Variable Star

21

“Evelyn, what—?”

That was as far as I could go. I could not even form a rational question.

No, wait. Yes I could.

“Evelyn, why?”

She had just let me think over an answer for a good half a minute. I gave her the same. So did the others. Jinny watched her intently, with no expression.

When she was ready, Evelyn said, “Joel, you were the first person I ever saw defy my grandfather. You are the only one I know who ever got away with it. You gave me the inspiration to become a musician—the only one in four entire generations of my family—in case perhaps that was the source of your courage. And it was! You’re the only man I’ve ever known who thought it was a great thing to go to the stars—and went.”

“But—”

“Shut up. That’s part of it. You were the very first adult I ever met who took me seriously. Who did not talk down to me, because I was small. You treated me as an equal with an unfortunate height problem you were too polite to notice.”

“That was—”

“I asked you to shut up. Because of that, you were the first adult I ever allowed to have any faintest idea how smart I was. Previous experiments had worked out badly. But it didn’t bother you a bit to need my help, or to get it. It didn’t even surprise you much.”

“That’s how my father always treated me at that age. I didn’t know any other way to react.”

“You were the first grown-up to remember my name the second time he saw me. And before you let me help you, you asked if it would get me in trouble.”

I tried to remember. Was all this true? It had been a long time ago.

But then, it had been longer for her than for me: thirteen years to my six since we’d cannoned into each other in the corridors of the North Keep—how could she remember so much better than I?

“You didn’t laugh at me.” She hesitated, then went on more softly, “Even when I told you I was going to marry you.” Then far more softly, “And you were engaged then.”

Jinny snorted, but did not speak.

Evelyn made a small measured movement, and began to drift toward me. Snow used to fall at about that speed in the low gravity of Ganymede, once. She came with infinite grace, and her eyes seemed to get larger faster than the rest of her.

“Joel Johnston, you were the first man ever to write to me. You’re the longest pen pal I ever had. You are the only man who ever kept writing to me after it was clear that I was not going to have sex with him. No one else of either sex, ever, has given me their attention without expecting anything in return. My letters ended up having to be a tenth the size of yours, and carefully edited, thanks to Gran’ther Dick… and yours kept on coming anyway. And you are the only man I have ever known in my life or expected to who did not care one single solitary molecule of a damn how much money I had!”

She gently collided with me, for the second time in six of my years and thirteen of hers. She was taller, now. Her eyes were only decimeters from mine, this time. So was her mouth. Both her arms were around me. I had both of mine around her. I must have let go of my handhold again. The room literally spun around us. She twined her calves around mine, completing the free-fall embrace. Our bellies touched, and we both discovered my waxing erection.

“I bullied them into coming for you,” she said. “I said I would space myself if they did not. They knew I meant it. Right now, Gran’ther would rather cut off his own feet than lose fifty percent of the universe’s remaining supply of egg-laying Conrads.” Her voice dropped so low then that even I needed to follow her exaggerated lip movements to know she was adding, “But… he… is… going to.”

It wasn’t so much any of the words as looking at her mouth that forced me to kiss her.

Very little coherent thought took place during that kiss. So it must have gone on for a long time, because I had time to think that no woman in my life had ever given me her attention for so many years in a row for any reason, let alone without reasonable hope of any possible return. That she had done this for years before she’d ever heard me play a note. That she had learned to play because of me. That she was far and away the best kisser I had ever met or even fantasized. And that it would be very convenient if our first two children happened to take to the bass and drums. Drums first, no doubt.

Then our faces were whole decimeters apart again, and there was a ship around us.

“You are coming with us, right?” she asked solemnly.

“I’m coming with you,” I said just as solemnly.

We both grinned at the same instant. “This is insane, right?” I asked her.

“Believe it,” she agreed.

“Oh, thank heavens. For a second there I was afraid I was going sane.”

“Little danger of that,” Jinny said from across the room.

I glanced over at her, found her expressionless. I realized that not once during that timeless kiss had it even momentarily occurred to me that Jinny was watching us. It made me want to grin even wider, but it seemed politer not to. The disease had come close to killing me—but the cure was now complete. Andrew, poor bastard, was welcome to her. I wished him well, hoped he was genius enough to hold his own with her. He had licked lightspeed; maybe he could.

