I almost, not quite, smile at this news flash. “He’ll go,” I say.

Secretary Bright Moon makes a quick note in her palmlog and then hesitates. Even though her expression is perfectly neutral now, I know that she is trying to decide whether to ask a question that she might not get the chance to ask later.

Hell, knowing that question was coming and trying to decide how to answer it is the reason I didn’t come to visit her a month ago, when I decided to do this thing. But then I remembered Kanakaredes’s answer when we asked him why the bugs had come all this way to visit us. He had read his Mallory and he had understood Gary, Paul, and me—and something about the human race—that this woman never would. She makes up her mind to ask her question.

“Why . . . ,” she begins. “Why do you want to climb it?”

Despite everything that’s happened, despite knowing that she’ll never understand, despite knowing what an asshole she’ll always consider me after this moment, I have to smile before I give her the answer.

“Because it’s there.”

Here’s a pretty good list of Ursula Le Guin’s honors: she’s won numerous Nebulas and Hugos, also a National Book Award, the Harold D. Versell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pushcart Prize, the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and a Newbery Honor.

It’s been said she’s sf’s most “academically” honored writer, which sounds faintly solicitous. How about this instead: she’s a marvelous science fiction writer—one of the finest ever—who happens to be recognized outside the field.

Still not good enough? What about: she’s a great writer, period, who helped to solidify the achievements of the New Wave by doing nothing more than writing great stories.

The Building

Ursula K. Le Guin

On Qoq there are two rational species. The Adaqo are stocky, greenish-tan-colored humanoids who, after a period of EEPT (explosive expansion of population and technology) four to five thousand years ago, barely survived the ensuing ecocastrophe. They have since lived on a modest scale, vastly reduced in numbers and more interested in survival than dominion.

The Aq are taller and a little greener than the Adaqo. The two species diverged from a common simioid ancestor, and are quite similar, but cannot interbreed. Like all species on Qoq, except a few pests and the insuperable and indifferent bacteria, the Aq suffered badly during and after the Adaqo EEPT. Before it, the two species had not been in contact. The Aq inhabited the southern continent only. As the Adaqo population escalated, they spread out over the three land masses of the northern hemisphere, and as they conquered their world, they incidentally conquered the Aq.

The Adaqo attempted to use the Aq as slaves for domestic or factory work, but failed. The historical evidence is shaky, but it seems the Aq, though unaggressive, simply do not take orders from anybody. During the height of the EEPT, the most expansive Adaqo empires pursued a policy of slaughtering the

“primitive” and “unteachable” Aq in the name of progress. Less bloody-minded civilizations of the equatorial zone merely pushed the remnant Aq populations into the deserts and barely habitable canebrakes of the coast. There a thousand or so Aq survived the destruction and final crash of the planet’s life-web.

Descent from this limited genetic source may help explain the prevalence of certain traits among the Aq, but the cultural expression of these tendencies is inexplicable in its uniformity. We don’t know much about what they were like before the crash, but their reputed refusal to carry out the other species’

orders might imply that they were already, as it were, working under orders of their own. As for the Adaqo, their numbers have risen from perhaps a hundred thousand survivors of the crash to about two million, mostly on the central north and the south continents. They live in small cities, towns, and farms, and carry on agriculture and commerce; their technology is efficient but modest, limited both by the exhaustion of their world’s resources and by strict religious sanctions. The present-day Aq number about forty thousand, all on the south continent. They live as gatherers and fishers, with some limited, casual agriculture. The only one of their domesticated animals to survive the die-offs is the boos, a clever creature descended from pack-hunting carnivores. The Aq hunted with boos when there were animals to hunt. Since the crash, they use the boos to carry or haul light loads, as companions, and in hard times as food.

Aq villages are movable; their houses, from time immemorial, have consisted of fabric domes stretched on a frame of light poles or canes, easy to set up, dismantle, and transport. The tall cane which grows in the swampy lakes of the desert and all along the coasts of the equatorial zone of the southern continent is their staple; they gather the young shoots for food, spin and weave the fiber into cloth, and make rope, baskets, and tools from the stems. When they have used up all the cane in a region they pick up the village and move on. The caneplants regenerate from the root system in a few years. They have kept pretty much to the desert-and-canebrake habitat enforced upon them by the Adaqo in earlier millennia. Some, however, camp around outside Adaqo towns and engage in a little barter and filching. The Adaqo trade with them for their fine canvas and baskets, and tolerate their thievery to a surprising degree.

