Armor

^{PART THREE} PUPPY IN A WELL

I sat slumped on the lounger watching Lya escort the medicos to the seal. She was questioning them urgently under her breath, trying to make sure they had meant it when they had said Holly and I were fine. I looked over at Holly sitting across from me (slumped too) scratching at the residue of paste left on his upper arm from the medigrip. He looked terrible. He was pale and beat and still wet from the sweat. He looked like I felt.

But we were fine, I knew. No matter what the doctors said or thought or anything else. We were fine. I guessed.

The food on the tray they had wheeled in between us was getting cold or hot or whatever was supposed to happen when we hadn’t touched it. Funny. We had been starving when we’d asked for it. The water was long gone though. First thing we had done was drain a pitcher apiece. I pulled out a cigarette. It shook violently along with my hand, either from sheer exhaustion or from the weight of … I dropped it on the tray, unlit.

Holly made some effort to sit straighter. Tried a smile, too. I wondered why he made the effort.

“Well,” he began energetically enough, “that was some ‘brilliant victory’! And Felix was certainly there, despite the official record.” He paused, seeming to run out of steam. He smiled again, this time a little embarrassed. “Well… I guess we can worry about the rest of it next time.”

Our eyes met, held. I nodded. Not in agreement, but at what our mutual gaze had shared: there would be no “next time.” No way.

I stood up slowly but steadily enough. “Tired,” I said and headed for the seal. There was a clock on the wall above it. It said only a little over two standard hours had passed. I stopped, looked back at Holly.

He nodded. “It’s right. It seems like it’s long regular time. But it’s fed to us pretty fast.”

I thought about it. From the ship to… to being alone to the Knuckle and … all that happened there… Two hours! “That’s incredible!” I whispered and continued my old man’s shuffle to the seal.

Behind me, Holly agreed that it was incredible.

Never felt less in tune with my surroundings. I usually hated that. But this time I was too tired to care. I marched numbly through the seals to my suite, idly counting the number of people I passed in the corridors. I caught myself doing it, stopped it, caught myself at it again. So I gave it up. If that’s what my mind wanted to do… Passed twenty-three people altogether.

I went inside and fell into bed, exhausted. I had been up a little over three hours.

Woke up when the screen showed night outside. I lit a cigarette and sat up in bed. But I had to put it out before it was half-finished. I slept again.

Woke up to Karen getting in bed with me. She saw that I was awake and kissed me on the forehead, banging me gently on the tip of my nose with a nipple. Then she snuggled up with her bottom against mine and slept. Like a puppy. Me, too. More hours.

* * * * *

The curved railing around the Dome balcony was made out of something cheap that made a shoddy raucous clang when I gripped it with every ounce of strength in my hands, shook it, shook it, gripped it, gripped it hard! but I didn’t scream. I did not scream for anyone else to hear. I just shook and strained and gripped until I could do nothing but collapse back on my heels and tremble.

Then fell back in a heap and stared through the railings toward the City. I didn’t cry either. I wouldn’t. But….

I took a long deep breath and let it out. I shook my head, held it still. I sighed. I looked up at the stars. They couldn’t help me either.

Dammit, I had always been the toughest man I knew!

Always. No matter how bad it got or hard or wrong or… stupid, sometimes. No matter how bizarre.

I had always known that. So the universe was a swallowing bottomless bitch—I was the toughest man! Not strongest or quickest or smartest or, God knew, best. But toughest? Goddamn yes!

I sat up, leaning against the railing. I put my face in my hands and tried getting down to it.

Could I have done that? Maybe. Maybe I had already; there’d been a lot up to now. But… could I have done it the way Felix had? Which meant: could I have done it while knowing what was going on? While knowing exactly?

I wrenched my hands together in and out. I pounded my fists across the tops of my thighs.

I didn’t think so.

For energy I went to hate. In fear I went animal, to be the Fiend myself, instead of fighting it. Most times I needed nothing but the situation, true. But when it had gotten tight and taut and stayed that way… In the furnace, I had had to pick and duel with each flame. I was never able to face the fire roar. It didn’t make any difference that it was the same fight. It didn’t matter that the end was the same. But the knowing how bad it was and how bad it could be and, dammit!, what I was going to have to do over and over to get out… I had never faced that.

Still, I had always been the toughest man I knew.

Now this Felix faced it all flat as hell, head on and…

and knowing, all along, how dark. He was detached, sure, and serious and separate from the knowing. But all through there was the terror and, most of all, the reason for the terror clear in him.

Facing where he was and fighting too, like some kind of damned engine. …

It would have ripped me apart.

It should have ripped Felix apart.

It hadn’t.

I moaned, gathered my knees into my chest. Damn you! I wanted to shout. It’s not fair! This is all I have!

Because it was getting to him. I could feel it in him. The fear was just as real as it should be. The sense of… hopeless despair, poured from the poor bastard! He knew\ He knew how bad it was! And still he kept at it!

Goddamn him!

I sat there awhile until a little calmer. Holly had been right, of course. This man had died. There was no other way. There was no help for him because there was no faith in him and… no hope for him. And I felt bad about that. About the loss of somebody who was maybe… better.

But I shoved that all away—I had to—and concentrated hard on what I had to do. I had to do it.

I had to see more. Felix was going to die. He had to. But before he did, he was going to crack. And I was going to see it.

You see, I had always been the toughest man I knew.

Lya hated Felix’s Alpha series.

“It’s too great a separation between Motive and Emotional,” she said, shaking her head at a screen glowing before her. She keyed away, shifting graphs and comparison charts and the like with impatience. She had seen it all before, of course. Had studied little else. Maybe she thought looking at it fast enough would help it make sense. At last she keyed the relay off with an irritated gesture. She shook her head again. “Too extreme,” she said.

Holly and I looked at one another and smiled. She didn’t know what “extreme” was. Yet. But she was about to. She had announced that next morning her intention to use the spare helmet. She’d be there “in person” next trip. Something about not being able, professionally, to accept the data before her. Not even with Holly’s corroboration. It reminded me that she was more to the Project than Holly’s better half. She was a full-grade Psyche-tech in her own right.

And maybe some of it was her “professional” skepticism. But I figured a lot of it to be the fact that Holly and I had survived it. On top of that she was feeling more than a little left out.

She could see it had done something to us. But she couldn’t tell what. And we couldn’t explain it. Holly couldn’t, anyway. I had been quiet as I could get away with. I didn’t want to think about it, much less talk about it and maybe have everybody know how I… hated.

Holly went to a lot of trouble to act like he wasn’t feeling the pressure stamped so brutally across his face. He ignored his fatigue. He ignored his sudden lapses of concentration. He ignored his nervous fidgeting. Well, I could if he could.