My heart suddenly sprang a leak, and joy started to leak out into reality. It began to sink in that I had no clear idea what was going to happen next, what I was going to do now. Or how I was going to live with myself afterward. I wanted with my whole heart to go with Evelyn, wherever she might go. But how could I leave so many of my friends—any of my friends—behind to die in the Sheffield? If I stayed, I could save at most one other life—if it hadn’t been for me, nobody would have lived—those and a dozen other rationalizations raced through my mind, but were of no help whatsoever.

Evelyn saw the change in my face. From her distance she could scarcely have helped it. “Joel, what’s wrong?”

I sighed. “I really hate with my whole heart the idea of leaving anyone at all to die of old age in this bucket. I don’t know if I can… I don’t know how to…” I did not even know how to express my dilemma, even to myself.

Dorothy Robb spoke up. “Am I the only one here comfortable with arithmetic?”

Everyone turned to stare at her.

She was frowning mightily. “Admittedly, the math does become hairy. But surely someone must know how to operate a calculator.”

“What do you mean, Dorothy?” Evelyn called.

She replied, “Joel, how many passengers does the Sheffield now carry?”

I wasn’t at all sure. Too many deaths lately, no time to keep the figures current. “Can we call it four hundred and fifty for now?”

She nodded and closed her eyes, saying, “So: nine passengers at a time yields a total of forty-five trips, with a series of geometrically decreasing trip lengths beginning with seventy-five light-years—we assume zero turnaround time for convenience—” She stopped speaking, but her lips kept moving. We all gave her time. After a while she said, “Call it very roughly a hundred and fifty-one years.”

My heart sank in my chest, but I nodded and kept going, needing to know just how bad it was. “How many could we transport in the first seventy or eighty years? You know, before we all die of old age.”

Dorothy gave me the look a grandmother gives a child who has just picked his nose in company. “Joel, Joel—those are a hundred and fifty-one real years.”

“Pardon—oh!” My heart leaped.

“Since this ship is doing nearly ninety-eight percent of the speed of light, that works out to… half a tick, now… a bit under thirty-three local, shipboard years.”

Blood roared in my ears. We could all live! Her figures assumed zero turnaround, zero downtime for maintenance, and a lot of other things—but it didn’t matter: the thing was doable. Andrew had saved us all.

This changed everything. For the first time since the quantum ramjet had gone out, I started to feel real hope. With it came a phantom memory of an ancient film about a man struggling with Time, who said to a companion near the end, “It’s not the despair—I can live with the despair. It’s the hope that’s killing me!”

Well, being killed beats being dead. I’d been dying for two dozen years now, since the moment of my birth. Another seventy-five years of it sounded very good.

If I could spend them with Evelyn.

The hatch opened and Andrew entered, as if invoked by my thinking of him. Herb came in on his heels, must have guided him there.

“Hi, darling,” was the first thing Andrew said, I noticed, and then, “Hello, everybody. I hope I’m not—” He saw me and Evelyn. “But apparently I am. I should have tapped first; crave pardon.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Herb told him. “That’s the way I usually find him.”

“Usually with his girlfriend,” I agreed.

Evelyn turned to me, eyes twinkling, and we gave each other our best deadpan. She was good; I nearly lost it. “So I’m going about this backward, then?” she asked.

“I for one work best in that mode,” I told her. “Come on in, Andrew—I can work with an audience. How goes the confabulation?”

He looked pained. “Well, they’re still discussing what should be done to evacuate the Sheffield as efficiently as possible. Your grandfather’s come up with the seed of a very interesting plan, actually. Several problems still to be solved, of course, but… look, could we talk about it on the way? Richard sent me to tell you he’d be pleased if we all returned to the Mercury right away, and began preparing for an immediate launch. It’s very important to lose as little time as possible, obviously, since every loss will cascade down through the whole sequence, and he’s determined to hit the ground running.”

Evelyn and I exchanged a glance and adjusted our position until we were side by side, each with an arm around the other’s waist. “They’re that close to agreeing on a plan?” Jinny asked.

