Starmind

13 The Shimizu Hotel 18 January 2065

Rhea was drifting helplessly in deep space, her air supply almost gone, her thrusters dry, gasping for air that wasn’t there, when windchimes sounded in the distance. She sighed, came back to reality, saved her changes, folded the typewriter and tucked it in her pocket, and went to answer the door.

It was Duncan, of course—the only person besides Rand, Colly and Jay for whom the doorbell would function while she was working. “Is Colly ready?” he asked.

His eyes seemed to ask several other things, and Rhea sighed again. I wonder what my eyes are answering, came the sudden thought. “Come in,” she said, and looked away. “Max, please tell Colly Duncan is here.”

“Beg pardon?” the AI said.

“Sorry. Tell Colly that Duncan is here.” Rhea hated making syntax errors; it was professionally embarrassing.

After a pause, her AI said, “Colly says to tell you she’s changing clothes and will be with you in two seconds.”

They looked at each other. “Five minutes,” they chorused together, and shared a grin.

Almost at once something about that trivial event bothered Rhea. It was a domestic little moment, something she and Rand might have shared, a small intimacy. Rand had in fact been doing his best to generate such moments, lately—probably because the deadline for her Big Decision was approaching. That underlying awareness had been making the return grins she gave her husband slightly forced. The grin she had just given Duncan was quite genuine. She realized she was drifting just perceptibly toward him, and overcorrected. “Come on in,” she said to cover it. “You know where everything is.”

“Are you working?” he asked, entering the suite.

She hesitated. The question meant, do you want to be left alone? Duncan was very understanding of a writer’s problems; if she said yes, she would cease to exist for him. “No,” she decided. “Can I get you anything? There’s time for coffee.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “How’s the work coming?”

“Not bad, thanks to you. I really struck ice with Buchi Tenmo.”

He grinned again at the spacer expression. Spacers didn’t give a damn for gold or diamonds or oil: for them a new source of potable water was real wealth. She had picked up the idiom from him—and it seemed to please him that she had. “Yeah, she’s pretty amazing… when you can tell what the hell she’s talking about.”

“Yes, there is that. It’s like talking to an angel on psychedelics sometimes. Would you mind sitting in on the conversation once or twice? You’ve been talking with Stardancers a lot longer than I have.”

“Sure—but don’t expect that to help much. Buchi’s just different. Even for a Stardancer. The ones born that way, who’ve never breathed, are the weirdest… but the most interesting too, I think.”

A week ago, Rhea had asked Duncan how one got to know a Stardancer. She knew it could be done simply and easily, even from the surface of Terra—but how did one scrape up an acquaintance? It turned out Duncan was friendly with several Stardancers. Most spacers were. And one of his personal friends among Homo caelestis happened to be physically located near enough to the Shimizu to allow for something very like a face-to-face meeting… through Rhea’s own window. Duncan had made the introduction a few days earlier, then politely left them alone. “When would be good for you in the next few days?”

“Any time; when’s good for you?”

She thought about it—and suddenly realized that the search criterion with which she was examining her calendar was “times when Rand and Colly won’t be around.” That made perfect sense: the conversation would be confusing enough without distraction. Nonetheless it struck her all at once that she was making a date to be alone—or almost alone—with a handsome young man. One who, if she wasn’t misreading signals, was interested in her.

It’s for work, for heaven’s sake!

Yes… but is it prudent?

Oh, shut up. “How about tomorrow night, after twenty?”

He nodded. “Program loaded.”

There was a brief silence. Rhea felt compelled to break it. “So how are things with you?”

“Pretty good, actually. I made another piece last night, and it turned out well.”

Duncan’s hobby was vacuum-sculpture. To Rhea the artform seemed to consist of assembling ingredients in various combinations, exposing them suddenly to vacuum, and then taking credit for the weird and beautiful shapes chemistry caused to occur. But vacuum-sculpture could be very beautiful—and she had to admit that Duncan seemed to produce aesthetically pleasing results more often than chance could account for. Didn’t photographers throw out twenty prints and take credit for the perfect twenty-first? Come to think of it, wasn’t her own storage cluttered with drafts that hadn’t quite gelled?

“I’d like to see it,” she said politely.

“No problem. We’ll talk to Buchi from my place, then.”

She opened her mouth… and then closed it firmly. He was pointedly not looking in her direction.

“I thought I’d take Colly to the pool again,” he went on.

Rhea laughed. “You think you have a choice, huh?” The laugh sounded too loud in her ears. “She’s a born water baby. You couldn’t keep her out of the surf, back ho—…back in Provincetown. You know, I’ve always thought it’s ironic. As far back as history goes, the Paixaos have made their living on and from the sea—and my mother was the first one in the family that ever learned to swim. How could you spend all that time on the water and not know how to swim? Weren’t they scared?”

Duncan shrugged. “I’ve lived all my life in space—and I don’t know how to breathe vacuum.”

“But that’s not possible—and it is possible to learn to swim, and it doesn’t even take much time.”

“Look at it from your greatest grandfather Henry’s perspective,” he said. “Suppose you’re off the Grand Banks and the ship sinks. How much good does it do you to know how to swim?”

It occurred to Rhea that Duncan knew a lot more about her family than she knew about his. She was not normally so forthcoming; had he been making an effort to draw her out? She reviewed memory tape, and could not decide. “I guess. It still seems odd. Maybe we should ask Buchi to teach you how to breathe vacuum.”

And now I’ve drawn the conversation back to our rendezvous…

Colly appeared just then. How she could have spent five minutes dressing was something of a mystery, for she was dressed for the pool, in the ubiquitous guest robe and nothing else. Since so many nationalities and cultures mingled in the Shimizu, all guests conformed to a minimal nudity taboo in politeness to the less civilized nations; one did not jaunt down public corridors naked. But a guest robe was sufficient, and even those could be dispensed with once one reached the pool—or any other nonpublic location. “Hi, Duncan! Come on, let’s go!”

“Sorry to hold you up,” he said sarcastically, and made way so Colly could hug her mother goodbye.

As Rhea handed the child off to Duncan, their hands brushed briefly. Rhea had gotten used to casual touching in space, even from strangers; free-fall made it necessary in close quarters. But this touch she felt from her scalp to the soles of her feet. It seemed to her that he made it linger.

She was glad then for Colly’s eagerness to be in the water; the two headed for the door before the blush reached her cheeks.

I should have said yes when he asked if I was working.

In fact, she should be working. She took her keyboard from her pocket and unfolded it. Work would be a wonderful distraction from the trend her thoughts were taking.