But I wondered at his lack of reaction when Lya had announced her intention to join us. Not that I blamed him. Certainly I felt relief at spreading it a little more. No qualms from me. But Lya wasn’t mine.

Is that why you fake it? I wondered, watching him brief her. Do you pretend it’s nothing so you won’t feel bad about sinking her in it, too?

I glanced over at the black suit, still propped into a sitting position beside the main console. What are you doing to us?

“…the personnel data confirmed Felix being there. I should have checked that first. But usually the medical records are better kept. The trouble is,” and he paused and scratched his chin. It was already red where he had done it so many times before. “The trouble is that, after the Knuckle, there’s no more data on G. Felix. Destroyed, they say.”

He looked up at us. To see if we wanted to snort, maybe.

“Anyway,” he went on, “a lot of other stuff did check out.” He studied a screen recessed at his elbow. “I confirmed Forest, for example. She did exist. She did die.” He paused, then looked up and smiled. “She did place runner-up to Kent at the Olympics, too.”

Lya sat forward. “And you say Felix had never heard of Kent?” We both nodded, though the question wasn’t really meant to be answered. She looked at me. “Jack, you’ve heard of Nathan Kent, haven’t you?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

She looked back at the screen. “Odd that Felix had not.” She touched a key. “Maybe,” she said, almost to herself, “he was lying.”

Holly and I exchanged a small smile. “It was the truth, Lya,” he said.

“But how do you know?”

I couldn’t resist it. “You’ll see,” I said with a look of… well, an ugly look.

Lya caught the words and the look. She ruffled nervously. “Yes,” she replied in a low voice. “I suppose I will.”

Holly got upset when Lya asked him what further information he had gotten from Fleet about the battle of the Knuckle.

“Nothing more,” he said shortly.

“Huh?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “That high a security clearance I don’t have.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

Holly smiled wryly. “Incredible, Jack. They expect me to come up with a solution to this morass they’ve created. But they lie to me about how they got there. Incredible!”

I laughed again. “Governmental,” I amended.

This time his grin was a bit more convincing. He checked the clock, looked questioningly about at us. “Any last comments, Jack? Questions, Lya?”

Lya had one. She wanted to know about that recitation Felix had given. “That title you mentioned. ‘Guardian,’ was it?” Holly nodded. “That sounds vaguely familiar. If you could remember what all Felix said, maybe I could have it scanned.”

“I’ll give it to you,” I said.

She seemed surprised. Probably because I had offered little else. “Okay, Jack,” she said, keying a coil. “Can you remember it all?”

Was she kidding? Word for word. I wanted to know about this… that man.

In a few minutes, with Holly and now Lya, beside me, I went to Hell again. The next day, after Lya had gotten over her first-Immersion need for sleep, I went again. And again and again.

But Felix wouldn’t die.

We, the three of us, slept and ate and rested and smoked and, rarely, chatted—all in perfect comfort. But once, and later twice, a day, we would put on these silly little helmets that looked like skullcaps and live and breathe and fear and despair within the very skin of a man rushing through a forest of gigantic mandibles and huge globular eyes, tearing through this forest, shedding and spraying its black blood, carving through it with blaze-bombs when he could or a blazer rifle while it lasted or, much more often, with bare armored hands that ripped and tore.

But he wouldn’t die.

The absolutely incalculable pressure of Banshee and the killing and the… total alien nature of his new world… it grew and grew in him. We felt it, each of us. We felt him separate and fight. We knew his dispassionate talent for carnage. We knew his inner terror and revulsion. We knew them as different and as the same. We knew they were separating, these two people, from themselves. We knew they were getting farther and farther apart. And we knew there was no room for this.

But still he wouldn’t die.

Fleet didn’t seem to know that Felix was only a human being. Maybe they didn’t know this because he wouldn’t act like one. Maybe they didn’t know this because his ID was stuck firm inside a computer glitch. Or maybe they didn’t know because he never spoke when he wasn’t dropping—we wondered a lot about what his life was like aboard ship. Or maybe they didn’t know because… they didn’t care. Because they sure as hell did not care; they just kept dropping him again and again and again and….

But he wouldn’t die.

God, how I hated him.

And so, of course, did Holly and Lya. But I didn’t know that then. Because I was too ashamed maybe, of my own hatred. Or maybe because I didn’t care about them anymore.

So more drops and more horror and more hate and Felix wouldn’t, wouldn’t, die.

Holly tripped on one of the suit’s boots, splayed out in the passage between two of the three loungers. He spun about, furious, to see what it was that had interfered with him. When he saw it was the suit, he paused, thought far too long for spontaneity, then kicked the suit as hard as he could in the chest. The field wasn’t on so there was some flex there, but it still hurt his foot a lot to kick plassteel. He groaned and hopped up and down for a few seconds. He didn’t say anything when he noticed I was watching. He didn’t have to. I knew it had been worth the pain to him. The suit was, of course, unmoved by the blow.

Lya’s hatred was pseudoscientific as long as she could string it out. Talked about how the graphs and charts of Alpha series readings and the like just didn’t fit. It was, she said, getting to be a “sore point” with her. Nobody laughed when she said this. Or paid much attention.

But one day, I did. When she was stalking back and forth on our break and mumbling to herself about this and that and I thought I heard the word “breakdown.”

I asked her if she thought that’s what Felix was going to have and she said: “Oh, he’ll have a breakdown all right. At the rate he’s going, he can’t miss.” Her voice was bitter, bitter, when she said this. But still I held my hand in front of my face so that no one would see the eager vicious look her words had sparked.

Another time, at the end of the “day”…

She slammed her fist angrily against one of her screens. We, Holly and I, looked up. She noticed our notice and got red in the face. “It’s just,” she began by way of apology, “that it’s the most spectacular survival mechanism I’ve ever seen! And it’s killing him!”

We didn’t say anything. We just sat there watching her. No quarter.

So she went on with: “He’s too sane, you know, to split completely. Too firm a grasp on reality. And the situation isn’t real!”

Holly probably meant to be compassionate. But it came out bitter with: “It sure seems real enough to me.” And a small smile.

“Oh does it?” she demanded, the hurt in her tone too plain. “This constant ant horror, the killing the dying—and never getting a break from Fleet, his own, our own people?” She stopped abruptly. Her chin quivered. “Who’d ever believe….”

And she sobbed.

The sound of that burned through Holly and me and we were silent and as unmoving as statues while she hurriedly, thankfully, regained control.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a moment or two. “It won’t happen again.”

Not where we could see it, she meant.