Her husband shrugged. “Your grandfather wants to be under way two seconds after the airlock shuts behind him. We don’t even know if all the provisions we were offered have been loaded aboard yet, much less stowed properly.”

She nodded. “I guess we can continue the conversation there. Let’s go.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Question.”

“He just told you we don’t have any minutes to spare,” Jinny said sharply.

“I agree with Andrew. But that begs my question: who’s ‘we,’ exactly?”

Everybody did a lot of blinking.

“Ten seats. Seven of you. If Evelyn has her way, I take seat number eight. Who gets the other two?”

Very loud blinking. Herb looked less sleepy than usual.

Andrew cleared his throat. “As I was leaving, Mr. Hattori had just agreed to join us.”

“Really?” Jinny said. “Why?”

Andrew frowned. “To be honest, I’m not sure. It made sense when Richard explained it.”

“Hattori!” Lieutenant Bruce squawked, ruining his efforts to avoid being caught eavesdropping. “Why in space should he get one of the first berths? He’s a bean counter!”

Jinny’s stare basted him with superheated contempt, and he withered. “I’m sure you would prefer to share your Bridge with people interested in your opinions, Lieutenant, so we will take our leave now. Your hospitality has been exceeded only by your courtesy. Shall we go, all?”

Evelyn turned her head to look at me. “Is there anything you want to pack, Joel?” One eyebrow rose slightly, copied accurately by the same side of her mouth. “Anyone you want to say good-bye to?”

I had absolutely no idea where we were going to go, or what we intended to do when we got there, or what if any contribution I could make.

I raised my voice a little. “Herb? Say good-bye to everybody for me, will you? You know how to say it pretty.”

“If I don’t get the tenth seat, sure,” he called back. “Don’t bother leaving me your porn folder; I hacked into it years ago.”

“Captain Conrad?” I said at the same volume. “Would my baggage allotment aboard your ship accommodate a baritone saxophone?”

“Anna?” Evelyn asked.

I smiled. “You read liner notes carefully. Yes, my Yanigasawa.”

Andrew called, “If it didn’t, I’d tear out a couple of instrument panels or something.”

He and I exchanged a look. “I’ll meet you all at the airlock with my saxophone, then,” I said.

Andrew pretended to clear his throat. “Joel, I hope you will forgive my presumption. I took the liberty of asking that your silver baritone be loaded aboard the Mercury shortly after our arrival. Evelyn said that was the one you’d want.” His eyes went back and forth between Jinny and Evelyn twice. “It seemed the prudent course.”

I knew what he meant. Jinny and Evelyn were twin forces of nature. If one of them said a man was coming aboard, the smart money said to save time and start loading his luggage. “I’m sure it was,” I agreed, and a silent understanding passed between us. “Let’s go, then. I’m eager to see your ship, Captain. I presume you docked down by the main passenger airlock?”

“That’s right.” He turned to Herb. “Mr. Johnson, will you accompany us? I can show you that thing I was talking about on our way up here.” Herb nodded.

Bruce looked like he wanted to cry. Rennick looked like he could happily boil me. Dorothy looked like she wanted to suddenly extrude a judge’s robes and marry Evelyn and me on the spot. Andrew looked as proud as a puppy who’s learned some really amazing new tricks and is dying to show everyone.

And Evelyn looked like the rest of my life, smiling at me.

The trip was nearly the whole length of the ship, and took longer than I had expected. We did not pass a lot of people I knew well… we passed few people at all; it seemed a lot of us were waiting in our rooms to be told what the hell was going on. But of the few friends we did encounter, there were none that either Herb or I could bring ourselves to simply float past without a word of personal leave-taking. We also wanted to make sure the news spread as quickly as possible throughout the ship that everyone was going to get out of this alive, sooner or later. I never did find a really satisfactory way to say it in a few sentences. Herb did much better, of course. All but one of the reactions I got were positive, supportive. The one—Richie—was just gaping at me, then turning and jaunting away without a word.

We had gotten all the way to the airlock antechamber before things started to shift around in my head.