Indeed the Adaqo attitude to the Aq is hard to define. Wariness is part of it; a kind of unease that is not suspicion or distrust; a watchfulness that, surprisingly, stops short of animosity or contempt, and may even become conciliating, as if the uneasiness were located in the Adaqo conscience. It is even harder to say what the Aq think of the Adaqo. They communicate in a pidgin or jargon containing elements from both Adaqo and Aq languages, but it appears that no individual ever learns the other species’ language. The two species seem to have settled on coexistence without relationship. They have nothing to do with each other except for these occasional, slightly abrasive contacts at the edges of Adaqo settlements—and a certain limited, strange collaboration having to do with what I can only call the specific obsession of the Aq.

I am not comfortable with the phrase “specific obsession,” but “cultural instinct” is worse. At about two and a half or three years old, Aq babies begin building. Whatever comes into their little greeny-bronze hands that can possibly serve as a block or brick they pile up into “houses.” The Aq use the same word for these miniature structures as for the fragile cane-and-canvas domes they live in, but there is no resemblance except that both are roofed enclosures with a door. The children’s “houses” are rectangular, flat-roofed, and always made of solid, heavy materials. They are not imitations of Adaqo houses, or only at a very great remove, since most of these children have never seen an Adaqo building or a representation of one.

It is hard to believe that they imitate one another with such unanimity that they never vary the plan; but it is harder to believe that their building style, like that of insects, is innate. As the children get older and more skillful they build larger constructions, though still no more than knee-high, with passages, courtyards, and sometimes towers. Many children spend all their free time gathering rocks or making mud bricks and building “houses.” They do not populate their buildings with toy people or animals or tell stories about them. They just build them, with evident pleasure and satisfaction. By the age of six or seven some children begin to leave off building, but others go on working together with other children, often under the guidance of interested adults, to make “houses” of considerable complexity, though still not large enough for anyone to live in. The children do not play in them.

When the village picks up and moves to a new gathering-ground or canebrake, these children leave their constructions behind without any sign of distress, and as soon as they are settled begin building again, often cannibalizing stones or bricks from the “houses” of a previous generation left on the site. Popular gathering sites are marked by dozens or hundreds of solidly built miniature ruins, populated only by the joint-legged gikoto of the marshes or the little ratlike hikiqi of the desert. No such ruins have been found in areas where the Aq lived before the Adaqo conquest—an indication that their propensity to build was less strong, or didn’t exist, before the conquest or before the crash. Two or three years after their ceremonies of adolescence some of the young people, those who went on building “houses” until they reached puberty, will go on their first stone faring. A stone faring sets out once a year from the Aq territories. The complete journey takes from two to three years, after which the travelers return to their natal village for five or six years. Some Aq never go stone faring, others go once, some go several or many times in their life.

The route of the stone farings is to the coast of Riqim, on the northeast continent, and back to the Mediro, a rocky plateau far inland from the southernmost canebrakes of the great south continent. The Aq stone farers gather in spring, coming overland or by cane-raft from their various villages to Gatbam, a small port near the equator on the west coast of the south continent. There a fleet of cane-and-canvas sailboats awaits them. The sailors and navigators are all Adaqo, most of them from towns of the northwest coast. They are professional sailors, mostly fishermen; some of them “sail the faring” every year for decades. The Aq pilgrims have nothing to pay them with, arriving with provisions for the journey but nothing else. While at Riqim, the Adaqo sailors will net and salt fish from those rich waters, a catch which makes their journey profitable. But they never go to fish off Riqim except with the stone-faring fleet.

The journey takes several weeks. The voyage north is the dangerous one, made early in the year so that the return voyage, carrying the cargo, may be made at the optimal time. Now and then boats or even whole fleets are lost in the wild tropical storms of that wide sea.