It kept getting worse. Not as bad as that first time, not as bad as the Knuckle, not then. But the pressure was accumulating. It was building up in us. Because we knew it was in him.

We got weirder. We moved through the days like Zombies. Or like K Dick wireheads. But worse because we weren’t even happy hooked up.

And because Felix wouldn’t die.

Everybody else did, though. Or had or would. And that was one of the most disquieting and… disorienting… things. It was really so goddamned dreamlike. There were all new faces around him all the time and always dying. Slowly or quickly or quietly or screeching.

New players each time but always the same game.

And once through the mists of our shoddy little obsession, I remember thinking: Four years of this so far!

Goddamn us.

And Felix wouldn’t die.

I awoke crying. In Karen’s arms.

She was real good about it. She held me until the sobs stopped. Until I could stop shivering. She may even have rocked me a time or two. But it disgusted her. And as soon as I seemed to be okay, she got up out of bed, dressed, and left.

I didn’t much care. No waking moments, however pleasant with her or barren without, could make up for the nightmares themselves.

I sat up and lit a cigarette. I couldn’t remember what I had been dreaming exactly. But I had a damned good idea. It was always a bad night on those days when Felix had been seriously injured. And the day before had been one of the worst. Lya, with her medical background, had estimated that he had been hurt badly enough to be in intensive care at least three times. Or four, counting today.

But he wouldn’t die.

I was the first one down that morning, furious with Lya because today was the day she had insisted we discuss the science of what was happening to him. I was furious at this waste of time. For a sense of imminence had begun to be felt by each of us. Any day now. Any drop.

Any ant.

But she would not continue, she said, until all the psychological and physiological and other ramifications starting with P were discussed. She wanted answers to this mystery.

It made me mad. Time was wasting. And it was so obvious anyway.

Looking impatiently around the lab I noticed a calendar. I sat up straight in my chair, astonished to see that over three weeks had passed since this had begun. Idly I wondered how many rendezvous I had missed with Wice. I thought two, but I couldn’t be sure.

Holly came walking briskly in, hiding his anger better than I did. In fact, Holly had hidden his reaction to the whole experience pretty well. He had always been quiet, of course. Now he was quiet and surly, a small difference really. And cold, of course. But we had all become that. Even Lya, as much as she could. He sat down beside me and pushed a tape into the slot.

“Look at this,” he said as he keyed it on. I did but I didn’t follow the jargon of the local computer. I said so.

“It’s about Lya’s request for information on that recitation Felix gave on that first day. You gave it to her. Remember?” I nodded. He pointed to a row of abbreviations. “All this means is the extent of the scan. This machine didn’t have any reference. So it asked the Fleet Beam. Nothing there, either. Had to go all the way to Earth, to the Biblioterre in Geneva.”

“Holly,” I sighed, not bothering to hide my lack of interest, “where did it come from.”

He looked at me. “Oh. Uh, Golden.”

“Golden?” I cried, surprised.

“Yes. It’s part of the coronation ceremony for Guardian. But not just any Guardian—you know they have about twenty—but for the First Guardian. The ‘Guardian of Gold,’ it says here.”

“The Boss, you mean.”

Holly laughed. “Boss is a way of describing the most powerful monarch of the richest and most influential planet in manned space. The First Guardian is Golden.” He smiled, shook his head at me. “Boss indeed!”

I shrugged. “Anything else?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. It’s a secret.”

“But it was in the computer.”

Holly frowned. “In a way, it was. You see, we asked what it meant. If we had asked what it was, we’d have gotten nothing.”

I didn’t get it. “Then why have it in there at all?”

“History. The Biblioterre is where everything is kept from all the planets that they want to last forever.” He grinned wryly. “Once this colonizing ‘phase’ has exhausted itself.”

I was wondering how much I liked this new sarcastic Holly when Lya breezed briskly into the room, her arms full of coils. She sat down across the table from us and began inserting various coils into various slots. She made the panel appear at that end and, with it, several screens rise into position. She looked very determined today. Not as if she had solved anything yet. But as if she was damn well going to before anybody took another step.

I lit a cigarette and waited for her to finish her preparations. Holly went to some trouble to appear calmly attentive, but he was just as impatient as I was.

At last, she was done. She came around to our side, transferred control to the other panel before her, and began to lecture.

Holly winced a little when he heard that tone in her voice. He glanced at me, his face expressionless but his meaning clear: Uh, oh, the cold dispassionate scientist is back. I kept my face equally blank, but I was wincing, too. Not so much at his coldness, but at the price of it. In fact, the price of the whole scene was getting awfully high.

No more Young Genius worshipping the Great Jack Crow, which was no loss. But no more sweet Holly melding warmly with his exquisite Lya either. And that was going to be missed.

I glanced at the suit, back to the two of them, already debating.

“Notice first these three frequencies representing stress,” said Lya, pointing to the largest screen. “The figure for stress is found by correlating …”

“Yes, yes, I see it,” Holly didn’t quite snap. “It’s a three. Low.”

“Particularly since this was recorded during battle.”

Holly blinked. “Huh? It can’t be.”

She shrugged, turned the panel toward him to have him see for himself. He did. He checked her figures in her specialty. If she was angry, she didn’t show it. Holly sat back when he was done, “Your equipment must be faulty.” Lya’s eyebrows lifted. Her equipment indeed. But all she did was key another screen and say; “Not necessarily. This is the Alpha series for the same period.”

Holly’s eyes widened. “Whew! A nine! I knew he was scared.”

“So we have an apparent paradox.”

And an argument. Or what would pass for one during this zombietime. In general, they were trying to figure out about Felix’s split personality. Why was he splitting? How was he splitting? How come it worked? Specifically, how come his mind was terrified but his body was not? Sort of.

“Felix’s fear is as strong as anyone’s,” said Lya. “We know that.”

“Or stronger,” said Holly.

“Or stronger,” she agreed. “But it would seem to be limited to certain parts of his brain.”

“How?”

“Perhaps it’s his overall sense of defeatism and despair.”

“Then how does that correlate with his incredible battle energy?” Holly wondered aloud. “It couldn’t be the instinctive will to survive.”

“Not in the usual sense,” she agreed. “For then the despair would go. The brain would discard it in order to save the psyche.”

Holly sighed. “Perhaps it is equipment failure. Since there is no apparent motivational pattern.”

“But there is a pattern. The readings are consistent.”

“Consistent but illogical. Psybernetically false. Because there must be overall motivational factors. There must be something to give it all a push.”

Lya mused: “A terrified man, whose brain manages to compartmentalize the terror so that he is able to function smoothly. Yet the whole process is overlaid with total fatalism, a clearly discernible condition that, by electrical necessity, should negate any positive motivation… Hollis, no one exists like this….”

