Foundation’s Friends

Maureen Birnbaum After Dark
by Betsy Spiegelman Fein

About two months after she barged into my honeymoon with Josh, Maureen showed up again. My jaw no longer hurt where she’d cracked me, but I still recalled how nearly impossible it had been to explain to my new husband what this totally unkempt barbarian girl in chain mail was doing in our hotel suite. I mean, it was our wedding night and all. Josh had just carried me across the threshold, and I’d gone into the bathroom “to freshen up, “ and there she was, God’s Gift to the Golden Horde, Muffy herself She spooked Josh out of his socks when she stormed out of the bathroom and through the front door. Josh’s jaw dropped to his knees, okay? I couldn’t get his mind back on honeymoon activities for two or three hours. Maureen has caused me a lot of grief over the years, but spoiling my wedding night takes the cake. I was never going to speak to her as long as I lived.

Only she showed up again with another of her crummy adventures. I was trying to make this strawberry cheese quiche from scratch for the first time. I went into the pantry to get something, and there she was. She likes to startle me, I think. Her idea of a cool joke. See, I’m twenty-two and settled now, but Maureen looks exactly the same way she did as a junior at the Greenberg School. She thinks like a high school kid, too. So I give this little yipe of surprise when I see her, and then I go, “Out! Out! “ She smiled at me like nothing weird had ever happened between us, and she came out of my pantry chewing on a handful of sugar-coated cereal. I frowned at her and go, “I didn’t mean just out of the pantry. I want you out of the house, like now. “ I was edged, for sure.

“Hold on, Bitsy, “ she goes, “you haven’t even heard my latest story. “

“And I’m not Bitsy any more, “ I go. “You don’t want to be called Muffy, I don’t want to be called Bitsy. I’m grown up now. Call me Betsy or Elizabeth. That’s what Josh calls me. Elizabeth. “

She laughed. “And where is dear Josh today? I don’t want to totally blow him away again or anything. “

“He’s seeing patients this afternoon. “

“Good, “ goes Maureen, “then you can knock off for a little while and listen. “

“I’m not going to listen, sister. I’ve got work to do. Why don’t you find a psychoanalyst to listen to you? It would do you like just so much good. “

“Ha ha, “ she goes, ignoring everything I said to her. Then she started telling me this story whether I wanted to hear it or not, and I didn’t want to hear it.

I think she thought we were still friends.

You remember the last time I bopped by, I told you all about this battle in the far future I won like singlehanded, okay? [As stirringly recounted in “Maureen Birnbaum on the Art of War,” in Friends of the Horseclans, edited by Robert Adams and Pamela Crippen Adams (Signet, 1987).] So after I left you and your darling doctor hubby in Bermuda, I decided to whush on out of your honeymoon suite and try to find Mars again. Mars is, you know, my destiny, and where I met that totally bluff Prince Van. I was still drooling like a schoolgirl over him, and I’d been dying to run into him again. But I just kept missing Mars, and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Maybe it was my follow-through, or I wasn’t keeping my head down or something. I just didn’t understand how I was messing up.

Anyway, from down by your hotel’s pool I aimed at Mars, but I landed someplace that didn’t look anything like the part of Mars I knew: no ocher dead sea bottom, no hurtling moons, no bizarro green men. I jumped up and down a couple of times to see if maybe it felt like Martian gravity, but no such luck. Good ol’ Maureen wasn’t going to have any help carrying around her heroinely poundage here. Matter of fact, I was just a teensy bit heftier in this place than on Earth. Right off, I figured wherever this was, it wasn’t going to make my short list of fave vacation spots. My God, like who needs a complimentary gift of an extra fifteen pounds to lug around, know what I mean?

I was disappointed, but so what else is new? If these thrilling exploits of mine have taught me one thing, it’s that you can’t always get what you want. Yeah, you’re right, Bitsy, Mick Jagger said the same thing entire decades ago, but I don’t get my wisdom from ancient song stylists of our parents’ generation.

The first thing I do when I dew hush in one of these weirdo places is try to sort out the ground rules, ‘cause they’re always different. It pays to find out up front if you’re likely to be scarfed down for lunch by some hairball monster, or worshiped as the reincarnation of Joan Crawford or something. Between you and me, sweetie, being worshiped is only marginally better than death, but we savage warrior women won’t accept either treatment. You must’ve learned that much from me by now, and I hope you’ve let your Josh know all about it.

Bitsy, can I get something to drink out of your fridge? I mean, I just got back from saving the civilization of an entire world from destruction, and I’m dying for a Tab. Jeez, you don’t have any Tab, and you used to be Miss Diet Bubbles of Greater Long Island. And no beer, either! Whatever happened to Blitzy Bitsy Spiegelman, the original party vegetable? You’ve got five different brands of bottled water in here, and not a single one of them is Perrier! What, you serve one water with fish and another with meat? ‘ A pure, delicious water from the natural miracle of New Jersey’s sparkling springs.’ You drink water from New Jersey? Bitsy, are you like fully wheezed or what? Josh’s idea, right?