I found myself thinking over everything that had been said since I’d gotten to the Bridge, and who had been saying it. Everything made sense, everything added up, except for a single term in the equation. It nagged at me. Gave me a faint sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I could not seem to either justify or explain away.

I was so preoccupied I was barely paying attention to Andrew’s eager babbling about his discovery, even though I did want very much to hear it. It was the genuine Secret of the Ages he was telling me. But I was distracted, and it didn’t help that hardly anything he said conveyed much meaning to me.

Then all at once, three words leaped out of the noise, burrowed into my consciousness, and there exploded with great force. I lost my grip on my p-suit, and didn’t bother jaunting after it.

“Andy,” I interrupted rudely. “Did you just say, ‘…irrespective of…’ a moment ago?”

He was struggling with his own p-suit, trying to get his feet in. He had the klutziness of the true supergenius. “Excuse me? Yes, Joel. Quite irrespective. As I was saying, the basis of the DIS principle—”

I stepped on him again. “Evelyn? Do you understand Andrew’s drive? Has he explained it to you?”

She paused in her own suit-up checklist procedure. “He tried to,” she said, puzzled but game. “It didn’t take. I’m afraid I don’t have anything like your background in physics.”

I nodded. “Dorothy?”

She shook her head. “I was handicapped by my background in physics. It kept turning out that everything I thought I knew was wrong. I gave up listening at about the fourth sentence, when I seemed to hear him telling me that all mass is infinite in the first place.”

“It is, in a sense,” Andrew tried to explain. “You see—”

“Andrew, my new friend,” I told him, “we don’t. Very likely we can’t. But I want to be as certain as I can be of at least one datum, so I’m going to ask you one more time. Have I just understood you to tell me that the DIS effect functions under any circumstances, irrespective of mass? Do those three words mean to you what they mean to us? Or is this some sort of semantic confusion?”

“No, you’re correct,” he said, puzzled. “Mass really is imaginary, you know. Like inertia. What you need to understand—”

I turned to Evelyn. “Do you get it?”

She was frowning hugely. Her own p-suit drifted away from her hands, forgotten. I saw understanding wash over her, like a wave of ice water. “Oh, no. Oh, no! Joel—”

Now the equation solved itself: the dubious term had been defined, and others adjusted themselves to match with the inexorable beauty of math working out.

“What are you talking about?” Jinny asked.

My stomach lurched. I turned and stared at her. “You know, don’t you? Of course you do.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

“What does she know?” Herb asked me.

I could see from Dorothy’s face that she got it, was thinking it through, and becoming as angry as I was. I could also see that Rennick had known all along, and was not even faintly surprised. He started edging toward the hatch that led back out into the rest of the Sheffield.

Uptake. Uptake was going to be important, now. I spoke quickly and in my loudest talking-to-the-audience voice.

“Everyone here has a mental picture of Richard Conrad. Can any one of you really picture him spending the next thirty-odd years rescuing a few hundred farmers?”

General consternation. Rennick made it all the way to the door and put his back to it.

“But he himself wouldn’t—” Jinny began.

“Do you honestly think he believes that would be the best use for his one and only superluminal starship, during these next crucial empire-building decades?”

“He wanted to own the entire Solar System,” Herb said. “Now he’ll have to settle for what’s left. But I think he would consider that the absolute minimum acceptable.”

“My grandfather is with your own Captain this very minute, trying to—”

“Your grandfather is lying his aristocratic ass off at this minute,” I said, “trying to persuade Captain Bean he’s ever going to see him again after the Mercury leaves. That way he can consign more than four hundred people to death with an absolute minimum of harsh words or other unpleasantness. And we can all depart without Alice Dahl having to hold a gun on anyone.”

“You’re insane!” Jinny snapped.

“If he really wanted to help us, all he’d have had to do was order his grandson-in-law to unship his DIS drive from the Mercury… and install it in the Sheffield! Andrew just got finished telling us the silly thing doesn’t believe in mass.”

