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ISLANDED IN THE STARS

BY
George Scott Huggins

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of English

2000

ABSTRACT
ISLANDED IN THE STARS
BY

George Scott Huggins

This is a creative thesis consisting of original poetry
and science-fiction. Its major theme is that of
communication between the Self and the other, the climax of
the various pieces usually being achieved at the point where
the protagonist or narrator comes to a greater understanding
of the Other. As the fictional pieces here are science-
fiction, the ”Other” often takes the form of an
extraterrestrial intelligence or a human greatly different
to those we are familiar with today. The poetry does not
have an avowedly otherworldly theme, instead focusing on the
Other closer to home, ranging from historical personages to
European places and citizens, and from dogs to angels. It
is to be hoped that the reader, apart from coming to a
greater realization of his or her own place in the cosmos,

also has fun reading this.

I would like to dedicate this work to my mother and
father, George L. Huggins and Linda K. Huggins, and the
books they read me, which were my first gates to the stars.
This is for them, and for my Father in Heaven, and my Lord

Jesus Christ. Those whom we cannot repay, we can only

honor.

iii

I would like to thank Gordon Henry, Lister Matheson, and
especially Anita Skeen for putting up with me through the
past three years and guiding both me and this project,
neither of which would be what it is today without them.
Also, thanks to Alan Newton for his support and reassurance

in the early years at Michigan State.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Islandings

Rengu: Spring Noon
Buchenwald Reflections
Christmas

Friday

Dead Man Laughing
Brotherdammerung
Hoviesynthesis

What Avenger Is

Dogs: A Response

For Nana Who Lived Far Away
Signal Mountain Blackberries
Sonnet Triune: Grandfather -- (Grand)son -- Father
Coffee with Kim

Stone Solo

Her Gift

Soliloquy For The Middle-Class Hamlet
Valjean and Javert

What Germany Saw

Sestina: Ending

Intuition in Butterflies
Moscow River

Counterrevolutionary Sonnet

10

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

28

29

30

St. Vasily's Cathedral: Winter
Sestina: Notes on a Small Revolution
Sestina: The Tower of London
Shipsong

Viet-Nam

Warplane

Why I Still Watch Star Wars

Towers of Babel: New York and Star Flight
Flying Fish

In the Stars

The Sea Like Fire, The Beaches Glass
When the Fleet Comes

Requiem with Interruptions

Bearing the Pattern

vi

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

58

89

118

INTRODUCTION

I came to Michigan State University both to write
poetry and to write fiction. Under Gordon Henry, (and also
with the assistance of such teachers as Tim Powers and Joan
Vinge, my instructors at the Clarion Writers' Workshop) I
learned to shift my concentration from simple, plot-oriented

stories full of visual "special effects" to stories

I

centering on people. . . both human and inhuman. Dr. Henry
taught me to develop my characters outside the bounds of a
single story; to play with them in different situations.
Irina Ivanovna has gone through two other incarnations on
Vadagon than the one you see here. Joan Vinge and Tim
Powers (brought to the University by Lister Matheson) taught
me to delve for my characters' motivations: to consider them
in terms of their loves and hates; wants and fears. From
these lessons came the inner and social conflicts that face
Sean Gyranhijjor.

Both Anita Skeen and Marcia Aldrich helped shape my
poetry. Recognizing my love for wordplay, Professor Skeen
helped me to loosen my poems, making the narrative flow more
accessible to the audience (who, owing to the unfortunate
circumstance of not being me, were often confused by my
habit of trying to pack in three allusive references in a
single line!) Dr. Aldrich, with her many different poetry
assignments, motivated me to find new forms (among them the

Sonnet Triune and the rengu) to express myself in, and

1

taught me the importance of structure and cohesion in my

poetry.

"Islanded in the Stars" is not just a catchy title,
though it is that, and certainly intended to emphasize the
science-fictional bias that appears in my work. "Islanded
in the Stars" captures a theme central to most of my pieces:
a paradox in the human animal. A part of the universe, but
also, inevitably, apart from the universe. Tolkien's elves,
upon awakening to life by the waters of Cuivienen, named
this paradox most succinctly by calling themselves Quandi,
or Spaakars: we, like them, are the part of the Universe
which speaks. Anything else which speaks is by definition
included in this definition -- but is also, by the very act
of speaking, separated from us. It is angtnar that also
speaks.

It is in the moments at which "apartness" between
speakers is stretched; the moments in which the speakers
seek (or are thrust into) a violation of their universal
Aparthaig that my pieces find their tension. This location
of tension differs from that of many of my contemporaries in
that it develops the speakers intarparsgnally, while much
contemporary.fiction develops its speakers intzapazsgnally.
That is, I develop my Speakers, or characters almost
exclusively by showing them in interaction with other
characters and with their worlds. For example, Dr. Emily

Quirran is faced with death as a result of prolonged contact

2

with an alien mind. It is only through communication, not
only with the (as she sees it) "primitive" Sunone priest,
Wings-Over-Sun, but also with her friend Sandor, that she
can begin to understand and overcome her problem. In so
doing, she and Sandor realize their love for one another.
Wings-Over-Sun and Dr. Quirran also manage to form a new
basis of communication and respect between the races.

By contrast, in her short story, ”Acts of Violence,"
Ursula Hegi develops the narrator and his mother through
ngncommunication. The more mother and son try to speak to
one another, the less they understand one another, until
finally, the story culminates in an act of violence which
leaves the narrator gasping on the floor. He is overpowered
by his mother, but does not comprehend her. The reader
comprehends both, but this comprehension is accomplished
through watching the characters alienate one another: not
through watching them commune. Hegi develops the characters
within themselves.

My fiction especially is greatly predicated on the idea
of contact with the alien. Whether this is literal "alien
contact" in the sense of extraterrestrial intelligence or
contact with humans or a human society having a radically
different Waltansghauang makes little difference; the
portrayal of the contact with and the concomitant
understanding between the "aliens" in question is what is
important. From this exploration emerged not only the race

of Sunones, whose strictures against surgery and practice of

3

reincarnation appear to be religious in nature to Humans,
but also Marta Krovikian, the cheerleader-wannabe-turned-
soldier who finds herself cast in the role of alien, and is
forced to abandon either that role or her own sanity.

In my poetry, the tension of alien contact is seen
throughout, although never between humans and what we would
term "aliens," in the classic sense. Nevertheless, angels
are met. Russia, that alien nation with whom our own has
fenced and quietly warred for the last fifty years, makes an
appearance. Even the family dog and my own relatives (who a
lot of people are convinced are from outer space anyway)
become alienated and then re-explored.

But all this is window-dressing and props. As one
artist to others I invite you for a peek behind the set, and
show you the foundations of the building, the ribs that hold
the hull of the ship together. But to really appreciate the
vessel I have built, you must see it from without, and move
deeper in at the same time, and so I bring this introduction
to a close. Go on, turn the page. What follows is much

more interesting. Go.

Islandings

Spring Noon

In late morning heat
Sycamore limbs fall Skyward:
Solid waterfall.

Bare limbs recall the winter
White ice in germination.

Awash in flat cloud
Wakes of the invisible
Ships retreat dockward.

Spiders hunting: eight-legged pearls
Flash blackly: beckon sunlight.

Reflected in pools
The sky peers into the sky
Through branchy netting.

Noon passes in a shadow,
Tilting dark blades to the east.

Buchenwald Reflections: 1995

It begins with a knock,
It began with a knock,

Gentle green knocks on the roof of the bus,
Fevered gray knocks on the door of the house,

Breaking my concentration,
Breaking the doorframe.

And the brakes whine in protest.
The dog, the baby, whined in fear.

We are led from the bus.
We were forced on the train.

We are met by a Stadtffihrer,
We were sent by the Staats Ffihrer,

Shown the ruins of houses
Shown the HOuses of Ruin.

And we spend awhile among them.
We were spent in piles among them.

Nothing grows from the ground
But the germs grew in our bodies.

But a few weeds that mock the stone
we cherished the weeds or anything green.

The earth seems burned.
It wasn’t the earth we worried about.

The sun flew quickly, afraid to stay,
The sun sank, stealing our warmth.

Christmas

Old Jesse Still talks about it
in his cicada-edged croak that
races to a meeting with entropy.

"That night with all the lights"

he calls it and the others nod

muttering in the code that old people use

that once squeezed puzzled glances from now-dead parents
back at the dawn of time.

It gets no better name from him.

Perhaps these sheep have eaten away his vocabulary
over the years --

so much fractal grass,

leaving a gritty stubble of sentences.

”That night with all the lights," oh, yeah
they murmble, traceless now of terror when
darkness turning inside out around us

left only a dozen frightened shepherds facing
the choir of storms.

Somehow the sheep (damnedest thing)

just raised their heads like everyday and
we, our faces in grass and toadstools prayed
living wool to be a shield against lightning.

This same staff I hold today in my hand

twisted like it wanted a better look, and even though
light was all the universe, I was sure I could hear
grass weeping under the cold weight of my shadow.

Fear not? The memory of impossible words
from somewhere inside flashing wings, so calm.
Instinctively believing I dared to look and

Some days I can still see the afterglare:
Elusive purple feathers

That night with all the lights they charged us
wielding soft, impaling words. Fifty stars grew faces:
Glory to God in the Highest.
Glory to God in the Highest.
The Highest.
The Highest.

Caught between heavens and earth, just listening --
of all the kingdoms only we were not yet part.
Eighteen different notes of light crawled up

my spine, a sounding board. Gone

so quickly I almost thought

I dreamed if I had not

heard the rocks sustaining their final note
basalt profundo

and known (not knowing how)

where to see the child.

God, I'd rather see the angels again than take that.
All the lights shrunk to nothing to him,
the One Who.

I woke in a cell in the city; fined ten shekels
for shouting in midnight streets something crazy
about a King.

I don’t Shout any more; the sheep need feeding,

but sometimes when all the others are out on far hills
I imagine myself again before those eyes in a grown
Man and in my lone and windcracked throat far from
any stage

I sing.

Friday

I think it was the trees that were most real that night.
Thick, knotted, brown, so hard trying

the limits of their forms, to grow

a century a second

it seemed, once He was there, to pass that slowly
my six wings stiff with the tension and gazing
so that rocks only days younger than

I really would cry out

I thought, if it might do some good, I would appear
to comfort Him, to tell Him, no, even here

among these false, cloudy sleeping men,

"I am ready to go with Thee,"

one of them mumbled, not knowing what he spilled from soft
lips

Decaying with disease that only I and He could see.

That one must have seen me and told

for it is written

I was there, and strengthened Him: I

Strengthen Him? Oh, of course! And after that

I slew the Enemy who coiled like poisoned gravity around
us, and with one hand gave God back the Earth,

hanging it upon

Nothing. I did nothing but watch the leaves, falling
early as the fires of humans, reckless in the spring
smelling of sulfur, they came with the Dark

Lights, with crackling voices,

Oh, my brothers and sisters (for once they were). But now
not

an instant did I hesitate to draw my long nozh and vred,

(as one of your time has said) my blade and heart

leapt as the Rock

(So He called him) raised sword and rushed them,
spirit, blood and flesh burning high together --
when He whispered, "Dost thou not think

that I cannot now pray to my Father and He

shall give me twelve legions of angels?

I could see my name on his lips

as they trembled
so scared.

10

I said, no
not twelve.
Please, God
Just one,
Now.

And then they took Him. And then the trees and the rocks
And the Rock and I, we looked unseeing in the night, finally
into each other's eyes, little and littler brother.

And we ran.

11

Dead Man Laughing
Scarcely more than scenery now, but then
Remember, we did not know what to think, what fear
they cast upon us with their eyes, like stars. . .
No, no, like pools of solid stone, robes carved of rock
and flowing, shining waves of heat,
But they were cold, remember? Cold like slate, as smooth
as ice giants, shining --
-- reflecting --
-- and all chilling smiles,
so cruel, as sharp and curved, like Scythian blades.
Yes, laughing like a razor in the moon, we fell before
those mouth-shaped edges, what worse could come

we thought, and bared our necks for killing as they opened.
"Why do you seek the living among the dead?"

No more, no sense: we waited to understand,
(I wonder, did we even hear the words?)
but turned with cry-filled throats to go our ways and then,
looked up, and saw
oh, God.
Those smiles become clear, of course
tears smash through ice
and joy through iron and now,
how impossible
unthinkable

not to laugh.

12

Brbtherdammerung

The last time we went to war

We brothers bound

In brotherhood combined

Against you, clearing

The ammunition racks of our tall pine
That grew in the neighbors’ yard, our
Ship of shells and cluster bombs
(Spiky balls of needles

And cones that smelled like board)
Waiting. waiting. waiting

For you

For you and her to appear

Around the horizon of the house.

Your shrieks smoked up

When we threw the fusillade

Of cones and needles

And we, not warriors

But gods unassailable laughed

At your shots that almost brushed my toe,
Faint echoes

Of our own barrage

So weak

Until

Your hands went white

Around the first branches, and your sister
Followed in your green wake

Through knives, I remember my bombs

Dwindling in the volume of fire

We poured down, I remember the ball of needles
Falling into your sister's face as she looked up;
Screamed and dropped, running for the house;

For Inside. For the domain

Of mothers and fathers.

You climbed on

We concentrated

Our fire on your head which blazed

A beacon in the late fall sun and you
Reached for me. I climbed, anxious

Not to share the fate of other gods
Shattered at the touch of earth. Eventually
You dropped, and turned your back

Still under our fire

While we watched,

We gods, we brothers and knew

It would soon be time for us
To go Inside.

13

Moviesynthesis
for my sister.

There is a half of a half of the sky

Hanging above us at sunset --

the terminator, astronomers call it, conjuring for us
pictures of steel endoskeletons and lasers.

I showed you that movie still

I have no idea why you liked it:

all explosives and blood and fire

so unlike you,

a tree seen through sequential autumns
turning colors in a Spiral through time,
only little changes when we separate,

I missed that

when a year = a second then a tree = an explosion.

So maybe you have understood, after all,
and I am the slow one, only now seeing
the patient ways you have made

so much air and fire, light

into you in places

I cannot know.

Because we never see the whole sky.
Unblocked by the earth are stars:
just loci of probability, like trees

in a forest that fall
unseen.

14

What Avenger is

Avenger was

the name of Darth Vader's flagship
filling the 88mm sky with a satanic
red glow over white planets'

blood

called my name

in my darkest moments of childhood
hate I wanted to feel, possess, be
a ship metallic in the dark

night

terror in the sleep

of the wicked I would invent

crimes, make them pay, gutshoot single-handed
a burglar, caught alone in our

house

my cousin called

home the other night and told how

her ex-boyfriend used to play with her,
panted and sweated and she

fought

to no avail

I tried to conjure up the fire

that burned in the stars and lithium
fusion engines within myself

now

I find

that moviemagic does not change
halogen and neon to lasers

or bring avengers from hollow plastic
models.

15

Dogs: a Response
Dogs know stuff about things.

They know who puts who "to sleep."
--"Dogs," by Tim Seibles

It's not that they know

Stuff, though imitation comes so easily:
Deeply whirling brown eyes in lines

We complete into faces

Puckered up into kissing faces:

Good boy. GOOD BOY!

That's how well they hide it, their tongues

Hanging out, a limp, wet, pink over teeth. Someone
Ought to remember scabbards

Serve to hide their reasons for being.

Not-knowing can be a choice.

Who ever really knew any
One who understood the word
STAY!

When it mattered?

Dogs know what not to know, like
Kids. Know

Just enough

About fences to bark at you

Every day for twenty years:

Make you jump out of the soft warm
Morning coffee.

Instants of fear.

You get in your car and they smile behind
Chain-link: You can’t touch

US.

Think back to schoolyard dust and the bully,
Laughing. Sneer.

Barking.

Lock. Load” Aim.

Say, like his flabby, 300 lb. mother,
"Good boy . 'I

Now 0 O O
squeeze.

Then laugh and fill the world.

16

Nana Who Lived Far Away

I lost another grandmother last night.
Right on schedule it seemed. We

see death only from the outside but
what I saw wasn't like death at all:

"Call for mail, one dead grandmother."
Other than the word, who could tell?
Hell, she lived two thousand miles away --

Gray and straight woman, a collection of
rough stories, polished by mom and dad
add something. But how could I miss
this woman? Such things should not be

the only substance of the near zero I
try to remember of her and make something, to build
willed sorrow: an elegy, a thing that should be.

Me, I have only a finished book, one more

lore collection, forever sealed and dry.
I lost another grandmother last night.

17

Signal Mountain Blackberries

To Virginia Dare Sain Cheshire (Mema) in memoriam
1900-1997

they burst in summer spheres of night
from under leaves where fingers rove
when hunger seeks a hunger's love -

short fingers probe the branches’ height.

they stain the cards that spin in hands

that carded wool in firelight

that playing under skin stretched tight
embellish tales of vanished lands.

they cluster sugared shot and shell
dripping black and purple blood
we cut the pie she thanks the Lord
a millionth time completes the Spell

she holds for ninety-seven years.
Twelve years since i had shared her sky
my phone rings and blackberry pie

and card hands run between my ears.

this deck of hers flips, colored bands,
flat faces Sliding by unseen
too quick to catch a purple stain
i wonder in how many hands?

18

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19

Coffee with Kim

Moons of cheap lighting in fans

Move in rippleshimmer ways: it's basic physics
Governing these two handled bowls.

Cappucino and chocolate, plain tea

(Lent strikes again, Kim’s giving up coffee.

What's Lent doing in the middle of a semester, anyway?)
The cups

Dip up and down in semi-orbits, melting everything.

Like a combination meal

The parts all come together:

Pork with beans, eggs with bacon,

Coffee with Kim.

Small parts of things that allow the world -—

A little conceit

On my part: the conversation

Is linguistics and classes and graduation and future and
Dances in and out of modulation with the jazz

That passes for the music of the spheres

In tiny universes like this.

The doors of night on the edge of vision

Are not quite open, and we drink to that:

To another victorious game of telephone tag

Where the two-dollar prizes sit steaming in front of us.

Locked here in a seven week moment

Until the coffee-laced now collapses, and
We’ll be relegated to the virtual

Contact of screens.

My enemy my ally my friend,
Each the "each other" we keep calling.

Despite the fact that I can hum

Oh-bla-di, oh-bla-da with the best of them

I notice that alone at breakfast with the paper
I don't drink coffee anymore.

20

Stone Solo

One in the morning is green

with secret-agent shadows cast by telephone
buttons and digital numbers showing
oblivion time:

Not enough

That this is when you call me,

from Kansas or Spain

reminding me of summer and java:

asking about my girlfriend

but telling me about your new man how he
makes you feel: like skipping

across the surfaces of lakes

proves how close we are

reflections of stone, spun by
an unknown Thrower and we

fly skip
fall kiss

water, but never in the same place
always just missing

each other with others

opposite sides of badly synced
mirrors that go on and on

without gravity or friction

to stop us

in this pool of night

where we are still
just friends.

21

Her Gift

Zhui (Taiwanese) 1. You can have what you want.
2. A carved wooden plaque containing this message,
traditionally displayed in homes.

You can have what you want.

It hangs

hovering on my wall,

the soft polished brown: curved wood

is her skin under lamplight and

the grain pervading, lines of force dancing
carving her fibers when

she walks, turns.

Through the blackbranded ideograms
canted like eyes,

run the teak microfilaments of

hair hanging like the crimson tassels:
closing my eyes I touch them,

feel her for an instant

like rain running in place, echoing
her laughter, her voice

struggles with my native tongue.
Broken English tinkles on the floor
scattering shattered syllables.

You can have what you want.
She gave it to me.

22

Soliloquy For The Middle Class Hamlet

Damned villains and dread lords fill all the air.
The smoky ghosts of bookshelves in the night

Mock me: mock my puerile papers strewn
from floor to desktop: scattered magazines

fill all the house. The dishes in the sink
mark still more sins of mine like diamond dust,

half-noticed and abrasive. It is I
who leave her finding stains and socks each day

somewhere. When will I learn to get it all
together? That's the question of my life

where shame comes in a million specks of gray --
not one true streak of pure and honest black

to gouge with red and wash between us. Just
forgotten chores and toilet seats left up

(I know she hates that) rub our edges: what
unspoken and unthought of penance fits

these crimes of mine that make a bodkin laugh
and beg to rather slink back to its sheath

than drink this shallow pool of me, lukewarm?
A thousand paper cuts? Mosquito bites?

Or being slaughtered by a horde of ducks?
Is this what I deserve? I, a mere boat

cast into seas where battlecruisers roam
with dark guns, speaking only with their fire.

One of them, she rides the storms to kill
or die in sunsets, ice, and glowing embers,

while I patch leaking seams, becalmed and still
in these horizons, all my sins remembered.

23

Valjean and Javert

"Men like you can never change,"
you most carefully do not say, but think,

Men like me can never change
and you narrow eyes over a bitter sigh knowing that

NO, 24601
sins, mistakes, errors, cannot be forgotten because

My duty’s to the law,
anyone should know this steep, wet island, honor:

you have no rights
once you have fallen off there is no return. You have

Come with me, 24601
ways of revenge, they cry out: silences, tones, thrusts of
speech.

Now the wheel is turned around
And I can only grunt pain, because you say

Jean valjean is nothing now
Nothing even now. And

Dare you speak to me of crime
build artillery on the shore, just for me,

And the price you’ve had to pay
for our beachside house, now so alone and

Every man is born in sin,
dying. Except somehow you. You have not yet fallen,

Every man must choose his way
so you think, but here drowning it is clear

You know nothing of Javert
you are floating sightless beside me.