So where was I? No, never mind, I’ll just die of thirst. Anyway, I looked around and at first it didn’t really seem like another planet or anything. I was standing ID this road, okay? I was most of the way up a hill, and behind me the pavement wound down through these trees and stuff, and I could see a pretty big town down there. It reminded me a lot of this time Daddy and Pammy took me to Santa Barbara, except I couldn’t see anything like an ocean from where I was on that hill. Up ahead of me was a big building with a dome on it, like one of those places where they keep their telescopes, you know? I can’t remember what they call ‘em, but you know what I mean. Well, the dome place was a lot closer than the city, so I started booking it up the road the rest of the way.

Now, at this point, the only evidence I had that I wasn’t on Earth somewhere was my weight, and you’ve probably noticed that I’ve tended to bulk up just a smidge from one adventure to the next. So maybe, I think, I really am just outside of Santa Barbara or somewhere, and the extra fifteen pounds is like this horrible souvenir I picked up in the World of Tomorrow. I did have lots of healthful exercise there, bashing skulls in the fresh air, a diet that would lay Richard Simmons in his grave-I mean, look at these muscles! These lats would make Stallone jealous!

This is how I’m talking to myself, until I notice that there’s a partial sunset going on off to the left. A partial sunset. That’s where not all of the suns in the sky seem to be setting at the same time. See, there was this yellow sun plunking itself down on the horizon, and making a real nice show out of the mists in the valley, and ordinarily I would have stopped and admired it because sunsets are like so cute. Why do people get so totally poetic about sunsets, anyway? I mean, there’s always another one coming, like buses, and they’re all pretty much the same, too. You don’t have critics reviewing sunsets. Today’s will be just like yesterday’s, and there’s not much hope that tomorrow’s will be any more special. So what’s the big deal?

Well, even after the yellow sun faded away, it was still daytime, ‘cause there was still this other little sun hanging around. I thought it might be the moon, except it was almost as bright as the sun that had set, and it was red. “Okay, Maureen,” I go, “this is not Earth. And it’s not even in the whatyoucall, the solar system. You really flaked out this time. “

A couple of seconds later, I realized I was in big trouble. See, my interspatial whushing depends on being able to see my goal in the heavens. That’s how I got to Mars, remember? I stood out under the night sky and raised my beseeching arms to the ruddy God of War, and like whush! there I was. So, despite my steering problems, I’ve always found my way home ‘cause I’ve always stayed sort of in the same neighborhood. Now, though, it was all different. I wasn‘t going to be able to see the Earth in the sky at all. And the sun-the right sun, our sun-would be just one bright dot lost among all the others. If it was even there at all.

But I hadn‘t been entirely abandoned by Fate. After all, I was only half a mile downwind from an observatory. They’d be able to point me in the right direction, I was sure of it.

I cranked uphill for a few minutes, starting to feel a little weirded out. The light from the small sun was the color of beet juice, and it kind of sluiced down over the trees and the road and made me look like I’d been boiled too long. I was just telling myself that I hoped no one would see me until I got inside the observatory, when I spotted this guy hustling down the road toward me.

“Great,” I go, “he’ll think I’ve been pickled in a jar or something.” But there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I stopped worrying. After all, his color was halfway between a crabapple and an eggplant, too.

He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, either, even though in that light he looked like the Xylocaine poster child. The only odd thing about him was his clothes. He had on a kind of silvery jumpsuit with those stupid things that stand up on your shoulders, like the visitors from the future always wore in old sci-fi movies. He looked like Superman’s dad from back in the good old days on Krypton. “Oh boy,” I go, “welcome to the World of Superscience. “

I guess he was just as freaked to see me. I mean, I was wearing my working outfit, which was just the gold brassiere and G-string I picked up on’ my travels, with Old Betsy hung on my hip. Maybe it was the broadsword, or maybe he was just overcome by my ample figure, but he just came to a stop in the middle of the road and stared. I mean, if I whush through space in a drop-dead outfit I stumbled on at Lillie Rubin, I land in Fred Flintstone’s backyard. If I slide into my fighting harness instead, it figures I end up in some totally tasteful garden party beyond the stars. You can’t win, right?

Which reminds me, Bitsy. Every time I see you, you look like you need intensive care from the Fashion Resuscitators. Look at you now! Everything you’re wearing is black or drab colors and loose and shapeless. And hightop gym shoes with black socks? Bitsy! Has the FBS Catalog lost your address, or what?

