New Earth

Turnabout

The following morning, as Jordan left his cubicle and headed for the camp’s dining hall, Brandon fell in step beside him.

“Good morning, Jordy.”

“Morning, Bran.”

“Going to the city this morning?”

“That’s my intention.”

Brandon said, “I was talking with Thornberry and Meek last night. They think it would be a good idea if you kept your phone on, so we can record what Adri and the others say to you.”

Jordan felt his brows knit. “Record…?”

“I think it’s a good idea.”

“Do you?”

Brandon broke into one of his boyish smiles. “Oh, you can turn it off when you’re alone with Aditi.”

Jordan did not smile back at him.

As he walked the trail through the forest toward the city, Jordan felt the phone in his shirt pocket weighing like a guilty conscience.

Bran’s right, he told himself. We should be recording everything. Still, he felt it was somehow a sneaky thing to do, a betrayal of trust.

Then he saw Aditi standing on the stone walkway that circled the city, smiling warmly at him, and he forgot about the phone.

“Good morning,” he called, hurrying his steps toward her.

“Good morning to you,” she called back. And all Jordan’s doubts and fears about these aliens and their intentions melted away in the warmth of her greeting.

He resisted the urge to take her in his arms. Instead he simply extended his hand. She took it in her own.

“Adri told me about his physical examination,” she said as they began to walk down the city’s broad central avenue. The street was busy with men and women, some strolling idly, others striding purposefully, as if on some important business. Aditi’s pet feline was nowhere in sight.

“Today it’s my turn to be poked and prodded,” Jordan said, trying to make it sound light, pleasant.

Very seriously, Aditi replied, “No one is going to touch you. All the tests are noninvasive.”

“Of course,” he said. The irony in his voice was lost on her.

“I will be in charge of your examination,” Aditi said, rather proudly.

Somewhat surprised, Jordan asked, “You’re a medical technician, as well as a teacher?”

She hesitated, then replied, “I’ve had the training. All of us are capable of many tasks.”

They were heading for the main building, Jordan saw. Behind it was the dormitory where he and Brandon had been housed.

As if she could read his mind, Aditi asked, “Will you be staying here tonight?”

“I’d like to,” he admitted. “I’ll have to call back and tell the others first.”

“Of course,” she said.

As they neared the main building’s stately flight of entrance steps, Jordan asked, “And Adri, what tasks is he trained for?”

Again that little hesitation, as if she were checking through her memory for the correct answer. Or waiting for instructions. At last Aditi said, “Adri is our … historian. I think that is the best way to describe his duties.”

“Historian?”

“He deals with the past,” she said. Then she added, “And the future.”

“I don’t understand.”

Her lovely face puckered into an almost troubled frown, as if she were struggling to find the right words to explain it to him.

“I think that’s the best way to describe it,” Aditi said. “Adri studies the past of our people, and yours, and makes projections of what the future might be like.”

“The future of my people?”

“Yes. Naturally.”

“I’d like to see what he has to say about that,” Jordan said.

“I’m sure he’d be happy to discuss it with you.”

They walked the rest of the way in thoughtful silence. As they started up the stairs of the main building, Jordan asked, “How far back does your history go?”

“Millions of years,” Aditi answered. “Our years. We have existed for a very long time.”

“Back on Earth we wonder how long the human race can survive. You give me hope.”

“An intelligent race can survive almost indefinitely. Especially if it is intelligent enough to adapt to changing environments.”

“Ah,” said Jordan. “That’s the key, then, isn’t it? How intelligent are we?”

Very seriously, Aditi said, “The key is the ability to give up outworn concepts, modes of behavior that no longer work for survival.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Your people back on Earth have survived ice ages and pandemic plagues and your own aggressive, xenophobic nature. The question before you now is whether the strengths that have helped you to survive have become countersurvival in the face of new dangers.”

“You mean the greenhouse climate shift?”

“That’s part of the problem you face. You seem to have overcome the move toward authoritative governments—dictatorships. But there are new challenges that face you.”

“New challenges? Beyond the climate shift?”

“Yes.”

“What are they?”

Aditi did not answer for several heartbeats. At last she said, “You should speak to Adri about that. He’s the expert in that field, not I.”

They had reached the top of the stairs, and Aditi led him through the building’s central corridor to a set of rooms that looked to Jordan like a clinic. The area smelled faintly of antiseptics. People spoke in whispers.

She led him confidently through the warren of hallways to a room that looked to Jordan like a laboratory: the walls were lined with consoles that hummed softly. In the middle of the room stood a tall glass-walled booth. No one else was in the room; they were alone.

Pointing to the booth, Aditi said, “If you’ll step in there, I can scan your body.”

With a slightly mischievous grin, Jordan asked, “Should I take off my clothes?”

She actually blushed. “No, not at all. That won’t be necessary.”

Jordan stepped into the booth.

“Close the door, please,” Aditi said as she walked to the equipment set along the wall.

Jordan pulled the glass door shut.

“Please stand still for a moment.”

He did. He even held his breath. He heard a brief buzz, felt nothing. Aditi had her back to him, studying the gauges and display screens.

“Good,” she said. “You can come out now.”

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it,” she said, still intently peering at the readouts. “We have a complete picture of you, down to the molecular level.”

“That was easy.”

But Aditi said, “The scans show you had a virus in your lower intestinal tract that could potentially be dangerous—even fatal.”

“It’s dormant,” Jordan said. Still, he couldn’t suppress the shudder of fear that went through him.

Then he realized that she’d said “had.”

Before he could ask her, Aditi said, “I eliminated it.”

His knees went weak. Jordan squeaked, “Eliminated it?”

“Actually, the equipment automatically destroyed the virus,” Aditi said. “I should have asked your permission first, I know. I hope you don’t mind.”

Jordan laughed shakily. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.”

History Lesson

She eliminated the virus, Jordan said to himself over and over. Just like that, a tap of the finger and the virus is gone. The idea whirled through his thoughts as Aditi led him up a winding stairway, toward Adri’s office.

“Your technology is quite impressive,” he said, walking alongside her. “Far ahead of ours.”

“In some ways, yes,” Aditi murmured.

“Yet you’ve never developed space flight. I find that rather odd.”

With a sidelong glance, she said, “We develop technology to solve problems. Disease has been a problem for both our peoples. It’s that simple.”

Is it? Jordan wondered silently.

Adri’s office turned out to be a spacious, sunlit, airy room on the top floor of the building, with long windows that looked out on the city’s stone buildings and busy streets. Not a vehicle in sight, Jordan noticed. Pedestrian traffic only. And genetically engineered animals.

Like the building’s corridors, the walls of the office were covered with graceful swirling abstracts. There was no desk, no sign of hierarchy; merely comfortable-looking furniture scattered about the room.

Adri was seated on a long, curving couch when they entered the room. He rose gracefully to his feet and went toward Jordan, arms extended in greeting. In his floor-length robe he seemed to be gliding across the smoothly tiled floor.

“My friend Jordan,” he said, in his thin, whispery voice. “It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Adri,” said Jordan.

“I’m glad that Aditi was able to remove a potentially life-threatening virus from your body,” Adri said as he pointed Jordan toward the couch where he’d been sitting.

Jordan turned to Aditi. “How in the world did you—”

Before she could answer Adri said, “The readouts of your medical examination were transmitted to me here automatically. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, I suppose not.” Jordan looked around the room but he saw no display screens, no communications equipment of any kind.

Gently taking Jordan’s arm with one hand, Adri pointed toward the ceiling with the other. “Holographic projectors,” he explained. “All the hardware is out of sight.”

Jordan allowed the alien to lead him to the couch. He sat on it, and Aditi sat beside him. Adri crooked a finger at a plush armchair and it rolled across the floor to him. He sat in it, facing Jordan.

Suddenly a medical diagnostic console appeared before Jordan’s startled eyes, beeping softly, its screens showing glowing curved lines.

“A hologram,” Adri said, with a nonchalant shrug.

“I see,” said Jordan.

Just as suddenly, the hologram winked out.

“Your people are comfortable in their base camp?” Adri asked.

With a nod, Jordan replied, “Reasonably so. I’m sorry that they seem so…” he searched for a word, “so apprehensive about you. Suspicious.”

“That’s quite natural, I suppose.”

Aditi said, “It’s one of those survival traits that has become countersurvival.”

“Perhaps so,” Jordan granted. “But you must admit, all this is a lot to swallow.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Adri said. “What can I do to make the situation better?”

“You can start by telling me more about yourselves. Aditi tells me you’ve existed for millions of years.”

“Our civilization has, yes. Our culture.”

“And you’ve never developed space flight?”

Adri glanced at Aditi, then said, “We live on this planet. We have no need of space flight.”

“Yet you’ve apparently been studying Earth for some time.”

“Many of your centuries.”

“From here, on the ground.”

“We have optical and radio telescopes. We’ve listened to your radio and watched your television broadcasts. We’ve tapped into your digital webs. We’ve mapped and measured your planet. You exist in a very rich solar system: it’s filled with planets of astounding variety. And moons, asteroids, comets. No wonder you went into space. We have nothing here but our one lonely world.”

“But if you have telescopes of such sensitivity, why didn’t you try to contact us? Why didn’t you tell us you’re here?”

“Fear,” said Adri, quite flatly.

“Fear?”

“Your people are still decidedly aggressive. And xenophobic. You still have racial tensions among your own kind. The sudden announcement of an equally intelligent species would create severe problems for you.”

“So you waited for us to find you.”

“Yes, we did.”

Jordan shook his head. “That must have taken enormous patience. How long have you known of our existence?”

“We observed your cities and the pollution you poured into your atmosphere. We heard your earliest radio transmissions.”

“And all that time you waited.”

Aditi said, “We waited in hope that you would find us and reach out to us.”

“Which you have done,” said Adri. “And we have welcomed you.”