I was born inside a jail
I will not swim back to your shore, because

I was born with scum like you
only in the water can I even begin to wash:

I am from the gutter, too
though I drown in it.

24

What Germany Saw

(in iron)

was not

(probably)
blood caked, foam drooled
in ovens, tanks cored
ground melted to glass
only red and black spinning
great turning
steel rising, swords gleaming
a nation of victors
simple glory
Likewise what I saw

(in light)
was not

(hopefully)
sobs edged in madness, micron blades
stretched thousands of miles
winding, wounding code
across oceans
only gold and flame spinning
spiral turning

we rising, gleaming

"Ein Reich der Zwei," simple love.

How can we be forgiven?

25

Sestina: Ending

Once there was a woman. . .
but I forget. . . she was. . .
I hope she will not come again.

I think she hurt me once but . . .
That was very long ago.

I do not like to remember things any more.

--Ezra Pound, "La Fraisne“

The glass that was lightstained is broken:
A delusion of grandeur of sand,

And scintillations of thunder

Hide shards in each flagon of wine,
Transparent in slaughter of fields

Where her water flows into mine.

And this water, dark gathering, flooded the mine.
The engines on mountings lie broken,

Out of reach of the sun, playing in fields

Of gold that when round us like sand

Trickled madly in torrents of wine.

We rolled oblivious, to all, but the thunder

Comes swiftly, or else is not thunder.
And a gloryhole is not a mine.

When frozen, the sweetest of wine

Can't be drunk; it can only be broken.

At greatest need you can even drink sand,
And I did though surrounded by fields

Gone pale in her fever. She fields
All the armies ever boasted of thunder.
One by one in the passage of sand,

One by one, planting sniper and mine,

I slaughtered her forces. How broken
They bleed coughing thick clotted wine.

In this hot haze induced by no wine

I’ve lost track of the desert battlefields

Where we fought till she called me, voice broken.
I remember a time I loved thunder

In cool dawn, when her sword next to mine

Raised twin steel against worlds of mere sand.

26

Seeing clear now, this mountain of sand

I recoil from the memory of wine

And her future, so easily mine

Hangs a shadow thick over the fields.

At such cost even conquest in thunder

Could not pay for the sword-that-was-broken.

Empires built on sand and wine,

The fruit of my fields. Come quickly, thunder.
Hide in roaring waves this broken realm of mine.

27

Intuition in Butterflies

lying together, our hairs blend incestuously:
cables of exploded copper wire, extruded winding
crowns above two faces sharing freckles,

sharing hazel sharing eyes through

nucleic acids’ accidental amours:

embarrassing

to be bent face to face, pressed

lip to lip in public:

we’re not related

nor is this: I saw two butterflies today dive wrestling,
tickling, orbiting some dancing gust of air, green
deflowered leaves with pilots’ licenses

drifting down in chase until another leaf

reached just before the earth and pulled them down,

then mating back to back as if afraid

to see their own green mirrored in an eye.

so that’s why you left.

28

Moscow River

Moscow River, Moskva ryeka

Glinting green in even-sun

Even then she smiled upon me: my stay

Was only half-begun. I didn’t know the word for "stay"
Or "laughter," "have" or "kiss" or "run."

Moskva ryeka, Moscow river

Glinting green in even-sun.

Moscow river, hardly noticed

Shimmersplashed with golden leaves

Listening to her liquid singing. Dark in silence,
She retrieves a laugh I thought had disappeared

A song that I had disbelieved.

Hardly noticed, Moscow River

Shimmersplashed with golden leaves.

Moscow River, frozen solid

In the length of winterwhite

Days as short as hammerblows that barely even

Crack the night. Learning each the other’s language:
What we mustn’t, what we might

Frozen solid, Moscow River

In the length of winterwhite.

Moscow River, cool and warming

White and blue in Apriltide

Took my hand and led me onward, and cataracted
At my side. Flowing in the moonlight falling
On us in an endless slide

Cool and warming, Moscow River

White and blue in Apriltide

Moscow River, Meskva ryeka

Glowing red in fall of sun

Sank beneath the Kremlin walls, night ended what

We’d just begun. The words I learned are useless now.
Meaningless -- except to one.

The one I left, The Moscow River

Dorogaya -- yarkiy son.

Russian: Darling -- bright dream.

29

Counterrevolutionary Sonnet: Moscow 1993

Wind driven in brief spirals, leaves of red
and gold bounce off the towers. Afternoon

is mourned from onion domes, the chanting lead
strains, pulling up the image of the moon.

I walk beside the wall that holds the men,
hands cold and jingling eighty rubles’ change.
And equinox returns to us again

in squares of red and gold marked paper. Strange
how in the fall the colors stay the same
though arches rise to mark the sickle’s tomb.
One more Oktyabr’ lends the past its name:
Wind snatches at my burger in the gloom.
Makdonald’s wrapper falls upon this shore,
Leaves swirl -- and I can’t see it anymore.

30

St. Vasily’s Cathedral: Winter

Olga Korbut should have trained her legs

In the metro, in the city’s guts, where packed
Like villi in steel worms you try to breathe,
Haze thicker than in gyms or pine-branched saunas
Of vodka, beer, tobacco, men: all used

To gazing like spelunking sunflowers, safe

From falls until a voice (an angel recording)
Announces "Stantsiya Okhotniy Ryad."

Where Marx’s prospects were. The grimly tired
Zhigulis thud a contrabeat to doors

Hissed open. You, a constant sheen of sweat
Crawling down your face, sidestep through halls:
(Cold tiles of blue and beige) you hit the stairs
Just short of running -- up the subway wells --
And Kremlin walls look down, beneath their stars
Red, shifting in the winter morning rays.

Red Square is gray and curved. You start below
The Kremlin. Cobbles arc, a sculptured hill:
They form horizon’s edge just ten feet up

And ninety yards away. You see the sky

Dip down to touch the wall where buried men

Lie opposite the world’s oldest mall.

And on -- no, past -- the stones, a flash of gold
It rises as from stone, and you walk on:

In wings of powdered jewels: rocket carved

In brick, for. . . God! Five hundred years ago
Some genius taught a building how to fly. . .

Its launch is silent. Thunder only you

Can hear above the shouts of hawking guides

Orion beating skyward on his bombs

Prayers thrumming in your knees. And soon you’ll go.

Look back,
Close.
Are those stairs
still on the ground?

31

Notes On A Small Revolution: Oct. 4, 1993

In the land where smoke is dim

You can ride in kilometers-long guns
Woven radially under the earth,

They erupt here and there on the surface.
I walked toward the building where red
White and blue shadow grey in the days

Full of old rain, in those first days

The words, like the sights still were dim
As if heard in the deep infrared.

I was young, and had never heard guns
Break the fragile American surface
Tension held by the powers of the earth.

In Moscow, cement encased earth

Shook. A sudden compression of days

Swept like waves through a watery surface:
Gray streets buckling with age carrying dim
Sounds of faces, like faraway guns

On the sea, throwing salvoes of red

Like the trees, how they clung to the red
Leaves blowing and scorching the earth
Said their speaker, and promised them guns,
Waved before them the bright steel, days
Barbed, no longer impossibly dim,

Hunting memory, watching it surface.

One more high shout plunged through the surface
Of wallowing murmurs in red

Stabbing courage and vodka and dim

Fear and rodina, love of the earth

Breaching! Seventeen thousands of days

Brought to death by harpoon-training guns.

And a roar like clairvoyance of guns
Crying, "Now is the time to resurface.”
Broke out under the weight of the days
Piling sunset on sunset, all red

Magma birthing to shatter the earth

My feet moved, and all the rest is dim.

Sixteen revolutions of the earth, just days
Later red flowers Shared the street surface with me,
A dim watcher, smelling echoes of guns.

dim: smoke
rodina: motherland, home country

32

Sestina: The Tower of London
Loquitur: En Queen Elizabeth I Tudor, dying.

1558

But we always come back to our Tower

Rising up through our island’s great mist
That shrouds suns without number. My face
Crowned in red and gold -- ah, the old dragon
Henry laughs at the break of this morning,
The beginning and end of my wait

1577

On the throne. He said nothing of weight,
Of the shore-rooted shadows that tower
Over ships that sail out of the morning
And into the ravening mist.

He knew nothing of riding the Dragon

When I feel its fire in my face.

1588

Now I feel this wind in my face

Like chilled lead on this hill where I wait
For the shattering death of the Dragon,

For the sight of the galleons’ twin towers.
Words as light, to men grey as the mist

I speak, feeling the coming of mourning.

1601

Two Richards are with me this morning

On this stage, they use me as their face
Blankly painted. How could I have missed
Them? The Second is I, and I wait

For the drumbeats to sound from the Tower
Like the laugh of the Third, a mad dragon.

And my hands are the claws of that dragon
Curved and hard, they tap stone in the morning
Whose severed light slants on the Tower.

But whose hands? And whose is this face

That says nothing; does nothing but wait

For the blade, dirty gray like the mist.

1603

Now my lungs heavy, full of old mist

Mock the sounds one expects from the dragon
Island rulers, and I feel the wait

Lifting with the beginning of morning.

As she sets, the moon changes her face,

But we always come back to our Tower.

Wait, mist.

On the Tower is a dragon
I have waited many mornings to face.

33

Shipsong

You are born in wine and water, named by breaking
into glass, the sheets of water shattering
welcome in waves around your roundness, calling

low, the rhythm of your screws strides out
light drum beats in ocean, a snare
to the slow double bass of lunar time

rising black and midnight above
The graves of your sisters, a tilting floor
for dancing before retiring in ocean beds

where you make love,

make war, make legends, make madmen
dive after you to draw Eurydice
with sonar, keening

for you in a dark measured in tons
per square inch.

Titanic.
Lusitania.
Andrea Doria.

Arizona.
Bismarck.
Head.

34

Viet-Nam

Viet-Nam comes to me like a lover:

I smell her in the folds of blankets,

I see her shadow: an arching tree in the moonlight:
Hamadryad. Part of the scenery

of the male.

I feel betrothed

to her, to a myth of jungles and ganja

of growing up too soon or not at all:
Stallone Rambo and Dalton Trumbo threatening
like Charlie, like tunnels, like black
pajamas waiting with assault rifles.

She stalks me and I

am somehow flattered, even though

I prefer to look at others: Ardennes. The Bulge.
Guadalcanal. Iwo Jima: there was valor, there glory, but she
keeps showing up in tales read and written:

Like the girl you hang out with for years

because you’re just "good friends."

Suddenly you notice -- she’s part

of all the best stories.

She sits beside me laughing

at herself, at me, at those who claim her
(and know her no better than I)

an excuse for disillusion among those

who never were illusioned. '

When it rains I fear her: the lightning

reawakens rumors of her youth, of schizophrenia

and death let loose like wolves among the boys

(so old now) and I hide myself from her: I know
enough to know I do not know her. The endless water
stirs legends of sleepless pouring, touchless wounds
blood or water, flowing unstoppably away. . .

I do not know her this way; to me

she is the familiar partner, crawling in
at night beside me: the accustomed lover I
cannot imagine her

not being there.

35

Warplane

gone roiling through grey it moves
on artifice thunder

fueled by dino-saur

(= thunder lizard)

bones distilled

now repeating

sounds of their death

repeat

the meteor’s roar and a

flickering nonshape:
departing exhausts

collapse in pencil clouds
of drifting frost.

36

Why I Still watch Star Wars

We drift in the dim hall of mostly space

On the dark side of the force

Flowing through us, binding us, in these scarce
Padded cinema chairs that protect

Us from the ineffable thrust

That strings the stars, like dust

In momentary cobwebs, pulling

Us into the other dimension.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

There’s something alive in here,

And Han Solo was right when he said:

"It’s your imagination, kid."

So many parts of America and childhood,

Swirled and spiraled in: now, with a long time ago
In a galaxy far, far away.

Or maybe it’s just

Sitting beside you speculating

"You think a princess, and a guy like me. . ?"
Lines ricochet between shadows, ghosts

Of dreams and what

I want to say

"You mean you’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon?"
Should you have? Only if

You want to feel as I do

Because otherwise, what a piece of junk it is

When a little boy, his old man and their god

Save the world and I grin.

Ridiculous, it may be

But when, I ask in the sunset

Has it been otherwise? It is just this

That keeps me standing, staring quickly crosseyed
At the horizon until I see

Me under two suns in a desert sky

Waiting for stars.

37

Towers of Babel: New York and Star Flight

Driving from Jersey, New York seems to launch itself,
holding '
Moments from liftoff, the fog pooling thick round the bases:
Rising from engines quiescent till recently, folding
Multiple moonshots in seventeen seconds of stasis.
Gravity’s music goes forte approaching the center,

Curves the light in on itself just like Einstein suggested.
It

Speaks of mad poets, or else a mad, gambling Inventor --
Photons compress down to gammas and then are digested. Yet
Under the firepits where we wait the silence disguises
Longing for towers uncatchable, faith not quite dying
Sunset on sunset: we know that the sun also rises

Ending our liturgy: "one day we’ll find ourselves flying,"
Whisper the dreamers while gravity holds them in thrall,
Praying for launch, exaltation, explosion, for fall.

38

Flying Fish

Just before rainbows
Strike exaltation from wings
The ocean lets go.

39

In The Stars

40

The Sea Like Fire, The Beaches Glass
by

G. Scott Huggins

The bonshrike plant quivered under Irina Ivanovna’s
fingers. She held it by the tip of the branch, the branch
that -- almost -- resembled the springy wood that she
remembered from her father’s dacha outside Moskva. Not
wood, but like young trees, the Shoots quested upward from
the soaked, black earth, from the ghygrngzygn.

It was her color too, now. The jet hands holding the
only slightly greener needles of the bonshrike still had the
power to surprise her. Like garden, like gardener, she
thought, varying the English saying. A good variant? As
with trimming the plant, there was no way to know until she
had tried it in practice. She rolled the phrase in her
mouth again. An inapt simile, she decided. There was no
black earth on Vadagon, save that in this greenhouse.

The plant’s shaking ceased. Expertly, she tied it off,
and released it. The plant sprang violently into its new
Shape, clipped and bladed frond-spikes protruding upwards,

reaching toward the bluing sky. It was a good oxygen-

producer. Instant_bgnsai, people called it: the plants

41

responded in seconds, not days, to the ministrations of the
artist. Everything happened so quickly, here. Except the
days, Irina thought. Rigel’s actinic torch was purple,
almost motionless, on the horizon.

She sat back, and the footsteps that she had earlier
ignored continued. Then stopped.

"I thought I would find you here," said Galya.

Irina froze. But she had known that this time would
come. She had not expected it now. She had not expected it
in her garden.

"Vladimir was not here, and you did not answer the
door, so I came in."

And how did you know that my husband was not here?
Irina did not ask. It did not matter how she knew. Galya
was not the type to admit to things.

"I am surprised you did not come sooner," Irina said.
She did not turn. She was surprised by her own calm: the
clarity of her thought. There was fear there, yes, but
anger as well. It supported her: drove her to speak: "I
would have gotten in touch if I had known where you were."
If I had known for a fact that you were.

“There were. . . complications," Galya’s voice wavered
for the first time, under the influence of some strong
emotion, Irina could not tell which. "I could not come for
Seryozha until I knew. . . where we might go."

Irina felt her eyes widened, and almost she whirled on

the woman. Not even to find out whether her own son was

42

alive? Or did she know? And how? Irina said nothing.
Somehow, she had always been certain that Galya Isaakovna
was alive. It wouldn’t have been like her to die, certainly
not at the Zamyptzlaya_fiitya. She shuddered. The Americans
simply called it the Glass Beach. An easier name, from an
easier language. An easier people.

Had it truly been easy for the Americans, sitting there
in their high castle? She looked up. Through the roof of
the greenhouse, a bright star hung overhead. Raphael
Saunas, almost as large as Rigel in the sky, if nowhere near
as bright. She felt a sneer tug at her mouth.

"And?"

"And what?"

"Where will you go?"

"Liberty . "

Irina closed her eyes. Before, it had been an effort
not to turn to face her former friend. Now, she did not
want to. In her mind’s eye, she could still see Galya as
she had been after Landing, as they had been together: two
girls with more brains and stubbornness than sense, sitting
out late into zenithnight. They would twist each other’s
hair into outlandish shapes in the harsh blue starlight,
making bets on how long it would be before Isaak Borisovich
came out to yell at his daughter and her friend the
kzyastyahka, peasant, whom she would not give up seeing.
Yes, before: that was the word. Before Irina had gotten

bored of spending every waking hour discussing who ought to

43

marry who, and before Galya had gotten bored with everything
else. Before Rigel had been so hot, when the Sujarto
Process had still held its invisible ozone fence up against
that pinpoint furnace.

Even as they had drifted apart, they had always been
there for one another. But Irina did not know if she could
retain her memory, her vision, if she looked at Galya now.

”You will go to the Polar Chain with the Americans?”
She would not call the ragtag new colony Lihazty.

”Where else can I go?" Now there was bitterness in
Galya’s voice. "Where else can I live?" She paused. Did
she want an answer? Then her voice softened, slightly.
"Where is Seryozha?"

Irina caught a breath. Did Galya know? Wouldn’t she
have to? "He and Irinochka are outside. I told them to
come back before it got too dark. Irinochka has an
interesting definition of ‘too.’" Please, Bog, let her
disobey tonight. This was going to be bad enough without
Seryozha here. Rigel hovered, frozen. Days lasted a long
time on this world of Vadagon -- Waterfire. Soon evenday
would be over, and evennight would begin. And then the
black, jeweled sky of nadirday. . . seventy-two hours from
starrise to starrise. Npt_a_wptld_mada_fpz_n§t

"Will they be all right?" Galya asked. The tone of
the question told Irina that she didnLt know, and probably
hadn’t even given it a thought. Same old Galya. But

surely, looking at Irina’s own skin. . .

44

Like thunder out of the clear sky, Irina realized that
Galya hadn’t yet seen her skin. The housecoat covered her
feet while she was kneeling, and her hands were in front of
her. I could tell her how it was, Irina thought, but would

it make a difference?

The panic in the prefab pods that had once brought the
first colonists from Earth (in another incarnation, a
lifetime ago, called Iyah_§p91hiy) was restrained, but
always present, as was the antiseptic smell that pervaded
the hospital section. People shouldered past each other,
like something out of a painting: Escher mixed with Dali
perhaps. It was as if the shadows had come off the walls,
and no one had the authority to tell them to return, to fade
back into flatness. Only a few people were the deep tan of
sea-farmers. Mostly, they were white as the sky. . . or
black as the kelp in shallow sea-beds. All moved with a
restrained fear: an urgency.

Irina kept telling herself that it was better than
despair. Wasn’t it?

A doctor, red hair bursting from his black scalp like a
fountain of lava, disconnected the IV drip from Sergei’s
tensed arm and put a skindage over the place the needle had
been. Irina let the boy’s hands go, and he started to wipe
away his silent tears, breath shuddering between his lips.
Already his skin had taken on a deep brown color, even

though he was still pale with fright.

45

"You’ve been very brave, Seryozha," Irina said. There
was no way to tell if the words had done any good. Where
was Galya? A week ago, she had left him, while she saw to
family matters, and Irina hadn’t cared. It was difficult to
care about anything when everything you knew was most likely
going to die in a couple of years.

The last week had changed everything, and Galya was
nowhere to be found.

Irina’s hands were tired from holding Seryozha’s, and
she stretched them. Almost completely black, now. Her
stomach rumbled.

"You’ll want something for that," the doctor said,
handing her three packages each about the size of a hand
computer. ”Concentrated rations. They’ll abate the
hunger."

"There’s enough here for almost three days," Irina
protested.

"You’ll never notice it," the doctor said as he helped
Sergei off the bed. "Can’t force the body to produce
melanin at that rate without cost. As all great space
explorers should know, ‘There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free
Lunch,’ so you’ll need about three lunches, breakfasts and
dinners to get back the energy your body is going to burn
darkening you. npntt skimp. You or the kids." His bright
green eyes burned into her, all seriousness. "You could

drop dead of malnutrition if you don’t eat it all. And

46

that’s just to get you past the melanin enhancement. You
should eat normal meals, too."

"That’s not likely to happen," Irina said.

"Possibly not," said the doctor, looking away, voice
dropping. "But you should be all right if you stay in your
homes and lie low. If worst comes to worst. . . well, the
folks out in the boats are our people, too, after all." He
moved off, calling a nurse to help him get the next person -
- a big, German-looking man wearing uniform -- into the bed.

Our people? Irina shook her head. Your people,
doctor. Americans. Well, mostly Americans. There were
Germans. . . Russians, even, she forced herself to admit,
who would listen to anything.

Irina hurried the children outside into the near-vacant
Prizyemlyagrad streets. The sky was lightening to white,
and Rigel was just below the horizon. It was a quiet of
more than dawn. A line of people, pale white people, stood
at the entrance to the grounded module that served as the
hospital. They looked at Irina and the children. Some
gazes were steady. Some hopeful. Some twisted in. . .
anguish? Fear? All were silent. On the roofs of
Prizyemlyagrad, the populace waited, watching the sea.

The bay was encircled by ships. At least a hundred
ships. Everything from one-man skiffs and aircoral canoes

to two big cargo haulers that had come with the Americans in

Was.