Almost at once she found another distraction. The virtual screen that sprang into existence over the keyboard was preset to display her calendar as its boot document, so she wouldn’t start sinking into the warm fog if there was some imminent obligation scheduled. It showed the next thirty days, and the box for 5 February was highlighted—it leaped out of the screen at her, as it had been doing ever since she had highlighted it.

I have two more weeks to make up my mind whether I’m going to stay here, was what she had thought when she first started work that morning. Now, perhaps because of what had just transpired, it came out, I have two more weeks to make up my mind whether I’m going to stay married to Rand.

She entered her date with Duncan into the calendar, put the typewriter away again, and went to the window. She watched the majestically turning Earth for a measureless time, trying to put names on her feelings, and failing. They would not hold still long enough.

Finally she looked around her, as if to make sure she was alone… and checked her watch to make sure Rand was not due home… and spoke to her AI. “Maxwell: window program ‘Home.’ ”

“Yes, Rhea.”

Terra went away, and was replaced by Provincetown.

She was back in her own writing room in her own home, looking out of the turret through her favorite window, hearing the sounds of the street below, hearing the gulls and the distant surf, seeing Mrs. Vasques, her neighbor, haranguing yet another motorist who had clipped her fence in trying to negotiate the insanely narrow street. The illusion was nearly perfect—except for the same flaw it had had weeks ago, when Rand had first sprung it on her. This time, she was able to identify the flaw. This Provincetown didn’t smell. There was no salt tang in the air—none of that rich aroma that the landsman calls the smell of the sea and the sailor calls the smell of the land, the shore smell of decaying vegetation and sea creatures at the border between two incompossible worlds.

Maybe I could get a steward to bring me some fish leftovers, she thought, and began to cry. Fetal position is hard to achieve in free-fall, but she managed it.

She never did get back to work that afternoon. But she did manage to stop crying an hour before Duncan was due to bring Colly home for supper, so that her eyes wouldn’t be red when they arrived.

Rand showed up just as they did. He had been making a major effort to eat most meals with his family these days. For some reason, his arrival relieved her. Duncan declined an invitation to join them for dinner, and that relieved her too. During the meal she found herself paying more attention than usual to her husband, asking questions about his work and listening attentively to the answers, making little excuses to touch him. Before she knew it they had made a nonverbal contract, entirely by eye contact, to make love when he got home again that night. He went off to Jay’s place whistling.

She managed to get a little work done after supper, while Colly was off playing with a friend. She didn’t understand where the story was going, but it wouldn’t let her alone; its disturbing central image—adrift, running out of air, no direction home—had been recurring in her thoughts for weeks now. The question was, of course, who was adrift, and why? She had no clear idea as yet, but she knew if she kept playing with the situation it would come out of her eventually.

As she was putting Colly to bed that night, she said, “So—was it fun playing with Jason, honey?”

“He’s okay, I guess,” Colly said. “For a boy, anyway. At least he’s gonna be here a whole two weeks.” For Colly, the biggest flaw in the Shimizu’s accommodations was its criminally inadequate and excessively fluctuating supply of eight-year-olds. Children of transient guests rarely remained aboard more than a few days; permanent guests tended not to have small children, and by evil luck all the spacer children of hotel staff were either over ten or under six—less use than a grown-up. Colly still had all of her phone friends, of course, and her Provincetown chums were all phone friends too, now… but she was chronically short of playmates she could smell and touch.

“Oh, that’ll be fun,” Rhea said.

“I guess.” Suddenly Colly looked stricken. “Hey, Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“I just thought of something. My birthday comes in two and a half weeks, right?”

Rhea did mental arithmetic. “That’s right, honey. Why?”

Colly sat up on one elbow. “How am I gonna have a party?”

Rhea started to answer, and stopped.

“You can’t have a birthday party on the phone,” Colly said. “And all my friends are back on Earth! I’m not gonna get to have a real party, am I?” Her voice was rising in alarm.

“Uh… sure you will, honey. There’ll be kids aboard then, I’m sure there will. One or two, anyw—”

“But I won’t know them,” Colly insisted. “What good is a party with people you don’t even know?” She started to snuffle.

Rhea was tempted to join her. Instead she took Colly in her arms and rocked her. “Don’t cry, baby. It won’t be so bad. All your friends can be there on the phone—no, you know what? I’ll tell you what: we’ll get Daddy to merge all the phone signals into his shaping stuff, and your friends can be here almost like real, holographically, walking around and everything.” As she spoke, Rhea was estimating the cost of such an event: assuming Rand had time for this, and valuing his time at zero, it came to roughly the price of two luxury automobiles back on Terra. They could afford it, now—but still…

Colly considered the offer for a moment, then resumed snuffling, softer than before. “That’d be better… but you can’t tickle a holo, Mom. You can’t throw pieces of birthday cake at a holo.”

“Sure you can—only it’s even better, because nobody really gets messy. You wait and see: it’ll be fun.”

Colly was dubious, but after ten minutes of rocking and cuddling and soothing she allowed herself to be mollified, and went to sleep. Rhea left her bedroom exhausted and heartsick. Colly was right: a birthday party aboard the Shimizu probably wasn’t going to be much fun.

Less than a minute later, Rand arrived home, shiny-eyed and eager to make love.

Since adolescence Rhea had known that a contract with a man to have sex at an appointed time must be honored, if at all possible. Feeling martyred, she pasted a smile on her face and cooperated. But she made a mental note to discuss Colly’s birthday party with him as soon as they were done; she was not a hundred percent sure the consolation prize she had promised her daughter was technically feasible.

It was just as he was entering her that it dawned on her that the question might be moot: their child’s birthday came after the date on which she was to give Rand her final decision…

It was not a terribly erotic train of thought. The act was technically successful for both of them, for they had been married for a long time—but for the same reason, Rand asked, “Want to talk about it?” when their breathing had slowed.

She burst into tears. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

He held her close, but said nothing. He knew, in general, what was on her mind—and knew that she knew he knew. What was there for either of them to say?

What could Donny Handsome have said to Patty?

She untucked her chin from his neck and pushed at him with her hands; he rose far enough on his elbows so that she could see his face. She looked at it a long time… not just the eyes or the mouth, but the whole face. He waited. “You’re staying?” she said finally.

His face went blank. He was silent an equal time. She waited.

“Yes.”

She nodded, and pulled him back down to her. They lay there together in silence, breathing in the same rhythm and thinking the same thought.

What did that nod mean?

Twice, she felt him start to ask her. Each time he changed his mind. She couldn’t blame him—but part of her wished he had asked. If he had, perhaps an answer would have come to her.

She forgot to ask him about Colly’s birthday party that night.

