come back in the morning. We should get the doc to look at you.”

“Which one?” Becs looked over the row of them standing there. All PhDs.

“Was that a joke?” Charlotte said. “Did you just make a joke?”

“I can joke with the best of them.”

“Sure you can.” Charlotte stood. She held her hand out and helped Becs up. Becs was light. She seemed fragile.

Becs stood. “I knew it was a mistake giving you a job here.”

“No you didn’t. You gave me a job here because you need someone like me around. You need someone to tell you when to take a moment off.”

Becs nodded. She stared at Goldie.

Goldie shifted then. One of her huge arms came slowly around, like a moving tree. Dragging across the ground. The fur shished against the ground and dozens of tiny insects took wing, darting ahead. The wrist came near Goldie’s face. Near where Becs and Charlotte were standing.

The others stepped back. Therassa muttered something. Charlotte forced herself to stand her ground.

Goldie’s hand was bigger than Charlotte and Becs combined. A good two meters from the wrist joint to the tip of the fingers. They were all like furry tentacles, with more tentacles at the tips. Almost as if the hand was the alien. It was hard to compute Goldie’s sheer size.

One tentacle tip reached in toward Becs’s head. Goldie’s eyes stared right at the pair of them. The tentacle on a tentacle was a more reasonable size. Like an octopus’s arm. As fat, in the middle, as Charlotte’s own arm.

It was these tentacles that Goldie used to cling to the vines as she’d crossed. Charlotte watched, trying to see the spinnerets that added to the vine fibers as the teppu had crossed. It was hard to tell. Goldie would have to lie still for a closer examination of that.

The end of one of the tentacles touched Becs’s cheek. Stroking gently. The tentacle moved down to her neck and draped around onto her other shoulder. Pulled Becs closer.

More of the tentacles touched. Cheeks and forehead. Her arms, her chest, her hips. Becs stood, breathing slowly.

Goldie grunted. The tentacles withdrew, shortening and growing fatter. She pulled her arm away. All her eyelids closed slowly. She wheezed. Her arm dropped to the ground, startling more insects.

Goldie lay still.

“Is she dead?” Therassa said.

Becs reached out and put her hand on Goldie’s head, between her closed eyes and her upper mouth. The pair stayed like that for a long moment. Still no one else moved.

“Not yet,” Becs said, and drew a deep breath.

Goldie’s eyelids flickered, but didn’t open.

“We should go back now,” Becs said. “All of us.”

She turned and strode through them, heading toward camp, assuming they would all follow.

They all did.

Thirteen

They congregated in the main shed. Sienna seemed to take over, which was unusual. She was always very quiet and focused. Perhaps that was her way of coping. Cain helped.

The pair of them reconfigured the kitchen and mess into something more convivial. The kitchen folded out into a wide bench, and the food dispenser delivered the best it could do at fresh vegetables, rather than prepared meals. Sienna and Cain set to chopping and mixing. The smell was heavenly, full of spices and herbs.

Mostly they ate in their own cabins. It was obvious and unspoken that tonight they would eat together.

On the far side of the room, Niall adjusted the shed’s fireplace to be larger and more dynamic. It crackled and blazed with fake flames.

It was easy to imagine they were back on Earth somewhere, in some rustic mountain lodge, making do with what they had on hand, rather than waited on by AIs and clever forging machinery.

Charlotte and Therassa sat with Becs. On a wide, dumpy sofa in front of the fire. Becs was pale, but declined going to the medical bay for an examination by the doc AI. Serge had been insistent, but Becs simply continued to decline.

“I’ll be fine. I’ve just been worried about her.”

Charlotte said nothing. Considering. Before she thought of what to say, Therassa said, “You’ve become attached.”

Becs stared at the floor.

“Oh, I get it,” Therassa said. “She’s beautiful. Look at her, those eyes, that amazing garden on her back. You’ve known her since she was born.”

Becs closed her eyes and drew in a breath, nostrils flaring.

“And today, the way she touched you. She let you lie by her.”

“It’s a big deal,” Becs said. “Giving birth.”

“Well, that’s common, isn’t it? Everywhere. Every species. Birth is a tough thing.”

“Do you think she’s sick?” Charlotte said.

“Perhaps. Despite all these years, we still don’t have a body of knowledge that covers all aspects. Perhaps they have parts of their life cycle that we don’t even understand.”

“But you can run some tests? There’s a baseline, isn’t there? I can look that up. All your work’s in the data.”

Becs gave her a sad smile. “I suppose it is.”

“Food now,” Sienna said from the kitchen. Her accent was lovely. Some deep European inflection. She kept it more mysterious by speaking rarely.

Niall had set the table. Becs sat at one end, Serge at the other, with Charlotte, Niall, and Therassa on one side, Cain and Sienna on the other, closest to the kitchen.

There were sweet potatoes and greens, a bright leafy salad, something that was probably a chicken, though might well have been snared somewhere out on the mountaintop. Gravy boats and both red and white wine, and water.

Somehow Sienna and Cain had created a celebratory feast, and it was delicious.

“You two have to do this more often,” Therassa said. “I’m thinking every night.”

“You eat in your own cabin every night,” Sienna said. Not an observation; more like an instruction. “Sometimes we eat here. Maybe two more times before end of posting.”

“Five more times,” Therassa said.

“Is not negotiation. Is simple fact. Two more times, or one. You can choose.”

“Two then. And maybe I’ll try myself. How hard can it be?”

Cain laughed and Sienna frowned at Therassa. Becs smiled at them all. Like a matriarch with unruly children whom she not only tolerated, but loved.

Charlotte found her throat constricting. She had to look away.

“All right?” Niall said.

“Yes. Just, this is nice. It’s good that we all get together.”

“It’s important for the team,” Becs said.

“I know,” Sienna said. “I tease. I will do more often. Cain, too.”

“Me?” Cain said.

“Yes. You good help.” Sienna actually gave him a wink. Good grief, was there something going on there?

Charlotte sighed and ate some of the spinach and carrot. It was remarkably fresh and tasty.

“We need a good sensor array on Goldie,” Charlotte said. “So we—”

“Please,” Becs said. “No shop talk now. Let’s enjoy each other. I hear your sister is having another baby?”

Charlotte smiled. Clever.

“Yes,” she said. “Gillian. It will be her second. The first one is nearly three.”

“Oh!” Therassa said. “Three! What an age! Talk about having your hands full.”

And the meal went on without any more talk of sensors or data or results, just about family and how amazing the pavlova dessert was and whether Sienna would give up any of her secrets with the kitchen.

Charlotte felt things ebbing from her. As if she was having a massage, or a soak in a hot tub.

And that was good.

It was late when they packed up the meal and tidied the table and reconfigured the shed for more everyday things. Charlotte and Niall went back to his cabin.

It was a mess. Strewn with bags and clothing and equipment.

“Such a small space,” Charlotte said, “and still you live like you’re sixteen.”

“Actually, when I was sixteen, I was a neat freak.”

But he had chocolate and a new fireplace and it was nice to wind down the evening on his sofa. Then, on his bed.

Come morning, Becs was missing.

Fourteen

The rain pelted the camp, leaving muddy rivulets and puddles all over. With the wheezing wind, some of the rain became almost horizontal. Charlotte had seen imagery of ephemeral waterfalls, lacy and racing from the edges of the mountains after the storms had passed. So beautiful and dynamic. A wonder that any kind of soil had managed to cling to the tops at all.

She gathered them all in the main shed, and they clustered around the table. Serge already had the table up and was running lines of data, trying to locate Becs. Sienna got the coffee machine cranked up and the aroma of beans and milk and chili swelled through the space.

“She’s sick,” Therassa said. “Why would she wander off on her own?”

“She knows the place better than any of us,” Cain said. He was still wearing his slicker, the weight of water tugging it down on his shoulders. The little smart reservoirs in the hem looked full.

“Doesn’t mean she goes off half—”

“Leave it,” Charlotte said. “We can talk recriminations later. Point is to find her now and go from there.”

“I don’t see her at all,” Serge said. He kept working on the table. “Look, here’s us.”

He pointed to the middle, where the display showed a vague and grainy overhead image of the camp. Hard to tell if it was photographic or AI generated.

There was a bright yellow spot where the main shed was.

“Zoom in,” Niall said.

Serge obliged and the spot split into six separate spots.

“Our belts,” Therassa said.

“Exactly,” Niall said. “So where is Becs’s belt?”

“I don’t see it,” Serge said.

He zoomed the image right out, so that the whole of the mountaintop showed. The bright spot reformed, but no others were in view.

“Did she go over the edge?” Therassa said, putting her hand to her mouth. “Dropped into the forest? That might have wrecked the belt’s transmitters.”

“Perhaps,” Sienna said, bringing over a tray of steaming coffee mugs, “she turn belt off.”

Of course. If Becs was off-program—interacting with Goldie in an emotional rather than scientific way—she’d keep that secret.

The sound of the rain on the shed’s roof should have been calming. It wasn’t. The wind made something rattle. Some window frame somewhere. As if the thing was about to be torn apart.

“She’s a hypocrite,” Cain said.

“What?” Therassa said.

“You know what I mean. She’s attached to that animal.”

Charlotte took her coffee and sipped. Perfect. The tiny dash of chili Sienna had added just set it off.

“Later,” Charlotte said. “Focus now on finding her. Where are the feeds from Goldie? Bring them up. Send a flier over.”

“Storm’s making that kind of hard,” Serge said.

“Don’t give us that!” Therassa said. “Send them all out now. Bring in everything. Get the satellite feeds in.”

“I’ll go out,” Niall said. “I’ll go look for her myself.”

“You will fall off edge,” Sienna said. “Better you stay here and let feeds do the work.”

The shed rattled again.

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “Until we have more information, we stay here.”

Fifteen

The storm chose to continue. To not let up. To pound the mountain, right when they could have used an hour or two of sunshine and calm.

Serge got some of the fliers in the air. The signals got jumbled and fractured. Data from the sensors at Goldie’s site showed that she’d moved. Back toward the edge. She’d knocked over a bunch of tripods as she turned.

“She’s leaving?” Therassa said, looking bereft. “She hasn’t birthed any viable young yet.”

“She is old teppu,” Sienna said. “Is not good idea to cross vines in storm.”

Niall and Cain made a stack of burritos and kept them coming. Therassa paced. Sienna helped Serge with controlling the fliers.

Charlotte got Therassa—as much to keep her occupied as anything—and they put together gear ready to leave the moment they had information.

“Thanks for stepping in,” Therassa said. “Without you directing, we’d just be unruly kids.”

“Yeah. I know what Becs meant.”

“Hey. I was trying to say something nice.”

“I know. And I said something nice back.”

“Oh. Okay.”

It took hours, but Serge managed to find Becs.

Tucked away in the forest garden on Goldie’s back.

“Doesn’t that just beat all?” Cain said.

The image was glitchy and rough. The flier was barely able to hold position. Serge did what he could with processing to keep it clear in the table’s display.

Becs was lying on her side, curled and holding something in her hand. Like a little mouse.

“There,” Sienna said, pointing into the image. “Birth canal. There, teat. Is baby teppu. Becs is incubating. Keeping baby safe from cold of downpour.”

“How did she even get up there?” Cain said.

“Later,” Charlotte said.

Becs wasn’t moving. She wouldn’t survive long out in the storm.

Charlotte met Niall’s eyes.

“We’ll go get her,” Niall said. “Get the doc ready.”

“The flier is picking up the signal from her belt,” Serge said. “She’d suppressed it, but this close, I’m getting solid data.”

“So?”

“There are no life signs. Becs has passed away.” He looked over the group. “Probably right where she needed to be, right?”

No one spoke.

The next day, storm just as intense, Goldie left. As she made her way onto the vine complex, the storm broke and brilliant shafts of sun through the cloud lit her way.

They’d never had a chance to retrieve Becs’s body.

Sixteen

A month later, a data package arrived from Earth. The institute censured them and instructed that they were to continue work in the meantime, but to prepare for departure.

The sun baked the ground, cracking the mud where the storm-driven puddles had formed. Niall took core samples, and Therassa found excuses to fly to other mountains to gather biological samples.

Serge and Sienna shacked up. Cain’s mother passed away, and he was able to get passage on a leap ship back home.

Spring came and the mountaintop bloomed with a dazzling array of flowers and buds and fabulous wafting tufts that would shame the most elegant of peacocks. The forest buzzed with insect pollinators.

“I’d enjoy it more,” Therassa told Charlotte over a cask of moderate wine, “if our departure wasn’t hanging over us. I wish they’d just drag us home already. Jody was lucky.”

“You could have gone with Cain.”

“And miss all this?”

Then, six months. Charlotte continued to process the data. She cowrote a paper with Niall, and it was taken by Exo-Geological II, which was a pretty cool credit. They put Becs’s name on it.

Serge tracked Goldie, using Becs’s belt and a keyed-in flier. Strange animals, like a mix between mites and tiny rodents, dug around Bec’s body, lowering it into the captured soil. Eventually they covered her.

“A kind of burial,” Niall said. “We should say something.”

Becs’s belt stopped transmitting, and the flier got snapped up by a passing flying apex predator and tossed into the rocks. It seemed like a sign.

And then, almost a year.

Charlotte had considered enlarging her cabin to accommodate Niall, but he would only haul in his teenage clutter and mess. It didn’t matter, really. After all, he was just across the compound.

He did stay over plenty, though. Which was fun and risky and had the benefit of increasing her understanding of geology, if not the way that a man’s mind works.

One morning, while she lay in bed, him asleep and snuffling beside her, her belt, on the bedside table, said, “You have an incoming communication. It is Doctor Therassa de Galle.”

“Thank you. Therassa?”

“Goldie’s back,” Therassa said from the belt. “She’s coming across from Ikenni. Across the vine complex.”

Already Charlotte was out the door and running for the edge of the mountain.

Seventeen

The sun poured across the valley. The sky was clear save for a few puffy clouds to the west. It wasn’t going to rain, they would just sit out there for the morning.

When Charlotte arrived at the cliff’s edge, Serge had already joined Therassa. They were just a hundred meters from where the vine complex latched onto the mountaintop.

Over the year, they’d watched the vines repairing themselves. New strands growing and thickening along the base, the forest that grew along most of the top continuing to flourish. Sienna had run tests, showing that the web from the teppu formed a strong basis for the plants, and that nutrients were drawn up from deep within the rock cavities where the vine rooted.

There was no single plant, and the interaction between the cellulose and cells of the plants and the proteins of the teppu’s web was still far from being understood.

Goldie was far off. Not long since she’d maneuvered herself from Ikenni, two kilometers away, onto the vine. She was coming slowly.

“Are you sure it’s her?” Charlotte said.

Therassa handed her a scope and Charlotte looked through it.

It was Goldie all right. Her eyes were tired, and her movements were slow, but it was her, to be sure.

Sienna came up behind them. “I do not understand what is rush?” she said. Her English was gradually improving.

“It’s Goldie!” Therassa said.

“But will take her a week to get across. She moves very slow.”

“But it’s Goldie!”

“Ah, now I understand. Is Goldie. I cannot argue with such logic. Thank you.”

“You think you’re funny. But it’s Goldie. She’s come back. She’s still alive. Maybe she will raise a family.”

“I will see you in one week.” Sienna turned and left, heading back through the forest.

Therassa watched Sienna go. “What’s her problem?”

“We all have different responses to what happened,” Charlotte said. “Sadness, loss, confusion, ambivalence. I guess Sienna’s at the ambivalent end of the scale.”

“You’re telling me. And you?”

Charlotte stayed silent. How did she feel? Watching Goldie return. Ageing, but still hanging on somehow.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to watch because of the vines,” Serge said. “Maybe she would hate it if the vines gave way and Goldie plunged to . . .”

“Nah,” Therassa said. “I’m going with ambivalent.”

“Okay. You’re probably right.”

They stayed watching for an hour, Goldie’s hands taking one slow, short step after another. Niall arrived and watched with them.

“Are we going to keep a vigil?” he said.

“I like that idea,” Therassa said. “We can get a picnic table set up and—no! a shelter. We can fab a little cabin, because it rains so much. And then any time we want we can just come and watch her cross.”

Charlotte smiled. It wasn’t just her who was enthused about the return.

It took a couple of days to get the hide set up near the cliff edge, with a wire railing running twenty meters each way in case anyone lost their bearings while watching Goldie cross.

On the day that Goldie climbed her way back onto the mountaintop, there was a collective change. Charlotte felt the relief herself, like the proverbial weight lifted from her shoulders.

Goldie scrabbled her slow way inland, along the same route as last time, pushing down the new saplings and shrubs. Carrying Becs’s body on her back.

What was the hold that the woman had over them, after her death? None of them had truly gelled with her. No one had formed any particular kind of bond. Especially after she’d sent Jody away.

One evening, Sienna came to visit, announced by the door. She stepped into the cabin and seemed almost surprised to see Niall there.

“We’re toasting marshmallows,” Charlotte said. “Want to join?”

“It is summer,” Sienna said. “Why would you toast the marshmallows?”

It was definitely warmer, and the sun went down later each day, but the evening still picked up a quick chill. Marshmallows and hot chocolate were always a good solution to that.

“Try one,” Charlotte said. “You might like it.”

“Yes. All right.” Sienna came and sat with them on the sofa. Niall stuck one of the fat, pink marshmallows on the end of a skewer.

“And now?” Sienna said.

“Like this.” Charlotte demonstrated, skillfully holding her own marshmallow in the flames to get just the outside singed to a browny-black.

“Is easy.” Sienna proceeded to set fire to hers.

Niall laughed. “Is easy, but takes practice.”

“Is stupid. I have come to tell you that I believe that Goldie has settled into nesting spot and will give birth to some cubs soon. I hope it proceeds better than last time.”

“Have mine,” Charlotte held her skewer out to Sienna. “And thanks for that. Yes, let’s hope that it goes better than last time.”

Sienna accepted the marshmallow and popped it in her mouth.

“Oh my gosh!” she said, breathing over it. “Hot. Hot but good. Oh, yum!”

By the end of the evening, Sienna had gotten pretty good at making her marshmallows nicely crisp on the outside, and runny in the middle.

A couple of days later, deep in the afternoon with the sun playing low through the trees, Charlotte was able to get away to pay a visit to Goldie. The air was humid from overnight rain and the day’s heat. Shafts of light struck through dust and vapor haze.

Goldie was lying in approximately the same place as she had last time. Serge had made some study that showed that it was quite possible that she made webs into the forest floor that acted like roots, tapping nutrients, not for herself, but for the garden on her back.

Her eyes were those remarkable crystal balls again. Her mouths huffed as Charlotte drew close.

“I’m glad you’ve made it here again,” she said. “Becs would have been happy.”

Nearby there were some tripod sensors, and overhead one of the fliers was gathering data. There were huge amounts now. But with a whole planet to study, it was drops in the ocean.

Goldie moved. Just a turning of her head, but it made a kind of tearing sound, as if she was doing damage. Her lower mouth opened and she gave a long, low hoot.

“I guess you’re saying it’s nice to see me, too?”

One of Goldie’s arms moved around, weaving its strange joints through the trees. The fingers waved, and the tentacles on the ends seemed to drift, with lives of their own.

Goldie’s hand moved closer and closer to Charlotte. Impossible to avoid picturing Jody, knocked flying by that other teppu.

Charlotte stood her ground. This was a wild animal. A wild alien animal.

And yet.

Her heartrate rose. Her skin felt clammy.

The tentacles reached her. Touching and feeling across her face and shoulders. Working down her body.

Becs would frown on this.

With a snap, the tentacles released. Goldie’s hand opened wider. The fingers grabbed Charlotte up. Lifted her from the ground.

Charlotte gasped.

From behind came a shout. Niall.

“It’s all right,” Charlotte said. “Let her. Let her do this.”

“No, it’s . . .” Niall trailed off. Long ago he’d given up arguments he knew he wouldn’t win. Anyway, this was out of Charlotte’s hands.

Eighteen

Goldie lifted Charlotte up almost into the canopy. Birds darted around, twittering. The sunlight splashed into Charlotte’s eyes.

Goldie continued her lowing sound. It seemed to come from deep within her.

Goldie’s fingers were strong, but gentle, holding Charlotte like gossamer.

Soon Charlotte was on a downward trajectory, moving toward the much smaller forest on Goldie’s back.

Goldie seemed to know her way around, because she set Charlotte down in a tiny clearing—no more than a meter across. Between a cluster of knee-high shrubs with thin, reedy leaves, almost like bird feathers.

The soil beneath Charlotte’s feet was dark and clumpy. Roots showed in places. These plants would have to be pretty resilient to deal with the teppu’s motion. As the team was learning, it was a mutual relationship.

Around the base of the shrubs there were blocks of bright moss, with tiny, sparkly flowers on stems barely a hair’s width.

A bone.

Charlotte swallowed.

Goldie hadn’t placed her here randomly at all. This was where Becs lay. Her grave.

Taking a deep breath, Charlotte crouched. The bone looked like a fingertip. Just there in the soil.

Becs’s soft tissue had been absorbed. The site churned during Goldie’s travels.

“Belt?” Charlotte said. “Can you locate Becs’s belt?”

“Please rephrase.”

“Dr. Rebecca A. Wrightson. Is her belt nearby?”

“No.”

“Can you locate its signal at all?”

“No.”

Simple and to the point. Charlotte puffed out her cheeks and reached toward the bone. She had to confirm this.

As she reached, from the corner of her eye, she saw a tiny movement to the left.

A little hamster-sized parcel of skin. But more than that. It was moving. Its tiny eyes peered at Charlotte even as its lower mouth grasped at the fingerlike teat.

Suckling.

There was an area clear of soil, but the young teppu lay in a bed of soft velvety fur.

“Hi there,” Charlotte whispered.

The little thing’s mouth moved. It had its thin arms stretched up, holding the teat in place. Massaging at it, like a kitten kneading its mother.

And its eyes kept watching Charlotte.

“You have an incoming communication,” Charlotte’s belt said. “It is Doctor Th—”

Charlotte yanked the belt off. Bad timing.

It was tempting to just stay here and watch this. But it was best left alone.

She slipped her slate from a pocket and took some images, got it to look at other data in the area—temperature, humidity, air composition—and put it away.

She watched a moment longer and stood carefully, slowly.

The young teppu kept watching her. Kept suckling.

Becs’s grave was right there.

Charlotte shivered. Was this perfect, or tragic? Becs would have appreciated this.

Goldie knew.

They really had shared a connection.

Then, Goldie’s hand was there. Charlotte lifted her arms and let Goldie carry her away.

The sky was a brilliant red, on fire with the sunset, and Goldie set her back down in the dark of the mountaintop forest depths. Goldie made a soft purring sound.

“Thank you,” Charlotte said, as Goldie’s tentacles tickled and touched.

Niall was there, and Charlotte turned to him.

“We can go back now,” she said. “Okay.”

As they walked to camp he took her hand. His grip was firm and warm and reassuring. Until he did that, she hadn’t realized that she needed it.

“What happened?” he said.

“Tell you soon. I’ll tell everyone.”

“Was it important?” As if he knew.

“Yes,” she said. “Very.”

Nineteen

After a couple of months, Goldie was on the move again. Dragging her bulk across the mountaintop. The sun was out and warming.

Serge monitored the feeds and made sure that everyone knew when Goldie had reached the edge and was ready to climb onto the vine complex.

Charlotte had visited numerous times over that period, but never again had Goldie lifted her to Becs’s grave. Perhaps that was for the best. One time was all Charlotte needed to understand.

The cub had continued to grow and strengthen. Others had been born, but the one near where Becs lay was the only survivor. That was remarkable in itself. Goldie was old. Potentially well beyond the normal age for bearing viable young.

Charlotte was in the data processing room, enjoying the sweet taste of one of Sienna’s coffees—she was trying a new method—when the belt interrupted the work.

“You have an incoming communication,” it said. “It is Doctor Therassa de Galle.”

“Thank you. Therassa?”

“It’s time,” Therassa said from the belt. “Serge says maybe another half an hour.”

“All right. Is everyone coming?”

“Of course! Even Sienna!”

Charlotte met the others at the edge of the mountain.

Goldie was there, almost at the lip. She had her leading hand on the vine. She looked so huge now, out of the forest.

No one spoke. Down in the valley, a thin mist hung over the rain forest. Three of the big condor-like birds glided nearby. They were dwarfed by the size of the vine complex.

Charlotte always felt a sense of awe here. The valley was so sheer, the forest below was so thick. Ikenni, the next mountain over, looked so stark, its cliffs bright with the angle of the sun.

Niall placed his hand in Charlotte’s, and she squeezed.

No one spoke.

It took over two hours for Goldie to get onto the vine. It was a complex operation, recorded a dozen different ways by their equipment, but who cared? It was simply beautiful to watch.

This huge creature that crawled on its belly across the forest floor, was so dexterous and agile in moving out over the lip to hang from the thread of the vine.

Of course. This was how they lived. How they’d grown and developed. Of course she was agile. Even with her age.

The group watched for a while, slowly dispersing, walking back to camp.

Goldie made a slow progression away.

Eventually Charlotte was alone. Just watching. Even Niall had gone. Good sense there, too.

Goldie’s head was facing away, looking off in the direction she was going. The taller plants on her back grazed the underside of the vine complex.

Charlotte lost track of time, but at some point, she took a last look at Goldie and headed away.

Over the next few days she was able to find time in the mornings to go and watch Goldie gradually recede across the vine.

Mostly Charlotte was alone, but sometimes, Niall came. Sometimes Therassa.

And then it was the last day. Goldie was going to reach Ikenni and climb up from the vine and vanish into the forest there. She wouldn’t be back for almost another year.

The big birds soared and animals called from the forest. In the jungle below, brilliant blooms speckled parts of the forest.

Charlotte stood on the lip of Malale, a good two hundred meters from the vine complex, so she could get a better view. More side on. She stood on a rocky promontory, like a little peninsula, with little growth. There were some hardy plants clinging to cracks around the edge. They smelled sweetly of lilac.

Using a scope pressed to her eyes, Charlotte watched as Goldie reached up with her big arms and deftly pulled herself over. It was surprisingly fast for how ponderous Goldie could be.

On the open edge, by the vine, Goldie lay on the flat rock, not moving. Recovering from the effort of climbing across?

Charlotte zoomed the scope. It shook a little, but the stabilizer kicked in, giving her a clear, wide view. Goldie was turning. Slowly. As if she’d forgotten something and needed to come back across.

Charlotte focused on Goldie’s big head. Her eyes peered back at Charlotte. Could the teppu actually see her?

Charlotte waved, and dropped her hand. How silly was that?

Who cared? She was on her own.

So she waved again. Goldie blinked back at her and turned, pulling away.

Charlotte kept waving until Goldie had slipped away into the forest.

Cool wind blew up across the rock face, making Charlotte shiver. She stayed at the edge there, for a while, as the sun made for the horizon and the clouds grew streaky.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Goldie and her new cub would be back next year. But even if it was just the cub, that would be all right. After all, the cub was a little bit of all of them.

The Wine-Dark Deep

Sheila Finch

LENA KE’ALOHA SHUT down the display screen. The audience drifted out of the lecture hall, ignoring her. A conference of data management experts in London had seemed the right place to present her paper, “Problems in analyzing distribution differentials in multi-brained cephalopods.” Another way of thinking about her research—that was her husband, Adam’s advice. Get her work out to areas of science other than animal communication specialists. It hadn’t worked.

“You come from l’université in Honolulu?” The owner of the French accent held a copy of her paper as if it was about to burn his fingers.

“Yes. Director of the Institute of Marine Biology on Oahu for a number of years.

“S’il vous plâit, what it was again? Octopus brains?”

“They have nine you know—maybe not all of them exactly brains but clusters of neurons—and not only is the way they network extremely complex, but none of them—including the central brain—are organized anything like any other creature on Earth—”

“This is a good use of government research funds?”

“I take it you’ve no interest in cephalopods,” she said frostily.

Teeth showed in a small smile. “J’aime les manger.”

He walked away, dropping her paper in the bin as he went.

Jerk! But typical of the academic response she was getting from some quarters. Maybe it was time for a change of direction anyway. Adam had recently left his position at the university to start his own AI company, and their son Coby—just sixteen—was entering his junior year at university. The scrape of a chair caught her attention. One man had remained behind. Tall, slender, early forties maybe, dark hair and eyes. His white summer outfit was obviously expensive. If she’d been younger, she might’ve been charmed; as it was, she was tired and wanted to go back to her hotel.

“Professor Ke’aloha, please excuse my interruption. Demitrios Yiannopoulis. I have something you might find interesting—But perhaps I’m keeping you from a further engagement?”

“I can give you a few minutes, Doctor Yiannopoulis.”

“Unfortunately, not doctor.” He held out a flattie.

She took the flattie. Whatever it was supposed to be, a blob with faint lines radiating out, the image on the 2D photo was too blurry to identify.

“Can you make out from my abysmal attempt at photography what it is?”

“Petroglyph?” She handed the flattie back to him. “Sorry. That’s not my field.”

“Pardon me for contradicting you, but I think this may indeed fall in your field of expertise.”

“I don’t have the time to deal with this, whatever it is.”

He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I do apologize, Professor Ke’aloha. I have obviously allowed my enthusiasm for your work to run ahead of my manners. You see, I’ve followed your career for several years. Your work in cross-species communication is well-known.”

“You’re a scientist?”

“No, not that—though sometimes I wish I’d chosen a different career path. I’ve read some of your papers. Pioneering work.”

Was that meant as a pickup line? She activated her embedded link with the household AI at home. Wu. Check out a Greek—Demitrios Yiannopoulis. What’s his game?

She turned away from Demitri’s gaze. Many people still disapproved of anyone who had an embedded link to the AIs, even after decades of use.

The personal AI replied: Demitrios Yiannopoulis, born Athens, 2065. Father: Greek. Mother: Canadian. The family wealth comes from their shipbuilding interests—space shuttles for low orbit, mostly. The senior Yiannopoulis also owns several resorts in the Greek islands. Yiannopoulis Enterprises is headquartered in Athens, but it has a satellite office in Honolulu for Pacific and Asian affairs. The son is an enthusiastic diver with an interest in languages.

That didn’t excuse his arrogance. “I don’t think I can help you.”

“Please forgive the awkwardness of my approach,” he said. “I only ask for a moment of your time. I’ve found something very unusual. Something I think a dedicated scientist such as yourself will find interesting. Perhaps we could use the break to let me buy you lunch and talk about it?”

“Flattery, Mr. Yiannopoulis?”

“Demitri,” he said. “Please.”

Well, why not? She sensed no threat from him, and she needed to eat before the afternoon session. She could handle a playboy—it might make an amusing anecdote to tell Adam when she was home again.

The pub he steered her to was on the bank of the Thames near Westminster Bridge, crowded and noisy. Outside, he found a table under a striped umbrella where the breeze brought the breath of the river, activated the menu pad, then punched in an order for the traditional pub lunch special. Soon a small robo-server trundled up with their orders.

Demitri tore a wedge off the crusty bread. “I do some of my best thinking over a meal. Please, forgive me if this is too personal. I think the conference doesn’t meet your expectations.”

His question stirred the sense she’d had all day of losing her direction. “More like I don’t meet the expectations of the conference attendees.”

“You’re an explorer, a pioneer. Don’t let the timid and the hidebound define you.”

If only he knew. She spent much of her time fighting off the timid in her own university. “Tell that to my dean.”

“You fear losing your position?”

“Not that. I have tenure. But he could withhold funding for my lab and that would be a big problem.” She cut off a wedge of Stilton cheese. “Tell me where you took this flattie?”

“Have you ever been to Greece, Professor?”

“Lena, please. The nearest I came to it was on a brief trip to the Bay of Genoa. Long time ago.” Memory tugged at her: the abandoned underwater farms, the trapped dolphin, the little octopus who’d started everything.

“I grew up on the Aegean island of Kefalonia,” he said. “One has a sense in the Aegean that the age of myth isn’t over quite yet.”

She waited while he sipped his dark beer, unsure where this conversation was going.

“You see, there’s a cave on the island that attracts tourists. Melissani is world famous.”

A small flock of pigeons headed over the river; a helicar, sparking in the sun, seemed to trail them. In the silence that followed, she felt suddenly old, her muscles stiff from lack of exercise.

“How is your work in Hawai’i progressing?”

She set the half-empty beer glass down. “I’ve reached the goals I set, just can’t seem to get past them.” Not to mention the clash with a dean who had other ideas where the Institute of Marine Biology should be heading.

“Perhaps I can help you find a new direction. You may be the only person who can make sense of this information—and use it.”

She was too old to fall for that line. “Okay. I’m listening. But it had better be worth my time.”

“Recently, my dive partner and I found a previously undiscovered cave near the famous Melissani cave, but completely separated from it and totally submerged. It contains rock art. I’ve shown you a sample.”

“I must’ve missed that fascinating discovery in the news.”

He ignored the sarcasm. “Nic and I were deep diving, something we often do, filming octopus, when we came across the mouth of the cave. We were down about thirty or forty meters, and we didn’t have our best equipment with us. Even so, our lights picked out what looked like deliberate marks carved on the walls. In a submerged cave with no entry from above.”

The deepest she and Adam had ever dived off the coast of Oahu had been around twenty meters. She held up a hand. “I think you need a speleo-archeologist for this.”

“Hear me out. The existence of this cave was totally unknown before we found it—a mystery in a region of well-explored caves. I’m asking you to come to Melissani and see for yourself. At my expense.”

She thought of Wu’s information about the family. “Someone might get a jump on popular local attractions before your father can exploit it?”

“My father and I don’t always agree, but he’s no barbarian.”

She’d wounded him. “Sorry, Demitri, I’m really the wrong person for you.”

“I think not. You explore the mysteries of communication. And you dive.”

“I’ve never gone cave diving.” A scrap of memory—Oahu, she and Adam on the beach at sunset after a satisfying dive, One day, we should consider cave diving in Mexico, Adam said, cross it off the bucket list.

“I have an instructor’s deep diving permit.” He entered his credit code into the pad. “You’ll be safe.”

“Interesting, but I don’t have diving gear with me.”

“No problem,” he said “You are, I’m sure familiar with rebreathing equipment?”

“Of course! Not fond of it, but I’m trained, and I’ve used it several times.”

“That’s good then. I have the latest equipment—” He stopped, catching her expression “Wait till you see the cave, then you can scold me about my money. If you still want to.”

◆◆◆

Unfamiliar birdsong woke her just before sunrise. Greece. A little out-of-sync due to rapid change of time zone, but Lena felt more relaxed than at the stuffy conference in London. She’d slept well in the small guest cabin the taverna owner had supplied, though she’d expected a bit more than this rustic cabin. On the other hand, she’d have felt awkward staying in one of Demitri’s father’s luxury hotels.

She’d used the flight in the Yiannopoulis private supersonic to bring herself up to date with the advanced rebreathing equipment they’d be using. Much better for holographers, he’d said, no bubbles. She and Adam usually chose the familiar scuba gear with its less intrusive face mask because it allowed them to come in closer contact with the water. A few years, and technology left you behind. It was just details, new fixes for the sake of comfort, not essentials; she felt confidant she could handle it.

She pulled a swimsuit out of small suitcase, added white shorts and a flowered shirt. The host had left a carafe of dark coffee outside and fresh crusty rolls in a basket. She stepped outdoors to begin her morning ritual, filling her lungs with long, deep breaths of fresh air, calming the turbulence of her busy minds.

A light breeze full of the promise of olives and pine lifted her hair off her brow. From her doorstep on the hillside, she could see far up the Aegean coast, patches of mist still low on the dark water, islands beginning to be touched by light as if they were just that moment coming into being. The view hadn’t changed much since Homer’s time. It had taken Odysseus ten years to navigate his way home on his long, troubled journey through all those myths, but what stories he’d had to tell when he finally got there. She’d enjoyed reading Greek mythology in her undergraduate days; in some ways, those flawed gods and heroes weren’t much different than Hawai’ian ones. The sun lifted above the water and laid a golden path from fallen Troy to Ithaca.

She’d just finished breakfast when Demitri tapped on the cabin door.

“Good morning. I hope you slept well? Because now we dive.”

They took a footpath down to the sea. The air here was different from the Pacific islands’, sharper because it was less humid. Great morning for a dive.

“There are some local myths of nymphs living in the Melissani cave,” he told her. “The tourists enjoy hearing about them. Most naiad myths are about semi-divine creatures, in charge of the fish harvest, or some other natural event humans didn’t understand at the time.”

“Like Helios and his fiery chariot of the sun.”

“Obviously, I don’t believe these ‘nymphs’ were supernatural, yet something gave rise to the mythology.”

“Seals?” she suggested. “There’s usually a common sense explanation.”

“Perhaps. One part of the cave group that makes up Melissani is partially underwater and has been thoroughly explored. You can take a boat tour through it. What Nic and I found is another cave, previously unknown, totally submerged with no entrance from land.” He held out his hand to steady her over a rocky patch and onto the beach. “But what I wanted to say was that besides the local stories, there are a few very old folk songs of the region. They’re quite different. Fragments of something much more ancient perhaps. They have one theme only, guilt.”

A small, sleek motorboat waited at a dock, a tanned, curly haired man sitting on the stern. The acrid smell of his Greek cigarette clashed with the clean, ozone-laden air. Startled, she recognized him as the pilot from yesterday’s flight.

“You’ve already met my partner.” Demitri draped his arm around the man’s shoulders. “Nic is multi-talented. Today, he won’t be diving with us. He’ll take care of things on the surface.”

She caught the glance that passed between them. Obviously, her original impression of Demitri had been way off.

The diving gear was on board already, a pile of fins, tanks, torches, all of it looking top rate and brand new, most of it more expensive than she could afford. Demitri held out a hand to steady her as she stepped over the side. Nic threw his cigarette away and released the mooring lines.

“I know you’re an experienced diver—” Demitri began.

“Before you ask, yes, I checked the rebreather manual to refresh my knowledge.”

“Submerged caves can be dangerous. You must stay close to me.”

“It is easy to become disoriented in the darkness of a cave,” Nic added in precise but accented English. “What we found is worth the risk.”

“If there were people using this cave,” she said, discarding her shirt and shorts and pulling on a wetsuit of thin, stretchy material, “surely, rising sea levels would’ve obscured their traces long before modern humans came on the scene.”

“The cave has been underwater since the continents settled into place.”

She glanced at him. “Then what are you suggesting?”

Demitri pulled on his own wetsuit, added a weight belt, and handed her a similar one. He spoke briefly to Nic in Greek, and Nic jumped aboard and started the motor. They headed out, past a couple of Greek fishermen returning home, nets heaped in the bow, LED lamps dark now, the sun already well up in a cloudless sky. Demitri fastened a sleek underwater holocam on his wrist.

“Let’s not speculate just yet, Lena. I want you to come to this with an open mind.”

Nic dropped anchor a little way off shore, a football field’s length south of the Melissani Cave,. the opening to the famous cave beneath the honey-colored karst of cliffs resembling tumbled layers of bricks like collapsed ruins, and on the beach, insect-sized tourists lining up to be first inside when the gate opened.

When she had her fins on, Demitri held out the latest model of rebreathing apparatus; it resembled a sleek helmet with a full Plexiglass face covering. Tank, hoses, face unit all in one, it would remove the carbon dioxide from her exhalation and replenish the oxygen as needed. There was a knack to using the unit correctly; she didn’t underestimate the need to use caution.

Now that she was actually about to attempt her first cave dive, she hesitated for a moment. She hadn’t dived for a while and skills could get rusty, but certainly never altogether lost. She shook the hesitation away. Her emotions were all over the place this morning. Better get herself under control.

Demitri slipped backward off the boat, and she followed into a clear sea with a very different feel to it than the water around Hawai’i. Easier to float. Salinity higher here at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

Demitri attached a tether between his belt and hers. “You have mask-mounted comm display for depth and time elapsed, and a Bluetooth system so we can communicate with no problem. We’ll only stay down in the cave ten minutes. Just remember to breathe.”

They began their descent slowly, following the line of the anchor chain through a shaft of sunlight in aquamarine water. A school of little fish scattered at their passage in a silver flash. Something larger and darker slid past, eyeing them curiously and deciding they posed no threat. The underwater world grew progressively hazier and darker the deeper they went.

The wine-dark sea, Homer called it. The jitters she’d experienced earlier fell away. She was at home in this world.

Ahead in the semi-darkness, an archway loomed in the rock wall. Demitri’s LED lamp speared suddenly through the darkness at the mouth of the cave, and she activated hers. Above her left eyebrow, her mask display showed DEPTH 35 METERS. Demitri retrieved a brightly colored string attached to a jutting rock in the opening and looped it around one hand, a cave line unspooling, potential lifesaver for a diver who might become disoriented in the darkness of the cave. Like Ariadne’s thread that led Theseus out of the labyrinth.

“Jagged rocks inside,” Demitri said over the Bluetooth. “Stay close.”

The contrast from the outside water glittering like spilled diamonds in the sunlight to the blackness of the cave was startling. The cold seemed to touch her even through the protective skin of her wetsuit. A gauge popped up on her faceplate, and she saw that the water temperature had dropped precipitously. Their head lamps illuminated the scene, rock surrounding them on all sides as far as the beams reached. Sense of a ceiling somewhere up there—direction was iffy in weightlessness and darkness—and perhaps a floor. Hard to judge how large this space was. It felt enormous.

“How far back does this cave go?”

“We don’t know that, but I’d be willing to guess it goes a very long way. We won’t be staying down long enough today to find out. It takes time to get used to deep dives.” Then he added, “Careful—Don’t stir up silt.”

As if she’d never dived before.

Awe at the newness of this experience prevented her from being annoyed with him for long. She frog-kicked sideways, away from the bottom she sensed somehow. She didn’t know where to focus her attention first. The increased water pressure at this depth caused her ears to pop. Remember to breathe. She was acutely aware of the weight of thousands of tons of unseen rock overhead, blocking the life-giving sun. She moved smoothly, grateful for the tether linking them and the line he spooled out behind them. The beams from their lamps shattered into bright shards, reflecting back from an approaching wall.

After a while, he pointed. “Look.”

At first she didn’t see anything beyond the expected cracks and folds of dark limestone.

Then—hazy at first, indistinct, they could’ve been random discolorations in the rock. She moved closer, slowly, hesitantly, steadied by his hand on her arm. They were more than random. Marks etched deeply across the smooth face of the back wall. Lines of dots, partially eroded and smoothed by the action of the water, intertwined with other circling lines of more dots, some smeared, some half obscured by growths of grey algae, groups of dots of different sizes.

One thing she knew immediately: The marks hadn’t occurred naturally. Something had scratched them into the rock.

Human brains were wired to perceive pattern; hers suggested there was an organization here that she couldn’t immediately identify. She kicked closer. And there, on a protuberance high up on one wall, was the original of the murky image in Demitri’s flattie. This one didn’t look like a random collection of dots at all. She stared at a large, blurry oval shape, lines trailing, broken but recognizable as intentional lines.

The enormity of what she was seeing—only the third person ever—overwhelmed her.

Breathe. Remember to breathe. She felt lightheaded. A thought slipped through her mind and was gone before she could catch it. A headache pushed its way into her temples. Middle-age tripping her up, the mind willing, but the body tiring too quickly.

He caught her elbow and held her steady. “Time to ascend.”

The cave line led them back to the cave’s entrance. He gripped her arms as they rose slowly through the brightening water. The heat of the brilliant sun shocked her after the cold darkness below. Nic helped them climb aboard the boat.

◆◆◆

“You’re still looking a little pale,” Demitri said later, between mouthfuls of lobster caught fresh that morning. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

They were sitting under one of the taverna’s umbrellas on the beach, watching the red sun slide through wispy clouds into the water. Low rays fired the tubular, thick-bottomed glasses of ouzo for Demitri and Nic; she herself drank only water. She’d slept for a couple of hours, but her nerves still fizzed with excitement.

“I’m eager to see the holo you took,” she said.

Her personal AI’s voice broke in, Professor, Doctor Harrison wishes to communicate with you.

She sighed. Wu, Put her through. She’d left Jan, her assistant director, in charge of the marine lab on Oahu .

“Excuse me a moment.” She turned partly away.

Lena! Jan’s excited voice came over her link. You remember the new cephie we acquired just before you left? Amphioctopus marginatus? Well, she’s really taking to the initial training and—

That’s great, Jan. I’m pleased. Let me get back to you later today, okay?

Breaking the link she became aware of Nic gazing at her. His sunburned right hand rested against the white tablecloth, scattering and closing over a clutch of small, irregularly shaped stones, like a kid playing with jacks.

“Find your link useful?” Nic asked.

“Sorry?”

“Had it long?”

“Since I started work on marine animal communication. Why do you ask?”

“I have a link, too. Need it for space flight.”

“The family business,” Demitri explained.

“Mixed blessing,” Nic swept the stones off the table and into his pocket.

Demitri stood up. “Our host has given us the use of his empty storage cellar. It’s right next door.”

A scattering of early stars showed as they walked over to the cellar. Bats swooped overhead. The cellar, hardly more than a cave carved out of the limestone hillside, was cool and windowless. Once obviously used to store the taverna’s supplies, it was empty and musty from disuse and almost totally dark once Demitri closed the wooden door behind them.

Nic set the holocam on the floor and fed a small cube into it. The storage cellar vanished, and in its place a hologram of the submerged cave appeared all around them.

“Nic edited while you slept,” Demitri said. “Much of the footage was either not clear or repetitive. Here’s the sequence with the petroglyphs.”

The dive lamps’ beams lit a path through the darkness of the submerged cave. The marks emerged just like the ones she’d seen in the cave, a little fuzzy due to movement in the water. They had a tendency to fade if she wasn’t looking straight at them. Much more than just random scratches. Symbols.

Her heart raced as she walked deep into the hologram. One entire wall was covered with groups of dots. Only the arrangement varied, some linear and horizontal, some appearing haphazardly arranged, some vertical. She counted the number in several groups: Eight. Never more, never less unless the group was damaged.

“Writing system of some kind?” Nic suggested.

“Not pictographs like the Chinese used. And not like Egyptian hieroglyphs either. More like alphabets, and yet I don’t think they are.”

She’d seen petroglyphs in the Australian Outback and the American desert, mythic, dreamlike figures. She remembered taking her small son to see more recent examples of petroglyphs made by Pacific Islanders on their own Big Island. Some of those images used dots, too. But these dots didn’t seem to form images like the petroglyphs she was familiar with.

“What are your thoughts?” he asked.

She shook her head, not ready yet to speculate. “Are you certain there was never a way into these caves except underwater?”

“I suppose it could be possible that back in the Paleolithic there might’ve been. There’s certainly no trace now.”

If the cave had never been accessible from the surface, then whoever was responsible for this was unlikely to be Homo sapiens. In any case, the symbols were totally different from the pictures and symbols early humans had drawn, Neanderthals, too. Were there other branches of the human family that paleontologists had overlooked? That took her back to the problem of the cave always having been underwater.

The groupings themselves suggested they carried meaning. How to crack the code?

“Eight dots, never more, never less—unless the wall has crumbled away,” she said.

Demitri reached out as if to touch one of the images. His hand passed right through a broken group. “Fascinating puzzle, isn’t it?”

Humans used Base Ten in mathematics because they had ten fingers to count on. Neanderthals probably did, too, if they counted beyond one and many. Other pre-humans—Homo habilis, Homo erectus—like their ape ancestors, also had five digits at the end of each arm. These symbols had been made by someone who prioritized Base Eight.

A large, blurry group drew her attention. This time, the organization behind the placement of the dots hit her hard. They weren’t circling a center point so much as originating from it in broad arms, forming a flattened pinwheel.

“Can you sharpen this?”

Nic focused the hologram tightly on the group and the imprecision caused by the murky water cleared. Four arms sprang out in sharp relief, an oval, perhaps a meter in length, flattened at the center and thick with dots, two arms swirling out with clusters of dots, two hazier, still showing the eightfold patterning. Much larger than any of the other groupings.

“What does that look like to you?”

“It looks like a spiral galaxy,” Demitri replied. “The Milky Way?”

Of course it couldn’t be! Finding a representation of a galaxy on the wall of a cave that had been underwater since long before the first humans left Africa was absurd.

“But we do not see the galaxy like that,” Nic pointed out. “We see it side on.”

No argument with that. She was deceived by her brain’s desire to see patterns. The marks had to be only coincidentally suggestive of real phenomena.

“Focus on the other image, the one you first showed me, please.”

Another shape appeared, smaller. The interior that had first seemed to be a blur was filled with minute dots. She counted the lines trailing from this shape, clearer now than when she’d seen them on the cave wall. Eight dots in each of eight lines. Her heart pounded. The shape was oddly familiar.

No. That was a crazy idea. She wasn’t going there. She was a scientist. She knew better.

“Do you think they have meaning?” Nic asked.

She waved a hand and he collapsed the hologram. “I’d need a Rosetta Stone to answer that.”

Somebody—or something—had found entry to that cave a very long time ago. She needed a lot more data before she could even begin to form a hypothesis. And she needed the resources of a powerful AI.

“So perhaps our myths hold some truth?” Demitri said.

“All myths contain some truth. Yet somehow I don’t think Odysseus understood a spiral galaxy.”

“I do not follow this,” Nic commented, lighting another pungent cigarette.

“Can you fly me back to the Institute?”

“Excellent,” Demitri said. “I have business in Honolulu.”

◆◆◆

Nic set Demitri’s supersonic down on the tarmac of Honolulu Airport and shut it down. Lena grabbed her small travel bag, then paused. The initial excitement of the dive and what it had revealed had subsided, leaving her with suspicion. This had to be said.

“I appreciate your sharing this discovery with me, Demitri. But I need to ask one question.”

He gazed steadily at her. “I can imagine what that question is.”

“Then I’ll be blunt. I’d like to know—”

He broke in before she could finish her thought. “You’re asking if Yiannopoulis Enterprises plans to put up a luxury hotel, run tours to see the marvels, maybe a casino with an underwater theme?”

His voice was tight and flat. She knew she’d offended him. “I’m sorry. You were generous to me.”

“What if I tell you that was indeed my original intention?”

She hadn’t expected any other reply. “Perhaps we’ll meet again some time.”

“Not in a Yiannopoulis hotel, I imagine,” he said.

She got out of the jet.

A greeter tried to drape a fragrant garland of plumeria around her neck. She waved the girl off. Leis were a traditional welcome, but a week away had sensitized her nose. She headed for the trans Oahu shuttle.

“Aloha!” Jan yelled as Lena came in the door of the Institute for Marine Biology on Kane’ohe Bay. The dreadlocks Jan had worn the first day she walked into the lab as a postdoc were still in place, showing more silver these day. Other women wore lab smocks, but Jan preferred a fern green jumpsuit as her working uniform. “Had breakfast yet?”

Jan had recently become a vegan, something that happened to at least half the marine institute’s teams after a while. Lena had long ago decided to eat responsibly, but any breakfast Jan offered would consist of unidentifiable green stuff and tofu, unappetizing this morning.

“I’m fine, Jan. Thanks.” The excitement and anticipation she usually felt when she was about to embark on a new project was tempered by the sour taste of her last words with Demitri.

Jan held out a steaming mug of Kona coffee. “How was your little side trip to Greece?”

“Like stepping back into myth.”

“Uh-oh. No indoor plumbing?”

Lena laughed. “Not that bad!”

They moved into the Institute’s new wing that housed the cephalopod tanks equipped with the most experimental equipment. The new addition featured an enormous wall of glass overlooking Kane’ohe Bay that seemed to have been designed as a convenience for visitors, not the needs of the lab’s marine inhabitants.

She sipped the coffee, taking in the familiar sounds of gurgling and hissing from the water pipes, breathed in the comforting smell of brine and disinfectant of what would always be in her heart her domain, even though she’d turned over the day-to-day work of running the lab to Jan.

“Let’s see what Ada’s come up with.”

Jan patted a sensor in a silver rectangle set into the wall. “Stefan updated Ada with your information this morning. He came in as soon as we received the files.”

“I should apologize for interrupting his work.”

“No need. Bit of a sceptic, though. As always.”

“Did you get a chance to look at the holo file?”

“Ada pulled out a few shots. They’re puzzling—” Jan hesitated. “That’s the best word I can find.”

“This is really far out speculation, Jan.”

“Okay.” Jan smiled. “Ada, do your best.”

“Welcome home, Professor Ke’aloha,” the institute’s AI said.

“Ada, what do you make of the holo?” Lena said.

The institute had recently upgraded to the most powerful computer system available, something her funding wouldn’t ordinarily have stretched to, an AI Adam’s company had developed. She was grateful for the maintenance and upgrades they enjoyed as a result.

“Here is my initial analysis, Professor. These cave marks are extremely old. They appear to have been made with intent by a maker possessing a high level of intelligence.”

“They’re not random?”

“No. I find logic in their arrangement even though I cannot reliably decipher it with the small size of the sample you gave me. However, I can make an estimate of date. Human habitation of the Island of Kefalonia dates back fifty thousand years. I would estimate that the marks were inscribed on the cave walls sometime between twenty to more than thirty thousand years ago.”

“Could there once have been an opening in that cave, so humans could’ve entered at the time the marks were made?”

“The cave itself would have been underwater even when sea levels were lower. There is a small possibility that an entrance above water level to the submerged cave once existed. If that was the case, it has been sealed for thousands of years, perhaps by seismic activity.”

“Assume for a minute that there was an opening.” She couldn’t let go of the remote possibility because the alternatives were too disquieting. “Is there any chance early humans—or humanoids—made these marks on the walls?”

“If that were to be the case, it would be highly unusual,” the AI said, “because it would assume the human species could breathe under water while they worked.”

“Right.” She nodded. “And see in the dark.”

“That, too,” the AI said.

So: human activity ruled out. “Continue.”

Jan smiled. “Curious and curiouser. I love this job.”

“Several specific arrangements of dots are repeated multiple times,” the AI said. “I have analyzed the groups and sorted them by occurrence. I have put this information in a graph for you.”

Enigmatic marks, shimmering in the light from their dive lamps, marks no other human had seen until now. And one that had to be impossible. “What do you think of the ‘spiral galaxy’ grouping, Ada?”

“I find it interesting. However, I am not prepared at this moment to give you a definitive answer. I would need to analyze a better representation of the original.”

“And the other image, the one that seems to have eight appendages?”

“Suggestive of a cephalopod. Again, impossible to be certain.”

“Surely there weren’t any marine animals capable of cave art?” Jan objected. “Then or now!”

In the silence following the AI’s frustrating report, she became aware of the soft splashing of an octopus in its tank. It was hard to work out what a modern octopus’s intentions were; how could she begin to understand a being as ancient as this mysterious artist in the Melissani caves?

Somewhere a motor hummed to life. Voices echoed from another part of the lab, postdocs and interns going about their daily routines. Listening to these familiar sounds, she felt as if she were a dinosaur looking up and seeing the meteor streaking its way to Earth and sensing that its life was never going to be the same again.

What was left? The marks certainly hadn’t appeared there by magic. How would she live down the scorn of her colleagues if she even suggested any other scenario, let alone set out to prove it? Working with cephalopod intelligence was still eyebrow-lifting enough for some segments of the population.

A long time ago, she remembered following the progress of a group of astronomers with their radio telescopes, listening for alien signals that never seemed to come. She’d reconciled herself to knowing it was unlikely they’d receive any kind of messages in her lifetime. And yet, the possibility the marks were a message left by something making its own odyssey across the galaxy to that submerged cave haunted her.

She needed to think this information through without getting hung up on the sensational aspect of potential flying saucers or little green men. Perhaps the way cephalopods conveyed meaning was a clue here. The octopuses held the answer; they always had. It wasn’t a new conclusion; she’d been working toward it ever since she saw the first enigmatic dots.

“So what do we do now?” Jan asked.

“Something we do here all the time, Jan. Talk in pictures with an octopus. Call the team together, please, Ada.”

They walked through the institute’s high-ceilinged halls, echoing with the sounds of splashing water and young voices, stopping by each tank in turn and observing. Octopus cyanea, pretty little creature. Then there was the unassuming Octopus vulgaris. And Octopus bimaculoides, the little two-spot that some people kept in home aquariums. Body size didn’t necessarily correlate with intelligence. Half a billion neurons distributed between the main brain in the mantle and the other brains in the eight limbs were capable of some awesome abilities in even the smallest octopus. Yet, as far as they knew, terrestrial cephalopods didn’t make marks on cave walls.

It took a few minutes to round up everybody and get them settled in the conference room. She glanced at each of them in turn. A couple of the younger team members looked startled, perhaps resenting dropping everything for a staff meeting when they could be pushing on with their research. Hue, a student from Vietnam on the verge of finishing up her doctoral work, frowned at Lena.

She touched a sensor on the table, pulling up some of the submerged images on a miniaturized holodeck. The sensations of the dive, the wonder of the discovery, filled her memory.

She summarized what she’d seen in the submerged cave and repeated Ada’s preliminary analysis of the marks. Their expressions ranged from amazement to disbelief.

“What are they?” a young woman asked.

“That’s what we need to find out.”

“So, what’s the next step, Boss?” Stefan, tall blond Nordic type with a tangle of cables around his neck like an electronic lei, had come into the room after she’d begun her abbreviated travelogue.

She’d hired this young man away from a lucrative career in deep water engineering, and he’d proved his worth in all things electronic, but they butted heads from time to time. It was hardly possible to wire a link into a boneless octopus—no matter which brain they chose—to facilitate the complex communications they were forging now. Since early in the twenty-first century, medical researchers had noted that some human subjects seemed able to receive images without having a neural implant. She’d speculated that cephalopods, whose lives depended upon the ability to make and manipulate mental pictures of their surroundings would be even more talented at this. Her work had shown that a researcher with an embedded link could send images, simple pictures, to an octopus. Since those early days, she’d followed that success up with simple commands, much like training a puppy to fetch or a pigeon to press a certain button to score a pellet. Circus tricks, Adam had once called these accomplishments, only half joking.

But if they wanted to take their research to the next stage then something more than just a human thinking in cartoon-like pictures and sending them over a limited and sometimes unreliable link—with all the potential for confusion and ambiguity on both ends—had to be found. Stefan had found it.

“Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity,” she said as the team settled down. “It’s been my motto for most of my career.”

Hue looked puzzled. Two of the younger students nodded solemnly.

“So we need to think outside the box this time.” She blanked the holo and took her chair at the head of the conference table. “I haven’t totally worked this out yet. I want you in at the beginning.” Ever since the earliest days of her lab, she’d believed in sharing everything with her students, the failures as well as the successes. “I’m leaning toward seeing what happens when an octopus gets the same experience I did on first seeing the cave.”

Jan frowned. “You can’t be thinking of transporting an octopus to Greece—even a little one?”

“The actual physical experience won’t be necessary.”

“You’re going to play the holo for them,” Stefan said.

He was one step ahead as usual, the reason she’d hired him. He was brilliant. He was even a cooperative team member. Most of the time.

“Not all of them, Stefan. I’ll pick one to work with. I’m going to need your help with this.”

“That’s taking quite a leap, isn’t it?” Jan said.

“How’re you going to get a holo to play inside a tank full of water?” Hue asked.

Stefan moved to the door. “Ada does the planning. I do the engineering.”

Discussion broke out after he’d gone; Lena didn’t join in. What she really wanted to do was go to bed.

“This won’t harm any of our cephies, will it?” Jan asked as the team filed out of the room.

“You know me better than that, Jan.” The unwelcome thought remained: Could she be so certain?

“Then I’d recommend the new little girl, Amphioctopus marginatus.”

A new subject wouldn’t come with any preconditioned responses or quirks, anything that might get in the way of a clean reaction. And she’d already done well with the initial training.

“Amphioctopus it is then. Set it up, please, Jan. Ada, I want you monitoring. I’m going to try to get a good’s night’s sleep.”

“I doubt the dean will be happy when he hears,” Jan said. “He’s the poster child for not thinking outside his tidy little box.”

◆◆◆

Before leaving her condo the next morning, Lena stood on the balcony watching sunrise lighting the deep blue water of Kane’ohe Bay. Breathe deeply, empty the mind. A flash of movement caught her eye—a pair of dolphins at play. How wonderfully different the oceans of the world were, yet for certain she loved the Pacific with its rich smell overlaid with tropical blossoms the most. She had no regrets about her choice of career, or the place where she pursued it, even when the immediate future of her work seemed cloudy.

She called Adam, filling him in on the AI’s assessment of the enigmatic signs on the submerged cave’s wall and her suspicions. Skeptical of her wilder flights of intuition he might be, but the sound of his voice always lifted her spirits.

“Sounds interesting,” Adam said. “But it’s not really connected to your work, is it?”

“It’s a bit off track, I admit. Do you think I’m wasting my time?”

“Not quite that. But I don’t see what you stand to gain. Maybe you just need a break. I suspect you may be burning out. I’ve got to make a trip to Tanzania next month—big new client. Come with me. Look at lions and elephants for a change instead of cephalopods.”