47

Somehow, even nine hundred light-years away, one could
not get away from Americans. She snorted and quickened her
pace, forcing the children to trot to keep up.

"Mama, I’m hot," Irinochka said. "Can’t I take this
stuff off?"

Irina paused, gauging the star’s glow. "Yes, but when
I say it goes back on, no arguments. You too, Seryozha."
There was a silent nod as the children doffed their long,
loose, white robes. Would they suffice? Irina knew there
had been desert people on Earth who had fought the sun this
way. But Rigel was no friendly sun. No one called it "the
sun." When people got burned in the heat of zenithnight, it
was called stazhapn. And that had been before the
scientists and most of the Colonial Government had seized
control of the Baphaal_§amma§ and brought the artificial
ozone layer tumbling down.

As Irina led the children inland, the signs of human
habitation began to fade. A single road led up onto the
heights of the island of Novayalta.

"Why do we have to get our skins turned black just
because we’re going for a walk?" Seryozha asked.

Before Irina could answer, her daughter sighed, "Mama
already said, dummy. We might have to be out during
zenithnight. You want to get starburn?"

“No, but why do we have to be out at all? The doctor

said we should stay home."

48

"That’s where we’re going. Home. On the other side of
Novayalta," Irinochka said, primly.

If it is still there at all, Irina thought, and checked
herself. This was no time for Russian pessimism: it was
very unlikely that the dissenting minority of the Colonial
Government had been able to divert any forces from its
blockade of Prizyemlyagrad. And the scattered homesteads on
the far side of the island were not attractive as a military
target. Thank Bog Vladimir loved solitude the way he did.
Perhaps he would even be there waiting for them. Irina
shook her head. Her xenobiologist husband was halfway
around the planet, planting remote biomonitors: he probably
didn’t even know about the Rebellion. No, that isn’t fair,
she chided herself. He’s almost certainly frantic with
worry and on his way back home at top speed.

"Maybe it’s yap; home. But it’s not like there’s not
room enough to stay in Prizyemlyagrad. Anyone can check out
a room if they need to. The doctor even said so." Seryozha

spoke with the stubbornness of a child grasping the obvious.

 

2351 thought Irina. She said, "The doctor may have been
right. But I want to be sure."

Seryozha and Irinochka shared a look. When adults
wanted to be sang it usually meant that being a child was
about to get awfully tedious.

"If it weren’t for the stupid Americans, we could at

least take a boat," said Seryozha.

49

To this, Irina heartily agreed. Well, half-heartily,
anyway. There papa American defenders on the beach. It had
been the Americans who had foretold the destruction of
Vadagon’s biosphere, the instruments of the Sammaa that had
shown the inevitable result of the artificial ozone layer
that protected the Human colonists -- and was killing the
native life.

The colony had been presented with Hobson’s ancient
choice: keep the ozone layer in place, and die with the
native life, or take it down, and die of radiation-spawned
cancers. For nearly an Earth year, the colony had been
face-to-face with its own death.

Five days ago, the news that Vadagon need not die, the
news that ought to have had the populace dancing in the
streets, had sparked armed rebellion throughout the
colonies, and brought the hastily-assembled fleet to besiege
Prizyemlyagrad.

Not all Americans were idiots who didn’t understand
basic science. Just most of them.

"Why won’t they let us take our boat?" asked Irinochka.

"Because they may want to use it."

"But that’s stealing."

Irina sighed. How to explain to a ten-year old that
what was about to happen was far worse than theft? That on
an ocean world, any boat was automatically a military asset?
That just because a team of scientists and security

personnel had already taken over the Raphaal_§ammas and

50

reversed the Sujarto Process didn’t necessarily mean people
still wouldn’t fight over whether it ought to be done?

How to explain the implications of their new skin
color? That many people -- especially Americans —- had come
to this world to avoid people who looked like they did now?
How to explain racial and color hatreds to a child who had
never met anyone from a different race?

Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe everything would be
fine. But the police and few armed men on the beach
couldn’t possibly hold off that fleet.

Irina had listened to the stories of her great-uncle,
when he spoke of his time in the Russian army on Earth. She
doubted very much that the doctor had heard similar stories.
He was an American.

The sky lightened. A purple spark had appeared behind
them, brightening rapidly towards the blue. From behind
them, there was a crash. Another. Then answering crashes.

"What’s that?" The children turned to look toward the
distant beach.

"Don’t look back," said Irina. "You know better than
to look toward Rigel." She quickened her pace, and handed
them the food packs that the doctor had given them. That

0
I;‘° ’3 ‘ 7- ° .97 i!‘ ° t!‘ 3. IE 9‘

nWWhm But as they moved
deeper inland, the apathy with which the children picked at

their food told her she had been wrong.

51

"Irina? Will they be all right out under the star like
that?" Galya’s imperious tone forced Irina from her
reverie. She turned, and forced herself to look.

Galya stood before her, dressed in a long white robe,
her face and hands like leather. Old leather. Her eyes
were clear and bright, but her hair hung, white, brittle,
and limp, like a dead wig. Two deep scars pitted her
forehead, an angry, sick white. Irina felt the word
malahgma form in her mouth, felt the deadly roundness of it
on her tongue. As she watched, the wrinkles realigned in an
expression of horror.

"You. . . Irina, you. . ." Galya’s mouth worked.

“I see you’ve decided to stay here on Novayalta." She
was fighting for composure. "They must have gotten the new
bl. . . melanin facilities up in record time."

Irina said nothing, just waited. Galya was beginning
to see the fact that stared her in the face.

”You did get. . . it done here, didn’t you? Not
before. . ? You said they’d be all right with you, the
children, you didn’t. . ?"

"What was I supposed to do, Galya?"

Tears began to form in Galya’s yellowish eyes. "You
couldn’t. Not to my son. He was my_§pni"

"Than_ghaza_tha_hell_waza_ypp3" Finally, she said it.
"Do you think I wanted the responsibility: wanted to bring
him along? You must have seen what was happening, so where

did you go?" The greenhouse glass vibrated with echoes.

52

"Where did yap go?" Galya screamed back. "Vasily
searched and searched. . ." she trailed off, as if unable to
comprehend what she’d just said.

Irina felt herself nodding, the anger coursing through
her like flaming water, like Vbda-ogon’, like the planet’s
name. Yet her voice was soft. ”So Vasily was there. With
the fleet. And you knew it was coming. Rebellion. Why
didn’t you take Seryozha with you? Didn’t Vasily tell you
what would happen?"

Galya said nothing.

"What did you think I would do?"

"You. . . you were supposed to stay. . . Vasily said
his son would be. . . be safer. . . with hi--"

And Irina felt her anger drain, like one of Vadagon’s
sick, weak tides. Galya had never really been a
conspirator, or a Rebel. She was just weak.

"Why didn’t you stay?" Her words were a plea.

"And be part of Zamyptzlaya_nitya3” The words were
cruel, but they seemed forced out of her. "szhat Galya, it
was a war zone! I had to take the children out!"

WW And she was once
more halfway up the side of Maliy Ararat, pushing the
children’s screaming faces and her own into the dirt as the
hell of zenithnight had (impossibly) brightened and a heavy
hand of warm air had pressed them down, down, into the

earth.

 

W All that was left of the

place where man had first touched this world. Friends.
Family. History. All destroyed when the Baphaal_§ammas’
com laser had fired on the Rebel-controlled city. The ruby
beam had flickered, dimmed and dancing through the mushroom
cloud made by rock converted instantly to steam. The town,
the beach. All fused to glass. Melted.

Too parched in the scorching waves of zenithnight to
answer their whimpering questions, she had led the children,
silently on. By the time they had reached this house, all
three of them had been badly starburned, exhausted, and
dehydrated, through robes and melanin-enhanced skin alike.

"And what were you doing?" Irina heard herself say.
Her voice was calm and flat and deadly. Galya actually
winced. "Vasily was in that fleet, and you let me wait
there for him with my daughter and your son. You thought
that was aafiaz You thought I was safe? When you knew the
Americans. . ."

"The Americans?" Galya snarled. She spat. "The
Americans caused it all, destroyed, burned, killed them like
animalsi Destroyed our city, our homes! It is all the
fault of the RWY}.

Irina stood rooted to the spot, hearing the
condemnation that had been in her own thoughts tumble from
the mouth of this haggard, ugly woman, whose skin color was

more important to her than life. All_tha_fiaa1t_pfi_tha
Amazigahs. I have said it myself. But which Americans?

54

The ones in the ships, or the ones in the starship? Do I
even know?

"And where are you going now?" Irina heard herself ask.
"LihartyZ" She sneered the word. "With Americans? With
your son, who looks like me? Will you reverse the
enhancement? Leave him naked before Rigel?”

"At least he would be himself again. He would be
beautiful again. . ."

Irina gaped. She could not help herself. "Beautiful?
As you are beautiful? How long would that last, even at the
Pole? Look at you!" She pointed to the glass wall of the
greenhouse. A wavering, distorted orange figure looked out
at them. "Or would you take him up to Baphaa1_§amma§, where
the rest of the Americans have gone?"

Galya gave her a look of pure hatred, and once again,
Irina felt a sort of disgusted pity. That’s where Galya had
been. Trying to get a berth on the Sammaa, which was being
hastily converted into a city in space. Of course she had
been rejected. The widow of a Rebel fisherboat captain and
the daughter of a dead Russian colony founder. No real
education. You’re just the kind they don’t need up there,
Galya.

"You can’t get away from the Americans, Galya. Or your
son’s skin color. Or mine. They are here to stay." She
felt her own tears well up. How it hurt to say that. To
admit it to herself. But there was more to Russia, more to

Germany, and even America than skin color. Her family had

55

known that, hadn’t they? The crew of the Saunas had thought
so. Hadn’t they?

"The Americans. . ."

"They did what they had to do." It was like ripping
her own guts out to say the words. "The colony was too
small to stand a real war, and you know it." She repeated
the words like a mantra, the excuse others had given her,
when she had sneered at them. Now she knew the words were
true, but they were no less hateful. No less guilty.

Galya’s eyes were cold, and she could read the thoughts
out of them. Traitor. American-lover. thpznaya. It was
easier to take than she had thought, and at the same time
worse than she had ever imagined.

Children’s voices shouted laughter, far outside the
greenhouse, just barely audible. Galya’s head snapped
around, and there was fear and thwarted love etched in her
face.

"He’s still your son, Galya. Where will you take him?"

"I. . ." Galya looked toward the door as if it would
bite her. The children were taking their time. They were
still in the brush outside the house. "I will. . . I must.
. . must make arrangements. I will come back. I will."

She turned and walked quickly from the room. Irina started

forward, then stopped. Her hands fell.

56

After a while, she turned back to the bonshrike plant.
Its needles quivered, waiting for her touch. Waiting to

change in an instant. Waiting to be changed.

The End

57

When The Fleet Comes

by
G. Scott Huggins

My wife turns gently beside me in the dark warmth of
our bed: the smooth rippling of her fine scales against the
skin of my arm and side are enough to bring me fully awake:
I open my eyes to the wan light of the sun through the
dimglass.

In these shadows it is all but impossible to tell our
skins apart: bluegray scale and pinkish-tan skin blur
together in the middle of the otherwise photorealistic wash
that is our bedroom. I am awake, completely. It’s a trick
I’ve always had. Ajna wakes more slowly and later, so I am
careful as I roll out of bed and walk into the kitchen on my
toes.

This walk is something I’ve learned from a lifetime of
being around Hrredin. I can’t do it while wearing shoes, of
course. In public I’m confined to the flat, heel-toe gait

of Humans, but at home or in private company I come to my

58

toes without thinking. I’ve surprised many Hrredin that
way. They’ve told me so.

I go to work an hour before Ajna does. It’s already
1500: morning. I shower and dress quickly.

A look through the refrigerator provides me with the
last slice of a piyp flank which I wrap with a length of
leaf. Harsh green and blood flavors mix. No Human can be a
connoisseur among the Hrredin, nor can one survive without
some vegetable matter. I’m just wiping my mouth when I hear
Ajna step into the kitchen behind me.

She is smiling at me, but her pointed teeth and deep,
compound eyes are only half-showing: Ajna is not a morning
person. She grips her nightcloak with all eight fingers, as
if it is sleep itself that she can hold on to. Her bright
red crests are folded back against her scalp. She stretches
in a yawn, arching her narrow spine.

”Good morning,” I say to her. "Big day today?"

She scratches an eye. "Not as big as for you. Happy
Fleetday, Sean.” Now she smiles wider. She draws from the
pocket of her cloak a small bauble and hands it to me.

My stomach knots and I feel my face grow hard as I take
it.

It is a little thing. A ball of glass surrounding
another ball of blue-painted ocean with continents picked
out in green. On almost invisible supports, two large,

blocky battleships slowly orbit the model planet. In

59

transparent red Latin letters are the English words: "When
The Fleet Comes."

I consciously ease my grip on the thing. "You’re not
serious?" I hear myself say, fighting a storm that threatens
to spill over my mind and out through my lips.

Ajna’s crests flare; she senses that I am troubled, but
does not know why. "Why not? It’s an official holiday now.
I know only the Human bureaucrats get off work, but it’s
your holiday all the same.“

The bottom is emptying out of the world. "Is that how
you think of it?"

"Well, you don’t talk about it much, so I can’t say
it’s our holiday, but. . . "

"I don’t talk about it at all!" I am surprised at my
own vehemence. I am squeezing the ornament again. "This
is. . . not mine. I don’t spend one day of the year crying
for Earth, or making those horrible attempts at music, or
poisoning myself in the streets until I vomit, all because
of a dead world."

There are no tears in Ajna’s eyes: there cannot be, but
her face is closed and withdrawn in sorrow. But not for
herself.

"I know you don’t," she says. "Perhaps it’s time you
did."

"What?" I cannot believe what I am hearing. I look
desperately at the clock. 1550. "I. . . don’t have time to

discuss this. I have to go. I’ll be late. I love you.“

60

”Good-bye, Sean,“ she says sadly. She turns away,
walking toward the bathroom. I am left, holding the
ornament. I give it a last, hateful look, and then walk out
the door. On the way down the hall to the elevator, I drop
it in the trashcan.

Down on the ground, the streets of Dreyudan are less
than half-full as I walk to the maglev station. Aliens
going about their daily lives.

I wince at the thought. Aliens. People I’ve known, or
might have known, all my life. My adopted people, and
beautiful: silver-gray, finely scaled skins: large,
sensitive compound eyes: crests of red, purple, gold. They
walk on their toes and the balls of their feet. Long, long
ago, when I was a child, I saw Human women at a party
unconsciously trying to imitate that walk by using shoes set
with long posts at the heels. They were not half so
graceful.

I am Hrredin. By choice: not by birth. I speak Pliya
better than I speak English, for all that my walk is flat
and I have hair on my head, and smooth, light-tan skin. I
don’t think about it any more than I think about my
inability to truly see ultraviolet.

And my wife, whom I love, has just reminded me --
violently -- that I am an alien on her planet. I press my
identity ring up against the gate and climb the shallow
steps to the train platform. Ugly suspicions begin to flit

61

around in my head. W What did

Ajna really mean?

We married later in life than most people. I was
twenty years old (although one of my few Human friends had
insisted on sending me a card commemorating my thirtieth
birthday. How anyone measures Earth years anymore baffles
me: they’re only about two-thirds as long as a Hrredin
year): Ajna was twenty-one. We were content with each
other, and did not want children. We’d discussed that
problem in detail before we were married. Has she changed
her mind? She could, of course. Of all the women in the
world, Ajna could do that.

Hrredin mate for life -- when a couple first
experiences intercourse, their pheromones imprint on one
another, making sexual relations with another literally
impossible. But I was Human: imprinting would not occur.
Her egg-brother had reminded me of that in a private corner
at our wedding, teeth slightly bared, just short of the

white smile that invited a fight.

 

I
1". .93. .1. HEW, i’.‘ 9. l5... 1. .133! 93.1.3! Pl;xi,3‘

 

62

 

- C 0
‘3,3_ 9! ._!‘. I‘ .t‘ ‘ ,l’. -Q‘ -9 i~ '5. {.51

Ajna had been furious when she had learned of it. Egg—
siblings were close, but Thijna had been grossly out of
line. Or so she had said then. Does she still think so
now? Why would she remind me of this annual madness that
the Humans down in the Quarter celebrate? Or suggest that I
join them? I shudder.

The train has arrived: it hovers in the pit. I join my
fellow passengers in stepping aboard. A few polite smiles
flicker between us. Everything seems more detailed, more
important today than on any day before this. Is that
contempt I see in my neighbor’s eyes, the way he stands
there, tall in his winter coat and work skirt, orange crests
spread wide in the morning air? Two women whisper together
and I nearly glare at them. Are they talking about me?

I tell myself I am being ridiculous. I did not think
like this yesterday. Especially about Ajna. Why would she
deliberately hurt me?

There are two other aliens in the car. One is a
mountain of hair. I don’t recognize the species, but then,
Dreyudan is a starport city. The other is a Human. Short,
shorter than me. He smiles nervously at me: a big Human

smile with the corners of his mouth touching his ears. He

63

takes a couple of steps toward me even as I will him to
remain where he is.

”WW2" It sounds like
someone asking for something he knows he won’t get. I don’t
look at him as I answer, in Pliya.

"I don’t understand. Sorry."

"Ee-it iys nothing," he says in the same tongue,
heavily accented, as the maglev stops, but his face falls.

A lonely look. He says something that sounds like, "Magda
flata_yya:hyptsaa" and leaves. I am finally able to wrap my
confusion and worry into a combination of counting stations
and wondering what language the Human had used. I manage to

keep my mind on my work for the rest of the day.

I do this until I notice that the clock reads 3600. It
is time to go home. To Ajna. To my wife whose ornament
lies in a wastebasket on the floor of our building. And
whose meaning lies hidden.

I have closed down my terminal and am walking toward
the maglev station. I tell myself again that I am
overreacting. I know Ajna. She loves me. She has never
suggested that She considered marrying a Human a mistake, or
anything different from marrying a Hrredin.

Until now.

I hesitate at the station gates, identity ring half—
raised. Silver-gray, finely-scaled people move around me,

like water around a stubborn rock. I decide that I need

64

time to think. I will walk to the next station, and then go
home.

The streets are cold and not very crowded, yet not as
cold as they might be. Dreyudan is sufficiently north not
to be troubled by severe winters, and the buildings block
the wind the mountains don’t.

I’ve nearly decided what I will say to Ajna when I hear
the shouts. High voices yelling. I quicken my stride and
turn the corner. I stop.

A severe gray building looks out over the brown dust of
a schoolyard fenced in by a low rim of glassteel. Old
plastic poles and exercise equipment litter the hard ground.
And in the middle, three children surrounding a smaller one,
who is lying on the ground.

”You want some more of this, you piece of shit?" yells
one of them. "What’s that? I didn’t haa; you!" The
smallest of those standing punctuates his words with a kick.
His victim moans and the other two laugh. I freeze, mouth

going dry in spite of my age.

 

65

 

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The memory comes out of dark places, and before I know
it I have vaulted over the wall, my twenty-four year-old
legs nearly buckling as I land. "That’s enough! Get off
him right now!" My voice surprises even me, somewhere in

the dim distance where surprise matters.

66

The attackers straighten as if shot, compound eyes
glittering fear and hatred. My blood pounds. Nine years
old, probably. Just about the time a Hrredin starts to get
dangerous.

"Shit, it’s another one," one of them mutters.

"Who says it’s enough, rat-face?" says the leader,
sneering, teeth bared. His head comes to my neck. He is
tensed for combat. The others are nearly my height.

I feel my own lips pull back at the racial insult and
then I am no longer there. As if I am controlling a puppet
I make myself step forward and backhand him across the jaw.
He snarls and leaps: I bury my left fist in his nose, and he
falls back. I look around wildly, raising my arms and
flinching from the blows I know are coming-from either side,
but the nearly silent pads of running feet make me look up.

The two bigger boys are running for the fence. I look
down. The boy I’ve hit whimpers and shakes his head, then
scrambles to his feet and runs, leaving a violet stain from
his flat, bleeding nose in the dirt. A long, shuddering
breath leaves me.

I reach down to the remaining boy, huddled beneath his
winter coat. He flinches slightly at my touch. I reach for
his hand. Five pale fingers grip my wrist.

"My God," the words leave me as_I look into the face of
a Human boy. Blood runs from a cut on his lip. He is

perhaps seven years old. Pale skin: eyes that look slightly

67

tilted somehow. Dark, curly hair. He looks up into my eyes
as if I am something outside his experience.

”Thank you," he chokes out, in English. "You saved me.
They said there were people like you, but I never. . ." he
trails off, unsure how to continue. "You speak English?"

"I understand," I reply in the same language, almost
without realizing it. I am more concerned with his words.
Paap1a_lika_ypat Human vigilantes perhaps? "I would have
done the same for anyone," I say, probably too defensively.
"Are you all right?"

"I’ve had worse," the boy says glumly, then brightens.
"Who are you?"

"I’m Sean," I say. "What’s your name?"

"I’m Young-Jun Tomlinson," says the boy. "I don’t
think I’ve ever heard anyone mention you."

"I doubt we know many of the same people," I say in as
neutral a tone as possible.

"You live outside the Quarter, don’t you?" Young-Jun
eyes me suspiciously, as though I might suddenly grow
antennae.

"Yes,"I I smile grimly, "and you live inside it."

He turns to go, and I remember the times I had to walk
home, alone, not knowing who might have retreated just ahead
of me, ready to strike again.