“Yes,” said Jordan. “The question now is, where do we go from here?”

Motivations

Without an instant’s hesitation, Adri replied, “Why, we try to help one another, of course.”

“Help? In what way?”

Aditi said, “We can offer you medical technology that is far advanced over your own.”

“And the energy shields,” Adri added.

“Yes, they would both be welcomed. But what can we offer you?”

“Understanding,” said Adri.

Jordan felt puzzled. “Understanding?”

Adri nodded. “Yours is a large, aggressive species. How many people are there on Earth now?”

“Something like twenty billion. The recent spate of flooding has apparently killed a good many, of course, but the latest census figures I remember put the total in the twenty billion range.”

“Twenty billion,” Adri murmured.

“We are only a few thousand,” said Aditi.

“Thousand?”

“Yes,” Adri said. “Our numbers are very small. Frankly, we’ve been afraid of you. You could swallow us up in one gulp.”

“That’s why you haven’t contacted us,” Jordan realized.

“Your history is filled with the unfortunate consequences of contact between one group of people and another. The Neanderthals, for example. The Native Americans.”

Jordan suddenly understood Paul Longyear’s hard-eyed suspicions.

“So you waited until we reached out to you.”

“It seemed the best course of action for us,” Adri said. “Now that we have made contact, our future is in your hands.”

“Yet you could have remained hidden,” Jordan said. “You shielded your city from our ship’s sensors. We had no idea you were here.”

“If we had stayed hidden, what would have happened?” Adri asked. “You would have landed and started to explore this planet. Sooner or later you would have stumbled upon us.”

“And destroyed us,” Aditi said glumly.

“No! Why would we do that? How could we do it?”

Smiling gently, Adri said, “Friend Jordan, not every human being is as civilized as you. Twenty billion of you! How many would come here, to this world? How quickly would they turn it into a replica of the disaster they have created on their own home world?”

“We would be wiped out,” Aditi repeated.

Jordan said nothing for a moment, his thoughts spinning. Then, “And now that we’ve found you, that danger exists.”

“It does indeed,” said Adri.

“What are you going to do about it?” Aditi asked.

Her face was unutterably sad, Jordan saw. As if I’ve just condemned her entire race to extinction.

“What can I do about it?” he wondered aloud.

Adri said, “That is one of the problems that face us.”

“One of the problems? There are others?”

“Oh, yes. But let us deal with this first problem first.”

“You are a test case for us,” Aditi said. “If we can make you understand, then perhaps there is a chance that contact between our two peoples can be beneficial.”

“And if not?”

Adri sighed heavily. “You are slightly more than eight light-years from Earth. Your transmissions of information back to your home world will take eight-some years to reach their destination.”

Jordan nodded.

Looking slightly guilty, Adri said, “Your messages to Earth are not getting through. I’m afraid we’ve blocked your transmissions.”

“Blocked them? How?”

“It’s only temporarily, until we decide whether we should proceed with you.”

“And if you decide not to proceed?”

“Then your messages back to Earth will be permanently blocked. Earth will decide that your mission somehow met with disaster.”

“They’ll think we’re all dead,” Jordan realized.

“You will not be allowed to return,” said Adri. “You will have to stay here.”

“With us,” Aditi said.

Jordan sat there for long, silent moments, trying to digest it all. If we don’t measure up to Adri’s standards we won’t be allowed to return to Earth. The people back home will think we’ve been killed.

Yet he found himself thinking, Well, would that be so terrible? He looked at Aditi’s young, lovely face: so earnest, so caring. And he thought, Earth’s a madhouse, filled with self-seeking egoists who’ve wrecked the planet. What do I owe them? They killed my wife. They did nothing while the global climate spiraled out of control. Why not stay here and live with these people? With Aditi.

At last he rose from the couch. Aditi stood up beside him.

“I’ll have to talk this over with the others. They’ve got to know what’s at stake.”

Adri slowly, stiffly got to his feet. “By all means. Tell them that we would be happy to have them stay here and join us.”

Jordan smiled bleakly. “You would be happy, I can believe that. But they won’t be.”

Reactions

“They’d force us to stay here?” Thornberry’s beefy face twisted into an angry scowl.

“We’re their prisoners!” Meek wailed.

Jordan had returned to the base camp and called a meeting of the entire team. Aditi had wanted to accompany him, but Jordan decided that it would be better for her to remain in the city.

Now they sat around the long table in the dining area, looking just as angry and fearful as Jordan had expected. At the foot of the table a display screen showed Geoff Hazzard, Trish Wanamaker, and Demetrios Zadar, still aboard the orbiting ship. Hazzard looked grim, hostile. Trish and the astronomer seemed puzzled, confronted with a problem they had never expected.

Standing at the head of the table, Jordan spread both arms to quiet them down. “You can understand how afraid of us they are,” he said.

“They’re afraid of us?” Meek said, incredulous. “Hah!”

Longyear shook his head doggedly. “I say we go back aboard Gaia and drag our tails out of here.”

“Would they try to stop us?” Elyse wondered.

Thornberry said, “If they could deactivate my two rovers, I imagine they could conk out our rocketplane.”

Looking more alarmed than ever, Meek said, “You mean they could keep us here against our will?”

“I suppose that’s better than killing us,” Brandon said with a sardonic grin.

“I knew it!” Meek shouted. “I knew it. We’re all going to be murdered in our beds.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Brandon snapped.

“Now look here, young man—”

“Stop it!” Jordan commanded. “Settle down and stop bickering, both of you. This is exactly the kind of reaction that Adri fears from us: emotion instead of rationality.”

Brandon smiled crookedly at his brother. “All right, Jordy. What’s the rational approach to this?”

Before Jordan could reply, de Falla said, “The first thing to do is to see if the ship’s systems will work.”

“Everything’s working so far,” said Hazzard, from the display screen. “’Course, we haven’t had to fire up the fusion drive.”

“Could you check out the propulsion system without lighting it off?” Longyear asked.

“Sure. That’s what I’ll do.”

“Fine,” Jordan said. “That’s a reasonable first step. But it doesn’t get to the heart of our problem.”

“Which is?” Brandon prompted.

“How do we convince Adri and his people that Earth is not a threat to them?”

That silenced them. Even Meek looked thoughtful. But the silence lasted only a moment.

Thornberry said, “Seems to me our real problem is how do we counter their ability to knock out our vehicles. If we learn how to do that, we’ll be able to leave whenever we want to.”

Jordan nodded. “A good point. And there’s only one way to learn that: by working with Adri’s people. By letting them show us their capabilities, teach us their technology.”

Elyse objected, “Do you think they’d be naïve enough to tell us anything useful?”

“Perhaps not,” Jordan admitted. “But for the present, I think our best course of action—perhaps our only course of action—is to play along with them, show them we harbor no enmity toward them, show them that we’re eager to learn from them.”

“And we can offer to teach them our technology,” Brandon added. “After all, they don’t have space flight.”

“They don’t seem to have any transportation vehicles at all,” Jordan said.

“That’s very odd,” said Thornberry. “If they don’t have vehicles of their own, how do they know enough to deactivate ours?”

Longyear piped up. “I’d like to find out how their DNA matches ours. Was there some contact between us and them in the past?”

“But they don’t have space flight,” said Dr. Yamaguchi. “How could there have been any contact?”

“There must have been,” Longyear insisted. “You can’t get identical DNA without contact of some kind. Maybe both our races come from some third species.”

“An interstellar pollinator?” Brandon scoffed. “Like Arrhenius’s panspermia theory? Get real, Paul.”

Longyear frowned.

“Be that as it may,” said Jordan, trying to maintain control of the meeting, “we have an agenda of goals to reach for.”

“We do?” asked Meek.

“Yes, we do,” Jordan replied. Pointing to Hazzard, “Geoff, you check out the ship’s propulsion system. We might decide to leave here right away.”

Hazzard nodded.

“I’ve got to return to the city and tell Adri that we’ve decided to work with him and his people. Who’s willing to join me?”

“Not I,” Meek snapped. “I’m not going to set foot in their city, not willingly.”

“I’ll go,” said Brandon. “And I’ll ask Adri to put me in touch with whatever passes for a geologist among his folks.”

“I’ll go, too,” Elyse said.

Jordan felt mildly surprised. He surmised that she wanted to be close to Brandon, but he had to ask, “What can an astrophysicist accomplish—”

Before he could finish the sentence Elyse said, “You mentioned that they have advanced telescopes. I would like to see them, study them. This could be an unprecedented chance to study a white dwarf up close.”

“I see,” Jordan replied, trying not to smile at her. “Of course.” And he thought, I want to be close to Aditi; she wants to be close to Bran. From the look on Brandon’s face, he saw that his brother wanted to be close to Elyse, as well.

“I want to go,” Thornberry said. “There’s a lot for us to learn, there is.”

“I’ll go, too,” Longyear added, although he didn’t look very happy about it. “You’ll need a biologist, and I want to figure out how their DNA can be so much like ours.”

“Five of us, then,” said Jordan.

Meek wagged his head from side to side. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I tell you, you’re putting yourselves into the lions’ den.”

“Perhaps so, Harmon,” Jordan replied. “But I seem to recall an old adage, ‘Behold the lowly turtle: he only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.’”

The others around the table laughed feebly. Meek made a sour face.

In the City

As soon as the meeting broke up, Jordan and the four others headed for the city. It was nearly sunset when they left the base camp. The shadows of twilight lengthened as they marched along the forest trail. Jordan realized he didn’t know how to contact Adri with his pocketphone, yet he had the feeling that Adri knew perfectly well that he was coming.

Sure enough, the alien was standing at the edge of the city, on the stone walk that circled the buildings, practically beaming at the five approaching humans.

But Aditi was not with him.

“Welcome, my friends,” said Adri, extending both arms to them.

“We’re here to begin the process of learning to get along together,” Jordan said. In his own ears, the pronouncement sounded slightly pompous.