Jinny gasped in shock—but not as loud as her husband. “Coventry, what was I thinking of?” Andrew said, his face stricken. “I… I… I’d have to destroy the Mercury in the process, I guess that’s why it simply never occurred to me, but—yes, damn it to seven hells, there’s no real reason in the universe why I couldn’t recalibrate and ramp it up to make the field large enough to enfold even a ship this large. I could have it done in a few weeks! I think…”

“Don’t destroy the Mercury,” Herb advised. “Just bring it aboard. It’s about the size of one of our landing craft.”

“That would work—”

“I heard earlier it took you five or six subjective weeks to overtake and match orbits with us,” I told Jinny. “The Mercury was a private yacht on its shakedown cruise when Sol exploded. Even given Conrad family paranoia, I’d be surprised if she carried more than a couple of months’ worth of provisions for a crew of seven. My guess is your ship’s just about out of food, water, and air by now.” Andrew’s groan told me my guess was accurate. “That’s why the old bastard really let himself be talked into picking us for his first destination! He needs to be fully reprovisioned before he reaches an established colony planet, so he can deal from a position of strength. To him, we’re no more than a supplies cache en route, disposable. We’re the smallest number of people that stand between him and self-sufficiency.”

“And the easiest to con,” Herb said. “Because we’re scared and tired and vulnerable. And we have evidence other than Conrad’s word that Sol has been destroyed and hellfire is coming.”

“Oh, Grandfather,” Evelyn groaned. “Oh, this is awful!” She started for the exit. “Joel, you’re absolutely right: we have to—”

Rennick reached into his blouse and produced the smallest hand weapon I had ever seen, the size of a stylus, waved it across us all once. “You have to stay right where you are,” he barked. “Evelyn, I mean it! Don’t!” He aimed his weapon at her, and I gathered myself to leap into the line of fire, and his head exploded into red mist, most of which boiled out of existence even as it formed. A few tiny drops made it all the way across the room and spattered my face and hands. His little weapon flew from his hand and started caroming off things.

Dorothy Robb had something even smaller in her hand. It looked like the smaller half of a stylus, with the pocket clip on it. As I saw it, she released it like a soiled tissue and let it drift from her. “I thought I’d get all the way out of this life without ever using that,” she said thoughtfully, as if to herself, in the sudden ringing silence. “But it was worth carrying it, all these years.”

I wondered how she’d gotten it past the Gurkhas back home. But then, Rennick had managed with a larger one. Maybe the Gurkhas had known—and just figured they could deal with it. “Thank you, Dorothy,” I managed to say, wiping my face with my sleeve.

“You may always leave these little things to me,” she said, making it sound like a quote. Then she brushed a hand across her face and made a sound of revulsion. “I would not have thought his brain was large enough to make that much of a splash.”

Herb was instantly at her side with a pack of tissues. She thanked him gravely and accepted one.

The heat of the explosion had briefly been so intense, Rennick’s massive wound had cauterized itself. Most of the red mist had already been dealt with by the Sheffield’s intensive zero-gee airflow, and the rest would be soon.

“They’ll be here any minute,” Herb said to me.

“I know,” I said.

“You understand the problem. You’ve seen her.”

I wished I didn’t. “Yeah. I’ve seen Alice.”

We shared a wordless glance that lasted ten seconds or more. He smiled suddenly. “I don’t see another way. Do you?”

I thought as hard as I know how. Finally, reluctantly, I shook my head no. “Not with the tools at hand.”

He nodded.

I retrieved Dorothy’s weapon, glanced at it briefly, and tossed it to him.

“It’s empty,” Dorothy said urgently. “It was a single-shot.”

Herb held it up. “Could you tell it’s empty by looking at it?”

She made no reply, but her face said she understood now, and that the answer to his question was no.

A bounce took Rennick’s weapon past me and I picked it out of the air. I looked around at the scene, studying it closely. Just behind me, beside the airlock hatch, was a large display showing data of several kinds. I found the right switch and powered it off. Then I stepped back, measured angles, and said, “What do you think?” to Herb.

“Good as it’s liable to get,” he said. “This is what a long time ago used to be called a Hail Mary play.”

I nodded. “I really wish it was better,” I said.