Never mind. I looked at this Luke Floorwalker and I figured it was time for an exchange of interplanetary greetings. I stepped forward and raised my hand in the universal sign of peace. “I come from a planet not unlike your own,” I go, real solemn. “I am Maureen Danielle Birnbaum. Do not call me Muffy.”

This dweeb just boggled at me with his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish or something. Finally he figured out how his mouthparts were connected, and he goes, “You’ve come much sooner than we expected.”

“Excuse me?” I go. I hadn’t fully realized that my reputation was spreading all through the universe.

“We didn’t think there’d be any serious trouble until after totality,” he goes.

“I’m no trouble,” I go. “I come in peace for all mankind.”

He took a couple of steps forward and looked a little closer at my garb. He reached out with a finger to boink my chestal covering. Guys are always trying to do that to me. “Whoa, like men have died for less,” I go, in my Command Voice.

“Forgive me, my dear girl. Your fall into barbarism was also more immediate than we predicted. “

This goober rapidly needed straightening out. Old Betsy sang as I whipped her from her scabbard. “I’m not your dear girl, like I’m totally sure,” I go. “ And it’s not barbarism or anything. It’s like being fully wild and free.”

“Whatever,” he goes. “But let me introduce myself. I am Segol 154. “ He cocked his head to one side, so I was supposed to be impressed or something.

“Segol 154?” I go. “Is that like a name you spraypaint on subway cars? You live on 154th Street, or what?”

Now it was his turn to look bummed out. “I am Segol 154. That is my cognomination.” He said it with this little grisly sneer.

“Well, forget you, “ I go. I just didn’t like his attitude, you know?

He paid no attention. “May I ask you, how long have you been under this delusion?”.

I go, “What delusion?”

He goes, “This belief that you’re from another planet?”

Now, see, in everyone of these doggone exploits there comes a time when I have to prove I’m from another planet. Sometimes it’s hard and sometimes it’s easy. So I go, “Why can’t I be from another planet?”

Segol 154 just shook his head sadly. “Because there are no other planets. Lagash is all alone, circling Alpha. There are five other suns, but no planets. Although in the last ten years, the work of Aton 77 and others has deduced the existence of a lesser satellite, we’re equally certain that no life could exist upon it. “

“No other planets? Oh yeah?” Okay, so maybe I could’ve come up with a stronger argument.

“Yes, that is the case. So you see, you can’t be from another planet. You were born on Lagash, just as I was.”

“I never even heard of Lagash until a minute ago! I came from Earth, that beautiful sapphire-blue world my people so sadly take for granted. “

“If that is the case,” he goes, smirking like an idiot, “how do you explain the fact that you speak English?”

Well, I’ve told you before, it’s just amazing, huh? No matter where my adventures take me, they speak English when I get there. Prince Van spoke English on Mars, and the ape-things in the center of the Earth spoke English, and they were still speaking English in the far distant future. So I guess it was no biggie to find out they spoke English on Lagash, too. But I wasn’t going to tell Segol about all that. “I have studied your language,” I go. “We’ve picked up your television programs on Earth for some time, okay?”

His eyes kind of narrowed, and he looked at me for a little while without saying anything. Then he goes, “What is television?”

Omigod! Like I’m on a weirdo planet with no TV! “Your radio broadcasts,” I go, “that’s what I meant. We’ve studied your language and learned many things about your culture and all.”

He nodded. “It’s possible,” he goes. “There are many questions I must ask you, before I can be sure you are speaking the truth. But we can’t talk here. You must come with me. I was on my way to the Hideout.”

Now, believe me, at first I thought he was a complete dudley, but I’ve learned to give guys the benefit of the doubt. You never know who’s got like, you know, a cute little ski shack in Vail or something. So I didn’t bail on this guy just ‘cause he looked like he probably bit the heads off chipmunks in his bedroom or something, and anyway he’d just invited me to cruise the local Lagash nightlife.

I turned around in front of him and I go, “So am I dressed for the Hideout, or what? Is there dancing, or are we just going to like, you know, sit there and drink all night?” Which would’ve been okay, too. We warrior women can party till our brass brassieres turn green.

Segol looked at me like I was whoa nelly crazy or something. “What are you talking about?” he goes. “We’re in terrible danger here. The Hideout is our only chance of survival. We have to hurry!”

Okay, I’m not as stupid as I look: I finally figured out that the Hideout was like a hideout or something. We started hurrying back down the road. “Where is this place?” I go. “ And what are you so afraid of!”

“It’s going to be dark soon,” he goes, as if that said it all.

I laughed. “Your mama wants you home by suppertime, huh?”

“My dear girl-” He saw the grim look in my eyes and caught himself. “Maureen, perhaps you haven’t heard Aton’s ideas explained clearly.”

I go, “So who is this Aton dude when he’s at home? You mentioned him before.”