I sigh. "Why don’t I walk you home, Young-Jun?" After
all, it isn’t that far to the Quarter. I’ll call Ajna and

tell her what happened.

68

"All right," smiles Young-Jun. He leads me down the
side streets to another avenue.

The sun is setting. "This happen a lot?” I ask softly.

"Enough," he mutters. "They think Humans take their
jobs and shit, and they don’t like the way we look. My dad
says if they weren’t so butt-lazy they’d keep the jobs
themselves. My dad says at least they don’t have to worry
about us marrying their daughters." He laughs quietly and I
am glad the lengthening shadows hide my flushed face.

We are now in the Human Quarter. There is no line of
demarcation save that the apartment buildings and houses
have grown steadily shabbier. Stains mark the walls. Here
and there, a rectangular building squats among the
triangles. A few of the charitable groups that had helped
build these projects actually consulted Human architects, or
at least residents. Colored lights begin to peep out the
windows. Occasional singing drifts from doorways, both
recorded and actual voices. And smells. Strange smells,
tickling the back of my mind. 1

And now I am here, in the Quarter, going to a house
that is most likely celebrating Fleetday. I think of the
ornament shoved in the trashcan, and a feeling of subtle.
dread steals over me. The lighted windows seem walls,
forcing me onward, permitting turns neither to the right,
nor to the left.

Young-Jun turns a corner and we come to a small, squat

building. Square. Young-Jun’s parents must be better off

69

than usual to afford a room here. We go down some stairs
and Young-Jun raps on the door. It opens quickly.

A girl stands there, looking down on Young-Jun. She is
about twelve, dressed in black, wearing a loose shirt and
the long, nearly form-fitting tubes that Humans call
"pants." Her long red hair falls down past her shoulders.

"It’s about time you got here,” she says to Young-Jun.
"Mom and Dad are worried about you." She calls back into
the house. "He’s here, Dad.” Then she looks up and sees
me. Her eyes -- blue, but tilted just like Young-Jun’s ~-
90 wide.

"Uh, hi," she says to me, and a nervous smile spreads
over her face. My breath catches. She turns away.

"Dad, you better come see this."

A tall, thin-faced man, over thirty by the look of him,
hurries in. A worried face peers out from under light red
hair. ”Yes, what is it? What’s wrong? Young-Jun? Are you
all right?” He sees me. "Who are you?"

Before I can answer, Young-Jun jumps in. "This is
Sean, Dad. He helped me get away from those snakes I’ve
been telling you about. He’s from outside the Quarter!"

"Really?" Young-Jun’s father looks the question at me.

I wince. Snakes. I’ve seen the term before, scrawled
on walls, but this is the first time I’ve heard someone
actually use it. The counter to "rat-face." I feel

unclean.

70

”There were a few Hrredin involved, yes," I say. "Your
son was facing unfair odds. I’d have done the same. . ."

"You must think I’m rude to question you like this at
the door," Tomlinson breaks in. "My apologies, sir, do come
in.” He stands out of the way. "Your mother wants to speak
with you, young man." Young-Jun’s face falls, and he
disappears into the next room as if facing doom itself. I
step into the house, and the smell overwhelms me.

It is meat, but not meat. Not the raw flesh I am used
to, but hot, and there are other smells too. Vegetables?
Hot food? It is like something out of the deep past, but
different, very different. Only after this do I notice the
room.

It is small, perhaps half the size of my own living
room. Deep brown carpet covers the floor. I can see the
kitchen off to the left. A small multicom is on low volume
in the opposite corner, flashing images obscured by white
noise. An old set. A dark hallway leads to the right.
Tomlinson ushers me in. His daughter returns to her place
in a chair opposite the multicom. She watches me.

I am watching the tree. Earthlife. It dominates the
room, set against one wall. It is a foot taller than I
myself: head height for an adult male Hrredin. It is
composed entirely of dark green needles. Hung on the
needles are ornaments: Gold and red balls, wreaths, and much
more. Near the front is a model of a Human cruiser, its

running lights flashing. Fiberoptics flash on and off, a

71

galaxy of colors through the tree. At the top of the tree
is a globe with familiar markings: a misshapen green horse
leaping from a mountain balanced on its tip. Earth. Above
all this is a yellow banner with red felt letters. "When
The Fleet Comes."

Looking more closely now, I can see that it is not a
tree at all, but a metal skeleton with plastic needles. A
very good re-creation.

”You like our tree, do you, sir?" says Tomlinson. ”A
very old heirloom, that. From Earth itself. It used to be
a Christmas tree in my boyhood, and in my father’s."

Christmas. I vaguely remember Christmas. Scattered
images of excitement and good. "It’s very nice," I say
absently. Now I see that not all the ornaments have
something to do with Fleetday. One is a piece of wood
carved to resemble a hoop of leaves. In the middle turns a
fat, red, bearded figure. Another, so old that I can barely
make out the design: A town, covered in snow, all the
buildings square. Above the town, so large it must be
false, shines a cross-shaped star. The hills around the
town, where not covered in snow, are green. Whole hills of
green.

"This one’s mine!" announces Young-Jun, from around my
waist, reaching up to hold a paper ornament. I take it from
him gently. Two Human silhouetted faces, obviously male and
female, look outward. Between them, colored in green and

blue crayon, is the Earth. I hand it back to Young-Jun and

72

feel a sting in my thumb. A cut, almost too thin to see,
oozes a single drop of dark red blood.

"Young-Jun is our artist," says a new voice in
strangely slurred English. I look up. A short woman with
olive skin, almond eyes, and long black hair is looking at
me with a smile on her face. She is actually sweating.

"Mrs. Tomlinson, I presume?"

"Indeed, Mr. . . ?"

"Gyranhijjor. Sean Gyranhijjor. Just Sean," I say,
noting the strange looks I’m getting.

"That’s a Hrredin surname," said Mr. Tomlinson,
guardedly.

”Well actually it’s my. . ." I hesitate. hy_gifiaLs
nanat I am about to say, but I remember Young-Jun’s comment
about snakes and his father’s failure to call him to task
for it. "My legal name. For ease of pronunciation,” I say,
and feel like a traitor.

"Ease?" laughs the girl. "What do you call yourself
when you want to confuse people?"

"For Hrredin, it’s easy."

"You are most welcome to our house, Sean," says Mrs.
Tomlinson. "I am Young-Ae. This is my husband, George, and
my daughter, Amanda. You know Young-Jun already. Please
stay and share the Fleetday meal with us."

”Yeah!" says Young-Jun. Both George and Amanda smile
encouragingly at me. The smells from the kitchen are

singing in my brain. And Ajna is at home.

73

"I. . . I’ll have to call my wife,” I say, and wonder
who spoke. Is this me, about to sit down with Humans to a
Fleetday dinner? This stupid holiday devoted to wishful
thinking? Or is it my stomach overriding my brain?

"The phone is here," Young-Ae says, handing it to me.

I dial.

“Hello?"

"Hi, Ajna," I manage.

"Sean! I was beginning to worry. Where are you? You
aren’t still mad about this morning, are you?"

"No, of course not," I say, keeping my voice low.
Another wave of shame passes through me. It is too late to
back out. I can tell her what I was about to do. She will
understand.

But it will mean in effect, admitting she was right to
give me that ornament. And involve lengthy explanation.
2aphaps_it_is_t1na_ypp_digt Is this what she meant by that?

"I have to work late. I’ll be back before midnight. I
love you."

"I love you, Sean. Good-bye."

I switch off the phone. It is, to my knowledge, the
first time I have ever lied to my wife.

The family is waiting at the table for me, and the heat
emanating from it is like nothing I have ever experienced.
Covered dishes are everywhere. Steam is rising from some of
them. The smells coming from them are pieces of dreams and

memories and forgotten warmth made strange by space and

74

time. I approach and we Sit together. Then George rises
and holds up a bottle. He rises and steps toward me,
unsealing it. Into a small glass, beside the mug of water,
he pours a reddish-purple liquid. I barely stop myself from
recoiling as the smell hits me. Alcohol. Of course,
alcohol: the slow, metabolic poison that Humans take. It
will kill a Hrredin. The glass is full, and I tremble.

They will drink this red death, and expect me to do so as
well.

I remind myself violently that I am Human.

George reseals the bottle after pouring a very small
amount for Young-Jun. Then he lifts his glass. "To our
unexpected but most welcome guest, Sean. Truly a blessing
and a gift on this Fleetday. May he be remembered and
blessed. . . when the Fleet comes."

"When The Fleet Comes," they respond, and I find myself
muttering the response a half-step behind them. They drink,
looking at me. I drink. I recognize it. Gunberry, but not
as sweet. The bitterness of the aftertaste hits me and I
force myself not to grimace. They drink this on purpose?

Then I feel fingers of warmth spreading upwards from my
stomach, into my arms. Against my will, I find myself
relaxing.

"And the sooner the Fleet comes, the better," I hear
George murmur under his breath. I see Young-Ae nod.

Do they really believe it? I cannot tell from the

expressions on their faces. No. Admiral Anasizawi’s'

75

message notwithstanding, the Fleet must be dead by now. The
Fleet. Barely one undersized task force, I remember hearing
a Spacer mutter. All the Ships that couldn’t get home in
time for the Last Battle, and the old, old man who had led
them, saying, in a broken voice, "I shall return.”

Perhaps, with no more Earth left to give their lives
for, the Admiral had tried to give the Lifeships hope.
Perhaps they found what happiness can still be found for
Humans with no adopted worlds. I find myself hoping that,
at least, even though I have spared no thought for the Fleet
or Humans at all in years.

Amanda breaks into my thoughts. "Were you really
speaking Pliya to your wife?"

I look at Amanda. She faces me with cool, smiling
eyes: waiting for any answer.

"My wife. . . does not speak English," I say. Again I
am ashamed, but less strongly than before. God help me, am
I becoming accustomed to this? Has Ajna ever spoken of me
this way to others? i

"I know a chap with that problem," says George.
"Married a girl from Arabia. Spoke no English at all. Get
along all right in Pliya, though. Doesn’t matter to the
kids of course. Both Young-Jun and Amanda speak perfect
Korean, so their mother tells me. Can’t understand a word
myself."

The dishes are passed around the table and we serve

ourselves. Almost all of it is unrecognizable to me. I

76

haven’t thought of aaakihg food since childhood. They tell
me the names of the dishes in their English and Korean
equivalents. Roast Turkey. Calamari. Glass noodles.
Kimchee. I remember kimchee because after the first bite I
am forced to drain my entire glass of water. It is like
acid! Young-Jun giggles at me and Amanda suppresses a grin.

"So what exactly happened to make you follow my little
brother home, Sean?" asks Amanda, eyes flashing.

”Well, I. . . " I begin, and am grateful to Young-Jun
who leaps in, starting from the very beginning, and ending
triumphantly with me vaulting the fence like a mythical hero
and destroying his tormentors with the sheer force of my
superior Human wrath. Amanda rolls her eyes through her
brother’s story and I am caught up in the meaning of that
expression: irises and pupils moving like sparks under her
dark lashes. Hrredin eyes do not move.

Hers move back to me. "I sort of meant what were you
doing there, Sean?“ She gives her brother a sharp look.

"I was just taking a walk. Killing some time after
work."

"Well, it was still very brave to do what you did. I
hear those snake kids around that place carry knives."

I wince at the epithet. "The nztaaih‘" I stress
gently, ”say the same about Humans."

"Indeed," says Young-Ae, "in this neighborhood, that is
often the truth. Our young people, they believe a blade

settles many things that unsettle them." She glances at her

77

daughter. "So do theirs. Of course, you might not know
this, Sean, living where you do." She says it in a flat,
calm voice, and I realize that a line has been drawn. A
barrier beyond which I may not cross. Here as well, I am
almost accepted. Not quite an alien.

Besides which, she is right. I do not know these
people. They have isolated themselves from my world,
closing themselves off. Or did I close them off? Or is it
a thing that simply must be? The grease from the fried
"calamari" starts to congeal in my stomach, separating into
parts.

"Do you and your wife have any children?” George asks
me: He looks at me with a peculiar intensity.

"No," I say, expressionlessly as possible. "My wife
can’t have children." Not with me, anyway. Never with me.

"Ah, that’s a shame,” he says, chewing his "turkey.”
"But not uncommon, in these days.” He sighs. I can guess
what he means. Quite a few Humans are sterile. Some
Lifeships took near-misses from nuclear weapons. I say
nothing.

The conversation drifts to other things and runs from
discussions of the neighbors to jobs to things I do not
remember. I am mostly absorbed in the food. Amanda grins
at me when I stumble over the names of dishes.

For dessert Young-Ae brings out a loaf of fresh bread

of a kind I have never seen before. It is light, like foam,

78

not dry and flat. She then brings out a jar filled with a
red miasma of dark shapes.

The faded label says: "Strawberry Jam."

My mouth goes dry. It is a name I vaguely remember,
and a taste I have long forgotten. Kept safe for almost
seventeen years. It is beyond price.

Even I understand that there are no words for such a
moment. Straining, the lines coming hard to her smooth
face, Young-Ae cracks the vacuum-seal, and spreads the jam
on five slices of bread.

The flavor is almost too much. Childhood and dim
shapes that I recognize vaguely as my parents coalesce
around the fresh, red sweetness. Through half-lidded eyes,
I see George and Young-Ae, also locked in memory. More
memory for them: they are older. Amanda and Young-Jun chew
quietly, faces smooth with solemnity.

They understand the reasons, but not the feel. Not
even Amanda could have been born on Earth.

After the meal, conversation continues in the living
room, until I remember that Ajna is waiting. Guiltily I
look at my watch. It is 4500. Past time to go.

And I do not want to leave. It is like a dream that
has become more and more real. I find myself wondering why,
in my youth, I did not allow myself to be pulled into the
Quarter: into the "lower classes” where I so easily could
have belonged, completely and totally. Here, beneath the

notice of the gods, are riches they do not have.

79

I could have been George’s co-worker. Young-Ae’s
husband. Young-Jun’s father. I feel as if I have just been
told for the first time that I am blind, and that other
people can see.

Young-Ae and Young-Jun start to clear away the dishes.
Amanda and George rise. "Come into the living room, Sean,"
says George, "and I’ll give you the Grand Tour, such as it
is." Amanda gives a strangled gasp and blushes, running
down the hall to shut her door.

There isn’t much to see: the apartment is tiny. The
furniture is all Hrredin: shipping the Christmas tree must
have claimed nearly all of the Tomlinsons’ baggage space.
Young-Jun makes a whirlwind appearance and tries to explain
the significance of every piece of matter in his bedroom,
but George stops him. The tour takes less than ten minutes.

Back in the living room, George excuses himself to go
help his wife. A cool hand rests on my shoulder. I turn to
meet Amanda’s smile. "Come with me," she says, taking me by
the hand. ”Let me show you the garden."

"Garden?"

She gives a low, deprecating laugh. "Well, we call it
that, anyway. Sounds better than ‘big flowerpots on the
patio.’" She slides open the glass door on the far wall of
the room.

It is dark outside. Mist swirls in and out of the
spotlight that illuminates the tiny outdoor space in the

center of the building. Three other apartments face a lawn

80

of bluish moss crossed by a pavement and a bench. On either
side of the porch are two large tubs of dirt. One is bare,
the other studded with thick wisps of green. Grass?

"Onions,” Amanda says. "They’re pretty hardy: you can
even grow them now. Look." She digs her hands into the
soft loam of the other tub. . . and comes up with a
nightmare ovoid, brown, scaly, and horned.

"Potatoes," she says, meeting my puzzled eyes. "Real
potatoes. You know?” I did, but could only stare. "Well,
they’re almost like gold, here. They’ll even grow in
winter. With those and the onions, it’s almost like Dad
having two jobs."

"And you leave them out here?"

Her eyes darken. "You don’t steal Earthlife. Ever.

Na one steals Earthlife. Damn sure no one steals it twice."
She hands the thing to me and laughs softly when I hesitate.

"It’s warm."

"we have to heat the tubs a little," she says. "C’mon,
I’ll show you how to put it back." She kneels beside me and
her hands close around mine, holding them and the potato. A
warmth more than simple heat can account for flows through
my hands, spreading. Amanda spreads her fingers and parts
the loose, black dirt, nestling the potato and our hands
into it.

"Sometimes I like to come out here and put my hands and
feet in the dirt," she murmurs. "I feel like I could take

root myself, like a tree, if there still were any." The

81

dirt is warm and damp around our hands. Slowly, she
disengages, reaches behind her. I follow her movements: she
brings out a pair of cups: newly polished stone, and a
bottle, her dirt-encrusted hands arranging them as if by
rite: a quasi-mythical being from dead stories. She turns
and blinks at me with her astonishingly mobile blue eyes.

She is in her element. And she is beautiful.

I push the thought away, but it will not be wholly
silent. She continues, pouring a golden liquid into the
cups.

I have never seen this kind of beauty before.

She hands me a cup and raises her own. "When The Fleet
Comes," she says. Now I can hear the sardonic tone of her
voice. I raise my cup and the smell of alcohol burns
through my nose. I almost sneeze. How much can I drink
before the poison starts to work? In any case, there is no
more of this than there was of the wine, and I feel no
effect. She notices my hesitation.

"When The Fleet Comes," I say.

"The aliens will be fucked," she answers, as if
completing the sentence. Then she laughs as if at some joke
and drains half the cup. I drink, and then splutter,
breaking into a dry cough. This is liquid fire! It burns
in my stomach and I wince, but Amanda is still laughing. I
try to cover my distress. She raises her cup to mine and
drinks, motioning for me to do the same. This time, the

alcohol is in my mouth before I even think about it. 'It is

82

easier this time: smoother. Something else today was easier
the second time I did it, but I am not sure anymore what it
was. Ajna’s words float past me: Eathaps_it_is_tima_yaa
did, and a wave of anger hits me. Maybe she was right.
Maybe I will show her she was right. Perhaps this is what
she meant. I take another swallow of the burning liquid,
and my cup is empty. She raises the bottle and leans toward
me.

Our noses are nearly touching now. Her breath is a
memory of flowers and wine and everything that ought to have
been. A spinning flame seems to be just out of sight.
"Amanda. . . " I say. And then our hands entwine, flaking
dirt and her scent rushes in on me and there is nothing but
our two mouths locked together and time slows to a crawl,
impeded by the clumsy movements of our fingers, a pleasure
rising almost to pain. Our mouths break apart for breath,
and she fumbles with my skirt.

Like a bomb the knowledge bursts in on me that we are
about to do the impossible. No Hrredin can do what I am
about to, and that secret rushes to my face in a snarl of
joy, and Amanda somehow catches it and smiles herself as she
loosens her shirt, transcending and transcendingly Human.
Her eyes flare blue under their strange tilt, her father’s
eyes. . . and that thought shatters the moment like a spike
of ice as I remember exactly where we are.

"What’s the matter, Sean?" Amanda murmurs as I hold up

a hand and look wildly back at the glass door. It is

83

vacant, except for the lights of the tree. My breathing
returns to something approaching normal.

"What’s the matter?” I repeat stupidly. "My God, your
father. . . I mean, we can’t. . . not haza in the yard. . ."

She looks puzzled. "You think he doesn’t know?"

"He. . ?" It is as if my tongue has turned wooden.

"If it hadn’t been my idea anyway, I’m sure he would
have suggested it," she goes on. "Lots of women have
already had two children at my age." She pauses. "I’d
really like my first to be yours, Sean."

My romantic illusions, my lust, collapse.

"But why?" I manage.

She sits back, looking at me quizzically. “Why?
You’re from {as outside the Quarter, aren’t you, Sean?" She
gestures to the empty streets. "Take a look around you.
We’re dying here, and everybody knows it. You don’t think a
decent man would marry a girl who hadn’t had at least one
healthy child, do you? My chances are probably better with
you than with anyone else. Don’t you want children, Sean?"

A child. A child of my own. Is this what she is
offering me? What Ajna and I gave up, so long ago. Ajna
ahd_1. The thought hits like a fist.

"Amanda, I’m. . .' martian. I cannot say it. Shame
rolls over me at what I was about to do. "I have to go."

She does not say a word as I rise and pull aside the door.

84

 

Except for the tree and a solitary lamp, the living
room is dark. I have to wait for my eyes to adjust to find
the door.

. I whirl as George steps into the room from the kitchen.
Fear contracts in my gut as I throw my hands up, trying to
stammer something.

"You didn’t take very long, Sean."

He just stands there, watching me matter-of-factly.
"I’m not angry with you, Sean, just a little. . .
disappointed. It’s her first time, at least I think so, and
you might have been a little more. . . gentle."

"It’s not like you think. She told me you knew. We
didn’t. . . we didn’t."

Now he narrows his eyes. "You didn’t? Why not?” He
takes a step toward me. "Not good enough for your money,
Sean? Is that what you’re saying?" Now he looks very
dangerous.

"Oh, no! It’s not that at all, it’s just that. . .
dammit, George, I’m married, you know that! What would yap;
wife say if --" Once again, shame almost drives me to my
knees at how close I have come.

George gets the same puzzled look that his daughter had
worn. "My wife is fertile.” He looks down. "I’m sorry,
that was badly put. But you did tell us yourself your wife
couldn’t have children: she’s got no exclusive right to you,

and what’s the harm in your giving Amanda a good start?"

85

 

"George, you don’t understand. Among my wife’s. . .
people. . . you just don’t. . .”