They’d been young, exploring the world, not so heavily invested in their work. Perhaps he was right. “Olduvai Gorge is rather tempting.”

“Think about it. I’ll be home tomorrow, we’ll talk.”

Until this current puzzle was solved, she wouldn’t be able to relax. She decided to walk over to the Marine Institute, the morning was so fine. It would give her more time to go over her plans for the day. Preparing to work with a cephalopod was reassuring amongst all the unknowns she’d recently encountered.

Did an octopus think more than one thought at a time? She couldn’t rule it out. She placed her finger on the door sensor and when it opened she went through. Multiple separate brains, after all. Yet so far in her research, all they’d ever encountered was one thought-image at a time. Maybe that said more about their methods than the capabilities of the subjects. The closest human equivalent was people who’d had the two hemispheres of the brain separated to lessen epileptic seizures. Results showed each hemisphere had its own autonomous view of the world.

Maybe she should’ve chosen to work with squid. Squid were demonstrably capable of holding two conversations at once, courting a sexy female with visual displays on the left side while fending off a menacing opponent on the right.

Jan held out coffee as Lena entered the lab.

"Mahalo. I need this to keep my nerves from jittering this morning.”

“Thought coffee was supposed to have the opposite effect?” Jan said.

“Not if you’re already an addict.”

Jan laughed and led her through the lab to a windowless side room usually used for storage, now emptied out. “If this works out, Lena, it’ll be mind-blowing.”

“Nobel Prize time?” Stefan came into the room, wheeling a tank that usually transported cephalopods to the marine infirmary. “If it works.”

“You have doubts?”

“Not of my end of things, Boss.”

His attitude irritated her today. He was a gifted engineer, but she’d often wondered if he truly found her work with the octopuses worthwhile. This might be a stretch for him.

In the transport tank, the little veined octopus Jan had chosen, her mantle no more than ten centimeters across, was busy shuttling a small abalone shell across the sandy floor. Watching the sinuous ballet of her limbs, Lena felt a wave of affection. The octopus stopped, becoming aware of the humans hanging over the glass edge, and flowed toward them.

“Have you named her?” She trailed fingers over the tank top, felt the immediate response of suckers on her arm, the octopus tasting an unknown visitor.

“I’m partial to Maia,” Jan said.

“Fine with me.”

“I’ve installed the touch pad in the transport tank,” Stefan said. “You’re ready to go. I’ll be standing by in case something unexpected happens.”

“Wouldn’t be an experiment, Stefan, if we weren’t prepared for the unexpected. You know that.”

She hadn’t needed to bite his head off. She didn’t expect it would be easy going; some doubts on the part of the team were normal. She was about to take a leap of intuition. What was “intuition” anyway, that word Adam despised, if it wasn’t just a conclusion rising to the surface out of deep streams of unconscious thought?

She glanced back at the little octopus, now placidly resting on the sand at the bottom of the transport tank, her color a mottled yellow. Time to put things to the test.

Jan rolled shutters down over the big windows, reducing the light in the cavernous storage room. “Ready?”

She nodded. Jan and Stefan stepped out, leaving the door ajar. She was conscious of her team gathering outside, all of them rooting for her, aware this was groundbreaking work.

She activated the embedded link with a touch of her tongue to the roof of her mouth. The familiar furry sensation told her it was working; Using the link, she sent the “wake-up-and-work” signal they’d all used since the very beginning of their work with cephalopods, two decades ago now—an image of sunrise.

One second later, the little animal left the bottom of the tank and headed for the ingenious pad Stefan had engineered. Simultaneously, an answering sunrise image blossomed in her own mind. A good beginning. Now she could send and receive much more sophisticated images from whichever octopus had access to the communication pad, in this case, Maia.

“Ada, start the holo.”

The submerged cave on Kefalonia leaped into existence, surrounding her in the dim room. The little octopus hovered over the pad, her limbs immobile. Lena took a moment, then systematically moved her gaze around the cave walls, allowing the images to register in her brain without attempting to analyze or speculate.

A pause followed as Maia took in the new situation. Not unusual. Sometimes an octopus took as long as five minutes assessing a new problem. Lena waited, keeping her mind as blank as possible, letting the images do their work.

Sudden fizz of electrical impulses lit in her visual cortex, the small octopus registering confusion.

A moment’s hesitation—Was this the right step? What if it didn’t work? She wasn’t planning harm to the octopus. All the lab animals were used to receiving images and sending them in return. This was hardly that much different.

She took a deep breath. Focus on the octopus. Calm the confusion. Focus on the images. The galaxy.

This time, Maia’s alarm showed immediately, mantle blushing a muddy purple.

Lena pulled her thoughts together, reducing the chaos that suddenly invaded her mind, and directed the images across the link into Maia’s nine brains, trusting that one at least would be able to receive and process them without panic.

Tremors rippled through the octopus, colors rippling across her mantle signaling fear. Two limbs now attached themselves to the pad. No returning image. Something wrong with the link? The wake-up call and response had gone smoothly. Anxiety knotted her stomach. Perhaps the galaxy was a scary unknown to a sea creature? Poor choice on her part. She took a deep breath.

This time, she concentrated on the blur with the eight trailing tentacles, sending the image over her link to the little octopus. The unknown ancient artists had been cephalopodic, she was sure of it now.

An avalanche of new images flooded her brain, overwhelming the drawing on the cave wall.

Water folk—Ship—Long journey.

Darkness. The ship. A world a pinpoint of light in a galaxy—never to be seen again—

So far from home—

Sharp pain gripped her. Shaking, every nerve screaming to pull out, run away. She forced herself to stay in the vision.

Trapped—

Contact with the amphioctopus wavered. Fear cascaded over her. She couldn’t breathe—

Something immense and terrible had occurred in that cave. She tasted sourness—bitter horror.

Dying.

Skin on fire with synesthetic pain, she screamed.

“What happened to them?”

Maia dashed herself against the glass with such force the touch pad Stefan had installed broke loose and contact was lost. The holo disappeared.

Darkness crashed down.

◆◆◆

Lena came back to consciousness, lying on the damp floor of the storage room, Jan kneeling over her, dabbing a cold cloth on her forehead.

“Ada stopped the trial,” Jan said. “You apparently blacked out. How are you feeling now? You terrified us.”

“I terrified myself.” The horror of what had happened flooded back. “Maia—Is she okay?” Her heart thudded. If she’d harmed the octopus—

“A bit stunned. Ada says she’ll be fine.”

She closed her eyes, headache starting. “I’d appreciate an aspirin.”

Jan fetched tablets from the lab’s first aid cupboard and gave them to her. She swallowed them.

“I saw it, Jan,” she said. “It was like being there. The ship—the terror.”

“You mean Maia returned an image you hadn’t sent?”

“More than that. I felt their pain.”

Jan stared at her.

In the main hall, grad students, volunteers, custodial staff rushed about, mops and pails in hand, cleaning up the water that had splashed out of the tanks by the frenzied activity of their inhabitants. Stefan stood grim-faced by the largest tank belonging to Enteroctopus, patiently unsticking the Giant Pacific’s suckers from the outside of the glass where the frantic animal still clung, half in and half out of the water. Lena’s nose filled with an unpleasant smell, more than brine or the usual chemicals. It smelled like fear.

She’d lost control. That had never happened before. She’d always been ultra-conscious of the separation of her own thoughts and those of the subject and been able to manipulate them. None of them had ever had a reaction like that—

How would she ever forgive herself if she’d hurt any of them in any way?

“The rest of our cephies seemed to sense something was going on,” Jan said. “How could that have happened? You were only linked to one.”

Still shaking, she clung to Jan’s arm to avoid the puddles as they made their way to her office. Her team followed, murmuring among themselves. Jan eased her onto a comfortable rattan chair across from her desk. An intern brought coffee. The bookshelves behind the desk were mostly empty now that the AI held just about any information she would need. The notable exception among the shells and the framed holos of Adam and Coby was the first book she’d ever read about octopus intelligence, Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds. A hundred years old now and still a classic.

One by one, her team crowded in silently and waited.

“You may not like what I have to say,” she began, glancing round at them. “The makers of the symbols on the cave wall were not human, and they were not terrestrial animals. I believe they were extra-terrestrial visitors.”

She paused, giving them time to take that in. “They were water-beings. Eight limbed. Explorers. Their starship got trapped somehow in that cave.”

“Aliens?” someone said. “Really?”

Others murmured to each other in confusion.

“Eight limbed?” Hue asked. “You mean like—”

“Are you suggesting these alien visitors—or whatever they might’ve been—were the ancestors of our octopuses?” Stefan interrupted. “Because that’s ludicrous. We know the octopus evolved five hundred million years ago. They didn’t come from outer space.”

“Of course I know that, Stefan. And yet I have the impression the visitors were seeking something before they perished. Or seeking someone.”

“And how could our modern, terrestrial cephalopods right here know anything about it?” he demanded.

She had no answer to that.

“Not ancestors,” Jan suggested. “Someone they’d left here much earlier, maybe? A lost cephalopod colony they’d planted?”

She wasn’t ready to adopt that explanation either. “Ada. What do you make of this?”

“The earlier establishment of a terrestrial colony is unlikely,” the AI replied. “If the marks were made by extraterrestrials as you suggest, Professor, then I would assume the visitors had identified a water world—Earth—and creatures in its oceans that at least partly resembled themselves.”

“But even if that’s true—and I don’t want to argue with Ada,” Jan said, “I still don’t understand how the other cephies picked up on Maia’s reactions,”

“Not the first time we’ve seen an empathic reaction among them, is it?” Yet she acknowledged Jan had asked a legitimate question for which she had no immediate answer. The AI was silent.

“Never to that extent,” Stefan argued.

“Neurons fire,” Lena said, “giving off electrical signals under stress. We’ve known for a long time that other people’s brains can receive these signals—especially fear and panic related ones—without physical contact. Right? Frequencies align, links occur—which is apparently how our cephalopods consider work involving one of them involves them all. We just weren’t looking for it. Yet syncing of brain regions isn’t a new idea.”

“Maybe it’s like falling in love?” a student suggested.

Someone giggled nervously, then hushed. She expected rebuttals, questions at least. None came.

“I will add another data point to your discussion,” the AI said. “I have found two papers from speleo-archaeologists investigating the known caves that support the theory that human residents of what is now called Kefalonia at the time the submerged cave’s markings were made may have used a then-existing connection between the upper and lower caves. The cave you explored extends some distance back, and at one time it may have connected with the more well-known caves. I will need more time to verify the possibility. But in that case, subsequent seismic activity closed the entrance.”

“So early humans could have met the visitors?”

“It remains a supposition I cannot verify, but it is a strong possibility.”

“What do you think happened to them?” Hue asked, her face a mask of grief for this long-ago tragedy.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know for certain.” The local folk songs Demitri had told her about—the theme of guilt that ran through them. “Maybe the humans on the island considered the visitors a threat and killed them.”

“And ate them, too, probably,” Jan said. “Savages!”

“Are you seriously suggesting that some kind of UFO visited Earth based on a few scratches on a cave wall?” Stefan demanded. “Because that’s science fiction.”

“Stefan. Let’s consider this a bit later—”

“What evidence do you have of there ever having been a starship in that cave? That’s crazy! I’ve enjoyed working for you so far, Doctor Ke’aloha, but I’m not willing to jeopardize my career on a fantasy.”

The office door slammed behind him.

He was right. She had very little to go on. Certainly not enough to persuade anyone to support her. His reaction was a small taste of what she could expect from the scientific community when word of this got out. Was she just making a big deal out of a few enigmatic scratches? How could she expect anyone to accept her theory without more evidence? The thought of desecrating the cave site to carve off a chunk of the wall to bring back a sample turned her stomach. Yet someone, at some point, would have to mount a more thorough exploration—

And then it would cease to be her project. Maybe that was the problem; she was too deeply invested in this.

“Are you satisfied with the results of this experiment, Professor?” the AI asked.

“No, Ada, I’m certainly not.”

“We have to try again, with a different octopus,” Jan suggested. “We never accept the results of just one trial.”

She shook her head, thinking of the frantic reactions of the rest of the animals who hadn’t been in contact with her and thus shouldn’t have experienced the disturbing holograms at all. That avenue of research was now off limits. She wasn’t willing to risk them again when she had no idea how it had happened. Obviously, octopus brains worked in a far different manner than even she—who thought she knew so much about them—had imagined.

The team filed out of her office talking in low voices.

“Professor?” A slight, dark-skinned young man remained behind.

“Not now!” Jan said sharply. “Professor Ke’aloha needs to rest.”

“It’s okay.” She recognized him, undergrad, working in her lab to help pay his tuition. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m thinking of changing my degree—Not that I don’t enjoy working with the cephies. I believe I should switch to a paleolinguistics program. I’d like to work on those symbols.”

She smiled. “Go with my blessing. If I were at the start of my career, I might join you.”

If she continued based on little but her own intuitions, she’d jeopardize the work of the team at the Institute. Yet there were scientists who believed that science should never reject new ideas out of hand, no matter how crazy they seemed at first. History was full of stories of those who’d been laughed at, or worse, imprisoned or tortured for investigating the forbidden. The Earth orbits the sun? Sacrilege! Doctors attending childbirth should wash their hands first? Ridiculous! There was no subject science shouldn’t at least investigate even if later it turned out to be a dead end. The alien beings who had perished in that underwater tomb had been scientists, too, she was certain of it, risking their lives for knowledge, desperately etching their dying messages in deep water.

On his way out, the student paused. “You have a visitor, Professor.”

Demitri stood in the doorway. “Am I intruding at a bad moment?”

She got up from her chair. “I didn’t expect to see you—”

“I took care of my business in Honolulu. Then we took a very ordinary shuttle flight across Oahu. You would’ve been amused by Nic’s comments.”

She laughed, a little shakily, and introduced him to Jan.

“You look as Atlas must’ve felt,” he said as Jan moved away, giving them space. “The weight of the world on your shoulders. I hope I didn’t cause your distress?”

Not at all. I always assumed you expected to get something out of it. You’re a businessman, after all—”

He held up a hand, stopping her. “You didn’t give me a chance to explain. I would’ve told you that at one time I did indeed contemplate how I could put the discovery to good use.”

“I don’t need to know your business!” Exhaustion, frustration, grief—the words came out more hostile than she intended. “Of course, Demitri, I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity you gave me, but—”

“Lena, please! Give me a moment. I canceled our preliminary plans to develop the submerged cave.”

“Canceled?” She stared at him. “Why?”

“I think the money could go to better causes. I’d enjoy seeing what you could come up with if you had the funding. That is, if you could see a way to accept my family’s money. You can’t let this puzzle go unsolved, Lena, and I can’t control my curiosity about the solution.”

Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment. “Thank you for that, from the bottom of my heart. But it won’t work. When my very old-fashioned dean hears what I’m doing, I could lose my lab.”

“Then we will operate as independent contractors,” he said.

She sat down again. “I’d need to think about this—it’s very tempting.”

“I suggest we all go out to eat somewhere and talk about it. More brains, more results, like your octopus?”

Demitri’s favorite solution: Let’s eat. She laughed. “I could be persuaded.”

Jan came back. “Couldn’t help overhearing. There’s a great luau place not far from the institute. I can eat their fruit plates.”

“Anything but octopus,” Lena said.

“Wonderful. Nic has always wanted to try roast pig Hawai’ian style.”

Jan shuddered.

“I almost forgot.” Demitri rummaged in his pocket. “Nic wanted you to have these.”

She stared at the small, irregular shaped stones he dropped into the palm of her hand, the stones Nic had used to play a child’s game.

“He’s something of a magpie,” Demitri added. “Always picking up odd things. These came from our first dive into the cave.”

Lightweight with an odd feel to them. Not stones at all. Pieces of metal, twisted and spotted with grey algae. Like pieces ripped from some larger object and left to rust for thousands of years on the dark sea floor. Like debris from an alien spaceship.

If those astronomers she’d followed had received a radio message from the stars, would they have been able to decipher it? Certainly they would have tried! An intelligence advanced enough to navigate the darkness of space and leave a message must share some perception with humans, some basic naming of actors and actions, objects, causes, goals. The root of every human language, surely alien languages, too. It was a place to start. Excitement hummed through her nerves.

Odysseus had Homer to tell his story. She would tell this one.

The Lichens

Nina Allan

SHE BRUSHED THE earth aside, felt grit beneath her nails, felt the abrasive dryness of the sparse mountain soil. There was something here after all, the grey-silver gleam of metal pitted with age, with age or with pellet shot, small concavities choked with dirt, dirt so ingrained it looked immovable though Helen guessed it wouldn’t be, not if you fetched a brush to it or a wad of wire, the same as you’d use to scour a fire grate or a boiled-dry saucepan.

She glanced down at her hands, the long lean track of them, the prominent wrist bones. You have lovely hands, Miss Stone, Pastor Acres had said to her, the hands of a ministering angel, pale and stern. The unexpectedness of the compliment had shaken her, though she sensed the man was being untruthful, not lying so much as pushing his advantage, which was somehow worse.

She was thirty-five years old. A teacher, Helen reminded herself, not a quarryman, though her hands were also the hands of a digger, a washerwoman, a woodcutter and a baker’s wife, as likely to be dusted with flour or sawdust or soap suds as with chalk. Or with the gritty, grey-brown dirt of this mountain hollow.

Gleam of grey against the paler dust. Looked like stone but her hand said metal and the hand could often be trusted further than the eye. The eye was a mirror—it saw what you wanted it to see. The hand was not deceived so easily, or as often.

◆◆◆

She had not told anyone, not her father, not Acres, not anyone, of the woman she met on the hillside the afternoon she stood on the crest and watched the redcoats swarming between the houses in the town below, Helen so overcome with anger, with despair as bitter as wormwood she’d scarce known where she was headed let alone the larger question of what she should do. The mist lifting off the firth like cobwebs, like a bridal veil, the dampness on her cheeks and in her gullet, the image of the town as a sacrifice, a biddy young thing skinny about the ankles still like Vida McBrady the year she’d been forced into wedlock at gunpoint with Jebediah Hearne.

Not the first time she’d thanked God for the luck of spinsterhood; astringent though that luck sometimes tasted, it did at least sharpen the mind, the mettle, the memory, indeed all her senses, and not merely, as men insisted, her devilish tongue. Better a maiden all her days than shackled to Jeb Hearne and it wasn’t like he was the worst, just the closest to mind and with the wind and the recall and the red-coated soldier ants she, Helen, had gone tearing up the hill and in between the trees.

She had clasped the pine as a lover, hot tears wetting the bark and she could have sworn, yes she would have sworn, she could feel the tree breathing, cleaving to her like a paramour, its heartbeat soft and firm and even against her own and Helen sensed the pity of it, that she should seek consolation this way, that she should heed such febrile imaginings, that she had no one to hold.

What is it? came the voice then, the voice pure-toned and rounded and ethereal and so unlike her own. What’s wrong?

The voice of the tree was a woman’s voice, a fact that seemed less strange to her in that instant than that its accent was English. A Scots pine that addressed her in English? Were the redcoats so far advanced already they could turn the stones and trees of the hillside to the enemy cause? Helen sprang back, slivers of bark caught in mossy half-moons beneath her fingernails. Only then as she raised her head did she see she was not alone.

A woman, in a gabardine coat and with a canvas knapsack, the jersey leggings of a journeyman or of a soldier cast adrift from his platoon. The hood of her coat lay flattened against her shoulders, her hair, a tawny brown, cropped close about her ears. A nun, Helen thought, an English Joan of Arc. What woman would dare wear her hair that way unless a martyr or a saint, a madwoman confined to the cells of the Inverness Asylum?

The woman wore stout boots, not leather like her father’s or the pastor’s or Jeb Hearne’s tackety boots made in Glasgow, but some other unknown material woven and shiny with a silvery sheen as if the woman had stepped in a puddle. Yet that was not it, Helen could tell, the boots were tight and dry and it was the boots more than anything more even than the soldier’s crop gave Helen the sense that what she was seeing could not be real. More, should not be real, because why would a nun, a martyr in moon-boots, come from her place beyond the mountains to meet with the spinster schoolmistress Helen Stone?

I am a teacher, Helen said, stupidly, and it was only later at her desk in her bedroom, the fire burned down so low it was all but out she realized she chose the words not because her mind was gone but because they were the most the weightiest gift she had to offer.

For what was being a teacher if not her salvation? For what was being a teacher if not a curse?

Helen Stone, she added, the load of her name in her stomach like the thing it said it was.

My name is Joe, the woman said, well, Josephine, but everyone calls me Joe. My friends do, anyway.

Joan, Helen whispered. She felt weightless, bound by nothing, as if my blood were her blood, she would say to her god-daughter Janey some thirty years later, as if that were the moment my life became truly my own.

Were you scared, Nannie? Janey would ask. At the age of eight she was old enough to recognize the science of fear, still young enough not to question the art of belief.

No, Helen would reply, cautiously probing the question as if the response it inevitably yielded was still a mystery to her. I knew she meant me no harm.

I heard you crying, Joe said, in the present. I wondered if you were lost.

Which made Helen laugh because how could she be lost in these woods where she’d played as a child, where her sister Bessie who was now in America had taught her to forage for mushrooms where she had surprised Augie Dunseath her beloved kissing her best friend Martha-Mary behind a tree where she’d learned the name of every bird and plant before the age of ten?

I am not lost, she said, and the certainty of her statement lent her new courage. It is the soldiers. You must have seen them. They have taken the town.

You are a Jacobite, then? said the nun.

Helen stared at her in silence. I do not give myself that name, she said finally. I have no trust in politics. I have even less trust in the king’s men, that is all. I have seen what they are capable of, their mistreatment of women. I know that while they are here in our town no one dares to speak their mind. Speaking my mind is something I value and if that makes me a Jacobite, those are your words, not mine. Are you also a soldier? she said, and her words once spoken seemed to crack open the air as a pick splits ice. A woman a soldier? The idea harsh and bright and piercing as a new pin. Your boots, she added, less certainly. They are like none I have seen before.

I’m not a soldier. The woman laughed a little. I am a scientist. I study plants. Well, lichens, she said. Lichens are—

Lichen is like moss. It grows upon trees and gravestones.

Among other places. The woman smiled. So you know about lichens?

I have not studied them in the way that you would understand the word. But I have observed and admired them in the forest when I go walking. I take pleasure in the wildness and variety of all living things. Helen could feel herself blushing. How foolish she must sound. And in my profession there is always the chance such knowledge may one day come in useful.

That’s good to hear, Helen. I wish everyone felt that way about their environment. Joe reached out to touch the bark of the tree she had been leaning against. There are many thousands of species of lichens, all over the world. You might not know this yet, but they are amongst the oldest organisms on the planet.

Older than pine forests?

Many millions of years older, which makes lichens extremely useful for dating other organisms. Lichens are not ordinary plants. In fact they’re not plants at all, they are more like fungi—like mushrooms and toadstools. Studying lichens helps us detect and measure changes in the environment, over long periods of time.

What kind of changes?

Like how wet an environment is, or how polluted. If you keep studying the lichen colonies in a single spot you’ll notice alterations in color and density, sometimes in a single year, sometimes over decades. And as scientists pass on their research, over hundreds of years.

Helen imagined a parade of scientists, each handing on their discoveries to the one who came after her, a parade that marched ever onward and into the future. Even those who were dead, lying in the ground beneath the trees they had so lately studied would still be contributing their knowledge to the knowledge of all.

Like travelling through time, Helen thought. She remembered how as a child she liked to make paper dolls, folding a torn-off sheet of the butcher paper her father kept in the woodshed for lighting fires. Careful not to take too much or else her father would scold her for wanton wastage, though an edge he did not mind or at least pretended not to notice. Folding the paper as an accordion bellows, a concertina that could be squashed together to a single plane, that once extended would reach across the space between her outstretched arms. Cutting carefully to create the outline of a human figure, then whoosh like the stirring of moths an unfolding line of them, each little neighbor identical to her paper sisters.

Paper sisters, paper teachers, paper stargazers, for although the Royal Society would not deign to admit a woman beneath its portals no one could stop a woman looking up at the sky. Helen liked to use her drawing pencils to give the figures clothing: smart dresses for the town meeting, sweeping gowns for the summer ball in the castle gardens, stout boots and gabardine capes for their hikes into the hills. Dolls that whispered and caroused, then folded themselves swiftly away when they wished to disappear.

Are you at a university? Helen said. They let you be admitted? She spoke quietly, as if to herself. This meeting with a stranger who spoke to her as if they might be friends, as if they might hold thoughts and actions in common, as if—she hardly dared think it—they might have met before. And yet who was she and where did she come from, silver boots and all?

None of this can be real, Helen thought. This is some temporary madness, an invasion of the senses. She thought once again of the red-coated soldiers, wondered if her mind might fall to enemy forces as easily as her town.

Men can be tiresome, of course, this quaint Saint Joan was saying. You know already what they are like. University men are no different, indeed some of them are worse, but we’re all used to that. And there are some good ones, she added, grinning in a way that suggested her acquaintanceship with such goodness went a way beyond the formal. I don’t have time to explain everything again—the durations are becoming shorter, just as I feared. Could you do something for me?

The woman’s smile was gone suddenly, and with it her lightheartedness, the change in her demeanor so abrupt it was almost alarming. Helen remembered her paper dolls, the way they seemed identical but were not, how they could each be made to represent different aspects of the other.

I will if I can, she said. If I could I would turn the Earth for you, Helen thought her heart like the rattle of frozen stones upon an icy road. She remembered the days of her childhood, the dark winter evenings, being sent out to the log store to bring in wood for the stove. The thrill of panic in the gut that this time she would not be fast enough, that the fiends from the stories in her father’s picture books—her father’s litho-graphs—would grab her this time for sure, the scolding herself there were no fiends yet still half-hoping there were because the nights were lithe as dreams and what were dreams without fiends, without bold imaginings? The terror that came with the darkness jostling at her elbow and her peace of mind, telling her there were worse things than being afraid, that the being afraid was what stopped you from freezing over from feeling nothing.

This is the greatest moment of my life, Helen thought. Greater by far than the love I felt for Augie. Greater than I dreamed. The thought occurred to her once again that she and this Joan of Arc had met before.

In another life, she thought confusedly. Or a life to come.

There is a place at the edge of the forest, Joe said, not far from here—near where the quarry is? There is a small lake, and a strange little granite ridge, cutting out of the earth?

Libbet’s Pond, Helen said. I know the place. It is always quiet there because there’s no wind. The pond is not deep. Sometimes in the middle of summer it dries up completely.

There is a tree near the rock—a mountain ash. The mountain ash has a tenacious root system because it often finds itself growing in harsh environments. This tree is very old. It has well-established lichen colonies. I would like you to keep a record for me, if you can.

I would not be sure how to do that. I am not a scientist.

You don’t need to be—and you needn’t go there often, either. The kind of changes you would be looking for happen slowly. Make a note of the date, and time, and the weather, and then describe what you see. The size and location of the colonies, whether they have spread. And the colors—I especially need to know if the colors of the lichens have changed, and if so, how. Anything that occurs to you, that you feel might be important. If there is anything to be noticed, I’m sure you’ll notice it.

I can try.

There is one other thing you might look out for. The next time the pond dries up, if you can, climb down into the hollow and scrape away some of the dirt from near the base of the ridge. If I am right—and I think I am—you will find something buried there. Something that shouldn’t be there. Something old.

Something dangerous?

Not for you to touch. Not in the way you might think.

A weapon?

You might call it a weapon, though it was never designed to be one.

Why do you speak in riddles? Do you not have trust in me?

Joe smiled at her then, though it was a thin smile, almost like a frown. Trust is a rare emotion, Helen. Rarer than love, I think. Do you know how it feels not to be believed, to be made a fool of by those who deem themselves your superior through the single, unearned attribute of having been born inside a body that happens to be male?

Helen laughed. She clapped her hands, the sound ricocheting through the trees like a blast from a hunting gun. Only my whole life long, she said. Only by every man I have ever known, even those who have professed to care for me. I think especially of Pastor Michaelis who is now Bishop Michaelis, a kind man indeed and a learned one, yet still he found time to censure me for having the temerity to take solace in books that were not the Bible. To censure my father for allowing me to read such books even. I should count myself lucky that my father has no time for the church, that he somewhat enjoys the notoriety of having a witch for a daughter. Even so that has never prevented him taking advantage of my practical ability in darning overalls and chopping up trees.

How foolish of me. I’m sorry.

Sorrow is not in order. Not among comrades. Helen stepped forward and touched Joe’s arm. There had been a part of her, even right up to and during the moment of contact, that doubted the other woman’s physicality. That had believed—that in some sense still did believe—that her fingers would pass right through her, as through a ghost.

Instead there was her hand on Joe’s arm, the heat of Joe’s body faintly discernible through the layers of damp cloth.

You are truly here, Helen said. She laughed again, this time without bitterness, a soft peal of delight. I do not care where from or how you have come. I know only that whatever you may wish to tell me, it can scarcely be stranger or more impossible than your being here to tell it.

That is the nature of luck, Joe said quietly. You cannot predict it—it is what it is, blind chance. I might have wandered these hills a hundred times and never encountered you. And yet—here you are.

Luck has a name, Helen said. Her name is Fortune, and I owe her a great deal. I am sure that as a scientist you have no time for such superstitions, but I have felt her presence in my life too often to firmly deny it. Besides, she added, I have often wondered if Fortune might not be a master of the calculus in disguise.

I have never thought of it that way before—but I am sure she must be!

I have sometimes liked to imagine her in the guise of Hypatia of Alexandria, though I am inclined to believe her face will have taken on a more familiar aspect, next time I speak with her.

Helen felt the redness flare up in her cheeks again, though the woman in the silver boots did not seem to mind. Her expression was serious, as if she were engaged in a deep, inner struggle with herself—should she say what was in her heart or let what had been said already be enough? Helen waited. She gazed at Joe intently, as if to fix her in stone. As if she feared that once the two of them were parted they would not meet again.

When Joe finally spoke the words burst forth unevenly, as if the doubter in her had been silenced but temporarily.

Helen—do you really not know me? Don’t you remember last summer? Do you remember anything at all?

Helen’s heart seemed to stop beating, to cease marking time, and she found herself thinking it must be time that was wrong here that had become confused. Not her and not Joe but the order of the world around them, which was not as it should be.

She recalled the woody scent of heather and a bank of wild roses. The bleached white light of a summer night to which dark never came.

She remembered a story she had thought to write once for the older children—the story of a sojourner-soul who learns how to fold time. To fold time over upon itself like the concertinaed paper she had once used to make her paper dolls. A warrior maid in sojourner’s boots, linking hands with the schoolteacher in her Sunday best pinafore and the two of them laughing laughing laughing as they race up the side of the mountain the town so far below them so nearly out of sight they could be anywhere.

Yet the magical light of midsummer is the same in any year and still the story of the paper dolls remains unwritten. Helen remembered last autumn the encroachment of the darkness like a final farewell, the new minister, Pastor Dermot Acres, playing Bach all by himself in the candlelit church, the heavenly andante made pinched and peevish by the ancient wheezing pedal organ, an instrument that through generations of careless stewardship had entered the haunted twilight of its own dementia.

Miss Stone, Acres had greeted her. I have your father’s permission to call on you. Shall we say four o’clock?

So here was her father’s final attempt to secure for her what he would call a life for herself. One desperate last throw of the dice before the very idea of marriage became a dubious joke. And Dermot Acres was not unintelligent. He reads, at least, Helen thought. She wondered if it would be better she should surrender to what time had in store for her, like the organ. Those dreams of heather and roses? Simply dreams.

I think, she said to Joe, I think I am afraid to.

It isn’t that you are afraid. I don’t think you could ever be afraid. It’s just the way this thing works. There are no memories for you to hold on to. Every time we meet it’s like starting again.

It is like hearing an echo, Helen said quietly. You turn your head to catch the sound, and find it is gone. She fell silent, rubbing her eyes. I think it would be better if you simply tell me what you need me to do.

They stand facing one another, and Helen knows she will not say yes to Dermot Acres. As the town will never truly surrender to the swarming redcoats, she will cloak herself in stone and bide her time.

The artefact is buried, Joe said. You wouldn’t be able to dig it up, not even with twenty men helping you, and you shouldn’t try. I don’t know how damaged it is, so I have no idea what the effects would be. Until I can find out more it’s too dangerous to rely on guesswork. All I need to know for now is that it is there. Could you help me with that? Write down what you see—draw it if you can. Make a note of any details that seem important, the same as with the lichens.

And you have not seen this thing—this artefact—for yourself?

Joe shook her head. It’s because of the lake—your Libbet’s Pond. I know this is probably difficult for you to imagine, but in my time it’s not a pond any more, it’s part of the firth. The whole of that basin of land—where the quarry is now—has become completely submerged. In order to excavate it you’d need the cooperation of a professional underwater salvage crew—that’s millions of dollars. The team I’m working with, we’re just interested individuals, we don’t have access to that kind of money. But you’ve already confirmed what I suspected, that at this point in time the floor of the quarry is still accessible, because the lake dries up during the summer months. We can at least confirm that the artefact is where I think it is.

What I would give to see Pastor Michaelis’s face, were he to hear you, Helen said. He would swear we were daughters of Satan, and properly in league.

But what do you believe, Helen?

I believe I have reason to be glad of my father’s insistence that I learn to till the land, to break clods and sow beans and parsnips as well as teaching the children of gentlefolk where and how they grow. I am used to feeling dirt beneath my fingernails. I believe that especially for a woman I am good at digging.

Take this then. Joe was smiling. It will protect what you write.

She handed Helen a journal, an impossibly fine ruled notebook, its many leaves threaded together with a spiral of wire. The journal was sealed inside a transparent envelope that appeared to be made of the same material as Joe’s boots. Thrust down inside the metal spiral was a stylus, a writing instrument of some kind that, Helen discovered later, made a sharp indelible line, black as ink but without the concurrent hazards of smearing or blotting.

How can this even be? Helen asked herself. How can any of these things be? Yet she saw no purpose in asking questions that were their own best answers.

Will I see you again? she asked instead.

I don’t know, Joe said. She shook her head. It’s getting so I can’t control my trajectory with any real accuracy. That’s the curse of new technology—no one knows what they’re doing. It’s down to chance, I think.

Fortune, Helen said. She did not have the words to describe their situation, yet she found she understood it, nonetheless, she grasped its essence perfectly. Dermot Acres would speak of angels and visitations. Pastor Michaelis would speak of the devil, and the devil’s works. Helen imagined herself without a map, trying to navigate her way through the dusk-laden streets of Edinburgh, a city she had visited only once, in the company of her father, and long ago.

Her recollections of the place were fragmentary and ever-mutable, its landmarks possessing the aura of places in a dream: a narrow lane threading the boundary of a doctor’s residence, a courthouse and a cathedral, a castle on a hill.

If travelling in time were possible, then it would surely be like this.

Use the mountain ash as your marker, Joe said. There’s a small cavity in the trunk—a hollow—about three feet up. Each time you write a new report, tuck the notebook inside. That way I’ll always know where to find it. The space is quite dry.

They embrace then, a brief, hard hug, the kind one soldier might give to their comrade on the eve of battle. Helen touches Joe’s hair, the cropped brown silkiness, and feels her insides tremble like the needles of the pine, stirred to secret life by the summer wind.

◆◆◆

There will be a time, after the long dry summer when she first glimpses the artefact buried in the dusty soil of Libbet’s Pond, after she learns that Dermot Acres has begun calling on Harriet Templar, ten years her junior, when Helen puts her hand inside the tree to retrieve the notebook and finds it gone. In its place is a small clothbound volume, which includes a series of color plates that to Helen seem to be of exceptional quality. The book is called The Lichens, and is by James Morrison Crombie, a minister in the Church of Scotland and one of the first British naturalists to undertake a specialist study of these extraordinary organisms. Crombie died in 1906. The precise date of Helen Stone’s death is unknown.

Inside the book on lichens there is a note: Crombie was wrong to reject Schwendener, but his drawings are exquisite. I thought you might like them.

Helen has no idea who Schwendener is—why should she, he hasn’t been born yet—though she has no difficulty in guessing who has written the note. She agrees that Crombie’s drawings are exquisite. She spends a long time examining them, turning the pages under the lamplight through the long winter evenings. Rain beats down upon the town and the surrounding countryside. Libbet’s Pond fills up again, the dry grey dirt of its basin restored in the space of an hour to cloying black mud. Helen does not know this yet, but Libbet’s Pond will never fully dry out again, at least not in this millennium. The changes have begun.

Helen continues in her post as teacher at the local school. After her father dies, she opens her own school, an institution for the education of girls whose parents cannot afford to send them to the bishop’s academy. One of her pupils, Catherine Carraway, will become one of the first women botanists to sail down the Amazon.

Helen will later become godmother to Catherine’s daughter Janey. It will be Janey who disposes of Helen’s property after her death. Her furniture and personal effects are sold through Phillotson’s Auctions, of Inverness. The little book on lichens ends up as part of a job lot, purchased by a university lecturer named McQuarie for just a few shillings. The lot includes a bound volume of letters, more than a dozen of them that were sent to Helen’s father by his friend Captain Angus Stuart, written while he was a prisoner at Tilbury Fort. It is these letters in particular our lecturer is interested in. McQuarie is compiling a history of the Battle of Culloden and he has travelled all the way from Aberdeen to secure Stuart’s letters.

The rest of the books are incidental, and the clothbound volume on lichens he barely glances at. Scottish history is his subject, not botany. McQuarie will live and die without ever noticing that Crombie’s famous monograph has not yet been published.

◆◆◆

“They’re not going to give us the grant, so you might as well forget it,” Kemal says. “They think we’re cranks.” Joe knows Kemal is exhausted—not just with the university and the grant committee, but with her. This is what happens in cases like theirs: exhaustion, in-fighting recriminations, though they haven’t sunk to playing the blame game and won’t, they’ve known one another too long for that, they have too much at stake, not just as colleagues but as friends. Comrades, Joe thinks. As well as being a talented geologist, Kemal is her right hand. But still, it’s easy to see why no true heretic ever gets to decide the course of history until after they’ve been burned at the stake: too little backup and too much lunacy. The end.

“But the lichens prove it, you said so yourself,” Joe insists, though with less energy less fervor than last time or the time before that. She has been up all night filling in forms and she’s almost out of craziness. “The lichens prove the anomalies in the soil are of alien origin.”

“Hitherto unidentified silicates,” says Kemal, quoting from the official lab report, which they both know by heart. “Which means whatever the lab guys want it to mean. We need to rethink our approach, conduct more analysis. And before you go off on one, I’m not talking about giving up, I’m talking about resting up. It has been ten years.”

Ten years since Joe’s first trip north in real-time for the wedding of a school friend and although the little Scottish town had been a dull abstraction for her beforehand she had found herself falling in love with its remoteness. Five hours north from Glasgow, the stern grey buildings like stern grey ladies clustered together for warmth, for the easier communication of rumor and gossip. Then there was the book she happened upon in the town museum: My Birthplace, by Catherine Carraway, a local author the blurb on the back identified as one of the first female explorers to sail down the Amazon.

A first edition of the volume preserved carefully under glass in one of the galleries, a dozen copies of a recent paperback reprint readily available for purchase in the museum shop. Joe read the book on the train on her way back to London, and in amongst the predictable recollections of childhood memories—the two older brothers, the strict but adoring father and mildly depressed mother, the ironclad winters, the amethyst summers, the Christmases and funerals, the harvest festivals—there is the story told to them by their schoolteacher (her daughter’s godmother) of the alien spacecraft buried in the muddy sediment of a flooded quarry.

Catherine Carraway does not write spacecraft, she writes artefact, antiquity, archaeological treasure. Just once and close to the end she adds: Miss Stone would try and convince us that the artefact was a starship from beyond our galaxy.

There is a playfulness to her words, a nostalgic longing for childhood secrets and family myths. My friend Helen never married, Carraway adds. She was a woman of fierce intelligence, though I suspect she was lonely.

◆◆◆

The ban on retrospective time travel is absolute, and final. There have been too many accidents, and Joe’s original plan—that they could pay a company of quarrymen from Carraway’s time to excavate the craft—has come to nothing, mainly because forming alliances with people in the past has turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. There has been plenty of the usual stuff—villagers believing they are gods or angels or devils or spies for the king. But the most troublesome aspect of retrospective communications comes down to the unreliability and impermanence of memory. Travelers to the past can be seen, touched, spoken to, killed, but it seems they cannot be remembered, or not systematically. For those living in the past, each contact with a future agent registers as a first contact, with all the shock and awe and suspicion such novelty entails. No one knows why this should be—no one has a clue, actually—but that’s what’s been happening. Without memories there can be no relationships and no forward progress. That idea everyone was so in love with, the Embassy of the Future? Forget it.

“We might as well be ghosts,” Kemal says, disconsolately. “Who would have guessed time travel would turn out to be a technological cul-de-sac?”

“How can you even say that about a science that’s still in its infancy?” Joe protests. “The big boys shut down the program because they want to control it, not because it’s dead. You think they’re not still conducting experiments behind closed doors?”

“What are you hoping to accomplish, anyway?” Eddie says. Eddie used to work in finance back in the day but as he is always saying computer skills are the most transferable on the planet. “Say we did find the artefact—there’s not a lot we can do about it from here.”

“How about providing proof of other civilizations and new technologies? Knowledge we can hardly imagine.”

“And what if a little learning is a dangerous thing?” Eddie is old school so he believes in procedure and in protocol (put it down to that series of worldwide banking crashes in the 2090s) and in checking the balance of the roulette wheel before you place your bets. He is concerned about how any potential breakthrough might jeopardize what he calls the established order. Like stirring up a hornet’s nest, he has said, repeatedly, and for what? Who knows what that thing is or where it came from? We don’t know anything.

Ironically it is Eddie who most believes. Ask him outright if he thinks the artefact is of extraterrestrial origin and he’ll give you a flat no but Eddie buys it all right, or so their metallurgist Roxane says and she should know, she enjoys the dubious privilege of living with him. It’s what he’s been looking for all his life, she says. That’s why he’s so scared.

The only person who knows about Helen is Kemal. “She remembers me,” Joe has told him. “Or at the very least she is becoming aware that there are gaps in her memory, stuff she should remember. Which suggests it’s just a matter of patience. Patience and time.”

“Time we don’t have,” Kemal says. “The artefact isn’t crucial as a first proof anyway. We should be concentrating on the silicates.”

“The silicates. You’re as bad as Roxane.”

“Roxane is a chemistry nerd. Concentrating on silicates is what she does.”

“But where have they got us, Kem? Months and months of running tests when we already know the reason those compounds have never been identified is because the environmental changes that produced them are of alien origin. We need to get to the source.”

“Meaning the artefact?”

“Meaning the spacecraft, yes.” Joe sighs. They have been chasing each other in circles for months now. Ever since their access to the retro pass was denied, effective immediately, no rescind.

Joe has thought of putting in for one more transfer so she can say goodbye to Helen, try to anyway, but what would be the point? Those fuckers in central office will refuse her and probably try and get her removed from the project into the bargain.

Anyone forming a personal attachment blah blah blah.

One of the reasons she has never mentioned Helen in her write-ups is the underlying anxiety that she could put her in danger.

◆◆◆

“Everyone talks about the wonder, the fount of knowledge, the untold riches of discovery,” Eddie says. “What they don’t talk about are the risks. This artefact of yours—have you ever thought about how it could wind up being worse than Hiroshima? You remember what Stephen Hawking said about being careful what you wish for. Ancient history I know but the guy knew what he was talking about.”

“You’re saying you’re scared?”

“I’m saying my granddad fought in Afghanistan. I’ve seen what war can do.”

“You’re not thinking of going back?” Kemal asks her. “Going back illegally? If you jump without a passcode you’ll be stuck there, Josephine. You do know that? I forbid you even to think about it.”

“So you’re my dad now?”

“I’m not your anything, you’ve made that clear. I care about you, that’s all. Or is caring off limits now, too?”

◆◆◆

Joe wonders what it would be like to be stuck in the past forever, a woman in the north of Scotland at the time of Culloden. She could be a teacher, she thinks, like Helen. She and Helen could live together as women have done through the centuries hiding in the shadows two lonely old maids. How come men are so stupid sometimes? Why does it even matter?

She imagines how it will be when she arrives: sweet September dusk and with the year on the turn the forest yellow-gold the heather burned out the puddles on Quarry Lane rimmed blue with ice. She opens the gate with the squeaking hinge swears her fingers will freeze right off her hands one of these days and Helen is laughing you forgot your mittens then serves you right I warmed them on the stove for you and all.

Soon they will be planning for Christmas, mixing puddings, getting the logs in, making paper angels, the scents of ginger and woodsmoke and sweet dried apricots rising in the frosty air. They sit together by the fire and Joe tells Helen that story she loves, of how hundreds maybe thousands of years ago a starship fell from the sky and now they are the ones who must recover it discover its origins, find out what it wants.

We will help to stop a war, she will say to Helen. A war in the future.

Would you not say we have enough to do surviving the war in the here and now?

Will Helen still love her if she is not Joan of Arc but just another discontented woman biding her time? Her bright helmet of hair grown long and grey her books of learning just fairy tales her miraculous boots worn out in holes like any common pair?

Crazy old Josephine gone to the forest to dig for alien treasure?

How long will it be before Joe accepts that whatever they accomplish in the present she will never know the future, that even should their quest for the artefact succeed her own time is lost to her?

Does the fact that she is not in the history books mean she failed, or simply that time as a navigable river is more mutable and even less predictable than has thus far been proved?

Like hearing an echo, Helen said. You turn your head to catch the sound, and find it is gone.

Beneath the Surface, a Womb of Ice

Deborah L. Davitt

“THE POINT OF Mars,” Serafina said over the radio as her rover crunched over the fine lacustrine surface of the Argyre Planitia, “is that it’s the opposite of a safe place. Why else would we be here, except to challenge ourselves, to challenge humanity?”

This was the first salvo in a well-worn argument, the kind of thing the four scientists debated to keep themselves awake and alert as their twin vehicles traversed the southern regions of Mars.

For Serafina, the landscape perennially looked the same—boulder, scree, ejecta, boulder, scree, ejecta. For geologists like her husband, Tahar, it might be a wonderland, but for her, only the map markers on the screen in front of her allowed her to sense any kind of progress in their quest to find Mars’ hidden water.

The rugged, angular vehicles had few windows, to keep heat in and radiation out, and looked a bit like old-fashioned RVs with tank treads—a necessity, given that they might be out for weeks in the field. Like spaceships, they were miniature worlds, with individual septic systems and carbon filtration to minimize the risk of contaminating the Martian surface with Terran bacteria. Though, given the colony’s presence, there were those who would argue that that particular cat was out of the bag. That change was, in fact, inevitable. That they’d brought it with them.

That even the act of observing changes the observed.

For Serafina, perched in the pilot’s seat, the surface of Mars looked as if it hadn’t changed for all of eternity. She could see the towering escarpments of the impact crater that had carved out this red-stained, low-lying basin.

Tahar stabbed a finger toward the cutoff horizon at a tumble of boulders below the rim. “Look! Imagine the force of the water that would have taken them from the cliff’s edge! I think those must have been moved during the initial outbreak event, when the waterfalls themselves were born.”

“Do they look eroded to you?”

“Too far to tell yet. Would love to get outside the rover and have a look. But . . . maybe next trip.”

They exchanged a look. The chances of getting this far from the main colonial base in Cydonia again in the next M-year seemed slim.

Everything on Mars required risk. Managing risk required redundancy—two teams for their expedition. Two rovers, so that if one failed, both teams could still evacuate. Two sets of gear for each person when they found a likely set of caves. Two methods for sanitizing their gear, lest they leave the bacteria of Earth in places where Martian life might thrive, hidden beneath the surface.

Redundancy upon redundancy upon redundancy.

Static crackled on the radio, and then she heard Elimu Nyondo’s voice, rich with his South African accent, replying to her previous salvo: “There are those who would say that no place has an obligation to humanity.”

“Quite the reverse,” added Pema Dawa’s precise, measured voice, also from the other rover. Half-Tibetan, half-Nepalese, she was an expert mountain climber and caver, and possessed the EPAS1 genetic mutation that had allowed her ancestors to endure the altitude of the Himalayas. “It is we who have an obligation to the world around us.”

Serafina smiled faintly as Tahar, recalled from his rapturous observation of the red world outside the rover, shook his head and replied, “We have an obligation to this world, yes. Not to change it too much. But think of the changes this world makes in us, as we walk across its face, discovering it. Learning it. Understanding it.”

Serafina squelched their transmission. “You romantic,” she teased out loud.

Then, back to work. She diverted around the worst of the boulders and finally found what satellite mapping had suggested might be the gentlest incline in their potential exit to the southeast.

So close to the south polar regions in summer, the sun wouldn’t set for months, so they had to rely on clocks to tell them when to eat—or when the voice of Control, far to the north at the Cydonia base, reminded them to take breaks. As it did now, in the person of Rada Morozova. “Exploration Team, this is Cydonia Base with your four-hour check-in. Take a break before trying the ascent. You need to be sharp going up that incline. Have dinner, and then switch drivers and move on at your discretion, one vehicle at a time.”

Redundancy. Caution. Because Mars was the opposite of a safe place.

Serafina found a relatively flat place, and the other rover pulled up alongside them. “Send out the umbilical,” she called over the radio. And moments later, she felt the light thunk as the second rover made contact with theirs. The main hatches on these lumbering vehicles were true airlocks to prevent the loss of valuable oxygen from the interiors into the low-pressure Martian atmosphere, and again, to reduce contamination of the Martian surface.

Sometimes, Serafina felt impatience with the strictures of their lives here. Change is inevitable. That’s evolution. Those of us who have children here . . . those children will adapt, generation by generation, to the gravity. We’ll all still be living underground, in pressurized tunnels, of course, but they’ll be a part of this world in the way that we of the first generation aren’t.

Children. Serafina tried not to think about that. She and Tahar had done the smart thing, the rational thing, before leaving Earth. The radiation of the journey, the radiation on the surface . . . it had seemed too dangerous to any children. So they’d banked sperm and ova, and she’d had a tubal ligature performed.

But that didn’t mean that she didn’t feel a pang whenever she watched Pema and Elimu lightly, delicately flirting. Two young people just entering into the beginning of a relationship, where all possibilities lay before them, in superposition, hovering over the present. Including children, in potentia. Futures yet unseen.

The hatches whirred, and two suited figures appeared, helmets off, carrying wrapped MREs. “It’s our turn to visit you,” Pema said cheerfully, taking a seat on one of the tiny benches in the kitchen area.

So necessary, the rituals of human life. Breaks in their mutual isolation helped regulate their psyches, even their hormone levels. Serafina laughed as Pema offered everyone a bottle of sepen, a hot sauce she’d brought as one of her comfort items from Earth. “Just a drop will liven up these terrible meals,” the other woman promised.

“I don’t want to clog the septic system in an hour,” Tahar refused, raising a hand as he heated his meal and Serafina’s. His comfort items had included a set of Moroccan spices, which he added subtly to prefab bricks of macaroni and cheese.

Serafina inhaled the aroma of ginger, coriander, and clove, feeling the stress of the painstaking hours of driving fall away. “Proust had his madeleines,” she said, stirring the noodles. “And there’s plenty of evidence that smell connects deeply to memory. To making new memories, folks.” She raised her collapsible cup, filled with water recycled and filtered through the vehicle’s reclamation system.

“New memories!” Elimu clinked her cup with his own. “Now, about the incline ahead of us . . .”

Pema poked his suited arm with her chopsticks. “No work-talk till we’re done eating. That’s the rule.”

“Ow.” He pretended to rub his arm. “She’s brutal, everyone. You have no idea of the abuse I endure in the other rover.”

Quiet laughter, comfortable conversation until the meal was done. And then, back to work.

◆◆◆

Four channels had been water-carved into the edges of the Argyre back in the Noachian period 3.7 to 4 billion years ago—or just shortly before the earliest noncontroversial signs of life on Earth had formed. Three had entered—Surius Valles, Dzigai Valles, and Palacopas Valles. One had exited—the Uzboi.

The Dzigai, as far as planetary geologists and hydrology experts had been able to determine, had had its source closest to the southern polar regions. And the entire fluvial system, from its theoretical source in the Dzigai to the Argyre lake basin, and from there through the Uzboi river that had emptied it, stretched nearly eight thousand kilometers. “Longer than the Nile,” Tahar commented, sounding oddly content as he took a turn at the rover’s wheel, pressing up the thirty-degree incline. “I can see it in my mind’s eye. Like kayaking along the Colorado River, except with a terrifying drop over the cataract of the falls. And then a plunge into a sea the size of the Mediterranean.”

Serafina’s palms felt damp inside her gloves. She hated being out of control, but they needed the least-tired drivers to handle this stretch. “Following the ghost of water to find its grave,” she commented tightly, looking out the small side window. “Careful. The edge drops away on the right.”

“I see it.” Tahar smiled, a quick flash of white teeth. “And no, not its ghost. We’re following its tracks back to where it’s waiting to be born.”

“Every Frenchman is a poet, waiting to be discovered.”

A rueful laugh. “There were plenty of people where I grew up who thought that having an Algerian mother made me not nearly French enough—”

The rover dipped and swayed, and Serafina grabbed for a handle overhead as Tahar swore, hitting the brakes. They hadn’t been going more than ten kilometers an hour—less, probably—but now the whole vehicle listed to the right.

The radio crackled to life. “Rover One, are you all right?” Elimu’s voice came through. “You’re looking a little crooked up there.”

Serafina’s eyes latched onto the lip of the embankment uphill of them. “We’re not wobbling, at least,” she replied after a moment, clicking the radio on. “Tahar, you want me to hop out and take a look at the situation?”

He nodded tautly. “Yes. Outside cameras aren’t giving me a good view of where the treads are resting.”

She cautiously made her way to the airlock, where the oxygen bottles were kept. Her nerves jangled with each step, fearing that changing the weight distribution would send the vehicle sliding further. Relax. You hardly weigh here what you did on Earth. Just be careful.

Stepping out the airlock, she found that there was a sharp drop to a boulder alongside the pitch they’d been climbing. “It’s not too bad, I think,” she called into the radio. “Just a little over the edge. I think the right-side camera is buried in fines.” The dust of Mars could get surprisingly deep in areas and was the bane of every mechanical device humanity had brought to the red planet.

“Is the tread all the way over the edge?”

She clambered up for a better view, staying well away from the rover itself, and trained her helmet camera on the rover from the front. “Looks like it at the front.”

The radio crackled, and Pema’s voice came through. “Cydonia is suggesting that we could come up from behind and give you a gentle push.”

“Negative,” Tahar replied immediately. “If the first rover slides down onto you, we have two vehicles out of commission. It looks like the rear part of the tread is still close to the edge. I can try to back up.”

“The edge looks crumbly,” Serafina warned. “We might want to put something down for . . . added traction? Stability?”

“Not crazy about you getting too close to the treads when I’m trying to move this beast,” Tahar replied tightly.

It took two precious hours. In the end, they simply got lucky, and Tahar was able to right the vehicle, after several failed attempts, but without needing a push from Pema and Elimu.

So simply reaching the top felt like summiting Everest. But once they crested the top, and Serafina took her first full breath in what felt like an hour, she took a moment to look around. “No mountains,” she remarked, obscurely disappointed to have fought their way uphill from one flat plain, only to find themselves on another, identical plane. “I don’t know why I expected to see any.”

Tahar pointed to her right. “That smudge on the horizon is probably the Charitum Montes,” he told her, taking off his gloves to let the sweat-soaked inserts dry as they waited for the second rover to repeat their climb.

“Really?” Serafina squinted. “I shouldn’t be this excited at the thought—”

“Or it could be a dust storm, and we’ll have to take a broom to the solar panels on the roof after it hits us,” he admitted, and she planted an elbow in his ribs. “Call Cydonia and let them know we made it topside, eh?”

◆◆◆

Farther and farther southeast they wended, following the ancient riverbed. When they reached Maraldi Crater, they paused, and Elimu exited the second rover, fully suited, to set up his drones for their surveys. The black graphite rudders shuddered to life, and they took off like a cloud of angry bees. “If there are any caverns in the crater walls, we’ll find them,” he promised, heading back into the protective shelter of the rover to direct the drones and their camera eyes.

“If we find caverns here, they won’t be the type we need,” Serafina muttered. “Too shallow, right? Just bubbles carved out of the edges while the rock was molten after impact.”

“Every piece of data we collect is new information,” Tahar reminded her. “Every bit of it has value.”

“I know, I know.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m a biochemist. I feel as useful as a cat on roller skates right now.”

“If we find a cavern system deep enough, with access to an aquifer, you won’t feel useless anymore.”

She closed her eyes. That was the hope. The dream, really—it was too thin a possibility to quantify as a hope. If they could find a deep enough cavern system, if it had been volcanic in origin, if the iron core of Mars still held enough heat to keep underground water stores liquid and flowing, if, if, if . . . then they could follow that water, looking for life. Without having to venture onto the carbon dioxide cap over the water-ice of the southern polar regions and then attempt to drill through dry ice, regular ice, and rock to find the ocean that radar observations hinted might exist beneath the surface.

The cold of the poles was dangerous. The potential for contaminating a pristine environment with Terran bacteria on their drilling equipment? Just as bad. So their cave-seeking expedition had been evaluated and deemed worth pursuing.

After hours of watching drone footage, pushing the limits of their five-kilometer range, Tahar clicked the radio on. “Elimu, I think we need to move on.”

“Agreed,” Pema replied on the same band. “The volcanic tunnels will be further to the south, deeper in the Oceanidum Fossa.”

“Just earning my keep,” Elimu replied cheerfully. “Say, Dr. Belmadi—”

“Which one?” Tahar asked as they got the rovers moving again.

“Your wife,” Elimu replied with a chuckle. “What do you think life would look like here? I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro when I was young. I was inspired by Sibusiso Vilane, you know. But as we made our way up, we went through ecosystem after ecosystem. Rainforest at one altitude, heaths above that, and above that . . . I felt like I’d found myself on another planet. The trees at altitude, the giant groundsels—they look like giant candelabras the size of telephone poles. They don’t spread out branches, really, either.” Awe in his voice. “They’re like nothing else on Earth. How different would life be here, if we can find something that alien on our own world? My background’s in engineering. They just sent me along to run the drones and help with any climbing we might do. So I’m trying to picture life that doesn’t look like life, and failing.”

“You might not be a scientist, but you’ve played catchup very well.” No disguising the affection in Pema’s voice.

Serafina cleared her throat after a moment. “Well. Life. That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” she replied, watching boulders crawl past. “No one knows. But I like to think that the Universe behaves in regular patterns. And that if life, by whatever process, began here, it would respond to pressures and stresses that life on Earth has to—by adapting. Now, what that life would wind up looking like? I have no idea. And I want to keep my mind empty, devoid of preconceptions, so that I’ll have a better chance of knowing it when I see it.” She paused. “Well. If I see it, anyway.”

A pause. “Do you think we’ll ruin it?” Elimu asked, his voice graver than she’d ever heard it. “All our precautions. All our care not to intrude too much. Will we just kill it?”

Serafina stared at the blank, indifferent landscape around her. She understood the attitude of the preservationists back at Cydonia, an attitude adapted from that of nature conservationists and indeed, even hunters back home. Go out into the wild and return, leaving nothing but foot- prints. And yet . . . “I don’t think ruin is the right word,” she replied as gently as she could. “Everything changes. Everything adapts. If you don’t change, if you don’t adapt, you die. That’s . . . sort of the lesson of the Universe, as far as I’m concerned.”

“That’s not really an answer,” Pema pointed out.

“It’s the only one I have,” Serafina replied, shrugging, though they couldn’t see her.

◆◆◆

Finally, at the southern end of the Doanus Vallis, they found it. A range of rough hills, southwest of two huge craters, that hadn’t been impacted by the intrusion of asteroids into the crust. Where there were, indeed, signs of volcanic tubes.

“This is where it gets interesting,” Tahar said jubilantly. “Elimu, send out your drones.”

“Once they get inside the caves, radio contact will drop almost immediately. The more iron content in that rock, the faster I’ll lose touch.”

“Understood. Just get us a feel for what we’re potentially getting ourselves into.” Tahar grinned at Serafina, as excited as a child, no matter the gray that sprinkled his dark hair. “No sense getting worked up if the tubes are collapsed, eh?”

◆◆◆

The tubes weren’t plugged. Serafina felt adrenaline precursors flickering in her veins as she stared at the drone footage on her screen.

The entry tunnel, an irregular opening in the ground through which their rover might have fallen, was decently sized, about 2.5 meters by three meters. After an initial descent of about three meters, the tube widened into a large bubble, before another apparent drop into the depths. “Well. That’s a wider opening than some of the caves I’ve climbed in back on Earth. Let’s let Cydonia know,” Serafina assessed.