“Aton 77 is one of the most brilliant scientists on all of Lagash. He is a famous astronomer, and director of Saro University. He’s predicted that the entire world will go mad tonight when total Darkness falls.”

It sounded mondo dumb to me. “That’s why God gave us nightlights,” I go. “I mean, I even had this Jiminy Cricket lamp when I was a kid. Wouldn’t go to sleep or anything until Daddy turned it on for me.”

His voice trailed off. I don’t think he even heard me, you know? He goes, “ And then after the insanity starts, the fire and destruction will begin. Nothing will be left. Our entire civilization, every vestige of our culture, all of it will be eradicated. And the Observatory will be the first target, thanks to the Cultists. Our only hope is the Hideout. “

I slid Old Betsy back into her scabbard while I thought about what Segol had said. “You’re not kidding about this,” I go. “You’re like really scared, huh?”

He dropped his gaze to the ground. “I admit it,” he goes, “I’m terrified.”

Well, jeez, Bitsy, he was like such a little boy when he said that! I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, even though I still figured he was maybe stretching the truth just a teensy bit. “That Aton guy is still up there at the Observatory, right?” I go.

Segol looked up at me sort of mournfully. “Yes, along with a few of the other scientists who volunteered to stay behind and record the event.”

“And you were supposed to be there, too?”

He looked ashamed, but all he did was nod his head.

“And instead, you’re just zeeking out and lamming it for the Hideout. “

“We’ve got to move fast, because they’ll be coming from Saro City. They may kill us if they catch us here!”

I had this picture in my mind of those clearly freaked villagers waving torches around in Frankenstein, you know? I knew I could save this guy from a dozen or two rousted locals, but if the whole city turned up, whoa, like see ya bye! So the Hideout sounded like a maximum cool idea.

We followed the road downhill, and I had more time to think about what Segol had said. I mean, either the deadly cold of deep space had frozen my brain, or I was like really missing something. All I knew was that a lot of irked people were going to shred the Observatory, because they’d be driven loony by the darkness. See, I hadn’t noticed the capital D Segol had put on “Darkness.”

“Mr. 154,” I go, “or may I call you Segol? Can I like ask you something?”

“Huh?” he goes. He was way spaced, and he wasn’t even paying attention to me or anything.

“What makes this night different from all other nights?” I go. There was this moment of quiet when I realized that I sounded just like my little cousin Howard on Passover at my Uncle Sammy’s. Maybe I’d heard Segol wrong. Maybe he said the threat was coming from “Pharaoh City,” not “Saro City.”

“Why, nothing,” he goes. “Aton’s warning is that tonight will be exactly like last night, two thousand years ago. That’s the terrible truth.”

“You want me to believe it hasn’t been dark in two thousand years? I mean, when do you people sleep? Look, Lagash would have to practically creep around on its whatyoucall for the days to be that long. And then imagine what it would be like for the poor people on the dark side, going to the beach in the pitch-dark all the time.” The whole idea was like too weird for words.

He goes, “I can almost believe that you’ve come here from some other world. Lagash turns once about its axis in a little more than twenty-three hours. Our nearly eternal day is caused by the six suns. There is always at least one in the sky at all times.”

“Six?” I go. “Now that’s just too flaky. If you had that many up there, they’d be blamming into each other all the time.”

He just gave me his indulgent, superior little smirk again. “I see that you aren’t familiar with celestial mechanics,” he goes.

“And like you probably aren’t familiar with anything else,” I go. I could tell by his expression that I’d really ranked him out.

“The perpetual presence of one or more suns in the skies of Lagash means that Darkness falls only once every 2,049 years, when five of the suns have set and the invisible moon passes between us and Beta, the only remaining source of light and warmth.” He glanced upward, and I saw him freeze in terror. Already, the edge of the moon had dented the ruddy edge of Beta.

“Don’t pay any attention to that,” I go. I was trying to lend him some of my inexhaustible store of courage. But it was like odd. you know? There are all these stories on Earth about lucky explorers saving their lives by using eclipses to scare the natives. I had to do just the opposite. If the mindless mob caught us, I had to pretend that I could end the eclipse.

“Soon,” he goes, “the Stars!”

“You bet,” I go. I didn’t see what all the excitement was. Of course, I didn’t hear the capital letter again.

“When the Stars come out, the world will come to an end.” He looked at me, and his eyes were all big and bugged out. I hated to see him so scared, okay? Even in that cranberry light he was sort of cute-for a brainy type, I mean. He wasn’t Prince Van or anything, but he wasn’t any Math Club geek, either.

“And you blame it all on the stars?” I go.

“Strange, isn’t it? That Aton’s warning should agree with the Cult? Believe me, he wasn’t happy about it, but he’s absolutely sure of his conclusions. There is definite proof that nine previous cultures have climbed to civilization, only to be destroyed by the Stars. And now it is our turn. Tomorrow, the world will belong to savages and madmen, and the long process will begin again.”