Rhea knew that a real window like the one in her suite was supposed to be much better than a fake one—she knew, to the yen, how much more the former cost. But she was a shaper’s wife: to her Duncan’s fake window was just as good. Better, for she could shift to a view in any direction at all simply by touching a control. Somehow it felt more correct to talk with a Stardancer without Earth in the background, overshadowing everything.

And Buchi Tenmo did not appear to mind talking to a camera rather than a person in a window. She did not need to see Rhea; she already had. She must be used to talking with Duncan this way too.

Insofar as she was used to talking at all. So far Rhea had found it always took the first few minutes of the conversation for Buchi to become even partly comprehensible. That did not surprise Rhea. To temporarily “place on hold” an ongoing conversation with millions of others, and funnel consciousness down to only one or two nontelepathic minds must be a disorienting experience—especially for a spaceborn Stardancer, who had never been such a limited being herself. The wonder was that the trick was possible.

And already Buchi was winding down, only minutes in. She had progressed from incomprehensible polyglot babble to a lock on English—of a sort. Any minute now it would start conveying information.

“—as the world whirls around peg in a square holy cowhide it from yourself-esteem cleaning up your action figures it would be that’s entertainment to tell you but I forgot is a concept by which we measure painting the town read all of your books now, Rhea, and they’re very beautiful… the gostak distims the doshes… eftsoons, and right speedily… don’t blame him for not being careful in the beginning… a straight hook basically seeks fish who turn away from life… there: subject, object, predicate… am I getting there, Rhea? Duncan? Can I hear you, now? Are we having fun yet?”

“You’re getting there,” Rhea agreed. Things always improved dramatically, she had found, once Buchi reinvented the sentence. She found herself asking the question she had suppressed during her previous encounters with the Stardancer. “Buchi? Does it hurt? Doing this, I mean, talking with us—is it hard?”

“It’s fun!” For that moment Buchi sounded remarkably like Colly. “Is it hard to talk with me?”

“A little,” Rhea admitted. “But you’re right, it’s fun. But then, I’m only doing what I do all the time: talking, in my own language. You’re doing all the work.”

“By ‘work’ I understand you in this context to mean ‘energy expenditure regretted or begrudged.’ By that definition I have never worked in my life. Although I’m always busy.”

“I wish I could say the same.” A light dawned somewhere in the back of Rhea’s head. “But you’ve put your finger on something, Buchi. I’ve been thinking about our conversations, and why they haven’t satisfied me, and I think you just gave me a handle on my problem.”

“Problems are better with handles on them?”

“For me they are. Looking back over it, everything I’ve been asking you has been about… has had to do with things that a human supposes would be disadvantages of being a Stardancer. The bad parts. I’ve been asking you about the bad parts—and for each one I come up with, you explain how it’s not a bad part. Some of the explanations I just flat don’t understand—”

“I always have trouble conveying the idea of self generated reality,” Buchi agreed. “To a human it seems a flat contradiction in terms.”

Rhea had asked in her first conversation whether Buchi ever missed being able to “really” walk the surface of a planet, as opposed to “merely” reexperiencing it through the memories of those Stardancers who had lived on Earth before joining the Starmind. Communication had broken down when Buchi insisted that she could, really, walk on Terra any time she wanted—that she could “really” experience things she had never personally experienced—knowing the difference, but unbothered by it. Rhea, who had never confused even the best virtual-reality environments with real-reality, was baffled by this. She had spent most of her own professional life battering at the interface between almost-real and real, trying to make words on a screen sound and smell. She had to tiptoe around the thought that anyone for whom reality and imagination were interchangeable was someone who was not quite sane.

“—but that’s not the problem,” she went on, but Duncan interrupted her.

“It’s like this window, Rhea,” he said, touching her wrist and pointing.

“Huh?”

“You know that to most of the people in this hotel, this window we’re looking out right now isn’t as good as the one you have back in your suite. God knows it costs a lot less. But we’ve talked about it, so I know you agree with me that this one is actually better. It may not be ‘real’—but it can look in any direction you want, or show you anything you want to see, flatscreen anyway. I know yours can do even better, the way Rand has it tricked out now… but most people who pay a premium for one of those windows do it so they can tell themselves that what they’re looking at is ‘real.’ They care a lot about ‘real.’ You and I care a little less. Buchi cares not at all. Think of it as a spectrum rather than a discontinuity.”

Rhea looked at him, surprised and a little impressed by his insight. “I think I see what you mean,” she said.

He flushed and went on. “With total control of her brain and body, reality can mean whatever she wants it to mean. She can experience the touch of someone half a light year away, feel it on her skin. Or feel the touch of someone long dead… as long as someone in the Starmind holds the memory of how it feels to be touched by that person. Not one coffee molecule has ever passed her lips her whole life long, but she’s probably tasted better coffee than you or I ever will.”

“I’m doing it now! ‘Bean around the Solar System…’ ” Buchi let the song parody trail off after a few more hummed bars.

“But with reality that slippery…” Rhea began.

Duncan interrupted. “… how do they make sure they don’t lose track of the one you and I believe in? What do they do for a reality check, you mean?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.”

“We are many,” Buchi said. “And we are one. E pluribus unum. Alone/All-one. Consensus reality is very important to us. If we ever lost it, we would come apart. It is the same with your own neurons. We put about as much effort into it as they do. And about as often, we fire randomly—we make things up, we vacation in realities of our own fashioning, singly or in groups. The universe is always there when we return. It is not a problem.”

“Now there,” Rhea said triumphantly, “is my problem. As I started to say before, I can live with the fact that I have trouble grasping your explanations of why assorted aspects of being a Stardancer aren’t problems for you. What’s driving me crazy is that you just… don’t seem to have any problems!

“None of the ones I envisioned. None of them has even triggered mention of any problem you do have. I’m a writer: to me a character is his or her problems; if they don’t have any, they’re no use to me, I’ve got nothing to work with, no way to motivate them. I guess what I’m asking is, don’t you people—you Stardancers—have any problems? I know you never get hungry or thirsty or cold or lonely or lost or have to go to the bathroom at an inappropriate time. But Jesus, Buchi—isn’t there anything you fear? Or miss? Or yearn for? Or regret? Is there anything you lust after? Or mourn?”

“Must your characters always be driven by the lash?”

Rhea thought about it. “Pretty much, yes. That’s what the audience wants to see. How someone like itself reacts under the lash. Because it helps the reader guess and deal with how she would react under the same pressure. The rule of thumb is, the sharper the lash—the tougher the antinomy—the better the story. For us humans, life is suffering, just as the Buddhists say. Is that really not true for you?”