I laughed. “He did. And damn well.”

Lya was not amused. “We know that, Jack. We just don’t know how.”

“You keep saying that. I don’t see what the problem is.”

Holly tried a patient smile. “The trouble is, Jack, that there are a couple of blatant contradictions here. You see, in a high-stress situation like this one, requiring physical response to physical peril, usually one of two things happens: The emotional reaction, the fear, becomes predominant, thereby paralyzing the body. Or, conversely, the body takes control, forgetting, for the time being, the fear.”

“You mean the guy either panics and freezes, or becomes a hero first and panics later.”

“Essentially, yes.”

“But Felix didn’t do either one,” I pointed out.

“Precisely,” said Holly nodding. “But he should have.”

“Why?”

Lya blinked. “Because he’s a human being.”

“But everybody isn’t like everybody else.”

“True, Jack,” agreed Holly slowly. “And clearly Felix is an exceptional man. But there are limits even here. Particularly when you consider the rather obvious fact of his fatalism. A man as, well, as resigned as he is to death just shouldn’t be able to keep going….”

“He doesn’t believe, Jack,” interrupted Lya. “And without belief there is no positive motivational factor.”

I sat up in my chair. “You keep saying that, too. ‘Positive motivations.’”

Holly lifted an eyebrow. “Yes…?”

I shrugged. “But there’s nothing positive about Felix.”

Holly stared at me quizzically for a few moments. Then his face brightened and his eyes lit up. “Of course!” he shouted. “It’s not positive at all. It’s negative!”

Lya looked skeptical. “A negative motivation?”

“Sure,” he said happily, turning to her. “It all fits. But you’ve got to take the factors in order of priority. First comes the fear. The defeatism comes next—Felix has no faith that he will live. But it’s that very lack of hope which allows him to avoid, temporarily, the burden of the fear. For without suspense, the major effects of fear are sidetracked.”

“And so, too,” added Lya, “are most motivational factors.”

“Only the positive ones.”

She looked at him oddly. “You mean… he wants to die?”

“Of course not,” retorted Holly. “He merely expects to.”

“Then the negative push?”

I jumped in. “He refuses to.”

She looked at me. “I beg your pardon?”

Holly laughed. “Don’t you see, Lya. He believes he will eventually be killed. Yet each time a danger threatens, he repels it. He doesn’t repel all danger—he doesn’t believe he could—but….”

“…but he does take issue with specific threats!” she finished for him, seeing it at last. She sat back in her chair, delighted with her revelation. “That’s marvelous,” she said, mostly to herself.

Holly sounded a little awed himself. “Oh, he’s a marvel, all right. Imagine living like that! Here is a human being with absolutely no sense of optimism, no faith in his own future. No hope.

“Yet he manages to survive—not through an inherent craving for life—but through a stubborn refusal of death.”

“No wonder he’s splitting apart,” breathed Lya and the two of them laughed.

I smiled.

After a few moments, Lya added: “But the ants will get him.”

“Oh, hell,” I snarled, angry at her. I held up my hands, indicating hordes in the unseen distance. “The ants will get him, sure. But,” I stabbed the air before me, indicating an individual among the hosts, “not this one. And not the one behind him either, goddammit!” I looked at her beseechingly, willing her to understand. “Don’t you see, Lya? The ants scare him. But he can fight the individuals because…”

“Because why, Jack?” she prompted.

“Because they piss him off!”

Holly had to perform a Fleet Citizenry Certification on a newborn baby girl so we got no chance to Immerse that day. It was our first break in weeks. Holly didn’t like it any better than I did. At first.

“I don’t know why I have to handle this personally,” he said to Lya.

She explained to him, and me, that the father of the child, one Neil Phillips, was not part of Fleet at all. “He’s an independent subcontractor, building some of the installations that aren’t prefabs. Technically he’s not under our direct authority. But he is a citizen, so he has a right to demand witnessing from the head of the nearest Fleet installation. That means you, Dear.”

Holly nodded, looking at the request on the screen in front of him. “Wants to be certain his daughter can claim North American Humanity Privilege….”

Lya looked confused. “That’s the part I don’t understand,” she said. “He says he wants to be sure she’s a Texan.”

I laughed. “Sugar, Texas is in North America.”

“It is? I thought it was a planet!” She shook her head. “The way he talks about it….”

So we went. Reluctantly at first, and then with more enthusiasm. This Phillips dude understood how to throw a party. There were substances there even I, in all my years of debauchery, had never tried. I suspected that Phillips had made some of it himself, a charge to which he never responded unless you count a devious grin, which I did not. Still, he was nice enough to take me aside and suggest, kindly respectfully, what I shouldn’t try that night for the first time. I took him up on his advice.

Holly took him up on more than that. Seemed neither he nor Lya had ever seen anyone that chewed tobacco before. Lya was understandably appalled by the notion, but Holly was delighted and anxious to try it. He was particularly curious as to how Phillips managed the spitting and a clean beard at the same time. Phillips, complete with devious grin, was pleased to provide instruction.

Holly swallowed a lot of it. But Phillips was instantly at his side, commiserating and bearing some obscure green stuff to “get that taste out of your mouth, Director.” By the time of the ceremony, Holly was just barely audible. But he managed well enough.

“…certify that Natalie Anne Phillips, daughter of Neil and Cindy Phillips, weighing five pounds and thirteen ounces on this fourteenth day of March, year 2081, Standard, is hereby and forevermore a full citizen of the North American Commonwealth.”

And once the ceremony was over, there didn’t seem to any of the three of us any pressing reason to leave. At least half of the Project was there for the occasion of the birth of the first earthchild on Sanction, all happy and excited and full of homesickness and booze. It was a lot of fun.

I didn’t see much of either Holly or Lya for several hours. I think Lya spent most of her time with the proud mother. And Holly spent at least an hour talking with Phillips’ first child, handsome blond ten-year-old named Nathan. I just sort of mingled randomly, the feeling of frustration about not Immersing temporarily offset by the joy of the people around me.

Toward the end of the evening, I had a chance to stand outside the nursery viewer and actually see the little baby girl for the first time. She was beautiful, exquisitely formed, pixielike in her soft little fisty sleep.

I suppose I stood there too long, long enough to think about all such things that never seem to have anything to do with me. Things like children, of course. But especially Things, like the birth of beautiful baby girls. She had sandy hair, I remember. It looked very soft.

Talking about him that day had gotten to me. I resisted sleep. I don’t know that I was really afraid of nightmares. I doubt it. Nothing was that clear to me on purpose.