I tapped him on the skull. “Hello, Segol?” I go. “Is anybody like home? You haven’t told me what the stars have to do with it.”

He wasn’t really paying attention to me, which just goes to show you how zoned out he was, ‘cause I made a pretty dramatic presentation with my boobs clad in a metal Maidenform and my broadsword and everything. He goes, “Beenay 25 had an insane idea that there might be as many as two dozen stars in the universe. Can you imagine?”

“Beenay 25?” I go. “It sounds like an acne cream.”

“And the Stars, whatever they are, only come out in the Darkness. I think it’s all superstitious hogwash, myself. But Aton believes that the Cult’s ravings may have some basis in fact, that their Book of Revelations may have been written shortly after the last nightfall-”

Bitsy, you know how they say “my blood ran cold?” The orthodontist shows his bill to your parents and like their blood runs cold, okay? Well, right then I learned what they meant. It took a whole long time to seep into my brain, but finally I realized like, hey, if night falls only once every two thousand years around this place, then the stars won’t come out again for centuries, right? And without stars, I’d never be able to whush myself home! I’d be stuck on Lagash forever and ever! And I already knew they didn’t have TV, so that meant they also didn’t have any of the other trappings of modern civilization that are dependent on TV, like the Shopping Channel and Lorenzo Lamas. And could the Galleria have existed back in those pre-test-pattern dark ages? I think not.

So I was not going to be hanging out on Lagash long enough to find out what the dawn would bring. I had one window of opportunity, and I wasn’t going to miss it. “What about the weather?” I go.

“Hmm?” Like Segol the Bionic Brain was aware of my existence again.

“You know, if it gets all cloudy, we won’t be able to see the stars.” Then I’d be trapped there for good.

He brightened up considerably for a moment. “Yes,” he goes, “that would be a miracle.”

“Not for some of us,” I go. First I thought he’d fallen desperately in love with me and wanted me to stay on Lagash. But this bozo was thinking that after two thousand years of buildup, the big night might come and it would be too overcast to see anything. Quel irony, right?

N.S.L., sweetie-No Such Luck. Beta, the red sun in the sky, was now only a thin crescent like a bloody sliver of fingernail or something. It wouldn’t be much longer to total Darkness. It was like slightly obvious that we’d never make it to the Hideout in time. I was stuck out on this road with Segol 154, who was like a total loon. Still, the Hideout was all he could think about.

“We’ve got to hurry,” he goes, putting his grubby hands on my person and kind of dragging me along after him. “We’ve got to get to the Hideout. We must make sure you’re safe. Your destiny is to have babies, many babies, who will be the hope of Lagash’s future.”

I disenhanded myself from him and laughed, a proud and haughty laugh meaning “If you weren’t such a pitiful knob. I’d hack you to little pieces for that remark.” Let me tell you a little secret, honey: no matter where you go in the known universe, the men are all the same. It’s like these honkers are what God gave us as substitutes because all the really buf guys are on back order.

So what does he do? He grabs me by both shoulders and goggles into my face. “You…will be…the mother of…my children!” he goes. And even if there wasn’t a line of drool down his chin, like there should have been.

You know and I know-and, believe me, Bitsy, now this Segol knows-nobody paws me uninvited. I didn’t care if civilization was quickly coming to a screeching halt. I was now totally bugged, and I was going to teach him a lesson in interspatial etiquette. I put one hand flat against his chest and pushed real hard, and the next thing he’s down in the road squinting up at me all surprised. I whipped Old Betsy from her scabbard again and took a menacing step toward him. “Look!” he screams. “Behind you!”

“Oh, like I’m so sure,” I go. But I heard these grumbly sounds, and I turned and saw a mob of people huffing up the hill toward us. They did not look pleased.

Segol scrabbled to his feet and stood beside me. “Let me do the talking, little lady,” he goes. “They may still listen to reason. And maybe you’d better put that silly sword away.”

I decided to let him take his shot. I didn’t even freak out about being called “little lady.” I was absolutely beyond arguing with him. He could try talking to the mob, and when he’d said his piece, I was going to lop his grody head off. Okay, like I’d given him fair warning, hadn’t I?

But he wasn’t even aware that he’d bummed me out. He started walking toward the crowd from the city, both hands raised above his head. I don’t know what that was supposed to mean. Segol probably thought he was one dangerous dude. Maybe he thought that with his hands in the air, he wouldn’t look like such a terrible threat to the safety of those five hundred howling maniacs. “Listen to me!” he goes. “Listen to me! I mean you no harm!”