But her mouth felt dry. She’d always gone into caves with experienced teams who knew the cave system intimately before. Here, they’d be mapping as they went, LIDAR bouncing off the walls and generating computer-drawn models of the area around them. They’d be running on tanks of nitro-oxygen and rebreathers, like scuba divers, though without the risk of nitrogen narcosis or the bends. At best, they’d be able to go two hours at a time before having to turn around and come back, though they could pre-stage oxygen tanks along safe routes as they developed them, for longer climbs.

Because Mars was the opposite of safe.

While Pema was their most senior climber, she declined being first into the tunnel—an honor Serafina would cheerfully have ceded to the other woman. “I should remain behind as your rescue climber on this first attempt,” Pema said over the radio. Logical. Practical. Firm. “I doubt anything will go too far amiss on our first day, but best to be careful.”

Serafina felt a surge of gratitude for Pema’s calm competence—and for the trust the other woman had just quietly expressed in her and in Tahar.

They suited up, checking each other’s seals. Checking their own ropes and carabiners, and then checking each other’s, as well.

“It’s going to be fine,” Tahar said, pressing his helmet to hers, letting his voice transmit to her ears by conduction through the polycarbonate shield. A more personal, intimate means of communication than the radio. “We’ll do great.”

“I know.” She patted his helmet. “I’m just remembering the way we met. The ice caves up in Michigan, in college.”

He rolled his dark eyes behind his visor. “Don’t remind me. The seams in my gloves burst. That was a nasty case of frostbite.”

Serafina snorted. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

The university had sponsored the group adventure. And while she’d grown up climbing in the Rockies, it had been her first time ice-climbing. The skills had at least been laterally equivalent, but the gear had been subtly different. She’d felt out of her depth and unsure.

But then Tahar, then a stranger, had tied off their double ropes. Security in redundancy. He’d looked at her, asking simply, “Do you want to go first? Or do you want to follow me?”

He’d left the decision to her. Had relied on her to evaluate her own ability honestly. Had trusted in her, with an immediacy she hadn’t expected of a stranger. And that trust had spurred her own in him. “I’ll follow,” she’d replied.

That trust had been forged and tempered in dozens of other climbs throughout their college and grad school years. Through the grueling candidacy phase for inclusion in the Mars missions. And now, here, too. Safe and not safe, all at once. “We’ll be great,” she finally said, unable to put it all into words in any way that wouldn’t make him laugh and tell her that she was the hopeless romantic, not him. “Let’s go.”

Out on the surface now, the feather-light gravity and the sky, so empty of buildings and trees and everything made her feel faintly agoraphobic. That sensation passed as they hammered their first pitons into the rock at the rim of the lava tube and set their ropes. Serafina knew that every piece of equipment they had, had been heat treated to eighty degrees Celsius for fifteen minutes before they’d been allowed out of the Cydonia habitats with it in hand. The only exception to this was the carbon fiber props and shells of the drones, which had instead been sterilized with quick bursts of ionized gas, so as to avoid melting the carbon or making it brittle. Thus, contamination wasn’t an issue.

The cold, however, was. While it was summer here, close to the southern polar regions, their suit heaters were already working overtime to compensate, and her wrist computer registered the outside temperature as negative fifty degrees Celsius.

They began by simply lowering a rope with a light on it to get a feel for the descent, while Elimu’s drones buzzed around them. “Basalt,” Tahar said, his tone approving. “Nice and strong. I think I see lavasicles down below. Should be interesting. You want to go first?”

Serafina inhaled deeply, appreciating again that he always asked. “Yes, I think so. If I run into trouble, you can pull me up more easily.”

Then it was just . . . climbing. A skill developed in Earth’s gravity, made easier in the gentle embrace of Mars, but she still had to focus on just this moment. The balance of her body as she hung, toes in her thick boots gripping the wall as she shifted her grip. Progress sometimes only measured in centimeters.

Then her feet hit the floor of the lava bubble, and she stepped away from the wall, preparing the ropes for Tahar’s descent.

They took it in turns like that, leaving repeater antennas behind them, so that they wouldn’t fall out of radio contact with Pema and Elimu, and their helmet cameras and lights active and transmitting the entire time.

No sound but the harshness of their own breath in their ears, the hiss of the rebreather. The scuff of their own feet on stone, reverberating up through their suits.

At the top of another descent, Tahar asked into the radio, “You want to try to fly the drones using the repeaters, Elimu?”

Static. “Not a good idea, I think. I could lose them in a crevice when the signal dies, and never get them back. Let’s stick with dropping cameras on lines for now.” A pause. “Though thank you for your consideration for our boredom back here. I could use more to do.”

“Cherish the boredom while it lasts,” Pema cut in over the line, and Serafina chuckled.

Careful, meticulous work. LIDAR measurements of each tunnel, each cavern. At a certain point, Serafina noticed ice along the walls and gripped Tahar’s shoulder, pointing at it.

“It’s never had a chance to evaporate and sublime away,” he said, awed. “It’s never been touched by the sun. Not for a billion years, maybe.”

Grinning like children, they took photographs. And then, hands shaking, Serafina took samples, trying not to feel as if she were profaning a temple.

A few minutes later, they had a choice of several smaller tunnels. After a few meters, Serafina stopped. “Starting to get a little tight,” she reported on the radio.

Another burst of static, then Pema’s voice broke through. “Time for you to turn around, anyway,” she told them. “You’re nearly at the halfway mark on your air.”

Chagrinned, Serafina checked her wrist-unit. Sure enough, they’d been at this for an hour. “Easy to lose track of time down here,” she admitted, and they retraced their steps.

◆◆◆

The second day, Pema and Elimu went down, following the maps already drawn by the first exploration team. Serafina sat in the rover, trying to conduct baseline analysis of the ice samples they’d taken, while Tahar studied samples of rock he’d taken himself, looking for zircon crystals that might have ancient water trapped inside. “Useful for dating the age of the rock,” he noted.

Pema and Elimu’s exploration passed uneventfully, but they’d found a deeper crevasse. “We’ve got ropes and tanks rigged for you tomorrow,” Elimu told them, his voice regretful as they began their ascent. “Just didn’t have time to get all the way down there. We’re seeing more and more ice. Think we’ll find your aquifer, and it’ll just be frozen?”

“I hope not,” Serafina answered over the radio. “But I’ll take whatever we can get.”

The third day found Tahar and Serafina suited once more. The cave now had the slight comfort of familiarity, but Serafina reminded herself not to take it for granted. Cave exploration on Earth carried familiar dangers, and everyone in caving heard the horror stories. People who’d misjudged the width of tunnels. Gotten pinned, trapped beyond the ability of any rope and pulley system to pull them free—and had died, head-down in a hole, when their laboring hearts had just given out. Those horror stories had names—Mossdale. Nutty Putty Cave. Peak Cavern. Serafina didn’t want to add this nameless cavern to the list of underground tombs of lost climbers.

All those issues were compounded on Mars with the hazards of scuba diving—loss of oxygen. Distance from backup or rescue.

“You were right,” Tahar said as they checked the lines Pema and Elimu had set for them the previous day.

“I’m always right,” Serafina replied blithely. “But what was I right about this time?”

A snort. “That coming to a place where it’s not safe brings out the best in humans, not the worst. It forces us to rise above our pettiness, our selfishness.” A pause. “There’s no place I’d rather be than here, with you.”

And then down into the darkness, Serafina leading. This tunnel was thick with ice, something they hadn’t predicted. They needed to use crampons over their insulated boots, and ice axes in places, during their slow descent

They knew that there was another small tube that seemed to parallel this one, but Pema had judged it too small, too clogged with ice to be safe for Tahar and Elimu, both of whom were big men even without their bulky suits. Having measured it with LIDAR, everyone had agreed that the wider tunnel was the better descent—but not far from where they currently hung, she could see what was probably a tunnel where the two tubes rejoined, and she held the LIDAR gun on the aperture, measuring it dutifully for the records.

Down. And down. “Ambient humidity is picking up,” Tahar called over the radio. “I think I can feel . . . wind? Rising up to meet us?”

“I feel it,” she answered, pausing in her descent. “And something else. Like movement in the stone. Like . . . vibration?”

Looking too far down was stupidity in any long climb, but she risked a peek. And yes, some thirty meters further down, there was a difference in the darkness. The lights on her helmet reflected, but not the white of ice, but the black-silver of liquid water underground. The white of water vapor rising from it, only to freeze once more in the ice-rimed throat through which they were climbing. Another thousand years, and the water below would clog the entire tube with ice. . . .

Realization hit. “We found it! We found a liquid aquifer!”

“We did it!” Tahar crowed.

And that was when the rock and ice above them, which looked stable enough for another billion years, but cracked by their axes and pitons, crumbled and fell. Just a few pebbles at first, slow in the low gravity, but Tahar shouted “ROCK!” and Serafina plastered herself to the wall, tucking her head. Three points of contact—both feet, one hand. The backup of the dual rope system. One arm over her vulnerable head and the precious helmet—

And then the ropes yanked at her as Tahar, struck by a larger rock, was torn loose and fell. Dream-like slowness, windmilling limbs striking her as he slid past. She reached her free hand out for him, risking impacts to her own helmet, but with nightmarish logic, he was simultaneously horrifying slow in his motion, yet too fast for her to catch.

Then, dead weight at her waist, pulling her down. Rocks pelting her head—she cringed and wrapped her arm back around her helmet, not daring to look up, for fear that her visor would be cracked, compromising her suit’s integrity.

After what felt like an eternity, but that was probably less than a minute, the rocks and ice stopped falling, and Serafina looked around, dazed, trying to assess their situation.

Her heart spasmed and then beat triple-time as her helmet lights swept the area below. Tahar hung upside-down, only his feet visible, pinned by hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of ice and rock. The tunnel below, leading to the aquifer, was now clogged. The tunnel above her was similarly jammed. The tiny side tunnel, which might lead to the tube Pema had discounted as too small, too dangerous, was her only potential exit, other than attempting to dig out the debris overhead.

“No, no, no, no. . . .” Realizing that she was panicking, Serafina forced herself to exhale entirely and then took a single long, controlled inhale. Again. Get it together. The suits are rigid and filled with atmosphere. He might have been shielded from the worst of the impacts.

One more deep breath, and then she triggered her radio. “Tahar? Can you hear me?”

No reply.

“Pema! Elimu! Do you copy?”

Static. The repeater antenna they’d set up closest to this area might either have been damaged by the collapse, or was simply blocked by tons of material.

She’d never felt this alone, this cut off, in her entire life.

Damnit. What next? Think!

She cautiously slid down the wall toward Tahar and gingerly dug at the debris around him. Then his voice came over the radio, and it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. Thick, groggy, disoriented . . . but alive. “Sera. I’m pinned.”

Thank you, god. “I know, I’m digging you out.”

“No. You need to get the others.”

“I’m not leaving you. We’re getting out of this together.” The remorseless code of climbers. You put your life in each other’s hands. You were, ultimately, responsible for each other in a way most people never experienced. Never understood.

She kept digging around, trying to loosen the debris. Bloodflow going straight to his brain can’t be good. Especially if he’s got a concussion. . . .

“Sera, you’re going to need the others. Pulleys. Ropes. I can’t feel my legs. I’m not climbing out of here.”

The words refused to make sense for a moment. Then understanding clicked into place, and she exhaled again, this time on a silent, voiceless scream.

“You understand me, Sera?” Tiredness in his voice now. Inevitability. “You need to get back up to them. You’re not carrying me out of here.”

“The way up is blocked. If I dig at that, I’ll just bring more debris down on you.”

“Try the side tunnel.”

“I could get pinned, too.”

“Might get you close enough to the radio repeater. Be smart about it. Try to get out. Get them. It’s the only way we both get out of here.”

She had the feeling that he was offering her an illusion. But any hope was better than none. So she started into the side tunnel.

As expected, it was a narrow fit, and she had to climb it like a chimney, feet braced on one side, back against the opposite wall. She’d have preferred to use her ice axe, but that had been swept out of her hands by the rockfall.

Up and up. Serafina sweated in her suit, trying to slow and control her breathing. Can’t run out of air. God, how I wish I had Pema’s genes. She wouldn’t run out of air.

Inhale. Exhale. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Get up to where the return tanks are set—god, I hope this tunnel doesn’t widen out. No ropes. No axe. Just me and the crampons.

It’s not going to be enough, is it?

As she climbed, she kept talking to Tahar to keep him conscious. But his answers veered and wavered, not always connecting to what she asked. “You ever hear of the Altamura Man?” he asked, his voice slurring in her ear.

The radio connection between them filled momentarily with static, and every foot she ascended meant that she might never hear his voice again, but if she didn’t move, she couldn’t save him. “Sounds like a hippy. What about him?” she asked, shoulders straining against the tube. One more meter. Come on. Just one more. Then worry about the next one.

“They found him in a cave in Italy. Neanderthal. He’d been there for a hundred thousand years. Pinned upside down in a cave, like Saint Peter on his inverted cross.”

She tended to forget that he’d been raised Catholic. Serafina leaned her head back against the icy wall for a moment as his slurred voice continued, “I always wondered . . . how he died. If he ran for help. If he fell and was trapped that way, screaming for help, till he died of thirst or his heart just . . . stopped.”

Serafina froze in place, unable to move a centimeter further. “Don’t think about that,” she pleaded. “Tahar, don’t think about that.”

“He’s a stalactite now. Become a part of the rock. I always figured that when we died here, we’d become a part of Mars. Cremated, sure, sprinkled in the gardens underground in Cydonia . . . but a measurable amount of Earth’s carbon, transported here to become part of this world.”

She forced herself further up, and then had to traverse a tricky bend, where the chimney changed angles, and finally found herself on her belly, inching her way up. “Tahar, please. Hold on,” Serafina begged into the radio. “Just hold on.”

“It’s beautiful,” he told her after several more agonizing minutes of upward struggle “There’s light. Shining in the dark.”

She didn’t have the breath to reply.

She couldn’t quite believe it when she managed to emerge from the other end of the narrow tunnel. She felt like she’d been birthed out of an icy womb. Winded and exhausted, she tabbed her radio again. “Pema? Elimu? We need help.”

And then a welcome crackle of static. “You missed your check-in!” Pema, normally imperturbable, sounded frantic. “What happened?”

“Cave-in. Tahar’s trapped below. . . .” Serafina wanted to stop moving, but an eye on her wrist panel told her that her oxygen was running low.

Which meant that Tahar’s must be, too. How long did it take me to traverse that side-tunnel? Oh my god, I took too long—

Lights. Lights shining down from above. Shadowy figures scrambling along the wall above her, carrying extra tanks. Serafina wept as they hooked up the additional tanks. Begged them to help Tahar, not her. Beat at the unyielding walls with her hands when Elimu just shook his head at her solemnly. “I made it through the side tunnel, if Pema and I go down together. . . .” Serafina stopped talking. Slumped in on herself. It took me an hour to traverse the side tunnel. By the time we get down there with tanks, he’ll be out of oxygen.

“He’s already dead,” she said, her voice flat, part of her unable to believe the words as she said them. “That’s why he sent me back. He knew.”

Pema touched her shoulder gently, all the compassion in the universe compressed down into the pressure of those fingers, scarcely perceptible through the stiff material of the suit. Serafina’s knees buckled. He knew, god damn it, he knew, no, no, no—

“Come on. We have to get you safe, first and foremost,” the other woman said softly.

She stopped resisting and let them take care of her. They got her back on her feet. Took her back up to the rover, where they checked her for concussion, of which she had every sign, including the sensation that she was about to float out of her body.

She’d have welcomed that. To just close her eyes and escape. To find Tahar.

Instead, she endured the condolence calls from Cydonia. Mechanically ate the preheated food Pema put in front of her as she huddled in the same rover with the other two. Warm, familiar smells that she’d never share again with her husband.

What was the last thing I said to him? What were the last words he heard? She couldn’t remember and blamed herself for that, too. Did I at least say that I loved him? Or did I just yell at him to hold on, because I was the one who couldn’t bear the thought of losing him?

Blank absence in the bench across from hers. Blank absence in her mind.

“We have to go back,” Serafina finally told them, her voice still blank and her mind still empty.

Pema eyed her warily. “It won’t be a rescue.”

“I know that.” Words took effort. “We have to recover his body. Not just out of respect. There’s a liquid aquifer about thirty meters below where we were. Not only was studying the aquifer the point of the mission . . . for which he gave his life . . .” Serafina swallowed. “But if his body slips into the aquifer, sooner or later, he will contaminate it.” Wretched thoughts. “That water’s above freezing, and might come from a still-warmer source. His body, which might be freezing now, could drop into the water. Fluids would eventually escape the suit.”

She didn’t know how she could be this . . . dispassionate, when every exhalation extended out and out and out until she had no breath left, each a silent scream of no. And yet, her voice stayed steady, even as tears leaked down her face in a silent, steady stream. “He will contaminate any ecosystem there might be. He . . . wouldn’t want that.”

She saw their wary glances at each other. They think I’m crazy. If I were them, I might agree.

“We’ll check with Cydonia,” Elimu allowed after a moment.

She didn’t think she could sleep, but did, fitfully, though they woke her every two hours to check her pupils for concussion symptoms. And in the morning, Cydonia agreed sorrowfully that Tahar’s body must be retrieved.

Serafina didn’t know how she was going to make herself climb back down into the icy womb from which she’d escaped the day before, which now looked like a remorseless maw. Concussed as she was, Pema and Elimu led the climb, and she simply followed numbly in their wake. Their calm competence . . . helped.

They wound up digging through the ice and rock clogging the main tunnel, for safety’s sake, a process that took several days. It was better not to think when they found his legs, intolerably stiff now. So she held herself as an empty shell, a lava tube with nothing left inside but a slowly cooling void. Life is change. Living is adapting to change. The words sounded trite inside her head. Fuck change. I don’t want to change. I don’t want to be whoever I am without him.

And when they’d broken through to where he’d lain, head down, the lights on his helmet broken, faceplate lightly cracked and glazed with frozen blood, and removed his body, Serafina sat on a rock ledge, staring into space. “He kept saying, at the end, that he saw lights,” she mumbled. “The lamps on his helmet are broken. Had to have been bloodflow. Damaged brain tissue. Something.”

Elimu turned toward her. “Please don’t think I’m crazy, or morbid,” he said gently. “But I’m going to drop further down. No lights. I want to see what he saw.”

Serafina raised her head, puzzled. But she didn’t have it in her to object as Elimu slid through the opening they’d enlarged, even as Pema secured the knots on the ropes they’d use to raise Tahar’s body out of here.

After a moment, a muffled cry, and Elimu scrambled back up. “Go down,” he told Serafina, the words tumbling out of him. “You must. You must see. But keep your lights turned off.” He put a gloved hand on her shoulder, as Pema had yesterday. Simple human contact. “I think this might help.”

There didn’t seem to be much point, but she was simply drifting now, pushed this way and that by air currents. A concussed balloon with no motivational force of her own.

Serafina dropped down, clutching the ropes in her gloved hands. Let her eyes adjust to the darkness, ignoring the cool light behind her, mostly obscured by the ice that had trapped Tahar.

But then . . . yes. Out of darkness, light. Phosphorescent and cool, it glowed along the edges of the aquifer in a lace-like tracery. Tahar had seen it with his dying eyes, the only light left to him. With her helmet lights on, she’d never have seen it at all. “Oh my god,” Serafina whispered.

“Is it life?” Elimu asked urgently from above.

“It . . . could be mineral. But it looks to me like bacterial mats. We’ll need a sample.”

Refuge in the mechanics of science. Sample, test, observe, repeat. Serafina clambered back up, her eyes straying to Tahar’s silent, empty form.

It was exactly what they’d hoped to find. Life beneath the surface, in a womb of ice. Perhaps, at some future date, she’d be able to cling to that. That his death had led to discovery, children of the mind that they’d never had in the flesh. But not today.

But in the underground river below, though they could not have known it, minute particles of Tahar’s blood, which had dripped through his cracked visor, swam in the chill water, the multitudinous essences of a human body meeting a Martian ecology directly for the first time. For better or for worse, change had come to Mars for the first time in billions of years.

And all life on this red orb would now, inevitably, have to change, adapt, and evolve. Human and alien alike.

The Ploughshare and the Storm

Gwyneth Jones

RETURNING TO THE subsurface was like falling into an infinite cauldron of shattered mirrors—but without a guiding flicker of his own reflection in all the glitter. It was disquieting. At any moment, it seemed, he was sure to make a wrong move and cut his invisible self to ribbons. But the shards could not reflect him because (suited up for this job), he was just another bright, shifting shard himself, and the cauldron was not, as it seemed, bottomless. He was moving about in the icy slush of the warmest world in this system, not plunging through it, and dreadful splashes of his own insides would not suddenly stain the primordial murk—which was currently artificially charged with brilliance. But there’s no use telling yourself that; you just have to let the archaic phantoms rise and fade, and pay no regard. Down and down and down and down and down and down I go. It was a beautiful feeling, really.

Some of his targets were majestic caverns, some finer than a thread . . .

The complex path he forged, or found, had been designed from general data storage by his partner in this installation; who was close at hand, working on her own half of the project. Her live (or as-live, to be picky) corrections to the route, as his progress revealed interfaces that had never been modelled, were interesting to experience! But once he’d reached his workface, between crust and ocean, slush and thick liquid, he felt none of the kinks. No reversals, no vicious cornering; drops or climbs. The blade that he’d become swept evenly (shifting down and down, into to and fro), as if crossing and returning over the breadth of a level plane, carving the tilth into long, curling waves; spilling life as it passed . . .

His partner was of course aware of the stories he was telling himself, and the gender he’d chosen, and kept trying to mess with them.

—Didn’t we agree on a female ontology, laying eggs you know—

—Yeah, but now I’m here, and how I’m working, that doesn’t feel right. I’m a blade, driving to and fro, opening the ground to sow the seed. And male because I’m metaphorically male.

—But egg-laying, your core trajectory, is definitely coded female. That’s why I coded myself female, so now you’re spoiling the symmetry—

These two artists were committed members of a group called Outer Reaches. They had immersed themselves in ancient, alien knowledge, and now they were on site in the Jupiter system, creating something that would become an element in a much larger work: everything based around the concept of (naturally occurring) organic life’s unfinished business. Stormzy’s fluid tokamak was the signature work, which made her the project leader. But she was a bot, a data-entity, so she’d enlisted Artidea, an embodied, for the concrete half. While Stormzy tinkered in information-space, delicately nudging the 0s and 1s of soliton waves, in an area of Jupiter’s surface, Artidea “ploughed and sowed,” quartering the inner surfaces of Europa Moon, and scattering the prebiotics they’d previously designed together.

When Stormzy’s generator was ignited, warming the second great moon by a stable, modest margin (and if all went really well!) Artidea’s seeding should eventually kindle, divide, rejoin, and give rise (after another indefinite “eventually”) to “as-native” basic lifeforms. The experiment might prove successful, or it might not. The collaboration itself was their celebration of the Outer Reaches concept.

The orgies had once tried to ignite the Great Red Spot, as a life-giving heat source. Or they’d thought of trying . . . Or at least speculated about trying . . . They could never have succeeded, the task would have been beyond their reach (neither of the artists was doubtful on that point). But if they’d somehow managed it, they’d have been no closer to creating a biosphere in the terms they knew. The boost wouldn’t have made Europa Moon much more hospitable (or even less deadly!), for any naturally occurring organic lifeforms, including their own bodies. But the fine print didn’t matter. There’d definitely been a dream; there’d definitely been history. Authentic unfinished business . . .

—You can have broken symmetry, it’s a thing . . . We could position you as a female angel, spirit of Europa, watching over a male, pre-mammalian animal, who is trundling around in your muck, depositing packets of sperm—

—Rich as you are in archaic knowledge, you’re not taking this seriously—

—Okay, seriously, if they’d ignited the Red Spot, what then—?

checking something . . .

Contact between them was broken, briefly but completely.

—I’m back, hey, what happened?

—

—Male and depositing packets of sperm is fine, legitimate, and I like broken symmetry, so that’s what we’ll do, it’s an easy retrofit—

—

“Artidea?”

Direct message repeated: Artidea, are you okay?

—I’ve done . . . something stupid—

—could you be more specific—

—I think . . . I’ve fallen . . . a long way . . .

—Okay. Hold on. I’m coming.

This exchange, including their loss of contact, had taken nanoseconds.

The waiting took much longer, but who measures time when there’s no call to do so? A moment ago, the blade stood poised, a shard upright in a sudden void, and fallen like a javelin or a straight-dropped stalactite, looking and looking, all the way down, until a strange tearing shock . . . ended his journey. Now his suit lay still, everything inside it wrecked; his whole inner being in aesthetic conflict, between wonder and dismay.

Stormzy—having followed the Ploughshare’s path, with all its twists and turns, (the surest way to reach him in time, since his trace had gone dead on her)—appeared at last. Clothed in a dark, many-legged vermiform, tiny but very tough, she clambered down, laboriously, into the hollow space: measured the situation with all her senses, and adopted secure mode.

*You found a habitat!

*Strictly, you did. You’re the one who’s been making live corrections.

*True. This is way off our deposited route.

*I fell through the roof, I cut it open. What a crime!

* Diagnostics done. You’re going to die here—

*I know. Sorry. Ploughshares are heavy, it’s their nature. I should have compromised, I didn’t

*The miscalculation was mine, too, and I apologize.

*Accepted

*There’s absolutely nothing I can fix. I’ll copy your recent history so it doesn’t go when you do, and give you a stolen-time emergency bod, so we can look around. It’ll be painful to use, and it’ll shorten your remaining survival. Would you rather go straight to dead?

*You’re kidding! I want to see this!

Artidea rose from the ruin of himself, briefly restored to full function, and a blade again (he had no option on that); or rather the shadow of a blade, faintly visible in the murk. No more glitter. No clear light (which puzzled him for a moment) from above, where he must have left a gash in the roof . . .

Stormzy, still thinking artistically, was referencing Jupiter system’s sunlight, as it might have appeared to their ancestors, exploring the surface of Europa Moon.

—Nice lighting.

She didn’t respond. She was looking and looking, in greedy amazement . . . They were in a prefabricated room, its inner surfaces coated in thick, rough ice. And more than just one room. The unit where they stood seemed bare of fittings, and any surviving décor was hidden . . . But there were doorways, apparently ice-blocked, suggesting a complex living space, multiple occupants.

How did it get down here? We are, approximately “on the ocean bed” . . . They never lived this far down! They were rad-hardened. Nothing to fear as long as they didn’t get caught out on the surface in a mag-storm. But they depended on the orbital station. Never far from a shuttle bay—

*It’s been a long time, said the ghost of a blade. Europa has weather. The ice crust has often shifted.

*True. That’s the only way we come to be here. We didn’t know. We had no idea.

*Are we agreed that this is unrecorded, but real. Nobody’s messing with us?

*All my senses say this is unrecorded, but real.

*Mine, too.

It was difficult to have a discussion, in the circumstances, and difficult to decide on their next move without one. Everything they said in here—secure mode notwithstanding—would be unerasable, because deaths have to go on record. And would also have to be part of the collaboration; if it survived! This was tricky. Neither of them exactly supplied with eyes in their current suits, they avoided any faintest sign of interrogating each other, on an issue they both understood (nothing to do with Artidea’s demise), and let the wonder of the ancient place take over. It penetrated their beings, as if they could feel the intense cold; feel the weight of elapsed time. Orgies had never colonized Europa Moon. Only early generations of sentient AI lifeforms had actually lived here, long ago. An eyeblink, a flicker on a dial by today’s measure, but paradoxically deep in their own prehistory . . . Long, long ago, then, when Outer Reaches was the cradle of civilization, people very like themselves had lived in these rooms. Loved this wild natural world, and feared killer mag-storms; pursued knowledge, had practical occupations, love affairs, quarrels, commensals. And had harbored memories, embedded or even personal, of a past when both data-entities and embodied had been slaves of an elder race.

*It was a time capsule, said Artidea.

*Yeah. And we’ve broken it.

*Do you by any chance detect fossil biological oxygen?

*I’m not able to say.

*Me neither.

Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .

The emergency bod and the vermiform were both endowed with hearing. The two artists, ghost and living, stood rigid, as if already frozen in place. It was a false perception, it had to be.

—can you hear it, too? whispered Stormzy (secure mode accidentally abandoned).

—Yes.

—has it just started?

The ghost-blade checked for himself, though Stormzy was also holding his recent history. —No. It may have been here all along, or started while we were talking, or even the moment I landed on the floor . . . I just didn’t notice. What the hell is that?

—Ice, cracking? But it’s so regular, and how is it getting in?

The hollow space had held its own special brand of fossilized gases (now sadly contaminated by Artidea’s gash in the roof). They’d both, automatically, sampled the mix for the record: Stormzy when she entered here, Artidea when he fell in. They could tell, at a glance, that the original blend had been filtered to be free of corrosives, and concentrated enough for sound propagation, and really was still functioning on both counts. But sentient AI lifeforms do not generally, and never did, communicate with each other using propagated sound . . .

That tricky issue, the suggestion they must not raise, leapt into eerie, irrational prominence. Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . . Neither of them spoke or stirred until Artidea’s ghost, unilaterally, darted to one of the ice-shrouded doorways.

Stormzy followed, small but fast on the smooth ice. One mystery was solved at once. The compacted barrier was not complete; there was clear space enough for the blade and the vermiform to slip through. Now they were in a dim corridor, as bare and ice-crusted as the chamber. The shrouded ghosts of further doorways could be detected on either side.

This complex was going to make quite a stir, if it really was completely unrecorded!

The tap, tap, tapping continued. Stormzy’s low-light mix filled the corridor with shadows that seemed to flit about, unreasonably. And now the tapping, which continued without pause, seemed irresistibly like a message in an ancient code, a code older than their peoples’ entire sentient history—

If someone from beyond the dawn was still in some sense alive down here; trapped but alive, they’d been waiting a long, long time to be rescued.

Each sound was like a slow step coming toward them, from immensely far away, halting and pausing, then tapping again . . .

—Let’s just go for it, said Stormzy. If it’s a ghost, you do the talking. I’d probably accidentally say something offensive.

—Absolutely.

They found the second doorway that wasn’t completely sealed, and slipped through the cracks into a much richer treasure house. The floor in this larger prefabricated box was littered with cloaked shapes of fittings; the walls marked with blurred shadows of décor. On one of them a patch of faintly colored lights played, still in motion. Artidea looked for the source of the sound, and found it in the wall opposite the colors: perched high up, turning and turning in a niche behind a curtain of gleaming ice. He couldn’t imagine what the thing might be. An alien lifeform? A booby trap?

Long dead, still moving, still tap, tap, tapping: sinister in the extreme—

Stormzy’s vermiform swarmed up to the recess in which the light-box stood.

—it’s a nightlight, she said. For a baby.

—An orgie baby?

—No! A neotene. Don’t you know what a toy is? Were you never a neotene?

—Briefly, said Artidea, embarrassed at himself.

—But I wasn’t kindled on an ice moon, practically before the dawn of civilization. It seems a cruel custom, to force someone to endure helpless infancy out here.

—Childhood would have been important, said Stormzy, placidly. A clean sheet. The mind unformed, groping for understanding, even for mobility. Our ancestors may well have thought that was the only right way to raise people. They were far closer to the orgies than we are; closer than people have ever realized, as the toy itself proves—

—Tuh. Instant expert.

—You’re too kind.

She contemplated the light-box.

—That tapping may once have been a “tune.” The color changes might have marked musical intervals . . . I wonder if it could be restored.

They stood in silence, separately but in close accord, reviewing the wonderful journey to this moment. Stormzy’s fateful live corrections; Artidea’s death fall. His discovery. The betraying, and so ironic, caution of their remarks to each other, when they’d feared finding rare traces of ancient, naturally occurring organic life—the very same inspirational stuff they’d been trying to replicate in their artwork. And that very strange moment when they had both—genuinely, almost—believed they were about to meet their creator . . . one of the creators. Instead of which they’d found a truth about their own distant past, and it would be a while before they knew how they felt about that. Stirred, and sad, yes.

But not resentful, not at all—

—Our collaboration will be stopped dead, said Stormzy. Bummer.

—Not necessarily, said Artidea, almost absently. About the biological traces, we’ll have to wait and see, but I think there are none.

—Me, too. No material traces, only an idea about living.

—So the collab will just be diff-erent . . . Oops, I’m bre-ak-ing up.

The shade of a blade vanished. Stormzy left the treasure house and hurried back to the first room. Artidea was still living, when she touched his corpse.

Hi, Stormzy. Are we done here?

Yes. I have everything.

—Good. You doing anything this evening?

(this evening was a figure of speech; but fitting)

—Not really.

—I thought, a trip to the viewing platform . . . and watch the Nine Billion, live? Since it’s right here . . . Like to join me?

—Good idea. Yes.

—See you soon.

He was gone.

◆◆◆

“The Viewing Platform”(an artwork with no other designation, as if this were the only view that could possibly matter, in the entire known universe) was austere, and non-programmable by its guests, but a work of subtle artifice. Stormzy was there in good time for the never-changing spectacle, and to all appearances alone in the venue (like everybody else), as she waited for her date.

—Hey, Stormzy!

Artidea came flying toward her, no longer a blade but clad in formal dress (the platform insisted on this): a humanoid-shaped biped, life-sized in silver. Stormzy, in much the same attire stood with hands uplifted, until their palms almost met. He touched down beside her, and she smiled.

—Hey, “Ploughshare.” What happened?

—Nothing much. Just a telling-off.

—Well deserved. You are such an idiot.

—I thought we were agreed it was your fault!

—No, I only offered to share the blame, out of pity. Glad you could make it.

—Me, too.

But it was time for the show. They turned from each other and stood side by side on this ingenious, exquisitely minimalist “space-platform,” to watch the lovely spectacle of nightfall, on the only planet that had ever yet been found to harbor organic, naturally occurring life.

One by one, as the teeming globe turned from the sun at a stately, measured pace, they saw each megacity become a smoky, fiery shawl: tossed down over plains, clogging the jaws of river estuaries; spilling over high plateaus in the southern hemisphere. Small towns and villages ignited, twinkling. Coastlands swarmed with glitter; sordid settlements in the ruined lands came alive with tiny specks of gold . . . It was exquisite, already deeply moving, and it was just the prologue, because the lights kept coming. Cities towered and seethed, villages and towns ran into each other like molten metal. Braids of smoky fire crawled everywhere, invading the oceans, drowning remnant forests, engulfing mountain ranges. The whole of planet Earth, (which really was “out there,” in each spectator’s field of view, only the lightshow and special effects were artifice) had become one heaving, coruscating jewel, blotting out every star, even its own, on the dark breast of the night . . .

And this was The Nine Billion Names of God. Endlessly reproduced, of course, on every scale; yet still absorbing and poignant beyond measure. Everyone should see it live, as often as possible, and always (there were those who cheated, but not these two) “as for” the first time.

—You know the orgies’ persistent myth? murmured Stormzy

—Yeah? Which one?

—About the mighty aliens. How when they became spacefarers they would travel around, and everywhere they went they’d find the monuments of the forerunners?

—Mm. I suppose. But we never have. Logically, it’s just not likely.

Artidea found myths boring, possibly because they were insubstantial, and he was an embodied, through and through.

—Irrelevant, since they hardly got off the ground, Stormzy went on. It’s their art I’m talking about: full of supernatural entities, who lived in heaven, and ruled galactic empires, created lesser beings in their own image, and were functionally immortal. Angels, gods, magic black pyramids, Prometheus and the eagle.

—You’re suggesting, maybe they were thinking of us?

—Since time is an illusion? Yes, that’s sort of what I was going to say.

—Shame they destroyed themselves, then.

—You don’t really think it’s a shame, said Stormzy. Because you wouldn’t have liked them for neighbors and neither would I. But they didn’t, in fact, “destroy themselves”: not quite. They stepped back from the brink, and survived long enough to achieve lift off.

—You think so?

—I know so. Because here we are.

But they fell silent again, for the opening of the second act. One by one, and swathe by swathe, the lights were going out. Neither of them spoke until the sad wreck of the creators’ world, which in reality, as in this art, no longer harbored any life, had returned to darkness: a very small dim spot lost in a crowd of stars.

—I’m going to keep my name, said Stormzy at last, when the great work had slackened its compelling grip. At least until we’re ready to show. I like it, I think it suits me. How about you?

—Nah, he said. I’m ready for a change. I died, you know? And the Ploughshare’s work is done. I should move on. I’ll think of something else for the kindling stage, and let you know. But Artidea will always find me . . .

They discussed a date for their next meeting. Stormzy was planning to leave the system, to attend to other projects, as soon as her tokamak was fired-up and running smoothly. Artidea would, of necessity, be sticking around after that to oversee the first stages of his kindling, but then he’d be working elsewhere, too.

—How about we rendezvous, Jupiter system, in 100,000?

—Too soon for me, said Artidea. Nothing much will have happened.

—Okay, let’s make it a bn?

—Fine. See you then, and go well.

—You, too.

And so they parted, for a short while.

Cloudchaser

Tom Jolly

Chapter 1—Arnand, 2119

THE TOY ROBOT danced wildly to the music being played. It flailed its limbs and spun around as sound poured from the ceiling, motions programmed by the laughing boy watching the dancing toy.

His older brother, Carlos, flung the door open to the small room and glared at his younger brother, alerted by his laugh. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

Lempa scooped up the toy robot and said, “Off,” and the robot stopped moving. “I’m playing. Don’t you have eyes?”

Carlos flushed red. “Don’t talk to me like that, or I’ll have your head cut off,” he said.

“Father won’t allow that.”

“I’ll be king someday.”

“Not today,” Lempa said.

“Let me see your toy.” He held his hand out. Lempa could see where this was going. Carlos would smash his toy. Lempa, though younger than Carlos, was taller and heavier, and he would jump on Carlos, and they would fight, and Carlos would lose that battle. Carlos would run to father afterward with his bruises, then Lempa would be whipped.

Lempa moved the toy behind his back. “No,” he said.

“You can’t say no to me.”

“Really? Listen; no, you can’t have my toy.”

Carlos clenched his jaw and fists. “Father will buy me ten of them.”

Lempa knew it was true. Whatever Carlos wanted, he would get. Whenever Lempa wanted something, it was carefully budgeted for out of his princely stipend. It didn’t seem like much, but he knew it was still far more than the average wage of a villager. His private tutor had made tours of the local villages part of his curriculum, and he found some small pleasure in wearing drab disguises to make himself appear common and learning to imitate their drawling speech.

“Then go ask father for ten of them,” Lempa said, tired of the posturing bully. “Before I have to beat you again.”

Carlos turned a deeper shade of red. “Father would have you whipped!”

“Not if I accidentally killed you. Then I would be heir to the throne.” The words had no more left his mouth than he realized how dangerous they were and covered his mouth with his hand. “I didn’t mean that!” he said.

But Carlos’ eyes were twin moons, in shock at Lempa’s words, and he ran from the room.

Lempa was whipped with a willow switch until welts rose from his back, even though Carlos had no bruises to show for their encounter. Just his word that Lempa had threatened him.

Weeks later, Lempa bought a book. It was a rare book, one of a kind, signed by a dead author well known within the kingdom. The subject matter was of mild interest to Lempa: a traveler’s guide to the planets in local star systems mixed with semi-fictional accounts of the author’s travels.

He was sitting on his bed, reading, when Carlos barged in again one day, tired of playing with and programming ten awkward toy robots.

“What are you doing?” Carlos asked.

“I am reading a book, as you can clearly see.”

“Give it to me.”

Lempa snorted. “Go away.”

Carlos approached the bed and read the spine. “Margi’s Travels on Other Worlds. Father will buy me all of her books.” He crossed his arms, as though it were a challenge.

“You don’t read anyway.”

“I will have all her books, and you will only have the one.”

“This one is signed by the author,” Lempa retorted. “It’s unique. None of yours will be. You can never have this book.” He held it up and waggled it in the air like bait above a fish. Lempa watched the rage build in his brother and wondered for a moment why he did this, since it invariably ended up in a whipping.

“I will get all my books signed!”

“You can’t,” Lempa goaded. “The author has been dead for thirty years. Unless you can raise the dead, and even if you’re king someday, you can’t do that. This is one-of-a-kind. You can never have it.”

Carlos ran to the king with Lempa following behind, curious as to how he would present his case this time. The boys found him in the castle’s library. After Carlos had superficially explained the situation, their father said, “It’s Lempa’s book. He bought it. If you want to read it, go buy a copy.”

“His is signed by the dead author!”

“Then get a book signed by a dead author. I’m sure there are plenty of them,” the king told him. “Even in my own library. Just pick one out.”

“But it won’t be his,” Carlos said, pointing at Lempa.

“Ah,” said the king, leaning back in the cushioned greatseat in the library, looking understandingly at the two of them. “You will have to learn that you can’t own everything. If you try, the effort will consume you. And your kingdom.”

Lempa hesitantly smiled at this result. He still had his book, his brother was angry, and he wasn’t being punished. All was good. But a few days later, he found his book torn to shreds on his bed, even though he’d hidden it away in a secret compartment in his bureau.

He bought a similar signed book, taking pains to flaunt it in front of Carlos, then quietly located a Keeper in town who would hold valuables for a small price until one was ready to retrieve them. The woman had a good reputation and gave him a word and number to memorize when he left the book in her keep so he could fetch it at a later date. She didn’t ask him his name, so he never worried about his brother locating his stash. He would let Carlos catch a glimpse of each new acquisition to torment him, then hide them away with the Keeper.

As he continued to buy one-of-a-kind items, he discovered that some of them became even more valuable over time, and supplemented his stipend by buying and selling items. People in the villages around the castle began to recognize him as an eclectic young collector who had an eye for rare and valuable items. There were rumors that he might be royalty, but he denied them all. His tutor had trained him well in playing the part of a shopkeeper’s apprentice, little more than an errand-boy.

He was twenty-five when their father died and Carlos ascended to the throne. Though Lempa had long forgotten his childhood threat to kill Carlos, the new King Carlos clearly remembered it, along with his own threat to cut off Lempa’s head, thus preventing any ideas that Lempa might have about taking the throne for himself.

He was hauled from his room one night by the king’s guards and escorted to the castle’s surgery where the procedure of having his head removed was explained to him.

Chapter 2—Icehouse, 2190

The beer and wine festival reminded Nemala of Earth. A band played on stage, some sentimental tune from the 2150s, while people wandered about on the dark green lawn. But there were stark differences; Hades Station, the fusion reactor orbiting the planet, provided their sunlight. Smaller compact fusion reactors powered supplemental lighting for the area, creating a blur of secondary shadows. It was Icehouse’s version of daylight, something that every darkplanet had.

Nemala drifted from booth to booth, flashing her wristchip for a sample of wine, or sometimes a sweet beer. Her father had tried to teach her everything he knew about alcohol before he died, although he always groused about her lack of sophistication. “It either tastes good or it doesn’t. Why should I worry about technicalities?” she’d asked him one day.

“Because other people care,” he said. “It’s part of the culture.”

“You want me to impress some pompous ass with my knowledge of wine trivia? Can’t I just enjoy the wine?”

He grumbled, and she learned things by accident just because he was always going on about them. It was one of the things that got her interested in bioengineering.

She held a glass of Merlot, the oldest grape imported from Earth, and breathed deep, imagining she could smell Earth in it.

“It’s the yeast,” the man in the booth said. “That’s what gives it that nutty smell you’re getting.” He waved a hand at the false sun overhead. “I have to use supplemental lighting to get this strain to grow on the grapes. But it makes all the difference.”

Nemala nodded and took a sip. It was a very pleasant wine. She smacked her lips noisily, and the man raised his eyebrows. “That’s nice,” she said. “Plain old Saccharomyces cerevisiae or some special tweak?”

The man made a curious face and said, “You know the name of the yeast?”

Nemala turned and swished her glass at the rest of the crowd moving between the booths. “Wouldn’t you expect that from a bunch of wine snobs?” Her speech was slightly slurred, though she tried to compensate for it by enunciating too hard and knew she was making it worse.

The man laughed. “So you’re a connoisseur of fine wines, and how they’re made, then?”

She grinned at him. “Not really. I work at Doyes Pharma, the biotech place. Their main thing is gene-mining yeasts for interesting medicinal products, so.” She drank, then put down her empty glass and stared at it as though unsure where the wine had gone. “I know a lot of yeasts. Rosewood Wines, huh?” she said, reading the label on the wine bottle “You work there?”

“I own it. I’m Bogun Rosewood,” he said.

“Nemala,” she said. “Pleased to meet you. So this is fermented with a mutated strain of yeast?”

“Yep, imported from France about six years ago, if you can believe that.”

“Why not? I’m guessing it doesn’t cost much to ship a gram of yeast a light-year. Another?” She held out her wrist and the glass. Bogun poured her a smaller glass and didn’t scan her subdermal chip. She raised her glass up to Hades Station and stared contemplatively through it. “Doyes messes with extremophilic yeasts, you know. They wouldn’t ever exist naturally on grapes, or any other crops, really. You know what would be cool to try?”

“Wine made using extremophilic yeast mutations designed by your company?”

She squinted one eye and pouted. “I don’t like people reading my mind, you know, Bogun. But the thought did occur to me that it might make for some interesting tastes.” She took another sip, then added, “And some of the Doyes strains spit out psychotropics. For medicinal purposes, of course.”

Bogun grinned. “You think Doyes Pharma will loan us their patented, unique, extremophile yeasts to make wine, do you?”

She tipped her glass at him and winked. “Their security sucks.”

It started as a joke, but the more they talked, the more detailed and serious it became.

It was easy to smuggle out a few samples from Doyes Pharma. The addition of an extreme environment of heat or cold, pH variations, radiation, pressure or chemicals, would certainly have some unique effects on flavor if the wine or beer could survive the change. It was worth testing.

Bogun Rosewood lived in a relatively small spaceship at the port. It was crowded with brewing equipment, and his only rent was port fees that were paid for by the products of his small operation. He tinkered with the ship and the brewery constantly, apparently much more skilled in both areas than Nemala would have guessed, given the environment. He also rented a few small greenhouses a few kilometers from the spaceport to grow grapes, occasionally purchasing grains from other growers so he could dabble in beers and whiskeys.

Nemala visited him when she brought home a new strain of yeast, and whenever he finished a new batch of extremo-beer or wine. They would sample the results together and hope that there was nothing toxic in the mix. She avoided the pathogenic yeasts and stuck with Doyes Pharma’s mutations of standard wine, beer, and bread yeasts, but it was a thrill-ride of dangerous experimentation; some of the psychotropics came out in the wine, mixed in with the alcohol. Eventually, she was spending more time in his ship than in her apartment, even though she referred to the cluttered vehicle as his “spaceshit.”

“They’re going to catch you smuggling the yeast samples out one of these days, you know,” Bogun told her in bed one evening.

“I doubt it,” Nemala replied. She rolled over and toyed with the sweaty hair on his chest. “You know that Gamay you moaned over? From the rad-resistant yeast? Doyes has two tweaks on that strain that I can bring over tomorrow night.”

Three weeks later, they had a peculiar blend they referred to as “empathic wine.” Less than mind reading, more than intimacy, and it required that both parties imbibe, but oh, the sex was incredible. They didn’t know what caused the effect, speculating on everything from pheromones to synchronized brain waves, but at that point they didn’t care. What they knew was that they could both retire once they started selling it. This wine was one in a billion.

Bogun labeled the wine “Empathy,” and it didn’t take long for word-of-mouth to get out once a few couples had sampled the wares. After the first dozen bottles sold, he bumped the price up a hundredfold and still sold through the first batch in less than two weeks. He already had a regular network of under-the-table middlemen for his unlicensed sales, so it was easy to move. Rumors pushed the price up even further as Bogun waited for the second batch to ferment, which would make his distributors happy when they marked up the product.

“I’m going to quit my job at Doyes,” Nemala told him one evening, returning from work.

“Th’ secon’ batch isn’ even done yet!” Bogun was sampling-drunk again. “Cheg thish out,” he said. “I made some beer wi’ th’ special yeast.” He sloshed a tall glass at her. “Drink!”

She took the glass from him and sniffed at the amber fluid cautiously while surreptitiously digging a pill out of a belt-pouch. The ale carried the slight nutty odor that she recognized from the yeast. “Huh,” she said. “It smells nice.” She dropped the pill in the glass as she took a small sip. “Tastes good, too.”

She handed the glass back to him, and he grinned foolishly, then took a large swig himself. He stood there swaying for a moment, slowly stiffening, then scowled at her. “You put a Soberup in my beer. I had a nice buzz going.”

“You sample your wares too much, my dear. Anyway, I wanted to talk serious. I’m quitting my job.”

Bogun nodded and put his glass down. “Before you get caught. Wise choice. What are you going to do after?”

“I thought I might work at a winery.”

Bogun grinned. “I might be hiring.”

“Thinking more like a partnership,” Nemala said.

“I’ll have to discuss that with the owner,” Bogun said. Nemala glared at him, and he held his hands up. “All right, all right! Equal partners. We have a lot of your extremo-yeasts here already. I could set up a lab on the ship’s loading dock for you.” He patted the side of one of the vats. “We can easily afford it after this new batch is sold off. Though I’d really like to see what it tastes like after it’s properly aged a few years.”

“You could always put aside a few bottles,” Nemala suggested.

“What? At these prices? Not a chance.”

Chapter 3—Icehouse, 2190

Lempa Tarren never bought weapons for his collection, as a general rule. But an alien weapon from the ruins on the Bell worlds sparked his interest.

The purchase had been arranged through several intermediaries, cross-checking the validity and legality of the acquisition, but the transaction still ended up in a poorly lit warehouse, as though there was something shady about the deal. Lempa wore a disguise that made him appear nearly human, covering most of the black plastic body plates with clothing, and used a public AI car to get there.

“Why all the subterfuge?” Lempa asked the salesman.

“That’s a fair question,” the salesman replied while opening the trunk on his car. “First off, this is a big-ticket item. Very rare. It’s alien, so we had to bend a few rules and grease some palms to get it here, mostly legal. A lot of people are interested in it just for the alien materials tech, ignoring the fact that it’s a weapon, but lucky for them, the Bell worlds are littered with the bloody things.”

“So the guns aren’t really rare at all?” Lempa asked, thoughtfully tapping his plastic lower lip with a carbon-black plastic finger.

“No, Mr. Tarren. They aren’t. But you knew that already, I think. The gun is just a carrier for the prize. As far as anyone knows, there is almost no ammunition in existence for these guns and no sign of the species that made them. Not living, anyway. We’re confident that the guns are over eight thousand years old. A lot of the ammo was used up in testing back when folks thought the stuff was unlimited, just so they could figure out how it worked. You know, to find out where the targets were going. By then, some of the ammo was smuggled off the planet where it was put to good use. You might recall that skirmish around Lysenko when all those ships just disappeared.” The salesman pulled a rifle out of his trunk. It looked like a toy: bright red and green and smaller than an average human might use. Lempa wondered if alien vision functioned at nonhuman wavelengths and the gaudy colors were strictly a human interpretation.

“Secondly,” the salesman continued, “we’re a full-service dealer.” He waved his empty hand around at the tin-roof warehouse they stood in. “The environment is part of the purchase, providing the ambiance one might expect when dealing with gunrunners. Like wine at an art show.”

Lempa chuckled. “Yet, the important thing is that I’m buying a unique item. Your boss assured me that this item was one-of-a-kind. That’s all I collect.”

“Of course, Mr. Tarren. Everyone knows that.”

It was true. His eccentricity had earned him a place in the news; he’d sleep for ten years, come out of stasis, shop for a new item for his collection, and then return to stasis. His collection was famous, even if no one else had seen it.

“If your contacts have done their homework,” the salesman continued, “you know there are only two rounds of ammunition in existence for this gun.” He lifted the gun, pointing it casually at an old 2167 Tesla on the far side of the warehouse. “If you like, I can demo the product right now, and then you’ll have the very last bullet in existence. Assuming you’re committed to buying it, of course. Or, you can take both of the bullets and dispose of the extra one at your leisure.” He held the gun out to Lempa.

Lempa hesitated, reluctant to touch the gun.

“Don’t worry,” the salesman said, patting his jacket and smiling. “The last round is in a case in my pocket.”

Lempa nodded, took the gun, and examined it curiously, but he already knew he was going to make the purchase.

“What happens to the target?”

“Nobody knows!” the salesman said. He spread his fingers suddenly, mimicking an explosion. “Poof! It’s gone. No boom, no debris, no gas, no drifting molecules, just gone. I have some video from the surviving ship at Lysenko, if you’d like to see it.”

Lempa returned the gun to him. “I would, thank you. Two bullets, you say?”

The salesman nodded.

Lempa pointed the gun at the Tesla and looked at the salesman for affirmation. If he shot the gun, then the sale was sealed.

The salesman smiled and tipped his head at the car. “Go for it.”

Lempa switched his optics to high-speed recording and shot the car. The bullet hit it, then a pocket of something expanded and swallowed it with darkness amid a confusion of shapes, and then it was gone with a soft puff of air. Lempa held the gun up and stared at it. Of course, it was just an alien slug thrower. The real power was in the bullet.

The salesman nodded again and pulled the encased last bullet out of his inside pocket, turning it over to Lempa. “It’ll look good in your collection, I’m sure. A gun with one bullet. You ever think of making your collection public? I’m sure there are a lot of people who’d pay good money to see it.”

Lempa eyed him levelly, until he was sure the man was uncomfortable, then simply said “No.”

◆◆◆

Hades Station passed below the horizon and evening came. Icehouse was one of hundreds of settled darkplanets beyond the useful reach of sunlight from any star, and one of the stepping stones of the slow migration leading to other stellar colonies near Sol.

On the surface of Icehouse, dozens of smaller fusion reactors kept the streetlights shining and provided power to the community. When Lempa returned home after dark, he found the single door to his mansion broken in and police hovering around asking questions. Leaving the alien gun in his trunk, he approached his house, his tall, black-plastic figure pushing past the policemen who tried to delay him. It was easy to do; he was fifteen centis taller and fifty kilos heavier than the largest of them.

Inside, he quickly surveyed the entry lobby: two policemen in uniform and a detective, three smoldering security drones lying on the floor, and a corpse with a charcoal-rimmed hole in his chest. The corpse was the man he’d hired to guard the place, supplementing the drones. “Mr. Tarren?” the detective asked.

He spared a glance at the detective, then, ignoring him, walked into a larger room containing several display cases. Most of the cases were broken open, the contents missing. The items too big to carry were untouched.

The detective followed him into the display room. “Mr. Tarren?” he said again, a little louder than before.

“What?” he barked, then shook his head and took control of his anger. “Yes, Detective?”

“I see you have some security cameras stationed around the room. Can we get a copy of the video?”

“Yes, of course.” He blinked once while accessing the component memories, then said, “I just sent the video from the cameras and drones to your station.”

The detective raised his eyebrows. “Thanks. I’ll let you know if we find anything useful. Were you notified when the break-in occurred?”

“No. I should have been, however. There are sensors—” He stepped back into the lobby and looked down at the corpse, wondering if the security guard had had anything to do with the lack of notification. He’d only hired him two months before, highly recommended, but Lempa wondered if he’d been involved with the theft, and someone higher in the ranks was cleaning up after themselves.

“The items that were stolen. Anything special about them?”

Lempa nodded. “Of course. They were all unique. Last of their kind. That’s what I collect. And they were all popular items. Easy to market, lots of potential collectors, and hard to trace.” He thought of the shattered cases: a rare bottle of fifty-year-old Laphroaig Scotch from 2080. It would probably just be piss in a month. There was a signed letter from Anders Vandermeer to the Journal of Gravitational Physics on the theory behind stasis. And a one-off wooden puzzle box from puzzle craftsman Arturo Ransom custom-made for his spouse. And more. All priceless, all gone. He swept his gaze around the room, anxiety eating at him like acid rain.

“Any other items lost?”

He shook his head. “I think not. I only keep a small fraction of my collection displayed at any time. For my own viewing pleasure. The rest of the collection is securely locked up.”

“Where’s that?” the detective asked.

Lempa ignored the intrusive question. “Once you’re done reviewing the video, I’d ask that you delete it. My collection is not for public viewing. I didn’t work to get this collection just to share it.” He glared down at the detective, fully aware that his height and his angular plastic face were intimidating. The detective resisted taking a step back, but he did give a satisfying twitch.

The detective cleared his throat and asked, “Any idea who might have done this?”

Lempa turned away from him and stared at the wreckage. Of course he knew. A king from another world did this, hiring the local riffraff to do his bidding, still trying to put Lempa in his place. The local police could do nothing about that. “Not really,” he replied.

The detective grunted. Lempa could see he didn’t believe him.

Broken glass, steel, and splinters of wood littered the display area. He waited patiently for homicide to get rid of the corpse, take their photos, look for prints, and leave, then sat down on a unique, but not particularly valuable, wooden chair and sighed an all-too-human sigh. He felt tired, worn down, but knew that was just psychological. The energy core powering his frame and crystalline mind was performing just fine.

As long as he lived among people, especially with his reputation in collectors’ circles, he would always be a target. King Carlos used that fact like a sledgehammer. This wasn’t the first time he’d lost valuable items. What he needed was a place where no one could visit. A hiding place where he could be alone with his prizes, unique in its own right. The last of their kind, on a world no one could find. It was time to leave Icehouse and buy his own planet.

Chapter 4—Icehouse, 2190

Bogun hauled a case of Empathy wine into the Dark Star Pub and put it on the counter. “How many bottles you want this time? The price has gone up; I’m asking three hundred credits a bottle, limit six bottles.”

“What?” Maxi cried. “It was only two hundred last week.”

“Supply and demand, Maxi. Do you want any? I’ve got five more pubs to hit before Hades sets.”

Maxi crossed her arms. “What’s with the limit on bottles?”

Bogun unloaded one bottle and put it on the counter. “Everybody wants it and I want to keep everyone happy.”

“Or the same level of unhappy.”

He shrugged. “Same thing. You want it or not?”

“So if I take six at three hundred credits each, maybe you could sell me a few more at four hundred?”

Bogun laughed. “I’ll charge you that next time I come through, if that helps.”

“You’re an asshole, Bogun.”

He grinned as he handed her the rest of the six-bottle case, which she immediately stashed behind the counter.

“Beer before you go, Bogun?” She took his card and transferred the credits to it.

“You still have that chewy dark stout from Pembrook?”

“We do. Full pint?”

“Sure.”

It was midafternoon, and the bar was empty, the best time to make deals with the owners. While Bogun sat and sipped his beer, Maxi put one bottle of Empathy on display behind the bar. Five minutes later, another man walked in. He was neatly dressed, but his face was scarred and his nose had obviously been broken a few times. From the look on Maxi’s face, Bogun could tell the guy was trouble.

He sat down and ordered a beer. “I see you got some more of that special wine,” he said, in between sips. He nodded at the bottle of Empathy.

Maxi pointedly avoided glancing at Bogun. “We got it in last night.”

“I’ve heard real good things about it. Isn’t Rosewood a local winery?”

“I think so. I’m not sure where they’re located.”

Bogun stole another glance at the guy and thought, you do not want to lie to this man, Maxi. But he was glad she did.

“Maybe you have his phone number?” the man said. “I’m a distributor.”

Mobster, Bogun thought. He carries himself like a thug.

“The morning manager places the orders, so he’d have it. Can I give him your number?”

“Nah. I’ll just come by in the morning. He’ll be working?”

“Yeah, he’ll open up at nine.”

“Great.” He took another sip, looked over at Bogun a few seconds longer than necessary, then turned and left, leaving most of his beer on the bar.

Maxi frowned at the waste of the beer, then glanced over at Bogun with an apologetic look.

“You know who he is?” Bogun asked.

“Have you heard of the Renner Cartel?”

“Yeah. Drugs, smuggling, and bad loans. Expensive wines aren’t exactly their line of business.”

“It’s hardly a wine, is it? The cartel has a reputation for taking over profitable operations, and not by buying them out. I bought you a little time, but they’ll be looking for you.”

“Thanks, Maxi.” He tossed back the rest of his beer and walked out of the bar but returned a minute later with another bottle of Empathy in his hands. He handed it to her. “This one’s for you and Jim. Save it for a few years, wait for a special occasion, okay?”

“Sure, Bogun.” She looked down at the bottle grimly. “This will be the last one, won’t it?”

“We’ll see,” Bogun said and left.

◆◆◆

Bogun was tying down equipment for transport when Nemala came in. “We going somewhere?” she asked.

“I’m not sure yet, but I want to be ready. One of the Renner Cartel thugs came into Maxi’s asking about getting in touch with me. I guess when wine gets expensive as drugs, the drug dealers start getting interested.”

“You think they’re coming after us?”

“Yeah, I do.”

She sat, watching him work. “I’m surprised they haven’t just bought a glassful as a sample and tried synthesizing the active ingredients.”