Back to the curved railing of the dome’s balcony, staring at the city. I lit a cigarette and somebody close by gasped. It was Lya, standing a few paces away in the shadows. I started to say something but I turned around instead at the sound of a foot scraping behind me. It was Holly.

He looked as surprised as Lya and I did. I wondered how long the three of us had been there without knowing about the others. I had often caught the other two like that, in the lab or the dining room. Sitting and staring. Usually I just moved on. But tonight, either because of the party earlier or because of the things that had been said—if they weren’t really the same—I spoke up.

“Can I buy somebody a drink?” I asked.

My voice seemed to boom across the dome. We all jumped a little. But then we relaxed and Holly smiled and said he had had plenty to drink already and Lya laughed at that, volunteering that she might never drink again and we all laughed at that. Lya said she was hungry, however.

So the three of us headed down into the dome, weaving slightly, in search of food. The surly galley-tech was like every other cook since the dawn of dawning. It may have been Holly’s Project, but the kitchen was his. With great reluctance and muttered bitching about the hour, he managed to lay out a cold snack for three. Then he stood around waiting for us to eat it.

“Out!” said Holly when he had had enough editorializing. He pointed his finger toward the door imperiously. It scared the hell out of the cook and made us all laugh at Holly’s new Command Voice.

We laughed a lot. We needed it. We needed a drink too and something, syntho, was found. So we drank and picked at the food and became, inevitably, talkative. It was an eerie couple of hours in the half-light of that immense Galley. Not just because we talked, but because of what we talked about. And something else: the way we talked.

We were fiercely cheerful.

And oddly enough, we didn’t avoid talking about it. Rather macabre black humor as a matter of fact.

About how we had each of us been drinking a hell of a lot lately, not just tonight because even a hangover was better than some of the dreams we were having, ha ha ha. Maybe Lewis was right after all, ha ha. Probably have to stick to syntho ourselves once we got the habit. Ha.

Holly wondered aloud what it was that Lewis was scared to dream about and Lya said it was fish. I agreed. “He thinks they’re plotting against him.”

Holly laughed: “Paranoia is its own reward—who said that?”

I laughed: “Are there any fish in that river?”

Lya laughed: “Over sixty species catalogued so far. But that won’t do Lewis any good.”

Holly and I laughed: “Why not?”

And Lya laughed back: “Because most of the big ones are in on it.”

And we laughed back at her and the three of us laughed at the three of us laughing.

Ha ha ha ha.

Later on a grain or two of truth from me. True Jack Crow. About how come I really didn’t get the residuals from the Blaze-drive because I had discovered the Aiyeel in a stolen ship and how it came out at the piracy trial that Quan Tri couldn’t really press charges against me for stealing the ship as he had stolen it from the Dalchek Mining Combine. And since Dalchek was already long-dead by that time without heirs or a will—and especially on account of the Blaze-drive being the single most valuable tool in history—Fleet had ended up with the whole thing. Or public Domain had, but at the time that was about the same thing.

They laughed at that story and at the part about me admitting being lost when I discovered the Aiyeel in the first place. It seemed to help.

So I told them the truth about how come the Darj regarded me as a God. Lost again and frantic again and then there I was with them spacesick and seasick and full of time lag and planet lag and throwing up the traditional feast prepared in my honor all over the Touch Mother who regarded, by doctrine-dogma, all aspects of regurgitation as holy. Meaning only sacred chow was good enough for me.

“I threw that up too,” I added and they laughed. “But the Touch Mother didn’t know because I was deep in the Inner Fold which was this very damp cellar, essentially, where gods hung out and I was alone and before anybody could find out, I was already on my way back.”

Holly said he bet I was in an awful hurry to get out of there before they found out and I said yes, that too. “But mostly I was starving to death.” Holly and I laughed at that and Lya, too, a little. But she was starting to drift.

Holly tried taking over, telling something I don’t remember about being a young Prodigy. He tried to make it funny and, of course, failed. But I egged him on just the same, laughing hard and trying to get Lya to.

But she wouldn’t or couldn’t and eventually, inevitably, it got very quiet in that huge dark place. Holly couldn’t stand it.

“You tell one, Honey,” he said at last.

And she did. But she didn’t just tell it. She carved it, carved it deep in the deepest place for it, our shame. It didn’t start out as a story. It started out as a confession. As The Confession. The tears were already welling when she began to speak.

“I haven’t been honest with you two,” she said, starting the thick beads rolling. “I know I’ve been cold and distant and,” bitterly, “oh so scientific! But the truth is, Holly, Jack… The truth is that I feel so… so small and mean and….”

She drifted off. Holly sat beside her like a statue. He could not move. And I knew what he felt, for I, too, wanted to shout: “DON’T! Don’t crack us open!” But I didn’t. I was a statue, too. And worse, I didn’t even help.

She wiped her eyes and positioned herself more firmly on her stool. She stretched her hands out flat on the chopping board in front of her. She examined the knuckles. Then she curled her fingers securely together.

“It’s like… it’s like once on Trankia, when I was little and my brother had a dog. You know, a puppy.” She looked at us to see if we knew. We nodded like the statues we were. “A puppy my uncle had brought him. From Earth, I think, or somewhere.

“Anyway, my brother, Gay, loved this dog. This puppy. He really did. I mean he did everything for him. Fed him and petted him all the time.” She took a deep breath. “And all that. And I used to kid him about it. Not really much. Really! But some, I guess. Because he was younger than me and I was full of being the oldest and wise. You know, becoming a woman.” She stopped, thought. “I think I was ten.”

“Anyway, Gay was younger, like I said. And one day he had to go into town. Into the settlement. Cholesterol implants, maybe—he was about the right age. And Mom and Daddy were going to be away.” She took another deep breath, a longer one this time. I begged her to stop. But she couldn’t hear what I couldn’t say.

“I was to look after the house. And after the dog. The puppy. Gay was so worried! He was sure I didn’t like the puppy because I had kidded him so. And I laughed and acted really bored by his concern. ‘Of course I can take care of one measly animal,’ I told him. And eventually he left, left the puppy with me. Only because Mom told him to stop being silly.” She paused. “Just before she left she took me aside and told me to please be sure and I got mad that she had so little faith in me. But I didn’t show it then. I waited until they were gone and then I let the puppy out by itself.”

The tears were really rolling by then. She made a halfhearted attempt to wipe them away.

“The puppy never went out alone. Just never! We had sunk a geotherm close to the house but, I don’t know, we’d struck the water table or something and anyway there was this deep, deep, well. About ten meters and it was jagged on the side without plastiform and some water at the bottom.