With infinite kindness in his eyes, he said not “Me, too,” but “I know.” Then he moved, to position himself just beside the hatch out to the Sheffield. Dorothy began gathering the p-suits we hadn’t finished donning, and stowing them out of the way.

“What are you doing?” Jinny asked dangerously. “Damn it, what is going on?” Andrew couldn’t decide which of us to gape at. He wore a look I could empathize with—a man rearranging the entire contents of his brain, and heart.

“Can you handle her?” I asked Evelyn.

She looked me in the eye and said not “I think so,” but, “Yes.” Everybody was being very helpful to me today. I nodded thanks, and she left my side, jaunting over to dock beside Jinny.

“Cousin Jinny,” she said clearly and firmly, “zip it.”

Jinny was too shocked to respond, and before she could regroup, we all heard the sound of the party approaching the antechamber from outside.

“Joel—” Dorothy began.

“I think it’ll be all right,” I told her. “But stay alert.”

She shut up, chose a spot well away from the hatch, near the air outflow, and tugged Rennick’s body there. She held onto the grille with one hand, and held Rennick near it with the other. “Evelyn, over here, dear.”

Evelyn looked to me, I nodded, and she joined Dorothy.

Herb and I shared one last long look. Nothing to be said.

The hatch irised open.

Alice Dahl entered first, and she was as good as I had presumed she must be. The instant she cleared the hatchway she sensed that something was wrong—body language? Blood scent the airflow hadn’t finished flushing yet?—and went hyperalert well before she could have seen Rennick’s body. She didn’t actually kill anyone, but she was very ready to. And it was me she focused on.

Failing to notice, Conrad came in behind her, followed by Solomon Short. “All right, everyone,” he was saying, “thanks to Captain Bean’s insights, and Relativist Short’s gift for lateral thinking, I think we’ve come up with a plan that will—”

It took him that long to see Rennick’s drifting corpse and stop speaking. He must have been very tired. But he was still sharp, and quick. He didn’t bother asking what was wrong.

“All right,” he went on. “Everyone on board now. We will discuss this later.”

“Gran’ther, how can you?” Evelyn asked him with infinite sadness.

He did not seem to understand her question.

“The race made a small mistake,” Herb said. Alice’s head turned to track him. “We did finally make some progress at stamping out war. But maybe it would have been better to start with greed.”

“What’s going on?” Solomon asked mildly.

“Conman of Conman here,” I said, “was just about to depart, leaving behind a boatful of suckers who thought he’d be coming back to start a rescue shuttle.”

Solomon caught on at once, and turned to glare at Conrad. “Really?”

“He also forgot to mention to anybody that with a little work, Andy’s Magic Carpet drive will push anything you put it in, just as fast. Irrespective of its mass.”

Solomon’s face darkened even further. “I see. He had better things to do with it. Sure, he did.”

“Sol,” I said quickly. “It’s covered. Okay? Watch out for green mist.”

I saw him take my meaning. Stay out of the line of fire and await developments.

“Oh, for Covenant’s sake!” Conrad snarled. “Jinny, you understand. Evelyn, dear, history is being made. Right now, by us. We need to form and consolidate the Confederation of Human Stars, get it organized. Ferry telepaths around until rational communication can take place, and then get busy and avenge our star. For all we know, a second wave of attacks is just about to happen—there is no way we have time to waste rescuing a bunch of losers from their own incompetence. Please try to be rational. You’re a Conrad, for the—”

“I am a Johnston,” she told him.

He rolled his eyes. “Young love. Oh, I love being old! Fine. I don’t care what name you go by, as long as you get into that damned pressure suit and back aboard the ship, now.”

She looked him in the eye and slowly shook her head. “I will not.”

Conrad of Conrad sighed, irritated beyond endurance. “Alice.”

Alice Dahl reached for her right hip, and Time slowed to its lowest possible velocity.

“Alice!” I shouted.

She was very good, gave me less than half her attention at first despite my shout.

That changed fast when she saw my hand holding the weapon I’d been palming all this time, though.

She was so good that in the fraction of an instant it took me to draw a dead bead on her center of mass, she had her own gun out and pointed directly at my left eye.