But Adri’s aged face smiled at him. “Very good. But let’s have dinner first.”

Aditi joined them for dinner, and Jordan felt happy and relaxed at last.

Jordan woke up the next morning feeling truly rested. His bedroom in the city was almost like home to him: he felt comfortable in it, at ease. The room wasn’t spacious, yet it felt pleasantly airy. Its only window looked out on a charming courtyard, colorful with blossoming shrubbery and a stately tree at its center. Even the hummingbird buzzing overhead seemed familiar, friendly.

He hoped that Brandon felt the same way, then wondered if Bran were in his own room or down the hall with Elyse.

Staring up at the high ceiling, he thought of Aditi. Except for that one quick kiss in the rain a few days earlier, Jordan had not made any romantic moves on her. He wanted to, the physical urge was definitely there, but thoughts of Miriam rose in his mind. Her ghost separated them.

For her part, Aditi had seemed pleasant enough through dinner, a warm, happy young woman who laughed easily and sparkled with intelligence. Yet she seemed content to be a friend, a companion, and nothing more. There was a limit to her friendliness, he could feel it, like an electric fence.

While the dessert was being served, Jordan asked her about her people’s customs regarding marriage and family.

“I’ve never been married,” she said, as if surprised by his question.

“But your people do marry,” he pressed.

She glanced at Adri, seated beside her. “Yes,” she said slowly, almost reluctantly. “Marriage is rare among us, though. Our birth rate is so low that there is little need for marriage and child rearing.”

“But you do marry.”

She finally understood. “Yes,” Aditi answered with an amused smile. “But marriage isn’t necessary for a couple to have a sexual relationship.”

And suddenly Jordan felt tongue-tied. He turned his attention to his dessert and hoped none of the others noticed his burning cheeks.

Lying in his bed, Jordan remembered the moment and his embarrassment. Like a pimple-faced teenaged bumpkin, he said to himself. Like a foolish—

His phone chirped, interrupting his musings. He sat up and reached for it on the bedside table.

Geoffrey Hazzard’s face filled the little screen, dark, unsmiling.

“Good morning, Geoff,” Jordan said. “You’re up pretty early, aren’t you?”

Hazzard broke into a sardonic little smile. “You’ve slept pretty late, haven’t you?”

The clock readout at the bottom of the phone’s screen showed it was precisely 8 A.M. New Earth’s spin rate was almost exactly the same as Earth’s, to within a few milliseconds. Another coincidence that seemed too good to be true. But there it was, coincidence or not.

“I’m getting lazy, I admit it,” Jordan said, suppressing a yawn. “How’s everything aboard the ship?”

“That’s what I’m calling about.”

Jordan felt a pang of alarm. “Something wrong?”

“Not with the ship,” said Hazzard. “All systems check out solidly in the green. Nothing wrong with the fusion drive.”

“Then why are you calling?”

“Half an hour ago our sensors detected a major flare on the Pup. It’s putting out a lot of energy. Looks like we’re going to be hit by a major radiation storm.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Could be. I’ve stepped up the power for our magnetic shielding. It’ll stop the protons, they’re the biggest danger, but a lot of gamma and X-ray radiation’s going to zip right through the magnetic field.”

“You’ll have to spend a few hours in the storm cellar, then.”

Hazzard frowned slightly. “More like a couple of days.”

“I see.”

“I was thinking maybe we could come down to the surface for a day or so, stay at the base camp.”

“And be protected by the planet’s atmosphere.”

“Beats sitting in the damned coffin for hours on end.”

“What about the ship’s systems? Will they be damaged?”

“They’re hardened. Should be okay. If there’s damage we could repair it afterward.”

Jordan thought swiftly. “All right, come on down, then. I’ll alert Thornberry and the others.”

The astronaut broke into a big, bright smile. “Thanks, Jordan. I’ll tell Trish and Demetrios.”

Hazzard’s image winked out. Jordan put in a conference call to the others in the city and asked them to meet him in his quarters immediately.

“A solar storm?” Elyse said, suddenly excited. “I’ll have to get to the observatory! I can observe the planet’s magnetosphere and its interaction with the plasma cloud. This is wonderful!”

She and Brandon were in the sitting room that connected Jordan’s bedroom with his brother’s. It was obvious that she had spent the night with Brandon.

Thornberry, slumped on one of the armchairs, was less excited about the impending storm. “Could be trouble for the ship’s electronic systems,” he muttered, rubbing his stubbled chin.

“What about the propulsion engines?” Jordan asked.

Thornberry made an elaborate shrug. “Might fry the electronic controls, but it shouldn’t hurt the engines themselves. They see plenty of radiation when the fusion reactor’s burning, they do.”

Longyear looked thoughtful as he sat in the other armchair, leaning his chin on his fists. “Hazzard and the others ought to be safe enough in the storm cellar,” he mused.

“He’s asked to come down to the base camp,” said Jordan. “And I agreed.”

“Then there’ll be nobody in the ship?” Thornberry asked.

“For a day or two,” Jordan said.

Thornberry chuckled. “I can just hear Meek shrieking when he finds out about that.”

“What would Meek have to complain about?” Brandon asked.

“He’ll say this flare was caused by Adri, to get us to abandon the ship, so he can have all of us in his grip here on the ground.”

The others laughed, weakly. Jordan wondered if Meek would be right.

Shielding

The little meeting broke up. Elyse—with Brandon at her side—left to go to the astronomical observatory on the other side of the city. Thornberry and Longyear hurried out to the buggy that the roboticist had parked at the city’s edge and headed back to the base camp, to inform Meek and the others that Hazzard, Trish Wanamaker, and Demetrios Zadar were on their way to join them.

Standing alone in his suddenly emptied sitting room, Jordan decided he’d better talk to Adri and see what he knew about the upcoming solar storm.

He called out to the room’s communications system, “Contact Adri, please.”

Almost instantaneously the wall screen showed Adri. He looked up from where he was sitting, apparently slightly surprised. Adri appeared to be in conference with a half-dozen younger men and women, sitting on the chairs and couches scattered about his spacious room.

“Oh, yes, the radiation storm,” Adri said, nodding slightly. “I was just informed of it by our astronomers.”

“So they’re aware of it.”

“Of course.” Adri hesitated a moment, then went on, “Why don’t you come to my quarters, where we can discuss the situation?”

“I’ll be there directly,” said Jordan.

The airy penthouse room was empty when Jordan got there, except for Adri himself. The people who had been there before were gone.

“Welcome, friend Jordan,” said Adri, rising slowly from the couch where he’d been sitting. “Have you had breakfast?”

Jordan crossed the big room swiftly and grasped both of Adri’s outstretched hands in his own.

Without preamble, Jordan said, “The three people who were aboard our ship in orbit are coming down to the base camp, for the duration of the storm.”

“A wise precaution,” said Adri. “This is going to be a severe storm, from what I’m told, and they will be much safer beneath our protective blanket of air than aboard your ship in orbit.”

Adri sat back on the couch; Jordan took one of the armchairs facing him. Somehow Adri looked older than ever before, weary, bent with age. Off in a corner of the room, the alien’s furball pet seemed to be curled up, asleep.

“I was just about to order breakfast for myself,” Adri said. “Would you care for something?”

Jordan shrugged. “Some buttered toast, perhaps. And tea.”

“Of course.” Adri called to one of the wall screens and ordered breakfast for two.

“So it will be a very severe storm,” Jordan said.

Looking quite serious, Adri replied, “Very. The Pup throws off flares every now and then, but this one is among the largest we’ve ever recorded.”

“Will it cause much damage?”

“Here on the ground? No, no: the atmosphere protects us to a great degree, and our energy shields will absorb whatever radiation reaches the ground.”

“But our ship in orbit?”

“It may suffer some damage, I’m afraid.”

“I see,” Jordan said.

“We could provide an energy shield for your camp,” Adri suggested. “It would be the prudent thing to do.”

Thinking how Meek would react to that, Jordan still said, “Thank you. I’ll ask Dr. Thornberry to work with your people to set it up.”

“Very good,” said Adri. “I’ll tell Aditi to direct the installation.” With a knowing smile, he added, “She’ll be glad of an excuse to be near you again.”

Jordan forced himself to concentrate on business. “Could you provide an energy shield for our ship, as well?”

Adri looked away for a moment. At last he said, “That might be feasible, but we won’t have time to do so before the radiation storm strikes.”

“But if you can set up a shield for our base camp, why not the ship?”

“It would have to be lifted to your ship.”

“We can do that easily enough.”

“And then integrated with your ship’s systems,” Adri went on, “to make certain it would not interfere with their operation. That would take a day or so of testing and adjustments, I fear.”

“Oh. I see.” But despite himself Jordan wondered if Adri was telling him the truth.

As Jordan prepared to leave the city and return to the camp, he was surprised to see Brandon enter their sitting room, looking downcast.

“I thought you were staying with Elyse,” he said to his brother.

Dejectedly, Brandon replied, “She’s talking technobabble with the astronomers. I’m just in the way.”

“Feeling left out?”

“Totally.”

“Your first lovers’ quarrel,” Jordan teased.

“No quarrel,” said Brandon. “She wasn’t paying enough attention to me to have a quarrel.”

Suppressing a chuckle, Jordan offered, “Well, you can come back with us to the camp.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what I’ll have to do.”

Jordan couldn’t help telling him, “Aditi’s coming with us.”

Brandon looked surprised. Quickly recovering, he said only, “Good for you, Jordy.”

As they trudged through the woods toward the cluster of hemispherical shelters that comprised the base camp Jordan stayed alongside Aditi. Behind them, a minihorse carried an electronics black box the size of a shipping crate, the generator for the energy dome. Brandon and the others walked up ahead.

“Does the Pup burp out flares very often?” Jordan asked Aditi.

She looked puzzled. “Burp?”