“I was at the kitchen window and I could see him bouncing around and I knew that anybody could watch him that way—Gay didn’t have to be a baby about hovering over him all the time and, well, I looked up once….” She sighed like a death rattle. “And he was gone.

“I ran outside right then, of course. And I knew… instantly… I knew what I should have known all along. That I had known it was going to happen. I mean, I knew he was going to fall. I knew it. Why else had I let him out?”

And she sobbed.

“He was still alive but his little haunches—his hips, you know—were broken. The fall had smashed them. And the water was too deep for him so he was paddling with just his two front little paws to keep up. To keep alive.

“He paddled all the way around in a little circle until he saw this little ledge kind of rock sticking out next to the wall and he paddled over, his little paws just churning, until he got there and then he just dug and clawed and scrambled up there, all the way on top of it where he could rest a little. And where I could see his little hips all crushed.”

She shook her head to clear it, gritting her teeth. She began to talk more quickly, anxious to get it over with.

“But the rock he was on was too small, even for him and he was so… tiny! It was wet, too, from the water and… and from the blood and slippery. He fell back in, when he twisted around to try and lick away the pain.

“But instead of getting right back up there he seemed to be lost and he paddled around some more until I yelled down to him to get back on the rock and … when he heard my voice… he looked up at me, right into my eyes, and whimpered for help.”

She stopped abruptly. She buried her face in her hands. When she looked back up, she was a ghost.

“He whimpered all the time from then on. Every time he paddled he’d let out this pitiful little yelp. And every time he got back up on the rock where he could catch his breath he would howl up to me to come get him and save him. There was no way to do that. Just no way. It was too deep and I didn’t have a ladder or a rope and even if I’d had one, it was too far for me to climb. So all I could do was sit there and listen and watch him paddle and dig and scramble his way back up onto that rock and then, in just a second or two, slide back into the water. Pretty soon the water was red.

“And he was such a tiny puppy—he couldn’t lose that much blood and live. But he did. He was like a… I don’t know. Like a little motor. Paddling around and around like he could always do it.”

She looked at us as if pleading. Back and forth into our dead frozen eyes. “But he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He wasn’t a motor. He wasn’t a machine. He was a puppy! I could hear how it hurt him. He was in agony!

“But he just kept on, paddling and climbing up and slipping back down into that red water and blood, sometimes his little head would just disappear for a few seconds. But he’d always come right back up again.

“At first I admired him so! Oh, I thought he was the bravest, most noble little thing I had ever seen, to keep at it like that. But… after a while. After the first hour … I mean, there was just no…

“I just hated him. I hated him. Because he wouldn’t die. He was putting me through it, too. And I couldn’t stand it! I couldn’t stand it! I mean, there was just no way. And…”

Her voice cracked, broke. There was no way to stop it. But she told the rest of it through her aching.

“I went to the garden, the rock garden Mom was making and I got the biggest rocks I could carry and I took them back to the well and I sat there at the edge and I threw them at him until he was dead. I… I crushed his head with them.”

She collapsed into fitful, racking sobs. Holly, tears plainly visible on his own cheeks, rushed to her and wrapped her in his arms. She clung to him, letting herself have it for some seconds. Then her head began shaking violently against his chest. “No!” she blurted and tore herself away. Holly tried to cradle her again but she propped her palms against his chest, holding him off and looking him in the eye so he would really know…

“No! No, Holly. No, my darling you don’t understand! It’s… it’s… I hate Felix, too, Holly. I hate him the very same way I did that puppy and I hate us for watching and for not being able to stop watching and I hate him for making us see how brave he can be and… But mostly….”

She shrugged out of his grasp, stood up from the stool. Her voice was low and resigned and clotted with her shame. “Mostly I hate me, Holly. Because I would do it again. Yes, I would. I would. If I could do it again, I’d kill Felix now. I’d kill him. Anything to stop the awful whimpering. Anything!

“Don’t you see, Holly? Don’t you see? You can’t love me! Look! Look how hateful I am!”

And then she fell against him, surrendering at last to his care. And his judgment. But there was no judgment there. For Holly felt the same way. He told her so as he held her. And as he told her he, too, began to cry and shake with the pain and shame and self-hate.

I tried to reach them. God, how I wanted to! But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I knew what to say. I knew what to do. I needed the release so badly, more than they did, more, worse, than they could ever know.

But I was blocked. Stuck tight to the rim of me, to the meat of my fear and loathing and hiding out behind and from the legend I had bled for so long.

I remember trying to stand up…

I woke up on the cot in Lya’s small office. Holly was nowhere in sight. Lya sat on a chair watching me. She stood up and moved to the edge of the cot. I looked up at her and… and all of it came rushing back. I felt the blood exploding through my veins. I opened my mouth—I couldn’t talk. Realized my eyes had closed—hell, slammed shut. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t….

And then I felt her arms circling my shoulders and I all but dove against her, clinging to her. My tears broke through at last, soaking her blouse. My sobs, unbid, rattled me. I babbled a lot. Most of it was confused and lost, except for saying, for admitting that I hated Him too.

And something else. I looked up after awhile, feeling and sounding like a child. Pleading. “I want to be Jack Crow again!”

She smiled warmly. Glowing protective and sure. “You will.”

“But Felix! He’s…”

“Felix is dead.”

“How can you be sure?” I insisted, my voice shaking. “Maybe he never died! Maybe he never will!”

Her face became startled-frightened-horrified in an instant. But then all was flung away with a toss of her hair and she pressed my head back between her breasts, cutting off my fears with her firm grasp and monotonous maternal coos.

She rocked me to sleep, I guess.

No. I’m sure she did. She did.

The clock said three hours until dawn when I awoke again. I was alone, thank God. I sat up on the cot. I fished and found a cigarette. The door to the lab was open. I stood up and used it, crossing the vast shadowy chamber hurriedly to the main seal and the bright corridor beyond. There was no one around, no sound of scurrying techs or late partygoers. Quiet. Fresh air seemed like a good idea. I began the long climb to the outer seal.

Halfway there I stopped and noticed something: I was okay.

I shouldn’t have been. I should have felt embarrassed and ashamed and humiliated and… But I didn’t. I felt fine. Relieved, in fact. Like a boil finally lanced. I smiled. Maybe so.

Outside was lovely, brightly starlit. Even the view of the City seemed pristine. I stepped to the bottom of the ramp and sat down to enjoy it. Somebody giggled.

“…what else would you expect?” More giggles.

“Maybe he’s going for some kinda record.” Single giggle.

“Well, he’s got my vote for stupid.” More giggles still.

I stood up and followed the sounds. Not really defensive. But perhaps a little.