The answer was almost a full minute in coming. It was the first time Rhea could remember Buchi hesitating even slightly in responding. Two or three times she began to speak, but each time decided to wait for an answer.

“The Starmind suffers,” Buchi said at last, “as sharply, as deeply, as keenly, as you yourself. But in different ways… for different reasons… and I cannot explain them to you. No terrestrial language contains words that will convey the necessary concepts: you do not have the concepts. Every human language contains the implicit assumption that individual minds have bone walls around them. It would be much easier for me to convey color to a blind man.”

Rhea was frustrated… but if there was anything her work had prepared her to believe, it was that some things simply could not be put into words. “What are you all doing?”

“What are you asking?”

“What is the Starmind doing? Are you doing anything? Did those Fireflies have any purpose in creating your kind? Are you all working toward something together… or just floating around like the red blobs in a lava lamp, marveling at the Solar System and unscrewing the inscrutable?”

“You know hundreds of things we do. I can download a summary list to your AI if you wish. It runs about a terabyte.”

“Then I’ve seen most of it. Well, scanned it.” Even that was an absurd claim. “All right, I’ve scanned the superindex, tiptoed through some of the subindices, and jumped in at random here and there a few hundred places. And one thing I noticed.”

“Yes?”

“Most of the things you do come down, in the long run, to helping us. Helping humans. Helping Terra. Some of it benefits us directly, like nanotechnology, and some it just seems to happen to work out to our benefit way down the line, like that Belt-map hobby of yours that kept us from getting clobbered by Lucifer’s Hammer in ’32. Even the ‘pure-science’ researches you’re engaged in always seem to benefit us more than they benefit you, when the dust settles.”

“Can we ignore suffering at our own heart, at our roots? We may not be of humanity… but we are from humanity.”

“I’m not complaining. I’m just asking: is that what you Stardancers do for problems? Borrow ours?” She had an image of the human race as endearingly dopey pets, who could be relied upon to produce fascinating but trivial problems, supply life’s necessary irritant. “If some cosmic disaster wiped us all out… would the Starmind go crazy from boredom? Or would you still have things to do?”

Another pause. This one was only ten seconds or so. “We would still have a nearly infinite number of things to do. And again, I despair of finding words that will successfully hint at their nature.” Another five seconds. “One subset may perhaps be intelligibly outlined, at least. You are aware, are you not, that the Starmind is not alone in the Universe?”

“Huh? Sure. So what?” It was a classic insoluble problem. Within a few years of its initial formation, the Starmind had reported to humanity that it was receiving telepathic broadcasts from numberless other Starminds throughout the Galaxy and Magellanic Clouds—a potential source of inconceivable wealth in any terms. But it came in all at once, at the same “volume,” from all quarters—and none of it appeared to be in any known or decipherable language or concept-system. The Starmind did not even know how to say, “Quiet, please—one at a time!” The best it had managed, according to all reports, was to learn to ignore the useless infinity of treasure, as a geiger counter suppresses its “awareness” of normal background radiation. “What good does that do you if you can’t communicate with anybody?” Rhea asked. “You can’t, right?” She knew the answer—but from books and media accounts, and knew how much that was worth.

“No, we cannot,” Buchi agreed. “But that may not always be so.”

“You think the problem might actually be solvable?” Duncan said excitedly.

“Our seed has been awake for less than seven decades,” Buchi said. “There are yet far fewer of us Stardancers than there are neurons in even the most limited brain. Yet our numbers grow—and the Starmind grows wiser every nanosecond. It is certain that we live longer than you, and we do not waste a third of our lives in stupor and another third working at life-support. We have time. Time has us. We use tools you cannot understand to build tools you cannot conceive to solve problems we ourselves cannot name. It is not a thing to trouble yourself over.”

“Do you know anything at all about where it’s all going?” Rhea asked. “That you can explain?”

“Yes. Wonderful things are going to happen.”

Rhea blinked. “But what?”

The silence went on until she realized no answer would be forthcoming. “When?” she tried then.

That answer came at once, startling her.

“Soon.”

“How soon?” she blurted.

Again, silent seconds ticked by.

“Within my lifetime?” she tried.

“I cannot be certain, but I believe so.”

“Will you be able to explain these things to us humans when they happen?”

“When they happen, you will know.”

“And you can’t give me any idea what it will be like?”

More silence.

“Why doesn’t anybody else know about this?” Rhea said irritably. “I’ve read—scanned—everything I could get my hands on about you Stardancers. This is the first hint I’ve heard that the galactic signal-to-noise problem might be susceptible of solution. Is it a secret, or what?”

“Would I have burdened you with a secret without warning you? The reason you have not heard of this before is that you are the first to have asked about this in many decades, the first since we began to be sure of it ourselves.”

“Really?” Rhea asked. “That’s hard to believe.”

“Yes, isn’t it? Rhea, answer me two questions. First, regarding the Fireflies, who made us: is there any characteristic commonly associated with the term ‘gods’ that they lack?”

Rhea thought hard. Apparently omniscient, apparently omnipotent, apparently benevolent but absolutely unknowable… long gone and not expected back soon… “No,” she admitted. “Wait: two. They seem to have no desire at all to be worshipped… and they haven’t instructed anyone to kill anyone else in their name.”

“You anticipate my second question: do you know of any religion on or off Terra which worships them?”

It startled her. “Why, no. There are cults who worship you… at least one large one. And up until forty-odd years ago there was a small one trying to kill you. But I don’t know of any Firefly-worshippers, now that you mention it.”

“Rhea, humanity can just barely live with the mere memory of the Fireflies. They are too vast to think about. From the human point of view, the best thing about them is that they were in the vicinity of Terra for a matter of hours, at the orbit of Saturn for a matter of months, and left promising my father not to return for a matter of centuries. We Stardancers are tolerated, for all our alienness, because we were once and still partially are human. Beneath my Symbiote are flesh and blood, born of woman. But of all the things we are asked—and we are asked many things by many humans—we are rarely asked about the Fireflies… and almost never about other Starminds, circling other stars. Your governments and philosophers were overjoyed to learn that the galactic surround is incomprehensible to us, and have been happy to tiptoe around the sleeping dragon ever since.”

“If that’s true, I’m pretty disgusted with my own species,” Rhea said.

“You need not be. Think of it from a historical perspective. After two millions of years of slaughter, humanity has just learned how to live with itself in peace, and has done so for a time measured in mere years. Can you reasonably expect it to be prepared to deal with a galaxy of unknown strangers? So quickly? I can tell you that we the Starmind tremble at the thought of the Fireflies returning—and we could at least talk with them if they did. Why should you not ‘pretend it never happened’? It seems to me a healthy psychological adjustment for your race at this time.”