George’s face hardens, but there is sympathy in his
eyes. "Look, Sean, this is no time for old customs. We
want to keep as many as we can alive, but that won’t matter
if there’s no one left to remember them, will it?" He takes
me by the shoulders. "This is what we have to do to
survive: what Humans have to do."

Eh§§_W§_DQY§_§Q_§Q- Betray our words? Tp_su:yiya.

But survive as what?

"Look, your wife doesn’t ever have to know: Amanda’s
husband will raise your son as his own. But if she did know
she would. . . she would haya_tp understand."

”You don’t know Ajna. . ." I begin, and stop. George
pushes me away as if I’ve burned him.

"Ajna?" he repeats, looking at me in disbelief. "Ajna?
My God, that’s not. . . a Hrredin name?" It is a question
but he reads the answer out of my face. "That’s where you
got that last name of yours: you married a Hrredin." His
face flushes dark. "You son-of-a-bitch. You’ll kill us
all, and for hpthihgt"

"George, I. . ."

”OUT! Get out of my house!" he yells. "Get out and
don’t come back, you perverted bastard!" He advances. I
run for the door: it barely misses my heel as it slams

behind me. I run for a long time, the world becoming a

86

blur. By the time I stop, the square houses are behind me,
and the triangles of Dreyudan are coming into view.

I stop, looking back. Alcohol, fried grease and shame
all come together in my throat. Twisting inside, I pour it
out on the ragged surface of the street. I heave and heave
until there is nothing left. Spoiled food and lust run from
me together.

And I finally begin to understand. In a rush of
comprehension I see what the Human race might have been:
what it once was. So beautiful. Maybe. And tears start to
fall from my eyes.

E l .! . !' :‘d.

And now I know what Ajna meant. What she had tried to
make me see: this people, my people that was worth grieving
for. Turning to the wall I retie the knot in my skirt. It
is time to go. I scan the night. Off in the distance, I
see the gray height of a maglev rail. I start walking
toward it. Somewhere along that rail is a station.

I will kill us all, he said. Maybe. Maybe the Human
race is really dying. I hope not. I never knew how much of
me was Human, and thus, I never knew how much was Hrredin.

I will never know fully, but perhaps I will know more, and
next time, I will learn better. Without needing to be
ashamed.

And Ajna knew. She knows better than I do. She tried

to tell me, but I wasn’t listening. I am now.

87

I walk faster. Maybe they haven’t emptied that

trashcan yet. It is late, and Ajna is waiting.

The End

88

Requiem With Interruptions

bY

G. Scott Huggins

 

89

 

 

For one moment, when he sees me, Sandor’s face lights
up from across the restaurant and he waves. Halfway there,
his smile fails, and I know I must look bad. I thought it
was bad enough each morning, in the mirror, after the
dreams. Here it is worse.

"Jesus, Emily, it’s good to see you,§ he says. Still,
his voice sounds anything but good. Probably no wonder,
even though I know I look better than I did a month ago. I
pull out the heavy, wooden chair and nearly fall. The lack
of sleep is starting to take its toll, the doctor in me

says, but I catch myself and sit down.

90

"It’s good to see you too, Sandor," I say, "You’re
looking well." In his case, it is true. Space—tanned skin,
curly hair, mustache. "How’s work on the Lattice coming?"

"I’m hurt you had to ask," he smiles. "Didn’t you see
the difference on your way in? I’ve got stories. . .” He
stops himself. "But first, I’m starved, and if you’re not,
you ought to be, after what I’ve heard about your tour.
Let’s get the food on the way." He begins to key in his
choices. I lift the menu and have just decided what to
order when Sandor takes my right hand.

I flinch, but do not pull away as he examines it: a
pitted, white glove of scar tissue. He pauses over the
middle and index fingers, where the nails are missing. His
eyes are dark when he looks at me. "Good God, Em, you never
told me about this. I’d heard there was only one death?"

I nod and the motion. . . slides.

Sandor’s face fades into the vertiginous weightlessness
of the sickbay, multicolored fluid spotting the air around
me as my patient cries in agony and another alien tries to
sign to me, breaks into pieces so pretty and I’m fighting,
fighting to get back to. . .

"Em? Em?" Sandor is saying, and I come back, looking
at my snow-white hands. The dreams are starting to intrude
even when I am awake, now. I know what they are. I had
been planning on reconstructive surgery, of course, but
there’s no point, now.

"I’m not a surgeon any more, Sandor."

91

His mouth freezes open for a moment. "What? But why?
There wasn’t a radiation flash or anything? Not because of
this. . . ?"

"I just got the word today," I began. And, dammit, I
hadn’t been going to ruin this: we hardly ever get to see
each other any more, but he knows about the accident, and so
now I have to tell him: might as well get it over with,
everyone will know soon enough.

"My brain is degenerating." I rush the words out.
"Looks like an Alzheimer’s variant, but it isn’t responding
to treatment. Brainwaves going all over the place. That’s
why I —- blanked out just now. The dementia is beginning.

I don’t know -- no one knows how long, but it’s starting to
progress pretty rapidly." I stop. There is nothing else to
say.

And Sandor, being the good friend that he is, says
nothing, and holds my hands, my ugly, pointless hands, until

the silence passes and the meal comes.

Priest Wings-Over-Sun finished his fifth glass of the
brown, stinging sugar water and released some of the gas
back into the air. He was not sure why the Humans seated on
either side of him had turned their primeyes (no, just eyes,
he reminded himself. Humans had no overeye -- poor things)
to look at him, nor what the motions of their faces, sliding
grotesquely over their skulls, meant. Nothing good for a

lone Sunone, he was sure.

92

He considered asking a crewmember for another serving
of the drink, but decided against it -- the shuttle was
nearly to the station, and he had enough sugar stored to
last him through many long conversations.

He told himself again that anger served no purpose, but
it did little good. These Humans with their soft skins and
barely detectable vibrating speech and their repulsive faces
had caused the souldeath of one of his Entrusted. They had
been warned. They had been warned by the dead one’s mate,
but they had not listened. They had used metal -- natal; --
on his Entrusted. And now he was dead, and worse than dead,
his soul lost. His skin tried to climb his body with the
thought: souldeath. Never to join the Choir-in-the-Heart of
the next life. . .

Now Wings-Over-Sun had a letter of apology from someone
in the Human Navy, who, as far as he could tell, had not
even been aboard the ship. He also had a widow to bring

home and comfort as best he could. All things considered,

it was enough for anger. And fear.

 

93

 

I sit up, gasping, out of the nightmare. Horrible

shapes are all around me, alien shapes, but I know, 1_khax
that if I can just hold on for a moment it will sort itself
out.

There. I am me again.

Why am I fighting Humans in my dreams? Why am I
wielding a sword of glass? Why does the thought of metal
terrify me? The answers, surely so obvious, slide away with
the rest of the Elastic Place (and where did that phrase
come from?) and leave me. . . where? Here.

It is not my apartment.

I am lying on a long couch, with a thin, brown blanket
over me. Clashing bits of memorabilia line the walls.
Short and long Japanese swords. A Russian wall hanging in
bright reds and greens. Maps of Earth and its colonies. A

man’s room. Sandor. Memory begins to return, in the

94

 

 

faltering manner I am getting used to. I am still wearing
the clothes I met him in.

"Are you all right, Em?" Sandor is standing in the
hall by the clock. Four. I’ve been asleep almost three
hours. Almost a record for the past week.

"Don’t you have to be at work?" I ask.

"I keep my own hours a lot these days. You fell asleep
in the tram.“

"You. . ." a portion of my sleep-fuzzed mind springs
into focus. "You carried me here." How ridiculous looking.
But it is a chill image. How long before I have to be
carried everywhere? Before someone has to feed me? Before.
. . I clamp down on the thought. That way lies madness, on
an even faster path than the one I am already on.

"You want to talk about it?“ he says.

"No," I say automatically, but the look on his face
tells me I will speak. If not now, then sometime.

"It’s all. . . dreams," I say. "Like dreams coming to
life and life turning to a dream. Sometimes I. . . can’t
tell where they break apart."

"What do you dream about?" He sits in the papasan
opposite me. "The blowout?"

I look at him sharply, and he raises his hands in mock
protection. "That’s about when this began, isn’t it? It’d
be a miracle if you didn’t dream it."

"It always starts out the same," I manage. "I’m

somewhere alien. I see dreams, like things floating past,

95

 

and they’re alien, too. So I pick them up and try to make
them. . . right, to make them mine. But they already are.
Then I notice that I’m the alien, and the aliens are Humans.
But I’m fighting the alien."

"The aliens that are Humans or the aliens that are
aliens?"

"Yes. Neither. Both." A laugh fights its way to the
surface and breaks bitterly. "I don’t know. And I’ve got
these heavy glass blades because metal is too deadly, and I
really hope She doesn’t touch me, because I’ll die."

Sandor’s raised eyebrows say it all. "Dammit, I know
it doesn’t make sense!" I yell. "I don’t make sense
anymore: my dreams don’t." He says nothing. Absolutely
calm, and I can’t stand it. "And you sure as hell don’t,
either, Sandor," I add. "Why did you even bring me here?"

He opens his mouth, pauses, and then says, "You needed
to be taken somewhere. And I don’t know where you live
these days. What else?"

He’d been going to say something else, but I was too
tired to dig.

”It’s either that or I’m back on Thny_Kiap. Sometimes
both."

He leans back to listen, and I have no choice but to

begin the story.

The meteor strike was a nightmare that shouldn’t have

been: the point from which I could measure all subsequent

96

nightmares. It had come in too fast for countermeasures,
and punctured us in a line right through the passengers’
quarters into the main rotation gear. We’d lost gravity
instantly.

I didn’t think we’d have very much work ahead of us. I
know it sounds cold, but it’s the way it is. Punctures
usually don’t leave much in the way of injuries, but we’d
been lucky, in a way. No one had been in either of the
outer compartments, and the emergency bulkheads had sealed
almost instantly. Only one spacer was sucked out.

But there was a dining room -- a gpadzpahalad dining
room -- full of passengers between those two bulkheads.

Five minutes after arriving in sickbay, I was pulling
splinters out of the third spacer’s belly, trying to get a
zero-gee IV into place, while my midshipmen tried to keep
the air between me and my patient free of the mists and
drops of blood that floated around the cabin like a sick
snowstorm.

I started sewing the man up, but halfway through, a
rating arrived, calling, "Eetee case, complications! Who’s
on it?"

I didn’t want it, but it was ultimately my
responsibility: we had no alien specialists on board.
“Finish," I barked at my aides. ”Bring him here." I shoved
the cot aside and braced myself to catch the new one.

"God, what is it?" Whatever it was, it was hideous. I

hoped blue was its natural color. That was better than the

97

F’

alternative: that it was cyanotic. The surface of its head
was one great, shiny cap, like a compound eye, except in the
front where two smaller eyes, a knife-thin nose, and a
jointed jaw made up a kind of a face. It was bilaterally
symmetric with thin limbs and thick digits. The chest was
spouting globules of deep purple blood from one large
splinter. I could cut it out without too much trouble. The
ultrasound was showing no surprises. I could almost have
pulled it out, except for one large barb.

The being was obviously in pain: a patch on its throat
glowed red and white alternately, and it was struggling.

The rating and I tied its limbs down. I didn’t dare use an
anesthetic. I was just positioning my scalpel when my arm
was jerked around.

It was another of the aliens, flailing wildly, trying
to keep its balance in zero gee. I tried to grip its hand
in mine, but it tore loose, signing, +No out. No touch,
not with metal. You cannot. You kill.+

It was using Sameslan, of course. Bad Sameslan. While
anyone can (and does, at least a little, if they travel
interstellar) learn to :aad Anglic, almost no alien races
have vocal cords capable of zapzaduaing it. We can’t
reproduce theirs either. But most of them have limbs that
can approximate the gestures of the sign language invented
by our own Deaf, so it’s the interstellar lingua franca --

and probably will be until we run into someone with more

98

 

ships or a better idea. No one travels interstellar without
learning at least a little of it.

In this being’s case, yazy little. Nevertheless, a
wave of relief swept over me at her words. +You are a
doctor?+

+No. Wife of him. You cannot cut. We have Healer.
Healer comes.+

Thank God. I signed as slowly as I dared. +Where is
the healer? Please hurry.+

+Healer on our world. Husband must go back.+

My hope was replaced by disgust. We were already at
least one Jump from this being’s home system. She didn’t
understand even the basics of star travel. +If I do not
cut, he will die,+ I signed slowly. +He will not live until
your doctor comes.+

+Not doctor. Healer. Priest. Only Priest can cut
with metal, or. . .+ she fumbled a few gestures. +. . .he
will die. Forever.+ The patch on her throat was cycling
through all the colors of the spectrum.

Then I understood. She had already given him up.
Wanted him uncontaminated for whatever next life they
believed in. Such courage, so misguided.

There was a good chance her mate would die anyway. The
ultrasound showed no surprises, but there was a lot of
damage inside. All I could do was sew him up and hope for

the best.

99

A crazy part of my mind muttered that it might be more
merciful to do as she asked. It would be easy to let him
go. No one would blame me for it, and there were plenty of
Human casualties that needed attention. . . I was instantly
ashamed. How could I even think this way? I didn’t
consider myself a racist, yet here I was, considering
putting this. . . life out of its misery because it wasn’t
human. Religion was hat an issue.

”Get her out of here," I told the rating, my harshness
fueled by my own guilt. He picked her up in his powerful
arms and kicked off. She struggled, throat flashing so
brightly I could see the light reflecting off the far walls.
My scalpel was in my hand. I checked once more for signs of
any hidden blood vessels I might damage. Nothing. Just one
swift cut. . .

The world exploded into pain and blue fire.

Sandor is watching me, his mouth slightly open, as I
finish my story. "I woke up in one of my own beds with my
hands bandaged. They had to restart my heart twice. The
patient actually lived. But he went into a coma and never
came out. A closer scan showed a kind of defense system,
like an electric eel: very powerful conduction system right
below the skin."

I struggle to keep my thoughts focused. Through the

retelling of the story I have felt them slipping away,

100

trying to slide off to the side and out the door. Sandor’s
words bring me back.

"Look, I have some leave coming up, and you’re going to
need to make plans -- for what’s coming.” He has trouble
getting the words out. "I’d like to help."

”No, that’s okay," I say automatically. "You don’t
want to use up your time because of me, and what can you do,
anyway?" I say it lightly, but I see him flinch. "You
know, Mom will be coming up soon, and there’s a lot to plan
and. . ."

”And I’d_just be in the way," he says, face blank. "I
know. It’s all right. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of people
who’ll be there. Call if you need me." He rises to go to
the kitchen. Soon he will offer to take me home, and this
will be the last time we’ll see each other.

And Andrea is on assignment. Kirill and Janesha both
looked frightened when I called them, mouthed variants on
"I’m—so-sorry-Em-call-if-I-can-help-good-bye." And I
haven’t even called my mother but I will have to sometime.
And I hate being helped by anyone, but most of all her, and
by the time she’s here, there’ll be no one else.

As long as no one is helping me yet, I can still feel
like I’m going to stay sane: stay me. And I know I am being
foolish.

I make myself say it: "Sandor. I’d be glad of your
help."

101

Wings-Over-Sun drew the cloak around himself, high over
his head to shield his overeye from the garish Human colors.
It was unlikely that anyone would try to bespeak him here
unless they were already in front of him, and the large
compound eye that covered the back of his head was very
sensitive. Using only his two, simple primeyes, he felt
almost blind. Was this how Humans were forced to see? He
looked at that moment far more like an old, blue-skinned,
Human man than he would have cared to acknowledge.

The Humans seemed anxious to avoid him, even in the
press that exited from the lander. He was just as grateful.
The three balanced soulprobes in the quiver at his back were
fragile. He did not expect to need them, but Priests always
carried their soulprobes: they were the mark of his office.
He shuddered. So mush metal, everywhere.

It was easy to find her: she was the only Sunone in the
gate. She was also cloaked. She jumped upon seeing him and
hurried forward.

Wings-Over-Sun was glad that none of the Humans would
understand her near-hysteria. They were half-blind, after
all and communicated among themselves by indetectable air
vibrations. None could perceive the subtle patterns in the
rapid flashes produced by a Sunone throat. A good thing: it
would do their cause no good to appear desperate. He caught
her hand almost as soon as she had bowed. «You may rise,

Horizon-At-Noon. I thank you for your prompt greeting.»

102

«I apologize for my haste, Wings-Over-Sun. I am
grateful you have come. We entrust ourselves to your
justice.»

His anger flared again. He had known her: knew that
the love between her and her mate had been strong. She had
not yet let go. It would have been best if they were alone,

so that she could Share her grief, and he his knowledge and

J. in .‘71

reassurance. But this was not a thing Humans should see,
and privately, he was glad of it. The trip had been very
tiring.

«I fear that justice may be a long time coming. I wish
it were not so, but Humans are ignorant of many things.

They do not listen to us. I have come to take you home, and
to speak with them, so that this thing will not happen
again.» It was then that he noticed the Human woman
standing behind his Entrusted, watching them both.

She was not very much taller than they were, which was
saying something. Obviously female -- Human sexual
dimorphism was disgusting. One of the truly pallid ones --
dark hair with a white streak through it.

«What is that doing here?»

The Human’s arms and hands moved. Her face remained
still, and she gave no vibration. Belatedly, he recognized
Sameslan. +I am your interpreter. Horizon-At-Noon hired me
to assist you both. You will kindly refer to me as ‘she,’

at least in my presence. Do you understand?+

103

Wings-Over-Sun stared stupidly. Impossible that she
could have seen. «No Human can understand our speech.»

The Human’s mouth moved upward slightly. +51; Humans
are not ‘ignorant.’ Speak slowly. I am still learning. If
you continue to hire me, it may be easier for you to use
Sameslan. Can you do so?+

+Yes. I’m not sure how well,+ he managed.

+Well enough. I am called Lyan. It is a pleasure to
meet you, Priest.+

«With respect, I cannot say the same. I am here to
comfort and protect my Entrusted. I have no interest in
anything else on this world.»

He let Horizon-At-Noon translate. His arms were
getting tired, and he did not know all the symbols, nor
could he figure out the equivalent for those that required
five fingers in place of three. +Horizon-At-Noon has tried
to explain: you will speak for your kind about the
requirements of your religion.+

«I do not know,» he Signed, +religion.+ «I am a
healer of souls, and I want to make sure those Entrusted to
me and mine remain undamaged.»

Even Horizon-At-Noon had trouble with that speech.
There was, as best he could tell, a discussion about sanls.
He caught some of the gestures Horizon-At-Noon was using:
+part-of-person-that-cannot-be-seen.+ Lyan used a new
gesture: a single gesture, like pulling something small

apart. Then she wrote it down. He was surprised they had a

104

word for it. He was fairly certain Humans had no souls.
But she continued.

+1 understand. We have many of your profession here.+

 

pagan: he wanted to ask, but did not. This interpreter did

not know, nor would she have appreciated being blamed.

 

I do not know who is screaming. Then I realize it is

me, and I stop. I am holding tightly to something that is
murmuring in my ear. It is Sandor. Slowly, I let go, and

he releases me.

105

For the first time, I see him scared.

It is night, and his eyes show that I have woken him
up. A large flashlight lies on the floor of my bedroom: he
must have grabbed it on his way up.

"I know this is kind of a dumb question," he says,
getting his breath back, "but are you all right?"

"No," I say, and almost follow it up with, 1Lm_in
Dalasiah. Another one of the phrases I keep remembering
from the dreams, always right before I wake up. At least it
makes more sense than an Elastic Place.

God, I’m so tizad. I never sleep more than two hours,
and they can’t do anything about that either. One of the
doctors says if he finds another case of it, he’ll name it
after me. What an epitaph.

"I’ve never heard anyone scream like that." He looks
at me as if expecting me to fall over. Finally he says,
"Come on. We both need a drink."

He is tired, too, I notice as I follow him downstairs.
I’m at my most lucid just after waking, and I know that he
must have done a lot for me over the past week. Has it only
been a week? It might have been more. Will he run out of
leave time?

I sit at the table while he heats water, but I don’t
try to follow what he’s mixing. The scent of chocolate and
something else sharp brings my senses to a new height. Even

without lights it is all so hright. I look back and see him

106

 

cutting something sweet. Sugar. I need sugar, it has been
long.

He is cutting with metal. I nearly bolt. Doesn’t he
know only the priests touch metal?

He slides the cup over to me with a tiny slice of cake
on the side. He sees my face and flinches. What kind of
expression do I have on it? "It’s just me, Em. Sandor," he
says.

I want to throw the whole damn plate at him then for
that, for thinking I’m insane while I’m lucid as stone right
in front of him. I hate him for not knowing the difference,
while knowing I would do the same to him if he were the one
going mad.

So I sit and sip the chocolate laced with rum. It is
very good. Sandor almost sits, but there is a call: he goes
to take it.

By the time he is back, I have finished my chocolate,

and his, and half of the cake left in the refrigerator.

Wings-Over-Sun had not thought he could possibly be
more tired than angry, and yet he was. A week he’d been on
this planet, and aside from meeting Horizon-At-Noon, he had
accomplished nothing.

Oh, he had apha a great deal. He had met with
officials, complained to officials, been chivvied by
officials, been sent to other officials, and filled out many

forms, but he had nothing. He might as well have gone to

107

‘visit Horizon-At-Noon’s husband’s body, for all the good he
had accomplished. Indeed, talking to Human officials was
very like speaking with breathing corpses. They looked
alive, but said nothing. Not even a spoken word of promise
that anyone could stop this tragedy from happening again.

