Starplex

DELTA DRACONIS

“What was Saul Ben-Abraham like?” asked Glass.

Keith looked around the forest simulation, thinking of all the ways he could describe the man who had been his best friend. Tall. Boisterous. A guffaw that could be heard a kilometer away. A guy who could identify any song in three notes. A man who could drink more beer than anyone Keith had ever met—he must have had a bladder the size of Iceland. Finally, Keith settled on, “Hairy.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Glass.

“Saul had a great beard,” said Keith. “Covered most of his face. And he had this one giant eyebrow, like a chimp had laid its forearm across his head. The first time I ever saw him in shorts, I was amazed. The guy looked like sasquatch.”

“Sasquatch?”

“A mythical primate from my part of Earth. I still remember seeing him in shorts for the first time and saying, gee, Saul, you’ve got hairy legs. He let out that great laugh of his and said, ‘Yes—like a man.’ ” I said it was more like ten men.” Keith paused. “God, how I miss him. Friends like that, who mean that much to you, come along perhaps once in a lifetime.”

Glass was quiet for several seconds. “Yes,” he said at last. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Of course,” said Keith, “there was more to Saul than just a thick coat of fur. He was brilliant. The only person I’ve ever met who I thought might be brighter than him is Rissa. Saul was an astronomer. He’s the person who discovered the Tau Ceti shortcut, from its footprint in hyperspace. The guy should have won a Nobel prize for that… but they don’t like to award them posthumously.”

“I appreciate your loss,” said Glass. “It’s as if—oh, excuse me. My reckoner says I’ve got an incoming thought package. Will you excuse me for a little while?”

Keith nodded, and Glass took an odd step, sort of sideways, and disappeared. Doubtless he’d gone through a door hidden by the forest simulation filling the docking hay—the only direct visual evidence Keith had had that he wasn’t actually back on Earth. Well, if there was a door, Keith wanted to find it. He patted the air in the spot that Glass had disappeared from, but there was nothing. There had to be a wall somewhere around, though. The bay wasn’t that big. Keith began to walk, figuring he was bound to hit a wall eventually. He continued on for perhaps five hundred meters without encountering any obstruction.

Of course, if his—he started to think the word “captor,” again, but fought it down and substituted “host” instead—if his host were being clever, he could have manipulated the images to make Keith think he was walking in a straight line when he was really going in a circle.

Keith decided to rest. As much as he tried to find time to work out in Starplex’s Earth gym, which had gravity set to a full standard gee, he’d lost some muscle tone because of all the time he spent in the lighter Wald-standard gravity used in the ship’s common elements. He really should take Thor Magnor up on his offer of playing handball; Keith and Saul had played the game regularly, but he’d given it up when Saul had died.

Keith lowered himself to the ground again, which, at this spot, was covered with clover. Keith found it quite comfortable to sit on. He ran his hand through the clover, enjoying the feel of it against his skin, and looked around. It was a remarkable simulation, he thought. So relaxing, so beautiful. He watched some birds moving high overhead, but they were too far away for him to identify the species.

Keith plucked a piece of clover and brought it up to look at. Maybe this was his lucky day; maybe he’d find a four-leaf clover…

What luck. He did.

He plucked a few more pieces, and his jaw dropped.

He pressed his face to the ground, and examined plant after plant.

They were all four-leaf clovers.

He brought one up to his face, held between thumb and index finger, and scrutinized it. It seemed like normal clover in almost every way. It even bled a little green plant juice from its severed stem. But each of these clovers had four leaves. Keith remembered from undergraduate botany that the genus name for clover was Trifolium—three leaves. By definition, clover had three leaves, except in the odd mutant individual. But these plants all had four distinct oval leaves.

Keith looked at the white and pink flowers growing from some of the plants. Definitely clover—but four-leaf clover. He shook his head. How could Glass have gotten all the other details right, but have made a mistake such as this? It didn’t make any sense.

He looked around again, searching for any other discrepancies. Most of the deciduous trees did indeed seem to be maple—sugar maple, in fact, if he wasn’t mistaken. And those conifers were jack pine, and the big one a little farther along was a blue spruce. And—And what kind of bird was that? Sitting in that blue spruce? Surely not a cardinal or a jay. Oh, it had the tufted head crest, but it was emerald green, and its bill was flat and spatulate, unlike that of most songbirds.

It was Earth; no doubt about it. That was Earth’s moon, still sitting high in the daytime sky. And yet, it wasn’t quite Earth—some of the details weren’t right.

Keith chewed at his lower lip, puzzled…