Jordan rummaged in his mind for a definition. “Like when you’ve gobbled down your food too fast.” And he pantomimed a burp.

“Ah!” Laughing, Aditi said, “You mean ‘expel forcibly, belch, erupt, explode.’”

“You sound like a dictionary.”

“I’m quoting from a dictionary.”

Surprised, Jordon blurted, “You have a dictionary memorized?”

Again she laughed brightly. “No, but I can call one up when I need to.”

He understood. “You have a communications system? Built in?”

Aditi tapped her short-cropped red hair. “Inside the skull. We all do. It’s installed in childhood.”

Impressed, Jordan muttered, “That beats carrying a phone around, I suppose.”

When they reached the base camp, Meek eyed the minihorse and the equipment it was carrying with unconcealed hostility.

“I don’t like this,” he told Jordan. “I don’t like this at all.”

Taking the astrobiologist by the arm and leading him away from Aditi and the stolid beast, Jordan said, “Harmon, it’s for your own protection.”

“How do we know that?”

“The city is protected by an energy dome.”

Undeterred, Meek insisted, “We have no idea of how it works or what it actually does. I’m against—”

“What it does,” Jordan interrupted, “is protect you from any excess radiation caused by the storm.”

Meek’s long, craggy face was a picture of suspicion. “The Pup just happened to emit a flare. Hazzard and the others just happen to prefer leaving the ship and coming down here. Adri just happens to offer what he claims is a protective energy shield for our camp.”

“And I just happen to accept his offer,” Jordan countered, “and order the energy shield to be set up here. That’s all there is to it, Harmon.”

“I’m against it.”

“Your objection will be noted in the expedition’s record.”

“Fine.”

Jordan didn’t tell Meek that the expedition’s record was not being transmitted to Earth. Adri was blocking all their transmissions. He smiled to himself grimly. Harmon would go ballistic if he knew that.

Then he thought, perhaps I should go a little ballistic, myself.

But he kept his doubts to himself.

Hazzard and the two others arrived aboard a rocketplane that glided in smoothly to a picture-perfect landing. The astronaut looked happy to be back with everyone else.

“The ship’ll be okay,” he said, once Jordan asked him. “If there’s damage from the storm we should be able to repair it.”

“It’s just we fragile human beings that have to be protected,” Thornberry added, cocking a derisive eye at Meek.

Thornberry and Brandon helped Aditi to lift the crate of equipment from the back of the minihorse and place it squarely in the middle of their encampment. Once they uncrated it Aditi bent over the generator and tapped several switches on its top.

Jordan felt a momentary tingle through his body. Aditi peered at the readouts flickering along the top of the shield generator, then turned to Jordan and announced, “The shield is on. We are protected now.”

Aurora

Jordan decided it would be best for everyone to remain at the camp until the radiation storm abated. Meek and de Falla disappeared into the bubble tent that housed the geology lab, to pore over rock samples. Longyear joined them, together with several others, including Dr. Yamaguchi.

Thornberry bent over the shield generator, eager to learn how it worked. He quizzed Aditi, who apparently knew only how to turn the generator on and off, not its principles of operation. Hazzard, with nothing to do, walked around the camp, seemingly pleased to be free of the confines of the ship.

Jordan went from one group to another, checking on their needs, their findings.

Then he called Elyse, who was at the city’s astronomical observatory, where she was watching imagery of the Pup’s seething, boiling surface. She looked totally rapt as she stared at the screen, barely paying attention to Jordan. One of the city’s astronomers stood beside her, intently watching the readout that displayed the steeply rising level of radiation up above the atmosphere.

Jordan nodded to himself, satisfied that he had made the right decision to allow Hazzard and the others to come down to the camp, and to accept Adri’s offer of a protective shield.

When he reached the bubble tent that housed the geology lab, Meek and Longyear were sitting on folding chairs at the far side of the lab, heads together in whispered conversation. The instant Jordan stepped in, they both stiffened like naughty little boys caught raiding the cookie jar.

Jordan merely smiled and asked de Falla, who was sitting at a bench closer to the entryway, “How’s the work going, Silvio?”

“Interesting,” said the geologist. “I’m dating the rocks. You know, argon/potassium ratios, uranium/lead ratios, that sort of stuff.”

“Calculating their age from the amount of radioactive elements in them,” Jordan said.

De Falla nodded, and cast a glance at Meek and Longyear, who were sitting silent and unmoving across the lab.

“What have you found so far?”

With an almost boyish grin, de Falla said, “Confusion. Most of the samples we’ve chipped out are a lot younger than I expected. Younger by hundreds of millions of years.”

Puzzled, Jordan asked, “Younger? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Not yet.” Scratching at his neat little beard, he added, “But if these rock samples are typical of the planet, then this planet is somehow much younger than Earth. A whole lot younger.”

“Well, Elyse says Sirius itself can’t be more than half a billion years old.”

“I know. But how could this planet have evolved such a complex biosphere in so short a time? On Earth, it took more than a billion years before life crawled out of the oceans and colonized the land.”

“So this planet isn’t an exact duplicate of Earth, after all,” Jordan said.

“No, it’s not,” said de Falla. But there was little conviction in it. He seemed more doubtful of his discovery than proud of it.

Jordan left the lab tent and went to find Aditi. She was still with Thornberry, by the shield generator. Jordan asked her, “What do you know about the geology of your world?”

“Not very much, I’m afraid. Ask Adri about it; he can put you in touch with our geologists.”

He nodded and took her arm and started to walk with her among the bubble tents. Looking back at Thornberry, who was still peering intently at the generator, Jordan said, “I wonder if it’s a good idea to leave Mitch alone with your equipment.”

Aditi asked, “What do you mean?”

“I get the distinct feeling that he’d like to take the thing apart to find out how it works.”

She laughed. “He won’t be able to do that. The equipment is self-protective.”

“It resists tampering?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how it works, but if you try to open it up without tapping in the proper security code, it will give you a mild shock.”

“Really?”

“We have curious tinkerers among our people, too,” Aditi said.

Jordan found himself saying, “I think it would be best if you stayed here tonight. No sense walking back to the city in this radiation storm.”

She looked up at him. “It wouldn’t be dangerous for me, not really.”

Shaking his head, Jordan said firmly, “No. I want you to stay here tonight.” Then he laughed lightly and added, “If you don’t mind.”

Aditi didn’t answer. But she didn’t reject the idea, either.

Late in the afternoon, as Jordan walked with Aditi back toward the communications center, he saw Brandon step out of the biology lab’s bubble tent.

“Bran,” Jordan called to his brother. “How goes it?”

Stepping quickly toward Jordan, Brandon said, “Radiation level’s peaked. It’s starting to go down. Slowly.”

“I wonder how the ship made out?”

“Hazzard’s been checking on it remotely. She answers his queries, and the diagnostics don’t show any major damage.”

“That’s good. I get the feeling that Meek thought the radiation storm was cooked up by Adri to destroy our ship.”

Brandon glanced at Aditi, then said, “That’s not a joking matter, Jordy. You know there’s a cabal simmering along?”

Jordan felt mildly surprised. “A cabal?”

“Meek. He and Longyear and several others. They’ve formed a faction that’s not happy with your leadership.”

“Oh, that.”

“It’s more serious than you think, Jordy.”

“How serious can it be?”

“They’re talking about pulling up stakes and heading back to Earth,” said Brandon. “I think maybe Hazzard agrees with them.”

“Nonsense,” Jordan scoffed.

“They’re serious, Jordy. Meek is scared shitless of Adri and this whole situation. He says it can’t be natural. Everything we’re learning about this planet points to the conclusion that what we’re seeing isn’t natural.”

“He’s overreacting,” said Jordan, with a glance at Aditi. “He’ll get over it, in time.”

“I don’t know, Jordy,” Brandon said. “I just talked with Elyse, over at the observatory. She’s found out that this planet doesn’t have a magnetosphere.”

“No planetary magnetic field?”

“None.”

“Another difference from Earth,” Jordan murmured.

“Considering the radiation flux from the Pup’s flare, we ought to be getting fried here on the ground, without a magnetic field to deflect the charged particles.”

“That’s why Adri gave us the energy shield.”

Shaking his head, Brandon said, “Elyse told me that something’s absorbing the radiation, stopping most of it from reaching the planet.”

“Something? What?”

“Damned if I know. If there’s no magnetic field, then what on Earth is protecting this planet?”

“The energy shield,” said Aditi.

Both the brothers turned to her.

Brandon demanded, “You mean the shield protecting this camp is strong enough to deflect the flux from the flare?”

“No, it’s not. This little shield merely absorbs the residual amount of radiation that gets through the big shield.”

“The big shield?” Jordan asked.

Aditi nodded. “The planetary shield. The energy screen that protects the whole planet.”

Brandon gaped at her. “You mean you’ve got an energy shield strong enough to handle the flux coming in from the flare?”

“Certainly,” Aditi replied, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “We don’t have a natural magnetic field, so we had to set up an energy shield to protect ourselves.”

For several moments neither brother spoke, as they tried to absorb what Aditi was telling them.

A man-made energy screen that protects the entire planet, Jordan marveled. And she takes it for granted; it’s perfectly normal to her.

But Brandon said, “Wait till Harmon hears about this. He’ll want to hightail it out of here today!”

Jordan stared at his brother, thinking, We can’t leave! We just got here. And there’s so much to learn, so much to explore.

He glanced at Aditi, who stood patiently at his side, looking as if she were wondering what all the fuss was about.

Framing his words carefully, Jordan said to his brother, “Bran, I can understand Meek’s fears. I worry about all this myself. I mean, it’s just too good to be true. But we mustn’t run away from it. We’ve got to learn about it. There’s an enormous amount to be learned, I’m certain of that. And I intend to stay and learn, not run away like a frightened little boy.”

Brandon smiled tightly. “That’s just about what I thought you’d say. Now tell it to Meek.”