And now he felt that tragedy as deeply as Horizon-At-
Noon, and the horror that she had felt as her husband had
been soulkilled right in front of her. The torrent of
emotion that had flowed into him during their Sharing, the
first time they had contrived to be without Lyan, had almost
been too much. Now Horizon-At-Noon was much calmer for
having Shared. . . but he was more tired, more upset.

He caught sight of the stars and the rest of the
Lattice wheeling by, a cage of corridors, docks and chambers
that crawled like a floating spider over the curve of the
Earth. At least he’d been able to find a room in one of the
rotating toroids. Weightlessness only added to the fatigue
he had picked up in endless meetings with officials.

+We do not operate according to your concept of
Entrustment,+ Lyan had signed to him at one point. +We have
had.similar offices, but we don’t work that way any more.
Even if you represented your world, this would be difficult.
You must have patience.+

Lyan was another problem, but one he blessed. She did
speak for him. He sometimes suspected that she only made it
easier for him and the Humans to misunderstand each other,

ibut.she did so very well, and because of her, he had been

108

able to miscommunicate with many more Humans than he might
have otherwise. He checked himself. Even their depressing
sense of humor was beginning to infect him.

The chime at the door was unexpected. Horizon-At-Noon
was, as usual, in her room. For a moment he thought it
might be Lyan, but she was in the kitchen, oblivious. He
signaled to her to open the door.

The man was inside almost before the door was open.

The vibrations that passed between him and Lyan were strong,
and went on at length, punctuated with strange gestures.
Finally, Lyan turned to him.

+This man demands to speak to you.+

'Wings-Over-Sun looked at the man closely. Pink skin,
curled hair, and more hair over its disgustingly soft mouth.
He had not seen this Human before.

«What does he want?»

There was another long period of vibration. Then Lyan
signed, +He is surprised I can understand your speech. He
wants you to stop asking about the accident aboard the Thgy
Klan and about Doctor Emily Quirran.+ ‘

A name! The killer had a name. But he was not here to
seek punishment, in any case. Lyan had already warned him
of the impossibility of such a thing. +The Fleet protects
its own,+ she had said, and if that wasn’t Entrustment, what

was? So alien!

109

He regained his composure. +Tell him that I will stop
when I am sure that surgery by your kind upon my kind will
not happen again.+ He paused. +Why does he interfere?+

When Lyan turned back this time her face was changed.
More open, somehow. +He says he is the friend of Dr.
Quirran and that she is dying. He says they have friends
who have told them about us. He can do nothing to help you,
and very little to help her. He asks that you not shame her
because of your religion.+

Wings-Over-Sun felt his throat patch glow hot with
frustration. +What do I have to do with ‘religion?’ I do
not serve your gods. I speak of my people. You refused to
listen to them and the soul of one of my people is dead.
'His body breathes uselessly in your hospital, and his widow
mourns in the next room because of your stupidity!+

The man growled low at Lyan in response. She signed:

+He says that your friend might not now lie in a coma
if his widow had had the intelligence to warn the doctor of
your people’s defense system.+

There was no end to these Humans’ delusions. +Tell
this man he is insane. We have no "defense system." What
possible defense system could a wounded Sunone use against a
Human? Your people have all the weapons,+ he signed,
bitterly, +and all the starships that you arm without

enemies, and you think it makes you wise.+

110

The Human seemed to hesitate. Lyan translated again.
+He wants to know, if you have no defense system, what
burned his friend’s hands when she operated on the Sunone.+

finzngdi

The word stood out like the sun seen from his window in
this place with no atmosphere. Impossible. But could it
have happened? He did not want to think so: it would mean
that these Humans were just too similar to Sunones, to him.
Disgusting. Immediately, he felt ashamed. If there was any
chance that a soul might be saved. . . he forced himself to
sign clearly.

+What is your friend dying of?+

There was a moment. Then: +Her brain is losing
function and she will soon die.+

For the first time since receiving the report back on
homeworld, Wings-Over-Sun felt a surge of hope.

+If you want her to live, take me to your friend.+ He
was not sure what the significance of opening eyes and
mouths wide was among Humans, but both Lyan and the man were
doing so. He had no time. +Do it DQW1+

He grabbed his case. For the first time since his
novitiate, he nearly clutched his soulprobes hard enough to
break them. He flashed in protest as Sandor pulled him out

the door.

 

i am trapped i cannot move there is someone something

else here with me in my head in myself it runs together the
thoughts run together i run together and dissolve i wonder
if that has been the secret of madness incurable madness for
all time a hysterical laugh would well up but i no longer
control my lungs could the old ideas of demon possession be
true i try to think of a prayer but i know none.

i am not dying i am being killed up until now i could
force it out by being awake by being in delusion but
delusion was really sanity it could come only at night but
now it is here it is in control it is too late to tell
anyone no one will believe a crazy woman not even sandor.

i wonder if it is possible to die of terror and lack of

sleep.

112

The tall man led him and Lyan through a maze and into a
room. The apartment inside was large, and well-kept.

In the center of the room slumped a woman in a large
chair, facing a mirror. Her eyes were dull. A fluid ran
from her mouth. Wings-Over-Sun stepped forward, not daring
to let his hopes die, even for an instant. He stepped.
between the Human woman and the mirror.

«Moon-in-Eclipse,» he called, gently.

The Human’s head snapped up and she gave a choked cry.
Wings-Over-Sun jumped back. Even he had not really

believed. «Moon-in-Eclipse. Sleep. Let go.»

And my enemy is gone. Relaxed, but still there. I
smell him. Weakly, I raise my head.

Sandor, and a woman I have never seen are watching me
from the corner. Before me stands a Sunone, and suddenly I
know who is inside me.

I scream .

The man ran forward, between Wings-Over-Sun and the

woman. He showed his teeth and vibrated so hard that Wings-

113

Over-Sun felt the wind of the Human’s breath. Lyan followed
and a conversation ensued.

Finally, Lyan signed, +He is frightened because of what
you have done to her. He thinks you have lied to him in
order to hurt her. He says he will kill you if you hurt
her. He. . . I think you should think of her as one of his
Entrusted," Lyan finished.

Wings-Over-Sun stood amazed. So much knowledge, and
yet the Humans were so slag. She thought to tell a priest
about Entrustment. He had known this from the conversation
they had had in his apartment. He chose his next words
carefully.

«Tell the Human this: I am going to do something
dangerous. If it is not done, his Entrusted will die very
slowly, as he already knows. If I succeed in this, it will
save her life and I will go. If I fail, she will die
quickly, and more mercifully than otherwise.»

The man and the two women vibrated among themselves for
a long time.

+The woman asks for help. The man says you ask for
much trust.+

Wings-Over-Sun did not answer, but looked at the Human
and nodded, once. He had learned the gesture. The man
looked down. Then he rose.

Wings-Over-Sun took a wooden knife from his belt and
carefully made a shallow cut in the palm of his hand.

Purple welled up. Ignoring the silvery pain, he inserted

114

one end of the rod in the incision. Hopefully only one
would be necessary, but soulprobes had crystallized before.
Taking the woman’s head in his hand, he bent it down until
the back of her neck showed. He turned to Lyan.

+Tell her she must remain absolutely still.+

To her credit, Dr. Emily Quirran did not flinch at all
when the wooden knife passed between her vertebrae and came
within microns of her spinal column.

Wings-Over-Sun placed the rod between the cuts, and
Shared, stepping through the conducting rod, and into the

Human darkness, singing, calling for his lost soul.

 

Light. Wind. Detachment spreads itself through the

axons and dendrites and pure, colorless fire blows from
fingertips to viscera. My spine stiffens and I surge back:
the Sunone’s grip is an unbreakable, soft shell, and a
scream forces its way up from my lungs.

Then I am sustaining a note, and the whole world is the
note: a note for a chord that was never expressed in sound.

And the thing that has been inside me, the shadow, is gone.

115

F’

Sandor is holding a cloth to the back of my neck and I
am looking at the Sunone. He is unsteadily sheathing his
knife.

I see the woman ask him, +Are you all right?+

Erratically, he signs back, +For the first time since I
come, things are right.+ He turns to me. +You will be
well.+

It is as though I am blind, and my eyes are clearing.

I understand it all. +You will return your. . .+ There

really is no better word in Anglic. My medical training

throws 11p terms: W

W None of then are right. +. .
.soul. . . to its body? We have kept it alive.+

+No,+ signs the Sunone. +Once the. . . circuit. . . is
broken, it cannot be restored. He is dead, yet lives.
Here.+ He taps his own head. +1 will take my Entrusted
back to our village. Back to the. . . Heart.+

I shudder, discovering that I know what that means,
though I cannot express it, and that it is good. +Thank
you.+

+We have been most fortunate,+ he signed. +Even among
our people, to share bodies with another soul is possible
for the untrained but. . . unusual. Dangerous. Usually,
when we are cut with metal, our souls simply die. You will
not do this to one of us again.+

+You know I will not,+ I say.

116

He blinks his two simple eyes, and his face assumes an
expression I now know to be one of surprise. +1 do. We are
no longer superstitious fools to you, are we?+

The words hurt, coming from one whose mind I have seen.
Shazad. +And am I still an ignorant conqueror?+

His eyes drop. +No. It was wrong to think so.+

+Yes.+ He knows I speak not of his thoughts, but of my
own. +We must speak. 1 can help you,+ I say, but my head
swims, and I fall back. He nods.

+Later. Later we will help each other. Now we must
rest.+ I see, for the first time, his own fatigue.

He rises and leaves. The woman follows, and I am left
alone with Sandor. He dresses the cut on the back of my
neck, and then we sit on the couch exhausted, falling
rapidly toward sleep. A sleep without dreams. A sleep with
hope for waking on the other side.

Before the world fades, I catch a glimpse of Sandor,
and memory gleams bright and unclouded and whole, like a
jewel. I think he will not be leaving soon, and for the

first time in weeks, I am happy.

The End.

117

Bearing The Pattern

by
G. Scott Huggins

The gun was heavy, and little drOps.of water:
perspiration, trickled from above the trigger down to my
hands, tickling all the way down to my elbows. 1 came to
the balls of my feet. Footsteps. Soft footsteps, just
around the corridor.

It had taken all my patience to let him come to me.
And he had. Slowly, I gathered air in my lungs.

I leapt. ’

Everything happened together: the hallway leapt into
focus and with it Heath, eyes going wide at my yell, then
another high yell, a yellowish-white blur in front of my
face and then stinging pain and numbness all up my wrists as
the gun was ripped from my hands to clatter against the far
wall. The momentum of my leap carried me across the

corridor, where I landed squarely on my ass.

118

"What the hell. . . " I spluttered, looking up, and
froze.

About ten centimeters from my nose hung three thin,
silvered blades. They bobbed a little from side to side,
warping my crazily elongated reflection when they moved.
Beyond them, a curiously small, pale face stared down.

Out of my peripheral vision, I could just see Heath
staring, mouth open, his own watergun hanging limply in his
fingers. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the owner of the
blades.

She was almost kneeling, but was still about one and a
half meters tall. She was holding the blades in her right
hand -- no, the blades were fixed to her wrist above her
right hand, and she was holding her forearm with her left.

Both arms were encased in bone.

In fact, she was encased in bone. From her neck down
to her false ribs, she was a single plate of dun armor,
thick enough to give only a vague impression of the breasts
that lay beneath. A joint revealed a series of smaller
plates, reaching down from her sternum at the apex to down
between her legs. Between her legs there was nothing but a
small knob of bone. Her legs were also armored: a ridge of
bone the thickness of a femur ran the length of each, broken
only at the knee joint. Her feet were a series of thin,
interlocking surfaces. Now I could see that her arms were
more lightly armored, wrapped in spiderweb frameworks of

supporting bone, like a grid. Between the grid supports,

119

the armor was about the thickness of a fingernail. Her
elbows and shoulders were heavily knobbed. Three large
sections, like huge vertebrae, climbed up her neck, the last
of which arced high over her head, splitting her black hair
down the middle. Thin runners of bone branched to the
sides, leaving shoulder length hair to grow from the sides
of her head.

Of course, I had heard about military bioarmor. This
was the first time I’d ever seen it.

Now she rose, and I could see she was well over two
meters tall. "Excuse me," she said. Her voice was soft,
but cool. "You startled me. I did not mean to hurt you."

I let out a long, shuddering breath and flexed my
fingers. The feeling was returning in a rush of needles.
Nothing hurt, but they wouldn’t stop shaking. I closed them
into fists behind me and got up. "Uh, I’m all right."

Heath made a noise like a strangled gurgle.

She seemed to scratch the plate on the top of her head.
"I must be more careful," she said absently, almost like she
was talking to herself. She said, "I’m slightly nervous
today. It won’t happen again.

"I see," I lied. My mouth switched to autopilot.
"Well, as long as we’ve met, I’m Carl Shire. This is my
friend, Heath." I extended my hand automatically.

She hesitated, then took it. Her hand was small, warm,

dry and completely normal to the touch. Over it there was a

120

cuff of bone and three slits that just might be housings for
blades. I fought not to stare.

"Marta Krovikian." She turned and offered her hand to
Heath, who gingerly took it.

"Are you visiting a friend?" I asked. No one else was
in the room. She must have been standing right in the
doorway when I’d jumped around the corner.

"I am a student like yourself.” Her voice was flat.

"I thought that all soldiers had their armor removed
before mustering out." The words were out before I knew it,
and I wished I hadn’t said them. Her eyes arched.

"I chose not to," she said, slightly louder, now,
looking around. I followed her gaze.

The hallway had about ten people in it, all in various
stages of moving in. Every eye was on her, a tower of
reinforced ivory filling the door to her room.

"well, it was, uh, nice to meet you. I’ve lived here
for a year. My door’s open if you have any questions." She
said nothing. "See you around.” I turned and picked up the
watergun where it had fallen.

It was completely unbroken. I turned back to Marta,
but her door was closed. Heath and I looked at each other,
and I followed him back to his room.

I stepped over the boxes and sat in the room’s empty

chair, accepting the beer Heath handed me.

121

"Well," I said brightly, "that was interesting." I
took a long pull of the beer to quell the shaking I felt
beginning to crawl up my spine.

"You okay?" Heath asked. "I’ve never seen anyone move
so fast."

"I’m all right. Or will be." At least I thought so.
Now I had time to be scared. To distract myself I asked,
"What do you know about things like that?"

"I know I wouldn’t use ‘things like that’ as a
description where she could hear you.”

My head jerked up. "Hey, I meant the armor, not her."

Heath shook his head. "With that stuff, it’s a little
difficult to make the distinction. Don’t you know?"

"I’m a Poli Sci major, Heath. 1 know how much it
costs, not what it does."

Heath Shook his head in mock sadness, then went on
seriously. "They have to grow that directly onto her own
bones. Her muscles are underneath. Highly augmented. It’s
artificial cell division. So she can’t take it off.“

"I knew that, but not why.”

"Well, it’s hard to explain, but she’s designed to
destroy tanks. Don’t get in another fight with her."

"I didn’t. . . " I began, but saw Heath laughing over
his beer. I gave him a disgusted look, and finished mine.
Then I walked back to my room to finish my own moving in.

It was hot, and I’d suggested the waterfight to cool us both

off. It had worked. I could still feel chills, even if not

122

the way I’d planned. 1 passed Marta’s room several times.
The door remained closed. Eventually, I stopped thinking
about her.

The floor orientation meeting was a week later. Heath
and I were among the last to enter the large, triangular
common room.

Marta protruded in the room like an upthrust rock spire
in a busy harbor. The dun tones of her armor reflected a
red, ghostly reflection of the clear red sunset shining
through the glass. She sat on a chair that was comically
small for her, next to an empty sofa. I circled around in
front of her, taking one of these seats while a large number
of people sat on the floor, a good three meters away. Heath
gave me a look, but followed, sitting on the other side of
me. I smiled at her, and in return got a cold lift of the
eyebrows. Her nostrils flared, as if smelling something
unpleasant. Well, now what had I done?

"I thought I’d approach slowly, from the front, this
time," I said, with a small laugh.

That seemed to do it. A corner of her mouth quirked
upward, and a little of the ice in the royal blue eyes
thawed. I looked around, and became conscious of more eyes.
Measuring eyes. Questing eyes. No one was, of course, rude

or brave enough to stare outright.

123

Under the broken gazes, I began to understand that my
gesture of sitting next to her might have been taken as the
act of a particularly gauche spectator.

I fidgeted uncomfortably with this thought. Marta’s
eyes wandered, but mostly stayed fixed on the door in the
center of the hall: the private apartment of our Resident
Assistant, who was late. I opened my mouth, but then
thought better of it. There was no time to explain about
Peacey, anyway, and she was coming in the door as soon as I
abandoned the notion.

Paige Crenner was a tall blonde with the tendency to
remind one of a crane, in both senses of the word. She was
striking, and aware of the fact. She were her hair in short
spikes, except for thin, trailing wisps that ran to waist
length. Her clothing almost always conformed to the lines
of her body, which was in very good shape, thanks both to
nature and the fact that she was a karate instructor. Hoops
hung and protruded: ears, nose, eyebrow.

Except for her current girlfriend, Nenya, everyone
called her Peace, after her initials and politics.

She sat down languidly, next to Nenya, and began her
speech about how she welcomed everyone to Kassebaum Hall and
Kansas State University, how honored she was to be the RA
this year, et multiple cetera. Soon, she turned to the
obligatory beginning-of-the-year, state-your-name-and-major
ritual. "First of all, I’m Peace Crenner, and this is my

partner, Nenya. I’m the president of Free Women For Choice

124

on campus, majoring in sociology. I’m on the Debating Team,
I’m the treasurer for the Separate Society here, and I like
to do work for the Green party. Okay, next, please?” She
turned with a smile to a morose looking freshman on her
right.

I was still trying to think of worthy things to say
about myself when Marta stood. There was a swish of indrawn
breath. Sitting beside her in an open room, I felt even
smaller than I had a week ago.

"My name is Marta Krovikian," she said, just loud
enough to be heard. "1 am a former combat specialist in the
United States Army. For those of you not familiar with it,
I am currently bearing the Standard Combat Growth Pattern of
Osteoplastic Armor. It functions as a bodily organ, much as
your skin does. It permits full range of motion." Just
slowly enough for the eye to follow, she spun on one foot,
collapsing to a crouch, and then reaching up to touch the
ceiling. ”Like so. In addition, the Pattern provides for
unarmed combat." '

She twitched her fingers, and all six of the blades I
had seen a week ago unfolded over her shielded knuckles.
Then she turned so that the back of her head was to most of
the room, and pointed to three tiny gleaming black spheroids
mounted on the back of the skull crest. "These simple eyes
give me the ability to detect motion beyond my normal range

of vision.

125

"I realize that I look unusual in this setting, and
wish to allay anyone’s anxieties now. Having done so, the
subject need not be raised again. Unless there are any
questions?" She surveyed the room, almost daring.

Peace raised a hand. Her expression was unreadable:
perfectly neutral.

"Could you tell us why you still wear your armor?"

Marta regarded her calmly. ”I bear the Pattern," her
stress on the verb was slight "because I choose to." There
was an instant of tension between the two women. Then Peace
inclined her head, seemingly in acknowledgement, though what

she was acknowledging, 1 could not then have said.

Two weeks later, I saw Marta in the hall while taking
out the trash. It was the first time I’d seen her since the
floor meeting. She was either out or in most of the time.
Nobody knew which. Nobody ever knocked on her door, as far
as I could tell.

The empty bucket in her hand said that she had just
done the same thing. As I dumped my can, a small piece of
paper with hasty writing on it caught my eye. I picked up
the crumpled thing and straightened it out without thinking.

It said: "Armered Bitch Go Home."

I was actually surprised. I shouldn’t have been.

Despite its success, the South China War had made the

126

military unpopular. I heard it in my classes: War was
unnecessary, soldiers were unnecessary. After Nato put down
the Czar in 2025, the problem was worse. But I had tuned it
out. Few people cared, at Kansas State. Fort Riley museum
was occasionally vandalized, but the ROTC program was very
small and ignored.

But now I was surprised. It had gotten personal. I
put my trashcan back in my room and went to Marta’s door. I
knocked loudly, and realized, to my horror, that I had no
idea what I was going to say.

I didn’t even know why I was doing it. I didn’t know
Marta. Maybe she deserved it. Maybe I just didn’t like her
getting picked on.

Maybe I liked sticking my nose into other people’s
problems. I was a Poli Sci major.

A muffled, "Open," reached my ears, and the door slid
aside. She looked at me across one of the small, standard-
issue tables that come in every dorm room, crouched over it
on the chair, knees high, looking much like a praying
mantis. On the table was a chess board with half the pieces
remaining, interlocked in patterns of block and attack.
Unfinished work glowed above the computer.

"Yes?" she asked in her perpetually neutral voice.

Like a drowning man, I grasped at the board presented
to me. "Chess problem, or unfinished game?" I asked in

return.

127

"Problem, actually. I pulled it off The Fifth Net."
she said, looking at me measuringly. "You play?"

"In high school, I did." I looked at the pieces, and
the problem appeared. "Queen to king’s. . ." I broke off.
I had just set white up for Checkmate. 1 was rewarded by
one of Marta’s tight smiles.

"That’s the obvious. Next guess?"

"It’s got to be a pawn move, it’s always a pawn move,"
I muttered, social problem forgotten in favor of chess
problem.