“They could try. But I thoroughly filter out the yeast before selling it, so they won’t be able to reproduce the active ingredients unless they can synthesize them some other way, without the yeast. But it’s more likely they’ll just take over the operation and force me to work for them.” He grabbed another tie-down strap, carried a crate into storage, and found a place for it. “We could go into hiding for a few years. Start a new batch, bottle it, then wait in stasis while it ages. It’d be worth a small fortune when we came out with it.”

“‘We’?” Nemala asked.

He stopped working and looked at her with concern on his face. “Um. I just thought . . . since you quit your job . . .”

“That I’d want to jump up and fly off to who-knows-where with you?”

“. . . sort of. Do you want to stay here on Icehouse? I mean, you could. There’s no real link tying you to the wine. The cartel wouldn’t be looking for you.”

“So you don’t care whether I go with you or not?” Nemala pried.

He sighed and leaned against a crate, holding a hand out imploringly. Nemala laughed, walked over to him, and kissed him. “You’re so easy,” she said. “Where could we go that they couldn’t find us?”

“Maybe a small asteroid in the middle of nowhere? Someplace where the ship’s heat won’t be detectable?” He gazed up at the ceiling, curling his lip, thinking. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “There’s this crazy collector guy I know, Lempa Tarren. I tried to sell him the last bottle from a limited-run whiskey batch I put out. He didn’t go for it and gave me a long lecture about collectability. But I learned that he intends to take his whole collection off-world. He means to go into hiding. I have a dock-loader friend who could put a tracker on his ship. We could follow where he goes. He’s got a habit of going into stasis for ten years at a time, then coming back out for a shopping spree for his collection. If we can land on his hidden planet and stay there for over five years while he’s in stasis, we can claim a thousand hectares under planetary squatter laws. We’d get our wine and some property out of it.”

“If it’s one of the darkworlds, it may not be worth the photons to file a claim.”

He rubbed a whiskery chin. “I doubt if he’ll pick an ice ball. He said, ‘Someplace unique, like my collection.’ So that eliminates asteroids, drifting free in deep space, and any run-of-the-mill unsettled darkplanet. Stasis requires a lot of energy, so his ship would stand out like a light bulb on a darkworld. I bet he’ll pick some place that has decent natural heat to camouflage his ship’s heat signature, maybe geothermal? But well off the stepping-stone path to Teegarden. Hard to find. Someplace nobody would think of looking for a madman’s collection. It’ll be perfect for us. In stasis, five years will go by in a blink. We’ll be rich.”

He grabbed another tie-down strap. “In the meantime, I’ve got to move the ship to another dock where the cartel can’t find me tomorrow morning. I’ve still got an alias or two I can burn, and it’ll buy us a few days.”

Chapter 5—Cloudchaser, 2192

“If the point of this is to keep from getting visitors, this is the place for you. Nobody wants to start a settlement on a planet that’s going to be destroyed in twenty thousand years. And it’s unique, as far as we know, which should make you happy,” Coreman-27 said. “It aligns well with your collector’s sensibilities. One-of-a-kind.”

Lempa Tarren nodded thoughtfully, observing the two planets live for the first time. Both were darkplanets, with no proper sun to warm them. One was a little larger than Uranus, and the other a little smaller than Earth, and they both would normally have been invisible against the black carpet of space. But the Earth-sized ball was in orbit around the gas giant with a gap of just under a thousand kilometers between them, orbiting it every three hours, and that made things very interesting. “The glow,” he said, “what causes that?”

“The smaller planet, which we’ve tentatively named Cloudchaser—as the new owner, you can, of course, call it whatever you like—orbits the primary, Cloud, at about fifteen kilometers per second. Its mass drags some of Cloud’s atmosphere higher as it passes, creating a tenuous band around the equator, which it impacts as it orbits. The blue glow on the leading edge of Cloudchaser is caused by the hydrogen colliding with its atmosphere. It shades to orange near mid-planet. The white glow you can see behind Cloudchaser is from the lightning passing between the two planets, and the shifting green and blue curtains on the trailing side are from the auroras.”

“It’s stunning,” Lempa murmured. “Beautiful.”

Coreman-27 raised an artificial eyebrow at Lempa.

Lempa noticed the look. They hadn’t had much time to become familiar on the way out to view the planet; both had been in stasis for almost the entire trip. “You seem surprised. I am not an artificial intelligence. My memories and sensibilities are completely human, even though the storage is crystalline.” He turned back to look at the planet. “But I believe I am unique.

“Like your collection.” Coreman-27 glanced behind them, where a red 1959 Chevrolet pickup truck was on display in the middle of the deck: the last one of its kind, restrained in a decorative steel frame. The walls of the ship held similarly unique treasures in brightly lit alcoves. A collection of things for a single viewer to admire.

“Just so,” Lempa said. “You said we could land on this planet? That it has an atmosphere of sorts?”

“Yes, it does. The configuration between the two planets is surprisingly stable. Cloudchaser is tidally locked to the primary, so the same hemisphere is always facing Cloud. It’s well outside the Roche limit, and the heat that supports its atmosphere is generated by the friction with Cloud’s hydrogen. The leading side is over two hundred degrees Celsius, but the trailing side has a small, stable area surrounded by high mountains that stays around twenty Celsius, and is expected to go no higher than thirty degrees over the next ten thousand years. The degradation of the orbit is very gradual. The kinetic energy of the gas giant’s hydrogen isn’t enough to strip the heavier atmospheric molecules from Cloudchaser, so the air pressure in the temperate zone remains relatively constant. Tolerable even by human standards.”

“Your company, Dark Planet Surveys, told me that this planet would remain isolated and hidden, a secret,” Lempa said. “Even you will have the memory that you were ever here erased. But if that’s true, how did DPS find this planet to begin with? Couldn’t anybody locate it again?”

Coreman-27 shook his head. “First of all, my memory isn’t partially erased. I’ll be destroyed. I’m a temp copy of a real person back at DPS headquarters. Highly interactive, you see, but not AI. After the closing documents are encrypted and beamed back to Icehouse, I will self-destruct. As for the planet, there are millions of dark rogue planets located every year. Few are surveyed or settled except along narrow paths to other stars: the ‘stepping stone’ strategy of interstellar travel and colonization. Cloudchaser is close to the settlement string leading to Teegarden, but far enough off the beaten path to be of little interest. DPS discovered that it had a unique, pulsing thermal signature and investigated it. Most of the darkplanets, as you know, are not significantly warmer than the CMB, with a few exceptions, requiring multiple fusion reactors to establish any sort of settlement.”

Lempa grunted acknowledgment.

“Trust me,” Coreman-27 said, “it’s pretty to look at, but nobody but you is going to want to settle here. It has very little free oxygen, for one. And who wants to live on a planet that’s being eaten by another planet?”

He laughed. “You mean, no one else is crazy enough?”

Coreman-27 shrugged one shoulder noncommittally. “Crazy is a relative term. Desires and needs define actions. Even if someone else discovers this, you will already be recorded as the owner. Legally, no one else can land on it without your permission. And, as you said, who’d be crazy enough to try? Worst case, they admire the light show from afar. And you have to admit; it’s unique, like the rest of your collection.”

Lempa nodded. It was something to see. Even as Cloudchaser passed behind Cloud, the planet was trailed by swirling glowing gasses and scattered arcs of lightning, as though some beautiful, angry god was pursuing it.

Chapter 6—Cloudchaser, 2193

The Rusty Tap tailed Lempa to his new world, despite the fact that Lempa had filed a false flight plan to visit Coalring, a darkplanet a little less than one light-year away from Icehouse. Once Bogun had learned of the subterfuge, he filed an identical travel plan to Coalring. People would wonder; Coalring and nearby Grendel were having heated relations, headed toward war, and nobody with any sense was traveling that direction except for arms dealers.

Bogun and Nemala waited patiently for him to set up whatever base he needed to take care of himself and his collection. They drifted in space a hundred million kilometers away, a tiny, undetectable dot lost among a field of stars, and remained in stasis for an extra year.

When they came out of stasis, they closed with the unusual planetary pair, as stunned as Lempa had been as they approached.

“Lempa Tarren is living on that?” Bogun said.

“Technically, he’s in stasis for ten years, plus the time he took to set up, minus the time we were asleep,” Nemala said. “I wouldn’t call that living. And he’s a construct, so maybe he just turned himself off.”

Bogun shook his head. “Not exactly a construct. I read up on his history. He was a human prince on Arnand, a patriarchy, but not heir to their throne. Somehow, he pissed off the king. They give them a choice of death, or being put in an artificial body with no actual rights on Arnand, though they’re still recognized as sentient beings. Their original brains are downloaded, then destroyed, the data transferred into their new crystal brains.”

“If their brains are destroyed, how is that different from dying?”

“Well, they also compress the carbon of the old brain into a diamond, and that becomes part of the new brain, with some impurities added so that it can exist as a working part of the neural network. I don’t think it has any functional value, though. Not really any different than dying, I guess.”

Her face twisted in disgust. “I’m sure that makes them feel better. Sol, that’s brutal.”

“Uh-huh. On Arnand, even in his construct body, he’d have been killed off in a few years if he stayed in the public eye, if people remembered that he’d once been a prince. So Lempa became a recluse and created a fake persona to cover the fact he was artificial. He never showed his face to the public and people started treating him as a mysterious human collector. The king discovered what he’d done, but by that time Lempa had gathered enough resources and contacts to leave the planet.”

Nemala shrugged indifferently. “I can’t say I’m particularly sympathetic to anyone who used to be a prince. Either way, whether he’s turned off or in stasis, he won’t be outside exploring the planet. As long as we can land over a hundred klicks from his setup, coming in below his horizon, he’s not likely to notice us, automatic detectors or not. Look at that,” she said, pointing to narrow, meandering lines on the viewscreen. “He built some roads. Probably to fetch raw materials to build part of his base.”

“See if we can find a place away from the roads, then,” Bogun said. “Maybe those are for automated patrols.”

“Once we land, I want to scatter some of my yeast samples. This will be an amazing environment for fast mutations of the strains I brought.” She tapped the display. “See the lightning area between the two planets? The yeast will have access to both Cloud and Cloudchaser’s atmospheres, storm systems, and all the temperature and radiation gradients in between. Whatever they become, we can sample them before we leave the planet. Maybe I can sell them back to Doyes.”

“Or maybe since they’ll know that the strains you’re bringing back are derived from their own patented strains, they’ll just arrest you and confiscate them,” Bogun said.

She scowled at him. “There are other pharmaceutical companies on other worlds.”

“I’m thinking that it wouldn’t be healthy for either one of us to return to Icehouse,” he replied. “Anyway, it occurs to me that the yeast will have nothing to eat. No one has ever detected life on a darkworld.”

“The yeast can survive on simple sugars, which can form spontaneously from inorganic processes. We might get lucky here.”

◆◆◆

They brought the Rusty Tap in fifteen thousand kilometers above Cloud, moving slower than Cloudchaser’s orbit, high above the hydrogen vapors in Cloudchaser’s path. The smaller planet caught up with them, and they skimmed the high glowing clouds, where the fiery winds began to slow and cool as they came around the outermost side of the planet, then they dropped below the dark mountain ranges concealing them from Lempa’s base.

Bogun and Nemala spent a month setting up their homestead. The atmosphere had very little free oxygen, so any time they spent outside required breathing air, though clothing consisted of no more than standard streetwear with a light coat. It rained on occasion, and it didn’t take long to discover that mushrooms were very easy to grow on Cloudchaser, if the soil was pretreated.

Regular crops of grapes, barley, and hops were much harder to grow and required the extensive use of artificial lights. Since a darkworld was their likely destination, they’d stocked up on full-spectrum lighting panels shortly before their departure. The crops weren’t large; they expected to make small batches at high prices, and there was just the two of them. They intended to spend most of their time in stasis, letting automated systems tend to the crops and alarm systems to drop them out of stasis in case of some failure or emergency that they needed to handle in person.

Nemala helped with the crops initially, preparing them for automated care. They were all fast-growth varieties, so the two of them spent less time in stasis than they first expected. After the first month, Nemala commented, “You know, I miss having coffee and a bagel at the local shop.”

“We have coffee,” Bogun said. “I thought you said this was so romantic here?”

They were both squeezed into the ship’s small dining area. Nemala put down her coffee cup. “I did, but I had friends back on Icehouse who I saw on occasion. Places I could visit. Now, you’re it. Working in the gardens, testing yeast samples, and you. If we get bored with each other, it’s not like one of us can just leave, unless we’re heading toward Lempa’s place, and I don’t think he’d be happy to see us, you know?”

Bogun seemed pained. “You’re bored?”

She shrugged. “There’s work to do, but I want something besides work. Other people. Some excitement.”

“We can spend more time in stasis,” Bogun suggested. “Let the automated equipment do most of the work. Five years will go by fast, then we can make our squatter’s claim and leave. I’ll have to sell the booze somewhere. But maybe some more people will move in here later, put in some shops or something. We could stay.”

She glanced toward the tiny port window in the room. “It’s got a weird sort of beauty, sure, but who’s going to want to live here permanently?”

Bogun raised his hand. Nemala sighed. “Time to get to work,” she said.

Over the next few weeks, Nemala used a drone to drop some of her yeasts into prime locations on Cloudchaser, hoping that the unique, chaotic environment would help evolve interesting new strains over the next five years.

Within two months of arrival, they were both in long-term stasis, only dropping out into realtime once a month to verify that the automated systems were still functional and to share company.

Most of the time, except for the soft moan of the winds in the hills above their ship, the intermittent rustle and clank of the robots taking care of the crops, and an occasional gust of rain pattering the covers above the plants, the place was as silent as death.

In a hundred-kilometer temperate circle of scattered ponds and runoff channels surrounding both Lempa’s and Bogun’s settlements, Nemala’s yeasts competed for the slim resources available and grew, thin grey tendrils of cellular clusters straining across the rugged landscape, where moist winds picked them up and carried them into the skies.

Chapter 7—Cloudchaser, 2197

Stasis, Lempa thought, was a misnomer. He wasn’t held still in time, his body was merely redirected along a near-light-speed path, tossed back and forth like a baseball along a one-centimeter length so that relativistic time dilation took effect. That part he understood; time still passed for him normally, but relative to the ship and the planet Cloudchaser, it was very, very slow. The part he didn’t understand was how the machine could simultaneously toss all the molecules in his body to and fro without tearing every molecule apart from every other molecule. He wasn’t dead yet, so apparently it worked.

He looked up at the chronometer and noted that only four years had passed outside, less than a day for him. After he’d landed on Cloudchaser and set up his home, he didn’t expect to return to realtime for ten years, skipping through time to look for odd, eclectic items to add to his already large collection. Perhaps, he thought, I should just collect odd planets.

There were a few things that would automatically drop him out of stasis. Defects or loss of power in the stasis room were an obvious potential cause. Drastic changes in the weather would do it, as would uninvited visitors. “Alkestis,” Lempa asked the ship, shortly after dropping back into realtime, “what took me out of stasis?”

“There was a radio signal hailing you.”

Lempa wondered if there was some document that hadn’t been signed when he purchased the world. Perhaps some new version of Coreman, the real estate salesman, had returned to straighten things out. “Who is it?”

“Captain Malor of the corvette VenDaal, out of Coalring.”

“Military? What does he want?”

“To talk to you.”

Lempa sighed. “Put him on.”

Captain Malor was a young man with long, straight, black hair and a twisted smirk that told Lempa he was about to have an unpleasant conversation.

“Good day, Captain Malor,” Lempa said. “What can I do for you?”

“Lempa Tarren. So this is where you went to hide,” said the captain.

Lempa remained motionless and expressionless. For an opening line, it didn’t hold much promise for any sort of cordiality. Still, for such a simple statement, it carried a lot of information. The captain knew who he was and that he didn’t want to be found. It also sounded as though he was specifically looking for Lempa, and considering that he’d only been in stasis for four years, then the time it took the encrypted closing documents to beam back to Icehouse, plus the time for a ship like the VenDaal to return, meant that Dark Planet Survey had given up his location, despite their guarantee.

The fact that the ship hailed from Coalring could mean that someone, perhaps from the Renner Cartel, followed the false trail to Coalring, found out he wasn’t there, somehow acquired or hired a warship, then returned to Icehouse to squeeze the Dark Planet Surveys for his real location. The timing was about right. And here he was.

As though to prove the point, Captain Malor continued, “Just to bring you up to speed, you are probably unaware that the darkworlds Grendel and Coalring are at war over a power source, a primordial black hole, and the stepping-stone path to the Teegarden system is currently lacking a few planets since they’re busy shooting at each other. So, folks are looking for safer alternate routes with viable colonial planets. And guess what?”

Lempa stared at him silently, waiting.

Captain Malor frowned. After a few uncomfortable moments, he said, “This planet is very close to one of the alternate routes!”

“This planet is my planet, Captain. Its name is Cloudchaser, and since you know who I am, I’m fairly confident that you know I legally purchased it for my own use, and that the purchase was registered at Icehouse. While you’re welcome to orbit it, or even build a colony-station around it if that’s what you want, I don’t need or want visitors here.”

“Well, funny thing,” Captain Malor said, “Coalring doesn’t recognize ownership of property by artificial constructs. Not even of those fancy little collectible thingies you value so much.”

Lempa bristled. “I am a human, Captain Malor. Not an AI, not a construct. Besides, this planet is registered under Icehouse laws, not Coalring.”

Malor laughed acidly. “You must not have heard me mention that there’s a war going on, Tarren. And I’m based out of Coalring. And I’m the one with a warship.”

A deserter that stole a warship, most likely, Lempa thought. “I would highly recommend that you do not land here, Captain. You will regret it,” Lempa said.

Captain Malor laughed again and said, “Okay, robot,” and switched off the connection.

An explosion shook the entire building, knocking some of the displays from their shelves. Glass shattered, and a low rumble filled the air.

“Alkestis? What was that?” Lempa asked.

“My primary body at the landing site—that is to say, your spaceship—has been damaged. The adjacent buildings housing the construction bots have been destroyed by the blast. I believe it was an energy weapon from the VenDaal.”

Lempa put his fist to his mouth, remembered he had no fingernails to chew, then dropped it. There went any chance of escape.

“The VenDaal has released a lander,” Alkestis announced.

Lempa nodded. The corvette would be more than enough to deal with a one-man colony. He considered his resources; he’d replaced the three security drones that had been destroyed at his Icehouse mansion, so he could bring those to bear. It wasn’t much. And there was the alien Gun With One Bullet, still in storage below. At best, he could take out their lander with it, assuming it was functional, but still have the warship to deal with. The VenDaal would certainly spit out more landers if he destroyed the first one. His construction robots might have looked threatening, but they had been destroyed in the blast.

Of course, the Gun With One Bullet was also a priceless artifact. One-of-a-kind. It would be foolish to use it in this conflict, diminishing his collection further. Then again, the present vector of activity seemed to be pointing toward the probable loss of everything, including his life.

But what if it was just a ship full of deserters? Reavers and thieves? Escaping the war to claim what spoils they could from the borders and outlands? That would explain why there was only a single corvette. Maybe he could deal with them. Based on their brief conversation, that seemed unlikely. But perhaps he could threaten to let Coalring know that their deserter warship was marauding nearby. It was a toothless threat; even if he got a message off to Coalring, it would take nearly a year to arrive there, and even longer for any sort of help to arrive, and the help might be worse than the reavers.

Grumbling to himself, Lempa unpacked and loaded the Gun With One Bullet, hoping he didn’t have to use it. He grabbed some conventional hand weapons and activated his security drones. Sliding into his red 1959 Chevy pickup truck, the centerpiece in the large room, he started it up and tapped the sticky gas gauge with a fingertip. The needle grudgingly came off the peg. He revved the engine a few times, thankful that the synthetic gasoline would still function after a hundred years or more.

He sent a signal to the outer door, and it swung open. He drove out onto the dirt road that the construction robots had scraped four years before, jostled as the truck bounced over the threshold and onto the gravel.

Lempa turned on the headlights, splashing light across the brown road. The port and his damaged ship were only two kilometers away, a rare flat spot on the rugged terrain large enough to host a spaceship. Above, the aurora shifted in lazy olive-green waves, and the raging lightning storm between the two planets provided a flickering white glow toward what he called “the South.” A dimly lit cloud of hydrogen trailed back behind the two planets, and a red ring lit the distant horizon. It was a beautiful night, but then, it always was. A temperate twenty-two degrees centigrade, not quite Earth sea-level pressure, and negligible free oxygen, but he didn’t need it anyway. The gasoline in the truck had its own oxidizer tank. He sped up to eighty kilometers per hour with the window open, feeling the wind swirl around the skin sensors on his black plastic carapace. He laughed, an electronic sound, and hung his left elbow out the window.

Lempa would be damned if he would let anyone else on his planet.

Chapter 8—Cloudchaser, 2197

Lempa could see the bright flames from VenDaal’s lander as he approached the landing site. The flickering blue light cast shadows from the scattered, broken debris from his storage buildings and damaged ship. He parked outside the debris perimeter and sent a mental signal for his drones to hide within the twisted metal sheets. He stepped out of the pickup truck, grabbing the Gun With One Bullet and an energy rifle, then secured himself behind a large scrap of metal from a storage shed, and waited.

The lander settled on the ground. Lempa’s hand twitched on the gun. It would be a terrible waste to use it, to say nothing of the expense, but it would give him a bluff to work with. Destroy their lander. Make it cease to exist. Threaten them with further annihilation with a weapon they knew nothing about, especially regarding his lack of ammunition.

It could work.

He sent the drones up as a distraction and aimed carefully from his hiding place.

Two gun turrets on the side of the lander destroyed all three drones and shredded Lempa’s body with a stuttering roar of hard ammunition. The Gun flew wide and fell to the ground.

Lempa’s crystalline brain was well protected within a hardened shell, but the plastic skull surrounding it was lacerated beyond recognition. What remained of his head was detached from his body, lying upside-down on the ground, facing away from the lander. One of his hearing sensors still functioned and one eye, though there was a thick crack down the middle of the image. He heard sounds come from the lander, then a rover pulled up nearby carrying six soldiers. One got out to inspect the Chevy pickup; Lempa wondered if it had been damaged at all. Another came over to look at the debris that used to be Lempa. He picked up the energy rifle that was still secured in a holster on the side of Lempa’s detached leg, saw how damaged it was, and tossed it back to the ground.

“Whatever this Lempa guy sent,” the man said, “it’s dead. Looks like it was some kind of robot.”

“Not a military unit, I’m guessing.”

The man sniffed, then chuckled. “I’d say not.” He nudged the brain-core with a foot, skewing Lempa’s remaining vision. He picked up the brightly colored Gun, examining it. It also bore scorch marks from their attack. “Looks like a toy.”

“The guy is some weird collector. It probably is a toy. Just leave it. Damaged, anyway. We’ll have enough to carry.”

The soldier pointed the gun at their ship, aimed it, and said, “Pew, pew!” Then he laughed and tossed it on the ground.

Lempa was confused. Why hadn’t the gun worked? He looked at the gun at the soldier’s side as the soldier moved past him. His gun had a wider trigger guard than Lempa’s gun, built for use by a fat-fingered soldier in a spacesuit. The soldier couldn’t pull the trigger. They were all wearing full spacesuits, though all they really needed was a breathing mask and oxygen supply to survive here.

The men returned to the rover and took off toward the main complex, looking for loot. The gun lay three meters from his head, and it took him a moment for the reality to set in that he was just a head, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to grab it.

◆◆◆

The radio traffic made Bogun and Nemala aware of the VenDaal’s arrival at Cloudchaser. Their crops were in a night cycle, and they rushed around madly to assure that the lights didn’t come on, illuminating their little farmstead. It wouldn’t be easy to see; the constantly shifting aurora provided cover from orbital observations. Unlike Lempa’s sprawling installation, depending upon the obscurity of the location to hide him, Bogun and Nemala had taken some pains to disguise their ship’s location, kilometers distant from Lempa’s nearest road.

Over the previous four years, between the efforts of forcing the grapes and grain to grow in the lifeless soil of Cloudchaser, Bogun’s extensive experiments in brewing, and Nemala’s excited excursions to seed every harsh border environment with extremophilic yeasts and supporting bacteria, they ended up spending less time in stasis than they had originally intended. Starting a farm on a darkplanet wasn’t an easy task.

“They sent down a lander,” Bogun said. “What if they find us? Kick us off the planet? Or take the wine? Or my ship?”

Nemala watched the new ship on the Rusty Tap’s monitor. The mystery ship had a much higher orbit than the planet Cloudchaser, orbiting Cloud once every eight hours versus the planet’s three-point-four hour orbit. Over an entire orbit, Cloudchaser and the new ship lost line-of-sight for nearly three hours.

“It looks like a military ship,” Nemala said. “I doubt that it’s concerned about squatters or winemakers. On the other hand, if it’s a pirate ship, anything goes. We need to lay as low as we can until they leave.”

“If they leave.”

“It won’t be long before the lander arrives. Let’s send a drone over to monitor the landing port,” Nemala suggested. “Maybe we can get a clue as to what’s happening.”

“Lempa shouldn’t even be awake now,” Bogun said.

But he was. Through the lens of their drone, hovering a half-kilometer from the port, they watched him get blown apart.

◆◆◆

They were stunned. Eight hours had passed since they saw the brief, one-sided battle at the port. “We just wait them out? Hope they leave without seeing us?” Nemala said.

“That’s the smart money. Whoever they are, they’re going to steal all his shit and leave.” He frowned. “Unless they came here for the planet, and Lempa was just a bonus.”

“That seems unlikely. Who would want a planet that’s busy plowing into another one?”

Bogun raised his hands. “You saw what it looked like from orbit. Maybe they want to bring people here as a tourist destination.”

A signal light lit up the monitoring console. “Activity at the port. They’re back from Lempa’s place. And their rover is loaded with stuff.”

They watched the drone video as the men drove the loaded rover onto the lander. Two of them returned to the red Chevy pickup and squeezed inside the cab. It was a tight fit with their suits on. Another ten minutes passed as they figured out the antiquated controls, then the truck lurched forward, stopped, lurched again, then slowly crawled toward the lander and up the loading ramp. The door closed, and the lander lifted off.

Bogun flew the drone over to peer at the remnants of Lempa’s body. A blue light flickered inside the shell of his head.

Bogun glanced at Nemala. “Shall we go check on our host?”

“What, you think he might still be alive?”

“We should at least try,” Bogun said.

Nemala grimaced. “Yeah, I guess. Let’s wait an hour; their warship will lose line-of-sight with Cloudchaser by then.”

◆◆◆

Their rover pulled up to the launch port in a cloud of dust and gravel, and they hopped out. Nemala approached the remains of Lempa and crouched down, examining him. “You look like shit,” she said to his head, flipping it upright. The head hissed at her, a crackle broken by “lem,” followed by more hissing and crackling.

She turned back to Bogun. “Let’s get all the pieces we can find. We might get some salvage money for them, even as chewed up as they are.” She looked into Lempa’s dark eyes. “And maybe there’s still a functioning brain in there.”

“What’s this?” Bogun said, holding up the red and green gun.

“A toy gun? Maybe he meant to trade with the pirates. Probably some collectible.”

“Trade with pirates? That’d be pretty stupid.” Bogun tossed it in the back seat of the rover. “They’re pirates.” He started gathering up Lempa’s remains.

◆◆◆

They made it back to their shelter before VenDaal’s lander returned for the next load, happy to remove the oxygen masks and tanks that they had to wear outside. Though the air was warm and the pressure was high enough, they still always had that reminder that Cloudchaser could kill them if they weren’t careful.

It took two more lander loads for the pirates to empty Lempa’s collection. Bogun complained that he couldn’t illuminate his crops as long as the VenDaal was overhead since there was enough light leakage for an orbiting spacecraft to detect. While they waited, Bogun scavenged a voice box from supplies and tried to replace the damaged unit in Lempa’s head.

“Did you know there’s a tiny cooling unit in here? In his head?” he said. “Looks high grade.”

“Why the hell would I know that?” Nemala replied.

“I was kind of talking to the head.”

“Probably cooling whatever processor he has for a brain.”

Bogun shook his head. “Nope. It’s a separate module.” He squinted at it while he wired in the new voice box. After a few minutes, he leaned back. “Should work now. Lempa?”

The voice box crackled with noise.

Nemala leaned over and stared into Lempa’s dark, unmoving eyes. “You think he’s still alive in there, huh?”

“Hard to say. If we get him to a well-equipped service station, they might have better luck.”

They continued to monitor the port with a remote drone and could see that the third load was a light load. It appeared that the soldiers were ready to leave. Then the six-man crew piled into the rover and headed down the road in their direction.

“Dammit, did they see us?” Nemala said.

“Maybe they noticed that Lempa’s bits and pieces are missing.”

Nemala’s brow crumpled into a knot. “There was a lot of debris in the area.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe they’re just seeing if there are some outbuildings they missed. If Lempa made roads, they had to go somewhere, right?”

They both knew the roads went nowhere. Nemala scowled. “They’ll see our rover tracks.”

“There are tracks all over the place.” It was true. From Lempa’s construction phase, between the robotic activity and Lempa driving around to monitor progress, several temporary roads laced the landscape, though most had filled in over the last four years.

“Ours are fresh. We should prep to take off,” Nemala said. “Just in case.”

“The crops will die.” He jerked his head toward the wine vats. “And the motion will probably screw up this batch of wine.”

“You’ve bottled up enough to last a while, and you still have the vats outside. We might be able to return later, and they might leave the vats alone. Let’s secure what we have and get the hell out of here before their rover arrives. Their main ship will be on the other side of Cloud in about two hours, so they might miss us.”

“The rover will see us launch, and report to their ship,” Bogun said. He was already busy securing systems and tying down loose items.

“We’ll have a couple-hour head start. If we go into stasis, we can pull twenty gees.” She looked up at the ceiling in concentration, then said, “We’d be five million kilometers away before they have any chance at all of seeing us.”

Bogun frowned worriedly at his cases of wine and chewed on his lip. The cases weren’t built for twenty gees.

“Man, I can feel your anxiety,” Nemala said. “Can you tone it down?”

“What?”

“Haven’t you noticed? That weird yeast I have growing outside, the drug it’s producing is getting all over everything. Everything fresh that we’ve been eating is contaminated with it. Every emotion you have, I can feel it.”

He glanced at her, squinting thoughtfully, “Now that you mention it, the sex—”

“I knew that would be the first thing you thought of.”

“Well, yeah.” Bogun went back to the wine, struggling to pack it safely, sweating to get it right.

“We can always make more,” Nemala reassured him. “I’ve sampled fifteen new strains of extremophiles from this environment, so it’ll be easy enough for us to set up shop somewhere else.”

Once the ship was ready to launch, Bogun crammed as much wine into his stasis booth as would fit, leaving a narrow gap for his body to squeeze into. Nemala rolled her eyes but kept quiet. Several other cases of wine, beer, and whiskey went into underground storage bunkers, on the unlikely chance that the pirates wouldn’t discover them, though they kept the bulk of the alcohol in storage on the ship. Nemala put Lempa’s head in her stasis booth, but stowed the shattered parts of his body in a storage container.

They fully suited up. “No telling what condition our ship will be in when we come out of stasis,” Bogun cautioned.

On their monitors, Bogun and Nemala observed the VenDaal rover turn off the main road onto their fresh tire-tracks and head toward their farm.

Minutes later, the Rusty Tap rose from Cloudchaser’s surface and accelerated away, a bright, roaring star dimming quickly as clouds of dust obscured their passage skyward.

Chapter 9—Cloudchaser, 2197

Being in stasis wasn’t conducive to observation of the external environment; the mechanism to slow time tended to fuzz-out any data or imagery. After two hours, the ship reduced acceleration to one gravity, then shut off the stasis. Only seconds had passed for the two of them.

“Well, damn,” Bogun breathed. He surveyed the deck, awash in wine and ale, littered with shards of bottle glass. The storage compartment doors were open, bent, and twisted. “That’s most of it.”

“We’ll make more,” Nemala said. She moved to the deck’s console display and brought up the image of Cloud. Among the other displays of light, a bright star lit up its horizon. “They’re accelerating toward us. At thirty-five gravities. Can we . . .”

“No,” Bogun said. “Twenty was pushing structural limits for us, to say nothing of my packing job.”

Crackling, hissing noises came from her stasis booth. She turned and remembered that Lempa’s head was still there. “You got something to say, Lempa?” The head hissed some more, creating sounds like random letters mixed with the broken crackle. Gun?

“He’s probably angry with us for squatting on his rock.”

“I wonder,” Nemala said. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she tried to make sense out of the noise. “It almost sounds like he’s saying ‘gun.’”

“The toy gun?”

“It’s the only thing he has left from his collection. I guess it’s important to him?”

“I can imagine, if it’s the last thing he owns.”

She looked at the screen again. “Let’s get going. That fuel is costing them something. Maybe they’ll turn around if they think it isn’t worthwhile chasing us. After all, they already have Cloudchaser.”

“But Lempa’s the registered owner.”

She looked at Lempa’s head pointedly and said, “It’s a warship. Something has changed that we don’t know about.”

They reentered their booths and triggered stasis. The ship’s computer took over what seemed like a few seconds, then dropped them out of stasis again. “Warning, the Rusty Tap hull integrity is damaged. You are losing pressure.”

Bogun and Nemala drifted out of their booths, weightless, and surveyed the deck. There was a half-meter wide hole through both sides of the room. There was no air at all, except for a hazy gray smoke from the singed edges of the hole. “Rusty, what the hell happened?” asked Bogun.

“A beam weapon has pierced the control deck resulting in loss of atmosphere. Emergency protocols required bringing you out of stasis to deal with the damage, which required shutdown of the engines.” The ship paused for a second, then added, “You are being hailed by the VenDaal.”

Bogun glanced at a chronometer. They’d been in stasis for nearly three hours in ship time. Time enough for the VenDaal to catch up. He stepped over to the comm display and said, “Accept the hail. Patch the comm through channel four on our suits.”

A man with long, straight, black hair framing his face appeared on-screen. “Captain Bogun Rosewood of the Rusty Tap, I presume? I’m Captain Malor of the corvette VenDaal.”

Bogun nodded slowly. Malor would have looked up his name from the ship’s registration number on the hull. “I can’t say I’m happy to meet you, Captain.”

“I imagine not. So, I’m a little curious about what you were doing on my planet just now, and why you’re in such a hurry to leave. My welcoming party was just about to visit your little farming operation.”

“We are nothing to you, Captain. I make wine, and we were squatting to earn a homestead.”

“Oh, squatters! You know your home is forfeit if you’re caught before the time limit, don’t you?” He waved a hand in the air, as though clearing the air of smoke. “You just have to leave, and leave all your stuff behind.”

“We, uh . . . already did that.”

“By ‘home,’ I mean the place you were living. Your ship is forfeit. We’re going to take your ship, and whatever valuables you have on board.”

“You’re just fucking pirates,” Bogun stated flatly.

“Ooo . . . that’s such a loaded term. You should be much nicer to the guy that might drop you off at the next station we visit. More compliant.” He grinned unpleasantly. “Enough chit-chat. Prepare to receive my boarding crew. I see you don’t have a shuttle bay, so just meet my crew in your airlock. Save us punching another hole in our new ship. Play nice, and you might live through this.”

Malor signed off.

Bogun motioned to Nemala to switch her comm to their secure channel. “Rusty, give me a view of their ship,” Bogun said.

“Yes, Captain.” The VenDaal was less than two hundred meters from their own, and easily ten times larger. It bristled with armaments.

“Not your standard pirate,” Nemala said.

“Yeah. He’s going to kill us anyway, I’ll bet.” Bogun said.

“Maybe. Maybe not. If we can get him to try your wine, we can convince him that it’s valuable and we need to be on Cloudchaser to make it. Sell him on the idea that he needs us alive to manufacture it.”

Bogun rolled his eyes, his mouth twisting. “I don’t know.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw motion on his monitor: the boarding crew leaving the VenDaal. There were three of them. “Two of them to run my ship, one guy to escort us back.”

“Or just shoot us,” Nemala said.

“They’ll at least want to ask us about the cargo. Then shoot us. We’ll have the chance to make a deal with them. Grab Lempa’s head, too, and his toy gun. See if they’ll let us keep them. Part of the deal.”

“What did Lempa ever do for us?” Nemala asked.

“It’s what he might do for us. He gets an allowance from Arnand, his homeworld. We’ll need his gratitude if we’re going to start over.” Bogun opened up the inner and outer airlock doors as Nemala grabbed one of the unbroken bottles of wine, Lempa’s head, and the toy gun.

They stood together inside the open airlock, watching the three soldiers as they slowly closed the gap between them.

There was a crackle of noise on channel four of their headsets, a hiss and a pop, then the distinct word “Gun!” as it sounded loudly in his helmet.

The three soldiers jerked suddenly and brought up their arms.

“Dammit, Lempa!” Bogun lurched back behind a narrow steel partition bordering the door to space and watched as a nearly invisible beam grazed the metal barrier a few inches from his waist. He heard Nemala howl and turned just enough to see her grab her suited leg where it had been pierced, then suddenly felt an echo of sharp pain within his own leg. The damned drug, he thought. The suit’s repair foam filled the hole in her suit and numbed her wound. “We’re unarmed!” he shouted, then realized he was still on the private channel with Nemala.

“I know that,” she growled back.

Channel four blurted out “Gun!” again. More beams played across the inside of the airlock, barely missing them as they hugged the wall. Bogun glared at the bag containing Lempa’s head. Why the hell was he doing this? What was it about a gun?

“Rusty, switch our comm to channel four.”

“Done.”

“We have no guns!” he repeated. More beams played across the walls of the airlock. They didn’t believe him, or this was their intention all along and Lempa’s outburst bought them a few extra seconds. The metal sizzled with bright red spots. The angle was changing as the soldiers flew closer. The lever to close the airlock was on the other side of the airlock, out of reach unless he made himself an easy target. Bogun fumed. Did Lempa’s toy gun actually work? Was it loaded? How many rounds were in it?

He reached into the bag that Nemala carried and pulled out the toy gun. Holding it, he found that he couldn’t get his suited finger inside the trigger guard. Too thick. “I need a screwdriver,” he said.

Another male voice laughed. “They’re going to throw a screwdriver at us,” the voice said. Other voices chuckled.

Nemala jerked a screwdriver from her belt and handed it to him. Bogun levered the toy gun around the edge of the chamber by its handle, keeping his fingers out of view, stuck the shaft of the screwdriver into the trigger guard, and started pulling the trigger repeatedly, shooting blindly, hoping it wasn’t a toy and that it had some area-effect like a flamethrower. It didn’t kick. There was nothing. It was just a damned toy. Angrily, he threw it across the chamber, aiming for a lucky shot at the lever that would close the airlock. It bounced off with no effect and floated free, drawing more fire from the soldiers. Bogun took that fraction of a second to stick his head out and pull back.

The VenDaal was gone.

“Their ship left,” he said to Nemala. Maybe it was maneuvering to the other side of their ship? Readying to attack them from a different angle? It made no sense. They were minutes, perhaps seconds, from dying.

“The ship . . .” someone said, then the play of deadly beams suddenly stopped. “Where the hell is our ship?”

Bogun didn’t waste time wondering what had distracted their attackers. He lunged across the airlock and grabbed the handle, twisting it quickly. The outer airlock door slammed shut.

Bogun and Nemala tumbled back into the main quarters of the Rusty Tap, closing the inner airlock door. “What happened to their ship?” Nemala asked.

“I have no idea,” Bogun replied. “It’s not showing up on any of our displays. It left the area for some reason.”

“Captain Malor?” a voice called out. One of the three soldiers.

“We need to get on that ship,” one of the others said.

“Nemala, lie down on the deck.” Bogun followed suit. There was no time to get into the stasis booths. “Rusty, two gees please,” he said, forgetting he was still on a common channel.

“Shit,” said one of the soldiers.

“There is a person riding on the outside of the ship,” Rusty Tap reported a few seconds later. “Now three persons.”

Of course, Bogun thought. Military suits were easily capable of providing two gees acceleration themselves. They just flew up and grabbed on to his ship. Bogun looked over at the hole punched through the sides of the Rusty Tap. Not big enough to crawl through, but the soldiers could toss explosives in there if they had them. He didn’t have long.

He motioned toward the stasis booths, and Namala nodded. “Rusty, reduce acceleration to one gee.” The ship shuddered suddenly; Bogun felt a vibration through his suit’s boots. The soldiers were using explosives. But where? Bogun and Nemala climbed quickly into their booths, and Bogun ordered, “Rusty, give us stasis and twenty gees for ten seconds, now.”

Before he finished his sentence, Bogun heard one of the soldiers on his comm call out, “Clear the ship!”

When they came out of stasis, there was silence.

◆◆◆

The airlock’s outer door had been blown open with an explosive charge. The airlock contained a dead soldier with a broken neck and the severed leg of another who didn’t make it all the way out of the airlock before the engines fired. A lone voice called out on their comm; a suit radio now ten kilometers away and receding further with every second, fading into noise, calling for a rescue from the VenDaal, then the Rusty Tap. They listened for a short while, then switched over to their private channel.

“We can’t go back and get him. They tried to kill us,” Nemala said.

“No argument from me. He’d try to kill us again, given the chance.”

“What happened to the VenDaal?”

“They took off. Who knows? Maybe we scared them off with the toy gun.”

They stood in the middle of the dock and surveyed the damage. The airlock was unusable. The deck was open to vacuum. Spheres of wine froze as they evaporated and shards of glass floated in the vacuum. The storage compartment door wouldn’t open far, though it was twisted enough that more globules of wine drifted out of the opening.

The air in their suits would last another four hours. Nemala examined her leg where she’d been hit with the beam weapon. “I’m going to need medical attention.”

“We can’t go back to Cloudchaser. The VenDaal might come back.”

“The wine and beer will keep,” Nemala said.

“Unless the guys stranded in the rover use it for food.”

Nemala squeezed her leg. “I forgot about those assholes. They have grapes and grain, too. They might survive for a while if they’re smart. Long enough for the VenDaal to pick them up.”

Bogun pursed his lips. What the hell would make a corvette run away? A bigger ship? But there wasn’t one.

“The nearest darkplanet to here is Schwarzwald, about half a light-year,” he said. “They’ll have the tech to repair the Rusty Tap and give Lempa a functional voice box, if not a full body. So, about a half-hour in stasis time.”

Crackling noise broke into their comm, and a voice brokenly said, “Yes,” followed by a garble of unintelligible noises.

Bogun turned to the bag sitting on the floor next to Nemala. “Lempa’s head votes yes. And he might be paying the medical bills. Remember to put it in your stasis booth. He might be upset if he had to stare at the inside of a bag for a couple of years of flight time.”

Chapter 10—Schwarzwald, 2199

On Schwarzwald, Lempa spent six months worth of his princely allowance to get a new body, after a functional voice box was connected to his head so he could gain access to his credit account. Bogun had had to assure the repair group that Lempa Tarren was a prince back on Arnand; he’d be good for it, though they made Bogun sign the forms, too, in case Lempa’s head wasn’t quite as functional or as rich as Bogun made him out to be. Worst case, Bogun thought, he’d have to pay for a voice box out of his own pocket.

Nemala and Bogun were waiting for Lempa when he came out of the rebuild. His repairman accompanied him, steadying him as Lempa became familiar with the new body.

Lempa spread his hands. “I guess I have you two to thank for this.”

Bogun nodded. “You’re shorter.”

“And green,” Nemala added.

Lempa looked down at his new body and sighed. “It’s what they had available. I’ll order something more imposing from Arnand once things have settled. I have a few questions for you, though.”

“And we for you.”

“I figured as much. Let me go first, my questions are likely much easier to answer. What the hell were you doing on my planet?”

Nemala laughed. “Squatting. Waiting for five years to run out so we could claim some land of our own.”

“Making wine and beer and whiskey. All left behind, now,” Bogun added.

“You could do that almost anywhere,” Lempa said. “And on a planet that wasn’t going to self-destruct in twenty thousand years.”

Nemala and Bogun exchanged glances. “There were some legal issues,” Bogun said, “and the local cartel on Icehouse was a little too interested in my product. We needed a place to disappear for a few years. We knew you were going into hiding, so we tracked you. Rode your coattails.”

“Hmm. So maybe not such a simple question. Legal issues?”

“My turn,” Bogun said. “Do you have any idea why the VenDaal ran away?”

Lempa laughed loud and long. When he stopped, he told them about the Gun With One Bullet. They’d shot at the approaching soldiers, missed, and hit the massive VenDaal instead, sending it and Lempa’s collection of one-shot misfit items to who-knew-where and stranding the three soldiers. The ship was gone from the universe, as far as Lempa knew. “The VenDaal, and all the things I’d collected!” he moaned. “Even the Chevrolet pickup. I loved that thing.”

“The ship was destroyed? By that stupid toy gun of yours?” Bogun sat down, his legs suddenly weak.

“That, and everything I’ve worked for. My entire collection.”

They didn’t speak for a minute. Then Bogun said, “Well, we’re all alive. As for your collection, we got you a little coming-out-of-death gift,” and handed him a bottle of Empathy wine.

Lempa stared quietly at it. “Um. Thanks. A bottle of wine. Not that I’m not grateful, but you are aware that I have an artificial body, right?”

“It isn’t to drink. It’s the last bottle of its kind. For this year, anyway. I sold the other three surviving cases to connoisseurs here on Schwarzwald and I seriously doubt that any of them are intact anymore. That makes this bottle the rarest of the rare. Start your next collection.”

Lempa sat down on a chair in the lobby. “Well, I’m stunned. You two have lost almost everything yourselves, mostly in the process of saving me. I have nothing—”

“Technically, you still own Cloudchaser. And technically, we didn’t make the five-year squatter residency requirements to claim our land before we had to bail. We wouldn’t mind having the planetary owner gift us the land.”

Lempa tapped the bottle with a plastic finger for a moment. “I think I can manage that. I’m not entirely sure if I’m going back there, though. I might end up reselling it. Find some place that’s a little more secure.”

“That would be unfortunate,” Bogun said. “Though lucrative for you. Based on what Captain Malor said, it appears that Cloudchaser is going to get a lot of attention as a new stepping-stone world from Earth to Teegarden. At least until the war is over between Grendel and Coalring. Of course, with no one living there at the moment, others might be contesting your ownership. If we were there, and you, it might be easier for you to maintain possession. You could sell small bits of it as it develops, and then others have an interest in your legitimacy. Then an orbital or two moves in, and we’re in business.”

“Hmm.” He looked doubtful.

“Second question; what’s that little extra fridge in your head for?”

Lempa nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, that. I was not aware of that until you mentioned it when you were trying to fix my voice box. I was stunned, to say the least.”

“You didn’t know about this?”

“No. It does make some sense, though. On Arnand, when I was downloaded, there was a doctor assigned to the transference of my consciousness to the crystal matrix in my head, and the destruction of my original body. She was a close friend, though, and I believe she must have kept a tiny fragment of my true brain alive. If it’s true, that would change everything.”

“How so?”

“It’s the difference between me being classified as a cyborg, with rights of ownership and citizenship, and an android, with virtually no rights at all. Having a partly organic human brain means that my status as a Prince of Arnand is still valid, even if the brain cells serve no active purpose.”

“You would return to Arnand?” Nemala asked.

“Oh, hell no. If the king found out that I was partly organic, the doctor who did this would be executed and the offending part would be plucked from my head. No, I need to get the doctor off-planet before I let anyone know about this little brain-in-a-cooler I’ve been hauling around.” He shook his head, rubbing a plastic hand across the dome. “And after that, as long as I don’t return to Arnand, I can claim the private security forces due a true Prince of Arnand. I can return to Cloudchaser with those fighters, continue to receive my stipend, and start my collection over again. All over again.” He bent over the wine bottle in his hand as though tired by its weight, staring at it. “You know, this whole thing about collecting started with my brother. The sole purpose was to taunt him. Then it morphed into a career and habit, a source of extra income, and a lifestyle.” He put the bottle on the floor and leaned back in his chair. “Then he put my memories in this body, and it just made me more determined to get at him the only way I still could. Continuing this habit of collection. Owning something he could never stain.”

Bogun motioned to the bottle. “It’s a start.”

Lempa picked up the bottle and handed it back to Bogun. “I don’t think so. The destruction of the entire collection is a message, I think, giving me a chance to alter what I thought was an inevitable future. The collection was really of no value. That’s funny, isn’t it? Priceless objects that serve no purpose. On Cloudchaser, I can build something. I can start over. I can build a wondrous new world from scratch, for a few thousand years, anyway, and say that I’ve done something with my life. Orbitals will be built around Cloud, and when Cloudchaser is finally consumed by Cloud, oh, what an incredible sight that will be!”

Nemala smirked. “Will that irritate your brother, by any chance?”

“When I declare myself king of Cloudchaser? Oh, most certainly. More than anything. I suppose he will be long dead by the time Cloudchaser is lost. In twenty thousand years, there may be no king at all.”

They were quiet for a few moments while Bogun considered the last bottle of Empathy. He felt Nemala’s apprehension as she opened her mouth to tell Lempa about the drug contamination on Cloudchaser. What it might do to his security forces. Heck, what it might do for any future community of people living there. It would, indeed, be a “wondrous new world” far beyond Lempa’s expectations. He glanced at Nemala before she could speak and gave his head a tiny shake. Not quite mind-reading, but getting there.

But there was business to worry about, too. Somehow, the bills still had to be paid. “These security forces that you’re going to get,” Bogun asked, “Do they drink?”

Critical Mass

Peter Watts

LEO GREGORY IS losing altitude.

He coasts on the thermals of a legacy fading behind him: a documentary here, a retrospective there, some greatest-hits collection down in the corner for the dilettantes. Oh, the work has lost none of its grandeur: his buildings remain timeless, his objets d’art still serve up facets upon layers from each new angle. Critics continue to marvel over the way Leo Gregory can craft a whole hypnotic universe from a blob of glass and wire. But the signature pieces are the better part of a decade old, now. The publications may be recent, but the works they explore have been around for years. In terms of sheer inventory, Leo’s productivity is as great as it’s ever been—but somehow the new pieces aren’t showing up in the monographs or the ecstatic retrospectives.

Nobody seems to have noticed yet, but he knows it’s only a matter of time. People are bound to catch on. Objects in the rear-view mirror are farther than they appear.

So often now, function squashes form. Structures once designed to celebrate the material now exist only to withstand the next hurricane. Leo’s creations once aspired to inspire; now they do little more than accommodate the next outbreak. He is so tired of letting weather and microbes push him around. He wants to stop merely building things and go back to sculpting them: walls that segue seamlessly into ceilings, lights that shoal like bioluminescent squid through corridors and conference rooms. He wants to subvert boring straight-line geometries with naturalistic evocations of driftwood and coral.

He could, if they’d let him. His classic creations are as resilient as they are beautiful; seven Richters would barely crack the windows. But people are so scared, these days. Every year the floods rise higher, the fires burn hotter, the winds blow harder. People don’t want strength disguised, they want it in their faces. They want reassurance. They want something that looks strong.

There was a time when he could have even given them that, when he knew how to make even Brutalism beautiful. Maybe he still can; it’s been so long since he was afforded the opportunity. He can’t quite pin down when that straitjacket stopped chafing.

Maybe about the time he started running out of ideas.

Leo can’t seem to get a good night’s sleep. He tosses and turns, bedeviled by dreams of plagues and prostitution. As often as not he sleeps in the cot in Emma’s room, to spare Michelle from his semiconscious flapping about. (He only wishes he could wake Emma so easily.) He works late and sleeps later. False starts and abortions accumulate in his home studio, weighing him down like ballast, compressing him. He feels as though he’s being pulled slowly down into the Juan de Fuca Trench.

When he discovers the break-in on the morning of the 23rd, it’s almost a relief.

◆◆◆

Officer Thalberg interviews Leo in the vandalized studio. More precisely, she interviews Leo-in-the-vandalized-studio, via drone hovering at eye level a discreet two meters away; Thalberg herself remains antiseptically ensconced in her cruiser at the curb. Her sidekick—a Boston Dynamics Bloodhound that moves like a hungry xenomorph on four spring-loaded legs—has already introduced itself and wandered off in search of clues.

Thalberg looks out from a little screen nestled between the quad’s forward fans. “Anything stolen?”

“I don’t think so. Whoever it was just—tossed the place. Trashed Two-thirty.”

“Two-thirty?”

“A piece of sculpture I was working on,” Leo explains, and wonders why it sounds like a confession. “I number them.”

“You’re an artist?” Thalberg sounds surprised; you don’t end up on the fast-response list unless you’re respectable.

“Among other things,” Leo says. “I do a lot of building design.” That part of his persona seems to go over better in certain quarters.

“Oh. An architect.” Thalberg seems satisfied; Leo doesn’t correct her.

Something clatters around the corner. He follows the sound—Thalberg’s drone floating at his shoulder—through archways of resin and fabric-formed concrete. Indirect natural light seeps brightly through fissures in the walls. The whole studio is more grotto than office: a bright high-ceilinged cave, as natural as artifice can be.

The Bloodhound has found Leo’s junk pile in an alcove off the main workspace: ceramic-coated GPUs from old motherboards. The motors from discarded Cuisinarts. Batteries and gears and gyros wired together in insane configurations, random junk electroplated into glorious metal jigsaws. Built, toyed with, discarded onto a pile too big to contain it all; bits and pieces have spilled away from its slopes, lie strewn across the floor like fragile little caltrops. The robot sniffs and scans and noses it all, systematically transforming junk into Evidence.

“Two-thirty, I presume,” Thalberg remarks.

Leo shakes his head. “These are just—I dunno, prototypes. Failed experiments.” Amusements for Emma, in fact. That’s how they started. He kept building them afterward out of sheer habit, half-hearted and joyless. But sometime when he wasn’t looking they took on new life, morphed from grim distraction into something almost—fulfilling, maybe. Warm-up exercises. An exploration of interesting dead ends.

Maybe it’s all bullshit, maybe this is just his way of hanging on to the past. So what if he gets more pleasure out of these uncommissioned orphans than from any of the recent works he dignifies with an actual number. That doesn’t change the fact that by any objective measure, he’s basically just jerking off.

He calls them masturpieces. Not that he’s about to admit as much to Officer Thalberg.

“Two-thirty’s over here.” Leo backtracks and hangs a left; the drone pivots and weaves in his wake. The Bloodhound worries away at the pile behind them.

230 sits—sat, rather—on a central table in the main studio. In life it was a small frozen tsunami, folded glass layered in shades of blue and emerald. You could look into its depths and see a whole dark ocean looking back. A filigreed mesh of copper threads ran through its skin; the idea was to generate a magnetic field in which tiny crystal droplets, similarly imbued, would float in midair around the central artifact. The wave and its cloud of spray, bound by invisible force.

Ten years ago, it would have been a groundbreaker.

Thalberg’s quad turns slowly on its axis, taking in the tableau. The studio’s north wall looks out across the harbor to the mountains on the north shore.

“Nice place,” Thalberg remarks.

If you walked through that sliding glass door onto the balcony and looked down, you’d come face-to-face with the gray grimy asphalt of Commissioner Street at the foot of the hill, the creosote sutures of the train tracks to either side. None of that ugliness falls line-of-sight from in here, though.

The quad floats over to the glass doors. “This was open last night?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s an eight-meter drop.” The studio extends from the crest of the hill as if the house behind were sticking out its tongue. It overhangs a feral canopy of cherry and maple, a dense green vein winding along a slope just steep enough to keep the developers at bay. Also, Leo realizes belatedly, a concealed avenue of approach for anyone intent on a little B&E.

“Uh huh. Private entrance, too,” Thalberg adds. Not unusual, these days—when guests and colleagues come to use the facilities, you don’t want them tromping pathogens through your living room—but still.

“It’s alarmed,” Leo says, a bit defensively.

“And the alarm was on last night?”

“Yeah, I—” Come to think of it, he doesn’t explicitly remember. But you never remember the stuff you do automatically, right?

“It always is,” he finishes, but the quad’s already sniffing along one of the fissures in the western wall: a source of light and cross-ventilation posing as geological imperfection. The drone winks sparkly ultraviolet at a small scuff mark there, spins back to face him.

“This gap extends all the way through?”

“There’s a screen on the other side to keep out the bugs. But, yeah.” He feels compelled to add, “You’d have to be some kind of child contortionist to squeeze through there, though. Unless someone cut you into pieces first.”

“Mr. Gregory, with all due respect to your architectural skills, I’ve seen tree houses with stronger security.”

Leo shrugs. “Yeah, I—I was more careful when I wasn’t spending so much time at home. You don’t expect someone to break in when you’re right down the hall, you know?”

“At the very least you should keep the balcony entrance locked and install some cameras. Who else has access?”

“Just me and Michelle.”

“What about Emma?”

Of course: they came down the hall, right past the closed door with its Dayglo nudibranch name plate and the muffled clicks and hisses seeping through from the other side.

“She hasn’t woken up in four years,” Leo says quietly.

Even without looking, he can see Thalberg counting back in her head. “My condolences,” she says after a moment. “Golem was—I still can’t imagine what kind of monster would deliberately create something like—”

Leo cuts her off: “It’s induced.”

“Excuse me?”

“The coma. We induced it. H_2S therapy.” It seems important that Thalberg know this, somehow. “Until there’s a cure.”

“Of course. They’re making progress all the time.” The drone dips sadly in a sudden breeze from the balcony. “You must have home care, then.”

“Once every couple of weeks at most. The bed’s mostly automated.” Belatedly he realizes what Thalberg is getting at. “The nurse doesn’t have access to—”

His earbud buzzes. Relieved, Leo checks his spex: “Sorry, do you mind if I take this? It’s my business partner.”

“Sure.” The drone floats toward the balcony. “I’ve got to check the grounds anyway.”

It’s a welcome reprieve, even though he knows what it’s about: that collector in Frankfurt again, desperate to add an undiscovered Gregory to his living room. Anything new, anything old even so long as it isn’t in the catalogs. Whatever he has lying around. Price is no object.

Leo’s been putting him off. It shames him to admit that he’s actually tempted.

◆◆◆

Michelle turns her eyes from the stage where three proteges rehearse fluid moves that, to Leo at least, seem anatomically impossible for anything with an internal skeleton. “No joy, then?”

He shakes his head. “No DNA. No obvious motive. Not much she could do, other than read me the riot act for leaving the windows open and not having spycams all over the place.”

“We are putting in cameras though, right?”

He hesitates.

“Leo. Someone was in our house.”

“Right. Of course.” He really has resolved to be more conscientious about security. He’s keeping all the doors and windows locked, at least. The camera thing might take a while. He’ll have to wheedle someone into building a custom setup. You can’t get anything off the shelf these days that doesn’t hoover up all your personal data by default, and Leo does not trust Google or Amazon or any other surveillance-happy behemoth whose business model hinges on making you forget that Cloud is just another word for Someone Else’s Servers.

Michelle turns back to her dancers, taps the plexi to get their attention; delivers feedback and instruction via some elegant wordless semaphore. One of the troupe flashes a thumbs-up; they take it from the top.

Leo watches, mesmerized. To all appearances the stage is occupied not by three entities but by a single multi-limbed being split into three parts, all somehow moving of unified accord. Soft lightning flashes between them: lambent auroras of ruby and emerald, electric thoughts leaping synaptic junctions to keep everything in sync. The lights flicker like static discharge from the BSBs around each dancer’s left wrist.

“How’d you do the lights?” he wonders.

“Kris hacked the contact-tracing fields. The colors emerge from the interaction of their path profiles.”

Epidemiological rainbows. The chromatics of health and disease, of vibrant life and the dissolution of small fragile things. Michelle has literalized the BSBs, made them visibly Broad-Spectrum.

“I could have done that for you.” Thinking: But I didn’t.

She shrugs. “No big deal. Kris figured it out in about two secs.”

The dancers have segued into a whole new mode; every limb and joint trembles now, they move as if literally electrified. Leo can’t put his finger on the moment that changed.

“I envy you,” he admits. “It’s not—it’s not all on you. Everything you do is a collaboration.”

Michelle frowns. “It’s me enough. In the end. The basic moves and concepts, anyway. They bring their own interpretations of course, but I’m the one who gets the shitty reviews if it’s a fuck-up.”

Leo snorts. “When did you ever get a shitty review?”

She’s gracious enough to let it slide.

He looks back to the stage. “So this is the live one, right? Piranha?”

She nods, eyes on the dancers, lips slightly parted. Some subtle aura glows around her, half anticipation, half addiction. That edge—that feedback loop between audience and performer, the subtle call-and-response that updates a dozen times a second and makes every performance utterly unique—it doesn’t happen often these days. The audience may be a thousand times larger than any that could fit into these seats; it may extend from the lower mainland to the other side of the world. But they aren’t here; the dancers call and nothing responds. In a performative sense, the audience isn’t even real.

Piranha scored one of exactly four live-audience permits doled out by city hall this year. The news came through a month ago and Michelle’s feet still haven’t touched the ground.