Rhea started to reply, but Duncan interrupted her again. “Excuse me, Buchi—I want to backtrack a second. Did you say when the Fireflies left, they made a promise to ‘your father’?”

“Yes.”

That had caught Rhea’s ear too. “Who is your father, Buchi?” she asked.

“Charlie Armstead.”

Rhea’s eyes widened. “And your mother?” she managed to ask.

“Norrey Drummond.”

She heard a singing in her ears, like a Provincetown mosquito. The second and third Stardancers who had ever lived, founders of Stardancers Incorporated, as famous throughout even the human race as Shara Drummond herself! “My God! I never dreamed—”

“Me either,” Duncan said in awed tones. “You never told me that, Booch.”

“You never asked. What’s your father’s name, and why haven’t you told me?”

“It’s ‘Walter.’ But you’re right. His name only comes up if someone finds my name funny and I have to explain the story.”

“I saw the humor in your name the moment you told it to me,” Buchi said. “But I assumed you were tired of explaining its origin, so I did not comment.”

“And bless you,” he said. “It’s just that I keep forgetting you folks don’t use last names to indicate either paternal or maternal descent.”

“There is no need to. We know our lineage, and each of the other’s—it need not be encoded in our names. We choose names purely for their meanings.”

The humming in Rhea’s ears was beginning to diminish. “What does your name mean, Buchi Tenmo?” Rhea asked.

“ ‘Dancing Wisdom Celestial Net,’ ” the Stardancer answered.

“That’s beautiful!” Duncan said… an instant before Rhea could. “I wish I had a name that good.” He turned to Rhea. “Or like yours. ‘Rhea’—‘earth’ or ‘mother,’ two of the most beautiful words there are. And ‘Paixao,’ just as beautiful: ‘passion.’ ”

The mosquitos resumed their attack on Rhea’s ears. She could feel the lobes turning red, offering blood. “What does your name mean?” she asked quickly, aware of the significance of his having looked up the meaning of her name, but unwilling to acknowledge it.

He made a face. “I got the booby-prize. ‘Duncan’ means ‘dark-skinned warrior’ ”—Rhea found herself thinking that he was dark-skinned even by Provincetown standards, though he certainly wasn’t muscled like a warrior… and forced herself to pay attention to what he was saying—“and ‘Iowa’… well, there’s the political district in the North American Federation, of course, the province or state or whatever… and at least one writer once confused that with Heaven. But actually it comes from ‘Ioakim’—apparently an official at someplace called Ellis Island made Greatest Grandad change it. It’s Russian Hebrew for ‘God will establish’… which I for one find wishful thinking.”

Rhea found that she wanted to change the subject from Duncan’s name, from Duncan, and suddenly remembered a question that had ghosted through her mind perhaps a dozen times over the course of her life. “The word ‘God’ makes me think of Fireflies again,” she said. “Buchi, there’s one more question I’ve always wondered about. Why did the Fireflies come when they did?”

“They came when it was time.”

“Yes—but why was it time? The generally accepted answer is that they came ‘at the dawn of space travel.’ But it was more like brunchtime. Humanity had been in space—had been established in space—for years when they showed up. We’d been to Luna decades before. Did it take them that long to notice? Or that long to arrive? If we could establish a time-duration for their journey, it might be a clue to where they came from.”

“Their arrival was instantaneous,” Buchi said flatly.

“Then what triggered it? Do you know?”

“The signing of a contract. An agreement between Skyfac Incorporated and Shara Drummond.”

Details from a history lesson came back dimly to Rhea. Sure enough, the way she remembered it, the Fireflies had first been sighted in the Solar System about two weeks before Shara Drummond left Earth to create the Stardance. They had flicked into existence around the orbits of Neptune and Pluto (at that time very close together), the outer limit of the System, and then moved in as far as the orbit of Saturn a couple of weeks later…

…the day Shara reached Skyfac! Where they stayed, until she was on the verge of being sent home again with her dream unfulfilled—then arrived just in time to force the performance of the Stardance…

“They came to us the moment that a human being came to space for the express purpose of creating art,” Buchi said.

The words seemed to echo in Rhea’s skull.

“How they knew of that, even the Starmind cannot yet imagine—but the fact is unmistakable.”

She felt as if her head were cracking. The insight was too immense and powerful to deal with—yet so obvious she could hardly believe no one had worked it out ages ago.

“Thank you, Buchi,” she said quickly. “You’ve been very gracious and helpful, we’ll talk again another time, I hope you’ll excuse me now but I need to get to my typewriter so I can—” She stopped babbling when she noticed that she had already switched off the window.

She turned from it, and there was Duncan.

At once he turned away, which relieved and annoyed her at the same time, and jaunted across the room… but in seconds he was back, bearing a strange and uncouth object, waving it at her as he braked himself to a halt at her side. “I promised I’d show you this, Rhea,” he said.

It was his manner more than anything else which cued her. This had to be the new piece of vacuum sculpture he had mentioned. Resolving to find something polite to say about it, she began to scrutinize it for material to work with.

A timeless time later, she began to experience perceptual distortion, and slowly figured out the cause. Her eyes were beginning to grow tearbubbles…

What it was made of she could not guess. The subtleties of its composition process were a closed book to her. But what it looked like, to her, more than anything else she could think of, was a piece of driftwood she had once brought home from the Provincetown shore. It had a similar shape, twisted on itself, asymmetrically beautiful, and it had the stark bleached color and polished appearance of very old driftwood. Washed up on an alien shore… like herself.

“It’s very beautiful,” she said, and heard a husky note in her voice. She searched for polite small talk. “Does it… do your pieces have names?”

“It’s called ‘Driftglass,’ ” he said. His own voice was hoarse.

She flinched slightly. “It’s very lovely. It reminds me—”

“—of home, I know,” he said quickly. “It’s yours. I made it for you.”

The mosquitos at her ears had brought in chainsaws. “I… I really have to go,” she said. “I promised Rand—” She was already in motion, three of her four thrusters firing at max acceleration, past him before she could see his reaction.

“Sure, of course, good night,” she heard him say behind her as the door got out of her way, and as she came out of her turn and raced down the corridor, she was for a time very proud of herself. Until she noticed that she had Driftglass in her hand…

And I didn’t even thank him.

“You are going too fast,” came a voice from all around her. “Please slow down.” She flinched, and then realized it was only an AI traffic cop; she was exceeding the local jaunting speed limit. She decelerated at once.

“Thank you,” she said. “That is very good advice.”