"Be my guest," she said.

I went through all the possibilities, none of which
were useful, most of which were fatal. We stared at the
board together for long moments. Then I bowed my head,
laughing quietly. "Oh, tricky," I said. Marta looked at me
quizzically. "Queen takes bishop."

Marta looked at me like I’d gone insane. "Rook takes
queen."

"Exactly, and now pawn takes pawn. . ."

"Oh!" Marta’s eyes flashed. "Very good," she said,
after a minute. ”Would you care for an entire game?"

"Sure." She yielded the chair to me and moved the
table so that she could sit on the bed. The game opened
fast, and I found myself taxed merely to stay on the
defensive. I sighed in mock irritation as I sent a knight
to cover my threatened bishop. "Don’t you have work to do?"

I asked facetiously.

128

 

"Yes,” she said, seriously, "but chess has always
helped me to relax when things get tense."

"Relax?" I asked. She nodded. I fished out the
crumpled sheet of paper from my pocket. "Would this be one
of the reasons things are getting tense?"

She took the sheet of paper and scowled darkly. "Where
did you get this?"

"You dropped it by the trash."

"What right have you to intrude in my affairs?"

"Look, I just wanted to help. . .”

"I don’t need your help."

This wasn’t going the way I had thought it would. "No
one says you do, but I didn’t think. . ."

"Correct, you didn’t. I think you should leave."

"Marta,” I began. She rose and looked down on me.
Hard.

"Out."

I stood, moving very slowly. What exactly triggered
those combat reflexes? I hoped it wasn’t anger. ”Very
well," I managed. "I apologize deeply for troubling you
with my assistance." I turned my back to her and left. The
door shut behind me. Nenya was walking by, and she gave me
a supercilious glance.

I wanted to hit something. Dammit, I’d done the right
thing. Or I’d tried to. And she’d made me look like an
ass. But she’d been hurt, too. I didn’t know whether to be

angry at her or pity her.

129

 

The next day, I saw another note on her door, and
checking quickly to make sure she wasn’t around, I peered at
it closely. This one said: IRON MAIDEN BABY KILLER.

Disgusted, I ripped the note down and tore it up.
Because she still didn’t deserve it, I was sure of that.

Two hours later, while poring over a download from the
library, there was a buzz at the door.

"Open!" I sang out. The door slid open, and Marta
ducked under the doorframe. For a minute, I was afraid that
she had somehow seen me take the note from her door, and was
come to talk about more "interference," but she didn’t look
angry.

”Yes?" I inquired, politely.

"I’ve come to apologize," she said, in that same flat
tone that never altered. "You were concerned. I appreciate
that. I. . . sort of acted on instinct. I won’t say that
it won’t happen again. But I should not have been angry."

Against all logic, I was smiling. "WOn’t you sit
down?"

"Actually," she said, giving me that smile that looked
like she was afraid of breaking her mouth, "I was hoping
you’d come back over. I’d hate you to think that you could
get out of losing to me at chess by getting yourself thrown
out of my room."

"I was hoping you wouldn’t see that," I mock-groaned.

"I almost didn’t," she said, softly.

130

I continued the game of chess and won it. We played
again, and she put me soundly back in my place. Then it was
time for class, and 1 left.

She never knocked on my door again. But I watched
hers. And every two or three days, there’d be something new
on it. Obscene cartoons, sometimes, but mostly invitations
for the homicidal, armor-plated, baby-killing bitch to go
fuck herself. I pulled them down.

The next week, I got two myself, one calling me a
warmonger and the other depicting me with a drill between my
legs trying desperately to penetrate the shell of some
mutant crab thing. I spat and trashed them, thinking black
thoughts about Nenya, and whoever she’d told.

Conversations tended to stop when Marta Krovikian
entered a room. No one dared stare at her, but they didn’t
want to talk around her, either. Even Peace, who at least
always greeted people, seemed to find other things to occupy
her attention when Marta was there. But at least she left
Marta alone. So I thought.

One day, after a chess game, on our way to the dining
hall, Peace passed us. She mumbled greetings. Marta waited
until she was gone. "She is annoying," she said.

I agreed, but was surprised to hear that statement come
from Marta, who I didn’t think had been around long enough
to learn that.

"What makes you say that?" I asked automatically.

131

"She’s like a friend I had, once." Her eyes focused on
a point somewhen long ago. "She. . . surrounds herself with
mirrors, and builds up images before her, of how things
should be. She doesn’t care about the way things are. Or
the way they might want to be."

I was amazed. "Marta," 1 said, "you’re a poet."

I got a quirky smile and a shake of the head.

"Has she been bothering you?"

"She wants me to visit some of the groups she belongs
to."

"Well, in fairness to the groups, their members can’t
all be as, ah, emphatic as Peacey."

"Their mirrors won’t reflect me."

”What, are you a vampire?" I laughed.

Coldly: "I may have tasted enough blood to qualify.”

"I was kidding," I sighed.

"I know." Now the smile was sad. "I didn’t drink any
of it except my own. I guess I don’t qualify."

"I guess not," I hesitated. "Marta, if I may, I think
you could stand to take the world less seriously. You could
even laugh once in a while."

She stopped. "The world is serious, Carl. The world
is deadly serious about everything it does. Even when it
laughs, the world never forgets how important it is. You’re
intelligent enough: but you haven’t learned that."

Annoyed, I let it drop.

132

The place was full, and there were no free tables. We
got our meals and sat with the rest of the sixth floor in
its traditional corner table. For once, conversations
didn’t stop. Peace was giving some poor freshman her Views.

”. . . oh, but you’re male. You obviously have great
understanding of women who want to be sistermothers. What
gives you the right to an opinion?"

"The Constitution," Marta interrupted, not looking up.
I winced. Well, Marta had to learn, sooner or later.

"The Constitution?" Peace repeated blandly, rolling
her eyes. "A piece of paper created by white males to
legitimize their own power. It doesn’t even guarantee civil
rights for women. I thought about being a sistermother
once," she said, turning back to her original opponent. "I
guess you think I’m not capable of raising a child?"

"That’s not what I meant."

"Well, it’s what you said!" Peace bridled. "Maybe if
people would pay more attention to what they say, we
wouldn’t have a need for people to wear things like Marta
does."

Marta slowly turned her head to face Peace squarely.

"I swore an oath to defend the ideals on that ‘piece of
paper.’ And the Pattern is descended from an art form older
than language. Its kind will not be removed from the earth
through controlling language. What we say does not start

wars: what we do, does."

133

Peace smiled and put a hand gently on Marta’s ribbed
shoulder. "Well, of course they made you swear an oath, but
people are more important than ideals. They wouldn’t let
you into their army without. . ."

"Take your hand off me."

Peace froze. The massive forearm swung up and knocked
her fingers aside.

"Off!" There was a moment of charged silence. Marta
spoke again.

"What do you mean, ‘their army?’"

Peace drew her hand back and looked hurt. "Well, I was
only trying to be helpful!" she buffed. "Their army, of
course, the army of this country that uses people to oppress
people, all over the world!”

Marta raised a massive fist. She spread her fingers.
”Very well. I see that you believe me to be," She ticked
the points off on her fingers. "A tool, a traitor, and
possibly an idiot. Which is it, please?"

"I never said. . ."

"You most certainly did. Only a tool would swear a
coerced oath. Only a traitor would permit her use against
her own. Only an idiot would Swear an oath without knowing
its implications. 1 ask again, which do you take me for?"

Peace’s look changed to one of purest sympathy. "I’m
so sorry. I didn’t realize what they must have put you
through. It’s not surprising that you feel a kind of

loyalty, it’s a common technique. . ."

134

"Stop it!" But Marta’s voice was softer, and she spoke

as if to a child. "‘Their’ army didn’t do anything to me.

I neither need nor want your excuses. I am what I am.

Would you want me," she glanced at Nenya, "making excuses to
people here for what you are?"

Peace’s face became deadly expressionless. "Oh. I
see. Simple heterosexual bigotry. Well, I was born
lesbian: I have a right to be who I am, and I’m proud of
it!"

"There we have the difference and the likeness between
us, then," said Marta, calmly. "I was not born the way I
am. It’s not natural. But I, too, have the right to be
what I am. I, too, am proud of it."

Peace stood. "Proud? You’ve subjugated your body to
those who buy only death!" She strode out of the dining
hall. Nenya half-rose, looking at Marta in fear, anger, and
something else. Then ran to follow her partner.

"Better the body than the mind," Marta said quietly,

and went on eating. Conversation did not resume.

From then on, the number of notes on Marta’s door, and
mine, doubled.' A letter to the editor denounced the "hate
language" used by "a militarist" to insult a "dedicated,
open-minded woman" like Peacey. About four days later,

though, as I reached to take yet another piece of paper off

135

of her door, I paused. The script was neat and even, not

jagged and hurried:

"Individualism is a fatal poison. But individuality is
the salt of common life. You may have to live life in
a crowd, but you do not have to live like it, nor
subsist on its food. You may have your own orchard.
You may drink at a hidden spring. Be yourself if

you would serve others."

-- Henry van Dyke

An ally? But who? I didn’t care. I hoped it would do
some good.

Two days later I saw the results. Marta Krovikian
stepped into the lobby -- in blue.

She was everywhere blue. The ribs of her arms: the
plates of her legs and torso. The ridges were highlighted
with white and lighter blue, while joints and gutters were
velvet navy -- almost black. A dark, double-beaked,
abstract bird-of-prey launched skyward on her chest plates.
Only on her face, hands, and exposed neck was there no trace
of color.

She gazed defiantly into the lobby, a third-full with
morning studiers and breakfast-goers. Slowly, a low clap
rang out, and then another. Then the whole lobby was

applauding. She gave the lobby an amused half-smile with a

136

gracious bow of the head. She took the step that put her
beside me.

"Shall we eat?” she asked quietly. I bowed deeply to
hide my blush. When I looked up, I saw Peace standing in
her doorway. There was a look on her face I couldn’t
interpret. Rage mixed with knowledge of a defeat, mixed
with. . . what? I gave her a wide smile as the elevator
door opened, and about ten people, including Marta, stepped
inside.

The questions around Marta changed. It wasn’t, "What
kind of person goes around in armor anymore?" It was,
"Where did you learn to do that?" To this, Marta only
answered that she had had little formal training. And I
began to notice that while I was still removing hate mail
from her door, there was much less of it. Sometimes, there

were things like this:

"Genius is the power of lighting one’s own fire."

-- John Foster

It was the same person who had written the first note.
Whoever it was, I wanted to meet that person. Being Marta’s
friend was hard work. Just below it was one saying: 30,000
DEAD IN TWO WARS. HOW MANY MORE WILL YOU KILL?

I mentioned it in the caf one day when I was eating

with Heath.

137

"I’m glad someone’s been able to break through to her,"
he said, chewing on an alleged dinner roll. ”No one should
be alone that much. But she sort of does bring it on
herself."

I nodded, even though his remark grated on me. Did she
really? Was it her attitude, or just her armor that kept
people away. 1 said, "I wish she were a little more alone,
in a way. Those notes get pretty vicious."

I looked up and saw Nenya sitting down about three
chairs down from me. I felt anger flare up in me. I’d
pulled a swastika off my door just two days back, and I was
pretty sure she was one of the chief rumor mongerers about

everything that allegedly happened between me and Marta.

A couple of days later, I was playing chess with Marta
in her room. She was quiet, even for her, looking blankly
at the board. Her blue eyes contrasted with the flowing
blue-purple-black color scheme of her armor.

She advanced a knight. I began considering the
implications, when I heard her say softly, "I have been
unwise."

I looked at the board more intently. ”If that move was
a mistake, I don’t see it. . ."

"Not about the game, Carl." I forgot the board.

"Is there something wrong?"

138

"Possibly." She looked away for a moment, and then
said, “You know the old man who preaches at the Union?"

I felt my eyes roll. ”Oh, yeah.‘I Fred Merrun was the
progeny of an old-time preacher family who had made it their
personal crusade to deliver the student body of Kansas State
from their sinful ways, real or imaginary, for literally
generations.

My imagination caught up with me. “What did you do?" I
asked, trying to fight a smile that was forming somewhere
around my stomach. Marta actually looked guilty.

"Well, I wouldn’t have done anything,” she said, "but
there I was just walking by when he pointed me out, and
standing there with those thick glasses, yelling about how
I’d disfigured the temple of God by bearing the Pattern,
and. . . so. . ." The words came out in a rush. "So I
walked up to him, told him his glasses didn’t suit his
temple very well either, and before I knew what I was doing
I’d grabbed them off his face and thrown them over Anderson
Hall. It wasn’t my fault that he tried to hit me and just
about broke his hand. Stop laughing!"

I did, instantly, at that tone of voice. Her blue eyes
blazed fiercely. "I could have killed him," she whispered.
”He could have died right there in my hand. Because I was
angry."

I began to see. I’d dreamed of hitting Fred Morrun: I
didn’t know anyone who hadn’t, but this. . . "I’m sorry," I

said.

139

"It’s all right. I decided to tell you." She paused.
"And I suppose, from your point of view, it was funny."

The door chimed.

Marta blinked, then said, "Open."

It was Peace. I felt my stomach sink.

Peace looked at us both, and raised an eyebrow. Then
she decided to ignore me.

"Yes?" said Marta.

"I. . . wanted to tell you how sorry I am about what I
said earlier. I mean. . . I heard about what you did to
that asshole by the Union. I didn’t mean to hurt you.

Well, I did, but I didn’t understand you then. I was hoping
that we could be friends."

Marta looked up, then away. "Neither understanding nor
being friends is an easy thing, with me. But your apology
is accepted."

"May I. . . sit down?"

Marta gestured. Peace sat.

"Marta, I don’t want to impose on you, but I would like
you to help us. You showed today that we can use men’s
weapons against them. You’re really very inspiring."

Marta tilted her head. "Whom do you mean by ‘us?’
Inspiring to do what? Act against men? I don’t act against
men. I acted against a man, and only because he was being a
hypocrite in public, and using me for an example. If you

want action against men, you’re far more effective."

140

Peace sat a little straighter. "Ah, but not as
effective as you could be. That armor of yours. . . you’ve
made it a wholly feminine power. I was wrong about that,
before."

Marta frowned. She carefully picked up her queen from
the board and held it up to the light.

"It’s all a game to you, isn’t it? You don’t want a
friend. You want a playing piece. And here I am. So well
positioned: your lady in painted armor. But every queen
starts out as a pawn. Thank you, but I do not want to be
yours." She wrapped her fingers around the piece. "Why do
you hate them so much?"

Peace’s face flushed dark and when she spoke it was low
and ugly. "You know, or should. Men are rapists. Nenya
knows. Because they cause the wars that plague half the
world. Because they use all of their strength, even our
strength, to subjugate us, to keep us as chattels. Isn’t
that reason enough?"

I rose to leave. Marta looked up. "Sit down, Carl."

It was less than a command: more than a request. Her
face was even harder now. She turned to Peace, almost
gently. "Do you really believe that women would do it
better? Not differently, but better?"

Peace leaned closer, and clasped Marta by the forearm.
"Of course we would, we could. . ."

"Take your hands OFF ME!"

141

Peace recoiled, but found herself caught by a twist of
Marta’s wrist, gripping hers like a vise. A broken, jagged
look was on Peace’s face as she stared into Marta’s eyes,
and I knew: Peace was in love with Marta Krovikian! But
there was not, could not be reciprocation. . .

Marta leaned into Peace’s face, holding her painfully.
"Don’t you see," she hissed, "that if a man did to you what
you are doing to me, you would call it assault? Don’t hear
yourself becoming what you hate?"

Peace lost all semblance of composure. ”But we’re
women! We don’t destroy everything we touch! We’re not
like them!" she cried furiously.

Marta’s face went terrifyingly blank. She took the
point of Peace’s jaw gently in her hand and turned it up to
face her. "Never tell me that again. And never return."

"No, wait. . ." But there was no waiting. Marta
altered her grip, forcing Peace to her feet with a gasp of
pain. Marta marched her through the door.

"Out! Look!" The door closed and locked, shutting out
the sight of Peace slumping against the opposite wall.
Marta took two steps back, unseeing, and folded herself on
the bed. She put her head in her hands, and began massaging
her face, and then her hands together, and then her face,
and lower neck. Her hands seemed to recoil from the armor,
and at the same time seemed to try to cover every exposed
area of her body.

"Marta?"

142

She jumped and stared at me. For the smallest second,
I knew what it was to be the target of a deadly weapon.

"Carl.” She took a deep breath. "I don’t think I can
finish our game right now."

"We can’t anyway," I said, trying to force a lighter
tone. "You’ve broken the queen."

Marta opened her fist and looked at the splintered
plastic as if she’d never before seen such a thing. "I’m
sorry," she said quietly. But she didn’t seem to be
speaking to me. I felt cold. She looked scared.

She put the pieces on the board, and took a bottle from
under her bed, and filled a low tray with the liquid. She
dipped a dirty washcloth into the solution, and began
cleaning her right leg. Where the solvent touched her
armor, the intricate, rounded, purple-blue-black enamel
dissolved and ran, leaving clean, yellow-white organic.

"What are you doing? Marta, this isn’t because of that
idiot in the Union is it? You couldn’t have taken that
seriously?"

"No, but I take that seriously," she said sadly, not
stopping, and gesturing toward the door. "I take those
seriously." She pointed to her desk, and I noted a pile of
papers on it, all Sizes. I looked through them.

I’d never seen such a differing array of messages.
There were notes: all the kinds I’d torn from her door and
many others that I’d never seen, proposing everything from a

date to crude sex to undying love. What in the world?

143

Marta was looking at me with one of her small smiles.
"Well, don’t look so surprised, Carl. Even your efforts
can’t stop people sliding them under the door." I winced.
For all my self—congratulation, 1 had simply never thought
of that. Somewhere among the hundreds of notes, it dawned
on me that Marta was many things to many people, and all in
their minds. They built castles around her, put swords in,
her hands, killed her, and removed her armor with their
minds, thousands of them. Because whatever else you could
do with Marta Krovikian, you couldn’t ignore her. Not and
still be alive.

"I understand," I said again. My eyes burned. Her
legs were yellow-grey again, and the color was being
stripped from her arms.

”No, you don’t, and neither does she, and neither do
they. This," she indicated the tessallations on her armor,
"was a mistake. All I want: all I have wanted, is to be
left alone, and none of them will ever understand. I really
want to be alone, Carl. It’s what I’ve wanted for so long
that I don’t remember the last time I was lonely. I can
barely comprehend the concept. And it seems that they
either hate me for it. . . or don’t believe it’s possible."

"I don’t hate you for it."

”No, you don’t."

"Then if you want to be alone so much, why do you

tolerate me?"

144

”You let me be alone with you, Carl." She looked at a
far point on the ceiling. "You don’t demand. I suppose
that’s why, here, you’re the closest thing to a friend I
have."

I didn’t feel offended. I just nodded, and rose.

"Call me when you’re ready to play." I think it was at that

moment that I finally began to understand Marta Krovikian.

But she was right, nobody else did. They were curious
as to her sudden reversion to type, but their questions,
polite or probing, were rebuffed, with increasing intensity.
It didn’t work in her favor. 1 could see the fame she had
won facing the dear Reverend deteriorating into something
worse than ambivalence. Her reputation as something cold
and inhuman was back. And there was something worse. A
directed enmity marshalled against her, and it lived on the
floor, in the big room off the common area. I was reminded
of the proverb of what Hell hath no fury like when I saw
Peace looking at Marta Krovikian. That was certainly
something that wasn’t restricted to one orientation. And
why was I surprised about that?

The notes started to reappear. It was about that time
that I caught one of the perpetrators. I had just turned
off the light when I heard a soft step in the hall. Ever so

faintly, there was a scratching. I walked to the door and

145

looked through the peephole. Someone was holding a piece of

paper on Marta’s door, working on a message. I was just

sleepy enough to be pissed and heedless. I opened the door,‘

stepped out, and spun my victim around by the arm in one
smooth motion. "What the fuck do you think. . ?" The words
died in my throat as my grip was expertly broken. I backed
off quickly and came up with my fists raised, one tingling
badly.

Nenya stood facing me, her face a mask of rage, her own
stance promising a much more refined way of fighting. I was
much stronger than she was. But I remembered Peace’s black
belt. "So Peacey can’t even write her own shit these days,
is that it?" I asked, breathing heavily.

Then I noticed the large blue splotch below Nenya’s
left eye, how thin and drawn she looked. I saw the note

where it had fallen by the door:

"No one respects a talent that is concealed."

-- Desiderius Erasmus

"Holy shit," I breathed. "It’s you. Why?"

She stared defiantly up at me. "As if you could ever
understand." She shook her head. "Step back."

Without thinking, I did so, and she picked up the note,
fixed it to the door. Looking me straight in the eye, she
said, haltingly, "I. . . ask you. . . not to tell Peace

about this."

146

Imm

I felt my eyes widen. "You mean she doesn’t know? And
she still. . ." Nenya blushed, the bruise dark against her
cheek. I shut up.

“The day I tell Paige Crenner anything I think she
wants to know will see a wind chill factor in Hell," 1 said
evenly.

She nodded, straightened, and left. I went back to
bed. 1 was a long time getting to sleep.