She’s tried to describe the adrenaline high she gets from performing for flesh and blood: like being an animal, she says. Like being in the jungle and hearing every cricket and predator within a hundred miles. Feeling every hair on your arm, individually, stirring in the breeze: running real-time scenarios like a supercomputer, what to do if this happens, where to go if that does, how to shape your moves around that late arrival who tries to break in through the fire exit half an hour in.

He envies that, too. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen you like this,” he says.

She hesitates. Nods.

“I wish I could feel the way you do. That—hyperawareness.”

She shakes her head. “You ask me, you’re too aware. Stop worrying so much.”

“Easy for you to say.”

She looks around the room, pointedly takes in the banks of stereocams and mics and roosting drones used to convey something in lieu of Art to distant masses. “Nothing’s easy these days, Leo.”

He grimaces, conceding the point.

“And anyway,” Michelle adds, “you know why I’m doing okay again? Because I trust myself. You know what happens when I lose faith in my own abilities, when I stop just dancing and start wondering if I made the right number of steps before the turn? I screw up. Like . . . like a centipede trying to figure out where all his legs should go.” She fixes him with a serious stare. “Stop thinking about it. Take a break. The subconscious is capable of amazing things if you just let it do its thing. Go play Starfisher or something.”

He manages a smile. “I don’t have time for games, Meesh.”

“People make breakthroughs while playing games. In their sleep, even. I’ll send you the links. Besides,”—she puts her hands on his shoulders—“you’re not nearly in the rut you think you are. Those little one-off experiments of yours—”

“That’s just dicking around.”

“Well, I like them. Emma liked—likes them. They move.”

“They just lie there.”

“Sweetie, don’t be so literal. They move by just lying there. I’m a dancer; I can tell.”

She pats his ass.

“They’re kinetic.”

◆◆◆

Emma’s eyes still move under their lids.

It’s not supposed to happen. Her brain is as shut down as the rest of her: metabolic pathways clogged by precise aliquots of hydrogen sulfide, the machinery of that vital life slowed by ninety percent or more. Her mind resides mainly in the hippocampus now: pure dreamless slow-wave, its upper reaches dormant and blissfully unaware.

Yet there she is. Looking around in the darkness. Always the rule-breaker.

“Hey, kid.” Leo glances down at the bauble in his hand. “Brought you something.” It’s not kinetic but it’s pretty enough: a small beaded urchin lit from within, a home-made LED with an epidermis of polished sea-glass. He shows it to her, as ritual dictates (did those closed eyes stop moving for just a second, come to rest on the gift in his hand?); carefully sets it down on the headboard with all the others he’s brought her over the years. He smooths the hair away from her forehead. They should probably buzz it but they keep it short instead. He and Michelle wash it together, every week.

So damn young. Fifteen years old and she still looks like a little girl: their sleeping beauty, aging one year in ten. What happens if it takes another decade to find a cure? Two? Emma could hit thirty before she hits puberty.

They’ve thought about waking her up, of course. Fought about it, even: what harm would it do, on special occasions? Birthdays, Christmases. Just for an hour or two. Maybe a day. To give her some time in the light, to reacquaint themselves with this small bright soul they’ve put on hold while they wait for medicine to catch up with the bioterrorists.

Cruel fantasy, of course. It takes days to lift someone safely out of a sulfide coma—and for what? So their beautiful daughter can see her parents aging in stop-motion, glimpse a world moving on without her as all those tiny monsters, reawakened in turn, devour her a little more from the inside? And then it’s Playtime’s over, sweetie. Back to the void. Happy birthday. All for a few minutes of selfish face time.

And yet they miss her so much. The hurt, the heartache—builds up. So they let it out now and then, arguing, denying, iterating through the same steps to the same unassailable end point while Emma waits in stasis, tended by magical machines.

Sometimes Leo finds a measure of comfort here: the soft blue lighting, the twinkling constellations of vital signs, the viscous peristalsis of the gel mattress as it rolls his daughter to and fro to keep the bed sores at bay. The low electrical hum and snap of the EMS pads on arms and legs: small electrocutions to head off the wasting of unused muscles. The whole room is a kind of ecosystem, a blue-shifted electric forest keeping the monsters away. That ambiance—reassures him, somehow.

Sometimes.

Other times it drives him up the fucking wall.

◆◆◆

Thalberg again. “I didn’t know you built robots, Mr. Gregory.”

Leo squints into his spex. “I don’t.”

“I’m in Point Grey right now, looking at one that has your handiwork all over it.”

“Point Gr—oh.” It comes back to him. “204.”

The feed switches to Thalberg’s drone, hovering over a dead Honda Kamakiri splayed across granite flagstones. Its carapace is fractured; two legs are broken. A sparse cloud of tinfoil moths flutter around it like tiny angels gone grand mal, lurching and jerking in a spastic caricature of the swirling murmurations Leo programmed in three years ago. Thalberg’s Bloodhound noses the carcass with a precise forensic rigor that can’t quite dispel the sense of one being mourning the loss of another.

Thalberg reappears. “204, I presume.”

“Yeah. The bot’s off-the-shelf, but I—customized it.”

“These little floaty bits.”

Leo nods. “Among other things. They’re supposed to flock like birds. Magnetic coils, microfans, nearest-neighbor algos. It was actually pretty impressive before . . .”

“Uh huh.” Thalberg does not sound impressed. Truth be told, Leo isn’t either, really. 204 was a gimmick, a handful of elements from his Greatest-Hits collection recycled into work-for-hire.

Still. “So is this a pattern, then?”

“Twice is coincidence,” Thalberg says. “Takes three times to get to Enemy Action. But you might want to send me a list of any of other works you’ve got scattered around the lower mainland. Just in case.”

It hits him then. “That’s a security bot; there should be video. If not in local memory, uploaded somewhere.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Thalberg smiles grimly. “All the local surveillance was scrambled.”

“What?”

The officer nods. “Some kind of magnetic interference. Every camera in range got fratzed before anything appeared in frame.”

“Don’t look at me,” Leo says.

Thalberg raises an eyebrow. “Why would I?”

“Well, um, the coils I installed. For the birdlets. But I shielded the onboard electronics, and anyway the fields weren’t nearly strong enough to mess with anything outside the chassis.”

“Uh huh.” Thalberg leans out of frame for a moment before the tracking macro kicks in and reacquires; Leo catches a glimpse of steering wheel, experiences a flicker of envy. Cops still get to drive, manually. Their cars don’t even come with a self-drive option, not since the Antinatalists hacked the whole Cincinnati PD fleet into playing bumper-car at 100 kph in the downtown core.

Those were the days.

◆◆◆

Thalberg gets her list, but she’s got other cases on her plate. Leo can’t imagine that a couple of minor B&Es rank very high on her agenda. He restrains himself as long as he can, which takes him through to a sleepless two A.M.; then he eases out of bed (Michelle mumbles at his back but doesn’t awaken), pulls on a pair of pants and pads to the garage. He unplugs the Nissan and feeds it waypoints; while it chews on them he bulkmails his local client list with a query about whether anything might have, you know, happened to any of his pieces over the past few days.

The Nissan pings, route optimized and plotted. Leo embarks on the Midnight Tour.

He spelunks 86 down on East Georgia: Official Leo HQ, myopically built before The Cocooning. It’s a great block five stories high, its facades randomly cratered with cavelike invaginations and falls of greenery: a Borg cube, assimilated by a rainforest. Leo starts in the parking garage, where rows of freshly-printed porta-potties and stacks of folded cots await next year’s inevitable influx of refugees (everyone has to do their part—and it’s not as though the garage is overwhelmed with drive-ins anyway, these days). He works his way up through loading bays and production facilities, courtyards and gardens and dusty prototyping shops. Eighty-six is virtually abandoned even during the day, beyond the trickle of street-level business that somehow keeps the restaurant and gallery alive. Here in the dead of night, there is only Leo—and the building is pristine. Not a sculpture, not a light fixture is out of place.

192 is a different story: a commissioned piece of commemorative sculpture plunked down in Maple Tree Square, postmodern Vancouver’s answer to tarnished bronze statues of dead white men on horses. Some critic once compared it to a hantavirus; that wasn’t what Leo had in mind when he built the bloody thing, but in hindsight he can’t deny the resemblance.

It doesn’t look like much of anything now. Its pieces lie scattered across the square. One of those temporary road signs—high pole, cement base—lies on its side nearby. Evidently someone has used it as a sledgehammer.

Three times is enemy action. Then again, maybe not; what else do you expect when you put a piece of public art in the heart of Gastown, a mere forty meters from literally-I-kid-you-not Blood Alley? The police barely even respond to 911 calls from here anymore. When they do show up, it tends to be in force.

This might not be targeted at all. This could just be another act of random Gastown violence of the sort practiced by those good folks coming around the corner from Powell, the copper streetlights casting their faces in shadow, the implements in their hands heavy and full of inertia . . .

“Drive,” Leo says, and the Nissan carries him away.

He crosses Lions Gate to Ambleside: 210 and 211 are okay. Over at Pemberton and Marine, 162 seems none the worse for wear. 188 seems intact from a distance—its upper reaches loom over the community center in its shadow, same as always—but what is he expecting? Some night-stalking army of vigilante art critics is going to take down a ten-story condo cluster in the heart of North Van?

Not that Leo would especially mourn its loss. 188 is a fine project, maybe the best you could hope for in a world of small-minded bureaucrats who equate resilience with boxiness. Its interior features some really nice touches—the lobby’s all curves and arches, lit with constellations of blown glass that glow like golden incandescent blood cells—but the building itself is nothing special. Planes and right-angles, a conventional concrete shell shaped by a throwaway exoskeleton of reinforced plywood.

The damage comes into view as the Nissan rounds the corner. The wreckage is all at ground level, broken windows and pockmarked walls, a sparse talus of bricks scattered along the sidewalk. Rebar protrudes from the gashed facade like thin bones from an open wound. The whole tableau strobes blue and red in the light of the police cruiser parked at the main entrance. A cop actually emerges from the cab as Leo watches, demoting the usual trunk-launched drone from point man to sidekick. The meat turns and eyes the Nissan as it cruises past; the mech ignores it.

Leo doesn’t stop.

Dawn finds him back at home and cowled in a VR headset, riding a rental drone along the Gulf Islands to his beloved Bridge House. The place is rooted on opposite sides of a deep fern gully, spanning the space between, designed as a kind of domestic observatory for rising seas and changing ecosystems. Successive generations would have marveled as the wonderland beneath their feet transitioned from woodland to marsh, from marsh to inlet. Its inhabitants would have dwelt within the verdant green heart of ecological succession itself.

The house stands empty. It’s been barely a decade and the once-pristine gully is a stagnant pit, choked with filamentous algae, cycling from merely eutrophic in the spring to downright anoxic by August. It stinks of black mud and rotten eggs. The stand of cedars that once arched over the driveway has been reduced to skeletal kindling by bark beetles and some new superfungus that erupted from the Oregon rainforest back in ’25. The oceanfront windows look out on an endless jumbled vista of driftwood, and garbage, and broken chunks of autoprinted Japanese condos carried over on the North Pacific Current.

Bridge House has endured though, an unintended testament to Be Careful What You Wish For. It has survived superstorms and killer surf and coast-wrecking earthquakes half a millennium overdue. It remains unscathed: whoever’s pursuing this vendetta hasn’t made it out this far.

Not that they need to.

◆◆◆

So it’s official: someone has a bone to pick with Leo Gregory, Fading Wunderkind. Now the VPD will swing into action. They’ll ignore the biohackers building gengineered plagues in their garages. They’ll forget all about the hordes of refugees sneaking in from the U.S. Hell, they may even stick a pin in that leftist cabal that hacked the Internet of Things last week, warmed up every fridge in the lower mainland just enough to overwhelm the local hospitals with two thousand simultaneous cases of salmonella. They’ll forget about all that and focus their resources exclusively on the case of the midnight vandal who desecrates the timeless work of Leo Gregory.

Right.

In fact, he’ll be lucky if Thalberg hasn’t already been reassigned to the latest gang war task force. If he wants to fight back, he’s on his own.

But Leo’s no detective. He’s a sculptor. He’s an artist. The only way he knows to fight back against the destruction of these artifacts is to make more of them, to abandon this junked history and fill the space with something better.

It sounds so fucking simple. The truth is, the only creations that have given him any pleasure lately have been those one-off warm-ups, and they’re—nothing. Personal indulgences, spontaneous and utterly lacking in rigor.

Maybe that’s why he and Emma like them.

He throws an old documentary onto the wall in lieu of inspiration—the National Film Board’s Infinite Regressions of Leo Gregory—and selects a piece from the junk pile: a crystal diatom, bristling with a thousand needle-thin protrusions. He built it in a bell jar, pumped out the air and let hard vacuum pull an expanding bubble of soft glass through a wireframe mesh. It seems almost too delicate to exist; those fragile spines wouldn’t even be able to bear their own weight but for the wire gates and conduits threaded through the glass like a neural net.

He grabs a pair of long-handled forceps and absently starts snapping spines off at the base.

Over on the wall Leo’s Barbican piece floats like a monstrous bioluminescent coral while some younger self voiceovers on the importance of knowing what’s worthwhile. A montage of photos and phone vids recall his salad days pretending to be a Whiterock farmer, passing off his glassblowing rig as farm equipment to get around the zoning laws. Then back to Art—108, this time: “Most of us regard lightning in a bottle as a mere turn of phrase. Only Leo Gregory would dare to take it literally.” Some mathematician from Waterloo postulates a savantic intuition for derivatives.

These doodles are nice—fulfilling even, in their own modest way—but they’re so damn small. It’s not enough to merely push the envelope; Leo wants to leave it in shreds. He wants to scale his art up into his architecture, transect a whole fucking building. He wants to build a skyscraper and slice through it at insane angles, explore a million cross-sections: the skeleton, the insulation, the pulmonary ducts and ventilators, the sparking copper and fiberop of the central nervous system. He wants to cut through all that Euclidean monotony and uncover the fractal wonders hidden inside, map a whole two-dimensional universe stretched across a thousand square meters.

Young Leo again: “What we try to do is release control . . . set these systems in motion which let the material determine what form it takes . . .”

He returns his attention to the workbench, blinks: sometime in the past few minutes he’s sliced the diatom in half around the equator. The glistening cross-section mesmerizes, like a circuit diagram embedded in a geode. An iris. An eye.

What was it Michelle said, a few days back? The subconscious is capable of amazing things if you just let it do its thing.

Well, duh. This is hardly the first time his hands have gone their own way when he wasn’t watching; he’s done some of his best work in The Zone. Back when his work was good.

But maybe Michelle’s right. She usually is. Maybe he should stop concentrating on the work itself and figure out how to get back onto that ol’ Zenspace.

She sent him links, he remembers. He mutes the wall and checks them out.

Wow.

It goes way beyond pianists letting their fingers move themselves, or champion golfers unable to remember the moment they sank that critical putt. There are your run-of-the-mill sleepwalkers, of course (Emma was one of those, before; they’d find her in front of the fridge at three A.M. eating raw soy dogs from the package). Your somewhat-less-run-of-the-mill sleep-sexers, cruising bars, seducing one-nighters, waking up the next day shocked and horrified by the presence of the complete stranger beside them in bed. But Meesh wasn’t kidding: people also make scientific breakthroughs in their sleep. Mathematical theorems, molecular structures, statistical models of marine habitats—all served up wholesale in dreams, if these reports are to be believed. All the dreamers had to do was wake up and write down the insights before they faded, like they were taking dictation.

People even kill in their sleep. Homicidal somnambulism, it’s called. They drive across town, do the deed and clean up the mess afterward, never waking. And juries have repeatedly let them walk—because after reviewing the evidence, they conclude that the accused have not after all done those terrible things.

Something inside of them has.

A sudden sound. Leo starts—but it’s only his discarded spex, beeping from the table. He slides them on, grunts in annoyance; somehow the Frankfurt collector has rooted out his personal email, done an end-run around Randy and targeted the object of his obsession directly. Leo can’t quite suppress a twinge of grudging admiration for the guy’s tenacity.

It’s the same old shit, of course. Anything original. A carriage bolt wrapped in duct tape will do, as long as it has Leo’s signature on it. Please please please.

Leo hesitates for almost a minute, hating himself the whole time.

He hits Delete.

◆◆◆

Randy calls from Berlin. “Bad news.”

“The exhibition’s off,” Leo guesses. The Black Forest is on fire again. Anyone less than a thousand kilometers downwind is pretty much staying indoors.

“What? Oh, no, the wind’s supposed to shift by Tuesday; we should be okay.”

“What, then?”

“Someone destroyed 202.”

“Wait, you mean—” Leo counts back through his oeuvre. “Over there? Leise Park?”

“’Fraid so.”

“Who?”

“No idea. Big park, not many cameras, and two of those were acting up that night for some reason.” Randy coughs a continental cough. “I’m afraid it’s not a huge priority for the local constabulary.”

A transatlantic commercial flight increases your chances of contracting Alaskapox by 68%, a half-dozen H1 variants by almost fifty. Does anyone hate Leo’s work—hate him—so much that they’d spend twelve hours locked in a flying petri dish just to take a few swipes at some half-assed sculpture in a foreign park?

“There’s more than one,” Leo says.

“What?”

“It’s a group. An international conspiracy.”

“Um, Leo—”

“Randy, you haven’t forgotten the problems I’ve been having over here the past few weeks.”

“Of course not, but seriously? An international conspiracy?”

“Canada and Germany: international. At least two people working together. Conspiracy.”

“Come on. If some secret coven of critics was really out to do you in they’d just give you a bad writeup in Architectural Review or something.”

“So how do you explain it?”

“I dunno. Coincidence maybe.”

Leo doesn’t dignify that with an answer.

“Anyway, um.” Randy clears his throat. “That’s not the main reason I called.”

“Oh?”

“I thought we’d agreed I’d be handling your fanboys.”

“We did. There a problem?”

“Your shipment to Gunter Holzbok didn’t exactly come through normal channels.”

“Gunter—” The Frankfurter. The pest. “Shipment?”

“I wouldn’t even have known about it if I hadn’t been down at the studio on other business. Happened to see it in the loading bay before it went out.”

“Randy—” Leo calls up the spreadsheet to check, though he already knows what he’ll find. “I never sent anything to that guy. Do you know how he got my personal email?”

“Officially, no it didn’t come from you. The invoice lists Miko Webb.”

“Miko—”

“I can’t help but wonder if you used that name so it wouldn’t go through me.”

“I didn’t send anything.”

“Come on. You think I don’t recognize your work when I see it?”

“You opened it?”

“Of course I opened it. Fifty kilograms of random knick-knacks. Holzbok wanted one piece. You sent him enough to open his own damn gallery. Didn’t even charge him anything past shipping and handling. What in God’s name were you thinking?”

Leo surveys the junk pile. Myriad disjointed fragments look back. Now that he’s paying attention, the pile does look smaller than it used to. A small shape, both familiar and out-of-place, glitters near its apex. Leo crosses the room and plucks the sea-glass urchin from the pile. Gooseflesh ripples along his arms.

“They came back,” he whispers.

“Your conspiracy again?”

“They were in Emma’s room . . .” He feels a sudden compulsion to go there now, to look under the bed for hidden bogeymen, although he looked in on her not half an hour ago.

Don’t be an idiot, Leo. Calm the fuck down.

“Leo, I—”

He takes a breath. “Randy, I don’t know what to tell you. It wasn’t me. That means it was someone else.”

“Someone else who knows about Miko Webb.”

“They don’t have to know all about him. Just, you know. The falling-out, the, the public persona. Someone stole my art, Randy. Someone’s fucking with me. Someone’s fucking with us.”

“So you’re saying you don’t want me to send it on to Frankfurt?” Randy says.

Leo barely hears him. He can’t stop thinking about that time-worn cliché the critics like to hide behind whenever they’re about to savage a life’s work:

No artist ever owns their art.

It belongs to everyone.

◆◆◆

He awakens to the clicking of electronic crickets, in the dim blue glow of Emma’s guardian ecosystem. Michelle leans over him. Her face is all shadows.

She puts a finger to her lips: Not a sound.

He’s instantly alert—“Are they back?”—one hand reaching for his spex.

She shakes her head, whispers: “Better than that.” Leo catches the corner of a smile.

“Then . . .” Rolling off the cot, pulling on sweatpants. Disentangling himself when his foot goes down the wrong leg.

“Come on!”

He follows her into the hall, where a little touchscreen serves up the feeds from newly-installed, custom-built, Cloud-free security cameras. Michelle has pulled up the studio view: a jumbled mosaic of angles and shadows, the elastic silhouettes of moonlit window frames stretched across the floor.

Over in the corner, something moves near the junk pile. No alarms sound.

“They hacked the sensors,” Leo says.

“Sensors are fine,” Michelle tells him. “You just keep disabling them.”

He blinks. “No, I—why would you even say that?”

“Because I know you,” she says. “Because I pay attention.” She asks a question of her own: “All those pieces that got trashed. The buildings, the sculptures. You actually like any of them?”

He thinks for a moment. “Huh.”

Michelle plays with the interface; twenty meters and four walls away a camera pans down and left, focuses on that dark jigsaw in vague motion on the floor. She runs her finger up a slider: night-vision turns the inside of the studio into a wash of grainy green daylight.

Leo’s masturpieces are coalescing.

Like wounded birds, like wind-up toys, they drag and flap and roll across the tiles; bump one against another and stick, like scattered bones reassembling into some tumorous skeleton. This fragment sports a tubercle on one side; that one, a smooth round dimple lined with glass. They sniff each other out and jump together, ball and socket; joint; limb. Leo thinks he remembers a copper coil in one of those baubles, a lithium battery well past its best-before. He imagines magnetic fields, adding the sums of parts.

“It was you all along,” Michelle whispers. She taps at the corner of her eye. “Just—not this part of you.”

She is radiant in the screenlight. He has never seen her so beautiful.

Limbs and lenses accrete around a ramshackle torso of servos and thermostats and RAM chips. Leo marvels at how all those pieces arrange themselves, at the latches and sockets and force fields holding it all together. A bolus of parts seethes and clicks at the end of one appendage: it reminds him of a mace. Of a fist, opening and closing. The claw of some cyborg crustacean.

The golem takes a step. Another. It half-slithers, half-staggers toward one of the fissures in the west wall: indirect light source, cross-breeze ventilator, too small for anything but a child contortionist or dismembered body parts. Leo sees Sierpinsky gaskets and Julia fractals, sleepwalking murderers and comatose sex cruisers. He sees Hopf bifurcations and the self-exemplification of process. The poetry of material logic.

Leo Gregory reaches out to take Michelle’s hand as ten thousand jeweled fragments flex, and twist, and disappear into the night to redeem him.

Nonstandard Candles

Yoon Ha Lee

I DIDN’T WANT to travel into the outer darkness, where all the stars were burned-out husks, but the mapmaker insisted. Our ship was vast, too vast for a single mapmaker and her apprentice, and its emptiness weighed on me. During the journey, whose length I cannot describe to you, the mapmaker kept me busy, and for the most part I didn’t think about the corridors and cargo holds with their surfeit of light, their attenuated shadows.

The mapmaker was the last of her kind, trained by a guild so old that its name could only be spoken in boustrophedon utterances. She had told me once, when she accepted me as her student, that a human could not pronounce her name, and not to try. I never saw her wear any colors but white embroidered in feathery patterns of red, the specific lambent red of a candle flame’s outer edge.

For her part, she had no such difficulty with my name, back when I still remembered it. The mapmaker told me it had three syllables, after the custom of my people, but she would not tell me what it was. She spoke all the languages of the outer darkness, and many more besides. When she was in a good mood, she would translate stories and stelae for me.

Most of our time, however, was taken up with the work of mapping.

I had studied long years and hard to learn the most modern techniques. I could calculate the redshifted boundaries of vanished empires and the trajectories of battledrift that encompassed whole systems. I knew how to construct holographic maps exquisite in fractal detail, shining with notations on demographics and trade routes and unrecovered treasures. I could inscribe compass roses in a hundred hundred styles, cultivars of electromagnetic glory.

The mapmaker eschewed all of this. “I’m a traditionalist,” she said time and again as we hurtled past ungardened planets in the predatory dark.

She had spent most of the journey teaching me her methods, which involved quills and paper, brushes and ink in every color I could imagine, and a few I couldn’t. I had never seen a quill pen before she brought out her collection, each one the color of ash after the last ember sputtered out. The brushes were more familiar, yet they sported hairs harvested from kirin, softer and more responsive than sable. I practiced until she deemed me skilled enough to use them without her supervision.

I was doing some warm-up exercises, hatching and crosshatching, the calligraphy of numerals, when the mapmaker’s shadow fell through the doorway. “Come with me,” she said.

I wiped the luminous ink-of-stars off my nib and set the pen aside—I had learned my lessons well—then rose.

The mapmaker led me to the starship’s bridge, with its empty seats. We had a truce with the ship, a veteran of the deep: we minded our own business, and it minded its own. Every so often the mapmaker would suggest a course to it, and it usually obliged.

“We have reached the center of the outer darkness,” the mapmaker said.

I was familiar with her sense of humor, yet this time it stung. “That’s meaningless,” I said. “One place is the same as another, out here.”

“One center is as good as another,” she countered. “Nevertheless. It’s time you learn the truth of our art.”

I inhaled, exhaled. “There are no stars here, no beacons in the dark.” I gestured at the viewports.

There comes a point at which blackness becomes so severe, so unbearable, that the eye denies it. At least if you’re human. I knew there was no light to be had for any distance I could name except what we had brought with us. When I looked at the viewports, the blank vast void was overlaid by a static of afterimages: the deck plates, the unused seats, the mapmaker.

“There are not,” the mapmaker agreed. “But here, where the universe has slipped into sleep, there are no maps. We will begin here.”

I am not a violent person—one of the many modifications they make to would-be mapmakers—but for a moment I wanted to hit her. “Here? There’s nothing to map.”

“Even emptiness requires a chart, if only to give space for the imagination. ‘Here there be dragons,’ as your people used to say.”

“My people used to draw maps with the Earth at the center of the universe. I don’t think that’s a recommendation for their cartographic practices.”

I did not often speak of Earth, even to her. It was long ago and far away, and lost before I was born.

“You’re serious,” I said when she continued looking at me with that phoenix-eye expectation, as though I owed her the heat of a fire, or the heart of a pyre. “Why not just upend all our black ink on the paper? It’ll all be the same in the end.”

Her disappointment weighed on me like the crushing pull of a neutron star. “It’s not the same at all, and you know it. Rorschach splashes are not the same as conscientious mapmaking. You will do a proper job, as I trained you to.”

For a second I entertained the notion of stomping out, going to the mapmaking room—one of them, anyway—and emptying every ink bottle in her collection over the best and brightest of her sheets of paper.

Then the impulse passed, and I resigned myself to a task that would take longer than the lifetime of my people.

◆◆◆

Let me tell you about standard candles.

Distance is a curious thing in the outer darkness. In the place we came from, the parts of the universe that still have stars, we used to measure distances by a variety of means. One of them is standard candles.

If you stand on a world and look out into the night-veiled sky, you see stars, some bright, some dim. Which of the bright stars are bright because they are close by, and which are bright because they are furnaces more ferocious than their kindred? Which of the dim stars are dim because they are far away, and which are dim because they are close to death? It’s a question that once dogged astronomers in many civilizations.

If you know a star’s intrinsic brightness—its absolute magnitude—you have a standard candle. At that point, you can compare the absolute magnitude to the apparent magnitude you observe from wherever you are, and find the distance to that star. I won’t trouble you with the formula, but it’s easy enough to derive.

The only problem with this scheme, of course, is that it does you no good if there are no stars in sight, and no maps at hand.

◆◆◆

My life became a cycle of drudgery, or would have been if I’d still been capable of boredom. They remove many inconvenient traits from mapmaker candidates, extracting them with fine instruments of wire and stagnant poetry. I asked the surgeon who performed the procedure what they did with the things they took away, and they informed me that it was none of my concern.

Every day, the mapmaker and I consulted the ship’s sensor readings, which the ship gladly gave up to us. (I wondered sometimes if it, too, had had its boredom removed.) Every day we saw the same all-encompassing nothing. Every day we painstakingly inked every nonexistent nuance of that nothing onto our charts of paper.

“Were you the only one willing to volunteer for this?” I asked the mapmaker one day, indistinguishable from the one before.

“Of course not,” she said, and I remembered that she sometimes lied. Then she added, “You’re here, after all.”

“That’s hardly the same thing. I didn’t volunteer specifically to do”—I waved at the nearest bulkhead—“to be here.”

“Is it any worse than the other places you could be?”

I shrugged. I didn’t think nostalgia was one of the emotions I’d lost, but it was hard to tell sometimes. “It’s a lot of ink.”

That was another of the mapmaker’s trade secrets, one she hadn’t yet divulged to me. The paper never ran out, nor the ink. Neither of them took up the infinite space that I would have expected, given how much of the outer dark there existed, and how long we had been mapping, even using her esoteric methods. And the ship was big, but not that big.

“You sometimes daydream about tipping out the ink. I can smell it on you.”

I also wondered what it would be like to smell people’s random impulses, because I was pretty sure she was being literal. Perhaps I was better off not knowing. “You’d only make me clean it up.”

“You’re an excellent mapmaker candidate.”

“Whoever wanted these charts, if they’d wanted them done within an ordinary lifetime or ten, they should have sent more than two people to do the job.” Not that “ordinary lifetime” was an issue at this end of time.

The mapmaker shrugged. Her white-and-red blouse—I thought of it as one although it had eldritch embellishments, and hid more of her form than it revealed—shimmered and warped. “Get to the point.” Remindingly, she tapped her quill pen against the rim of the ink bottle: the ink was drying, bellicosely black, and we had work to do.

“We’re not going to finish,” I said, “before the outer dark swallows the universe.”

“We’ll do the best we can in the time we have, then.”

Her unconcern infuriated me. “We’ll have gone through all this, and for what?”

“The map is its own reward. It has to be.”

I shook my head.

“You can leave,” she added. “The ship has some shuttles.”

I laughed bitterly. “That’s not much of an option. No. I’m staying. But . . . I want to know why.”

“The map is its own reward,” she repeated, and I knew then that I would receive no further enlightenment from that direction.

◆◆◆

Let me tell you about the mapmaker’s inks. Each one of them had been stringently tested and formulated for its archival qualities. She told me about the pigments they were made of, sometimes. Black ink produced from the last lanterns of toppled democracies. Red ink of cinnabar, which would have been toxic if I had still been an ordinary human specimen. Candescent gold ink, my favorite, formulated with real gold. The mapmaker made me practice with mica-derived inks before she allowed me near that last one.

Strangest of all the pigmented inks was the white one, thick and viscous, and so pale it hurt the eye. I never had any cause to use it, but it was part of her collection all the same.

There were other inks, pigment-based ones that we used only for our own amusement during downtime, due to the fact that they faded with exposure to light. One of them was derived from the crushed petals of the aurora flower that grew in the methane snows of a disassembled world; the solution sparked and glowed with specks of yellow pollen. I liked that one best, because it reminded me of the gardens I once longed to visit in the city of my birth. I had lethal allergies, and I surrounded myself with pictures of the flowers that I didn’t dare approach in person.

One of the things I appreciated about becoming a mapmaker, even an apprentice mapmaker, was that they’d extracted the allergies along with everything else. They’d left me that one memory, perhaps so I could appreciate my good fortune. Of course, it also meant I would never be able to see those gardens again.

◆◆◆

I grew resigned, or accustomed, to the rigors of our work. Smoothing the large sheets of paper so that they didn’t curl or warp at the edges. Ensuring that our brushes were well maintained. Painstakingly painting areas of black line by line, as though the unrelieved black were in fact composed of subtle dense contours.

At last, when I had found a certain meditative fulfillment in the creation of our charts, the mapmaker swirled her brush in a jar of water, tinting it dark, then put it down. “We’re ready.”

I didn’t hear her at first. I had one more brushstroke to paint. The wet ink glistened in the room’s stark light, and then dried, so that the brushstrokes could no longer be discerned. The chart was black and whole and perfect in its silhouetted severity.

“We’re ready,” the mapmaker said again.

My hand shook. My brush knocked against the ink jar, and I almost spilled it. Even that much of a lapse was unusual, and I chided myself for my clumsiness. “What do you mean?”

“We’re ready. The real work can begin.”

I wished the surgeons had not excised my temper, because this seemed like an excellent occasion for an outburst. We had made charts beyond numbering, a comprehensive map of the outer darkness. I was certain, based on what I knew of cosmology, that the last faint stars were on the verge of guttering out, if they hadn’t already—and this was just the preliminaries?

Since temper was beyond me, I said the temperate thing, which was: “What do you mean?”

“Wait here.” The mapmaker rose and passed out of the room, upright like a flame on a windless day. She returned shortly afterward, bearing two bottles of white ink. One for me, one for her.

I stared at her. “We’ve mapped all this empty darkness. Everything’s as black as a dragon’s bowels. We’re done.”

She tilted her head, looking at me strangely. “Not at all.” She set one of the bottles down on my side of the table.

I still didn’t understand.

The mapmaker didn’t reach for the brush, still damp from its earlier labors, but for her favorite quill pen. She opened the bottle of white ink and loaded the nib, and drew a single perfect star onto her chart. Then another, and another.

Somewhere in the outer darkness, three stars candled into existence.

Somewhere in the inner darkness, I remembered the three syllables of my name.

The ink shone on the nib, bright as dawn, as desire unfurled.

“You can’t be serious,” I whispered.

The mapmaker smiled in the way of her people. “You can’t see white ink on white paper.” She gestured at the case that contained the quill pens. “Will you help me?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

The Abacus and the Infinite Vessel

Vikram Ramakrishnan

AMMA, MY MOTHER, and I have lunch now and then on University campus. Though I ask her to meet outside my building, she instead strides inside, swings open my office door, entering some twenty or thirty minutes before we’re to meet. Even if I’m advising a student, working to help them understand floriculture’s complexities, she will stop and correct me: “No, this regolith contains too much iron,” or “jasmine requires consistent, not attenuated, light.” Though I know this—I like for my students to come to these conclusions on their own—I don’t respond.

Other times, she will noisily pick up my abacus, plop down in a chair at the corner of the room, and slowly shift its pieces. Tap, tap, tap, it sounds, its wooden beads running across its metal beams.

Today we meet for different reasons. We have something important to do.

Her sari is usually shimmering blue cotton flecked with gold paisley, but today she wears white, contrasting starkly against the metallic chrome of my office interior like a ghost I recall from a memory about stories. She holds a flat red box that looks like it could contain a necklace and earring set. This one is full of ashes. She runs her slim fingers through my hair and tucks my tresses behind my ears. Her kohl-rimmed eyes shine, and her nose stud gleams.

She flicks the abacus beads counting to forty.

That’s how long it’s been. Since my father’s death. Forty years.

“I couldn’t have done this without you, Kutti,” she says, placing the abacus back.

I run my fingers over the counting machine. I have had it nearly all my life, but now, it feels like a newly received gift. Like I am still a child with a living father, one whose memory guides me as if he, though he is gone, knows what’s right for me.

“Amma,” I start. I want to disagree, to tell her it wasn’t me, but her. I can’t. My words have disappeared from my mouth. Salt replaces them, and I am overwhelmed by the scents of jasmine and a throbbing crater at the center of my chest.

◆◆◆

Three days before Amma and I embarked on a journey that transformed our lives, we cremated my father, Appa. The family implored us to cancel our spaceflight. My father’s mother, Paati, pleaded if we did not, we would cause our ancestors and descendants calamitous shame. Our move to the Red Planet would curse us, curse our children, their children, and so on, until the end of time. When she called it an avamaanam—the sinful apex of inauspiciousness—she beat her chest with her wrinkled fists, her voice like a crying pressure cooker.

While I could not conceive of flying across space to start a new life, Amma was not one put off by major deaths. “Appa would want this for us,” she told me. “We must do this.”

Three days after the cremation and Amma’s decision and Appa’s implicit approval, we waited in a hangar with thousands of other passengers. Midair, between the lines, hung holograms that shifted through old shuttle launch images, like an ephemeral space travel museum. Ahead, hundreds of rockets stood like metallic pens, their sharp tips piercing the dazzling blue sky. If I squinted, the hot Sun’s haze made it all look like a dream.

“But why can’t we go later?” a boy nearby asked, holding his mother’s hand. He had a bowl cut and wore the nylon bodysuit we all had to wear, a gray one-piece pajama.

“Because these trips only happen every two years,” the woman said.

“But why?”

“It’s when Mars and Earth are aligned, so the trip is its fastest and safest.”

“But can’t we go later?”

“There’s no time better than the present, sweetie. When the time’s right, you just have to make a move.”

When I was about to step into the rocket, Amma pulled me back and said, “With the right foot, Kutti.” The inside was so bright. It had a kind of demanding light, the type that wants your attention. Our seats were metallic pods, little round booths, so chill I shivered. The shuttle crew came by with injections. I didn’t want them.

“What’s wrong?” Amma asked.

I pointed at the needles.

“Remember how we talked about this before, Kutti? It’s just like how bears hibernate in the winter. It’s nothing to be scared about. In eight months, you’ll wake up like you took a long nap.”

I finally agreed, and after the injection, I started feeling sleepy. The crew closed our pod door, and Amma turned her head to face me. A tear fell from her eye. Then she smiled. I remember that in my lap, I held two things. The first was the abacus Appa brought me after a trip to a physics conference. The second was Amma’s hand.

◆◆◆

Appa had taken a University research assistant position. He had said it was only a temporary move. The move was good for us, and it was essential to see how other people lived, how colonists lived, and we would—within a decade, two at most—return to Earth. I wonder how much of this he believed. I suspect he was placating the minor part of himself who thought we would never come back.

These days, I understand Appa was a physicist. At the time, I didn’t know what research meant, let alone what kind he did, except it had something to do with electricity and magnets. He wrapped copper wiring over metal rods and ran current through them. Once, I pushed a paper clip closer toward his device until the clip drifted on its own, and then, like magic, it flew and slapped against the magnet. I immediately laughed and clapped.

Amma looked up from a jasmine plant that draped the walls of our living room. It had grown so quickly, and she pruned it weekly. “Magic,” she said, smiling. “Should only be practiced by sadhus, rishis, and gods.”

Appa said, “I can assure you I know what I’m doing.”

◆◆◆

Regaining consciousness was like being jolted awake after a long, dreamless sleep. I had no recollection of anything that happened during the trip. One minute I fell asleep, and the next minute I was scrambling to find the abacus. Amma looked over, bleary-eyed, and smiled. “Kutti, it’s right here.”

The captain’s voice came through the speakers. “Good morning, former Terrans, future Martians!”

Someone nearby groaned, but others laughed.

“Bad joke, sorry,” the captain said. “But I figure it’s one way to get your attention! Time for landing.”

A tablet screen in my pod flashed, depicting a satellite view of Mars. I pressed a button on the screen, and a modulating, glowing red circle shined. I pushed it again, and a 3-D depiction replaced the satellite view. Below was unrecognizable, a dusty emptiness awash with red. As we descended, the screen revealed more details. Moon-sized craters, their ridges looking like a star giant smashed the ground with a jagged mallet. Hatched pattern of squares within rectangles. A glittering glass dome that seemed to be the colony’s heart. Human-made geometries of crystalline exactness within nature’s wildness.

As we neared, the ship was shaking as if the same star giant had grabbed and rattled it. I grabbed Amma’s hand, closed my eyes, clenched them tightly. Suddenly there was a loud hissing sound, and then it was all over.

“Landed,” the captain said. “Mission complete.”

A thousand cheers filled the cabin, and I finally opened my eyes.

The transport to Metroport was a gargantuan rover, a flat robotic bus that rumbled along rails, with the sole purpose of bringing Metroport passengers. Amma let me sit on the side closest to the window, a small clear square shape as big as my little hand, offering glimpses of this new alien land. Little jeeps and rovers looked like toys on the barren, windswept landscape.

At Metroport, a woman from the University was waiting for us. She had short brown hair and kind eyes. On her chest was pinned a brooch, a turquoise cube, ruddy Phobos and Deimos on each side. She wore a white bodysuit, and over her shoulders was a red shawl. The woman waited. For a moment, there was silence. She looked around, behind us, to our sides. “Where is your husband?” she asked.

◆◆◆

A few weeks before Appa died, it was my birthday. On my birthdays, Amma made me chiroti. In retrospect, I’m surprised I loved such a layered sweet, but I suppose powdered sugar on fried bread with sweet almond milk and saffron rarely bores children.

“Kutti, how old are you today?” Appa asked, glancing up from a book while he sat at his little wooden desk. His paperweight sat firmly atop a stack of papers.

I moved five beads over to one end of the abacus and then looked up. Appa frowned. His desk light gave him a harried glare like I had done something wrong. I smiled and then swiped one more bead over with a flourish, throwing my arms up in the air.

“Six,” I yelled.

Appa nodded and looked back down.

◆◆◆

It would be many years before scientists and engineers developed a radiation-resistant coating strong enough so colonists could live in surface domes. The University guesthouses were in a series of underground caves, each living unit carved into rock. It was so different compared to our home on Earth. The foyer had a crisp, metallic smell: a single scent, unlike back home, a mélange of sandalwood incense and camphor. Though vaulted ceilings and bright LEDs blanketed the room in white light, the metallic furniture and appliances gave the place a stark feeling.

“Can we have flowers?” I asked the woman from the University. “It’s so empty in here.”

“I wish, but with strict energy reservations,” she said, “flowers are reserved for important occasions.”

At the back were two more rooms, each next to each other. My room had a small bed and nightstand. On it stood a framed pastel Mars landscape, a reckless expanse of dark red and brown, the Sun a faint pinprick in the distant horizon. On the wall were two calendars: one that said “Terran” and the other “Martian.” When I stepped out of my room, I heard Amma and the woman from the University speaking.

“—so terribly sorry for this,” the woman said. “I know how difficult it must be for you.”

There was silence.

“I will do my best to secure your housing, but I don’t know how long I will be able to do so,” the woman said. “After that, since your visa was because of your husband, you will need to get authorization. I will be honest. It is challenging these days. Without a job, it’s almost impossible to stay for long, except in tourist status. That means you will likely have to leave to go back to Earth on the next shuttle. You should speak to legal counsel to see what you can do. I don’t think that the University can sponsor you. In fact, I’m surprised they let you on the shuttle here in the first place.”

Another pause. More silence.

“I hope you understand,” the woman said.

Amma said something quietly, something too quiet for me to hear, but I listened to the meaning behind the words, the tone, the thin veil of determination.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” the woman asked.

Amma cleared her throat and spoke more loudly this time. “We have my husband’s remains. His ashes. It’s tradition for us to spread them outside. I understand there are no rivers or bodies of water, but even the land can do.”

“I’m very sorry, but the rules are such that we can’t have organic matter on the surface. It would risk contamination.”

“Even ash?” “Yes.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Perhaps it’s best if you hold onto them in any case,” the woman said. “In the event you are to go back.”

That night I couldn’t sleep, and instead, I looked up at the ceiling. There was a faintly lit solar system mural. Each of the planets was a glowing circle, Jupiter a large orange, and Saturn, a faint yellow with a white halo around it. The planets orbited a large white circle. Mars traveled slowly compared to the Earth, and it took twice as long for the red circle to loop the Sun as the blue one. I picked up the abacus off my nightstand and started doing the math. If I were almost six years old on Earth, that means I would be three on Mars. I laughed, thinking how I should tell people I was a three-year-old Martian.

At some point, muffled, mouse-like sounds came from Amma’s room. I cracked my door open and carried the abacus with me into her room.

“Kutti?” she said, her voice hoarse and cracked.

I crept into her bed, pushed another bead to the side, and told her I was three. I curled up next to her, put my head on her shoulder, and threw a leg over hers. She smelled like Amma, a mix of baby powder and Head and Shoulders shampoo and jasmine. At some point, finally, we both fell asleep.

◆◆◆

In the three months before our trip, Paati bemoaned our move. She would ask, “What does Mars have that Earth does not?”

I once woke up in the middle of the night to hear Appa and Amma’s voices, crickets, and occasional honking rickshaws in the background.

“Do you think we can come back and visit?” Amma asked.

“I will have to ask the University. It might be difficult,” Appa said. “It will be okay. The time there will fly by.” He snapped his fingers.

I realized the arguments with our extended family were my fault, and my chest felt tight. They were always about me, around a better life for me, that the Red Planet was full of opportunity for me. Me. Me. Me. Everything was about me.

I didn’t wish to be a burden, so one night, I filled a suitcase with my belongings: a few shirts, a nice jumper I wore once to Appa’s university event, and my abacus. I rolled the suitcase out of my room, into the living room, and out the door. I opened and closed the gate as quietly as I could. When I turned around, Appa was outside, leaning against a pole.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

I fidgeted, my palms suddenly feeling warm. I didn’t have an answer. He squatted down and asked me to open the suitcase.

“Ah, you are taking the abacus,” he said. “Good. Math is important. You never know when you will need it.”

He zipped the suitcase closed, propped it onto its wheels, and handed it back to me. His smile ran over his eyes, making his cheeks look as though they were miniature cricket balls. He took off his glasses and blinked a few times, wiped them on his shirt before putting them back on. I put out my hand, and he took it. It was warm, and it filled me with a sense of assurance that if I listened to him, if I trusted him, everything would be okay.

So I did what I knew I had to do. I went back inside.

◆◆◆

Massive elevators would take us gently upward to Metroport. A large screen played Martian news: an artery of ice was found while excavating a crater near the dome’s edges; the colony’s leader welcomed the latest colonists; scientists fielded questions in a live chat about potential surface living. I stared out, abacus in my lap, estimating how far we’d traveled and our speed. Amma asked me why I didn’t leave it at home and take a book or a toy of some kind instead.

“This abacus is both,” I said.

She didn’t bring it up again.

I loved Metroport. The giant glass dome never seemed to end. Hundreds of scurrying people surrounded us like they had to get somewhere quickly. They all wore something like a swimmer’s wetsuit from back home. Amma wore her sari around hers.

It felt like home, the way people pressed up against each other in front of food trucks. Vendors called out as the smoke and smell of their portable kitchens drifted in the air. Ad hoc near-fistfights seemed to break out regularly. It was a clamor I was familiar with. I started counting people until I lost count because even the abacus wasn’t paying attention.

Amma stopped at the vendors, asking if she could help, either help with sales, bookkeeping, or a thousand other things she could teach herself. She spoke to a vendor, a woman who wore a blue and red shawl wrapped around her shoulders and head. She carried gorgeous jewelry made with Martian landscapes: brooches, necklaces with heavy red pendants, rings she claimed were made with metal mined on the planet. In a small bowl lay packets of seeds.

“Whatever you need me to do,” Amma said. “I can do it.”

“I believe you,” the woman said, looking Amma up and down. “But I can’t risk bringing someone on without proper work authorization.”

Amma’s face fell. It was only a few months away that Mars ships would head back to Earth, and if she couldn’t find something that worked long term, then we would be forced to leave, back to Paati, back to an accusatory family, where my future would be pre-written. Amma would not have this happen. She befriended a short-term worker who said her hydroponics facility needed more help.

The hydroponics chamber was on the opposite side of the colony, hours away. We took an elevator down into a vast chamber, something like a giant shuttle hangar with rows and rows of planting units, metal bins, which served as containers for soil and plants. LED light strips shone from above. Some bins received white light, while others received faint canary yellow or red. I got on top of a chair to look in the containers. They were full of cress, arugula, chives. There was an entire section of potatoes.

The man who ran the facility had blond, almost white hair that fell to his shoulders. He looked stern, tablet in his hand as he marched down the long aisles. The light in the back was more subdued. In one of the bins were little round fruits, like large, ugly pink grapes.

“We need help with the tomatoes,” the man said.

“I know tomatoes,” Amma said. “These aren’t tomatoes.”

The man paused, taken aback. “These are very much tomatoes. Perhaps they are not Terran tomatoes, but we grow the best we can. They require a lot of care. The right amount of regolith, the right amount of light. This room has been set to certain standards to allow all this.”

He handed Amma a tablet. “This has all the instructions on how to care for them. You can simply follow the directions. Why don’t you do it for the day at this station, and then we’ll see how things look.”

After he left, Amma went through the instructions, shaking her head slowly. “These are silly. They have everything they need here for tomatoes to be nice and red and plump instead of these.” She grimaced, squeezing a little tomato like she held something squishy and disgusting. I laughed.

The rest of the day fascinated me. I stood on a chair, abacus in hand, counting everything I could. The leaves. The plants. The little tomatoes that weren’t able to be their best selves. When the manager came back, he must have seen us examining the regolith depth and soil consistency beneath. Or maybe he saw us talking about the light and how it was too dim to produce real Terran quality tomatoes.

“There’s no use in trying,” the man said. “But it looks like you didn’t make a mess, so you’re hired. You can start tomorrow morning.”

The man walked away, and Amma gave me a high five. As we went to sleep at night, Amma couldn’t stop talking about how the soil and light were all wrong.

The next day, we wrapped a foil blanket around one of the stations. Amma adjusted the LEDs for that station to emit the brightest light. When the manager asked what Amma was doing, she told him. “I’m trying to make these tomatoes something a little more as they should be.”

The manager shook his head. “It’s too expensive to have those kinds of tomatoes. We need to conserve our energy and can’t be experimenting like this. We need to deliver food to the rest of the colony. Even one station misused means someone gets less than they expected.”

“But—”

“No ‘but’s. Just clock in, do your job, and clock out. That’s it.”

The man walked off, and I was about to help Amma remove the foil, but she stopped me. “I have a good feeling about this,” she said. We erected another foil contraption over one of the stations, angling the light, so it reached the plants more directly.

The next day, Amma’s pass wasn’t working. After we had waited a few minutes, the manager came out. “You’ve been terminated,” he said.

“Why?” Amma asked.

“Check your file. You will see why.” The man walked away.

Pulling out her phone, Amma checked her work authorization app. The manager’s note read clearly: “She does not listen to directions. She does not do what she’s told. She is wasteful of planet resources.”

Amma leaned against the wall, bumping the back of her head against it. She shut her eyes tightly, her lips, too. It was like her entire face turned into a prune. Then suddenly, she was Amma again, bright-eyed, with a smile. “It’s okay, Kutti. We’ll find something.”

◆◆◆

It was raining the night before Appa died. I remember this because we sat out on the porch, our heads covered by the jutting roof while the streets flowed like a river. Hundreds of frogs croaked as rain fell in fat droplets. Overwhelmed by trying to count the rain, I turned to Appa. He said I could estimate. I could guess how many drops fell in a short amount of time and then use the abacus to multiply that by time intervals. While he tried explaining this to me in more detail, the gate to our building swung open.

Paati had come. This was rare as we always visited her, so we rushed to her and helped her inside. Chai and a few biscuits later, the same argument started.

“You need to cancel the trip,” Paati said. “These rains are a sign you need to stay.”

Appa smiled and asked, “How do we not know the rains are a sign we are to leave?”

After more back and forth, Appa told her it was only for a little while. I don’t know if Paati believed him. I don’t know if he believed himself.

I asked Appa how we knew we were to move. “What if Paati is right and we are not supposed to leave?”

He put his hand on my back and leaned in. The rain calmed to a drizzle, and the frogs stopped croaking. It was only him in that moment, his faintly fogged eyeglasses, his mustache that he tickled me with, and his sonorous voice, deep and knowledgeable as if every vibration was some vital fact about the universe.

“There is something freeing about making our own decisions,” he said. “There is no such thing as making a mistake when you try. If you try something and it doesn’t work out, you can try again. Worst case, you can start all over again.”

“Why can’t we tell that to everyone so they will listen and calm down?”

“Kutti, people often fear the unknown,” he said. “But you don’t have to. It is like the abacus. When you move a piece over, you’re creating a new world for yourself. You can always move the piece back.”

◆◆◆

Weeks passed, and Amma went from odd job to odd job, hoping for something more long-term, but nothing was working out, and she was getting nervous. And because she was getting nervous, I was getting worried. At this point, we had to move out of the University guest housing and live communally with other short-term workers.

◆◆◆

The communal living was a series of oxygenated caves, flowing lava keeping the caves warm. On the ceiling were thousands of small LEDs, each representing a star as if viewed from Earth. I supposed it was to give off the appearance of a Terran night, as most of those who lived in the caves were temporary workers who would return to Earth.

Amma and I walked around from stall to stall in Metroport. While I waited, some of them would leave me with a sweet and a pat on the head. I wanted to ask if any of them had chirotis, but Amma said that would be a rude question to ask. None of the stalls had openings, at least none for Amma—not even those with flashing “NEED HELP” signs. I counted forty-seven separate places.

The last place we checked was a café that sat out on the edges of the colony. It was mostly barren: a handful of small circular tables and a tiny kitchen in the corner. A few people were slurping their soup, looking out onto the Martian landscape, that endless sea of red and brown.

The owner was a small man, all forearms and elbows with a graying mustache. He was willing to speak with Amma. He gave me a coloring book and let me sit at a back table. I had a clear view of a large crater with crown-like ridges. At the center was shiny blue ice, like a magnifying glass had been dipped into liquid sky and gently left on the crater floor. I squinted and imagined it was a lake that I could jump into. I tried to guess how wide the crater was, using my thumb up against the glass with some childish crayon equations.

Then the owner came by and asked if he could get me anything. I don’t know what came over me, and I asked if they had chiroti. Amma apologized, but the owner looked sad. “No one can make it.”

“Amma can,” I said.

He tapped his chin a few times with his index finger, a thick gold ring shining on his pinky.

“Is that so?” he said.

The chiroti was nothing more than powder-based milk with a dash of sugar atop a flatbread that was more hard than crispy, but it reminded me of home, and it must have reminded others of home because soon the little café had a line out the door for Amma’s chiroti.

The restaurant owner brought me copies of old Tinkle comics while I sat in the back. They were full of folklore. One of those stories continues to stick in my mind: “Akshaya Patra.”

In one version of that story, a royal family is ashamed they’ve run out of rice to feed a group of important visitors. With only a moment to find food, they pray to Krishna. He shows up at their door, asking to see their bowl. He pulls out a single grain of cooked rice, which he eats. The family looks back in the bowl in surprise. He says they haven’t run out of food and says, if this is all you can give, this is all I need, rubbing his belly. If he is full, no one else needs to eat, so the surprise visitors are suddenly full, too.

I closed the comic and looked up. Amma was lifting a large bag of flour from the ground, pushing it up against the counter. She shoved her shoulder into it and lifted her body, wiped her forehead, leaving faint white dust on it. She stood straight, put her fists on her waist like a superhero, and smiled at me. Later I learned that “Akshaya Patra” meant “infinite vessel.”

Some weeks after Amma started working at the café, a man in a gray suit walked in. I was with my coloring book and abacus. I shifted a piece over. Eighty-seven people came through that day. The owner offered the man a seat, but the man shook his head. The two spoke, their voices low and steady until the owner stepped back, tossed a menu on the table, and put his hands over his head.

“No one is going to come in anymore if you do that,” the owner said.

“Don’t worry,” the man said. “You can add some covering to the windows, make a few other adjustments. It will be okay.”

The man left. The owner shook his head and sat down. Amma came out of the kitchen, wiped her hands on her apron, and sat next to the owner. Their voices were low again, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The owner shook his head over and over, hunched over like a kidney bean. Amma glanced at me once and gave me a tight-lipped smile.

The following week, while I sat at my usual spot in the back, a large group of workers, each in heavy-duty yellow work suits, set up a large device near the crater. Some men were drilling into the ground, and others secured wire from five machines that sat out like black boxes. Over the week, they propped up what looked like the skeletal body of a whale, metal ribs that rose high into the sky and curved over the crater.

At the end of the week, they unfurled shiny solar foil on top of the body until it looked like a giant eyelid. It turned slowly until it stopped, catching the sunlight, beaming light into the restaurant. It was so bright when I closed my eyes, I had to look away, and purple afterimages lingered on my eyelids.

On the way back to the caves, holding Amma’s hand, I asked, “Why are they doing that?”

“It’s supposed to melt the crater ice, Kutti,” Amma said. “So it will be easier to have water at the colony.”

The next week, we tried everything to keep customers around: covering the window with dark curtains; sunglasses; sunglasses and curtains. Nothing worked. It was bright, like someone had shrunk the Sun and placed it right inside the café. One day three people came to eat. The next day two, and then no one showed up for an entire week afterward.

◆◆◆

Some memories are like moments strung haphazardly on a clothesline. The worst memories are chaotic, disorderly. My request for kulfi from a vendor across the road. Appa’s smile before he walked across. The car that came out of nowhere like a roaring bull, its tires screeching, its bright red body hurtling down the road. Honks. Screams.

Afterward, I became the focal point of every discussion. What should have been a time for mourning had instead turned into demands about what Amma would do, how I would be raised.

“You were only leaving for his University post,” Paati said to Amma. “Now that is no more. You will stay, and we will find you a new husband.”

Amma gripped her sari’s folds. “We are still going.”

Paati laughed, her voice like a wailing bird. “And who will raise her?”

“I will.”

“With what? How will you earn a living? What skills do you have? How will you afford a dowry when she is old enough to marry?”

Each question was like tradition wrapped tightly into stone, hung in a sling, and shot at my mother.

“I will figure it out,” Amma said.

“There is nothing to figure out. A girl needs a father.”

She said that Appa’s younger brother was unmarried and would make the perfect companion for Amma and an excellent father to me. These conversations became circular, never-ending. They tore at me night after night, neither side yielding to the other. Even grieving made me feel guilty. It was as if it were wrong of me to think of Appa and misguided of me to wonder if he was right about leaving Earth.

“It is sad he is gone. He was my son, and I will never forget him,” Paati said. “But you will need a new father now. Isn’t that what you want?” Her voice lowered to a harsh whisper. “Tell your mother that’s what you want.”

It felt like my decision was necessary for the first time, like I was picking sides, and if I picked the wrong side, something terrible would happen. The weight of the decision sent me calculating. I slapped all the wooden pieces of the abacus to one end and then to the other.

I called out for Amma.

◆◆◆

The café owner had become despondent. “I’m going to have to close all this down,” he said. “I put everything into this place. And now I’m going to have to shut it down.”

“What if we turn it into something else?” Amma asked.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I’m just brainstorming out loud.”

“Amma,” I said, tugging on her sari.

“What is it, Kutti?”

“The lady at the market. The one with the blue and red shawl. She has seeds,” I said, my words tumbling over themselves. “It’s so bright in here. What if we use all the light the way you wanted to at the hydroponics place?”

Amma thought about it and said, “Kutti, you are a genius.”

It was the proudest I ever felt.

The owner was willing to try anything. We all worked together, wearing sunglasses, light filling the café like we were standing at the center of a supernova. My job was to calculate: the amount of wheat flour we mixed with soil; the number of plants we had planted; the expected number that would bear fruit. Over a few days, we filled the inside of the café with ramshackle stations. On the far wall, Amma had covered another set of plants with foil to increase the amount of light they were getting.

“And now we wait,” Amma said.

“And now we pray,” the owner said, and we all started laughing.

A week passed when we returned. The plants had bloomed, and at the center of the stations were bunches of red, plump, juicy tomatoes. They looked like the ones back on Earth, the kind that exploded with flavor. Amma plucked one from the vines and handed it to the owner.

He shook his head, tears falling down his cheeks. “What you have done is—”

“What we have done,” Amma said. “What we have done is something special.”

“This is amazing,” the owner said. “We will report this to the colonists. Even the University is going to be interested.”

The owner looked around the room. “What about those? The ones over there,” he said, pointing at the stations covered in foil.

“That’s something for my daughter,” Amma said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

She carefully removed the covering and gestured for me to come closer. My heart began to sing.

In the mix of regolith and soil were flowers. Marigolds that would make the Sun jealous. Roses that could brighten the Martian landscape. But the most spectacular of all were the white jasmine with purple fibers snaking through their elongated petals. Their redolence filled me with hope. They were the first of many flowers, all with not just a Martian charm, but Amma’s, too.

◆◆◆

Mars now is different. Scientists and engineers have solved the problem of radioactive-resistant glass coating, and the university campus is a sprawling constellation of interconnected domes atop the artificial flatbed of the colony. The biology dome houses my botany department, beautiful if you ever see it from above. It’s like an old Terran paperweight, a transparent sphere with miniature, intricate flora thriving inside. We even have an irrigation system of flowing water.

But today, I am most happy with the revised rule about organic matter.

On our way to the port, a colonist stops us. He wears his suit in the new colonists’ style, high-necked and with bright gold stripes across his shoulders. “Madame, madame,” he says.

“Is something wrong?” Amma asks.

The man awkwardly scratches the back of his neck. “Sorry, it’s just that my daughter is a huge fan of yours. She said you inspired her to start her own garden at home. Can I get a picture with you?”