On the Project side of the main bridge stood three Security, the gigglers, in a tight little circle. My approaching tread broke the pattern in a hurry. They gasped together, whipped around together, reached for blazers together. A single voice, however, did the hailing.

“Identify,” she ordered in a strong contralto.

I answered her, ignoring the momentary feeling of daring, with: “Crow.”

They relaxed, peering at me through the darkness. A couple of hooded heads nodded. “Good morning, Mr. Crow,” responded the contralto respectfully. I smiled at my own relief. It still worked.

“Good morning, yourself. What’s so funny?”

Two of them exchanged a nervous glance. But the boss, the contralto, remained cool enough.

“Nothing much, Mr. Crow. Nothing you’d find interesting.”

“Then why did I ask you?”

“Beg pardon, Sir?”

“Why did I ask if I wasn’t already interested?”

“Huh? Well sir, I guess….”

“Don’t guess.”

“Yessir. It was… well, it was that Lewis guy.”

“That Lewis guy? You mean the Lewis who owns this planet? That Lewis guy?”

“Uh, yessir. Mr. Lewis.”

“What about Mr. Lewis…?”

“Well, it’s just that…”

A sudden burst of staccato explosions had me already dropping to my feet before my conscious mind had recognized the long-unheard sound of automatic rifle fire. I looked around to see the three Security still standing. Bent over somewhat, startled even, but still standing.

“Nothing to worry about, Mr. Crow. Those came from the City,” said the contralto, pointing a gloved hand across the river.

I stood up slowly, my gaze following her lead. “The City? They have guns there?”

“Yessir.”

“I thought all weapons were forbidden them.”

“That’s the law, yessir. One of the only one’s Lew… Mr. Lewis has. But somebody isn’t listening. We’ve been hearing gunfire almost every night for the past couple of weeks.”

“Hmm. What about blazers?”

“Oh, no. No beams. Just bullets.”

Another burst followed the first. Random shots sounded next, continuing intermittently for several seconds. Gradually it faded away to only a shot or two every minute or so. I thought about Wice and Eyes and their little bands of merry men running through that muddy maze playing shoot-’em-up. Maybe missing the past couple of rendezvous had been a pretty good move after all. We stood there for a while as we were, ears keenly attuned, staring out into that dim distant glow listening to unseen strangers fighting unknown, unexplained battles. Once we saw a muzzle flash. Another time I heard a sound that could have been a cry of pain. It could have also been the wind, or the river, or an animal. Or a cry of pain.

“You see what I mean, sir,” said the contralto when the last shots seemed to have come and gone, “they got nothing to do with us. Just local trouble.”

“Luck for them,” said the youngest of the three from beside her. He gripped the butt of his blazer menacingly.

The contralto eyed him with amused disgust. “Meinhoff, you ever see what a little bitty piece of lead does to people with complexions like yours?”

He looked embarrassed. But not enough. “No, Ma’am.”

“Don’t laugh at rifles. Up to five hundred meters they’re every bit as good as blazers.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And you?” she prompted the third Security, another woman. The other woman jumped to attentiveness.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. She thought a moment. “Only….”

The contralto sighed. “Only what Bader?”

“Well, ma’am, you don’t really think we need to take a bunch of potshofting deserters seriously, do you?”

“Bader, if those folks are all deserters, then who’s doing the shooting?”

The other woman opened her mouth to speak, closed it.

“What about Lewis?” I reminded them.

“Oh. Well, it’s just that…” She pointed the gloved hand again, this time toward a small copse of trees beside the river’s edge. “He’s right over there if you want to see for yourself.”

“You mean he’s here now?” I asked, surprised.

“Yessir. Comes down to the river to fish every night. Stays all night, too. He doesn’t leave until morning when he…”

“When he what?”

“When he sleeps it off, sir.”

“I see.” I thought a minute. “Thanks,” I said over my shoulder and headed down to the bank. She mumbled something back. I stopped after I had gone several steps and called back to her. “How long has this been going on?”

“A couple of weeks, Mr. Crow,” was shouted back.

“Since the shooting started?”

There was a brief pause. Then, “Why, yessir.”

“Good night,” I shouted before actual conversation threatened. I headed toward the trees. The footing was horrible, I noticed. The grass was damp with dew this close to the water’s edge. Not the best time to fish, when any spot you might pick to sit on was wet. But then, what did fishing ever really have to do with Lewis?

He slept peacefully, quietly. Except for his breathing, which was slight, he was as still as a corpse. He was on his back with his face to the stars. His feet were splayed out at a 45-degree angle from each other. His arms were twisted around with his elbows sticking out at his sides. His hands were underneath his back for some reason. Perhaps to keep warm. He looked like a cookie.

A drunk cookie, of course. Even from a couple of steps away, I could smell the syntho. There were a couple of jugs beside him, one tipped over on its side and both clearly empty. The fishing gear had been neatly stacked a step away. The line was still dry on the reel.

I sat down on his tackle box and lit a cigarette. I vaguely recalled someone—Karen, perhaps—saying no one had seen him around in quite a while. Well, this was where he’d been. Since the trouble in the City. And, of course, since the day of the picnic when he’d seen the suit. I vividly remembered the look on his face the moment he had seen it. The revulsion. The panic.

I sighed, tossed the cigarette at the river. It hissed momentarily. I reached for his shoulder, damp from the dew like the rest of him, with some indefinite idea of taking him inside to get warm. But when my hand touched him….

I drew my hand back quickly, as if to avoid contamination. The disgust welled up in me. I think I snarled. I took a few steps away, glanced out across the river, then back to the… the cookie. I shook my head. I shuddered.

He had named Sanction well. That had been just what it was for a rich punk with too much money and not enough character. And he’d been awfully happy for awhile. He had the Project people there, to supply sanity and straight lines. And syntho. And then along had come a pack of gypsy refugees to provide just the right touch of slumming spice. The perfect cocktail party.

But sooner or later, usually sooner, the next morning shows up full of energy and sunlight and memories of the real world. It kicks most people up off their asses. But Lewis…. Without anybody to drink with, he drank alone. At night. In the dew. Away.

He began to snore. I wanted to kick him. The idea of his just running away, with the City heating up and the Project finally getting down to work—hell, because of those things—he ran away.

“You poor dumb drunken jerk,” I said to him and turned away for good.

The funny thing about it, I thought as I walked back up the slope, or rather the unfunny thing about it, was that it sort of fitted. Lewis was, after all, the last piece this mess really needed. He had performed his function. If everything is to foul up, one must have a place for it. And Sanction was just the place.

“Everything all right, Mr. Crow?” asked the contralto as I passed the bridge. “Is Mr. Lewis okay?”

“Fine,” I answered without turning, “if you like the type.”