Nenya’s secret efforts did not hinder Peace. It took
time, but there were complaints. A couple of residents
expressed misgivings about living in the same building with
a person who was so effectively armed. Armed deliberately,
if stories told by the Army were true, to kill armed
opponents. Not long thereafter, an open letter, put forward
by the Separate Society, appeared on the editorial page of
the school paper expressing its "real regret that the
relevant authorities have not seen fit to insure the
security of the majority of students in regard to keeping
campus free of weapons."

Once started, the thing proceeded with alarming speed.
Rumors mentioning Marta Krovikian by name began to
circulate, always in vague terms, alleging ”threats." other
groups on campus began also to show their "concern," as
well. And when the opportunity presented itself, Peace
acted. One day, the paper mentioned a minor, drunken brawl.

One of the residents had pulled a folding knife, and had

147

been arrested. 1 was in the room, sitting, as usual, over
the chess board when the door chime sounded.

"Open."

Peace stepped into the room, and there was nothing of
peace in her face. It was a mask, hard as ivory. Marta
stood, eyes blazing. "I told you not to return.”

"I’m afraid you don’t have that right, Ms. Krovikian.
I am a Resident Assistant and have the authority to enter
the residents’ rooms for the welfare of the students."

"Really? And what might justify concern over student
welfare here? Is playing chess dangerous?"

"I have reason to believe that there are weapons in
this room.”

Marta spat. "Yes, you would believe that, wouldn’t
you? Be my guest." She swept a hand around the room.

"I don’t think a search will be necessary. There are
six knives, right in plain sight."

Marta’s eyes narrowed. I didn’t get it either. "What
do you mean?”

"On your wrists, there. Three on each hand. It is
against the rules of this hall to keep weapons in the rooms
of residents."

Marta slowly made a fist and the three mirrored blades
slid into view. "You aren’t talking about these?" Her
voice was frozen lead sliding on velvet.

"I’m afraid I am. You will have to give them to me."

"Be careful what you wish for, Ms. Crenner.”

148

”Are you threatening me, Ms. Krovikian?"

"The threat is in the ear of the bearer."

"Then I repeat, you must surrender your weapons.”

"My ‘weapons’ as you call them, are a part of my body.
I believe, in certain circles, your hands and feet are
considered deadly. Do you remove them?"

"Hands and feet are not legally recognized as weapons
by the University," Peace said, primly. "I’m afraid double-
edged blades are.”

"If you have been listening to me at any point in the
year, which I doubt," said Marta, implacably, ”you know that
no part of the Pattern can be removed short of major
surgery."

"Then I’m afraid I’ll have to file a report of
noncompliance with Residence Hall regulations.”

"You go ahead and do that."

Peace was not stupid. Theoretically, she could have
called the police and had Marta Krovikian removed from her
room immediately, but a police officer might not have seen
Peace’s brand of reason. Therefore, a report was filed
through campus authorities. Protests were raised. In less
time than I believed possible, the bureaucracy, motivated by
hundreds of correct shoves at the right time, reacted.

Marta stood in my room holding a sheet of paper one week
later. She ran her hand over her exposed face, probing the
flesh. She sighed, and the eyes looking out of that

shielded head were tired. "It appears that our Resident

149

Assistant has won. I am to present myself to the student
tribunal. I must prove that I am no danger to the student
body. Failing to appear will result in discharge from the
hall."

"You can prove you’re no danger, can’t you?" I asked
hopefully.

"Carl, don’t be stupid. Of course not. I am a danger
to the student body. A controlled danger, but I am
dangerous." She sat.

"I underestimated her. She had more resources than I
let myself think. The tribunal will consist of at least a
majority of her allies. They will merely seek to prove that
I can kill a student on this campus, if pressed. And 1 can.
I can kill anyone on this campus, and no one within reach
could stop me." It was not a boast. "And even if they
could find me safe enough to live with, she knows that this
is exactly what I most wish to avoid. She has dragged me
into the spotlight."

"Could you move off campus?"

She laughed bitterly. "Oh, really, Carl! Would I be
on campus if I had another choice? Why would I subject
myself to the stares, the whispers, the thousand invasions,
if I could live alone? But do you think any landlord in
town had a room for me? Strangely enough, they were all
filled the second I walked in the door."

"Why are you here, Marta?"

"I just told you. . ."

150

"I don’t mean the dorms. Why are you here? In school.
Why don’t you just become a hermit someplace quiet? If you
hate being around people so much, then why are you even
here?"

Her face had turned the color of concrete at noon. ”I
thought you were my friend, Carl."

"The only one you have, and I’d really hate it if you
had to leave, so stop trying to distract me and answer the
question." I began to have that detached, two-seconds-
after-the-car-wreck feeling.

”I’m not independently wealthy,” she started.

"Oh, stop. You called me intelligent once, don’t
pretend you were lying now. You could make a decent living
holding cars up one-handed for a mechanic who can’t afford a
hydraulic lift if you wanted to: why are you here? What’s
more important to you than your solitude?“

"I don’t want to be just a tower of armor for the rest
of my life, Carl!" she snapped. "Maybe I’m trying to deal
with this the best way I know how. I thought college would
be. . . different, somehow. Maybe I’m naive." Her voice
had softened.

"Good, at least now I know you won’t just give up." I
picked up the letter. "This is bullshit, you know. If
anyone but you faced this kind of prejudice, Peace and her
friends would fall over themselves helping you. Let’s use
their own arguments against them. They want fair, we’ll

give them fair."

151

"How?"

Feeling giddy with the surreal feeling of absolute
hopelessness, I stood. ”My lady, I am a. . ."

"Poli Sci major," she said with me, rolling her eyes.

"And," I continued, "this sort of bullshit is my
business. I do not intend to have my chess partner kicked
out from under her roof without a fight. Come with me."

An eyebrow raised. "Where are we going?"

"We’re going to the library. Then we’re going to the
Student Senate and look for precedents. Then we’re going to
find manifesti from every group that’s crucifying you and
hoist them on their own petards."

"We’re going to lose, Carl. We have a week."

"And what are you going to do with it, lie down and
die?" I snapped.

The quirky smile I knew so well finally reappeared.
"Lead on. I suppose I might as well learn some research
before I get kicked out of school."

That night, I plowed through the library looking for
anything that would help us. I looked up legal precedents,
anatomical definitions, statements of purpose, anything. At
three in the morning I read the same sentence five times and
sleepily suggested we call it a night.

"Oh, by the way, Marta. . ."

"Yes?"

"Whatever you use on that Pattern of yours, to decorate

it? Use it. From now until the hearing."

152

"Carl, we’ve been through that. It’s over."

"No. Public opinion is important on this. You had a
lot more allies than you can believe simply because of how
you looked. One of the rumors going around is that you’re
still on active duty and were ordered by your superiors to
stop defacing the uniform. That’s bad. Admittedly, it
won’t be much, but it’s got to help."

We took it up at noon the next day. Marta appeared in
brilliant pigments, an explosion of red and black in a fiery
pinwheel that licked up her limbs, moving with her. We
worked through that night and started another day.

By eight on the third night I had enough material to
choke several committees and was starting to formulate my
plan of attack. But I had to have a break before I went on.
I couldn’t take any more chess, so Marta suggested that we
go down to the weight room.

My weight training is strictly low key. I picked up
one of the short arm-curl bars as we entered the empty room
and found a corner. Suddenly, Marta called out, "Catch!”

I jumped and yelled, staggering under the weight of the
ten kaygee bench press bar she threw into my hands. She
picked up its mate, one-handed, and blurred it through the
air, twirling it like a baton. It cracked audibly onto her
right wrist, and she held it like a quarterstaff. She
essayed a shy smile. "I wanted to be a cheerleader, once."

"You what?” Truly ridiculous mental pictures formed in

my mind.

153

"So long ago. So foolish." She looked into the mirror
as if trying to find the past. "We trained with these in
unpowered combat." She began to slide weights onto the two
ends of the metal staff. Twenty kaygees first.

"You don’t mean you hit each other with those?"

"It’s the greatest confidence builder in the world to
be hit by a drill instructor armed with one of these things
and get up with no more than a sore back, Carl."

“What if someone took one in the face?"

"We had visors." She was done. The assembled weight
was at least seventy-five kaygee. Slowly, under her wrist
muscles alone, the massive barbell began to rotate in the
air. She twirled with it, now on one foot, now on the
other. A quiet croon came from between her lips: a long,
wandering descant. Now the weight was twirling very fast,
and she was using her arms, one over the other, to keep it
going.

"These are speed kata exercises in our school of
martial arts. I’m forbidden to teach it, but you certainly
can’t apply it." I nodded mutely. Now the dance became
more intricate, and the weight became a spinning blur,
described by a flashing grey border of moving iron. She
moved to the large punching bag in the center of the room.
Then She started striking. The huge barbell lashed out,
once, twice, three times, and each time it grazed the
surface of the bag, ever so slightly, and a metal on plastic

zing rebounded through the room. Then legs and arms flashed

154

out of the dance, each barely missing contact with the
surface. It went on and on, faster and faster, Marta
dodging the blows of an unseen foe, and then a foot leapt
out of the redblack maelstrom, striking the bag dead center
with a BOOM! The bag jerked, reaching an angle of forty-
five degrees before it swung back~down, meeting the
unyielding rod in the hands of Marta Krovikian. She stopped
it, and then set the barbell down, breathing hard. ”Pity I
had to pull the punches, but a full bar strike would have
split the bag."

”I believe it."

She ran her hand along her opposite arm, along the main
bone crest superior to the ulna. "It’s so incredible, and
yet it cannot keep me safe. It can only keep me whole.”
She-put her hands to her face, then looked at me. "Carl, in
a few days, the questions about the Pattern, and why I bear
it will begin, and I will not be answering them. Do you
know why?"

"You choose not to."

A rueful laugh. "You have been listening. It was
wrong of me to tease you. But you if anyone deserve to
know. And because you do not seek it," she paused as if
before some inner barrier. "I will tell you," she said.

“If you don’t want to. . .”

”Let me." She flicked her blades in and out,

convulsively. "I might not be able to again."

155

I nodded. She sat on a bench-press machine, dwarfing
it.

"My unit was sent in against the New Czar. There
weren’t many of us. There didn’t need to be.

"You’ll never know the confidence we felt that day. We

were killing machines, armed to our artificial teeth. 1

=4

went in with a slow microreactor on my back powering a Gauss

antitank cannon and a flechette thrower that could shred

[rem—'1

anything unarmored. Lasers, grenades. . . oh, we had it
all. Eight-man platoons, traveling in pairs. We ran at
fifty miles an hour, and were sent scouting into the heart
of enemy territory. And Hank and I ran into the center of
the Pit.”

”The Pit?"

"Part of the war you didn’t hear about. The Czar, now,
he wasn’t quite as stupid as you’d have him out to be. The
Custer of Crimea, they called him. Hell, I did, going in.
The war only lasted three days: this was the first of them.
And contrary to the rout you heard about, the Czar’s
soldiers held. They died, but they didn’t rout.

"The Czar was tricky. He had his forces all over the
peninsula, positioned to meet our beachhead. So Hank and I
went in from the coast, around the curve of the Black Sea.
What no one knew was that the Czar had militia reserves all
through the desert. The biggest of these, the best armed,
lay hidden, ready to take our lead elements as they pursued

the retreating zashchitniki. This was the Pit. We ran

156

right into the middle of it. We were monitored for about a
hundred miles: never knew it, and then. . . then the forest
came to life.

"There were bunkers, all through the ground, and they
just sprouted, like cottonwood, all at once. Hank and I, we
stood back to back, yelling for backup. They’d jammed the
net. They ran at us waving anything they had: new guns, old
guns, swords, fists. At that range, a flechette gun doesn’t
kill: it. . . strips." She shuddered only slightly, and
went on. ”Skeletons fell at my feet, just like parts made
by robots, and I couldn’t pause to do more than reload. And
reload. Women, children." Her voice was a whisper.
"Reload. Then there were no more reloads. We were in a
hailstorm of fire, but it was too small to really hurt us:
their few heavy weapons couldn’t fire without hitting their
own people in the back. I fought. Hank fought. And then I
couldn’t lift my leg anymore because there were twenty
people holding it down. And then it was like falling in a
screaming ocean. There were a hundred people on each of us.
We weren’t even hurt. But we couldn’t move. They kept us
pinned, and the ones nearest kept. . . kept touching me,
trying to find the joints in the armor, trying to find some
way in. The Pattern was the only thing that kept them out.

”The local commander arrived, too late to salvage Hank.
They’d pretty well torn his helmet off, along with most of
his face. But I was still alive. How could I be kept that

way?" She seemed to shrink.

157

”They drove their one tank across my feet, Carl.
That’s how they kept me there. And even this bone has a
breaking point. My feet were crushed, and the only reason I
didn’t bleed to death in the desert was because our blood is
loaded with coagulants. So I lived. I lived while they
drove trucks over my hands, keeping me spreadeagled on the
sand. I lived and was conscious while they discussed how to
rape me. And the women stood back and provided. . . ideas.
They ordered me to surrender and take off my armor."

"You didn’t surrender."

"I never surrendered." Her teeth showed spasmodically.
"But I lay there helpless while they tried with knives,
swords, rifles. It all just bounced off, even at point
blank range as they tried desperately to penetrate, right
here." She tapped her featureless pelvis. "It only lasted
three hours. That’s all. They felt me, probed me, for
three hours, trying to find the secret. They didn’t. They
got angry. Took off my helmet, broke my jaw, urinated on
me. But at the end, they heard the radio telling them that
they were needed at the front, because the rest of the force
had landed and there weren’t going to be any troops left to
lead anyone into their trap. So the commander ordered their
tank to back off my feet: I nearly passed out from the pain.
I awoke just in time to see them lower the turret gun at the
same point they’d been hammering at all night, and fire."
Her hands went to her face. "I won’t try to describe it.

If it had been a modern round, I’d have been blown in half.

158

But it was an old, light tank. The shell blew the armor in
and left me slowly bleeding to death. Then, they finally
left. By the time the helicopter found me, I was nearly
dead. I survived. They put me back together again. I did
not surrender. I can never surrender. And because the
Pattern kept out those hands, I can’t bear the thought of
losing it. I don’t think I could stand to be touched
without it. The thought of sex. . . you have to surrender,
you see? But sometimes, sometimes I miss feeling." She
held her palms up. "Now you know."

"Now we know." Peace stepped into the room with Nenya
behind her. The door had been closed, so how. . ?

Then I remembered the tiny vents, set low in the doors.
I looked to Marta, betrayed by her own words to a simple
eavesdropper. She rose, and her face was immobile as the
rest of her body.

"Coward," she whispered.

Peace’s jaw dropped, theatrically. "Coward? Coward?
You have the gall to stand there in that abortion of armor
and call me a coward? You slaughter people for pay and call
me a coward?" Her eyes went cool and mocking. "You didn’t
get half what you deserved."

"Dammit, no!" Nenya’s shout wiped the triumph from
Peace’s face, and she looked down on her smaller partner in
disbelief. "What’s happened to you, Paige?" Tears of anger

were running down her cheeks.

159

"I thought we didn’t do this to each other. You told
me we didn’t. You told me it was never our fault! She was
raped, Peace, and you say she deserved it. . .“

She was cut off by Peace’s hand around her throat.

"You little bitch. You think I don’t know you’ve been
looking at her, this whole time?"

Nenya’s hand came around and cracked into the side of
Peace’s head, and she howled. She thrust Nenya from her and
kicked viciously into her stomach. Nenya crumpled. Peace
stood over her, punctuating words with blows: "She. . .
wasn’t raped! She was shot. . . butchering people. . . in
that damned invasion! She’s a traitor. . ."

Then Marta was standing over her, bending Peace’s right
hand back, back away from Nenya. Peace’s scream rose as her
wrist cracked. Somehow, even then, she broke away, and
stood facing Marta, one hand dangling limply, snarling hate.

I leapt up, crying out, "Nb!"

Marta blurred. The women flowed together: Peace’s
karate reflexes trying to block a bioarmor fist. Tin shield
against the cannon. Peace folded over, and horror stared
out of her eyes.

She coughed once, and blood poured down her chin, onto
Marta’s forearm. Three Silver blades were buried in her
lower gut. I was stone.

Marta’s wild eyes stared into Peace’s and whispered,
"This is how it was, and it is not rape?" Peace’s mouth

worked: she coughed. Blood spattered. Marta lifted her, on

160

the blades, off her feet. The world spun, and my stomach
emptied on the floor: still I heard Marta, screaming:

"This is how it was, and it is not rape? Answer me!"

A wet, retching sound: someone trying to inhale.

Marta set her down and pulled the blades out, dripping.
As her opponent fell, she whispered, tears streaming from
her eyes, the words fueled by hate and the last of the air
in her lungs, "That is. . . how it was."

Blood pooled underneath the crumpled form. Nenya
gasped from her place on the floor, staggered to her feet,
and stumbled out the door. Marta looked at her blades, now
red-black with blood. She seemed to wake up from some other
place, and turned to me, almost as if she wanted to ask a
question. Then she collapsed, falling beside Peace.

1 did not pass out. I spent the longest minutes of my
life in a gym waiting for the sirens to arrive, and watching
Marta Krovikian, her rage spent, massaging her face with her

hands.

The police took her away, and she went without
resisting. I was taken too, for questioning. I answered.

"Where is she?" I asked the detective in the brown
suit, when he was done.

"Via Christi, in Wichita. They’re doing all they can."

"I mean Marta."

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"Don’t worry about her," said Brown Suit, grimly.
"We’ll take care of her."

”She’s my friend," I said, softly.

"Oh.” He was startled. Then his eyes narrowed, but
softened at the same time. He spoke into a phone, then
faced me again. "Her attorney’s with her now, but. . . she
isn’t expected to be competent to stand trial. She won’t
talk: hasn’t said a word. Follows simple instructions.
We’re calling a doctor to confirm."

"What happens after that?"

"She’ll be consigned to a hospital, indefinitely, after
they cut her out of that armor."

My mouth went dry. "You can’t do that."

"We don’t have much of a choice, Mr. Shire. We can’t
afford to have mental patients around that stand a good
chance of winning an argument with a tank."

"She’ll die. You’ve got to listen to me, you’ll be
condemning her to death without trial."

"Son, they do this sort of thing all the time," said
Brown Suit, placatingly.

"Not to her! You don’t. . ." I couldn’t go on. "Can
I see her?"

"When they’re done."

Two hours later, I was led to her cell. 1 was
surprised to see a mountain of metal and bone standing
outside of it. But it wasn’t Marta. It was unmistakably

masculine, and even taller than she was. A large, open-

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barrelled, magnetic cannon hung by his side, and there were
corporal’s chevrons on his shoulders. He stared straight
ahead, into the cell, at a point on the wall. Marta was
sitting with her feet up on the bunk, face in her hands.
Her red and black coloring was partially removed in ugly,
dun strips where something had been applied to take the
blood off. Faded red mixed with muddy gray in runners.

"Let me in."

"Oh, no," said Brown Suit, ”Not on your life. I’m not
going to be faced with a hostage situation. She could kill
you by patting you hard."

Anger flooded me. The Detective looked at me as if to
say, "take it or leave it." Then he went out. There was
nothing I could do but look through the bars.

She looked at me with the same old neutral mask on that
she wore every day in public. But now there was a deadness
in the blue eyes. She did not speak.

I knelt down, leaning against the cold bars and
whispered, ”Marta, please, you’ve got to talk to them.
They’ll take away the Pattern without even a trial if you
don’t. They think you’re insane." She looked up, and 1
half expected to see the old quirky smile, and hear her say,
"Are they wrong?"

I didn’t.

"Marta, maybe you can plead temporary insanity, and
I’ll testify all the way to back you up. Please, Marta.

You can’t surrender now. Fight this.“

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Slowly, she stood up. I felt the mountain of the
Corporal turn and move behind me, watching her intently.

Slowly, very slowly, she approached the bars and knelt
opposite me. She looked me in the eyes, her hand emerging
from the cuff of the synthetic bone. Under the three hidden
knives, five soft fingers reached between the steel and
touched my face, sliding along my nose, cheek, and neck,
softly caressing my throat, then my shoulder, then my ribs.

Everything blurred, and her hand traveled back up to
the shoulder, down the arm to the hand. She held my wrist
as if she were afraid of breaking it, and gently pulled my
hand to her face.

I sat unmoving, as she held my hand to her forehead,
closed her eyes, and felt my fingers with her cheek. Then
she dropped my hand, and bent her head, looking down. I
blindly groped my way out of the jail, and before I knew it,
found myself on a street, walking. I didn’t stop until
dawn, in the middle of a field, far away from everything.

A week later, they performed the operation that removed
the Pattern from Marta Krovikian. I tried to see her. I
was told that she was "severely disturbed" and was not
allowed to have visitors. Three days later, I read the
obituary.

The funeral was small. Nenya was there, too. All she
said was, "I’m sorry," and then we cried. We keep in touch.
We remember Marta. There were a few soldiers, ex-soldiers.

They were very cold: distant. I suppose it was only fair.

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Who could tell them differently? We had never borne the
Pattern. Marta bore the Pattern. It destroyed her, and
saved her. It kept her alive and killed her. It was
beautiful, and it was horrible. Marta always talked about
"bearing the Pattern." And Nenya said maybe we all have
one: something that kills even as it strengthens, heals as
it wounds. "Peace was my Pattern," she said. "And Marta
was the way out of it. For better or for worse." I don’t
know what my Pattern might be, but I’m keeping an eye out
for it.

Because if it’s anything like Marta Krovikian, it will

be worth seeing. Whatever happens.

The End

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