As soon as they disembark on the stony shores of Riqim, the Aq get to work. Under the direction of senior stone farers, the novices set up domed tents, store their sparse provisions, take up the tools left there by the last pilgrimage, and climb the steep green cliffs to the quarries. Riqimite is a lustrous, fine-textured, greenish stone with a tendency to cleave along a plane. It can be sawed in blocks or split into stone “planks” or smaller “tiles” and even into sheets so thin they are translucent. Though relatively light, it is stone, and a ten-meter canvas sailboat can’t carry great quantities of it; so the stone farers carefully gauge the amount they quarry. They roughshape the blocks at Riqim and even do some of the fine cutting, so that the boats carry as little waste as possible. They work fast, since they want to start home in the calm season around the solstice. When their work is complete they run up a flag on a high pole on the cliffs to signal the fleet, which comes in boat by boat over the next few days. They load the stone aboard under the tubs of salted fish and set sail back south. The boats put in at various Adaqo ports, usually the crew’s home port, to unload and sell their fish; then they all sail on several hundred kilometers down the coast to Gazt, a long, shallow harbor in the hot marshlands south of the canebrake country. There the sailors help the Aq unload the stone. They receive no payment for or profit from this part of the trip. I asked a shipmaster who had “sailed the faring” many times why she and her sailors were willing to make the trip to Gazt. She shrugged. “It’s part of the agreement,” she said, evidently not having thought much about it, and after thinking, added, “Be an awful job to drag that stone overland through the marshes.”

Before the boats have sailed halfway back to the harbor mouth, the Aq have begun loading the stone onto wheeled flatbed carts left on the docks of Gazt by the last stone faring. Then they get into harness and haul these carts five hundred kilometers inland and three thousand meters upward.

They go at most three or four kilometers a day. They encamp before evening and fan out from the trails to forage and set snares for hiqiki, since by now their supplies are low. The cart train tends to follow the least recently used of the several winding trails, because the hunting and gathering will be better along it. During the sea voyages and at Riqim the mood of the stone farers tends to be solemn and tense. They are not sailors, and the labor at the quarries is hard and driven. Hauling carts by shoulder-harness is certainly not light work either, but the pilgrims take it merrily; they talk and joke while hauling, share their food and sit talking around their campfires, and behave like any group of people engaged willingly in an arduous joint enterprise.

They discuss which path to take, and wheel-mending techniques, and so on. But when I went with them I never heard them talk in the larger sense about what they were doing, their journey’s goal. All the paths finally have to surmount the cliffs at the edge of the plateau. As they come up onto the level after that terrible last grade, the stone farers stop and gaze to the southeast. One after another the long, flat carts laden with dusty stone buck and jerk up over the rim and stop. The haulers stand in harness, gazing silent at the Building.

After a thousand years or so of the long, slow recovery of the shattered ecosystem, enough Aq began to have enough food to have enough energy for activities beyond forage and storage. It was then, when bare survival was still chancy, that they began the stone faring. So few, in such an inimical world, the atmosphere damaged, the great cycles of life not yet reestablished in the poisoned and despoiled oceans, the lands full of bones, ghosts, ruins, dead forests, deserts of salt, of sand, of chemical waste—how did the inhabitants of such a world think of undertaking such a task? How did they know the stone they wanted was at Riqim?

How did they know where Riqim was? Did they originally make their way there somehow without Adaqo boats and navigators? The origins of the stone faring are absolutely mysterious, but no more mysterious than its object. All we know is that every stone in the Building comes from the quarries of Riqim, and that the Aq have been building it for over three thousand, perhaps four thousand years. It is immense, of course. It covers many acres and contains thousands of rooms, passages, and courts. It is certainly one of the largest edifices, perhaps the largest single one, on any world. And yet declarations of size, counts and measures, comparisons and superlatives, are meaningless, the fact being that a technology such as that of contemporary Earth, or the ancient Adaqo, could have built a building ten times bigger in ten years.

It is possible that the ever-increasing vastness of the Building is a metaphor or illustration of precisely such a moral enormity.