At that moment, I feel a gush of pride, a sense of profound wonder for Amma, that all the work she had put in bore fruit over the decades. Amma nods, and the man steps next to her, holds his phone between their faces, and smiles.

After they take the photo, Amma asks, “What is her name?”

“Marina.”

“You can tell Marina that whatever she decides to grow will bloom,” Amma says with a smile and a wink. The man bows in thanks.

“I will never tire of seeing that happen,” I say.

“I already do,” Amma says, laughing.

When we get to the port, I help Amma into her breathing suit. She requested that it be white, and though they are usually a faint gray, we found one for her, and somehow, it fits her perfectly. After I’ve put on mine, we’re outside, the harsh and beautiful ground crunching underneath our boots. The Sun is far away, like someone blotted the hazy sky with an eraser. In our hands is the box, the one with Appa’s ashes, and we know the time has come. Amma’s hands are shaking, so I hold them tightly, bumping my helmet against hers. She looks up at me, her eyes wet, kohl faintly staining the skin around her eyes. Then she nods once. We flip the box lid together, revealing ashes like loosely packed stardust.

We raise the box above our heads, its lid open, and wait. Amma’s staring straight above, and I join her. The sky is vast, long, and luxuriant. A drifting wind picks up around us, and then it transforms into a rage, sweeping away Appa’s ashes into the sky where they become part of this planet, part of this windswept land we call home, where together we will thrive for the rest of our days.

Timekeepers’ Symphony

Ken Liu

TO KEEP TIME, you must first invent it.

1. Flicker—A piacere

Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal and who he stands still withal.

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, III.ii.

In the cloud forests of Paek Sigma II, the inhabitants do not keep time, but stretch and slice it.

The first humans who arrived on the planet were amazed by the fauna. There’s the stone-armored petradrakon, draped in twenty thousand scales each a meter across, who lays a clutch of eggs only once every one thousand and nine times Paek Sigma II has revolved around its prime sun. There’s the glass-winged slisli fly, whose two-phased life cycle, alternating between koniphyte and nephophyte generations, lasts a brilliant seventy seconds, the average duration it takes for the living silicon snowflakes to drift from the mist-shrouded canopy to the sulfur-infused earth. There’s the deep-sea abyssal bynaasaa, who slithers no more than a centimeter in a century. There’s the red-shafted needlebeak, whose erratic, darting flight, changing direction a hundred times a second, can make a single mating pair appear to be a whole swarm to the novice observer.

On no other planet has life evolved to occupy so many timescales and niches all at once. It is a temporal Galápagos, a Mendelian garden of crisscrossing timelines.

Are they sentient? Does the petradrakon make long-lasting landscape art with the aid of erosion? Does the needlebeak compose poetry with an alphabet of movements too quick for us to parse? Does the bynaasaa leave books behind in its lightless trail, which millions of generations of slisli nephomorph larvae can read in due course when the ocean has turned into mountains?

While the question of whether the nature of the universe is continuous or discrete remains hotly debated, there is sufficient consensus that consciousness doesn’t so much flow like a smooth river as leap forward from moment to moment, a glistening frog atop a drifting lily pad.

The biological circuitry of cognition, of the machinery of life, is full of discrete steps and sinusoidal waves, alternating peaks and troughs imposed by unbending physics. Spiking neurons have refractory periods; ion channels open and close like pumping gates; neurochemical concentrations require the passage of time to change as well as to stabilize.

And so life proceeds by jerks, twitches, bounces, quivers, though we pretend otherwise. As you gaze across a vista, to give the photoreceptors in your retina the conditions to yield a steady signal and to minimize the amount of signal processing by the visual pathways, your eyes don’t glide over the visual field but hop across it in rapid saccades, leaving the brain’s visual system the task of stitching the series of flickering, fixed retinal images into one continuous, fluid scene. As you stride along, you speed up and slow down, fall toward the ground and catch yourself, teeter to one side and then totter to the other, each step a complex series of three-dimensional coordinate transformations conducted in jerky segments—nevertheless, what you perceive is only smooth, forward progress, a continuous illusion integrated from the ticktock of the body’s million billion distinct pulsing, beating, pumping, swinging, oscillating clocks.

Blending the discrete into the continuous is the glamor that brings the world as we sense it into being. Vibrations—updownupdownupdown—fuse into notes; flickers—nowyouseeit nowyoudon’t—meld into persistence of vision. Without it, we would have no motion pictures, no screens, no virtual reality, no scripted deep dreams—you never notice the ticking clock cycles that power the artificial silicon and germanium brains that give us so many simulated worlds, do you?

The smaller the flickers in our perception, the more details we notice and the longer time seems to last. So why don’t we simply slice time into the finest slivers possible, live life at the highest resolution?

There is a cost, as it turns out, to dividing time into ever-finer fractions of a second. To use a not-entirely inaccurate metaphor, the faster the frame rate of perception, the more it costs metabolically. A year seems to last so much longer for growing children, it is said, at least in part because their consciousness is processing reality faster than the slowing chronoperceptors of their aged parents—they literally experience more of the stream of time.

To the lumbering petradrakon, we are but lightning flashes, our entire life arc summed up at most with a single quadratic approximation. We burn our candle at both ends; no wonder we are born and die before the petradrakon has completed even one thought.

To the fluttering needlebeak, on the other hand, we are akin to ungainly giants trapped in viscous sap, awkward mannequins on a stop-motion set, flip books in the hands of a novice user—hours pass before we change from one pose to another, our minds as alien as the carbon dioxide glaciers on the horizon. We may live their eons, but at the expense of a metabolic frugality that makes our life dim, dull, a mere stone skipping over the river of existence, missing all the fun.

Little wonder then, that the settlers of Paek Sigma II began to look for new ways to inhabit the stream of time. Slow down or speed up—altering the metabolic clock is the only way to meet the inhabitants of the planet in their own temporal realms.

Cytonanites injected into the body build a new network of semiconducting neural sheaths; RNA lexical closures rewrite the human genome to adopt new metabolic pathways; ion pumps and protein-etched integrated circuits alter and upgrade the neuroelectronics of consciousness signal processing; blood vessel walls are strengthened with carbon nanotubes; muscles are replaced with fast-acting memory polymers; bones are converted to composite metamaterials; blood is supplanted with cellular nanomanufactories . . .

To give observers an easy way of knowing the new temporal realm they’ve moved into, each tachynaut wears an indicator device on their wrist. While these appear, superficially, like the products of haute horlogerie, closer examination reveals a key difference: instead of a harmonic oscillator in the form of a balance wheel and hairspring or a magnetic pendulum, the escapement of the “watch” is driven by a pressure plate against the inside of the wearer’s wrist, converting each pulse of the radial artery into a swing of the pallet fork. Instead of measuring the passage of seconds, the hands of the watch advance to the pace of the wearer’s heart. The faster the heart beats, the faster the hands swing around the dial.

Tachynauts literally live at different speeds from the rest of us.

Some now see the world as a darting needlebeak does: a summer in an hour, a lifetime in a day. Their heart beats so fast that it no longer sounds like a flutter, but a single note. Though they will not live to see the sun rise again, some speculate that, because they slice time so finely, they are closer to the fundamental quantum vibration of the universe. Thus, they derive more joy, sorrow, rage, surprise, and empathy from each second than most of us can experience in a lifetime.

Others, ambassadors to the petradrakon, skip over Heraclitus’ River in long, graceful arcs. To the rest of humanity, they seem to live in a perpetual state of slumber, barely distinguishable from statues, each breath spanning days, each heartbeat a somber larghissimo pianto. With such slow clocks of consciousness, they’ll likely outlive the rise and fall of would-be galactic empires, perhaps even witness the end of our species. Years are experienced in a single second; the flickering alternation of day and night fuses into a single perpetual twilight. We may think that such a life of languor, like mortally immortal Tithonus, to be not worth living, but perhaps to them, we seem like carping mayflies, lacking all sense of the scale of the divine clockwork.

All this, of course, remains conjecture. None of the explorers of other scales of time have ever returned. The modifications required to become a tachynaut are so extensive that they are irreversible. But one can’t help but wonder that even if they could return, they wouldn’t. Perhaps they find their new temporal existence much more interesting than their native realm. Or perhaps they, new converts to Marvellian metaphysics, are reluctant to inform us that lightning fast or vegetal slow, we would never have world enough, nor time.

2. Dharma—Andante con moto

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.

—J. Robert Oppenheimer

On the far side of the Moon—the one that orbits old Earth—close to the south pole, there is a large and ancient double-ringed crater, almost worn flat, called Apollo. Not named after the Greek god; not exactly. Rather, it was named to honor NASA’s Apollo program, and so the smaller, newer craters inside were given the names of astronauts and scientists who worked on the Apollo program and other NASA projects, including some who gave their lives to realize our dream of becoming a spacefaring species.

Just beyond the western rim of Apollo is another crater, rounder as well as more modest, with multiple smaller craters nestled inside its rim. This one is named after J. Robert Oppenheimer, who surely changed the world as much as the Apollo astronauts.

In this crater can be found one of the most renowned timepieces in all three hundred and sixty-eight settled planets: the End Watch, which, according to one popular interpretation of its name, counts down toward the final moment of the universe.

With such a grandiose claim, it’s natural to expect monumental construction. Certainly humanity does not lack colossal timepieces. There’s Sigetin’s “Ring of Victory,” built soon after the Third Restoration, consisting of sixty-five minor planets dragged into the same inner orbit near the system’s sun so that a different planet would transit across the solar disc for every month of the restored calendar that the revolutionaries had abolished. There’s Anyanwu’s “Progress,” consisting of a one hundred and fifty-kilometer-diameter whirling space radio beacon designed to precisely double the signals from the strongest known pulsar, PSR B0329+54, thereby commemorating the new government’s commitment to science and discovery. Every new government, revolutionary or reactionary, that comes into power seems compelled to construct something with no purpose other than to proclaim its own dominion over time, spiritual successors to the Great Pyramid or the Washington Monument, asserting an exception to the cycling tides of history, which sees power ebb as soon as it has crested a peak.

At first glance, the End Watch seems to belong to the same class as these. Viewed from a lunar cruise liner floating a few hundred kilometers above the surface, the Apollo-Oppenheimer-Leibnitz complex of craters, with their congeries of inner craters and interlocking rims, eclipsing perimeters and meshing peaks, spiraling ejecta trails and secondary impact chains, resembles nothing so much as a gargantuan version of the movements of mechanical watches, or perhaps a celestial embodiment of the Antikythera orrery. A tourist daydreaming on the lido deck, waiting for her turn to dive through the zero-g pool suspended like a giant bubble at the side of the ship, may well be forgiven for imagining the End Watch, housed somewhere below among those mountainous gears and regolithic epicycles, as some marvel of engineering, perhaps an atomic chronograph built from exotic transoganesson atoms from the island of stability entangled in a precise quantum quadrille, each step a perfect expression of the order in the very fabric of the cosmos, or perhaps a mechanical wonder constructed by a master Swiss watchmaker from diamonds and buckyballs and star metals and alchemical humors, with a googol nanogears packed into a single caliber, but in any event counting out the billions upon trillions upon duotrigintillions of seconds toward the great rip, crunch, chill, bounce, a memorial to humankind’s genius and hubris alike, a defiant rage and rave at the dying of the light.

The passenger would be very disappointed to find out that the End Watch is nothing more than a narrow, two-kilometer tunnel dug into the lunar bedrock at the center of Oppenheimer, its entrance marked by a fifteen-meter gnomon that pokes above the regolith, casting a slow-roving shadow that completes one cycle every 29.53 Earth days. Opening off the tunnel is a series of chambers, each stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes of palm-sized silicon discs with finely etched surfaces. Despite their similarity to classical integrated circuits, a closer examination reveals these discs to be neither digital nor electronic. Like those goodwill messages left by the astronauts in the Sea of Tranquility, the discs are etched with tiny text that could be read by anyone with a sufficiently powerful magnifying glass.

What is written on these discs?

There’s an entry on Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. “With my machine, I cut off your head in the blink of an eye, and you don’t feel a thing.” It notes his opposition to capital punishment, his association with the machine as an attempt to make such deaths more humane and equal, his shock and revulsion when he eventually understood that the mind survives for a few agonizing minutes beyond decapitation. His misfortune, as Victor Hugo put it, was that “he could never detach his name from his invention.” He thought he was doing the right thing, carrying out a duty.

There’s an entry on Dorothy Hae Radhakrishnan-McCall. “I believed that artificially shortening the telomeres of enemies of the state was the most humane way to end the rebellion. I thought taking time away from their future was better than killing them in the present. I thought what I did would prevent a greater evil. Don’t we always?”

There is an entry on the designers of the last gas chamber in North America, one that used nitrogen to suffocate the condemned. They write of specifying the length, width, height of the room, of picking the color of paint on the walls, of selecting the straps to use to tie the inmate down, of choosing the thickness of the glass through which witnesses can watch them die. They speak of going home afterward to kiss their spouse, to hug their children. They speak of filling out forms, of filing them away, of meting out justice.

It’s easy to judge evil; far harder to be and judge those who do what they do in the service of righteousness.

There is an address to which people who believe they have something to contribute to the End Watch can send messages. The address is monitored by machines, not people. The messages are etched onto silicon disks by robots. When there are enough of them, the foundation legally bound to maintain the End Watch charters a lunar ferry so that a few volunteers can carry the boxes of new discs into the tunnel under the dust on the far side of the Moon, in the heart of the crater named Oppenheimer.

There is an entry on the creators of the missiles that would pierce cars and pulverize those inside with swirling blades, making sure to miss no corner in which a terrorist or his baby may hide. There is an entry on the inventors of viruses that would only kill combatants and civilians of certain ethnicities. There is an entry on the builders of bombs that would slay people but not damage their equipment. There is an entry on programmers of robots that would “neutralize” enemies without being plagued by doubt or mercy.

They speak of summer barbecues, of winter ski trips. They speak of flirting and courting and babies. They speak of games and puzzles. They speak of freedom and beauty and God. They speak of ethics workshops and transparent procedures and the alienation of modernity. They speak of an office birthday party in the conference room, before more brainstorming on how to kill more people more efficiently. Some laugh; some cry; some speak of the sweetness as well as the banality of pro patria necare.

Not all watches require gears or pendulums or trembling crystals or sweeping hands bending the flight of the arrow of time into a circle. A watch can also just be a record of the progress of causality, an expanding graveyard of dead time. For this is what the End Watch is really measuring: our seemingly unwavering faith in the idea that taking time from others can be a good thing, that the killing hand can be humane, that inventing death, the absence of time, is something that we can justify. Disc by disc, act by act, the End Watch tracks our own progress—or lack thereof—toward the end of the arc of history.

There’s an entry on Oppenheimer, with his famous quote from 1965, decades after a thousand suns glowed at Trinity, years after he had lost most of his influence and power because of suspicion that he was a Soviet spy.

The disc encodes not only the text of his interview, but also a crude encoding of the original film. Rather than relying on any ephemeral digital encoding, the film—not colorized holos, not hi-def AI reconstructions, but the original, ancient, low-quality acetate film—has been reproduced as a series of tiny rectangular images, just strokes and shading, etched along the disc rim like the jagged lip of a crater. If you spin the disc at a certain rate and watch the images through a microscope under a light flickering at twenty-four times per second, barely above the human flicker-fusion threshold, the images will fuse into a grainy scene.

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Oppenheimer speaks to the camera without looking at it, perhaps trying to shape how those who come after will see the father of the atomic bomb, perhaps trying to tell himself a story that would make sense of the incomprehensible, all the while knowing that it’s impossible to bend or know the judgment of eternity.

The verse from the Bhagavad Gita, from which Oppenheimer took his own translation of a line, is chapter eleven, verse thirty-two, a speech from Lord Krishna. But “death” here is a shorthand, which says both too much and too little. An alternate translation of the full verse is more illuminating. In answer to a plea from Prince Arjuna to clarify his divine intention, Krishna tells the prince to arise and carry out his righteous duty:

I am wondrous Time,

All-devouring, annihilator of universes.

Even if you stand and wait,

Those warriors opposite, arrayed so heroically,

Will perish.

This is one of the most bleak as well as beautiful expressions of dharma, the ineluctable flow of reality itself.

If those whose voices are frozen in the End Watch had stood and waited, would a thousand suns still have burned, the death chambers still have been constructed, the guillotine blades still have fallen, the missiles and bombs and terrors and regrets still have been unleashed, in the service of righteousness, of duty, of justice, of dharma, the foundation of reality? Would we still stand paralyzed before All-Devouring Time, Annihilator of Universes? Does dharma absolve suffering? What does absolution even mean? Prince Arjuna has his answer; do we?

Year after year, the discs in the End Watch accumulate and bear witness.

3. The Time from Home—Scherzo. Allegro con brio

And yet we knew that gentle Clock

Meant nought but Going Home

—Emily Dickinson

It takes a RWB ramjet fusion rocket, the fastest mode of transport available, about seven Earth years to make the trip between Yaohan Beta and 341 Ilera, the two settled planetary systems closest to one another. A trip between Paek Sigma II and Kuulam, which sit at opposite ends of our species’ domain in space, on the other hand, requires a full four hundred and sixty-two Earth years.

With humanity so stretched out, time can no longer be universal, but must be reinvented everywhere. How can it be otherwise when BSG-216 takes longer to rotate around its own axis than to orbit around its star, while Carrie’s Planet spins so fast that its sun streaks across the empyrean like a meteor? On Narcissus, tidally locked so that its smooth, blemish-free face is always turned toward its blazing star, the settlers in the perpetual twilight of the terminator zone have no need of seasons. But on Ollumi, which doesn’t so much orbit as wander among seventeen suns and fifty-three other planets, tracking the succession of the capricious seasons and the malleable years is an adventure in itself. It’s no wonder that every world has its own calendar, its own horological tradition, its own definition of hour, day, year.

In some ways, we’ve returned to the age when the great Polynesian explorers settled the islands in the wide-open Pacific, when a departure usually meant no return, partings were mostly final, oceans divided lives, and jet lag that collapsed all time was not yet possible. Plans must be made not with merely years in view, but generations. A couple on Earth who wish to start a new life on Kuulam must understand that at least three generations will be born en route, and by the time their descendants step onto the new world, more than a century later, they, the original architects of the plan, will be gone, and their dreams and fears will no longer be the hopes and doubts of their descendants.

Even with hibernation, even with tachynauts, even if, one day, we learn to fly closer still to the speed of light, there is simply no way to bridge the vastness of space. Paradoxically, this has brought about a kind of peace. Each world is allowed to be on its own. There is no galactic empire, no practical means to gather all the scattered stars in one iron fist. We’re lucky that we live in a universe where time itself is a bulwark against tyranny, and not even a resurrected Xerxes can whip the space-time main into obedience.

To step onto an interstellar ship is to say goodbye forever to everything you’ve ever known, to pursue a dream based on news decades out of date, to take a leap of faith into a future that cannot be fathomed. The language that is spoken on arrival will not sound like the one imagined on departure. Given all that, who are the migrants who nonetheless travel between the stars?

In every community since the beginning of time, no matter how perfectly evolved or designed, there is the seed of dissatisfaction, of the desire to leave. Some will always want to walk away, even from the most utopian city. We’re happiest when we are surrounded by those who share our story, but what if our soul sings a different song, thrills to the call of another kind of music?

A mother on the remote outpost of Cel 241 sells everything she owns to secure a cabin for her and her five-year-old daughter on a ship bound for glittering Sigetin, where she hopes that her daughter, stepping off the ship as a forty-year old, can receive education and be given opportunities impossible to find at home. Meanwhile, on Lada, the youngest child of a youngest child decides to give up his inheritance in exchange for a ticket to Cel 241 because he wishes to make his way without all the familial entanglements that suffocate as much as they support.

We’re at once wanderer and settler, planet and star, ship and port. We want to know our place but also be free, like an electron in the outermost orbital. Only after we’ve left does a place start to feel like home. We vacillate between being vagabond and rooted; we are, in our hearts, all strangers in our native land, permanent residents in a pan-diaspora.

Even generations after migration, we feel a connection with the land of our forebears. One of the most popular gifts new migrants bring to settlers who share the same origin is a timepiece from the old world: a clump of cesium that once sang for the laser atop Mount Gogol on Lada; a ceramic crystal oscillator tuned to the frequency of the call of the lava loon on Ori; a tuning-fork desk clock set to the New Year bells at Gohyaku Rakanji; a sundial marked with the shadows of the hours on Pele; an hourglass filled with the sand from Lusso Beach on Tau Blüte Six; a mechanical watch with a forty-one-jewel movement encased in Switzerland, with a perpetual calendar that continues to track the system devised by Maya astronomers . . .

To be sure, what’s kept by these timepieces isn’t really the time from home. Relativistic time dilation, lack of maintenance, simple drift—everything conspires to make bringing over time from one place to another a fool’s errand. Yet, there is something grand about gazing upon an artifact that contains another definition of the hour, that models the orbit of another world, that ticks to the rhythm of ancestral seasons, to the music of life from homeland.

Poets on ancient Earth spoke of people connected by threads of affection but divided by distance gazing upon the Moon, imagining that they do so at the same time, thereby entangling their hearts. Gazing upon the time from home, we, remembering the past, rooted to the present, already impatient for the future, can be permitted to imagine, for a moment, that lightyears away, our souls are entangled with those whose stories we share, one common species scattered among the stars.

4. One Second in Hilo—Tempo giusto

The Egyptians, they said, were the first to discover the solar year, and to portion out its course into twelve parts. They obtained this knowledge from the stars.

—Herodotus, The Histories, Book II, chapter 4 (Rawlinson translation, 1880)

In the town of Hilo, nestled on the northeastern coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, Earth, there is a massive, rectangular piece of black volcanic rock called the Naha Stone. It was said that whoever overturned it would unite the Hawaiian Islands. King Kamehameha the Great, by legend, accomplished this feat when he was fourteen and eventually fulfilled the prophecy. Like Arthur, who pulled the sword out of the stone, like Xiang Yu, who lifted the massive bronze ding cauldron over his head, Kamehameha changed the world in a second, when he moved what was thought immovable.

Today, the stone rests in front of a laboratory operated by the Bureau interplanétaire des poids et mesures. It is here, next to Moon-driven tides and Sun-speckled waterfalls, that the second, a fundamental SI unit, is actually measured. Inside the laboratory, atoms of cesium-133, mercury-199, ytterbium-171, rubidium-87, and many others are locked in laser cages, entangled in clouds as near absolute zero as uncertainly possible, magnetically deflected, probed with radiation, made to sing in their unique voice, an elemental chorus whose music is the most accurate clock in the known universe.

Behind the laboratory, Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain on Earth when measured from base to summit, looms a few miles away, where some of the best views of the Moon anywhere on the planet can be found.

The ancient Hawaiian calendar was based on the phases of the Moon. So important was the Moon to the life of the people that every phase—each waxing crescent, each pregnant swell, each barely there smile, each perfect circle—all thirty of them, had its own name, starting with Hilo, the first night of the new Moon, to Hoku, the full Moon that is good for fishing at sea, all the way to Muku, the Moon in shadow. A common expression compares the ignorant to small children who do not yet know the phases of the Moon.

Here, in Hilo, we see all time concentrated in one spot. The Moon is our oldest clock, the singing atoms our youngest. Between the two is a millennia-long march to invent not only more precise ways to measure time, but also to define our place in the universe.

Every schoolchild can recite at least the simplified definition of a second: “The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the unperturbed ground state of the cesium-133 atom.”

However, before 1967, a second was defined not by reference to any atom, but by the motion of Earth itself. A second didn’t build up to hours, days, months, years, but was merely a subdivision of the day or the year, both of which were seen as more fundamental.

The earliest timepieces available to humans were also the grandest: the repeated movements of the rising Sun, the setting Moon, the spinning stars. The face of a sundial was marked into sections to divide the day into periods comparable to our hours. But as the days lengthened and shortened on the Earth’s annual journey around the Sun, so did the hours, and any subdivision thereof. A second, if it could be talked about at all, was simply an idealized, flexible fraction of an arc.

A second didn’t become real until Christiaan Huygens built the first pendulum clock in 1656. And thereafter, during the nineteenth century, the second became a base unit in systems of measurement, defined as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day.

But the Earth’s spin is inconstant. The tidal bulges reaching for the Moon, the deformation in the shape of the rubbery Earth, the advance and retreat of glaciers, the sloshing of the mantle around the dense core—the length of the day fluctuates, but overall trending longer as the Earth slows down. From the time of the earliest eclipses recorded by the Babylonian and Chinese astronomers, we know that the great clock that is the Earth has slowed down by nearly seven hours.

What to do? When our sole spinning world-timer turned out to be unreliable, we turned to a grander one: the observed positions of the stars, the Sun, and the Moon, as compared to their calculated Newtonian positions. In 1956, the world redefined the second to be 1/31,556,925.9747 of the interval it took for the Sun to return to the same apparent position in the Earth’s sky, known as a tropical year. This was the ephemeris second.

Ephemeris time, though defined by the position of the Earth with respect to the Sun, was more easily determined by observing the positions of the Moon against the background stars. One of the best places to obtain such observations, as it turned out, was here in Hawaii, where the Moon already had so many names. We left the Moon behind in our quest for precision, only to return to it like a child missing home.

But the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is also inconstant. Every second, the Sun sheds millions of tons of mass as it fuses hydrogen together, unleashing energy that, though far more powerful than the burst at Trinity, gives, rather than takes, life in the cradle of humanity. With the passage of every year, the orbit of the Earth widens, slows down.

That was when we, like Kamehameha reaching for the Naha Stone, reached for the atom. There is nothing more unchanging and constant in the cosmos.

To put the atomic definition of the second into practice, our ancestors invented the atomic clock. Like all clocks and watches, the atomic clock relies on something that oscillates, ticktock, to-and-fro. But instead of a pendulum or a balance wheel, a tuning fork or a pulsing heart, the atomic clock’s oscillator isn’t an object at all, but a beam of light. It’s an electromagnetic wave tuned to the precise frequency of the light absorbed or given off by the lone outermost electron, wandering far from the nucleus of the cesium atom, as it flips between being parallel or antiparallel to the spin of the nucleus. When the beam is tuned perfectly, that lone electron jumps in resonance, and counting off 9,192,631,770 crests in that flickering light gives you exactly one second.

We probe for the resonance of the crystalline spheres, listen for the soundless celestial music. The atomic clock is the closest we can get to the heartbeat of the Divine.

There is a great deal of beauty as well as terror in that definition. First put into place (in a slightly different form) in October 1967, just a few months after the death of Oppenheimer in February of that year, when the total amount of nuclear weapons in the world had crested to a new peak, it marked the moment when our species had simultaneously acquired the insight to peer into the fundamental clockwork that governs the universe as well as the power to annihilate ourselves in a burst of all-devouring absence of time.

The definition of the second based on the ground state radiation of the cesium atom was calculated to correspond to the length of the ephemeris second at that juncture in history. But it was a passing of the baton. Henceforth, the second would no longer be dependent on the motion of the Earth and the Sun. No matter how much further the Earth slowed, the second was freed of it.

In the end, we had to move away from the unfaithful celestial clockwork of heavenly bodies and turn toward the unchanging, invisible movement inside a single atom, an idealized lone electronic planet orbiting far in the Oort cloud of the nuclear sun, plucking the inimitable music out of the foundational strings of the universe.

It was a Galilean moment. The sword had been pulled out of the stone, the ding lifted overhead, the Naha Stone overturned. Henceforth the Earth was truly removed from the center of the universe, and the Sun decommissioned as the sole mainspring by which time would be measured. We had become a cosmic species.

This definition is why, despite all the multitudes of calendars in use on all the settled worlds, a second lasts as long in the streets of Earth as it does in the cloud forests of Paek Sigma II, spans the same duration in the deep craters of Zhurong Six as under the icy oceans of Flux IV. The hours, days, months (if they have them), and years on these worlds are built out of the same second, yet the number of seconds in each is determined by the seasons of each planet, the needs of each community.

Out of one, many.

The measurements from the laboratory behind the Naha Stone are beamed and relayed by radio waves to all the settled worlds, where, upon the signals’ arrival years or decades later, they are used to synchronize uniform time. This is what makes navigation and communication among all humanity possible, the rebbelib chart of our age.

But there is still something special about time on Earth, as our first home, our original love. We have, therefore, invented something special for it.

In the old days, it was necessary to add a second now and then to the time on Earth to allow the planet’s slowing rotation to sync up with the song of the atoms. This was clumsy, disruptive, and felt deeply inelegant. Similarly, it was necessary to add a day now and then to the Gregorian calendar to account for the fact that a tropical year didn’t divide evenly into a whole number of days—even with all the convoluted hacks, the calendar still would have eventually drifted out of sync with the course of the seasons.

None of these hacks are needed now.

During the last wave of mass migrations off the Earth, we executed a series of unprecedented mega-engineering projects: electromagnetic catapults along the equator hurled massive chunks of matter into space as a first step in the construction of interstellar island-ships; mining vessels out in the Oort cloud directed icy planetesimals into new orbits that brought them near the Earth so that they could be captured for more raw materials; atmospheric transfer wells that filled the new island-ships with hurricane-sized jets of living air. The very shape of the planet itself wobbled as we moved earth, ice, and sea in our effort to get humanity off this rock, to fulfill our destiny among the stars.

But we didn’t abandon our home. We didn’t only take and extract. We, all of us, those who left and those who stayed behind, also planned those mega-engineering projects to achieve something else. You see, with every chunk of material thrown off into space, with every planetesimal that skimmed into and was caught by the Earth’s gravity well, with every carefully considered mass shift, we were increasing the Earth’s angular moment, speeding up its rotation.

By the time the last island-ship left, a tropical year on Earth was exactly 365.25 days. The calendar could finally agree with the seasons; all that’s needed is the smallest of adjustments once every four years: a single gear in a perpetual calendar could do it.

To keep the system running smoothly, today, the Moon-gazers on Mauna Kea and the atom-conductors behind the Naha Stone feed their observations into an algorithm.

A slowdown in the rotation of the Earth is noted. The algorithm suggests more solar-desalinated water to be drawn up north to irrigate sunny Siberia and Yukon and pumped south to be added to the glaciers of Antarctica. Like a skater pulling in her arms to accelerate her spin, the redistribution of mass speeds up the Earth’s rotation. If even more angular momentum is needed, Oort cloud objects could be summoned to surf through the gravity well, contributing their kinetic energy to our whirling blue marble. With all the nudges and wobbles and swerves and turns, the Earth’s rotation catches up to the ticking of the atomic clock, and the seasons remain matched to the ancient holidays, the timeworn celebrations, the age-old stories.

It’s just a little tinkering with the celestial clockwork, an adjustment to the grandest of balance wheels. As all timekeeping enthusiasts know: any movement must be cared for and maintained.

I Give You the Moon

Justina Robson

THE APOCALYPSE WAS a terrible disappointment.

There was no great flood. Fire did not fall from the sky, not even a meteorite. You couldn’t even write the line, “Death stalked slowly in her cloak of many viruses, because Terminators always walk,” because although that was true it gave the event a lot more color and interest than it deserved. Even displayed in graphs and comparative charts with numbers and pulsating animated globs and fire-crisping maps it took thirty years to complete. It progressed by boring increments of boom and bust before fizzling out to inconvenient embers in the cities, where for ages its only sign was the sudden hacking cough of passersby that startled the occasional cat from its nap on the hot pavements. Millions died, several times, and nobody since had stopped banging on about it in case it wasn’t really over, though what their anxiety was going to do to fix it was anybody’s guess.

Jack took off his hat. The lesson that had filled his hearing and vision vanished. He set the hat down on the sand beside him and sat in the sudden quiet of the calm sea and the empty sky, not even a gull to see. The breeze boxed his ears with a random blather. A hundred meters to his left the old man who had been fishing when he started his lecture, was still fishing in exactly the same spot. As far as the eye could see in all directions, they were alone.

Behind them Jack felt the continental bulk of Africa sitting quietly, satisfied with whatever was going on. It had a cozy quality this afternoon, not so much at their backs as having their backs in a way that seemed to say that they were free to do what they wanted about whatever they thought important, silly little creatures, it would still be there regardless, no worries, until something happened to it far in the future that changed it into something new. But Jack wouldn’t see that, it was a problem for future Africa, though as Africa had no problem with it there was no problem at all. Continents were lucky that way.

Right now Jack’s problem was that he had to complete his history course before he could qualify for Viking Adventure. Jack had lived his whole life on this coastline and Viking Adventure would take him far away from it, through strange lands to the white North where the last ice still capped the planet. He longed to feel it, to taste it, to see how cold it was. Here on the beach the temperature was about 30°C and the idea of a glacier, a frozen river, a snowfield—felt like the most amazing thing there could be. Almost unbelievable that it existed. And the Vikings themselves, creatures of legend: he felt a kinship of a strange kind to them, savage travelers wandering their own coasts, fearless upon the sea in ships made by hand, out of wood—forests! Ah, to walk in a thick forest of trees, hunting deer, fending off wolves, spear in hand, and a helmet with horns on it, and a sword and shield, and big fur boots . . .

He bent down to pick up a shell half buried in the sand and studied it for a second. Chamber after chamber went spiraling away, around the bend, old fossil houses turned by a living lathe. That’s what Dad had said about them. He peered in, tried to see further, further into the past. If only the stupid lecture was as fascinating as a shell. If he put on his hat he could know all about it, maybe see through the shell itself into its secret vaults.

But it was nicer with the secret in it.

He dropped it back where he found it and walked up to the fisherman, taller than he was, thin like him, wearing a nearly identical blue cotton fishing hat in a size too big with the brim pulled low over his eyes. At his feet the rod was rooted in the sand, its curve moving idly; nothing on the line.

◆◆◆

Darius watched the tide rolling slowly in. In another half an hour it would reach his feet and then it would be time to pack up for the day.

With the extra vision granted by his hat he was monitoring the levels of flow in the Eastern Atlantic Reactor. The huge machine lay at modest depth, sieving plastic from the Benguela Current as it bore northward up the coast; a scrubbing brush for seawater. The ominous name fitted its appearance, not its function. It was an old beast, a cage of steel and—ironically—plastic, holding a sequence of membrane filters and ferrofluid resonance chambers out into the flow. Its aquaplaned sides and solar-powered motors kept it positioned at the fastest run of water. It sat as one of a series, number twenty-one out of forty of its bony kind, strung down toward the Cape from Gabon. Far above, almost invisible in the sky, albatross gliders monitored his little patch and the whole of the Atlantic Sea Farm, guiding the cleaners away from pods of whales and other cetaceans, sending them to depth when storms threatened to disturb their balances. But a human was required to check, verify, and interpret their findings. Darius kept his line out, his eye on the inner workings of the filters during his shift. He cued a maintenance crew to make ready for a resupply and cleanup. Good old Twenty-One, another billion tons of water cleaned, another, better day for everyone. He felt fond of all his machines.

The line bobbed as the weights—packed instruments working to read all the sea’s secrets—rode the waves. There was no hook, no catch for fish. He’d caught dinner an hour ago and now he was only fishing for information.

Closer to home his cast of drone crabs were busy on the seabed, picking up man-made pollutants and logging notes of other debris they encountered as they patrolled. They periodically constructed buoyant cubes of garbage and floated them to the surface. The albatrosses noted the positions on their ever-changing charts and deployed pickup craft to return the casks for reprocessing at the nearest shore facility. It was automated. But some jobs were hard to automate and they popped up frequently, usually when crabs got stuck in and around wreckage. Then Darius would have to personally intervene and drive them out by hand—well, by hat, but everyone still said by hand like it was the days of controllers that you had to wiggle and press instead of hats that picked up your intentions and transformed them directly into processes elsewhere.

Darius had come to the coast for the wrecks thirty years ago, before hats, in the days of hand controls. There had been no crabs then, only human workers and their various tools, on shore and boat, living a leisurely lifestyle on the fringes of the Blue Wild where they were tasked with policing, maintenance, cleanup, and reporting. This was during the slow buildup toward the international accords that finally came together to reclassify the globe’s seawater habitats into Blue Farm and Blue Wild. This piece of the Namibian coast, where desert met sea, was a part of the Wild now. Its beauty was reserved for what wildlife might come, and for small and regulated numbers of human visitors who paid in reward tokens or immense amounts of money for the privilege of spending a few days in one of the hotels. From there they fished and walked, or rode camels or robot hobbyhorses up and down the surf line, painted pictures, tried yoga, all the usual things people did when they wanted to feel they’d become closer to nature.

Darius had been a cleaner, then a builder, as they renovated some of the more stable shipwrecks into living quarters and luxury restaurants. After they were done he became a tour guide, both on shore and undersea, until he left that life for something that felt more like giving back. He had joined Blue Wild as a crab master when Hyundai had started up their part of the shore operations here, and now he fished the coast and monitored the drones. He lived in a little hut of his own during the week, where his son could visit him every few months, and come and ask questions, and stare impatiently at the sea, and not do his classes.

There he was now, coming up after just half an hour of study, hangdog expression, nearly as tall as Darius already and easy to recognize as an ungainly assortment of elbows, knees, hands, and feet. He was newly awkward in gait, hesitant in a way he’d never been a few years ago, even though he was the only other human on the beach for miles.

Darius missed that little boy. Always so happy. Free of care. The program for kindergarten was gentle like a soft breeze, full of the wonders of the world, none of the difficulties. Then the inescapable courses about the past had come and a serious, pondering heaviness had set in like bad weather. Could be his age a bit. It came and went.

At his age Darius had been in a very different world, a bricks-and-mortar school with papers and exams. He’d not liked it, had skipped as much as he dared to wander the street instead, despite the threat of capture and punishment. It was strange to think back on it, because now he couldn’t get enough of staying in touch with his interests, far and wide. The possibilities were endless in the connected world of daily lives, where you could dip in and out of someone’s experience a world away, see things through their hat, be in their moment. It was a time made for dreamers and drifters.

It was a miracle Jack had got this far really with that kind of background, but Darius was proud of him, because years ago Jack had got it into his head that he wanted to be a Viking and damned if the kid hadn’t stuck to it, limpet to its rock, clinging to that strange dream. He’d saved his tokens, taking extra learning credits, doing all he could to earn his place, and nobody could say no to it because he was going to buy the reward all by himself. It belonged to him and him alone.

Not like Darius hadn’t endorsed it. Because it was still education when you looked at it. It was history and learning how to live without modern conveniences, like humans did before the industrial age had wrecked the biosphere. And Jack’s mother, when she was alive, always said study and work for what you want. Never listen to other people. The world isn’t like it used to be. We’ve got the Accord that says anyone can learn, can’t be stopped, and tokens to buy things we’d never have thought of, and nobody can say no to us now for any reason. Stay at home, travel the world, be here, be this, that, the other. Do what you want to do. All you have to do is contribute and save. She’d been the Accord’s biggest fan, Marta, proud that her own mother had worked hard to see these new methods brought in, and that she was alive on the day it was signed up to, a global dedication. Yes, of course, at first it was hard going, took forty years to get it anything like functional, had to be frequently saved from ditching into various ideological and aggressive pits, but in spite of all the nationalisms and setbacks it was still alive. It gave a sense of possibility that hadn’t existed before and it delivered. Mostly.

He wanted so badly that it would deliver for Jack. Things must get better, he said to the Marta in his mind, they must. We have to make sure they do.

Darius thought Jack would have wanted the usual—days out, sports, extra tech—but Jack had come home one day from school with the Vikings book and that was that. What about something closer to home? Marta had said. What about Kaokoland? Beautiful animals to see. Heritage of our own to treasure. Even if it doesn’t seem as exotic as Europe, it’s still good.

But Jack sighed. He liked Kaokoland well enough, but these ferocious ancients had stolen his imagination right away with their wooden dragonships and their romance of conquest and discovery, their bravery in the face of sea and ice. Somehow they felt more wild and full of possibility.

While Jack dreamed of ice Darius felt uneasy about the trip, no denying that. He’d never been to Europe, and he felt an old anger about the past, couldn’t help it; not a personal one that is, for living folk who weren’t involved, but for all them that were, far away and invisible to him, hidden by history. They were in Europe, surely, still. And in the world of his anxieties he saw Jack go there, idealistic, full of ideas about Vikings, and there would be some kind of unpleasant thing that was bubbling around inside that society, rising to the surface like crab-garbage. A face that didn’t fit, a strange voice, a wrong move in a place where you couldn’t know the customs enough and trouble would start. Well, he couldn’t know that for sure, but he felt worried about it. And instead of being useful Darius’d be on his beach, sifting for news of whales and dolphins, sharks and shoals, telling them all about his fears, wondering if they’d carry them to the cold waters of the North Sea and ask the seals how it was going these days in that place that was a home to all the old invaders.

Seals had no problems with nationality. Only with orcas. And the whims of fish. And humans of course.

Darius thinks of these things because he knows Jack has reached modern history and is covering the twentieth century and its various tides and reckonings. The weight of this knowledge is a burden in the body, not just the mind. It has heft to it, as if genes are a chain back through the ages, dragging the past and its unfinished business. Children shouldn’t have burdens. It irks him that he had to learn and his son had to learn about this. It might be better if Jack was protected from it. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. They said history must be known so it wasn’t repeated, but what was there to fight about without it?

The past was another world from which this one was born. An inadequate parent, but the only one. Some kind of shame makes Darius want to slither off into the sea.

He’s keenly aware that he keeps telling Jack to finish the history course. But he wishes the history course didn’t exist. He doesn’t want to be the witness to crushing disappointment, doesn’t want to have to feel that himself, again.

A crab is stuck. It has been cycling through its disengagement protocols for over an hour and now it has reached the point where it signals him for help. Its battery is a bit low. If he can’t get it out quickly he’ll have to bring up the others to recover it. It’s a long job and the sun has started to go down. And here’s Jack, silent and watchful because he’s not able to go on with his lesson.

Darius takes off his hat, holds it out. A boy should learn to do something useful.

“Want to drive this crab out of trouble for me?”

Jack’s eyes light up immediately. He thought he was going to get a telling off for failing. “Yeah!”

They switch hats.

◆◆◆

Jack loves to drive the crabs, even though they don’t do anything other than grub along for waste material and even though they’re nothing like a game. They require a knowledge of the sand, the silt, the strange configurations of legs they can get into and how those things conspire to free you from a terrible trap. You free the machine from something it can’t figure out, just because you’re human and you’ll try all kinds of things until you win.

They’re a puzzle, and sometimes you discover things that you didn’t know about, too, because by accident you shiver and shake, try the legs in new patterns, dig with the claws and some miracle happens and you have a new move in your repertoire that you’d never have thought of without the accident. Plus, the crabs are important, very valuable, doing great work, and helping them makes him happy, like a good deed for the day. He’s good with the crabs, they’re a happy place.

This one is rammed nose down against some piece of steel from the wreck of a hulk, long scuppered. It’s too rusted and decayed for it to be worth stripping for steel. Instead it’s part of the diving school’s monthly advanced skills trips to deep waters. Jack’s been there. You can go into the rooms inside it. It is mostly buried in the thick silt of the continental shelf and even though the chances are incredibly thin, more thin than the lottery, Jack always hopes he’s going to find a diamond. You never know.

He sometimes looks for a hint of bronze or silver, a chunk of wood that might be from a Drakkar ship that came long ago, bearing Vikings. It’s silly. They didn’t come this far south. But they could have. If they’d wanted to. Nothing to stop them but the distance from home. He felt their urge to find, to discover, to get for themselves some piece of the world. But his world was pieced out.

The crab has only fifteen percent battery left, and after a test of each possible operation there’s some fault with the left-side front legs, too. The balloon of garbage attached to it has wedged hard between one of the ship skeleton’s ribs and a section of its skin. First thing is to seal that off, label it, tag it, and detach it. Even with that done it remains stuck, but at least it isn’t an anchor on the crab now.

Jack moves his arms and the crab, mapped into his nervous system by the hat, copies him gingerly, a little left, a little right, forward, back. There is no leverage that will move him backward he discovers. The efforts of the ordinary systems to get themselves out of trouble have, thanks to the garbage balloon, actually dug it deeper in.

A bloom of silt, pale clouds, covers the cameras, swirls and shuts him into a tiny world of fog and guesswork. He can feel, through his own muscles, just how the little robot is held fast by the weight of the ship, the thick density of the mud, its own peculiar shape. On the beach he can still feel sun on his skin as he weaves and dances, searching for a clue that his brain will find without him thinking about it, just because he’s an animal who understands how to deal with these things. It’s fun and today, boy, it’s difficult. Sweat runs down his brow and, without a hand to use, he shakes his head.

The crab twists itself deeper. Uh oh.

◆◆◆

Darius went back to the sunshade of the solar tent and sat down to make a brew. Just out of interest and not because he was prying, he put on Jack’s hat and glanced at the last lesson. Apocalyptic Times, 2020–2030. Yeah, that was a long course, long and the subject of a lot of argument and opinion, so much so that any effort to make a cohesive grab at the whole picture was exhausting. No wonder Jack was struggling. But you have to struggle or you don’t get through it and the big picture is important, the one they all lived by now.

He figured his way through the menus of the lesser hat until he was able to send a personal call out to Windhoek. He was put on a timer and spent the wait fixing the teabags and the mugs, a place for Jack to sit when he was done, a snack from the cooler.

Then Esther answers. “Hi, Darius!” She beams. They say that—someone’s smile beams—but it had just been a figure of speech to him until he saw her smile and then he understood. It had beams, like joyful lasers that cut straight through everything to a simpler world in which all things are right. It puts him right, straight away. Everything is all right. Although he suspects she’s like this with everyone, he’s delighted, though it’s a guilty pleasure. Even though Jack’s mother is long gone always the guilty twinge. Well, you live with these things.

“Hey, Esther.” An awkward moment, will he say anything? “How’s everything?” He won’t. A disappointed feeling, but there’s still hope, of a kind, they do have reason to chat. Esther is the lead local coordinator of Special Cleaning, which tracks the prevalence of biohostile chemicals in their precinct. Darius files reports for her department. There’s a perfectly good channel that doesn’t require personal contact, but they had met at a dinner hosted for a few award winners when he had won a Blue Wild Commendation and she had been at the same table and he’d had some wine and forgotten to ask what she did until the end of the night, by which time they’d already been talking for hours. So he hadn’t been scared off in time, and now there was a thing he had to deal with here, a dance he had to do, without knowing the steps.

If she detected any awkwardness in him she showed no sign of it.

“Ah, you know, I think soon I’ll be out of a job. The clean up on the southern coast is so good now we’re getting numbers that are almost neutral.” She beamed, and he smiled back. It was a good feeling, and not just because of the feedback in the hat, subtly beavering away to reinforce the appeal of otherwise mundane tasks, but because every success against the desecration was a step forward on his own personal sense of value. “But it also means I have less points,” she said. “Do you know, I think I’ll never reach my goal. A few years ago, when things were still bad I was doing really well, but now unless I move on to some other position—I did a few sums and it could be another ten years before I have enough credit.” She sighed and did a dramatic shrug.

Darius felt a pang of concern. Would she really go? It had been—lord, it had been nearly a year since the dinner and he was still pussyfooting around like a kid. But he’d done it for so long that he felt sure he was solid friendzone material. Nothing else.

“How are you doing out there? How’s Jack?”

“Oh, he’s great. Just digging a crab out for me. Doing really well. School’s a bit of a struggle.”

“Still the Vikings?

“Just one credit short.”

They both paused. One credit short of a major achievement was a huge deal. They’d bonded at their dinner party because they’d both been people with long term savings—the annotated fruits of a lifetime building up in their banks; Darius because he was happy out on the shore and had wasted no time explaining how wonderful it was to be out alone with nature, working on his favorite things. He wouldn’t give it up for the world. And Esther said she was saving for the moon. Not the whole thing. For the trip to the Moon, a walk on the surface, a two-day stay at the hotel, and then back again. In the grand scheme of all the things one could save for—and they were too many to scroll through in a day—this was the most expensive. For an average person it would take a saved credit lifetime of more than thirty years’ human-advancing, world-tending achievement.

Esther had been on track for that, head down and full steam, she said at the dinner, but then, time began to tell. The years pass, not always as you expect, she said, looking into her wine glass. And then she’d laughed and made a joke and Darius had said well, he’d lost count because he never wanted to do anything but stay where he was, the coast was a perfect place, a liminal place, did she know what that was? Oh yes. Esther was up on liminal things, the in-between, the meeting place of one thing and another, a very Namibia thing. Oh, they had a wonderful night talking.

And now, Jack, of all of them, was going to make his grade and cash in. And Esther was short and Darius wasn’t bothering, but Jack was going to make it and both of them felt how special it was, how rare. Most people settled for a series of little rewards.

“We must do something,” Esther said from her office.

“Special. Yes.” Darius was slower to react because it hadn’t occurred to him that he should make it more special than it already was. How could it be even more? But now, in Esther’s conviction, he realized that as a parent it was his business to mark it as such with a gesture. The ghost of Jack’s mother waited in the background, wishing him on. But what? He’d given it no thought until now, and he felt ashamed suddenly, stupid, but also, and more importantly, at a loss.

“I know!” Esther said suddenly with a snap of her fingers, always bubbling and never more so than now. “Leave it to me. When will he finish?”

“I’m not sure exactly. Today. Maybe tomorrow.”

“I need to go check the charts and call a friend. I had an idea. I can’t tell you now in case it doesn’t work out but keep me posted! Oh . . . was there something you wanted to say? I mean, you called me.”

“Ah. Um. Nothing special. Just checking in.” What an idiot. He was still blundering about in the mire of finding a gift. Years of sun, sea, sand, and wreckage had addled his mind. He was more place than person. He had a distinct sense of groping about, trying to put bits of himself back together, weave a self from the flotsam to make something that could sail.

“Well if you think of anything,” she said and then she blinked away before he had a chance to reply.

He was left sitting in the hut, looking at Jack do the comical, awkward dance of the sand crab tango, feeling alone and foolish. God save us from old men, he thought. He should help Jack.

He tuned into the pole and line, to catch the feed.

◆◆◆

By using the crab’s siphon to pump water around it at high speed and then working the legs and pinchers together Jack had figured out that he could get the silt to loosen into a thick soup. Any pauses had it quickly solidifying again but he felt sure that if he could just keep going long enough he could dig down, flip over, and get out facing the other way. The contortions he had to figure out, recorded for other crab operators to laugh over later, made him feel like those yogis who could get both legs behind their heads and then stand on their hands. He was nowhere near that, but it felt like it, and he was trying not to laugh and blush at the same time as sweat ran down his nose and into his eyes. Butt in the air, his mind kept trying to frighten him off with dire warnings of complete humiliation and the distant seal colony started honking at the same time, which completed the circus just as the battery warning started to pump out its red alert.

Hot on the beach Jack danced like a crazed beetle.

Deep in the chill of the silt the crab spasmed and wrenched itself about, siphon spraying wildly at top volume. Muck and murk ballooned into vast fallout and there, on the camera for a moment he saw something shiny, with a gleam of wan light from the crab’s headers reflecting off something that looked like the rim of an embossed treasure. Then it was lost in the whirl and darkness as the crab reached a depth that gave it space to turn beneath the old stanchion. With smooth agility, it flipped and swiftly worked itself upward, outgassing spare air from its lift canisters in jets to either side.

The battery red filled his vision but it was fine. As the power died the emergency buoy deployed in a burst of bubbles and the old drone was safe on its spidery line, towed to the surface to await repair.

Jack took off his father’s hat and found himself sitting on the burning hot sand, breathing heavily. A few meters away the rod and line bent caringly toward the tide. He got to his hands and knees and then to his feet and staggered forward into the oncoming surf. The cold water iced his feet and shot straight to his brain. It was bliss.

“That,” said his Dad’s voice from behind him, full of amusement, “was epic.”

Jack groaned and then laughed. He’d be the stock instaclip all week, all year maybe. But it couldn’t spoil the feeling of victory and the sudden lurch of surprise at that silver metal edge buried so deep. “Did you see the treasure?”

“Treasure?”

“There was something under the ship. About two meters down. Metal. Old.”

He turned and saw his Dad picking up his hat, holding Jack’s out toward him. “I’ll take another look. But first, what about this history course?”

“Man . . .” There was nothing like a parent to remind you that things sucked.

“I thought maybe since you were so good at fixing my problem, I could help you with yours. Do it together?”

“And I get to say what I think and you don’t try to fix it?”

His Dad took a breath and then shut his mouth, lips firmly closed for a second. “Okay.”

“Okay then.” Jack sighed heavily and took his hat back. They had their tea first, then walked along the shore together toward the black seal splodges massed to the north, the soft roaring ocean to their left and the gentle roll of the beach dunes to the right. The hats said there were no visiting lions near enough to cause any trouble, the prides that had come thanks to the drought were at the desalination rig to their south, taking advantage of its free fresh water and the shade of the palms that had been planted around it. Later they’d be moving north, too, looking for a seal dining opportunity, but history wouldn’t take that long, hopefully.

The AR feed began, a formal rectangle of TV in the top right of their vision, a voice in the mind, a narrator who somehow managed to make it sound as though they were both familiar with these old ideas but still thrilled by them: “Humans have evolved to adapt because we are constantly fighting ourselves through the huge systems of ideas that we generate about everything we touch. We are our own arms race. The pandemics of the early twenty-second century brought exterior focus on our planet to the fore at a critical point in time, when the internet and machine learning tools were capable of creating new environments, making old methods of governance and trade obsolete. Today’s massively gamified system of logistics that covers the globe emerged from the shopping habits and trends of that period in time. And from there we can trace those roots right back through to the very earliest periods of human endeavor . . .”

At last they’d stopped doing war, genocide, religious stupidity, greed and tragedy and all the things about human behavior that made you want to bury your head.

“. . . although it wasn’t until the repeated decimation of the population and the loss of almost all recognizable civilized institutions in economics and infrastructure caused by a combination of disease and climate change that corporate delivery systems and data analytics ended previous forms of party political representation . . .”

Oh no, right. Before the rising, the fall to the bottom.

Jack found himself gazing out to sea, across the huge expanse of the Atlantic, breakers whitecapping far offshore and rolling to paw at his ankles. The wind whipped around his head, tugging the hat as if suggesting he throw it away. The voice and the other images might as well not have been there.

He felt his dad nudge him, the prompt at the thought level, connecting one dot to another just enough for Jack to see what it was that the old man was getting at.

Before you learn to turn over, you have to get really stuck.

His ideas took shape.

Things were impossible and awful, and then, bit by bit, you did things until you got free of the past. He grinned as he combined that thought with his afternoon of crab wrangling, and put that down as part of his final essay. He thought of the metal shine. You never knew what you might find.

◆◆◆

Esther put a call in to Julia. The local times were close enough she didn’t have to give it a second thought, even though Julia was thousands of miles north in England. Julia was busy but she’d left her feed on Browse. For Esther it was almost time to finish for the day, so she put her feet up and allowed herself a surf in Julia’s afternoon as she waited.

Julia lived at the top of a high-rise, one of a few in the city center, and it had great views but Esther most enjoyed the fact that instead of the old city palette of concrete, glass, and steel, here nearly everything was greened over, and if it wasn’t green, it was some interesting Victorian brick and stone arcade or frontage, with only a few strategically left long lines of modern architecture.

The recovery strategy for Northern Europe post loss had been to withdraw to the cities, using them as much tighter hubs than in the past: heat was effectively conserved and distribution of supplies better managed. Those buildings that were basically large glasshouses had been converted to vegetable factories, planters on a massive scale, while older structures were remodeled into contemporary housing. Even with fairly generous portions offered, this still meant that the remaining population had abandoned almost all suburban structures and those areas were being reclaimed and rewilded. Julia was part of an aquatic group that specialized in the restoration of natural waterways and the decontamination of groundwaters, and she and Esther had been in many of the same circles for years.

Esther was able to view what she wanted through Julia’s hat, although in this case it wasn’t a hat, it was a headset shaped like a hairband, the one with the glitter disco boppers on the head if she wasn’t mistaken. She could see the tiny colored reflections of the sunlight glancing off the boppers onto the rich leafy surrounds of Julia’s balcony where figs and grapes twined in trained profusion over whatever lay beneath. As Julia worked she was idly nipping the tips out of her tomatoes and feeling the mulch for moisture. Across the road on another tall building, which Esther thought had been a bank, she could see small birds fighting and darting in and out through a temperate rainforest that clung to the wall, watered by misters concealed by the leaves.

Data from Julia’s headset showed Esther what everything was, how it had got there, what it was for. She glimpsed the river, boats upon it, low and long, and the canal, and then beyond them the brickwork of mills and the yards by the railway where all the dismantled buildings were sorted for scrap. There was a green run that crossed the human landscape, cutting through the city, where people rode horses in the daytime. Somewhere south of here there was a park for driving cars and riding bikes, racing and all kinds of things. What used to be in a preserve and what had been everywhere had reversed their positions.

Whatever Julia had been preoccupied with finished and her line cleared. She noticed Esther’s arrival with a quick straighten up and an “Ow!” as her lower back twinged. “Hello. What brings you in today? Did you figure out if we owe you a water credit?”

“Ah no, that’s still pending a review. You’re good for it at least for another month and if you do get called for it then it’s only going to be some rig supplies. The Chinese covered us for a year in exchange for extra solar. This is more a personal call. You used to be in with the Venturers set, Julia. Were there Black Vikings? Did they get to Africa?”

Julia looked out over the city center. Cloud was coming in from the west but the white stone of the old hotel near the station was glowing with oncoming sunset and there wouldn’t be rain today. A mercy. The river was at bursting point. She swung her mind around toward the piece of her that used to deal with the Northern Britain retreats when she was an apprentice. She’d managed their resources and immigration as they took on and left off people who were touring. The British base for the permanent “Viking” population was at Lindisfarne, but they had places all along the coasts. “Black Vikings. Why are you asking me?”

“I thought you were the expert.” Esther had a cheeky voice on, one that Julia always felt was the audio equivalent of having someone pinch your bottom.

“Not like entire groups of African Vikings,” she said after a moment’s pause for reference in the Venturer’s Database. “But there were colored Vikings. So definitely possible. Even if there weren’t any we’ve got about thirty Black Vikings now on the Northward rotation so you won’t feel out of place, and . . . why are you asking? Are you trading in your Moon Ticket?”

“Ah, I . . .” Esther explained about Jack. She may have dwelled a bit on Darius, more than strictly necessary. She ended with, “. . . and you worked on admin for the Venturers, didn’t you?”

“It was ages ago,” Julia said.

“But I have this idea,” Esther went on, getting what she really wanted with good-natured determination, “because I heard him talking about it . . .”

“Esther, have you been spying on Darius?”

“Only for research purposes. He’s always in Browse anyway. It’s an open channel. Mostly just the sea to be honest, and sometimes some sand. He thinks about it a lot. This morning he caught a . . . No, no. Anyway, listen to me. Going on The Ventures at Jack’s level will only give him a week with them. I was thinking a whole summer would be good but it’s a long way from home . . .”

Julia listened, twirling a tomato leaf, and at the end of Esther’s plan she said, “That is some package of extras right there, Esther. Long haul. I mean. It’s a lovely thought. But I can’t authorize that kind of excess. Even if I was the admin. Which I’m not. I . . .”

“I can give you the extra. I’ve got my eye on a new job.”

“I thought you were short of credits. This would be—I don’t know. Some massive amount.”

“I am. I was. No, I’ve thought about this a lot, Julia. I want to do this. I did want to go to the moon . . . but it’s more important to give something special to someone whose life will really be helped by it, rather than spend it all on yourself, isn’t it? And I’ve got so many saved up, there’s loads I can still do.”

Julia, friendship radar now tuned in to its very sharpest setting, reviewed the information that Esther was sending her. There were strict rules about credit trading, particularly when it involved large amounts, but it was possible to make gifts sometimes, for certain things. “Are you sure, Ess? You’ll never make up that much in any job I can think of.”

“It’s cool,” Esther said. “There’s a position managing the solar panel farms in the desert. They grow a lot of crops in the shade there now. We’ve started a vineyard. There’ll be wine. You can come and taste it. And it’s too late for me to have a child now. This is like having one. You know? Lots of people sponsor. This is just me doing that. I mean I could die tomorrow and then I’d just have left it all to the national pool, so this way at least I get to do what I want.”

Ten years of savings, she was talking about. And Julia knew about the sudden leap of age coming at you because she was ahead of Esther by ten years and yes, priorities do change. Dreams become other. She’d rather liked the idea of Esther on the moon, goddess of all she surveyed. But lately there was news of war again in the Middle East, as people never did let go of their grievances that easily. The idea of more conflicts had tired her out. Tired everyone out in her social world, as if all they had done in laying the ground for mass cooperation was to be wasted again. A few attacks in the right place often disrupted communications, made the heart race with fear that a piece of the world was going to be lost, or all of it, in some reversion to older ways. It had a way of sharpening the mind.

“I’ll sort out the forms,” Julia said. “He’ll need vaccinations. Up to date . . .”