Taking in a deep breath, Jordan said, “I’ll do that. In the morning. I’ll call a breakfast meeting and we can thrash this out, with all of us present.”

Nodding, Brandon said, “Okay. I’ll tell Meek and the others.”

“Good. Do that.”

As Brandon hurried away, Aditi asked, “Will this be trouble for you?”

“Perhaps,” said Jordan. “But I’m supposed to be this group’s leader, so I’m going to have to lead them.”

And he remembered an old dictum from another leader of an earlier century: The secret of being a successful manager is keeping the five guys who hate you away from the four who haven’t made up their minds.

The evening was more than a little awkward. He had to find a space for Aditi to sleep. Very hesitantly, he phoned Elyse Rudaki at the observatory again to ask if Aditi might spend the night in her cubicle.

Elyse smiled knowingly. “Of course. I’m not using it.”

“I … ah … well, since you’re still in the city…” Jordan stammered.

Elyse seemed amused by his consternation. “Even if I were in the camp I wouldn’t be using my own cubicle. Not as long as Brandon is there.”

Jordan mumbled a thank-you and cut the connection.

He did not want to eat dinner with everyone else. No sense starting a debate with Meek and his clique over dinner, he told himself. We’ll have it out in the morning.

So he picked up a pair of dinner trays and met Aditi outside, where her minihorse was placidly munching on the grass. They sat upwind of the animal, with their backs against the sloping, slightly yielding wall of a bubble tent, laid the prepackaged meals on their outstretched legs, and opened them. They instantly heated themselves.

“Rather romantic, actually,” said Jordan as the aroma of their steaming meals wafted up to them. “Dining out in the open, under the—”

His voice caught in his throat. Up above them, the sky was glowing with colors. Long gossamer sheets of delicate green, red, blue, white shimmered and danced across the heavens, almost blotting out the stars.

Aditi gasped. “Aurora,” she breathed.

Jordan found his voice. “From the radiation storm,” he said softly. “Some of the radiation got through your screen and it’s lighting up the ionosphere.”

“It’s so incredibly beautiful,” she said.

“Overwhelming.”

Without thinking consciously about it, Jordan impulsively reached for Aditi and pulled her to him. His dinner slid off his legs and onto the grass as he held her tightly in his arms and kissed her.

Factions

Aditi and Jordan never finished their meal. They never even started it. They clung to each other for hours, caressing, kissing, speaking to each other in low, breathless voices.

“I had to travel eight and a half light-years to find you,” Jordan said. “To come alive again. To feel love and warmth again.”

Nestling her head on his shoulder, Aditi said, “I never realized how overpowering an emotion love can be. It … it simply sweeps you away.”

“It does that,” said Jordan. Looking up at the aurora again, he added, “Of course, we had a little help from the stars.”

She giggled. “Yes, we did.”

He looked down at her beautiful face, lit by the flickering aurora, and kissed her again.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “You have your meeting tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t want this night to end.”

“But it must,” Aditi said. She picked up her forgotten dinner tray and climbed to her feet.

Jordan got up beside her, slowly, reluctantly. “The aurora seems to be fading away.”

“The storm must be ending.”

“And our storm?” he asked.

She smiled gently at him. “It’s just beginning.”

“Will you come to my cubicle?”

“I can’t. It wouldn’t look right to the others.”

“I don’t care about the others! Let’s—”

Aditi silenced him with a fingertip on his lips. “Do you want Dr. Meek and the others who are frightened of us to think you’ve been seduced by an alien Madame Butterfly?”

He burst into laughter. “I think you mean Mata Hari.”

“She was the spy?”

“Not a very good one, I’m afraid. She got caught. And executed.”

“Oh.” Aditi’s face, half hidden in shadows, broke into a contrite smile. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes,” he said. Reluctantly. Very reluctantly.

They all met the next morning in the dining area for breakfast. After a pair of robots served the prepackaged food trays, Jordan got to his feet and said, “You’re probably wondering why I asked you all here this morning.”

No one laughed.

“Seriously,” he continued, “we seem to have a difference of opinion about what our course of action should be.”

Everyone turned to Meek, who was bringing a forkful of scrambled faux eggs to his mouth. He froze for an instant, put the fork down, and looked squarely at Jordan.

“I think we’re in over our heads here, and we should leave immediately and head back to Earth.”

“But we’ve made the greatest discovery in the history of the human race,” Jordan said. “Should we run away from it?”

“As fast as we can,” said Meek.

“But why? What are you afraid of?”

Meek glanced at Aditi, who was seated at Jordan’s side. He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “What I have to say may offend you, Aditi. But I’ve got to say it.”

“Please go ahead,” Aditi replied. “Speak your mind.”

“Very well. This planet shouldn’t be here. These people shouldn’t be here. Everything we’ve learned about Adri and his people leads to colossal contradictions.”

“Such as?”

“Adri’s DNA is identical to ours,” said Longyear. “That’s not possible, not natural.”

De Falla spoke up. “The planet’s geological structure is much younger than it should be.”

Meek resumed, “They have technology that’s far superior to ours.”

“But they don’t have spacecraft, not even satellites,” Hazzard added.

“Now wait,” said Jordan. “Adri and his people have treated us quite well. They’ve welcomed us—”

“Like the spider to the fly,” Tanya Verishkova muttered.

“He’s not being honest with us,” Meek went on. “He isn’t telling us the truth.”

Turning to Aditi, Jordan asked, “Is Adri being honest with us?”

Aditi said in a clear, calm voice, “Everything Adri has said to you has been the truth. He has never lied to you.”

“Ah, you see?” Meek said, waggling a finger at her. “They speak like lawyers.”

“What do you want to know?” Aditi asked.

“Why are you here? Why did you lure us to you?”

She looked genuinely perplexed. “We have lived here all our lives, just as you have lived on Earth. And we didn’t lure you, you came here to us.”

Longyear said, “Our ship’s sensors couldn’t detect your city.”

“Because of its energy shield.”

“But you sent out a laser beacon to attract us.”

“We observed your ship in orbit, just as we observed the earlier ships that had no people aboard them.”

“How did you know the earlier ships were uncrewed?” Meek demanded.

She shrugged. “No one came down to the ground, as you did.”

“Why’d you shine that laser beacon?” Thornberry asked.

“To attract your attention.”

“Aha!” Meek snapped.

Jordan said, “Harmon, turn the situation around. If an alien spaceship arrived in orbit around Earth, what would your reaction be?”

“Blow it out of the sky,” Thornberry said, without an instant’s hesitation.

“Be serious.”

“Well…” Meek hesitated, then answered, “I suppose I’d want to meet whoever was aboard it.”

“And ascertain if they were dangerous or not,” de Falla said.

“And examine them medically,” Yamaguchi added.

Longyear asked, “But what would be the chances that they were human? Down to their DNA?”

“We don’t know,” Jordan said. “This is our first experience with alien life.” Before anyone could reply, he added, “Intelligent alien life.”

“What about those whales in Jupiter’s ocean?” Verishkova asked. “The leviathans?”

“They’re not intelligent,” said Longyear.

“Aren’t they? I’ve read papers that say they are.”

“Whether they are or not,” Jordan said, “Adri and the people here on New Earth are fully intelligent.”

Meek insisted, “I say we go back to Earth and report what we’ve found.”

“And leave all these questions unanswered?” Jordan challenged. “The biggest discovery in human history, and you want to run away from it?”

Meek slowly sank back onto his chair. “I think they’re dangerous,” he grumbled. “I can’t help feeling that we’re in danger here.”

“Have they done anything harmful to us?” Jordan asked. “Have they been anything but helpful, generous?”

“They’re not telling us the whole truth about themselves. They know a lot more than they’re telling us.”

“Then we should dig into the matter and learn more about them,” Jordan said.

A stubborn silence filled the tent.

“We’re here to discover, to learn,” Jordan pleaded. “You’re all scientists and engineers. You’ve dedicated your lives to exploring, to uncovering new knowledge. Why run away from the opportunity of a lifetime?”

“To save our lives,” Meek answered.

Jordan looked around the table. “How many of you feel we’re in real danger here?”

Meek’s hand shot up. After a moment’s hesitation, Longyear, Wanamaker, and de Falla raised theirs also. Hazzard looked uncertain, uncomfortable, but his hands remained in his lap.

Suppressing a satisfied smile, Jordan said, “The nays have it. We’re staying.”

Meek shook his head. “This is a mistake, I tell you. A fatal mistake.”

“The mistake, Harmon,” said Jordan, with some steam behind it, “would be to pull up stakes. Instead of running away, we’ve got to learn all we can about this world and its people. We have a whole new world to explore! Let’s get on with it!”

But even as he spoke so positively, Jordan wondered how much he was being influenced by Aditi, sitting there and beaming prettily at him.

Transition

Jordan looked at his team, their faces all turned toward him. You’re their leader, he reminded himself. Show some leadership.

“Very well,” he told them, “I’m going back to the city. I’ll talk to Adri and try to get some of our questions answered. Who wants to come with me?”

Not a hand went up.

“Mitch, don’t you want to talk to their engineers? Find out how these energy shield generators work?”

“I do,” said Thornberry, “but … maybe later. Not just now.”

Hazzard said, “I’d better get back to the ship, check out all the systems.”

“Make certain the propulsion engines are working,” Meek muttered.

Turning to his brother, Jordan asked, “Bran, you want to come to the city, don’t you?”

“When Elyse is finished with their astronomers,” Brandon replied, looking uneasy. “Right now she wouldn’t have time for me.” Before Jordan could object, he added, “Besides, I’ve got plenty to do here.”

Jordan shook his head. “I see. All right, then, I’ll go alone and have a talk with Adri.”

“He’ll tell you anything you want to know,” said Aditi. “Or he’ll put you in contact with specialists who have the information you want.”