Or its size may be purely, simply, a result of its age. The oldest sections, far inside its outermost walls, show no indication that they were— or were not—seen as the beginning of something immense. They are exactly like the Aq children’s “houses” on a larger scale. All the rest of the Building has been added on, year by year, to this modest beginning, in much the same style. After perhaps some centuries the builders began to add stories onto the flat roofs of the early Building, but have never gone above four stories, except for towers and pinnacles and the airy barrel-domes that reach a height of perhaps sixty meters. The great bulk of the Building is no more than five to six meters high. Inevitably it has kept growing outward laterally, by way of ells and wings and joining arcades and courtyards, until it covers so vast an area that from a distance it looks like a fantastic terrain, a low mountain landscape all in silvery green stone.

Although not dwarfed like the children’s structures, curiously enough the Building is not quite full scale, taking the average height of an Aq as measure. The ceilings are barely high enough to allow them to stand straight, and they must stoop to pass through the doors.

No part of the Building is ruined or in disrepair, though occasional earthquakes shake the Mediro plateau. Damaged areas are repaired annually, or furnished stone to rebuild with. The work is fine, careful, sure, and delicate. No material is used but riqimite, mortised and tenoned like wood, or set in exquisitely fitted blocks and courses. The indoor surfaces are mostly finished satin smooth, the outer faces left in contrasting degrees of roughness and smoothness. There is no carving or ornamentation other than thin moldings or incised lines repeating and outlining the architectural shapes.

Windows are unglazed stone lattices or pierced stone sheets cut so thin as to be translucent. The repetitive rectangular designs of the latticework are elegantly proportioned; a ratio of four to five runs through many though not all of the Building’s rooms and apertures. Doors are thin stone slabs so well balanced and pivoted that they swing lightly and smoothly open and shut. There are no furnishings. Empty rooms, empty corridors, miles of corridors, endlessly similar, stairways, ramps, courtyards, roof terraces, delicate towers, vistas over the roofs of roof beyond roof, tower beyond tower, dome beyond dome to the far distance; high rooms lighted by great lacework windows or only by the dim, greenish, mottled translucency of windowpanes of stone; corridors that lead to other corridors, other rooms, stairs, ramps, courtyards, corridors. . . . Is it a maze, a labyrinth? Yes, inevitably; but is that what it was built to be?

Is it beautiful? Yes, in a way, wonderfully beautiful; but is that what it was built to be?

The Aq are a rational species. Answers to these questions must come from them. The troubling thing is that they have many different answers, none of which seems quite satisfying to them or anyone else. In this they resemble any reasonable being who does an unreasonable thing and justifies it with reasons. War, for example. My species has a great many good reasons for making war, though none of them is as good as the reason for not making war. Our most rational and scientific justifications—for instance, that we are an aggressive species—are perfectly circular: we make war because we make war. This is not really satisfying to the reasonable mind. Our justifications for making a particular war (such as: our people must have more land and more wealth, or: our people must have more power, or: our people must obey our deity’s orders to crush the heinous sacrilegious infidel) all come down to the same thing: we must make war because we must. We have no choice. We have no freedom. This is not ultimately satisfactory to the reasoning mind, which desires freedom.

In the same way the efforts of the Aq to explain or justify their building and their Building all invoke a necessity which doesn’t seem all that necessary and use reasons which meet themselves coming round. We go stone faring because we have always done it. We go to Riqim because the best stone is there. The Building is on the Mediro because the ground’s good and there’s room for it there. The Building is a great undertaking, which our children can look forward to and our finest men and women can work together on. The stone faring brings people from all our villages together. We were only a poor scattered people in the old days, but now the Building shows that there is a great vision in us. —All these reasons make sense but don’t quite convince, don’t satisfy.

Perhaps the questions should be asked of those Aq who never have gone stone faring. They don’t themselves question the stone faring. They speak of the stone farers as people doing something brave, difficult, worthy, perhaps sacred. So why have you never gone yourself?— Well, I never felt the need to. People who go, they have to go, they’re called to it.