Yeah, right. That made the mob feel a whole lot better about everything, for sure. There was this raspy guy at the front of the crowd. He looked like he’d been getting ready for the end of civilization for a long time now, and like he couldn’t wait for it to happen, you know? He had wild scraggly hair and big popping old eyes. He just about had a bird when he recognized Segol 154. “That’s one of them!” he goes, waving his arms around a lot. “He’s from the Observatory!”

Segol gave him this smile that was supposed to calm him down or something. “Come,” he goes, “let us reason together.”

“They didn’t come here to talk, “ I go. “They came here to work your butt.”

Someone else in the crowd started shouting, “Death to the unbelievers! Death to the blasphemers in the Observatory!”

That cry was taken up by others until it became this ugly chant. I wanted to tell them, hey, I’d never even been in the Observatory, but they wouldn’t even have heard me.

Finally, a tall man in a black robe pushed his way to the front of the crowd. When he raised his hands, they all shut up. “Silence, my friends,” he goes. “Let us give these profaners of the truth one last chance to redeem their souls.”

“Who’s that?” I go.

“His name is Sor 5,” Segol goes. “He is the leader of the Cultists.”

“Oh, huh,” I go. I turned to this Sor 5 and I go, “I don’t know anything about your Cult. What’s your problem, anyway?”

The guy in the robe just gave me this sad little smile. “It’s not my problem, young lady. It’s yours. You have only a few minutes left before Lagash is swallowed up by the Cave of Darkness. Unless you embrace the revealed truth of our faith, your soul will be stripped from you when the Stars appear. You will become a savage, unreasoning brute. “

I looked at the flipped-out people who made up his congregation, and I figured most of them didn’t have far to go. Like maybe they’d already seen the stars, like at some kind of preview party or something. “So what are you guys selling?” I go.

Sor goes, “Behold! The Cave of Darkness is already engulfing Beta.”

I looked up. There wasn’t much of the red sun left. “Really,” I go. “Tell me about it.”

“Soon all will be in Darkness, and the Stars will blaze down in all their fury. “

“Really.”

Sor looked confused for a few seconds. “You do not deny any of this?”

I go, “See, you’re telling me the same thing that Segol told me, and I can’t figure out what your hang-up is.”

That made him mad. I thought he was going to split his black robe. “We believe the Stars are the source of the Heavenly Flame, which will scourge and cleanse Lagash. The infidels of the Observatory insist that the Stars are nothing but burning balls of gas, physical objects like our own six suns. They refuse to grant that the Stars have any holy power at all. “

“Death to the unbelievers!” screamed the mob. “Death to the blasphemers in the Observatory!” Sor tried again to quiet them, but this time they wouldn’t listen. They surged forward, and I was like sure they were fully ready to tear us limb from limb. I brandished Old Betsy, but I backed away uphill, praying that Segol and I could somehow make it to the Observatory alive.

The astronomer shot me a terrified glance. “You hold them off,” he goes, “and I’ll run for help.”

“Right,” I go, sort of contemptuously, “you just do that.” He was like a real poohbutt, you know?

Just then, the last red ember of Beta flickered in the sky and went out as the eclipse reached totality. There was a long moment of this really creepy quiet. You couldn’t hear a sound, not a person gasping or an animal rustling, not even the wind. It was like being in a movie theater when the film breaks, just before the audience starts getting rowdy. And then the stars came out, normally No Big Deal.

Except on Lagash, it was a big deal, and not just ‘cause it’d been two thousand years since the last time. Bitsy, these people really knew how to have stars! I looked up, and there were a zillion times as many stars as we have on Earth. It reminded me of when we were getting ready for that dance at Brush-Bennett, and you spilled that whole box of glitter on my black strapless. Remember? Well, on Lagash, the night sky looked just like that. All the places between the stars were crammed with stars.

“Oh…my…God!” I was totally impressed, but I wasn’t, you know, going insane or anything.

“Stars!” goes Segol in this kind of strangled voice.

“Surprise,” I go. I mean, he was a real melvin.

Now the mob started screaming and screeching and carrying on. They’d known the Stars were coming, but like they didn’t have any idea what stars really were, or how many of them there’d be, and all that. So even Sor looked haired, but I give him credit, he pulled himself together pretty fast. “Our salvation will be the destruction of the Observatory,” he goes. I mean, he couldn’t bring himself to look up at the stars anymore, and he had to kind of croak his speech out, but he made himself heard. “If we destroy the Observatory and everyone in it, the Stars will spare us. And we must begin with them.”

He was pointing at me and Segol. “That is so lame,” I go. “Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing to be-”

Sadly, I didn’t have the time to finish my explanation. The crowd was full-on crazy and ready to roust. When they charged, I felt a sudden calmness flood through me. I didn’t know what Segol was doing and I didn’t care. Old Betsy whistled through the air as I hacked and hewed at the waves of shrieking lunatics. Bodies piled up in front of me and on both sides. I took a couple of biffs and bruises, but I was too skillful and like too excellent for them to fight through my guard.