“If you kill me,” she said calmly, “my hand will still kill you afterward.”

“Probably,” I agreed. Most of my attention was on my features, going for the best poker face of my life.

“Absolutely,” she corrected.

Time was going so slowly now, I could actually see her discern some tiny flaw in my poker face. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

“Hey, Butch!” Herb bellowed at the top of his lungs.

She was still good. She turned her head just enough to pick him up in her peripheral vision. She knew he was bluffing, because she knew he was smart enough to know he could not possibly beat her—and still she checked.

And found Herb aiming Dorothy’s tiny little weapon at her.

She identified it, must have realized it was much deadlier than the one I held. It didn’t worry her a bit. The right side of her mouth curled up in contempt.

Faster than the eye could follow, she spun on her axis. Beating Herb was no more difficult than beating me had been for her.

And as far as Alice Dahl knew, nobody important wanted Herb alive. She shot him in his left eye, perfectly confident that shock and denial would hold a civilian like me frozen for the split second that was all she would need.

I was not in shock. I was not in denial. She died halfway back around to me, when my shot caught her square in the heart.

It was a far less gaudy death than either of the others that had happened in that room—but it was definitive. Rennick’s weapon fired not a laser or projectiles, but something that relaxed muscles. All of them, completely. Her face went slack, her eyes became doll’s eyes, her body went limp and derelict, and sphincters let go just before Solomon crashed into her.

My own nearly did the same. I had been more than half expecting to die myself, doing this. But I barely noticed; I was already in transit to Herb, just in case, knowing it was futile but unable to help myself. Halfway there I knew I was wasting my time, and started to relax and begin mourning.

An unexpected noise behind me scared the living shit out of me.

I wrenched my body around and just had time to realize Jinny had launched herself after me, hands curled into claws—when Evelyn slammed into her so hard her vector won the argument. They both drifted away from me, but only Evelyn was still conscious.

I collided with Alice’s body myself, glanced off, and grabbed a handhold. Now my attention was fully on Andrew.

He couldn’t take his eyes off Jinny. He was staring at her as if she had just morphed into some loathsome insect, or perhaps a demon with fangs.

I felt truly bad for him. I knew exactly how he must feel. The same as I had, when I’d first learned she wasn’t who I’d thought she was at all. That she wasn’t who she had told me she was. That she was capable of enormities I could not have imagined, and would not have believed until forced to. Nobody that beautiful should be capable of that much guile: it was too unfair an advantage.

She was everything her grandfather had hoped for. And little else.

I decided he would probably live through it, too. He might even be able to deal with it, somehow, for all I knew. He was a supergenius. And a decent man down to his marrow. I would try and have a long talk with him, as soon as I could. A series of them.

Richard Conrad inevitably found his voice. “All right, now,” he began.

Andrew Jackson Conrad cut him off. “Grandfather,” he said, “shut the fuck up.”

Richard stared at him, more confounded by this than anything else that had occurred yet. He groped for words, found none at all.

“If you say one more word,” his grandson-in-law said to him, “I will come over there and shove it down your throat.”

“Way too kind,” I heard Dorothy murmur.

I saw it wash over him, and if it hadn’t been so pathetic I’d have enjoyed it more. For the first time in his entire life, Conrad of Conrad found himself in a room full of people… not one of whom gave a damn what he did or did not want.

He had always been utterly alone—but had probably never even suspected it until now.

“Joel,” Andrew continued, “I assume this ship carries proctors?”

“Good ones,” I agreed.

“Will you summon one, please. This citizen requires restraint.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “he’ll be here any second. The ship calls him if it decides he’s needed. As soon as he gets here, I suggest we all adjourn back to my quarters, and start making some plans.”

“Good,” he said. “Will you help me get my wife to your Infirmary first?”

“Not to worry,” I assured him. “My place is much closer, more comfortable… and our Healer makes house calls. She is very good.”

He nodded. “Thank you very much.”

I told him he was welcome.

And then—finally—my obligations were over for the moment, and at long last I went to rejoin my Evelyn.

She was waiting for me.

We had been waiting for each other, for a long, long, long time. No matter what clock you used to measure it.