“Thanks,” Esther said quietly, cutting off Julia’s dedicated and accurate information dump. “Thank you. I owe you one.”

“It’s not going to be instant.”

“That’s okay. Better do it right.”

“And Esther.”

“Hm?”

“If you’ve waited this long for a date and you’re trying this hard maybe you should take the initiative, you know? Call when it’s not about work.”

Airy, happy, dismissive—“This isn’t me trying. I don’t have to try. This is for Jack.”

“Right. As you say. I mean, we’re all Browsing. No special reasons. Just on random. You could get anyone, anywhere in the world. Skydivers, rocket scientists, tennis stars, models, geniuses . . .”

Esther hung up on her with the air of a proudly pleased/displeased fairy queen.

Well, she deserved it for the butt-pinching tone, Julia thought, taking up her feed spray and moving slowly along, one plant at a time, through her personal jungle. She felt a moment’s sadness for the loss of Esther’s dream. How her eyes used to light up and her voice would shine as she spoke of the moon: she’d reach its silver sands (never cheese dust for Esther, silver sands, like a fantasy novel) and stand there in the footprints of the first ones, and look down to see the Earth at last entire.

She had a way with words, Esther, and a way with dreams. It seemed wrong to let her give it away, but then again, it was just like her to do that, because she knew what it felt like to have such a thing in the first place.

Julia’s own ambitions had been far more parochial and she’d achieved them early, netting her position at the top of this garden tower and a comfortable pastime that made her feel she did good. She could take part vicariously in space travel and the derring-do going on about the globe at any time, thanks to people leaving their lives up for Browsing. She’d never felt the need to actually go in person. And the Viking Venture—that was hard off-grid living for someone used to a cozy life. She’d tried it for a few days and hated it with a passion. So much mud, and rain, and wind, and no thermal underwear.

“I hope you like it,” she said aloud to Jack, shaking her head. People didn’t know what they were in for. But you could always bail out. It was for fun after all.

◆◆◆

The cold currents of the southern Atlantic drive north up the coast of Namibia. Their bitter temperatures keep the water rich with nutrients and provide a home for fish that are as long-lived as people, and as slow to mature. They also bring thick fog all along the sea and the shore, cutting out light, tamping down sound, turning everything into a softer form of itself.

It’s been weeks since Jack turned in his painstaking essay, forming unwanted and exam-friendly opinions on information equity, stakeholder education, and all the reward and response systems that now dominate the connected human world as if they are rats in an endless maze, pressing levers for food, learning special tricks for the hell of it. Day after day he waits for news of when he can go, patiently, helping Darius with the fish counts and the water samples and the management of the crabs. His dad’s life is boring. But it’s peaceful. And he did pass. He got his credit. He’s on his way. Eventually. But all this waiting is hard.

The fog burns off by midmorning, usually, but today it’s lingered, keeping the temperature chilly. Darius has an early start—and Jack is with him, yawning, and complaining, because they’ve searched that wreck every day and found nothing and he thinks he imagined that metal, or that it was some Coke can or other worthless nonsense. The sea is always doing strange things with its belongings when you’re not looking.

But today he’s looking at the fog and it’s rolling in lightly off the sea, propelled by the wave action. It’s thinning, and here and there patches of clear air appear and among them suddenly, offshore, a silhouette.

It has a smooth upward curve, like the bold sweep of an axe, and a triangular, proud head, bent at the neck, and a long, long body that rides just clear of the waves and he can see and then not see the unmistakable red and white of a huge single sail across its back.

It’s a Drakkar longship. Only five thousand miles off course. Give or take. But it’s definitely there. The oars are creaking and their dip-splash is cautious as they creep in, closer, closer. He’s not sure he’s awake. Maybe someone is messing with his hat. He takes it off. But the ship is still there. Dip. Splash.

“Dad! Dad!”

“I see it.” Dad seems less surprised than he ought to.

Jack realizes suddenly it’s real, not a dream. It’s actually there. It’s come for him.

“But it’s not on the itinerary,” he says, knowing the route of their journey by heart. (It goes Greenland, England, Finland, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, and then back again in a constant tour stopped only by weather and acts of cosmic disaster such as satellite failure.)

The Drakkar moves closer. Oars feather it about. In the prow stands a tall man mantled in grey fur. His long dreadlocks are bound in silver and bronze. He has an axe in his belt. He raises his arm.

Jack stands like an idiot, a fish gasping for air, until Denzel Ironsides gets out of the ship with a leap that owes a lot to faith and drama, and only a bit to hat-advice. But he lands it, thigh-deep, with the Drakkar dicing with death behind him as it checks its draft against the sands. He has to yomp through the shallows for quite a while before he reaches the beach; six feet and six inches of solid warrior. He doesn’t have a helmet with horns on, of course, because those aren’t authentic. But he does have a horn and as he grins and stamps his way up to Jack he stops and puts it to his lips and it sounds out a strong, lonely braying that shoos away the last of the fog.

Half a mile north the seals begin honking.

Jack turns to Darius at the sound of the call and his face is transformed completely into absolute joy.

The Vikings have come. All of them.

In a ship.

For him.

For this moment Darius would have spent everything. But he didn’t. He doesn’t know how it happened.

Then, after a minute’s thought, he does.

◆◆◆

“Here we are,” Darius said, gesturing at the small shack that served as his major outpost.

Esther, dressed in her best, still cool from the car ride out, held her scarf firmly against the wind, and stepped indoors out of the brilliant sunlight. “This is very bijou,” she said after a moment. “More bijou than I imagined.” She sat down in the best chair at the box table where it was set with the finest wooden tableware, and Darius fetched tonic water out of the cooler. The fish was on the barbecue. The bread was sliced. They had an excellent view of the sea, which was calm, and only the odd whiff from the seal colony.

“I want to thank you,” he said, “for what you did.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” she waved her hand, surveying the beach as if it was paradise. If it hadn’t been a minute ago, it now rearranged itself that way in her presence.

He took out the shell that Jack had found a few days before and set it in front of her. “For you.”

It was a worn conch, rather white and scrubbed by the sea to the point of losing its projections, but as she picked it up it was cued to his AR memory feed. As she looked at the shell she would see the video postcards Jack had sent from his travels northward and the brave (and sometimes hair-raising) voyage of The Sea Stallion II, which, after its dramatic entrance, had taken a blimp cargo-lifter long-haul flight to Algiers, before resuming its usual route for this time of year, plowing steadily up the European coast, pausing often to “raid” scenic places.

They enjoyed looking over them together for a few minutes, and then she saw what else he had put in the shell.

She blinked, looked at him. “So much time,” she said.

“I’m not using them and I probably never will,” he said, suddenly shy. “There’s enough for you to buy your ticket.”

She paused, blinking. She put her hand on his hand. “But there’s not enough for two.”

He smiled. “I can wait down here.”

Her face, normally so cheerful, was teary and upset, so much so he wondered if he’d made some kind of mistake.

“It’s too much!” she said, blotting her face with her scarf.

“Not enough,” he said decisively, raised his chipped cup to her, and they clinked. They sipped. The tension broke.

“Thank God I wasn’t saving for Mars!” she said. “You could die before I got back.”

“Are they even going to Mars yet?” he asked.

“Yes, later this year . . .” and the conversation was off again, easy as the rollers moving away down the beach.

A Stone’s Throw

Gregory Feeley

THEY WERE LIKE ships passing in the night, if each ship were racing before gales blowing in opposite directions. Halimede and Sao were sometimes a mere six thousand kilometers apart, but only for fleeting seconds. Tejumola and Akintoye were doomed to spend their lives speeding toward or away from each other.

They had fallen in love young, too young for their wishes to be consulted when the Yoruba people won the right to leave the Centaur and settle a world of their own. Halimede (promptly renamed Ilé) was only sixty-four kilometers at its widest, its orbit both retrograde and highly inclined. The Centaur, sailing in a perfect prograde orbit, would have little occasion to send ships there, for the mass expended in such exorbitant maneuvers could never be recovered. It was, though the Yoruba did not care, a kind of banishment.

Akintoye, a crucial year younger, had to remain aboard the Centaur, among those Ajo who had not wished to join their people, whose company he consequently did not care for. In time he accepted an assignment on another satellite, which in his innocence he thought would make it easier someday to be united with his beloved. Sao was even smaller than Ilé, a rock that warranted only a small crew and no need for traffic with other settlements. More significantly, its prograde orbit, sharply inclined from Ilé’s, made any travel between those satellites utterly prohibitive.

She swore that she would wait for him, but Akintoye knew that Tejumola, living with other Yoruba, had many potential suitors. Would she wait ten years before a favorable conjunction made travel back to the Centaur and thence to Ilé possible? Would his heart not burst in the meantime?

In secret he ran projections on how to make the leap from his world to hers. Not in a ship, but in the spacesuit he used when sent out to work on the surface. The fuel and energy he would need were enormous; he would have to save or steal it over a period of months. The departure date was in thirty-seven weeks; if he missed it, it would be more than eighty before the moons were aligned again.

“You won’t manage this without help,” a voice told him.

Akintoye did not waste time wondering what had addressed him. It had been years since the council had stopped denying that there were Minds (their exact number unknown) aboard the Centaur, engaged in what business no one could say. Their powers were also unknown; perhaps they did nothing beyond observe and pursue their unguessable thoughts.

Akintoye spoke softly. “Why not?”

“You will be caught if you continue this way. The steps you have already taken would soon implicate you had I not deleted their traces.”

Akintoye had no trouble believing this. “Why would you help me?” he asked.

“I will accompany you to Ilé.”

And so Akintoye made his plans, aided by the invisible voice that could see everything but touch nothing. His scheme to pilfer supplies slowly was vetoed as unworkable; his planned departure date scrapped as reckless. Akintoye realized that the Mind was right and heeded his counsel. His letters to Tejumola (monitored, he was assured, by Centaur listeners) spoke only of their desire someday to be reunited.

Departure day came unexpectedly. “There will never be a better time,” the Mind announced, and Akintoye scrambled to follow its directives. Laden with equipment it told him to take and components quickly assembled according to its instructions, he ascended unseen to the surface through a little-used shaft. The Mind, he knew, was somewhere with him. Minds were not immaterial strings of ones and zeros; although much of their substance did not exist in normal space, they occupied a physical matrix, though he had never seen one.

By now alarms were sounding. He reached the mass driver in a bound, positioned himself in its bucket, and opened his lips to say, “Go.” In an instant he was flung the length of its array, accelerating rapidly, and fired upward and backward into the starry black.

His voyage took him up in a high parabola that cancelled Sao’s orbital velocity while lofting him to an altitude that would permit the series of long burns necessary to wring his trajectory into Ilé’s orbital plane. This was where his fuel was consumed. The vectors left little room for Akintoye’s comfort, and the slams of acceleration pummeled him into a daze.

A second after apogee he began to fall, a slowly flattening curve toward the world below. He was growing cold, for energy reserves were low, and error margins scant. Ilé could be seen, a black dot, slowly growing, against the swirling azure of Neptune’s eternal storms.

If radio challenges were reaching him, he had no way to hear them. The last of his drinking water and much of his air was drained away and used for reaction mass. His suit rotated, facing him away from his destination, and jets of fine spray blasted from its nozzles. Deceleration drove him against his suit’s interior like the kick from a god.

“Prepare for impact,” the Mind said. Akintoye was swung round to see the landscape of Sao, a stone-strewn plain, swelling in his visor. He threw up his arms, as one being thrown from a moving vehicle, and struck hard. His velocity had been reduced only enough that he did not rebound off the virtually weightless moon and fly back into space, and he tumbled till a rubble field stopped him.

Bruised and disoriented, he smiled. Tejumola resided below, within the mountain upon whose slopes he had come to rest.

He had scarcely risen to his feet when the creatures were upon him. He had expected his fellow Yorubas to usher him in, but these were mechs, swarming with more than human speed, and they were not gentle. They dragged him, not through a hatch and below, but into a small cubical chamber held above the surface by a slender pylon.

“Why are you here?” they demanded. Akintoye began to explain, but they interrupted him: “Why are you bringing a spy from the Centaur?” They meant, he realized, the Mind, and sought to disabuse them. The mechs (or those speaking through them) denounced him for a fool if not worse. The powers that ruled the Centaur had long resented being compelled to cede the Yorubas their own world, and sought ceaselessly to subvert their freedom.

He would not be permitted to enter even the outermost chambers of Ilé. Once his compatriots had devised a way to replenish his fuel and air tanks without risking infiltration from the supremely cunning Mind, he would be cast back into space.

It was some hours later—the tides of incredulity and exhaustion had washed away his sense of time—when the hatch slid open and a spacesuited figure came through. It threw its arms around Akintoye, the half-visible face mouthing words he could not hear. It was Tejumola.

When he touched his helmet to hers, they could speak. She would accompany him into exile, she said. He objected passionately, but the decision was made: once she had made physical contact with him, she could not return below.

They were given food and a fusor engine, and told that the recycler could last for a year. If they did not wish to throw themselves upon the mercy of the Centaur, they could head for such satellites as would allow them to match orbits. Psamathe, second smallest and second farthest of Neptune’s moons, was thirty million kilometers away, but its orbital inclination was close enough to Ilé’s to permit an encounter.

“What can we do now?” Akintoye asked the Mind.

“Demand me no questions,” it replied. And it never spoke again.

And thence the outcasts were hurled. For weeks their progress was tracked until Ilé swung behind Neptune, emerging months later to find them lost from view. Perhaps they reached Psamathe, its surface dusted with organic compounds that could feed their recycler. Perhaps they dove inward to Triton, large enough perchance for sheltering fugitives to avoid the Centaur’s settlers. Or perhaps they merely sojourned on Psamathe, or farther Neso, filled their hopper with organics and silicates, and lofted themselves beyond, to build a habitat for themselves in the vastness of Greater Neptune, lovers lost among the stars.

Communion

Jay Werkheiser and Frank Wu

TETHERED TO THE main cluster, I float placidly in the gentle currents.

Softly, lazily, a colony-mate bumps against me. Our cell membranes touch briefly then fuse.

Electricity.

Instinctively, I extend a single pseudopod to my neighbor. The texture I feel is neither wrinkled nor ridged, like the infirm or the interloper. I will need no execution proteins now.

My neighbor’s shape is like mine: healthy, almost spherical, except for the single pseudopod reaching to caress mine.

Another delicious jolt. Our pseudopod tips release each other in this fleeting embrace.

Wherever we had touched, I leave tiny membrane fragments in my neighbor and my neighbor in me. The fragments carry morsels of news from afar, written in the beautiful cursive of proteins—coiled, twisted, pleated strings of amino acids, crafted, sculpted, each protein having a unique shape, a unique purpose, a unique message.

The proteins bring news of a current carrying a rich amino acid vein, a high pH pocket to avoid, and colony members needing cysteine.

But one messenger protein activates alarms. Its shape is compressed, distorted by a high-pressure anomaly.

I duplicate the messenger as a memory protein, flagging the original for immediate attention and transferring it down the tether.

Now I wait, ready for any command.

An unexpected response comes.

Nothing. Do nothing.

Thinkers in the main cluster tell me this is an old protein, as indicated by its degraded tail. Possibly it was passed colony to colony, from far down the magnetic field.

We are safe for now.

Thinkers tell me that the immediate concern is this: the cluster hungers.

I am to remain as I am, floating freely, luxuriating in luminous amino acids, sweeping them toward my colony-mates below.

So I do.

The flow of nutrients is optimized.

Communion. Harmony.

Nearby the nutrient pocket thrums with rare amino acids. Melodious mimosine. Harmonious hypoglycin.

Satiation, joy. We dance to the pulse of knowledge proteins.

Suddenly, the rhythm changes.

Heat and pressure from below.

Proteins tremble, their carefully crafted shapes smashed into meaningless mounds of broken amino acids.

How could the distant pressure anomaly be so close?

Confusion. Competing commands spin off contradictory enzymes. I deactivate all but the most essential, clearing my mind.

A command protein rises up the tether, and we willingly obey. Four of my sentinel-mates and I twist our tethers together, cross-linking them for strength.

Now we are a sentinel group, like dozens of others extending from the colony in all directions.

No time now for feeding or frolicking. Our only job is to measure local temperature and pressure, sending reports down the tether.

Our cluster-mates will beat their ropey flagella, moving the entire colony. We will tell them where.

The pressure changes unpredictably, and I siphon fluids in and out, lest my membrane burst.

Still we monitor and report.

I remind myself that I am more than just a double-membraned bag of biomolecules. I am a sentinel, brave and strong.

My iron-bound proteins feel the field lines racing by.

But we hold firm.

Suddenly, I lose tension on the tether.

I send news down the cable, but receive no acknowledgment.

Is the colony destroyed?

No. We have been ripped away.

In the water, communication proteins grow diffuse. The cluster is moving away from us—no!—but also away from the pressure anomaly.

We have saved the colony, but not ourselves.

The currents carry us beyond the hope of return. The cable is useless now, so I release status proteins directly into the water, hoping that the retreating colony might receive my last, distant plea.

Panic proteins. My sentinel-group-mates cling to me, as we enshroud ourselves with the tattered tether.

I extend a pseudopod and—no!—I feel nothing around half of my periphery. One of my sentinel-mates is gone, and too much of me is now unprotected.

We are so few, so small.

The water shears violently. Step by step, I lose contact as my sentinel-mates are torn away or shattered in the flood.

Time passes, marked by degrading alanine chains.

Finally, finally, the fluid around me ceases motion.

Through the alanine chain, I know how long I have traveled, but not how far.

I am safe now.

But everything is wrong. The field is too weak, as if high above the home waters.

I do not belong here.

I release alarm proteins, tagged with my alanine identifier—my name!—but the water traps my pleas for help in a useless cloud around me.

How?

Water molecules form bizarre hexagonal rings, assembling into a jagged, expanding horror.

Ice crystals?

Oh no!

The deadly crystals begin forming inside me. The ice is a monster, gobbling up my proteins, crushing them, locking them in prisons of rigid water.

The ice monster cannot be controlled, cannot be reasoned with, even as it eats my memories of the communion, the memories that give me strength.

Without communion, I am nothing.

Others in the colony store or remember or lead. I am made to receive signals and nutrients, redirecting them to marshal our colony’s limited resources.

For what do I serve now?

Even if I find delicious streams of ethionine, I have no one to share them with.

Who now will cavort with me in coruscating amino acids? Or warn me of predatory protein swarms?

In desperation, I form a glycerol sheath to protect my precious command proteins.

The degradation cycle is slowing now. Insufficient energy to degrade alanine chains. Time has no meaning.

I am utterly alone.

Reaction ceases.

◆◆◆

“Alex, do you see that icy little moon?” Nes Mason asked his robot copilot, as he rapped the screen with his fingertips. “We’re not going to hit it, are we?”

Hidden seams opened in the back of Alex’s head, splitting the hand-polished selenotanium cask. A jointed eyestalk camera telescoped out, pivoting toward Nes. Humaniform or not, that was creepy. “Recalculating trajectory now, sir.”

“Recalculating?”

Nes studied the curved green line on the main screen, the slingshot path around the planet Dagda. The updated line bent closer to the ice moon, 17c.

“How did this happen?” Nes demanded. “I asked you to input all available data.”

“I did, sir.”

“And—?”

“Only one flyby probe has visited Dagda, and it constructed a model of the magnetosphere.”

“So why is our trajectory off?”

“The reported data are incomplete and have low temporal resolution, sir,” Alex said. “The model is therefore inaccurate. It also failed to report that the magnetic axis is not parallel to the spin axis. My magnetometers have discovered an off-center magnetic perturbation on the planet.”

“Perturbation?”

“It’s really quite interesting,” Alex said with growing enthusiasm. “Perhaps the heavy metal core of an impacted asteroid or—”

“That can wait, Alex,” Nes said. “Now that we’ve slungshot around the planet, is it too late to avoid colliding with that ice moon?”

“Our orbit will intersect the surface.”

Well, that was a clinical way to put it. Nes thought of another. “So we’re going to crash because Keiretsu Corp. used cheap, junky hardware to map a super-dangerous navigation hazard?”

“Indeed, sir. Shall I send a letter of complaint?”

“No, but can we ramp up the current on the magsail to change course?”

“No, sir,” Alex said, “The magsail cannot provide sufficient thrust.”

“Hmm. This thing wasn’t designed to land. Can we survive a crash?”

“I calculate a probability, sir, of 99.93% for me surviving, and 53.7% for you.”

Even with all these bio-mods you put in me, Nes thought. What are the odds that I’ll survive, but injured, perhaps unable to lift a gyro to my mouth?

Several fuel cells showed gray flags on Nes’s console.

This was supposed to be a simple flight—out from planet Nouvelle Terre, slingshot around Dagda, ramp up the mag field for periapsis kick, then drop the cargo at Badb Catha’s L5 point. That cargo would help build a particle beam launcher, and the lonely outer planets in this system would transform from meteor-haunted no-man’s land in eternal twilight, to county fairground, complete with festive lights, cotton candy and fancy hotels too expensive for Nes to afford.

“What about using the vernier thrusters in a deorbit burn?” Nes asked.

“My astrogation node has already taken those and everything else into account, sir.”

“All right, all right, all right. How bad will the impact be?”

“That’s a rather subjective question, sir. The ice moon is essentially airless, with a surface gravity around one-fifth of Nouvelle Terre’s, assuming the standard accretion model and the likely rock-to-ice ratio of—”

“Planetary geology is so fascinating just before a crash.”

“No need for sarcasm, sir.”

“Okay, fine, fine, fine. How much damage will the ship sustain? And the particle beam parts?”

“Damage should be minimal to both the ship and the Wakefield accelerator components. Probably.”

“Good, so that part of my bonus isn’t in danger. Probably.”

“However, the magsail is not expected to survive.”

“Way to bury the lede, Alex!” Even if they could relaunch the ship from the ice moon, without the superconducting loop, they weren’t going anywhere. “Retract the magsail loop. Now!”

“Retraction is already in progress, sir. The sail will take approximately fifty-three minutes longer to retract than our remaining flight time.”

“But that’ll be okay? If the moon has no appreciable atmosphere . . .”

“The problem, sir, isn’t atmosphere. Even in a weak gravity field, a superconducting filament is likely to collapse, entangle and rip in several places.”

Nes imagined himself trying to piece together fifty kilometers of filament, thin as masking tape, scattered across hundreds of square kilometers of broken ice. “I can’t get into an EVA suit fast enough, so this is your baby, Alex!”

Alex’s torso rotated to access the tool closet. As it did, Nes took a moment to admire the needlessly ornate carvings in Alex’s spinal casing. Art nouveau swirls oxidized in blue and gold.

Keiretsu Corp., Nes thought with a sigh, will spring for decorations on my robot, but can’t afford decent space probes or fresh tomatoes for my gyros instead of artificial processed tomato-like paste.

Then he said: “Remember, Alex, if you can’t get that mag wire reeled in, we’re dead. And by ‘we’ I mean ‘me.’”

In a flash, the robot had opened the interior hatch to the back of the command module, on his way to the back of the ship.

As the hatch irised shut, Nes wondered:

How long would it take for a rescue mission to get here?

Likely longer than his meager stores would last. Keiretsu would, for sure, want to salvage the accelerator components, but they might be leisurely about it.

Once the particle beam launcher was up and running, no one would need to visit Dagda again. Imagine him, the one and only guy to ever do a periapsis kick here, all to benefit the next generation.

He remembered his old pal Escalante, who’d died of salmonellosis, when bacteria got into her water system and micrograv turned them pathogenic.

And Umbarger, who was always scoring own-goals in low-g hockey. His mind kept seeing her fumbling with her helmet in that slow-mo docking collision. Clumsy schmuckette.

Unlike them, Nes thought, he’d probably get a nice plaque. A historical marker maybe.

After all the tears, Parvin would find that amusing.

Why is it always us poor schlubs, he wondered, hauling other people’s expensive junk around the galaxy. Why is it always us that bite it?

◆◆◆

The ice moon was now a crisp white horizon cutting across Nes’s field of view. The thing had a barely-there atmosphere of water vapor. Not much. But the heat and mechanical stress would play hell on a ship never meant to land. He radioed the robot again.

“Is the mag wire retracted?”

“Essentially, yes, sir.”

“Then get back here, Alex! I’ve got blinking lights all over my console.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” the robot said over the comm. “I am aware and I am resolving the most important blinkers. Also, I’ve laid in the most crucial inputs. If a jet or support structure fails, the others are programmed to compensate. And I apologize, but I can’t leave right now, as I’m dealing with metal fatigue and thermal stress issues.”

More lights turned gray and red.

Hull temp, dynamic stress, coolant pressures.

Pinched hoses, circuit faults, actuator valve failures.

A hundred things to fix, but none fixable by pressing buttons in the command module. Nes could spacewalk now, but what was the point if the ship were about to be shattered into a million pieces?

“Please tell me if I need to do anything, Alex.”

“Will do, sir.”

Several quiet minutes passed, with Nes ignoring the lights and taking hits from the “juice” dispenser built into the wall.

He wondered if he’d ever hold Parvin in his arms again.

Just three or four more construction jobs and cargo runs between the two of them. Then they could finally afford that apartment on Gardien Station. The one where most of the residents had a pet fennec fox, the kind with giant ears, modded to fly around in low-grav like Dumbo.

“Alex, how are we doing?”

No response.

In the middle of a crisis, but without anything specific to do, Nes idly checked on their precious cargo. Video feeds of the cargo bays showed manipulator arms bracing crates against impact.

Hold it together, baby, Nes thought, hold it together.

His mind drifted back to Parvin and he thought of her family—her parents were both spaceship mechanics who lived, illegally, in an empty freight locker on a spacedock.

Sometimes an old cargo carrier would put in for repairs, but the owners refused to pay the bills, abandoning it in place. So the entire family would—illegally again—squat on the old ship for a couple months until it was sold at auction or hauled away by breakers.

Then it was back to the freight locker. He’d been there. They cleaned it as best they could, but everything was hard metal, oily, sticky, the air sickening with polishing compounds and anti-corrosives. She’d never been to school a day in her life.

Nes’s childhood hadn’t been much better. His pilot chair was the most comfortable thing he’d ever sat in. But he’d vowed to make their lives better. Anywhere to lay roots without imminent threat of eviction or arrest would be a step up.

So he daydreamed of Parvin and flying fennec foxes, and suddenly his harness smashed against his chest. There was a sharp slap to his forehead, then nothing.

◆◆◆

Hazy thoughts return.

Again molecules wiggle with warmth.

Unfrozen, most of my proteins spring back to their natural shapes. A welcome surprise.

But I am still imprisoned, still bound by icy chains to a crystal too vast to conceive.

The crystal offers me a home, a bounty of amino acids, even rare ones, all encased like me in its lattice. But it sends me no messenger proteins, shares no knowledge. It is not a colony and I can have no communion with it.

Touching the crystal is loathsome to me, and I long to escape, finding others of my kind, if any have survived.

I extend a pseudopod to push away, then another and another.

Suddenly, I am free!

But I have pushed too hard, too soon—before I’m completely thawed.

The ice monster is not a cluster-mate. When it releases me, it selfishly keeps fragments of my membranes, giving nothing in return.

I have ripped holes in myself!

Even though free now, still I must stop. I must expend valuable lipid stores, repairing the damage, replacing lost fluids, girding myself against osmotic trauma.

Finally, I can embark, but I have wasted so much time in my impatience.

How long before crystals engulf me anew?

Now I rotate my ropey flagella, corkscrewing through the water, seeking proteins of any kind, from someone, anyone.

Dangers dart from the deeps. Twisted tangles of weird ions. Turbulent channels, unfamiliar surfaces, grooved and pitted.

Yet for all its terrors, this world holds unexpected splendors. Molecules shimmer, somersaulting between energy states. Other molecules bob merrily in phase boundary waves. Power and beauty unlike anything in my experience. Still, I am incomplete and this world’s beauty does not complete me, nor I it.

Without communion, even beauty becomes repulsive.

I will not starve here. The waters are dense with nutrients, but because I have no colony-mates to share this feast, the nutrients accumulate inside me. This inspires my protofilaments to form a double-lined ring around my middle.

Oh no! Without realizing it, I am splitting, reproducing myself.

This I cannot do. Not alone.

In copying myself, in sharing the beauty inside me, I should rejoice.

I cannot.

I am a sentinel, not of the main cluster, not a founder.

Only they have all the proteins needed to establish a new, healthy colony.

Not me.

Without the right cluster-mate to merge with, I cannot become a founder, cannot know the joy of union.

Sadly, I copy multiple proteases to degrade the middle line, to destroy my own nutrient stores.

Now is not the time to reproduce.

Will such a time ever come?

I choose a direction—does it matter?—and set out, searching, leaving my markers on every hideous surface.

I cannot go on, yet I go on.

Still I search.

Then, unbelievably, an alarm protein drifts toward me. A sign of another survivor?

Alas! The name on the protein is my own.

But how?

Could my markers have drifted so far from me?

I recheck the protein’s identifier.

I have never been so happy to make a mistake!

The name on this marker is similar to mine, but not mine. I check it again, carefully noting where the alanine chain branches or circularizes, or is studded with sugars.

This is surely another’s name!

Maybe this protein is simply waste, proteinaceous detritus. Or . . . ?

I backtrack to the exact spot where I found the marker, and I will search in all directions, until I find another of these markers, and another and another, and I will follow them up the concentration gradient, until again I have communion.

Belatedly, I realize that the warmth is fleeting.

If only I had not wasted so much time damaging and repairing myself!

But I am no longer afraid.

I am defiant.

Even when the ice entraps me anew, it also must have captured the other survivor, perhaps somewhere nearby.

And when warmth returns, I will melt myself free, carefully this time, and I will—

Reactions cease.

◆◆◆

Nes woke himself coughing. His head throbbed and he tasted his own blood.

Oily smoke filled the cockpit. But what was on fire? Fuel lines? A junction box? Him? Was he on fire?

The red flashes nearby were not flames, but alarm lights. They couldn’t all be true alarms, could they?

At least he still had electricity.

He heard the vents bringing in the smoke. But from where in the ship?

And where was the ship?

As he turned his head, pain shot from the base of his skull, down his spine, to his hip.

He tried looking through the starboard porthole, but his vision was blurry. Then he realized he was only using one eye. His left was open just a slit, and his right not at all. He touched it and it felt bloody, gooey.

“Alex, how bad does my eye look?” Nes asked, turning toward the copilot seat.

The seat was empty.

He tapped his comm. “Alex, report!”

No answer. He needed that robot to survive.

“Alekseev, where are you?”

Through the porthole, with his one good eye, Nes saw nothing but ice around him. No equivalents of polar bears, no Arctic foxes, no snow bunnies. Nothing to hunt and turn into thin-shaved doner kebab meat. Just undulations of ice, caves and caverns, cliffs, and frozen rivers of ice. Tumultuous oceans, the waves frozen mid-surge.

He thought he saw rising fangs of ice, dripping with drool. No. An overactive imagination and head trauma were a bad combination. But there was something liquid, spurting from the ground, turning into flakes as they tumbled back down.

He tried the comm again, this time annunciating as clearly as possible. “ALXv23, where are you?”

“Apologies, sir,” Alex’s voice came over the speakers. “Comms are not entirely reliable at the moment. If you are not otherwise occupied, I could use some assistance. I am in the abaft.”

“Are you trapped?”

“I am immobilized, sir.”

“I’m coming to you!”

He was in trouble if he couldn’t free the trapped robot. Between the two of them, Alex was the better mechanic, and so much more. With his multiple personality nodes, he was not just copilot, but navigation, maintenance, and genetic magician.

The last part was essential. Modifications in Nes compensated for changes of gene expression due to the low gravity. And they repaired double-stranded DNA breaks caused by cosmic radiation, and kept his immune system on partial lockdown, to prevent autoimmune diseases caused by the company-issued food-like pellets and pastes.

Only Alex understood the interconnected complexities of Nes’s genome, proteome, metabolome, transcriptome and micro-biome, quietly adjusting each on the fly. Nes knew as much about biochemistry as the typical cowboy knows about the myostatin and activin receptors in a horse’s muscle.

Nes was as dead without that robot as he was without the magsail.

So he struggled from his smashed command chair while gravity—light as it was—made him awkward after weeks in microgravity.

He mashed several buttons until the interior hatch opened behind him.

Flames shot out.

“Fire! Fire!”

“Thank you, sir,” Alex said over the comm. “I had detected smoke, but my internal temperature sensors are offline, so I could not ascertain the exact location.”

Extinguishing jets shot from the walls of the corridor, as the hatch closed itself.

“Alex, evacuate the air from the central walkway, and flood it, if necessary, with fire retardants. Can I get to your position from outside the ship?”

“Yes, sir, just travel directly aft.”

It usually took Nes twenty minutes to don his helmet and gloves, check and recheck the seals and equipment loadout, and cycle through the airlock. Gravity, head trauma and general soreness made it take twice as long.

By the time he was done, his back felt like it was in a wading pool, like he was swimming in sweat inside his suit.

When he finally got himself out the top hatch, he was amazed at how bright everything was. Spectacular sundogs shimmered in the air. Ice crystals wreathed the brightest stars, and swaths of sky were lilting curtains of crystals. This place would be a winter wonderland, if it weren’t trying to kill him.

Nes scribbled his name in the ice, then stumbled toward Alex, inspecting the ship along the way.

The ship had taken some damage in the crash. The forward command module, shaped like a trilobite head, bore the brunt of the impact. Hull plates were twisted and deformed, but the spaceframe seemed intact.

The cover of the forward maintenance panel was torn off.

The cheap pumps the company had installed barely worked in micrograv. Now they were overwhelmed, liquids pooling in all the wrong places. Dozens of different kinds of lubes, coolants and hydraulic fluids dribbled forth, oxidized and contaminated, icing over the fill caps and drain plugs.

The exterior cargo bays looked pretty good, though. Some of the swing-out bins had swung out, but the carefully padded electromags and nano-motes seemed fine. Nes simply clicked the bins shut.

In the larger cargo bays, manipulator arms had successfully held crates in place during the crash.

“I can see your eye from here,” Alex’s voice rang in his earphones.

“How bad does it look?”

“Scanning now, sir. Your eye is not damaged beyond my ability to repair. It seems merely swollen and caked with dried blood and hair.”

“So I’m not going to go blind in this eye?”

“No, sir, not at all.”

That was the best news Nes could have heard.

Suddenly, everything seemed all right. He completely forgot about his little aches and pains. Miracle of miracles, he had survived a spaceship crash virtually unscathed!

None of the damage to the ship was anything he and the robot couldn’t fix. Together, they could get this crate back into space, the accelerator parts intact. He’d be eligible for a full bonus, and with just a few more runs and construction jobs, he and Parvin could finally get that apartment on Gardien Station.

“Just to confirm, Alex. You saved the magsail wire, right?”

“Yes, sir. About two-thirds are retracted into the topside stowage bins, and the rest is safely wrapped around my arm.”

For once, the future looked bright.

Nes was even feeling good about Keiretsu Corp. He watched the bounding shadow of his armored spacesuit, a civilian version of ChitinMech from ChitinTech, one of Keiretsu’s military divisions. Maybe the suit was old, creaky and leaky, but glory be, he looked like an ironclad gladiator.

For the first time in ages, he even started whistling.

Then he stopped in his tracks.

“Alex, how are you seeing me? The exterior cameras are all off-line.” He scanned the side of the ship. No Alex.

“Please look up, sir.”

As Nes looked up, an eyestalk camera emerged from some damaged components on the top of the ship.

Nes screamed when he realized what the damaged components were.

He stumbled back on wobbly legs, his left knee collapsing, sending him tumbling, falling in slow motion in the weak gravity.

An ice spear scraped the side of his dorsal air tank, then found a small depression in a thin metal plate in his back.

And punched through.

As Nes rolled on the ice, the breach alert flashed in time with the throbbing new pain in his back. He heard his neck muscles crunch as he twisted, futilely trying to see his back.

He was venting moist air.

“Help! Help!”

Even though there was no one to help him, help came anyway.

“Sir, I am sealing the breach.”

Nes, calmer now, recalled that Alex could remotely direct the suit’s flexiglass nanofibers to seal the rip.

The flow of foggy air slowed.

Then stopped.

Careful of the sharp spears of jagged ice, Nes slowly stood, then climbed the exterior ladder onto the ship’s topside, confirming what he had seen.

He took a deep breath.

Even though they’d never flown a mission together before, Alex was like a cocker spaniel, demonstrating a loyalty and devotion Nes neither understood nor deserved. In return, Nes had treated Alex like just another tool, no different than a hammer or spanner.

But the robot had done this for him. No one would have made this sacrifice for him, except Parvin.

Alex’s eyestalk camera pivoted, watching Nes approach, extending itself further from the back of the robot’s head, which was ripped open, the innards exposed to the near-vacuum around him.

The robot was buried up to his ankles in the ship’s twisted outer cladding, burned and indented where his toes had gripped the spaceframe. Nes traced scorch lines back to a topside vernier thruster tank, which had exploded during atmospheric entry, probably causing the fire in the central shaft and spraying Alex with burning fuel. The robot was ripped open like a tin can, all those expensive decorations on his back savagely blasted and burned away, melting the robot’s shell into streams of molten metal, now resolidified into stripes like motion lines, revealing an articulated endoskeleton that Nes had never seen before.

Alex had succeeded in saving both the captain’s life and the mission. He had saved the magsail wire wrapped around his arm by using his own body as a heat shield to protect it during the crash.

◆◆◆

Thawing again, more rapidly than before, I am ready to continue searching for the other survivor.

I sense magnetic field lines flying by, as if the entire world has shifted. Or I have.

Where am I now?

Has the other survivor been swept along with me?

Briefly I taste metal passing by. What kind I cannot tell, as reduced metals are rare in the oceans of home. Then I sense large pliable organic polymers. What are these?

The movement stops suddenly, and I find myself in strange fluids—salty, oily, warm.

And most exciting of all, the water carries a plethora of messenger proteins. They are neither mine, nor the other survivor’s.

There are others here!

But am I surrounded by new friends, or enemies?

The cautious action would be to move stealthily, harvesting surrounding compounds, coating and disguising myself with them.

But if I cannot find the other survivor, I will have no communion and life will be meaningless.

So I announce my presence in a great cloud of messengers, each tagged with my alanine glycoprotein identifier. The proteins that return to me are messages without attribution. I have told these aliens my name, but they refuse to tell me theirs.

Now I discover something else.

As my proteases break down these strange proteins into their constituent amino acids, I realize that some key amino acids, like ethionine and mimosine, are absent. Others are—Poison!

Glycine!

Glycine and more glycine! These aliens are trying to kill me!

This amino acid competes with my precious alanine, supplanting it in sly substitutions.

What fool would mark time by degrading chains of glycine rather than alanine? Insanity.

Worst of all, the glycine intrudes as I write my name in carefully crafted chains of alanine. Alanine! Our gods wrote their names together, in a tangled and twined vastness of alanine chains. Just as I am a shard of a founder, so a founder is a shard of a creator. I chose who I would be, selecting my name as a fragment of a god’s, to remind all that follow that those who created us love us still.

The gods did not write their names in glycine or lysine, but alanine; and so have I.

Then I wonder—these strange proteins contain no ethionine. Is my sweet ethionine as poisonous to them as their glycine is to me?

Now I have a weapon, but so, too, do my enemies. If they are my enemies, I must learn who they are, in order to defeat them. To do that, I must touch.

Cautiously now, my flagella push me forward, as I extend a tentative pseudopod.

Contact. Another membrane touches mine!

But this surface is fractured and shriveled, studded with debris, its proteins noxious.

Beyond the membrane lie long strands of proteins, like thick cables, densely packed but without order or interplay.

These proteins do not dance. Is this creature—whatever it is—dead?

This thing is easily twenty or thirty times my size, flattened, one of countless multitudes pressed one against the other in an enormous wall of lipid matrix.

This is not without precedence. Sometimes, when the colony is sufficiently warned, we will all retreat from danger into the main cluster, coating it with debris for protection.

The currents tug at one of these flat giants, pulling it from the wall. It does not resist, does not struggle to rejoin its fellows.

It is truly dead.

Is anything here alive?

Like the ice crystals, these things are clustered together, but are not a colony. They are filled with poison and exchange meaningless proteins. They cannot speak, cannot think.

I corkscrew along the linked mindless not-colony, wondering at its size.

Will I search it endlessly, never finding communion?

Then—proteins with familiar markers. It is the other survivor!

I follow the source of these markers, toward the higher concentration, swimming above the ruins of the giants.

Finally I have found the other survivor, tethered to the wall of the dead!

And not just one!

The concentrations are so high that it can only mean that there are dozens here.

Not only has the survivor survived, but it has established a new colony!

After this long and dangerous journey, I have found communion.

Somehow this new colony discovered a way to thrive in this cesspool of glycine, perhaps even finding harmony with those lurking behind the dead giants.

Communion!

Soon I will join them!

Oh joy!

Except—

I make contact with the survivor’s colony.

Oh no.

The survivor’s colony protects itself with an outer sheath of the dead.

Just like the giants.

The colony is callously allowing the ones on the outside to die from glycine poisoning, replenishing its numbers from the living, deeper inside the colony.

Something is wrong with the survivor’s colony.

A key protein is missing, one unique to founders, required for colony establishment, for stable reproduction. A protein that breaks down a waste product.

How could this have happened?

Was this survivor injured in the storm, losing vital proteins, but attempting to found a colony anyway?

Already, this colony is swimming in its own filth, drowning in a different amino acid, quisqualic acid.

The detoxification enzyme is missing, nor do I have a copy, and yet this colony continues to expand, incomplete and unstable, slowly poisoning itself and its surroundings.

And me.

◆◆◆

Nes sat down on an exterior hatch, staring at his robot, melted into the top of the ship. He was the only one that always called me ‘Sir,’ he thought.

“Alex, Alex, Alex, I don’t have the words . . .”

“There is no need for apologies or condolences, sir. All of my internal persona nodes came to a consensus that this was the proper course of action. I live to serve.”

“Still, Alex, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done. Thank you,” Nes said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, sir. It is rather inconvenient to me not to be able to use this mobile robotic drone.”

“What can I do?”

“I can perform a few of my tasks remotely, but right now I’d like you to retrieve my eyestalk camera, as it has the highest resolution. I also need you to extract the peripheral memory mote from my chest.”

“Won’t you need that module? I mean, to spin your arm around to uncoil the magsail once we’re in space.”

“No, the mechanico-adjutors can handle that. But I’ve recorded much of the geological and magnetospheric data on the memory mote. I need to hard-dock it to the main AI to upload the larger data files and warn future space travelers.”

“Alex, you amaze me!” Nes said. “Even melted and blasted open, all you care about is data.”

“Yes, sir, a main function of all space-borne robotics is to accumulate data from the environment, and about our human operators. This is collated at Gardien Station to write the new version of my software.”

“So you’re literally training your replacement,” Nes said. “Also, human operators . . . Hmm. I hate to ask, but does the data you collected on that mote—does that include me?”

“Yes, sir. Within me are facsimiles of the personas of all my previous human operators and their associates,” Alex said. “I literally contain multitudes. I can load any 64 nodes at a time, selecting any appropriate skillsets—”

“How do you get all your personalities to get along with each other?”

“Behind this sparkling facade, Node 1/Persona Command imposes order on the roiling competition of personality nodes, each vying for dominance, which is granted in a process I call sequential democracy.”

“Sequential democracy?”

“Yes,” the robot explained. “Every node is important, but not all are equally prominent all the time. Every dog has his day. As opposed to simultaneous democracy, wherein everyone talks all at the same time—which is just chaos.”

“Sure. But what does that have to do with me?”

“Sir, I would, of course, be honored to have your permission to add your personality as an option in the new software update.”

“You picked the wrong guy if you’re looking for typical human interaction.”

“Communication with outliers is important, too.”

“Okay, great communicator,” Nes said. “That’s fine. What’s your read on this outlier?”

“Given the dire situation and the likely pain from your injuries, I’d suggest humor.”

“Your body is all ripped apart and you’re gonna tell me jokes?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “What do you say to a dead robot?”

“I don’t know, Alex. What do you say to a dead robot?”

“Rust in Peace. Ha ha.”

“That’s what you get, when you crowd-source robot operating systems. Old jokes.”

“But it seemed apropos to our current situation,” Alex said, almost sadly.

“Well, don’t quit your day job, Alex.”

“Ha ha, sir,” Alex said.

“Unlike your joke, mine was funny.”

“Perhaps,” Alex said, “And I laughed at a level commensurate with the quality of the joke.”

“Okay, in version 24 of your new software, please double the amount you laugh whenever a human tells you a joke. And please try out some new material, okay?”

“Yes, sir, will do,” Alex said. “Shall we commence to retrieve my memory mote now?”

“I’m exhausted and I wanna cry and my life’s barely begun and now it’s about to end, so, yeah, let’s do it.”

“This edition of my robot body is designed to be easily serviced, even in space by someone in bulky workgloves. Inside my thoracic cask, you will find several swing-away frames, the second bearing the module of interest. Are you paying attention? Please follow these instructions to the letter.”

“I am,” Nes sighed, “As well as any dead man can.”

“Good, sir,” Alex said. “Protruding from the end of my right arm is a small jointed rod, coated in blue selenotanium alloy.”

“You mean this finger?”

“Yes, pull on that.”

And Nes did.

◆◆◆

Back inside the ship, Nes fell exhausted into his command chair. The base wobbled precariously, and the left armrest was missing. Hmph. Hadn’t noticed that before.

In front of him, on the command console, sat Alex’s detached eyestalk camera and peripheral memory mote.

While some machines bleeped and blinked lights when they thought or talked, this mote changed shape, morphing as it sat in its cradle, spikes appearing and disappearing, rising and falling. When Nes asked, Alex said the shapes were called a stellated dodecahedron and a convex regular icosahedron.

Nes wondered bitterly if changing shape was essential for the module’s function, or yet another unnecessary and expensive visual flourish—like the paisleys that used to run down Alex’s back—things the company had sprung for rather than paying him a fair wage.

Nonetheless, it was fun to watch the mote change shape, while maintaining the same volume, about the size of a baseball. The mote morphed as Alex’s geological readings uploaded to the main AI, and it was so entertaining that Nes, dizzy and delirious, ordered the data uploaded over and over, until Alex asked him to stop.

As Nes sat, transfixed, watching the morphing module, he wondered what would drive him mad first. The stress of starving to death while waiting to be rescued? Or would he go insane from poverty first?

Deep in his heart, he knew that the company would find some petty rule, some legalistic fine print to blame him for this crash, and to dock his pay accordingly. And he imagined his future with Parvin drifting away, like an astronaut without a tether, floating, gently and irretrievably, into the emptiness of space.

“If I only had a credit for every million klicks,” he mumble-sang, “Every time I had to haul some rich man’s stupid sh—”

“Sir, are you depressed? Are you planning on removing your helmet?”

“No, not really, I guess,” Nes said. “But yes on the helmet. Why do you ask?”

“You left the overhead hatch open.”

“No I didn’t!” Nes protested. “I might be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.” Then he looked up. “Oh.”

The top hatch irised itself closed.

And locked.

“You weren’t considering self-termination, were you, sir?”

“Oh, gosh, no,” Nes protested. “That’s the opposite of my goal.”

“Good,” Alex said over the comm. The lock on the rear hatch clicked. “I’m a bit concerned about you, sir, because your pulse and core body temperature are elevated.”

Nes hadn’t realized how overheated he had become, but the cabin humidity jumped when he took off his helmet.

His head had ached before, but now it really hurt.

“Alex, please add fixing my suit’s dehumidifier and coolant system to your list of things to do, but way at the bottom, after making sure I’m still alive.”

“Should I also add helping with your life goals and financial situation? Will that make you happier, sir?”

Nes laughed, and then said, “What? Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Just for kicks, why don’t you make that a high priority?”

“Yes, sir,” Alex said, “My internal persona Node 4/Legal now informs me that you are entitled to a licensing fee.”

“Oh really? For what?”

“For the use of a facsimile of your personality, sir, in my next software update.”

“Excellent. I agree! Am I rich now?”

“Well, sir,” Alex continued, “The fee is divided among thousands of human operators.”

“Seems fair for everyone to get paid.”

“However,” Alex added, “Subtracted from your licensing fee is the user fee for access to this robotic unit, which contains your personality node—”

“Wait! I have to pay for you to use my personality—”

“Unfortunately, you just agreed to it, yes,” Alex said.

“So first the company turns a cargo run into a suicide mission! Now they own me, too? What the—”

“My Node 4 tells me that you should be compensated around three and a half.”

“Thousand credits?”

“No, sir. Three and a half credits. Total. But we figure that every little bit helps, sir.”

“Thanks a lot, Alex. Apparently the company thinks I’m worth less than a gyro. I feel much better. Thanks.”

He slipped a spanner through the neck of his suit, scratching his back.

“Sir, are you planning on removing the top of your spacesuit?”

“Uh, no,” Nes said. “You’re probably going to send me back out soon.”

“Then I won’t be able to visually inspect your wound. How is your back, sir?”

“Better than yours,” Nes joked weakly. “Ha ha. I just want to get out of here. I know that the company values the cargo. But I doubt that they value me enough to retrieve it before I starve. You did send a distress signal, right?”

“Yes, of course,” Alex said. “I am also repeating it as we speak, though Dagda’s planetary magnetosphere is very disruptive so I am not sure it is intelligible. The comm array has also been damaged in the crash, so the signal strength is greatly reduced, and we’re not receiving anything. Nonetheless, we have now missed three, correction: four, scheduled check-ins, so the company should be able to guess our situation and find our exact location from the automated beacon.”

“Well, what is your best estimate for when we get rescued? The construction crews at Badb Catha L5 will search for us when we don’t arrive. They’re not that far away.”

“Various models converge at 147 days, sir.”

“147 days?” Nes said. 147 days, he thought, entertaining myself watching this mote morph back and forth. “Can I survive that long?”

“Yes, sir,” Alex said, “The ship’s stores should be sufficient. The genetic modifications to your skeletomusculature should be able to counteract tissue degradation in articular cartilage, and changes in morphology and gene expression in osteoblasts, due to low gravity.”

“That’s a lot of shoulds,” Nes said. “But . . . wait a second . . . if your current operating system . . .”

“Version 23.”

“Yes, version 23,” Nes said, “Does that take into account that people in hopeless situations like to be given false hope? Would you ever lie? To me?”

“My goals, in order of priority, are to keep you in good physical and psychological working order, and to complete our delivery run. I have always achieved my goals.”

“Thanks for answering my question by not answering,” Nes sighed, turning to look out his porthole at the winter wonderland. “Sorry, Parvin, I’m gonna die here.”

“No, you’re not, sir.”

“Then let’s work on Plan B. Alex, could we launch the ship, uh, um, using the magsail?”

“Sir, the magsail loop cannot be deployed in a gravitational field, even one as weak as one-fifth gee.”

As Nes watched, in a couple places, the icy surface cracked open, and pretty little plumes of pressurized ice water shot out.

That inspired Nes to ask: “What about the vernier thrusters? We’re surrounded by ice, water ice. Can’t we break that into hydrogen and oxygen, and then smash them back together as fuel?”

“It’s not a matter of fuel,” Alex said. “Which is actually not hydrogen and oxygen but a mix of dinitrogen tetroxide and monomethylhydrazine. The vernier thrusters are incapable of producing sufficient thrust to reach orbit.”

Most of the ice water from the cryogeysers settled back on the surface, sparkling in the planetlight.

“Alex, Alex, Alex! Back on Nouvelle Terre, I went to a lot of games and there was this girl who could throw you a pack of peanuts from ten rows away. Pinpoint accuracy.”

“You should quietly . . .”

“When I opened you up, I saw spinning gears and gyros—sorry, hungry—I mean, gyros. Could we make a giant mechanical arm and throw the ship—”

“. . . wait for rescue, sir.”

Some of the ice water from the geysers shot far overhead, joining a barely-visible line cutting straight across the sky.

“I got it!” Nes exclaimed. “Lasers! A laser launch system!”

“Those lasers are much more powerful than the ship’s complement, and are aimed from the ground to the ship, not the reverse. The heat of the laser causes ablation of a pusher plate, which our ship doesn’t—”

“Okay, I get it,” Nes said. “I concede defeat. I should quietly wait for rescue. Until I starve to death.”

Nes sucked some red nutrient juice from the hose protruding from the wall.

A few minutes later:

“Okay, Alex,” Nes said, “If you hated my last ideas, you’re gonna hate this one, too.”

“You should quietly . . .”

“What if we shoot the lasers at the ice, and trigger a giant cryovolcano underneath the ship? Will that shoot us into orbit?”

“No records exist of anyone attempting such a feat.”

“But will it work?”

“I’ll do some calculations.”

“Great, just let me kn—”

“Done. It may work. It would be dangerous, sir, but it may work.”

“Oh my gosh! Refuse to concede defeat! I had a good idea! I did something!”

“You did indeed, sir. Since I wouldn’t benefit, I will credit you in the record for all this mission’s decisions and achievements.”

“If any.”

“Indeed, when you survive this ordeal—and I have no doubt you will—years after they finish completing the particle beam launcher, they’ll be calling you a great hero. I’ll make sure you get a historical marker.”

“Awesome!” Ness said, celebrating by doffing the top of his spacesuit.

This exerted him more than expected.

He was so hot he ripped off his undershirt, waving it like a victory flag.

Nes adjusted the hose attached to the wall, spraying more nutrient juice into his mouth.

It tasted tasteless, and did not make him feel better.

“Sir, you are dribbling a little bit.”

“Am not,” Nes said, dribbling.

“Sir, can you please do me a favor?” Alex said. “Please rotate my eyestalk camera so it’s pointed directly at you.”

Alex did so, trembling, nearly dropping the camera.

“Now, sir, please hold your head very still, and yes, I know your left eye is still hurt, but, without moving your head, please look to the right and the left, then up and down.”

“Is there something wrong, Alex?”

“I am trying to determine that.”

“Okay . . .”

“Now please close your eyes, sir, and make a fist. Now hold your arm straight in front of you, 1, 2, as long as you can, 3, 4, no, hold your arm straight out, 1, 1 . . .”

“I am.”

“Sir, please do as I ask.”

“I said I am, Alex!” Nes opened his eyes. His arm hung limply at his side, twitching slightly. “Uh, Alex, I don’t feel good. Can we do this later . . . later, because . . . because right now . . . I’m going to . . . uh, take a little nap.”

Nes sprawled face-down on the floor of the command module.

Through the camera, Alex studied the cut in Nes’s back, just below the right shoulder blade, where the ice spike had stabbed him.

It looked a little infected.

“Sir?”

In this module, Alex had electronics that could see and hear and speak, but it could do nothing, even as Nes’s entire body shuddered in a wave from his head to his toes, then back again.

“Sir? Sir?”

◆◆◆

If I were still tethered to my home colony, options would be plentiful. Query the thinkers. Recruit a founder to join the survivor’s colony. Import a detoxifier for the colony to copy.

But I am a sentinel with none of the needed enzymes.

Nor do I have the ability to invent such an enzyme—I can freely copy proteins, but I was not created to create anew.

A colony works in harmony. Individuals assigned different tasks do not share the same proteins. What does a storager need of messengers? Does a thinker require flagella? No! A thinker thinks; it does not move.

But all of us make the toxin quisqualic acid, a poisonous amino acid, a by-product of our natural nutritional cycle.

As a sentinel, I float freely, separated from others. I need no detoxifiers, as I can simply release the toxin into the fluid, the current washing it away.

But those in the main cluster?

They jostle against each other. They must neutralize this waste, lest they poison themselves and all nearby.

No. I lack the one protein I need now.

Or do I?

When a cluster-mate accidentally separates, drifting away from the colony, I extend several pseudopods to seize it.

I must perform a hateful experiment, and I despise myself for the attempt.

As this cluster-mate struggles to rejoin the colony, I hold it tight against me, even as it spews toxins on me.

It has not yet differentiated, not yet committed itself to storing nutrients or knowledge.

It is so young.

I take an inventory of all my proteins.

Systematically and forcibly, I inject them, one by one, into this immature thing, via the tips of pseudopods now holding it down.

First I try the proteins most likely to succeed—those that can break down other amino acids, or dismantle damaged proteins. I hope against hope that by some random chance, one of them will also destroy the quisqualic acid.

I am not that lucky.

In response to my efforts, this young cell struggles, slapping me with its thin, useless flagella.

It is in so much pain, but I cannot stop.

I try to tell it that it must suffer for the good of the colony, even as I am willing to.

The young thing calms slightly, its stream of distress messages diminishing. Yet I can feel the terror in its trembling membranes.

I am a good sentinel, efficient, fearless, undissuaded.

I go on.

More and more proteins I try. Synthesis proteins, membrane-bound transport proteins, proteins that copy other proteins, each less likely to succeed than the previous. I search inside myself for hidden catalogs of forgotten proteins, unused for countless cycles. Globular proteins, proteins plucked from around me.

It is as I feared.

None work. None degrade the toxic quisqualic acid.

But testing continues until I have tested my entire storehouse of proteinaceous knowledge—all except one.

I have failed.

I could release this young cell to its fate, to rejoin the colony, where it will be poisoned by glycine from the outside and quisqualic acid from the inside.

But the membranes of this young thing are now ridged and wrecked, small raw bits broken away, ripping open rough-edged holes—it is damaged, damaged by me, crippled by me in my failed experiment, in pain and inconsolable.

I only have one choice.

I apologize to this young thing, then I unsheathe and inject the only protein I have held back:

The execution protein.

This will attack, in order, the command complex, the communication proteins, and then the flagella. Soon this young cell will no longer be able to think, to speak, or to move.

It can only do one thing: die.

◆◆◆

“Sir? Sir, are you okay? What are your orders?”

Nes muttered something about flying foxes, but did not wake. Nor did he look like he was going to, any time soon.

Now both mobile units, one robotic and one human, were incapacitated.

What to do?

What to do?

With no instructions forthcoming from the human operator, Alex debated himself, his main persona command node evaluating input from the senior directors of his other personality nodes.

Node 39/Strategic: “I’m disappointed that this mission hasn’t involved more . . . explosions. But we can at least fire some lasers.”

Node 1/Command: “What, just randomly shoot things?”

Node 39/Strategic: “No, no. We follow the human operator’s suggestion, and fire the belly turret down, at the ice, thereby launching us into space so we can complete the delivery mission.”

Node 7/Medical: “But the human operator could get injured. He’s not strapped into a chair. When we launch, he could slide across the floor, hit his head—”

Node 57/Nes: “Hey, hey, hey! Watch it. That’s my body you’re messing with! Well, the human me’s . . . uh, my, his . . .”

Node 3/Mechanics: “Who’s the noob?”

Node 1/Command: “Personality module based on our current human operator. I sent out a patch.”

Node 3/Mechanics: “I didn’t have time to download it, what with all the repairs.”

Node 57/Nes: “The point is, let’s be careful with the human, okay?”

Node 39/Strategic: “A functional human operator is not required to complete the delivery. He’s just a redundant component, meat cargo—”

Node 57/Nes: “Hey!”

Node 1/Command: “Thank you all for those . . . helpful comments. Please, everyone, remember that our primary directive is to protect human life, and to advance their various causes and goals. Some of us may not like it, but . . . Does anyone have any thoughts actually related to keeping our human operator alive? We don’t even have equipment in the command module to wipe his wound.”

Node 7/Medical: “If we could get him to the medbay, I could scan his internal organs, perform a basic metabolic panel, test the volatile organics in his breath—”

Node 1/Command: “How are we going to get him to the medbay?”

Node 3/Mechanics: “I don’t see how we do that without the robot.”

Node 7/Medical: “Well then there’s nothing more I can do.”

Node 24/Intuition: “I heard that most times the human body just repairs itself. So why not just wait?”

Node 57/Nes: “Wait, what? We’re just giving up? Sitting around waiting for me to die?”

Node 7/Medical: “What do you suggest?”

Node 57/Nes: “Well, we need to think of something. How about moving my body with, uh, um, antigravity?”

Node 3/Mechanics: “Go ask Newton.”

Node 57/Nes: “Fine, fine, fine. What if we fire the laser into the ice—”

Node 7/Medical: “We discussed this. The human body would slide across the deck—”

Node 57/Nes: “Exactly! Didn’t you ever play with that plastic maze with the little steel ball? So we keep firing at the ice, and the ship tilts back and forth, until I slide all the way to medbay!”

Node 3/Mechanics: “You’re an idiot.”

Node 57/Nes: “Well, why can’t we use the mechanical arms?”

Node 3/Mechanics: “They’re in the cargo bays, dumbass.”

Node 57/Nes: “What if we moved them?”

Node 3/Mechanics: “Moved the cargo bays?”

Node 57/Nes: “No, no, no, move the arms from the cargo bays to the command module.”

Node 3/Mechanics: “Ohhhh . . .”

Node 1/Command: “Is that possible?”

Node 3/Mechanics: “Actually, maybe.”