14

Rand had come to feel that his favorite part of the Shimizu was the corridors. They were designed to be visually appealing, padded enough for the most inexpert jaunter, and offered an ever-changing parade of rich and almost-rich people to gawk at. They were the place where one flew, where you could enjoy the sensation of a jaunt that was not over within seconds. Most important to him, they represented the blessed hiatus between the problems of the studio and the problems of the home. They were the equivalent of a solitary drive from office to home back on Terra: the place of unwinding from work, and of winding other mechanisms back up again.

But sooner or later the corridors always led him back to his door. He was coming to think of it as the Place of Sighs; whichever direction he was going, he always seemed to pause just outside the threshold and sigh, first.

He did so now, decided he was ready to enter his home, and thumbed the doorlock.

Before he could enter, something burst from the room and enveloped him. Its first effect was as invigorating as a cool rain on a dry afternoon: his wife’s laughter…

As a musician he found it one of the Universe’s more glorious sounds; as a husband he found it exhilarating. In either capacity, he had been missing it lately. Like an addict following the smell of smoke, he followed it inside, seeking the source.

Rhea was in the living room, a little northeast of the window. She was sitting in the piece of furniture in which she usually did her writing—she moved around as she wrote, and hated the sound of Velcro separating as she did—but her seat belt was not fastened. And she had configured the furniture in the shape which its menu called “love-seat.” In its other corner, also unstrapped, was a broadly grinning Duncan Iowa. He had just opened his mouth to say something, to make Rhea laugh again, when he caught sight of Rand in the doorway. “Hello, Rand,” he said.

Rhea turned, smiling. “Hi, darling,” she said. “You must be exhausted—would you like a drink?”

He controlled a frown. “Why would I be exhausted?”

She looked surprised. “Well… the premiere is only a week away, right?”

“Sure—but my part was done yesterday. Jay and the dancers will be killing themselves from here on in, muscle-memorizing it, but I’m just there babysitting the software and looking for holes. I told you that last night.”

“Oh. I forgot.”

“Never mind.” He had been hoping to hear some more of her laughter, and now she wasn’t even smiling anymore. Nice work. “What were you guys laughing about? I could use a giggle.”

She shook her head. “It’d take too long to explain it. Duncan just came up with a neat way to improve some comic business in a story I’m working on.”

“Oh. I see.” In ten years of marriage, Rhea had never permitted Rand—or anyone—to see or hear about a work-in-progress. It was one of her many writer’s superstitions. “A story is like a soufflé,” was the line he had heard her tell people a hundred times.

“Where’s Colly?”

“Studying.” She glanced at her watch. “No, by now the terminal has unlocked, so she’s probably playing games or watching a movie.”

He nodded. “As long as she’s not on the phone again. That kid will talk away our air money one of these days.”

“Oh, no, she can’t be—I’ve got the White Rabbit set to warn me if she asks for a phone circuit.”

“The which?”

“The White Rabbit,” Duncan said. “It’s her new name for Harvey. He’s still a rabbit, but he’s shorter, and dressed like the Tenniel version. You know, the guy who illustrated the original Alice books.”

Rand was doubly irritated: that a strange man knew more about his daughter than he did, and that this young lout thought the best damn shaper in human space needed to be told who Tenniel was. But he still had faint hopes of hearing Rhea laugh again sometime tonight, so he pasted a big happy smile on his face. “Ha ha,” he said, as if reading the words from a page. “That’s cute. Pocket watch and all, eh?” I know the fucking books, sonny. “We’d better be careful what she eats and drinks. If she starts to grow, we’ll need a bigger suite.”

He was rewarded with a grin from his wife. “I don’t think there is such a thing. If she does, we’ll have to put her in the pool: she can have it all to herself.”

“I think Colly would really like that,” Duncan said.

“Can you stay for dinner, Duncan?” Rand asked, in the tone of voice that both sounds perfectly sincere and conveys the subtext, a negative answer is expected.

The lad was not completely mannerless; he pushed himself away from the love-seat and looked around for anything he might have left. “No, thanks, I have to—”

A braying sound interrupted him, for all the world like a burro’s mating call. All three froze.

“FLARE WARNING, CLASS ONE,” said a very loud voice. “THIS IS A SAFETY EMERGENCY. ALL GUESTS MUST GO AS QUICKLY AND CALMLY AS POSSIBLE TO THE NEAREST RADIATION LOCKER, AND REMAIN THERE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR ALARM AS LONG AS YOU SEEK SHELTER NOW. IF YOU HAVE A SPECIAL PROBLEM, ONLY, PHONE ‘FLARE EMERGENCY’ AND HELP WILL ARRIVE AT ONCE. WAVE-FRONT X-RAYS EXPECTED IN NINE MINUTES, TWENTY SECONDS. CLASS ONE FLARE WARNING—” It began to repeat.

“Volume mute!” Rand barked, and the voice went away. “Duncan, you’re staying.”

“I shouldn’t,” he said. “I’ve got my own bolt hole, two minutes away—that’s seven minutes cushion.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rhea said. “There’s plenty of room in our locker, I’ve seen it. This suite was built for up to six.” Still Duncan looked hesitant. “For heaven’s sake, we’re going to be in there with Colly for what, three hours to three days? With no phone, no TV, completely cut off from the Net? We need you, Duncan.”

He grinned. “That logic I understand.”

“We’re wasting time,” Rand snapped, and led the stampede.

By thoughtful design, access to the radiation locker was through Colly’s room. They expected to find her in a panic—but as they cleared the door they found her oblivious, wearing earphones and fixated on a screen, talking on the phone with a hush-filter. She flinched sharply when she became aware of them; on Earth she would have jumped a foot in the air. In free-fall the same reflex causes one to tumble erratically; she flailed like an octopus to regain her balance. “It was just for a minute,” she cried. “I was just gonna hang up, really!”

Rand got a grip on an ankle as it went past, swarmed up her and yanked the earphones out. “Quiet, Colly!” he said, trying to control his voice carefully so as to command instant attention without scaring her.

It seemed to work. “What is it, Daddy?”

“It’s all right, baby—there’s a flare on the way, but it’s only Class One. We’re all going on a picnic together for a little while. Wanna come?”

Her eyes got big and round. “Sure, Dad. Can I bring the White Rabbit? Harvey, I mean? I changed his name.”

“So I hear. I’m sorry, honey—radiation lockers are meant to keep electrons out, and that’s pretty much what the White Rabbit’s made of. We’re going to have to rough it, like they did in the Olden Days. Do you have any books around?”

“Hard copy, you mean? None I haven’t read a jillion times. You mean no games, or anything?”