Nodding, Jordan said, “Good. Then my task will be to set up a series of conferences for each of you with specialists in your different fields.”

“That’ll be grand,” Thornberry said, without enthusiasm.

“Fine by me,” said Brandon.

Meek said nothing.

Walking back toward the city with Aditi, Jordan couldn’t keep his mind on Meek and the growing fears that all the others seemed to have. His mind refused to dwell on it. Instead, he marveled that the forest seemed more alive than he’d ever found it before. Birds twittered above, little animals scampered across the ground, butterflies fluttered among the colorful flowers.

I’ve never noticed all this before, he said to himself. I never saw how beautiful and vibrant it all is.

And then he understood. It’s because I’m with Aditi. She makes the world wonderful. She makes me alive again.

He recognized that he had at last let go of the past. Not forgotten it. Not dismissed it. But he had stopped clinging to it, stopped going over it, again and again, endlessly. He had let go. He had opened his heart to life again.

A miracle has occurred, he told himself. This beautiful, intelligent, warm, and loving woman truly cares for me.

It wasn’t that he forgot Miriam. For a moment he felt almost guilty about Aditi. But he finally understood that love is not finite, not a zero-sum game. The love you feel for one person does not lessen the love you feel for someone else. Love can expand to encompass the whole world. A man can fall in love all over again, marveling at his good fortune, and this doesn’t diminish his love for the woman he had lost.

Eight point six light-years, he kept telling himself. I had to travel eight point six light-years to find her. I’m not going to let her go.

Once they reached the city, Jordan went through the day almost in a trance. He and Aditi met with Adri, who promised to help the team members meet specialists in their fields. He had dinner with Adri and Aditi.

Then he walked Aditi to his suite, grateful that Brandon had stayed at the camp.

As he ushered her into the sitting room, he stammered, “Ah … would you care for something? Is it possible to get an after-dinner drink?”

Aditi stepped close enough to brush against him. “We don’t need an alcoholic beverage, do we?”

He felt flustered, almost embarrassed. “Sometimes it helps … that is…”

“Jordan, darling,” Aditi said, twining her arms about his neck, “I love you. You love me, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then let’s go to bed.”

He gulped, but managed to say, “By all means!”

Racing Toward Extinction

The days seemed to fly by. Jordan split his time between the base camp and the city.

Activities at the camp settled into a busy, productive routine. Brandon and de Falla, accompanied by two robots, took off on a geological expedition, flying halfway across the planet in a rocketplane piloted remotely by Hazzard, who had returned to the orbiting Gaia.

“I might as well go out in the field,” Brandon groused. “Elyse has practically taken up residence at the observatory. She spends more time talking with Zadar than me.”

Jordan suppressed a grin. He said, “It’s a good thing Demetrios is up on the ship. Otherwise, I think you might get jealous of her fellow astronomer.”

Brandon’s answer was a sour grimace.

Jordan made a point of having lunch with Elyse in the city the next day.

“Bran misses you terribly,” he told her.

“I miss him, too,” she said. “But no one’s seen a white dwarf this close! We’re breaking new ground here.”

“What about this planetary energy shield?” Jordan asked her. “Have you discussed that with the observatory’s astronomers?”

Elyse frowned slightly, as if annoyed by a question from a layman, team leader or not. “I’ll get to that, Jordan. But we’ve got all these observations of the Pup to make!”

Jordan nodded. She’s deeply into her studies and she doesn’t want to be sidetracked, he knew. I wonder how much she misses Brandon, out in the woods halfway across the planet?

“One day our Sun will become a white dwarf,” Elyse pointed out. “We’re looking at the future of our own star.”

There’s no sidetracking her, Jordan realized.

After several days of hesitation, Longyear and Yamaguchi accompanied Jordan into the city and began examining not only the people, but their beasts of burden and their pets. Yet they returned each night to the camp.

The biologist grew more and more mistrustful. “It’s terrestrial DNA, all of it. Every species we’ve examined carries an almost exact duplicate of Earth-type DNA.”

Yamaguchi seemed happy enough about it. She began to write a research paper titled, “Convergent Evolution: Earth and Sirius C.” Longyear grudgingly helped her with it.

Jordan worried about Meek, who seemed to be lost in his fears, accomplishing nothing as the days wore on, staying in the camp and never setting foot in the city.

Adri came to visit the camp, and Jordan showed him through the labs and workshops. When they came to the biology laboratory, Meek was sitting at the workbench on a stool, his heels hooked on one of its rungs, the knees of his long legs almost reaching his squared-off chin.

“Hello, Harmon,” Jordan called. “We have a visitor.”

Meek nodded warily.

“Dr. Meek,” said Adri, smiling amicably. “How can I convince you that we are not dangerous to you?”

Meek’s brow furrowed. At last he said, “You could answer my questions truthfully.”

Adri nodded. “Of course.” Jordan saw his brow arch slyly as he added, “Would you like to test me with a lie detector?”

Looking annoyed, Meek said, “I wish I had one.”

“Perhaps you could construct one.”

Hiding his amusement, Jordan said, “I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Will it, Harmon?”

Meek didn’t answer.

Without being invited, Adri pulled up one of the stools lining the workbench and sat next to Meek. “Ask me anything you wish, sir.”

Jordan stood off to one side, scrutinizing the expression on Meek’s face. He saw fear, and sullen resentment. Yet something more, as well: there was human curiosity tucked in among his apprehensions.

“Where do you come from?” Meek started.

“Why, from here. This planet. New Earth.”

“You were born here?”

“I’ve lived here all my life.”

“How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

Meek’s eyes went wide.

Jordan chuckled and said, “Twelve New Earth years. Each orbit of this planet around Sirius takes thirty Earth years.”

“Which means,” Meek said, “that you’re … three hundred and sixty years old?” His eyes went even wider.

Adri smiled modestly. “Yes, your arithmetic is correct.”

“Three hundred and sixty years old?” Meek yelped.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Do your people regularly live such long lives?” Jordan asked.

Adri nodded solemnly. “Yes. So can you. Your biological sciences are steadily increasing your life spans, are they not?”

“Yes, but three hundred and sixty years,” Jordan marveled. “We haven’t reached that yet.”

“We can help you,” said Adri. Then he added, “Although, with your enormous population, I wonder if extending your life spans would be a good thing.”

Meek recovered from his surprise. “How old is your race?”

“Our civilization goes back many millions of years.”

“And you’ve existed on this one planet all that time?”

Adri spread his hands. “My race has lived only on this planet. We have never lived elsewhere.”

Jordan said, “What we find remarkable—unbelievable, almost—is that you’re so much like us. This entire planet is so Earthlike. It’s uncanny.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“It’s more than uncanny,” Meek grumbled. “It’s unbelievable. To find a planet exactly like Earth, and intelligent beings exactly like humans—”

“Not exactly,” Adri pointed out.

“Down to your DNA,” said Meek.

“Yes, biologically we are very similar,” Adri admitted. “But socially, culturally, we have significant differences.”

“You control your numbers,” said Jordan.

“We live in harmony with our environment,” Adri responded. “We are not xenophobic. We are not competitive, not aggressive. We have welcomed you to our world, while you are distinctly suspicious of us.” Before Meek could reply, Adri amended, “Perhaps I should say, you are instinctively suspicious of us.”

Meek said, “You disapprove of our instincts?”

Smiling gently, Adri replied, “It’s not a matter of my approval or disapproval. Your instincts served you well, long ages ago. But now you must outgrow them.”

“Why? Because you say so?”

“Because they are destroying you. You have devastated your planet with overpopulation, with environmental degradation, with famines and wars and hatreds. You are teetering on the brink of extinction, whether you realize it or not.”

“You sound like one of those overzealous eco-activists,” Meek said.

“Forgive me,” Adri immediately apologized. “I should not be telling you how to live your lives.”

“Someone should,” said Jordan.

“It’s just that…” Adri hesitated, seemingly gathering his thoughts. At last he said, with infinite sadness in his voice, “It’s just that to witness the destruction of an intelligent race is a terrible, terrible thing.”

“Do you really feel that we’re so close to destroying ourselves?” Jordan asked.

“Indeed,” said Adri, his aged face showing grave concern. “You are heading for extinction. Racing toward it, I’m afraid.”

Questions

Meek seemed thoroughly chastened as Adri sat on the stool beside him, his expression bleak. Jordan himself felt unutterably sad at the thought of the human race’s extinction.

Rousing himself, Jordan said, “Well, we’re not dead yet. We can overcome our problems, if we want to.”

“If you want to,” Adri agreed. “That’s the question. Can you alter your modes of behavior, your ways of thinking, soon enough and well enough to avert the catastrophe that’s facing you?”

“We can try,” said Jordan.

“We will help you all that we can, of course,” Adri said. “But your people will have to make some wrenching changes in their fundamental attitudes.”

Meek said nothing. He seemed lost in thought.

Adri got up from the stool. “I must return to the city now. Dr. Meek, I hope I have given you the information you sought.”

Meek nodded wordlessly.

Jordan said, “I’ll go with you to the edge of the camp, Adri.”

“No need for that, friend Jordan. I can find my way.” He turned and headed for the lab’s door in his seemingly effortless gliding walk.

As soon as Adri was out of sight, Meek stirred to life. “I don’t trust him. Despite everything he says, I don’t trust the man.”

“Perhaps,” Jordan said, “you don’t trust him because of everything he says.”

To Jordan’s surprise, Thornberry took up residence in the city. He spent his days in happy conference with young men and women who were fellow engineers.

“It’s unbelievable, the things they can do,” he said to Jordan and Aditi over dinner one evening. “I mean, they’ve developed quantum computers, for god’s sake. No bigger than a grain of sand, yet more powerful than anything we’ve got. They implant ’em in their skulls at birth!”

“I know,” said Jordan, looking at Aditi.