Of course, they had me outnumbered, and after a while I realized I was way tired. I wasn’t going to be able to handle all of them, so while I fought I tried to think up some, you know, strategy. And then I saw their leader over on the side of the road, kneeling down in the dark, with his face turned up to the sky where the eclipse was still chugging along and the stars were still blazing away. I started working my way toward him, wading through his nutty buddies with my broadsword cutting a swath before me.

Finally I was right beside him. I reached down and grabbed him by the neck of his robe and jerked him to his feet. “I am Sor!” he goes, like frothing a little in the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t all there anymore, okay?

“You’re sore,” I go. I let him go and he fell in a heap at my feet. “Tell your fruitcake army to stand still and shut up, or I’ll split your skull open and let the starlight in.”

Sor stared at me fearfully for a few seconds. Then he got to his feet and raised his arms. “Stand still and shut up!” he goes.

All the rest of the mob stopped what they were doing, which was mostly climbing over the stacks of bodies, trying to get to me.

“Good,” I go. “You have no reason to be afraid.”

Segol started babbling. I’d wondered what had happened to him. “Beenay guessed a dozen, maybe two dozen Stars. But this! The universe, the stars, the bigness!”

“Lagash is nothing, a speck of dust!” cried a voice from the mob.

“We’re nothing but insects, less than insects!”

“I want light! Let’s burn the Observatory!”

“We’re so small, and the Darkness is so huge! Our suns and our planet are insignificant!”

Well, these people had a serious problem. All of a sudden, they realized that there was a lot more to the universe than their precious Lagash. Then I had an idea that might keep these frenzied folks from thrashing all of their civilization and maybe save my own neck, too.

I go, “There’s no reason to be afraid. The stars are not what you think. I know. I come from a world that has studied them for many centuries.”

“She’s mad! The Stars have driven her insane!”

“Listen to her!” Segol goes. “She told me the same story long before the Stars appeared. She speaks the truth. “

“Yes,” I go, “there are other stars in the universe. That’s just something you ‘re going to have to learn to live with. But not as many as that.” I pointed up, and noticed that the eclipse had moved on past totality, and a teeny tiny thread of red light was starting to grow on one side of Beta.

“Then what are all those thousands of points of light?” goes Sor.

“Tonight is a night for revelations and strange truth,” I go. I’m always pretty good in a crisis like that. I can talk my way out of anything. Hey, you know that. You were my roommate, right? “Lagash, your six suns, and the other twelve stars in the universe are surrounded by a huge ball of ice. “

“Ice?” goes Segol. He sounded like he was having just a little bit of trouble buying it.

“Sure, ice, “ I go, acting kind of ticked off that he doubted me. “What did you think, that the universe just sort of went on and on forever? That’s so real, I’m totally sure.”

“A wall of ice,” Sor goes. “The Book of Revelations speaks of a Cave of Darkness. I don’t see why there can’t be a wall of ice as well.”

Now everyone had stopped trying to grab me by the throat. They were all like hanging on my every word, okay? “But what are the Stars?” someone goes.

“The Stars are an illusion,” I go. “What you see up there are only the reflections of the dozen real stars, shining on the craggy ice wall of the universe. “

There was this silence. I held my breath ‘cause everything would be totally cool if they believed me, but I’d have to start fighting for my life again if they didn’t. Five seconds passed, then ten. Then all at once they all went “ Ahhhh. “

Sor goes, “It’s the divine truth!” I saw tears running down his face.

“Look!” goes Segol. “Beta! It’s coming back!”

Sor waved his arms around and got their attention. “Let’s hurry back to Saro City,” he goes. “We can spread the news and keep our brothers and sisters from burning our homes. The other suns will rise in a few hours, and then life must go on as before. We must tell the others what we’ve learned, and broadcast the information to everyone on Lagash.” Then they turned and marched away, without so much as a thank-you.

When we were alone again on the road, Segol came over to me. He had this big, spazzy grin on his face. “That was really something, my dear,” he goes.

“My name’s Maureen, and this is the last time I’m going to remind you. If you have trouble remembering that, you can call me Princess.” Well, Bitsy, I know I was sort of stretching the truth, but sometimes I liked to think of myself as sort of almost engaged to Prince Van of the Angry Red Planet. I mean” a woman’s reach should exceed her grasp, or what’s a mixer at Yale for?

“Then congratulations, Maureen. You were outstanding. You have saved us from centuries of Dark Ages. I think you’ll always be remembered in the history books of Lagash.”

I shrugged. “What can I say?” I go. “It’s like a gift.”