I kept walking to the ramp and up it and into the dome. I was surprised that I felt, suddenly, better. Not good yet. Not yet, and maybe not for a while to come. But… better. Bad as it was, and bad as it was going to get—bad as I was gonna get, I was no Lewis.

And even better, maybe I was still Crow.

* * * * *

Karen was in my bed. She flipped on the light as I entered the bedroom, brushed her hair out of her eyes, and smiled.

I started to say something but stopped myself just in time. Thank God; it was a no-speak moment.

I got out of everything and slid under the sheets from the other side. We lay there, parallel but separated, and looked at one another. Her smile had gone. It stayed gone for the several seconds we lay there.

“Good night,” I said at last, scrunching my pillow meaningfully.

She looked at me coolly. Then, with equal cool, nodded.

“Good night,” she said as well and turned off the light.

It was still a couple of seconds, then…

She was there and soft and pliant and demanding and everything about the touch of her was what it should have been after the look of it. She broke off and away an inch or two and said: “Well, where else was I going to go, Lewis?”

I laughed and drove my smile across her lips and my hands onto her breasts and my hips onto hers. Hot damn.

In the dream the Suit had somehow gotten loose.

It pursued us, rushed at us across the suddenly vast expanse of the shiny-smooth lab floor. Ripped and torn electrical feeds trailed behind it as it swelled toward us. They hadn’t been strong enough to hold it.

“Run, everybody! Run!” screamed Lya at the throng of over a hundred who had for some reason become trapped down there with us. She shooed them like cattle toward the seal and safety but in their panic they were jamming themselves tight.

Holly was at some immense upright panel, the mad scientist, yelling: “Don’t panic! Don’t panic! I’ll think of something!” and working frantically at the keys. I tried to pull him away to safety but he wouldn’t budge. His grip was surprisingly strong with conviction. In disgust I reached down and jerked loose the panel’s power feeds but still Holly wouldn’t run, wouldn’t come. Lya screamed…

The Suit was upon us, sweeping horribly at us soundlessly, reaching its murderous armored hands toward us, black plassteel talons forming…

And Lewis was there by my side and he held out a jug of syntho and said: “Here. Just… here!” like that was all it was going to take and without thinking, I grabbed him and shoved him across the path of the Suit, to—I don’t know—distract it maybe so that I could….

Black arms struck out like serpents’ tongues, snatching Lewis in mid-slide, grabbing him to its chest in a crumpled heap and the slick black face of it, the evil-smooth sheen of it, opened, revealing a wide black mouth of razor-sharp lips and the head tilted back and then darted abruptly forward and down across Lewis’s throat, slicing and ripping out huge chunks of flesh and bone and cartilage and muscle and the blood spurted horribly….

And then we were alone, the three of us. Lewis dead at its feet and it straightened up, blood streaming from its face and those thin razor lips twisting into an evil plassteel smile.

“…Jack! Wake up! It’s all right! It’s all right!” Karen said, her arms managing to both shake me awake and comfort me all at once.

I found myself. I started to sit up, then relaxed into her. There was no sound for several moments but our breathing as it slowed, slowed, became steady.

“Well, at least you’re getting better at this,” I offered, for something to say.

She didn’t laugh. But neither did she leave.

It was going to be a big day. I could feel it.

It was barely mid-morning and I had already been at the lab for hours. Amazingly, I was filled with a fiercely vibrant energy. It was innervating, exciting, rich. I couldn’t wait to get to it.

Something was going to happen today. Something… conclusive. Something definite and explanatory and maybe… maybe good, I thought.

I was a fool.

The up-to-date list of Felix’s drops was on the screen in front of me. I had already gone over it a dozen times. I keyed up a summary: elapsed time approximately six months standard, just under two of that under direct medical supervision. Eighteen drops, twelve of them majors. Four trips to ICU, nine medicals. We figured around a dozen broken bones, at least that many separations or tearings of tendons and muscles and major joint groups. Three head injuries, none requiring surgery. We couldn’t be sure, of course. We only felt what we thought he felt as a broken bone or whatever.

In addition, Felix had been picked up on the last sweep for survivors on three separate occasions. Twice he had been the only survivor.

“You were really something,” I said, half-aloud. «

“Talking to ourselves, are we now?” asked Lya brightly as she swept into the room. “It’s come to this, has it?”

I returned her smile. She had the same look as I did, I noted. I rubbed my hands together. It was going to be a big day.

“Look at this, Jack,” said Holly from the doorway to his office. Then, seeing Lya, “look at this, Honey.”

The warmth in his voice was plain. The returning glow of her quick acknowledgment was equally clear. Maybe not as perfect as before, but the Couple was again a fact.

Holly had that look, too. Bright eyes, eager anticipation. We were all fools.

He held a high-security coil up before us and shook it. “You know what this is? A priority beam from the Court of Nobles on—are you ready?—Golden.”

“You’re kidding,” said Lya.

Holly shook his head. “Not a bit.”

“What do they want?” I asked.

He smiled, shook his head in wonder. “They want to know—and this is practically a quote—what the reason was for our inquiry at the Biblioterre…”

“How did they find out?” exclaimed Lya.

“When you’re dealing with Golden, you’re dealing Big Time,” I offered.

Holly nodded. “Quite true. I’m not surprised, really. They really are the… Oh! I didn’t tell you the rest. They also asked if the reason we are asking is because we have knowledge of…” He shook his head. “This is incredible.”

“Well, come on, Holly!” snapped Lya impatiently.

He smiled. “They want to know if we know where their Guardian is.”

We stared at him, Lya and I. We stared at each other. We stared at him again. We stared at the coil in his hand. I rose slowly to my feet. Holly was right; it was incredible.

“You mean…” stuttered Lya, her eyes wide and unbelieving, “you mean to tell me that they’ve… lost… their sovereign???”

I was staring out the window of the conference room, the one that overlooked the lab and the loungers and the console. And the suit.

“Until now,” I said.

So strapped in and ready to go, the three of us exchanging confident last smiles and pressings of hands, the least of our agreements. For we had decided to Immerse three times today. In one day. For the first time. My arm still tingled from the injection of vitamins and time-release stimules.

We were all so incredibly, wildly, maddeningly, eager. Something was going to happen. We knew it. We just knew it. Of course we were still apprehensive. Still frightened down in there somewhere. And the feelings of guilt were in there too, alongside the powerful inadequacy hue. But we had been through so much already and come through. We had strained and sweated and ached with this and come out of it. It had wrenched us about, turned us this way and that way and we had done even worse in our tortured acceptance. We had been… well, through Hell. What couldn’t we handle now?

Fools!

We didn’t know what Hell was.