“I mean, we’ve been talking about quantum computers for damned near a century now, and we’re nowhere near making one work. These people carry them around inside their heads! If I could bring one of ’em back home, I’d become a billionaire overnight, I could.”

Aditi said, “We can show you how to build them.”

Thornberry nodded eagerly. “I’m talking to your bright young folks about just that, I am.”

“Good,” Jordan said.

The three of them were sitting at a small table in the dining area of the dormitory building. The place was filled with Aditi’s people, young and old, men and women. Conversations in their fluted musical language and laughter drifted across the room. Human servants carried trays of food and drink to the tables.

But they’re not human, Jordan thought as he listened to Thornberry with half his attention. They’re human in form, but they belong to a different race, a different civilization. They’re aliens.

“And these energy shields,” the roboticist went on, “they take ’em for granted, they do. It’s ordinary engineering, as far as they’re concerned.”

Aditi said to Thornberry, “The shield generators are ordinary engineering. After all, we’ve used them for many generations.”

“I know,” said Thornberry. “But what I can’t figure out is how they work.”

“The engineers haven’t explained it to you?” she asked.

“They explain to me for hours, they do,” Thornberry said, “but for the life of me, the more they explain the less I understand.”

Jordan snapped his attention to the roboticist. “What do you mean, Mitch?”

“They’re talking about physics and principles that’re beyond me. Maybe a quantum physicist could understand them. More likely a string theoretician.”

“The closest we have to a physicist would be Elyse Rudaki,” said Jordan.

Thornberry nodded. “Maybe I should ask her to listen to ’em. Maybe she could understand the math.”

Aditi looked troubled. “Do you mean that the engineers are not answering your questions?”

His beefy face contorting into a troubled frown, Thornberry said, “Oh, they answer my questions, they do. But their answers are beyond me.”

“Then we must find someone who can explain it to you more clearly,” said Aditi.

Jordan smiled slightly. “Mitch, perhaps you’ve got to go to school and learn more physics.”

Thornberry conceded the point with a nod. “Maybe I should. Maybe what I need is a patient teacher.”

Jordan turned to Aditi. “You’re a teacher, aren’t you?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said.

“Could you help Mitch? I realize that advanced physics is probably beyond you, but perhaps you could find one of your fellow teachers who could help.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled and said, “I’ll ask Adri about that in the morning.”

As they turned their attention back to the dinners before them, Jordan marveled all over again at how closely the New Earthers’ cuisine resembled Earth’s. The meat on his plate certainly looked and tasted like veal. Grown in a biovat, but cooked to perfection with a tangy sauce that was tantalizingly familiar yet slightly different from anything Jordan could remember.

They were finishing their desserts when Jordan spotted Paul Longyear walking past their table.

“Paul,” he called, “join us for coffee?”

Longyear stopped, looked over their table, and pulled out the empty chair.

“It’s not coffee,” he said as he sat down. “Tastes almost the same, but it doesn’t have any caffeine at all.”

“You’ve tested it?” Jordan asked.

“I’ve been analyzing all their foodstuffs,” said the biologist. Holding up a thumb and forefinger a mere millimeter apart, he went on, “They’re all this close to Earth normal. Nothing in them that’s harmful to us, but just a tinge different.”

Aditi said, “I’m pleased that you find our food satisfactory.”

“More than satisfactory,” Jordan said. “It’s delicious. And I find the slight differences to be rather exotic.”

Thornberry pouted. “I haven’t found a decent potato here. I miss them, I do.”

Aditi looked troubled.

Then Thornberry added, “But we don’t have decent potatoes at our camp, either. Nor aboard the ship, by damn. The nearest honest potato is back on Earth, more’n eight light-years away.”

Jordan murmured, “The rigors of exploration.”

Thornberry broke into a hearty laugh. Looking around at the busy dining area, he guffawed, “Right you are. It’s hell out here on the frontier.”

Longyear didn’t laugh. Jordan thought he looked uptight, preoccupied by something that was bothering him.

When the waiter brought their coffee the biologist sipped at his cup minimally.

“So what have you and Nara been up to?” Jordan asked him, trying to shake him out of his dour mood.

“Cataloging the various species of animals here,” Longyear replied. With a shake of his head, he added, “It’s amazing what these people can do with biological engineering.”

Jordan glanced at Aditi. The “these people” phrase didn’t seem to bother her a bit.

“I mean,” Longyear went on, “they use genetic engineering the way we use mechanical engineering. Instead of inventing machines for labor-saving jobs, they gengineer animals.”

“And plants, too,” Aditi said. “Most of the fruits and vegetables we eat have been genetically modified.”

“We’ve done that on Earth,” Longyear said to her.

“We have?” Jordan asked.

“He means genetically engineered crops,” said Thornberry. “Frost-resistant wheat, grains that resist insect pests. It’s a big business.”

But Longyear said, “We’ve been doing genetic engineering for a long time, Mitch. Centuries. Millennia.”

Aditi said, “I had no idea your biological sciences were that advanced so long ago.”

With a hint of a smile, Longyear said, “They weren’t. The genetic engineering we did back then was done the old-fashioned way.”

“What do you mean?” Jordan asked.

“Well, take corn for instance. When my ancestors first came to what we now call Mexico, corn ears were no bigger than my thumb. But by consistently planting kernels from the biggest ears, over many generations we produced the kind of corn we eat today.”

“Selective breeding,” Jordan said.

“That’s right. The old-fashioned method of genetic engineering. We took wild cattle and pigs and bred them generation after generation to carry more meat. And to be docile. We fattened them up and dumbed them down.”

“And then we figured out the double helix,” said Thornberry. “Now we can do inside of a year what it took centuries to achieve before.”

Longyear nodded tightly. Then he turned to Jordan. “I need to talk to you. In private.”

Something’s in the wind, Jordan thought. With a glance toward Aditi, he replied to the biologist, “Will tomorrow morning do?”

“Fine,” said Longyear, tight-lipped. Then he repeated, “In private.”

Conundrum

The following morning, Jordan left Aditi sleeping in his bed, showered, shaved, and dressed as quietly as he could, then went to Longyear’s quarters. To his surprise, Meek was there, standing uneasily by Longyear’s desk.

“Harmon! I didn’t know you had come to the city.”

“I came early this morning,” said the astrobiologist. “I was up at the crack of dawn, the very crack of dawn.”

Longyear’s apartment was a single room, partitioned into a bedroom area, kitchen, and a sitting room furnished with a small sofa, a pair of armchairs, and a sleekly curved desk. The walls were covered with display screens that glowed pearly gray.

“I hope you had a pleasant walk through the forest,” Jordan said as he went to the sofa.

“I drove a buggy,” Meek replied. He dropped his lanky frame onto one of the armchairs.

“I see.” Turning to Longyear, who got up from his desk and went to the other armchair, Jordan said, “I gathered from the way you asked for this meeting that you didn’t want Aditi present.”

“That’s right,” the biologist said. Frowning slightly, he said, “It’s not that I don’t … um, trust her. It’s just that I think it’s better if we thrash this matter out among ourselves before talking to Adri or any of the others about it.”

“All right,” Jordan said, leaning back on the sofa’s plush cushions. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s not a problem so much as a conundrum.”

“A conundrum?”

Meek said, “A puzzle. A riddle.”

“Thank you, Harmon,” said Jordan, dryly.

Longyear’s lean face was entirely serious. “I’ve been thinking about this planet’s ozone layer.”

Jordan felt surprised.

“It’s much thicker than Earth’s,” Longyear said.

“Well, it has to be, doesn’t it? Sirius emits much more ultraviolet radiation than our Sun does. The ozone layer screens out the UV, protects life on the planet’s surface.”

“Exactly right,” said Meek.

Longyear leaned closer and asked, “But how did the ozone get there, in the first place?”

Jordan blinked at him. “As I understand it, the ultraviolet light coming in creates a reaction that turns some of the oxygen molecules high in the atmosphere into ozone: oxygen-three, isn’t it, where regular oxygen is a two-atom molecule.”

“Right,” said Longyear. “But how did the oxygen get into the atmosphere?”

Feeling as if he were taking a high school science exam, Jordan answered, “From living plants that give off oxygen as a result of photosynthesis.”

“Aha!” Meek pounced. “And how could plant life arise in the face of the heavy ultraviolet radiation reaching the planet’s surface?”

Jordan was puzzled by that. “Why … how did photosynthetic plants arise on Earth? In the oceans, wasn’t it? Single-celled bacteria in the water.”

“That’s what happened on Earth, true enough,” said Longyear. “The so-called blue-green algae—”

“Cyanobacteria, actually,” Meek interrupted.

A frown flashed across Longyear’s face as he continued, “Those single-celled creatures lived deep enough in the water so that the Sun’s UV didn’t reach them.”

“The water protected them,” Jordan said.

“Right. And over many eons, they pumped enough oxygen into Earth’s atmosphere to allow an ozone layer to build up. The ozone layer protected the planet’s surface from killing levels of ultraviolet and life could eventually evolve on land.”

Jordan spread his hands. “So the same thing has happened here, obviously.”

“Not so obvious, Jordan,” Longyear contradicted. Ticking off points on his stubby fingers, the biologist said, “One, Sirius puts out so much UV that it’s tough to see how life could have arisen in the first place.”

“Really? Even in the oceans?”

Raising a second finger, Longyear went on, “Which brings us to point number two: time. It took billions of years for life to evolve in the oceans of Earth. Billions of years for those cyanobacteria to generate enough oxygen to change the atmosphere and form an ozone layer.”

“This planet can’t be that old,” Meek said. “Sirius itself can’t be more than half a billion years old, from what Elyse Rudaki’s told me.”

“That’s not enough time for a thick ozone layer to be built up,” Longyear resumed.

“So how did it get there?” Meek demanded.

“How did life evolve on the ground without an ozone layer to protect it from lethal levels of UV?” Longyear added.