“Only if they’re free-standing, hon. Nothing that uses the Net. Get your Anything Box.” It was a nanotechnological toy-set, which could be caused to become a range of things, from a 3-D chess set to a Monopoly board to Scrabble game.

“I forgot to charge it,” she wailed.

Duncan already had the locker hatch open, and was waving Rhea to enter; she held back. “Come on, Colly,” he called. “You don’t need machines to play games.”

“You don’t?” She looked dubious. “Okay.” She started for the hatch. “Hey—what about supper?”

“That kitchenette will make sandwiches in under two minutes,” Rhea said, and began to turn toward the door. “We’ve got about seven left—”

“No, Rhea!” Duncan ordered. “That was a best-guess, and you don’t screw around with a flare emergency, for anything. There’s food and water in the locker—come on!”

“Go ahead,” Rand said. “I’ve got Colly.”

Rhea gave up and went to the hatch. Duncan caught her as she arrived, and handed her through the door. To guide a body from behind in free-fall without causing it to tumble, one pushes the buttocks. Rand had been in space long enough to know that, so he couldn’t even be annoyed. He put his attention on his daughter. “Push off on me, hon,” he said, and spread-eagled himself facing the hatch. Colly doubled up, put her feet against his stomach, and jumped. He used his thrusters to recover and follow her. Her aim was superb; she went through the hatch like a perfect slam-dunk and into Rhea’s arms.

Duncan seemed to have assigned himself the role of doorman; he waited for Rand to precede him. “After you, son,” Rand said gruffly. And as Duncan turned, he pushed the lad in, the same way he had done for Rhea.

The next few hours were not particularly pleasant ones.

Perhaps no one has ever spent a really comfortable three hours in a radiation locker. They were the only cubics in the Shimizu which could reasonably be called “spartan,” being simple boxes designed to keep a human alive for up to three and a half days despite the best efforts of energetic protons to kill him. (X-rays, although they arrive first, and keep coming as the following plasma cloud of electrons and protons strikes hull metal, are not a problem: a mere millimeter of aluminum will stop most of them.) A radiation locker is very easy to get into, impossible to get out of until the emergency is past, and will supply breathable air, potable water, digestible food substitutes, basic emergency medical care, and plumbing facilities. Period. If one wishes to make it congenial, one can stock it with one’s own free-standing computer gear, library of music and literature, programmable furniture, or a supply of gourmet delights, for there is a fair amount of room. But almost no one ever does… for the same reason that people still build at the base of volcanos. Bad solar flares are quite uncommon for about nine and a half out of every eleven years. When the tornados come once every decade or so, it is easy to forget to keep the storm shelter adequately stocked. So most visits there begin with a mournful inventory that is finished all too soon, followed by the dawning realization that this will be a sentence.

In this case, Rand decided early on not to dwell on the dark side of things, and resolved instead to concentrate on what could be accomplished while in here. So he checked his mental buffer, and found a task waiting: chewing his daughter out for using the telephone against express orders. But to his intense annoyance, Duncan interceded on her behalf (“butted in,” was how Rand phrased it to himself), claiming that she deserved praise for having figured out how to circumvent an AI lock. When he rejected this as irrelevant, Colly took over her own defense, presenting in a shrill voice the novel theory: “Anyway, I’m not even getting a real birthday party; space stinks and I want to go home.”

Since Rand had been counting on Colly’s enthusiasm for space to help win over Rhea, he took recourse in a strangled silence. Rhea had privately asked him, several days ago, about interfacing his shaping equipment with the phone so that the friends at Colly’s party could at least be convincing fakes. At the time he had been too busy, and said he would “think about it,” but later he had thought it through in financial terms only, and rejected the idea on those grounds. He wanted mightily now to promise—to have promised—to do it… but he could not construct a logic-bridge that would get him from “You’re spending too much money on the phone” to “I’m going to help you spend a king’s ransom on the phone,” and did not have Colly’s daredevil indifference to logic to help him. He made a firm private resolution to tackle the project—and banged his nose on the fact that he could not even begin for… how long did Class One flare emergencies generally last, anyway? He was forced to ask Duncan. And the answer—three hours to three days; we’ll know when the door opens—did not please him. It began to dawn on him that he was going to have to fill an indeterminate time with small talk, with a wife whom he had hurt, a child he had disappointed, and a young man who was beginning to annoy the hell out of him.

In the end, it was only eight hours, and even they were not the horrors they might have been. But only because Rhea rose heroically to the occasion, and almost singlehandedly carried the group on her shoulders, quelling negative emotions by sheer force of personality. She changed subjects, she suggested topics, she refereed potential disputes before they could occur, and she took upon herself any housekeeping task that might otherwise have brought Rand and Duncan into contact.

Eventually she bullied them all into the proper bomb shelter spirit. She told them endless stories, some pirated and some improvised. She cajoled Rand into singing the songs he sang best. Duncan reached back into the memory banks of a childhood in circumstances so primitive (by contemporary Terran standards) that he had frequently been deprived of amusement facilities, and pulled out game after game that could be played without tools or power. Before long Colly too was making her unique contribution: giggling. Not long after her usual bedtime, she fell asleep, but a child’s snores and other sleepsounds are nearly as uplifting as her giggles. And it is difficult for a conversation to turn to an argument if there is a child sleeping in the room. Before long, Rand had regained his original impression of Duncan as a decent enough young man—just needed a little seasoning among Terrans to learn the fine points of good manners, that was all. After all, Rhea seemed to like him, and she had good people radar.

Good spirits might not have lasted, but luck was with them: just as group morale peaked, the locker door opened and a loud voice began reassuring them that everything was fine. They managed to silence it before it could wake Colly, and emerged smiling together. Duncan had the grace to make his excuses and leave nearly at once. By the time Rand had finished seeing him out the door, Rhea had put Colly into her sleepsack and gone to their bedroom; he put the suite to sleep and joined her. He was quite tired; the only things he intended to do before sleeping were check to make sure their AIs were still sentient, and make sure that if there were any casualties, no one he knew was on the list.

But by the time he reached the bedroom, Rhea was more than halfway out of her clothes.

“Uh…” he managed to get out before the process was complete, and then she advanced on him like a cloud of electrons and protons. His own clothing was no protection at all. His next syllable was some five minutes later, and was even less spellable; he repeated it several times over the next few minutes, with increasing volume and decreasing period. The last iteration was a shout, which by then seemed to him to contain all the information the universe out there desperately needed to hear—until he heard Rhea shriek the message’s other half in harmony with him.