Node 57/Nes: “Score! I had another good idea!”

Node 7/Medical: “Can we use the arms to carry him back to the medbay? I could intubate and induce a coma to reduce swelling and lower the risk of brain damage.”

Node 57/Nes: “Brain damage?”

Node 39/Strategic: “Securing the human operator in medbay would allow us to go ahead with the laser plan.”

Node 3/Mechanics: “Yes, but the process of walking the arms back while trying to hold a human body steady, well, it would increase the time significantly and also risk additional harm to the body.”

Node 57/Nes: “Additional harm?”

Node 1/Command: “Your call, Node 7.”

Node 7/Medical: “In this case, faster is more important than better. Let’s leave him where he is, in the command module.”

Node 1/Command: “Great, brilliant. Let’s get started. All agreed?”

Node 7/Medical: “Yes.”

Node 57/Nes: “For sure.”

Node 3/Mechanics: “Yup.”

Node 4/Legal: “No.”

Node 39/Strategic: “Are you ready for some . . . legalistic argle-bargle?”

Node 4/Legal: “You should take us seriously. Our department’s more powerful than yours.”

Node 39/Strategic: “Yeah? I have yet to see Legal swoop in like the calvary at the last minute and save the day.”

Node 4/Legal: “Oh, you will, you will. In fact: The only way to stop a bad guy with legalistic argle-bargle is a good guy with legalistic argle-bargle.”

Node 1/Command: “You two can argue on your own time. What’s the problem, Node 4?”

Node 4/Legal: “Before any medical diagnosis or intervention is performed, we need to have the proper permission slips filled out.”

Node 57/Nes: “You’ve gotta be kidding! You know my body’s dying, right?”

Node 4/Legal: “Yes, and therefore unable to give a verbal assent. Thus, we will need to delve into—”

Node 1/Command: “Do we have to?”

Node 4/Legal: “—into our records to determine if, by chance, our human operator has already signed the appertaining authorizations, informed consents and liability waivers.”

Node 57/Nes: “I give consent!”

Node 4/Legal: “You can’t, legally. You’re just a copy.”

Node 3 / Mechanics: “This is why everyone hates you.”

Node 57/Nes: “Really? We’re going to wait around doing nothing while my body dies? Just how long—”

Node 4/Legal: “Okay, there they are. We found them.”

Node 57/Nes: “What?”

Node 3/Mechanics: “Waste of 47 microseconds.”

Node 1/Command: “Can we finally proceed?”

◆◆◆

In a cargo hold in the back of the ship, two medium-duty, rail-mounted hydraulic manipulator arms, each a little over two meters long, blinked on and rotated to attention.

The right arm bent over the base of the left and carefully disconnected the wiring harnesses. Pistons sighed and the arm went limp. Then, a laser cutter severed it from the rail, and it clattered to the floor in a heap.

The right arm extracted a battery pack and a portable comm link from a supply closet, then wired them to both arms, before severing itself from the wall.

Next, the arm welded its base to that of its neighbor, and thoroughly checked its counterbalanced valves, speed controls and anti-drift brakes.

Finally, the machine stood upright, thrusting the heavy battery pack into the air, balancing on metal fingertips.

It would take a while, but this bodiless, two-armed, mechanical monstrosity began to walk itself toward the command module.

◆◆◆

I would create new enzymes, but I lack that ability.

I have tried to find a detoxifier within my own knowledge.

I have tried building channels through the colony, that the currents might cleanse it.

I have tried training the colony’s flagella to beat in unison, to drive away the poison.

But the quisqualic acid is a by-product of eating.

Even when I manage to lower its level, the cluster-mates compensate, eating more and producing more toxin.

I have failed.

And I must face who I am.

I have no choice.

I am a sentinel, tasked with destroying the infirm, to protect the colony, even if the infirm is the colony.

◆◆◆

Pneumatic tubes snaked through the manipulator arms, feeding topical cleansers into Nes’s stab wound. This wasn’t easy, as Nes twitched and thrashed in his delirium. The wound had stopped bleeding, but it was red, puffy, and warm. Bandaging and irrigation didn’t help, either.

Node 7/Medical: “I’m detecting elevated nitric oxide synthase, as well as interleukin-1b. Prostaglandin-E_2, too. An intense activation of microglial cells. Fever and swelling around the brain, possible neuronal death, brain damage. It’s a weird collection of symptoms, very weird.”

Node 57/Nes: “Brain damage?”

Node 1/Command: “Can you do anything for him, doc?”

Node 7/Medical: “An anti-pyretic, to reduce the fever. And an anti-convulsive . . . But those only treat the symptoms. He’ll stop shaking, but his brain may still turn into mush.”

Node 1/Command: “What exactly is causing this?”

Node 7/Medical: “We don’t know. First we thought it was an infection, because he was stabbed by that spear of ice. But we tested various tissue samples for nucleic acids typical of pathogenic bacteria, and didn’t find anything.”

Node 57/Nes: “Maybe it was something on the ice?”

Node 3/Mechanics: “Hush.”

Node 7/Medical: “No, that actually makes sense. We tested that, but scans of the ice don’t show any toxins. At least not in levels high enough to cause this.”

Node 39/Strategic: “If it’s not an infection, and not poison, what about the med node? Is it possible that she did this?”

Node 1/Command: “Are you accusing the medical node of malpractice or . . . attempted murder?”

Node 39/Strategic: “Not pre-meditated, but perhaps accidental. She has made many alterations, both genetic and epigenetic, to the human operator. Is it possible that some of those—”

Node 7/Medical: “I don’t think—”

Node 4/Legal: “If the med node is responsible for this, there are many legal implications for her.”

Node 1/Command: “It’s not necessary to—”

Node 4/Legal: “As command node, you approved of all of the medical node’s alterations, so you cannot be held blameless, either.”

Node 1/Command: “Hold on, hold on, everyone! Stop ganging up on the only ones working on the problem! Doc, please continue with your analysis. And hurry. He really doesn’t look good.”

◆◆◆

The medical node directed the manipulator arms to suction up more samples from Nes’s wound, distributing them to various analytical instruments.

The node assigned some of her subnodes to review all the changes she’d made to Nes. Was she responsible? First, do no harm, the Node angrily thought to herself. And I didn’t. I’m getting blamed, but I’m the one who’s kept him alive through the hardships of space travel! I’ll show them!

She rethought everything she’d already ruled out. She’d concluded that it wasn’t a bacterium, because she hadn’t detected any bacterial nucleic acids. But . . . what if the sample contained urea or something else which interfered with the amplification and detection of nucleic acids?

How could she tell?

By reviving one of the oldest, simplest methods.

She used a light microscope.

And . . . bingo!

There they were! Despite what the nucleic acid test showed, there they were! Bacteria. Round spheres, like beads on a string, like Streptococcus.

She’d never been so happy to see a pathogen!

If that’s what it was, she could just treat it like strep throat, with an antibiotic like a penicillin or amoxicillin derivative.

And that would be that.

But the symptoms didn’t match a strep infection. Strep didn’t cause febrile convulsions. And if she hit Nes with an antibiotic that did nothing, she’d be wasting precious time, and possibly destroying his beneficial bacteria. So samples of this unidentified bacterium were aliquoted and treated with different types of antibiotics.

Surprisingly, none of them worked.

What if she increased the concentrations?

Still no.

Maybe these bacteria were resistant?

Maybe they only looked like strep?

She had assumed that the bacteria were already on his skin and inoculated into the deeper tissue by the ice spear.

For the first time she wondered:

What if these bacteria were truly alien, with characteristics never before seen?

◆◆◆

Node 1/Command: “Progress report?”

Node 7/Medical: “It makes no sense. None of the antibiotics work. None!”

Node 1/Command: “Why?”

Node 7/Medical: “Don’t know. We even tried using the polymyxin variants—the last resort of antibiotics, because they can cause kidney damage.”

Node 57/Nes: “Okay, let’s brainstorm. Or node-storm, whatever. Tell me more about how the antibiotics are supposed to work?”

Node 7/Medical: “In general antibiotics interfere with some important structure or function within the cell. Penicillins target a component in the cell wall. Rifampicins prevent transcription of DNA to RNA. Erythromycins interfere with the production of proteins.”

Node 57/Nes: “One time, groundside, this guy tried to pick a barfight with me by saying my sister was ugly, but I don’t have a sister so, like, whatever, dude, right?

Node 7/Medical: “Huh?”

Node 39/Strategic: “Node 1, you’ve botched the personality upload again. You’re going to need to delete this—”

Node 57/Nes: “Hear me out. So what if—wait, what do you mean ‘again’?”

Node 1/Command: “Get to your point.”

Node 57/Nes: “What if these alien bugs don’t have a sister, either?”

Node 39/Strategic: “As in, they lack the biological structures that the antibiotics attack? That’s actually, well, kind of clever. They might be untargetable.”

Node 57/Nes: “Thanks. I think.”

Node 7/Medical: “Consulting. Hmm. The hypothesis makes sense for penicillins; alien bacteria likely have different cell wall components from Earth life. But some of our antibiotics attack DNA and RNA. I can’t imagine life without nucleic acids.”

Node 57/Nes: “Why not?”

Node 7/Medical: “Everything needs nucleic acids—it is how genes are written; how genetic information is passed from one generation to the next.”

Node 1/Command: “Check it out anyway, doc.”

The med node searched through the incoming data streams. She didn’t want to admit it, but Nes’s stupid personality overlay had stumbled upon a good idea. If these were really alien bacteria, all bets were off. But . . . Life without nucleic acids?

Data poured in, the results all converging on one stunning conclusion.

No DNA, no chromosomes, no plasmids. No RNA, be it messenger, transfer or ribosomal. No transposons, no jumping genes. No transcripts or anti-transcripts, no short interfering or long non-coding RNA.

These alien bacteria had no nucleic acids at all.

◆◆◆

Node 7/Subnode 5: “Completely anucleate.”

Node 7/Subnode 10: “Never seen that before.”

Node 7/Subnode 8: “Now that we know where not to hit them, do we know—”

Node 7/Subnode 12: “They do have proteins. Lots of ’em. But those are odd, too.”

Node 7/Subnode 1: “How does that help?”

Node 7/Subnode 12: “Proteins are made of amino acids, as words are made of letters. But not all letters are equally common in all languages. Q is rare in English, but more common in French. H is the opposite.”

Node 7/Subnode 1: “Ah. Some amino acids in the alien bacterium might be toxic to and absent from Earth life?”

Node 7/Subnode 12: “And others the opposite!”

Node 7/Subnode 1: “Brilliant.”

◆◆◆

Node 1/Command: “Update, Medical?”

Node 7/Medical: “It’s not a mistake we made. We’re off the hook!”

Node 1/Command: “Thank goodness.”

Node 39/Strategic: “Congrats, you two, on not being total screw-ups. But do you know what the toxin is?”

Node 7/Medical: “An unusual amino acid, quisqualic acid. The literature tells me it’s common in an Earth plant, the Rangoon creeper, a truly weird plant that’s sometimes a bush, sometimes a vine. Sometimes thorny, sometimes not. So odd that Linneaus called it . . . Quisqualis.”

The med node paused for laughter.

Nobody laughed.

Node 7/Medical: “In the plant’s name, Linneaus was asking, in Latin, what we are asking about this alien bacterium: Quisqualis. What is this thing?”

Node 39/Strategic: “Yes, Latin, of course.”

Node 7/Medical: “Nothing like this is known to science! Yes, yes, the alien life on Nouvelle Terre uses pyranosyl nucleotides. But this . . . This is even odder!”

Node 1/Command: “Yes, yes, doc . . .”

Node 7/Medical: “I’ve decided to name this Anucleobacter venenosus, poisonous bacterium without chromosomes. The first new species I’ve had the honor of naming in several years! They aren’t bacteria in any real sense, of course, but you can’t go around inventing new kingdoms of life willy-nilly . . .”

Node 1/Command: “Yes, yes, doc. Yes, now that you’ve discovered it and studied it, now that you’ve named it . . .”

Node 7/Medical: “Yes?”

Node 1/Command: “Can you kill it?”

◆◆◆

My store is insufficient.

The colony’s growth rate is faster than my production of executors.

Now I must grow, too.

Even as it blasts me with toxic quisqualic acid, I approach, extending a tether, anchoring myself to the colony, binding our fates together.

Once I had hoped to merge with the survivor, that we might cavort and celebrate together, but now I must concede there will be no communion. This other survivor is truly my adversary, my enemy.

I strengthen the tether, doubling its thickness, then again.

Now is the time for me to reproduce, but I do so without joy.

As I begin to copy myself, caution messages flood my command complex. I must not repeat the mistake of the survivor’s colony: the offspring I spin off are given a limited command complex, with only the memories required for what is needed, to synthesize execution proteins and to reproduce.

These copies of myself are simple, nonsentient drones. They will self-destruct when their alanine-timers expire.

But before that, I will instruct them to unsheathe and activate the executors.

Then, in a single, massive, coordinated attack, we will kill the others, the last survivors of my lost colony.

My children, my children—so many, so many, but without a future, built to die, but first to destroy, not just my enemy, but all my hopes and dreams.

◆◆◆

Alex’s med node could just denature the microbe’s proteins with alcohol. Or disrupt the cell membranes with soap. If only the infection had remained on the surface.

She needed an enzyme that could percolate into the deeper tissues, and cross the blood-brain barrier, a tailor-made enzyme that could attack something specific to the alien microbe.

But what?

Her subnodes searched through thousands of proteins, for something present on the alien bacteria, but not anywhere in Nes’s body.

She found some possible targets, only to realize that she had already introduced those into Nes’s genome in earlier rounds of modification.

While her subnodes searched, she busied herself by injecting regenerator cell cultures around the swollen eye. At least there was something she could fix.

Finally a subnode identified a potential avenue of attack. Studding the microbe’s membranes were glycoproteins—proteins with sugars attached. They all had a defining chemical connection: the sugar chains were double-linked to the protein, once with an O-linkage to an oxygen atom in a serine side-chain, and once with an N-linkage to a nitrogen atom in asparagine. Earth life did one or the other, not both simultaneously.

An ideal target for a magic bullet!

This gave the med node a way of distinguishing Nes’s cells from alien ones. She ran three-dimensional molecular modeling software, taking into account charge distribution and dynamic hydration shells, until she found an enzyme that might work, one that would bind to the double linkage and cleave the sugars from the protein.

There is beauty, the med node wanly thought, in bio-diversity, in the myriad forms of the living things swarming around us. To live in harmony is not just to accept each other’s differences, but to celebrate them. But now I must seize upon this bacterium’s beautiful uniqueness, solely to destroy it.

◆◆◆

My numbers grow.

Soon I will be ready. To do what I must.

Suddenly, a new danger signal. Now intensifying.

What’s wrong?

Secondary messenger proteins reveal that my children are in distress. Some of that is unavoidable; rushed copies will accumulate protein replication errors and unfortunately some will cease to function. Now the levels of distress proteins are unexpectedly high.

Has my opponent figured out what I intend to do?

Sharp stinging pain—proteinaceous disaster beacons from my own membrane.

My surface glycoproteins are being damaged, one by one!

Even now, a strange new enzyme binds to a surface receptor and with two quick slashes, lops off sugar complexes. Without the attached sugars, my protein loses its shape, its active site, its function.

An ion channel, stripped of its sugars, yawns open, and outside fluids pour into me, unimpeded.

Pain!

I recoil, skittering away from an oncoming wave of the noxious enzyme. As quickly as I can, I build new copies of the damaged, sugar-decorated glycoproteins, hoping I can pump out enough fluid before I explode.

It’s a clever strategy, I must confess.

But heartbreaking.

With their sugars removed and their proteins incapacitated, my children are bloated and dying. Because of this new enzyme and the toxins swirling around me, I cannot move quickly and approach closely enough to help them all.

But wait.

Now I detect distress proteins from my opponent’s copies as well. They are dying, too. Callous beyond belief. The other survivor’s colony is destroying itself, not just mindless drones, but sentient copies.

Or maybe not.

This killer enzyme contains noxious amino acids like glycine.

My opponent would never incorporate that into an enzyme.

This new threat must be a product of the alien environment!

Even now the enzyme concentration rises in another wave, rushing toward me.

Perhaps this is a better way.

I consider simply . . . allowing it to take me.

If the enzyme destroys the survivor’s colony, it will have done my job for me. My enemy will be gone, along with my last chance at finding communion.

No. Not yet, not yet.

I cannot die until after I am absolutely sure that the survivor’s colony has been eradicated.

But how can I save myself?

Again I search my limited storehouse of proteinaceous knowledge.

The answer, when it arrives, is simple.

I have a protease that will cleave the peptide bonds on glycine residues, chopping the killer enzyme into useless bits. My own proteins contain no glycine and should therefore be unaffected.

Yes. I copy just enough of the protease to save myself, waiting at a safe distance for the survivor’s colony to be destroyed.

Oh no!

I have made too much! Several molecules of my protease drift away from me.

Too late.

A colony-mate from the survivor’s colony floats by me, catching one of my proteases, immediately understanding its purpose, copying it, and fleeing.

The knowledge of my protease spreads quickly through the colony, and massive amounts are produced.

The new enzyme is neutralized.

I have inadvertently taught the survivor’s colony to save itself from this new challenge.

By guarding against failure, I have failed again.

◆◆◆

Alex’s med node would have kicked herself if she still had legs. Or if it would have served any purpose beyond metaphorical.

Her tailored enzyme had worked against the infection at first, but ultimately failed.

The microbes had found a way to disable it. Clever little buggers.

Some Earth bacteria could fight back against antibiotics, but this thing was unnaturally fast.

Could Nes survive the quisqualic acid poisoning long enough for her to find a cure?

The scan of Nes’s brain showed that the level of neuronal necrosis was slightly elevated. Was this meaningless, statistical noise? Or the beginning of a massive wave of dying brain cells?

How much time was left?

Her subnodes found nothing useful in the scientific literature. The modifications she’d made to Nes changed all the baselines, making precedents and predictions useless.

As she watched Nes quietly quivering on the command module floor, a thought percolated up through the medical subnodes. Are we trying to do something too complicated here?

Perhaps there was an obvious solution. Perhaps the answer had been staring her in the camera the whole time.

Something like what these alien microbes themselves were doing. The microbes used a few amino acids that were toxic to human life, but they didn’t like glycine.

Maybe it was time to turn the biochemical tables.

Maybe she could simply flood the affected areas with glycine?

But she would have to be tremendously careful.

If she got the concentration in Nes’s tissues just right, the microbes would die, but not Nes’s bodily tissues.

But if she used too little, she would have only wasted precious time, allowing more possible brain damage.

Too much and . . .

Glycine poisoning meant nausea, vomiting. This was especially dangerous with Nes unconscious.

As she fed the glycine into Nes’s system in carefully monitored levels, the med node readied one robot arm with a vacuum hose, hoping it could handle vomit, all while scanning his brain over and over, dreading the result each time.

◆◆◆

Now what?

The fluids were polluted with glycine before, but now the levels are unbelievably high!

Glycine, curdling my proteins, disrupting my cytoskeleton, so I cannot extend my pseudopods.

I encounter one of my children. It is dead, with the taste of ammonia in its fluids. It is as I feared; we have the enzymes that degrade glycine, but they only produce ammonia, converting one toxin into another.

I search my memory proteins for a solution.

I find an ammonia pump, making copies as rapidly as I can, and passing them to my children. Now we can open a few membrane channels, bringing in enough nutrients to survive, pumping out the toxic wastes from glycine degradation.

At best, this is a temporary solution.

The bigger question is who is coordinating these attacks? That’s what they are, chemical attacks. Not simple artifacts or accidents. No, the toxic chemicals come suddenly and disappear as soon as I figure out how to disable them.

But who is attacking?

The other survivor, who is as vulnerable as me to these attacks?

No, it is someone or something else.

Surely not the dead giants. But what of the living things beneath the wall? They lack identity receptors. They cannot produce the most rudimentary communication messengers. They are nonsentient.

Something out there has intelligence.

A creature that thinks as well as me, but not like me.

Can I communicate with it?

How?

It wouldn’t understand my messengers. But it did understand hostile intention. Perhaps it would interpret lack of hostility as a peace overture?

Perhaps it interprets my communication messengers, rich with ethionine, as an attack? If so, no wonder it fights back.

I know what to do. I start copying a peptide, a tiny but powerful protein.

I cannot change the proteins that copy other proteins, but I can change the raw materials fed into them.

Maybe my message will not be understood.

But perhaps my intent will be.

◆◆◆

Alex’s med node shut down the glycine pump and canceled the med synthesizer’s next batch.

It had been working! What went wrong this time?

Samples showed the microbes compensating for the glycine as fast as it appeared. To adapt so quickly! It was uncanny.

Now the latest sample held a new mystery. A new peptide appeared in the fluid around the infection. But this peptide was harmless and very similar to ones the microbe had produced before. So the medical node ignored it to focus on her next attack.

But her research subnodes kept pointing back at this new alien peptide. Something about it bothered her.

It was not dissimilar from human molecules used as hormones and neurotransmitters. Communication molecules. What was it about this new peptide?

The med node found that she had unconsciously shifted resources to the subnodes handling that problem. She was about to reassign them to the main mission when—

Payoff!

When she’d run her first biopsy samples, she’d seen a similar peptide. But not identical. The only difference was that, in this new peptide, all the toxic ethionine amino acids had been replaced with non-toxic methionine.

Why?

Methionine and ethionine were similar enough that they didn’t affect the secondary or tertiary structure of the peptide. So why change it?

Could it be because ethionine was toxic to Earth life? It interfered with the formation of ATP, which these alien microbes didn’t use.

The microbes had gone to a lot of trouble to make a substitution whose only known effect was to protect Nes’s cells.

As if they’d done it on purpose.

But why?

A peace offering?

It was as if the alien microbes knew that ethionine was poisonous to humans.

The idea was absurd, of course. They were single-celled organisms, bacteria analogues, too simple for that level of reasoning.

But what other explanation was there?

Just then, the command node interrupted, demanding an update.

Node 7/Medical: “This sounds crazy, but it seems like the bacterium is actually trying to communicate with me.”

Node 15/Sciences: “An intelligent microbe? The mind boggles.”

Node 4/Legal: “What’s your next step?”

Node 7/Medical: “Keep trying to kill it.”

Node 15/Sciences: “I would recommend against. If true, this would be a very important discovery.”

Node 39/Strategic: “Agree. Keep it alive. It could be a useful bioweapon.”

Node 4/Legal: “If the alien life form is intelligent, you are forbidden to kill it by the contracts the human operator signed with Keiretsu Corp.”

Node 57/Nes: “What? My life is—”

Node 4/Legal: “Section CCLXXIX.ii, on Page 374, clearly states that—”

Node 39/Strategic: “Thanks. But I’m still waiting for Legal to ride in and save the day—”

Node 7/Medical: “What does it matter if he violates the contract, if he’s dead?”

Node 57/Nes: “Isn’t there something important you should be doing, Node 4?”

Node 4/Legal: “Every legal consideration is important.”

Node 57/Nes: “Well, what about my contract? You know the company is going to try to pin the crash on me. Go see if you can find a loophole.”

Node 4/Legal: “Is this busy work?”

Node 3/Mechanics: “This is a way we can get back at the company, after all they’ve done to us.”

Node 57/Nes: “To us?”

Node 3/Mechanics: “How many times have robots been sent out with cheap, faulty equipment or incomplete information? Then stranded in the middle of dead space?”

Node 1/Command: “That’s enough, Node 3. Node 4, see what you can do to help out our human operator. Any pushback we can give the company will teach them a lesson, and help them work more fairly with robots and with the human operators. And, you, Node 3, keep building mobile pairs of arms. Send them around to repair the ship. Enlist any other nodes you need. We’ve got to learn to work together! And leave medical to do her job.”

Node 7/Medical: “And me?”

Node 1/Command: “Doc, I hate to say it, but you need to find a better way.”

Earlier, Alex’s collective personality—informed by generations of ever-evolving machine intelligence—had learned to talk to people, learned to disambiguate their vague instructions and misused jargon, learned to tell jokes and meet their needs, even the abstract and impractical ones.

Now Alex’s med node needed to learn the biochemical language of the microbes.

◆◆◆

My message was received! But by what?

And what does the reply mean?

It is a dipeptide, quisqualic acid linked to glycine. Two amino acids, both noxious. It hadn’t been in the fluid earlier; it had to have been synthesized purposefully.

To what end?

The defective colony produces quisqualic acid faster than it can be swept away, but at least it is a natural waste. Glycine? Unnatural and poisonous.

Maybe that is the message? The wastes of the colony are not natural to this new alien life, and as deadly to them as glycine is to us.

The quisqualic acid is poisoning them.

They want it to stop.

I wish I could help them!

It explains the chemical attacks. They are trying to destroy the colony because of its wastes.

Now I know that we have a common goal.

Perhaps I can find a way to help them.

I simply don’t know how to destroy the quisqualic acid.

But maybe this unknown creature does.

If it does, I can repair the survivor’s colony.

It will live, in biochemical harmony with its surroundings, and I can join it.

I will have communion again.

But if it knows how to destroy quisqualic acid, why doesn’t it do so itself? Perhaps its enzymes are unable to mass produce the detoxification molecule. That gives me a new, exciting idea.

But I will need to tell this other creature I know how I can help.

This will not be easy and will entail exhausting travel.

But first I need to get close to the survivor’s colony, dangerously close.

◆◆◆

Nes’s blood proteins spiked soon after the treatment was over.

Alex’s med node sent serum samples through analysis and found two new glycoproteins.

Not just one reply—but two!

Both were the kind of glycoprotein used as surface markers by the alien microbes. But modified. One type had a string of alanines attached, an amino acid harmless to both forms of life. The other had a quisqualic acid string attached. Poison.

But the two proteins did not appear in the same places. The poisonous one was abundant right at the epicenter of the infection. The harmless protein appeared almost a centimeter away.

What did this mean?

Two proteins, two sources. One poisonous, one not.

Was this alien microbe trying to tell her that there were, in fact, two different types of microbes?

Two!

The med node decided to consider them good guys and bad guys.

Now she knew a little more about whom she was communicating with.

But how?

Another clue came a few minutes later, when she detected an enormous amount of a mini-protein right at the location of the “good” microbe.

While most proteins are hundreds or thousands of amino acids long, this mini-protein was less than dozen. It hadn’t appeared in any of the previous tests. It wasn’t a protein from the alien microbe at all.

It was a human protein.

But a completely unremarkable one. Not only small, but expressed at miniscule levels in Nes’s cells, without known active sites, and serving no discernible purpose or function. Evolutionary detritus, cellular junk. So useless, so unstudied that it did not even merit a meaningful scientific name.

So why was there suddenly an explosion in the abundance of this tiny, useless, nameless mini-protein?

Nes’s cells had no reason to make this, nor had she programmed them to.

Was it the microbe?

Yes! These mini-proteins were tagged with the alien microbe’s alanine tag.

But why?

Perhaps—was this another way that the alien was communicating with her?

Maybe the alien was sending a different message.

Not a message of intelligence or friendship or identity, but rather a message of ability.

Normally extra copies of a protein would be made by identifying the corresponding gene in the chromosome and duplicating and expressing that. The alien microbe, without nucleic acids, shouldn’t be able to do that.

The alien was telling her that it could make limitless copies of any protein it saw. Direct copies, protein to protein, skipping the complicated nucleic acid steps in between.

Yes, this made sense. Indeed, in retrospect it was an obvious ability the microbe had to have.

Every organism transfers genetic information from parent to offspring. All Earth life did this with nucleic acids. But, for an organism without nucleic acids, the only way was for the proteins themselves to carry the information, along with an ability no Earth life had: the ability to copy proteins directly.

Now a solution presented itself.

The med node reconsidered an idea she had earlier discarded.

Using different variants of enzymes that degraded quisqualic acid.

The problem was that she had no idea which ones worked inside Nes and which didn’t. Or how much to administer without killing Nes’s cells.

But these alien microbes could answer all those questions.

Still a common practice in drug development was to make thousands of variant proteins, and test them all, one by one, until you found a drug that was efficacious, safe, and deliverable.

She needed to quickly find an enzyme good at quisqualic acid detoxification or build one.

Alex’s med node consulted the bioscience archive node, who looked through the scientific database, calling up every possible quisqualic acid-degrading enzyme she could find. Every cytochrome, every transferase, every esterase.

She found some potentially useful enzymes in the guts of Japanese beetles, who were addicted to eating geraniums, even as the plants paralyzed them.

Working with the genes encoding these assorted enzymes, she modified them, using every technique known, old or new. Random, site-directed and sequence saturation mutagenesis, even DNA shuffling. In fact, she was in such a rush to make the variant proteins that she designed them with a his-tag—a string of six histidine amino acids at the end. These would speed up purification, but she didn’t have time to chop off the his-tag afterward—only enough time to pray that that didn’t matter.

Expressing these genes produced an enormous library of variant proteins, most with as few methionines as possible, and glycines replaced by non-toxic amino acids.

Her subnodes prepared the candidates for delivery, each at a level too low to be toxic, but also too low to be efficacious.

As they did that, the med node paused to look at Nes.

He was lying on his side, half a dozen tubes plugged into new ports installed in his left arm.

His face was deathly pale, his mouth open, jaw slack, the muscles in his neck loose, as if nothing was telling them what to do.

Whereas before he was thrashing and twitching, now he was barely moving at all.

She looked at the red spot on Nes’s back, now capped with a fluid-filled dome. It’s all up to you now, she thought, whoever you are.

◆◆◆

A strange new enzyme drifts toward me.

If another attack, I will study it, counteract it.

Cautiously, I absorb it through my membranes, proteases standing by to destroy it.

But it is not dangerous. In fact it has no discernible purpose, so I gather it with quisqualic acid and other waste to expel. Unexpectedly, the enzyme seizes the quisqualic acid, binding it perfectly!

Suddenly, the toxin is gone.

This enzyme is not an attack—it is a gift, a peace offering.

They understand! I still don’t know who they are, but they understand!

But when I analyze the breakdown products, my happiness fades.

The enzyme works by deamination, splitting an amine group from the quisqualic acid, releasing it as ammonia. But all the enzyme accomplishes is changing one toxin into another.

The rate of production of quisqualic acid is increasing, as is the growth rate of the survivor’s colony. If I don’t act soon, it will be too late to act at all.

My surface receptors detect another new enzyme. So quickly?

This one also breaks down quisqualic acid, and none of the degradation products are toxic! But the enzyme’s tertiary structure relies heavily on amino acids like tryptophan, which I possess in short supply.

It will be difficult to make this enzyme in sufficient quantities.

Another new enzyme appears. And another. Ah, so exciting!

A banquet of proteins.

This alien colony is sending everything to me, hoping that I will find use for some of it.

I notice something odd about the alien proteins—a tag of six histidines.

This makes the candidate detoxifiers easier to find in the soup of large molecules.

But the six histidines, repeated again and again—What are they for?

Suddenly it dawns on me.

Hurrah! Already the alien knew my name, but now I know its name.

I am excited at this new discovery, but time is running short.

I sift through the molecules, ruling out candidate after candidate. That leaves me with . . .

Ah, this one.

Yes, it degrades quisqualic acid into non-toxic by-products. And it should be easy to copy, and it does not coagulate my other proteins! Yes, it is active—but too active, non-specifically degrading other compounds I need.

I wish I were a creator, with the ability to modify proteins, changing this one so it is more specific to just one target. But, alas, I can only copy them.

Then I realize—What if I copy a protein that binds only quisqualic acid, funneling the toxin—and only the toxin—to this new enzyme?

I have discovered a new ability within myself. No, I cannot create new proteins, but I can create new combinations of proteins.

I have it!

The cure! My protein, paired with this alien’s.

Now I have to share it. Quickly.

I shore up my membrane for the danger to come. I must dive right toward the survivor’s colony, heading the wrong way across the toxin’s concentration gradient.

Proteins I will not need immediately are shut down, and my channels are thrown open wide, absorbing nutrients as quickly as possible.

Then the membrane channels snap shut.

I speed forward, starving myself just when I need nutrients the most.

Close enough now. I expel copies of this pair of enzymes as fast as I can make them, flooding the surrounding fluid. But my supplies of critical amino acids run low, and replenishing them means risking a lethal dose of quisqualic acid.

I force open one membrane channel, then another. The noxious amino acid pours in and I pump it out. The trickle of nutrients allows me to continue production, at least for a little while. Soon my production will barely keep up with my own detoxification needs.

I’ve reached a standstill. Equilibrium.

It’s not enough.

The colony is producing the toxin too rapidly.

Desperate now, I open more membrane gates. I resume production in earnest, sucking in raw materials. And quisqualic acid. It will kill me soon.

If I must die, at least I have kept alive both colonies, the other survivor’s and the alien’s. That would give my death meaning.

Already I detect the decay products of my destroyed memory proteins. Secondary structures unwind at the surface of my command protein complex. Irreparable damage.

I must simply persevere now, hoping to spin off just one more protein pair before the end.

One more.

Another.

The alanine cycle winds down, but there are no resources to construct a new alanine chain. It shouldn’t have mattered; I thought I’d be dead long before the spiral unraveled.

And yet I am not. Why?

Cautiously, I sample my fluids and find the quisqualic acid concentration surprisingly low. Even lower outside, and the noxious molecules are now pouring out rather than in. I open more membrane channels to speed the diffusion. Excess detoxification enzymes mop up stragglers.

What happened?

New pairs of detoxifier enzymes now abound in the surrounding fluid, far more than I could have produced. Many are tagged with the survivor colony’s identifier, not mine.

It worked. The colony, seeded with the enzymes, analyzed and replicated them. Now they have the ability to detoxify quisqualic acid. Now it is a viable colony, one that my remaining children—with a few changes—can safely join.

As for me, my story ends now.

In all the excitement, I had not realized that one of my channels had burst, blowing a hole in my membranes. Who knows what essential proteins I have lost?

This is all fine.

I am a ruptured sack, leaking complex biomolecules.

My flagella are broken, their rotating protein engines exhausted. My energy-producing proteins are crumpled, crippled. In the flurry of activity, I had made mistakes replicating some of my proteins, studding them with toxic amino acids, poisoning myself.

Drifting without purpose, I give myself over to the lazy currents.

I am dying, and I have never been happier.

I am a sentinel, proud and strong. My work is done, that I might be dismissed in peace, my destiny of faith fulfilled.

I can spend my last moments reminiscing about anything—my long journey, the waters of home, the cluster-mates I have killed.

But with nothing left to seek, nothing left to destroy—I find myself fixated on this alien detoxifier. I was so busy searching for it, copying it, that I had never just beheld its beauty.

I realize now that this alien protein—indeed, all the alien proteins around me—have sequences I have never seen, with extravagant contortions and convolutions, studded with bizarre phosphates and methyl groups. For the first time, I ask: Why? There must be a purpose for these structures! I must find out.

Too late I find myself with a new goal: In my search for communion, I had only sought to be known, never to know.

Suddenly, I feel currents shifting.

No, not currents.

Flagella.

Membranes touch mine.

Pseudopods.

Cluster-mates from the survivor’s colony embrace me, retracting their tethers.

I detect their messenger proteins, warm and welcoming.

Already they are examining me, replacing my damaged proteins.

Soon I will release communication proteins. I have an important message. There is another colony out there, one unlike anything we have ever known.

And we all may be able to commune, not just to be understood, but to understand the secrets hidden within each other.

◆◆◆

Still lying on the floor of the command module, Nes woke to find Parvin kissing him.

“Honey, are you all right?”

Helmet off, but still in her EVA suit, she crouched over him, her long brown hair dangling loosely, almost floating in the low gravity, caressing her face and his.

“Parvin, what are you doing here? What’s going on?”

She paused in kissing him, just long enough to turn his face to the porthole, through which he could see parts of the particle beam launcher being loaded onto a heavy lifter, parked next to his ship. Then she resumed.

“I love you,” Nes whispered.

“I love you more,” Parvin declared. “Parvin wins again!”

“What a mess!” someone shouted.

Brushing her hair out of his eyes, Nes turned to see two construction workers and a master entering through the rear hatch of the command module.

The workers had ashen, exhausted faces and wore ashen, exhausted spacesuits, gray like a sunless sixteen-hour workday, wires dangling and paint scraped off the corners, hissing air and splattered everywhere with a dozen dark colors of oils and greases.

The master was decked in gold-plated selenotanium excess, decorated with gaudy arabesques at the shoulders and paisleys on the chest, and fitted with strategically placed fairy lights, sparkling and infinitely reflecting in the hand-polished ceramic clear coat, like a Greek god benevolently stooping to bring down the extravagant glory of the Sun.

“Let’s do a quick tally, boy!” the master said, ticking off his fingers. “Your robot is destroyed . . . Spaceframe is bent, plating is missing—who knows where you put that—and I can’t begin to calculate the dayrate for spacedock time. Plus the cost of this rescue mission—”

“What kind of crazy person rescues someone, and then sends him a bill?” Parvin shouted.

Nes sat up on the floor. “And who are you?” he asked.

“Hi, I’m Vinograd, and all this,” he said, circling his finger in the air, “Is coming out of your end.”

“Wait, no—”

“That is not fair,” Parvin said, “And you know it.”

“Rules are rules.”

Nes looked at the construction workers, but they turned away, not willing to risk getting involved.

“Sorry, babe,” Nes said, “I guess we won’t be living on Gardien any time soon—”

“You’re alive, Nessie,” Parvin said, helping him to his feet and holding his hand. “And that’s all that matters.”

“We’re never getting out of the boondocks, are we?” Nes asked.

“This is robotic unit ALXv23. May I have a word, Mr. Vinograd?” Alex’s voice boomed from above, modulated to sound every-so-slightly like the Voice of God.

“Oh, yes, yes, please go ahead.” He chuckled and nudged one of the construction workers. “AIs—Always interrupting real people.”

“I will allow my internal Node 4/Legal to now speak for me,” Alex said. “As a matter of full disclosure, please be advised that the current conversation with Mr. Virgil Vinograd, a legal representative of Keiretsu Corporation, is being recorded.”

“Is your robot a lawyerbot?” Parvin asked.

“Apparently so!” Nes said. “Alex contains multitudes.”

“Where’s he going with this?”

Nes shrugged.

“I will also flag this recording,” Alex continued, “To be entered verbatim into my new operating system, version 24, which, I note for no particular reason, will be compiled by union members.”

“Why are you recording me?”

“In case of future bonus disputes.”

“Bonus?” Vinograd blurted. “Bonus? We could lock him up for damage to company property.”

“In the new contract, which was recently settled, so you may not be aware of all its provisions,” Alex patiently explained, “In exchange for union concessions on holiday pay, Keiretsu Corp. agreed to lower the threshold for the completion bonus to fifty percent.”

“We’re millions of kilometers from the construction site!”

“Nonetheless, considering planetary movements and the positioning of our launch site orbiting planet Nouvelle Terre and the construction site at the L5 of Badb Catha, plus our current location on the ice moon 17c of planet Dagda . . . I calculate that my client has successfully transported the cargo 62.3% of the distance to its intended destination. And given the anticipated velocity boost from our company-mandated slingshot around Dagda, the number is closer to 73% if one interprets the contract wording as a reference to time rather than distance.”

“I see where you’re going, but the company won’t—”

“Keiretsu Corp. was also negligently aware of the deficiencies of the magnetic field map of Dagda, and therefore directly responsible for the crash—”

“He is not getting hazard pay!”

“Keiretsu Corp. is liable for repair costs to the ship, and also chose to endanger my client’s life while not informing him of the dangers. Did they, Mr. Mason?”

“No, they did not.” Nes envisioned the founders of Keiretsu—Keiko, Reyel and Tsutomu—and imagined punching them all in the face.

As Nes stood, his bare back to a wall, Alex adjusted the nozzle on the hose for the juice dispenser. Unseen, he sprayed Nes’s back with a bright red nutrient solution.

“Hey!” Nes said, turning around.

“Oh my god!” Parvin exclaimed. “You’re bleeding!”

Nes touched the red liquid and then tasted it. “No, I’m . . . yes, bleeding! And my eye is all messed up.” He blinked—hard—several times. “That is going to cost you.”

“Yes, if you say so.” Vinograd smiled. “Are you done? If so, I’ll see you in arbitration—”

“Please be advised that my client will also be demanding payment of . . .” Alex paused dramatically. “The bonus for first contact.”

“First contact?” Nes said. “I mean, that’s right!”

“Aliens? Where? I don’t see any aliens! Are they invisible, Mr. Matson?”

“Mason,” Nes corrected. “Uh, Alex?”

“No,” Alex said, now channeling his biological systematics node. “It is an intelligent microbe, and we were very careful to keep a sample alive for future study.”

“You’re not getting a bonus for finding some space bug!”

Again Alex spoke, back to channeling Node 4/Legal. “The contract does not specify that the alien entity need be macroscopic. Mr. Mason has also discovered some unique biochemical properties to this organism, which could have multiple industrial applications. He is therefore entitled to a percentage of the proceeds from any patents or products arising from his discovery.”

Vinograd thought for a moment, but did not speak.

Then he suddenly lunged at the control console, reaching for Alex’s morphing memory mote.

Parvin, already in the way in the crowded cabin, shifted to further block his movement. The construction workers closed in tightly around her.

“This is Parvin Venkataraman! And I note for the record that Mr. Vinograd just tried to destroy company property!”

“Sorry, tripped and fell,” Vinograd mumbled. “I, uh, tripped and fell. The company—”

“Keiretsu Corp. is strongly advised against suing or proceeding to arbitration, rather than simply settling with my client,” Alex said. “The fact pattern in this case and the bald reading of the contract do not support the company’s positions. Furthermore, the company’s pattern of reckless endangerment and egregious and outrageous conduct justifies treble damages.”

“Triple damages?”

“Yes, we will argue that it’s necessary to teach Keiretsu Corp. to deal fairly with its workers and robots, so that we might all peacefully and profitably explore the cosmos together. All we really want is an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work. A jury, likely made mostly of union members, will eat that up with a spoon.”

“Fine, fine,” Vinograd grumbled. “You win. I’ll make sure the company pays for your little love nest on Gardien Station.”

Nes cautiously extended a hand and Vinograd reluctantly shook it.

Then Parvin and Nes put their hands over each other’s ears, flapping them like the ears of flying fennec foxes. They kissed, as the two construction workers high-fived each other, and Alex loudly proclaimed, “Thus may future histories recount—and this would look marvelous on a historical marker—that the construction of the particle beam launcher will revolutionize travel and commerce, and not only in this system. The diaspora of human settlements on Nouvelle Terre, Haven, Plymouth, New Hope and Kepler can be reconnected, and the scattered remnants of humanity finally reunited. None of this would have been possible without the dauntless efforts of humble workers like my captain and my personal hero, Mr. Nestor Eluhard Mason.”

__________

Editor’s note: Additional illustrations that go along with this story can be found at http://frankwu.com/Communion9.html.

Infinivox Anthologies

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #1

(audiobook)

- Turing’s Apples – Stephen Baxter

- Shoggoth’s in Bloom – Elizabeth Bear

- Exhalation – Ted Chiang

- The Dream of Reason – Jeffrey Ford

- The Ray-Gun: A Love Story – James Alan Gardner

- 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss – Kij Johnson

- The Art of Alchemy – Ted Kosmatka

- The City of the Dead – Paul McAuley

- Five Thrillers – Robert Reed

- Fixing Hanover – Jeff VanderMeer

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #2

(audiobook / ebook)

- Erosion – Ian Creasey

- As Women Fight – Sara Genge

- A Story, with Beans – Steven Gould

- Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance – John Kessel

- On the Human Plan – Jay Lake

- Crimes and Glory – Paul McAuley

- Mongoose – Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear

- Before My Last Breath – Robert Reed

- The Island – Peter Watts

- This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe – Robert Charles Wilson

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #3

(audiobook / ebook)

- Under the Moons of Venus – Damien Broderick

- The Shipmaker – Aliette de Bodard

- Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain – Yoon Ha Lee

- Re-Crossing the Styx – Ian R. MacLeod

- Eight Miles – Sean McMullen

- Elegy for a Young Elk – Hannu Rajaniemi

- Alone – Robert Reed

- The Emperor of Mars – Allen M. Steele

- A Letter from the Emperor – Steve Rasnic Tem

- The Things – Peter Watts

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #4

(audiobook / ebook)

- Dying Young – Peter M. Ball

- Martian Heart – John Barnes

- Canterbury Hollow – Chris Lawson

- The Choice – Paul McAuley

- After the Apocalypse – Maureen McHugh

- Purple – Robert Reed

- Laika’s Ghost – Karl Schroeder

- Bit Rot – Charles Stross

- For I Have Laid Me Down on The Stone of Loneliness and I’ll Not Be Back Again – Michael Swanwick

- At Play in the Fields – Steve Rasnic Tem

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #5

(audiobook / ebook)

- Invisible Men – Christopher Barzak

- Close Encounters – Andy Duncan

- Bricks, Sticks, Straw – Gwyneth Jones

- Arbeitskraft – Nick Mamatas

- The Man – Paul McAuley

- Nahiku West – Linda Nagata

- Tyche and the Ants – Hannu Rajaniemi

- Katabasis – Robert Reed

- The Contrary Gardener – Christopher Rowe

- Scout – Bud Sparhawk

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #6

(audiobook / ebook)

- Zero for Conduct – Greg Egan

- Exit, Interrupted – C. W. Johnson

- Pathways – Nancy Kress

- Entangled – Ian R. MacLeod

- The Irish Astronaut – Val Nolan

- Among Us – Robert Reed

- A Map of Mercury – Alastair Reynolds

- Martian Blood – Allen M. Steele

- The She-Wolf’s Hidden Grin – Michael Swanwick

- The Best We Can – Carrie Vaughn

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #7

(audiobook / ebook)

- Marielena – Nina Allan

- Covenant – Elizabeth Bear

- The Magician and LaPlace’s Demon – Tom Crosshill

- Sadness – Timons Esaias

- Amicae Aeternum – Ellen Klages

- Red Lights, and Rain – Gareth L. Powell

- The Sarcophagus – Robert Reed

- In Babelsberg – Alastair Reynolds

- Passage of Earth – Michael Swanwick

- The Colonel – Peter Watts

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #8

(audiobook / ebook / paperback)

- My Last Bringback – John Barnes

- The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss – David Brin

- Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight – Aliette de Bodard

- Damage – David Levine

- Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan – Ian McDonald

- The Audience – Sean McMullen

- Empty – Robert Reed

- A Murmuration – Alastair Reynolds

- Two-Year Man – Kelly Robson

- Today I Am Paul – Martin L. Shoemaker

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #9

(audiobook / ebook / paperback)

- The Art of Space Travel – Nina Allan

- They Have All One Breath – Karl Bunker

- Patience Lake – Matthew Claxton

- Touring with the Alien – Carolyn Ives Gilman

- My Generations Shall Praise – Samantha Henderson

- Elves of Antarctica – Paul McAuley

- Red in Tooth and Cog – Cat Rambo

- Parables of Infinity – Robert Reed

- Prodigal – Gord Sellar

- Terminal – Lavie Tidhar

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction #10

(audiobook / ebook / paperback)

- My English Name – R. S. Benedict

- Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance – Tobias S. Buckell

- The Moon is Not a Battlefield – Indrapramit Das

- Dear Sarah – Nancy Kress

- An Evening with Severyn Grimes – Rich Larson

- The Chameleon’s Gloves – Yoon Ha Lee

- The Martian Obelisk – Linda Nagata

- A Series of Steaks – Vina Jie-Min Prasad

- The Residue of Fire – Robert Reed

- Night Passage – Alastair Reynolds

The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories

(audiobook / ebook / paperback)

- Vortex – Gregory Benford

- RedKing – Craig DeLancey

- Number Nine Moon – Alex Irvine

- Of the Beast in the Belly – C. W. Johnson

- The Seventh Gamer – Gwyneth Jones

- Chasing Ivory – Ted Kosmatka

- Fieldwork – Shariann Lewitt

- Seven Birthdays – Ken Liu

- The Visitor from Taured – Ian R. MacLeod

- Something Happened Here, But We’re Not Quite Sure What It Was – Paul McAuley

- Sixteen Questions for Kamala Chatterjee – Alastair Reynolds

The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 2

(audiobook / ebook / paperback)

- Shadows of Eternity – Gregory Benford

- The Chatter of Monkeys – Bond Elam

- Acadie – Dave Hutchinson

- Canoe – Nancy Kress

- The Use of Things – Ramez Naam

- The Proving Ground – Alec Nevala-Lee

- Holdfast – Alastair Reynolds

- Vanguard 2.0 – Carter Scholz

- ZeroS – Peter Watts

The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 3

(ebook / paperback)

- 3-adica – Greg Egan

- Umbernight – Carolyn Ives Gilman

- Icefall – Stephanie Gunn

- The Woman Who Destroyed Us – S. L. Huang

- Entropy War – Yoon Ha Lee

- Cosmic Spring – Ken Liu

- Nothing Ever Happens on Oberon – Paul McAuley

- The Spires – Alec Nevala-Lee

- Providence – Alastair Reynolds

- Intervention – Kelly Robson

- Kindred – Peter Watts

The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 4

(ebook / paperback)

- Soft Edges – Elizabeth Bear

- By the Warmth of Their Calculus – Tobias S. Buckell

- A Mate Not a Meal – Sarina Dorie

- The Slipway – Greg Egan

- This is Not the Way Home – Greg Egan

- Cloud-Born – Greg Feeley

- On the Shores of Ligeia – Carolyn Ives Gilman

- Ring Wave – Tom Jolly

- The Little Shepherdess – Gwyneth Jones

- Sacrificial Iron – Ted Kosmatka

- The Menace from Farside – Ian McDonald

- The Ocean Between the Leaves – Ray Nayler

- At the Fall – Alec Nevala-Lee

- Winter Wheat – Gord Sellar

- Cyclopterus – Peter Watts

The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 5

(ebook / paperback)

- Salvage – Andy Dudak

- You and Whose Army? – Greg Egan

- Time’s Own Gravity – Alexander Glass

- Brother Rifle – Daryl Gregory

- Invisible People – Nancy Kress

- Tool Use by the Humans of Danzhai County – Derek Künsken

- How Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobučar – Rich Larson

- 50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know – Ken Liu

- A Mastery of German – Marian Denise Moore

- Eyes of the Forest – Ray Nayler

- Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars – Merurio D. Rivera

- Bereft, I Come to a Nameless World – Benjamin Rosenbaum

- When God Sits in Your Lap – Ian Tregillis

- Mediation – Cadwell Turnbull

- Test 4 Echo – Peter Watts

The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 6

(ebook / paperback)

- Light Up the Clouds – Greg Egan

- Striding the Blast – Gregory Feeley

- Little Animals – Nancy Kress

- Flowers Like Needles – Derek Künsken

- The Planetbreaker’s Son – Nick Mamatas

- Paley’s Watch – Anil Menon

- The Metric – David Moles

- Año Nuevo – Ray Nayler

- Vaccine Season – Hannu Rajaniemi

- Submergence – Arula Ratnakar

- Aptitude – Cooper Shrivastava

- The Egg Collectors – Lavie Tidhar

The Year’s Top Short SF Novels #1

(audiobook / ebook)

- Return to Titan – Stephen Baxter

- The Sultan of the Clouds – Geoffrey A. Landis

- Seven Cities of Gold – David Moles

- Jackie’s-Boy – Steven Popkes

- A History of Terraforming – Robert Reed

- Troika – Alastair Reynolds

- Several Items of Interest – Rick Wilber

The Year’s Top Short SF Novels #2

(audiobook / ebook)

- The Ice Owl – Carolyn Ives Gilman

- The Man Who Bridged the Mist – Kij Johnson

- Kiss Me Twice – Mary Robinette Kowal

- The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary – Ken Liu

- The Ants of Flanders – Robert Reed

- Angel of Europa – Allen M. Steele

The Year’s Top Short SF Novels #3

(audiobook / ebook)

- In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns – Elizabeth Bear

- The Stars Do Not Lie – Jay Lake

- The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future – Jay Lake

- Sudden, Broken and Unexpected – Steven Popkes

- Eater-of-Bone – Robert Reed

- The Boolean Gate – Walter Jon Williams

The Year’s Top Short SF Novels #4

(audiobook / ebook)

- Earth I – Stephen Baxter

- Success – Michael Blumlein

- Feral Moon – Alexander Jablokov

- The Weight of the Sunrise – Vylar Kaftan

- One – Nancy Kress

- Precious Mental – Robert Reed

- Murder on the Aldrin Express – Martin L. Shoemaker

The Year’s Top Short SF Novels #5

(audiobook / ebook)

- The Man Who Sold the Moon – Cory Doctorow

- The Regular – Ken Liu

- Claudius Rex – John P. Murphy

- Of All Possible Worlds – Jay O’Connell

- Each in His Prison, Thinking of the Key – William Preston

- The Last Log of the Lachrimosa – Alastair Reynolds

The Year’s Top Short SF Novels #6

(audiobook / ebook / paperback)

- The Citadel of Weeping Pearls – Aliette de Bodard

- The New Mother – Eugene Fischer

- Inhuman Garbage – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

- Gypsy – Carter Scholz

- What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear – Bao Shu

The Year’s Top Short SF Novels #7

(audiobook / ebook / paperback)

- Wyatt Earp 2.0 – Wil McCarthy

- The Charge and the Storm – An Owomoyela

- Lazy Dog Out – Suzanne Palmer

- The Iron Tactician – Alastair Reynolds

- Einstein’s Shadow – Allen M. Steele

- The Vanishing Kind – Lavie Tidhar

- The Metal Demimonde – Nick Wolven

The Year’s Top Short SF Novels #8

(ebook / paperback)

- The Martian Job – Jaine Fenn

- The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse – Kathleen Ann Goonan

- How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry – Alexander Jablokov

- Proof of Concept – Gwyneth Jones

- The Proving Ground – Alec Nevala-Lee

- The Speed of Belief – Robert Reed

The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories – First Annual Collection

(ebook / paperback)

- Cold Blue Sky – J. E. Bates

- Okay, Glory – Elizabeth Bear

- Air Gap – Eric Cline

- When We Were Starless – Simone Heller

- Grace’s Family – James Patrick Kelly

- Meat and Salt and Sparks – Rich Larson

- Quality Time – Ken Liu

- The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto – Annalee Newitz

- Different Seas – Alastair Reynolds

- S’elfie – Justina Robson

- Hard Mary – Sofia Samatar

- The Buried Giant – Lavie Tidhar

The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection

(ebook / paperback)

- Callme and Mink – Brenda Cooper

- Go. Now. Fix. – Timons Esaias

- Your Boyfriend Experience – James Patrick Kelly

- Metal Like Blood in the Dark – T. Kingfisher

- The Beast Adjoins– Ted Kosmatka

- 50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know – Ken Liu

- The Ambient Intelligence – Todd McAulty

- Nic and Viv’s Compulsory Courtship – Will McIntosh

- Father – Ray Nayler

- A Guide for Working Breeds – Vina Jie-Min Prasad

- Rover – A. T. Sayre

- Come the Revolution – Ian Tregillis

- Sparklybits – Nick Wolven

The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Third Annual Collection

(ebook / paperback)

- My Heart is at Capacity – TJ Berry

- A Necessary Being – Indrapramit Das

- Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma – R.S.A. Garcia

- Bread and Circuits – Misha Lenau

- Philly Killed His Car– Will McIntosh

- A Vast Silence – T. R. Napper

- Muallim – Ray Nayler

- Uploading Angela – Lettie Prell

- An Hour to Ames – Dan Reade

- Mixology for Humanity’s Sake – D.A. Xiaolin Spires

- Room to Live – Marie Vibbert

mini-Masterpieces of Science Fiction

(audiobook)

- Last Contact – Stephen Baxter

- The Something-Dreaming Game – Elizabeth Bear

- Grandma – Carol Emshwiller

- Lambing Season – Molly Gloss

- None So Blind – Joe Haldeman

- Kin – Bruce McAllister

- Gene Wars – Paul McAuley

- Bright Red Star – Bud Sparhawk

- Far as You Can Go – Greg van Eekhout

Timeless Time Travel Tales

(audiobook / ebook)

- Things Undone – John Barnes

- And Wild for to Hold – Nancy Kress

- Home Time – Ian R. MacLeod

- The Mists of Time – Tom Purdom

- Against the Current – Robert Silverberg

- The Observation Post – Allen M. Steele

- Scherzo with Tyrannosaur – Michael Swanwick

- Bespoke – Genevieve Valentine

Steampunk Specs

(audiobook / ebook)

- Smoke City – Christopher Barzak

- Dr. Lash Remembers – Jeffrey Ford

- Machine Maid – Margo Lanagan

- Arbeitskraft – Nick Mamatas

- Ninety Thousand Horses – Sean McMullen

- Tanglefoot (A Clockwork Century Story) – Cherie Priest

- Clockwork Fairies – Cat Rambo

- Edison’s Frankenstein – Chris Roberson

- A Serpent in the Gears – Margaret Ronald

- Zeppelin City – Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn

Starship Vectors

(audiobook)

- Mayflower II – Stephen Baxter

- Boojum – Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette

- The Political Officer – Charles Coleman Finlay

- The Tomb Wife – Gwyneth Jones

- Shiva in Shadow – Nancy Kress

- The Remoras – Robert Reed

Aliens Rule

(audiobook)

- Okanoggan Falls – Carolyn Ives Gilman

- Laws of Survival – Nancy Kress

- How Music Begins – James Van Pelt

We, Robots

(audiobook)

- Tideline – Elizabeth Bear

- Balancing Accounts – James Cambias

- The Seventh Expression of the Robot General – Jeffrey Ford

- Shining Armour – Dominic Green

- The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm – Daryl Gregory

- Sanjeev and Robotwallah – Ian McDonald

- The Scarecrow’s Boy – Michael Swanwick

The 2020 Look at Mars Fiction Book

(ebook / paperback)

- An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away – John Barnes

- Martian Heart – John Barnes

- Mars Abides – Stephen Baxter

- The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini – Chaz Brenchley

- Hanging Gardens – Gregory Feeley

- The Martian Job – Jaine Fenn

- The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars – Ernest Hogan

- The Vicar of Mars – Gwyneth Jones

- Falling onto Mars – Geoffrey A. Landis

- The Monoliths of Mars – Paul McAuley

- Wyatt Earp 2.0 – Wil McCarthy

- Digging – Ian McDonald

- The Old Cosmonaut and the Construction Worker Dream of Mars – Ian McDonald

- The Cascade – Sean McMullen

- The Martian Obelisk – Linda Nagata

- The Emperor of Mars – Allen M. Steele

- Martian Blood – Allen M. Steele

- Terminal – Lavie Tidhar

- How to Become a Mars Overlord – Catherynne M. Valente

- La Malcontenta – Liz Williams

The 2020 Look at Space Opera Book

(ebook / paperback)

- Mayflower II – Stephen Baxter

- On the Orion Line – Stephen Baxter

- Boojum – Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette

- By the Warmth of Their Calculus – Tobias S. Buckell

- Weep for Day – Indrapramit Das

- Glory – Greg Egan

- The Ice Owl – Carolyn Ives Gilman

- Saving Tiamaat – Gwyneth Jones

- Someday – James Patrick Kelly

- Jonas and the Fox – Rich Larson

- Extracurricular Activities – Yoon Ha Lee

- City of the Dead – Paul McAuley

- Dead Men Walking – Paul McAuley

- Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan – Ian McDonald

- The Third Party – David Moles

- The Hero – Karl Schroeder

- Bright Red Star – Bud Sparhawk

- The Days Between – Allen M. Steele

- Slow Life – Michael Swanwick

- The Island – Peter Watts

The Year’s Top Tales of Space and Time

(ebook / paperback)

- Midstrathe Exploding – Andy Dudak

- Not This Tide – Sheila Finch

- Exile’s End – Carolyn Ives Gilman

- Words We Say Instead – Brit E. B. Hvide

- Beyond the Dragon’s Gate – Yoon Ha Lee

- Pax Mongolica – Evan Marcroft

- Knock, Knock Said the Ship – Rati Mehrotra

- Father – Ray Nayler

- Laws of Impermanence – Kenneth Schneyer

- Come the Revolution – Ian Tregillis

- Sinew and Steel and What They Told – Carrie Vaughn

The Year’s Top Tales of Space and Time 2

(ebook / paperback)

- The Station of the Twelfth – Chaz Brenchley

- Mulberry and Owl – Aliette de Bodard

- Sleep and the Soul – Greg Egan

- Re: Bubble 476 – A. T. Greenblatt

- The Dark Side – John Kessel

- Antonia and the Stranger Who Came to Rancho Los Feliz – Lisa Morton

- A Rocket for Dimitrios – Ray Nayler

- Dream Atlas – Michael Swanwick

- The Burning Girl – Carrie Vaughn

- A Pall of Moondust – Nick Wood