What about the other people, the Adaqo? What do they think about this immense structure, certainly the greatest enterprise and achievement on their world at this time? Very little, evidently. Even the sailors of the stone faring never go up onto the Mediro and know nothing about the Building except that it is there and is very large. Adaqo of the northwest continent know it only as rumor, fable, travelers’

tales—the Palace of the Mediro on the Great South Continent. Some tales say the King of the Aq lives there in unimaginable splendor; others that it is a tower taller than the mountains, in which eyeless monsters dwell; others that it is a maze where the unwary traveler is lost in endless corridors full of bones and ghosts; others say that the winds blowing through it moan in huge chords like a vast aeolian harp, which can be heard for hundreds of miles; and so on. To the Adaqo it is a legend, like their own legends of the Ancient Times when their mighty ancestors flew in the air and drank rivers dry and turned forests into stone and built towers taller than the sky, and so on. Fairy tales.

Now and then an Aq who has been stone faring will say something different about the Building. If asked about it, some of them reply: “It is for the Adaqo.”

And indeed the Building is better proportioned to the short stature of the Adaqo than to the tall Aq. The Adaqo, if they ever went there, could walk through the corridors and doorways upright. An old woman of Katas, who had been five times a stone farer, was the first who gave me that answer.

“For the Adaqo?” I said, taken aback. “But why?”

“Because of the old days.”

“But they never go there.”

“It isn’t finished,” she said.

“A retribution?” I asked, puzzling at it. “A recompense?”

“They need it,” she said.

“The Adaqo need it, but you don’t?”

“No,” the old woman said with a smile. “We build it. We don’t need it.”

There’s a heck of a story behind this one. Seems Laura Whitton was attending Jeanne Cavelos’s Odyssey fiction writers workshop in New Hampshire in the summer of 2000, when Dan Simmons was writer in residence. At the same time, I was bugging the hell out of Dan to do a story for this book. When Dan read what Laura was working on he got in touch with me and asked if I’d be willing to look at it. Sure! I said, not knowing what to expect. What I didn’t quite expect, especially from an unpublished writer, was something this good.

What became “Froggies” needed a little work, but Laura Whitton was more than up to the task. I’m proud to share this “discovery” with Dan-and if Whitton goes on to do more great things, there’s only one person who can take any kind of credit, and it ain’t me or Dan. Froggies

Laura Whitton

Jo-ann paced the length of the courtroom, vast with its marble pillars and flags of state. She knew she should sit down, next to Amanda. Sit calmly, professionally, to hear the verdict. But it was all she could do to keep quiet, not to rush up to the man across the aisle and yell in his face. She heard it in her mind, saw herself pounding his shoulder for emphasis, saw fear in his eyes.

She twitched when she felt a hand on her sleeve. Amanda tugged her down. “Jo-ann, there’s nothing you can do at this point. We’ve given them everything we’ve got.”

At that moment, the deep gong sounded, and a quiet rustling filled the room as people shuffled their papers, switched on recording devices, and made last-minute notes. Jo-ann couldn’t help glaring at the man on the other side of the aisle. She realized he was focused on a door at the back of the room. Turning, she saw the justices enter. Five people, solemn in black robes, filed into the courtroom. They took their seats before the assembled crowd. Jo-ann could read nothing in their expressions. A second ringing of the gong, and the chief justice stood.

“Before us today stand two claimants to the exploitation rights of the planet Minerva. The Hugonaut Corporation argues right of first discovery, while the Department of Xenoanthropology argues prior right of indigenous population. This board of inquiry has met to review the arguments of both parties and to determine the status of the planet. The facts are not in dispute. StarShip Minerva, registry Port Juno, entered orbit around the third planet of Epsilon 37 on the sixty-first day of Year 652. Upon her return to human-controlled space, the captain reported the discovery of a life-inhabiting planet as required by the Department of Biological Resources. She submitted the name of the planet as Minerva. On behalf of her employer, the Hugonaut Corporation, she registered a claim for the exploitation rights of the planet. Upon reviewing this claim, BioResources referred the matter to the Department of Xenoanthropology.

“Based upon the possibility of sentience among the native life-forms, Xenoanthro determined to send its own expedition to the planet. That expedition arrived on the fifth day of Year 654, established a base upon the planet, and spent the remainder of the year studying the local life-forms. Attention was focused on the largest terrestrial species, and based upon evidence of rudimentary tool use, Xenoanthro now argues the sentience of the species. However, the Hugonaut Corporation notes that said tool use exhibits less complexity than the documented use by terran nonhuman primates. Further, the Hugonaut Corporation notes that of all the efforts to establish communication with the species, none have generated conclusive results.”