Jordan looked at them: Longyear earnest, serious, troubled; Meek burning with righteous indignation.

“Life couldn’t get started on the ground without a strong UV shield, a thick ozone layer high in the atmosphere,” Longyear repeated. “But the ozone layer couldn’t get created until life spent billions of years producing oxygen.”

“And this planet can’t be more than half a billion years old,” said Meek, almost triumphantly.

Jordan sat up straighter. “Are you certain of this, Paul? Or is it unproven speculation?”

“I’ve run the numbers through the computer. Considering the level of ultraviolet that Sirius emits, and the time scale involved, there’s no way that such a thick ozone layer could have been built up.”

“That’s … odd,” Jordan said, weakly.

“And then there’s this energy shield they’ve put up to protect against solar storms,” Longyear went on.

“That’s because there’s no planetary magnetic field, as on Earth,” said Jordan.

“Uh-huh. And how did Adri’s people evolve to the level of high technology without a geomagnetic field to protect them?”

Jordan blinked at him.

“Adri’s been lying to us,” Meek insisted. “There’s no way that these people could have originated on this planet.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Jordan protested. “I mean, they’re here, they exist. Together with all the other life forms we’ve seen.”

“Planetary engineering,” Longyear said. “Terraforming.”

“The idea of reshaping an entire planet to make it like Earth? That’s ridiculous!”

“Is it?” Meek snapped. “Look around you. It’s been done.”

“But the energy it would require,” Jordan argued. “The resources. The time.”

Meek said, “They’re a much older race than we are. They have a much superior technology. Look at those energy shields, their technology is light-years ahead of ours.”

“But to transform an entire planet…”

“That’s what they’ve done,” said Longyear, totally certain.

Meek insisted, “And we’ve got to find out why.”

Confirmation

Jordan’s first thought was to go to Adri and ask him about Longyear’s conclusion. But he hesitated. Instead, he decided to call his brother, still out in the field with de Falla, halfway across the planet.

Leaving Aditi in the city, Jordan joined Meek and Longyear in the buggy that the astrobiologist had driven to the city. All the way back through the shadowed, softly quiet forest, Jordan wrestled with his conscience. He found that he didn’t want to believe that Adri was lying to him, that Aditi was part of a scheme to deceive him and the other humans. It can’t be, he told himself, over and over. It can’t be.

And yet, if Longyear was right, Adri and his people were carrying out a massive deception. And Aditi was part of it. Mata Hari indeed, he thought. More like Delilah.

Then a new worry hit him. Can Adri tap into our phone conversations? What if he can listen to everything we say to each other?

By the time they reached the camp and Jordan had walked to the barracks tent, he had decided that there was nothing he could do about the possibility of Adri’s eavesdropping. If he can listen to our phone conversations, he surely must have overheard what Longyear and Meek told me this morning.

Once he reached his own cubicle, Jordan reluctantly sat on the springy, narrow cot and flipped open his pocketphone. Brandon answered immediately, looking sunburnt, his hair tossed by a fresh breeze, smiling like a man happy with his work. In the phone’s small screen, Jordan could see that his brother was up in the mountains: bare slabs of jagged rock rose behind him, and wisps of clouds threaded through the craggy peaks.

As he explained what Longyear and Meek had told him, Jordan could see his brother’s face grow somber, grave.

“They might be right, Jordy,” Brandon said. “What we’re finding out here is that this planet is much younger than Earth. A lot younger.”

“Geologically speaking,” said Jordan.

“Right. Half a billion years old, at most.”

“That would still give it enough time to develop indigenous life, wouldn’t it? Enough time for life to evolve into an intelligent species.”

“It took more than four billion years for an intelligent species to arise on Earth,” said Brandon.

“But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen sooner, elsewhere.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Brandon. “We just don’t know. We’re trying to make valid conclusions with just two examples. Hard to draw a curve with only two data points.”

Jordan sank back on the cot and stared at the domed ceiling of the bubble tent.

“How can we tell for sure?” he asked.

Brandon shook his head. “Jordy, if I knew, I’d tell you.”

Jordan understood the unspoken message. Ask Adri. He knows. The question is, will he tell me the truth?

And he realized that, before confronting Adri with his suspicions, he had to face Aditi.

Dreading what he had to do, Jordan walked through the midafternoon heat back toward the city. Sunshine filtered through the high canopies of the trees. Birds swooped above and butterflies flitted through the foliage. Furry little animals scampered and chittered. He saw it all but paid no attention. His thoughts were entirely on Aditi.

And there she was, standing alone on the stone walkway that circled the city’s perimeter, as if she were waiting for him.

“Hello,” he called. Then he couldn’t help adding, “Been waiting long?”

“No,” she answered. “I … I had a feeling you’d be coming.”

“Woman’s intuition?” he taunted as he stepped next to her.

Aditi looked slightly puzzled. “No … not intuition…”

“Have you been tracking me?”

She smiled at him. “Yes, of course. We track the emanations from your phone. Even when you’ve turned it off there’s enough residual radiation to be detected.”

He did not smile back. “And you listen to our phone conversations.”

“I don’t,” she said, totally serious now. “The communications technicians do.”

“So we have no privacy.”

“I’m afraid not. Adri says we need to know what you’re thinking, how you’re reacting to finding us.”

“I see.” A part of Jordan’s mind was telling him that Adri’s eavesdropping was perfectly natural. We’d listen to his chatter if we could, he thought. Two intelligent races bumping into each other. There’s a lot to learn, a lot to find out, a lot to be afraid of.

Aditi said, “You’re not angry, are you?”

He looked into her bright brown eyes and saw that she was worried. Or acting, he couldn’t help thinking.

“Are you?” she repeated.

“Aditi, dear, we’re lovers. We shouldn’t have secrets between us.” Then he added, “Do you really love me?”

“Oh, Jordan,” she gushed, and flung her arms around his neck. “Of course I love you! I never thought this would happen, but I do love you, truly I do.”

“And I love you, Aditi my darling. But…”

She pulled away from him slightly. “But you’re suspicious. I can’t say I blame you.”

“It’s just that, the more we learn about you, the less it all adds up.”

She nodded. “I know.”

Pointing to a stone bench a few meters from where they stood, Jordan said, “Why don’t we sit there and you can explain it all to me.”

“I’ll explain as much as I can,” she said, sitting on the bench.

Jordan sat down beside her. The stone was warm from the afternoon sunlight.

“Contact between two intelligent races is a very delicate matter,” Aditi began. “Especially when one of the races is so much younger than the other.”

“I understand,” he said. “But you—Adri, that is—he hasn’t been entirely truthful with us.”

“Oh no!” she blurted. “He’s been completely honest with you. He’s never told you anything that’s not true.”

“But he hasn’t told us the entire truth, has he?”

Aditi fell silent for a moment, and Jordan recognized that she was using her implanted communicator to ask for instructions.

Grasping her by the shoulders, he demanded, “Don’t ask Adri how to answer me. You tell me, yourself.”

Strangely, she smiled at him. “Very well, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Adri can hear us?”

“Not now. I’ve turned off my communicator.”

“Just like that.” Jordan snapped his fingers.

So did Aditi. “Just like that. It’s controlled by the brain’s electrical fields.”

“So we’re alone.”

“Yes. Completely.” Looking almost impishly pleased with herself, Aditi asked, “So what do you want to know?”

“Why has Adri been so … so deceptive with us?”

“It’s not deception, Jordan. Not in the least. Adri and the others decided that we would answer all your questions completely truthfully, but only the questions that you actually ask. Nothing more. No additional information.”

“Why would—”

“You’re like schoolchildren, Jordan. We didn’t want to give you more information than you could handle. So we decided to answer your questions truthfully, but to go no further than your questions. As you learned more about us, learned to ask deeper questions, we would answer them.”

“Like schoolchildren,” he murmured. “And you’re our teacher.”

“One of them.”

“That makes me teacher’s pet, I suppose,” he said, surprised at how bitter it sounded.

Aditi didn’t seem to notice the sharpness of his tone. With a smile, she murmured, “Much more than a pet, dearest. Much more.”

“You were … assigned by Adri to educate me?”

Her eyes went wide with surprise. “As a teacher, I was asked to be part of the committee of welcome.” Lowering her eyes, she went on in a near-whisper, “I had no idea that I would fall in love.” She hesitated a heartbeat, then asked, “You did fall in love with me too, didn’t you, Jordan?”

His heart melted. “Yes, I did, Aditi. Hopelessly, helplessly in love.”

She beamed happily at him.

So they sat on the stone bench in the warm afternoon light as the sun dipped lower and the shadows lengthened. Aditi explained Adri’s rationale for dealing with the visitors from Earth.

“We didn’t want to swamp you with too much information about ourselves. We decided to let you find out about us and our world at your own pace.”

“You’re a teacher, but I haven’t seen any children in your city. None at all. Do you have schoolchildren?”

“I teach adults,” Aditi replied. “Children are rare among us.”

“I see.”

“We don’t have the same kind of family relationships that you do,” she said.

“You told me that you do have marriages,” he recalled.

“Rarely.”

Suddenly he felt himself smiling. “So if I were to ask for your hand in marriage, would I have to get your parents’ consent?”

“My parents?”

“Your mother. Your father.”

Aditi shook her head slightly. “I have no parents.”

“You’re an orphan?”

“No. You don’t understand. I wasn’t gestated in a woman’s womb. I wasn’t born, the way you were. None of us were.”

Jordon felt his insides quake. “What do you mean?”

“I was created from genetically engineered cell samples. All of us were.”

“Created…” Jordan’s mind reeled. “You mean, in a biovat? Like meat?”

“More sophisticated than your biovats,” she replied. “An artificial womb. All of us were produced in such devices.”

“Even Adri?” Jordan heard his voice squeak.

“Yes, even Adri. Every one of us has been generated in a laboratory facility.”