Segol nodded, then hung his head in shame. “I guess I owe you an apology, too. I wasn’t much help to you during the battle.”

“‘S all right,” I go. “You weren’t really ready for all those stars.” I was just being gracious, you know? I’d been a little zoned out, too, when I saw how many there were, but I got over it.

He looked back up at me, as grateful as that awful Akita puppy Daddy brought home for Pammy’s birthday. “Perhaps you’d permit me the honor,” he goes, “of asking for your hand in marriage.”

I was like too stunned to say anything for a moment. I wiped Old Betsy off on this dead guy’s shirt and slid her slowly back into the scabbard. Then I go, “No, I won’t permit you the honor of having my hand in anything. Nothing personal, okay?”

He was disappointed, of course, but he’d live. “I understand. Would you answer a question, then?”

“Sure, as long as it’s not like way lewd or demeaning to all women. “

He took a deep breath and he goes, “Is it true? What you told the Cultists? Is it true that Lagash is in the center of a gigantic ball of ice?”

I laughed. I mean, how megadumb could he be? I wasn’t surprised that Sor 5 and his crowd swallowed that story, but I didn’t think a real astronomer would buy it. Then I realized that this was not the World of Superscience, after all, and that Segol was just a poor guy trying to understand like the laws of nature and everything. I couldn’t bring myself to weird him out any more than he already was. “Right, like totally,” I go. “Maybe someday your own Observatory will figure out the distance from Lagash to the ice wall. I used to know, but I forgot.”

“Thank you, Maureen,” he goes. Suddenly he’d gotten so humble it was ill. “I think we’d better hurry back to tell Aton and the others the news. Beenay and the rest of the photographers should have captured the Stars with their imaging equipment. They were all prepared, of course, but even so they may have given way to panic.” He looked down at the ground again, probably remembering how he’d bugged out of there in panic even before the stars came out.

“I’m sorry, Segol,” I go. “I can’t go back to the Observatory with you. I’m needed elsewhere. I’ve got to flash on back to Earth. If I wait much longer the eclipse will be over, the sky will get light, the stars will go out for another two thousand years, and I’ll never see my dear, dear friend Bitsy ever again. “ Sure, sweetie, even in this moment of awful tension, I thought of you. You believe me, don’t you?

Segol sighed. “I suppose you must go, then. I’ll never forget you, little la-I mean, Maureen.”

I gave him this sort of noblesse oblige smile, but I stopped short of getting all emotional and everything. “Farewell, Segol 154,” I go.”Tell the others that someday, when you’ve proved yourselves worthy, my people will welcome yours into the Federation of Planets. Until then, one last word of advice: try to discourage anyone who starts fiddling around with radio astronomy. I think it will make you all very, very unhappy.”

“Radio astronomy?” he goes. “How can you look at space with a radio?”

“Never mind, just remember what I said.” I raised one hand in the universal sign of “That’s all, folks.” Then I raised my supplicating arms to the stars, went eeny meeny miney mo, and whushed myself on out of there.

I’m sorry I had to listen to the whole story. By the time Maureen finished it, we had finished off all the strawberries, and a quiche with nothing in it is like tortellini salad without the tortellini. In the months that Josh and I had been together, he’d taught me a lot about food and everything. We didn‘t have supper any more, we dined. And then like I did the dishes.

Anyway, it was getting late, and you know I had to rush her out of there, and I tried to explain to her but she just didn’t want to listen, so then I put my back against her and shoved her toward the door, and I guess she got annoyed or something ‘cause then I shoved some more but she wasn‘t there and I fell on the kitchen floor and she was standing over me with her sword in her hand and she had on what she called her warrior-woman expression, and I could just see the headlines in the Post: QUEENS WOMAN DIES IN SHISH KABOB TRAGEDY. Josh would never be able to face our folks again. So I go. “Back off, Muffy. “ Wrong thing to say.

“You’re as bad as those ape-things in the center of the Earth!” She was screeching now.

I go, “Just bag your face, will you? Some roommate you are. Where’s that old Greenberg School bond we used to have?”

That got to her. She sheathed her jeweled sword and calmed down. She helped me get up and dusted me off a little. “I’m sorry, Bitsy, “ she goes. I noticed she was blushing.

“All right, I guess, “ I go. We looked at each other a little longer, then I started to cry for some reason, and then she trickled a couple, and we started hugging each other and bawling, and the front door opened and I heard Josh coming in, and all he needed was another unexplained visit from his favorite Savage Amazon, so I go, “Maureen, quick, you’ve got to hide!” And then I felt like we were all on I Love Lucy or something, and I started to laugh.

She laughed, too. Josh didn’t laugh, though. Sometimes it’s like we only see his friends, and why can’t I ever have my friends over? Josh goes, “Because my friends don’t wave broadswords around on the subway. “ I suppose he has a point there.