Before he fell asleep, he regained enough intelligence to compose a platitude, something along the lines of “Out of adversity comes fortitude.” Maybe… just maybe… Rhea was going to snap into it.

Talking work with Jay wasn’t as much fun as it had been; with four days left before the premiere of Kinergy (as they had decided to name the new work) Jay had too much else to do, Rand had too little else to do, and there was nothing to discuss together but things that might go wrong. And the incessant ego-struggles and other personal frictions among the dancers—but Rand hated that particular topic. He had himself pointedly chosen a field that allowed him to work alone when it suited him.

So he had no digression to propose when Jay said, “How’s it going with Rhea, bro?”

He decided to tackle it. “You know, last week I’d have said it was fucking hopeless. But it’s the funniest thing: somehow that flare emergency seems to have turned things around. At least a little, anyway. She came through it like a trouper, never complained once, never even frowned—and as soon as it was over, so was she: all over me. We haven’t had a session like that since… Jesus, I don’t know, but whenever it was, it was back on Earth. It felt… it felt like christening the Shimizu, christening space. Do you know what I mean?”

Jay nodded at once. “Ethan and I christened High Orbit that way, once.”

Rand winced away from the thought. Obviously the event had not cemented Ethan’s commitment to living in space very effectively. “I mean, it’s like when I first moved to P-Town. I’d never lived by the ocean, and I wasn’t sure if I could take that much horizon. And the storms, you know, the winds. And then we went through our first hurricane together, and it was hard, but when it was over I felt like, ‘Well, that wasn’t so bad; I can live here.’ Sitting in a radiation locker isn’t fun… but it’s a lot more fun than sitting in a singles bar. Maybe she’s going to steady down and learn to live here.”

“But it’s still that much up in the air, is it? With four days to curtain? You have to give Kate an answer one way or another the following week.”

“I know, I know. But it’s the kind of problem where you can’t push for an answer, no matter how urgent it is.”

“Well, all I’m saying is, if she bails out, don’t necessarily assume that you have to follow her—for keeps, I mean. Just because Ethan and I couldn’t make it work on a commuter basis doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Look at that Philip Rose and his wife—and he’s a writer, like Rhea. Quite a few spacers have made marriage with a groundhog work.”

“You really think it’s an option? After what happened to you?”

“Well, maybe not a great one. But it might be worth giving it a year and seeing how it works.” He seemed to start to say something, and then changed his mind. “I’m just being selfish, bro. Kinergy is a good piece. I like working with you; I don’t want to give it up. Losing partners is a habit I’m trying to break.”

Rand thought about it, and shook his head. “I hear you. But I just can’t see Rhea and I staying married that way. Besides, it’s not fair to Colly to yo-yo her that way, uproot her every three months.”

“There are other rotation schedules.”

“Doesn’t change anything. If Rhea goes, my choices are her—and Colly—or my work. So you can imagine how relieved I am at any hint that she might be willing to stay.”

Again Jay seemed to choose his words carefully. “Rand? Suppose she does go? Suppose the wild sex after the flare was just the bomb-shelter reflex to celebrate not having been killed after all? Suppose your choice is Rhea or the Shimizu: what then?”

“That I can answer concisely and with absolute certainty. The answer is, it beats the shit out of me.” He picked at a cuticle. “I really like this place. I really like this job. I really love working with you. But I really love Rhea and our kid. All I can tell you is, I’m praying it never comes up. And all hopeful omens are welcome.”

15 Assorted Terran Locations 19 January 2065

Hidalgo Rodriguez woke from a troubled sleep. His nightmares had been stranger and more unsettling than even a full gourd of wheero could account for. But opening his eyes was less than no help. He shrieked, and sprang to his feet even faster than he had on that distant childhood day in his father’s goat shed when he had learned empirically that a human sneeze means “Run for your life!” in Goat.

The shriek woke Amparo and the children; within seconds they were harmonizing with him.

Their homey familiar hovel was gone. It had been replaced, by something indescribable, almost literally unseeable. It was everywhere, on all sides, had no apparent openings, and no features that any of them could identify. The light by which they saw it had no detectable source. Their first and best guess was that it was some kind of magical trap.

This diagnosis caused Hidalgo to utter a bellow of what he hoped sounded like rage, and throw himself bodily at the nearest part of the thing he could reach. He did not really expect to break through, but he had to try. He struck hard with a hunched shoulder, rebounded and gasped. He had not produced an opening or even a dent—but part of the omnipresent… stuff… had suddenly became transparent.

A window…

Outside it Hidalgo saw the familiar landscape of his home region, with some odd alterations he was too busy to study. He grabbed up a rag, wrapped his fist in it, and smashed at the window. It emphatically refused to break. His hand was more equivocal; he swore foully.

His son Julio followed Hidalgo’s example, racing full tilt into the nearest wall to him. When nothing happened, he picked another spot and tried again. This time he was spectacularly successful: a door appeared in the stuff. He tested it; it worked just fine… and the entire Rodriguez clan joined him at high speed.

They stood outside the thing for a minute or so, all talking at the top of their lungs, none of them hearing a word—or noticing the sounds of similar loud “conversations” in the near distance.

The thing was still unidentifiable. It certainly did not look like a house, or even a building—not any that they had ever seen. It did not seem to have any straight lines or perpendiculars or right angles to it; there was no chimney.

Curiosity—and the growing realization that it was much hotter out here than it had been inside—finally caused them to reenter it.

They tried poking it some more. Finally Luz let out a scream. She had found a spot which caused it to grow a basin. Shouting at her to get away from it, Hidalgo cautiously approached the thing. For some reason, it had an extra faucet. He tried the one nearest him; its mechanism was unfamiliar to him, but not hard to figure out. Water came out, and swirled away.

Hidalgo gaped. His family had never, as far back as history recorded—yes, even unto his grandfather’s day!—had access to running water in the home. He was rich! And there were two of the things. He tried the other one—and when he had grasped what it produced, he fainted dead away.

Hot water…

When he awoke, his new house was talking to him, telling him cheerfully of traffic conditions in a city he had only heard of. It showed him pictures…

Hidalgo was a little comforted when he learned, shortly, that all of his neighbors in the hillside shanty-community were undergoing essentially identical experiences. So, elsewhere around the planet, were the family of Nkwame Van der Hoof, and their neighbors… the family of Algie Bent and their neighbors… the family of Trojan (his parents had named him after their hero) Khamela and their neighbors… the family of Lo Duc Tho and their neighbors… the list went on. Indeed, it was never completed.

A plague of houses seemed to be loose on the world…

It took much longer for it to become apparent—and longer for it to be believed by anyone with an education—that people who lived in those toadstool houses could not get sick.