Jo-ann looked across the aisle and saw the smug smile on the Hugonaut lawyer’s face. She gripped the table edge harder.

“This board has carefully reviewed the evidence. While we concede that members of the local species do utilize stone tools in a limited way, we are troubled by the failure to establish communications. The individuals studied by Xenoanthro did not, in our opinion, respond in any clear way to the communication efforts of the team. This board cannot impute intelligence to a race whose members refuse to interact with, or even acknowledge the communication efforts of, another intelligent species. Therefore, the claim of the Department of Xenoanthropology to administer the planet in behalf of the indigenous population is rejected. We grant the claim of the Hugonaut Corporation to the planet. All exploitation rights of the natural resources of planet Minerva are reserved to the Hugonaut Corporation, with the following exception.”

She refused to look at him. She held her breath. Please, at least give us this much. . . .

“In light of the strong concerns of the Department of Xenoanthropology with respect to the possible future sentience of the local species, we establish a reserve on the largest continent, which shall remain outside the claim of the Hugonaut Corporation. Xenoanthro will monitor this reserve to ensure the compliance of the Hugonaut Corporation. This board has ruled. All parties are dismissed.”

Jo-ann walked out of the courthouse unsteadily. She felt as though her head were both too big, wobbling slightly on her neck, and too small, the skin stretched tight across her face. She rubbed her forehead, trying to dispel the ache. I wonder why I’m even surprised, she thought. No way the feds were going to let prime mineral deposits like those go to waste, languishing under the surface while the Froggies went about their incomprehensible business. Damn!

“This sucks,” she said to Amanda. “They railroaded us. Another six months and we-“

“I wish that were true. But be honest, Jo-ann, was there a day-even one-in these last few months, when you thought you were getting anywhere with them?”

Jo-ann shrugged. She remembered how her hands shook when she stepped out of the base camp, part of the first team chosen to meet with the local group of Froggies. Having watched them for months, she had been convinced of their sentience. The first time humans would talk to other intelligent beings! At last, after all those years of studying Earth primates, wondering if Planetary Expeditions would ever find an alien species for her to talk to. She had begun to wonder why she’d sought a degree in Xenoanthropology when there were no live xenos for her to anthropomorphize. The old joke suddenly lacked humor. That damned judge, applying his anthropocentric standards to the Froggies. “No response to another intelligent species” indeed! For all they knew, by Froggie standards, the humans didn’t qualify as intelligent. Not worthy of their attention, at any rate. She sighed with old frustration. She just couldn’t understand why they’d failed.

Amanda stopped. “Want to get a drink?”

“No.”

“Okay. Later.”

Jo-ann called home.

“Dave here.”

“It’s me. Guess what.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. But you knew it was a long shot. . . .”

“Yeah, I guess. At least they’ve agreed to put in the reserve in the Thompson Forest for the Froggies. We’ll be monitoring the situation, and you’ll be able to keep working on those magic plants of yours. I suppose we can even keep trying to talk to them. ...”

“You never know, maybe you’ll come up with a way to get through to them.”

“But it’ll be too late. The Hugonauts already got the rest of the planet. Who knows what will be left for the Froggies in another hundred years?”

Five years later

“Tommy, come in and do your homework. You know your mother will be upset if it’s not done before dinner.”

Tommy heard his father and dug harder, faster, trying to get the hole deep enough, soon enough. The dirt was wrong-rocky, crumbly, thick with roots and little grubs. Actually, he didn’t mind the grubs so much. They were quite tasty, in fact, although Mommy got mad whenever she caught him. But Mommy wouldn’t be home for another hour, and Daddy didn’t watch him closely. Daddy was very busy, that’s what Mommy said. Doing important work. Which meant that Tommy could eat as many grubs as he could find, making his nest. Rounder, the rim needed to be rounder on that side, then this wall made smoother. Oh, what’s this, he thought. A grub, uncovered by his left midhand. A juicy one, and not very fast either. Gulp. Making the floor even was always the easiest part, unless he got too picky about it. Maybe Daddy would let him use the level. Tommy poked his head up, called “Daddy, Daddy, can I go in the tool shed?”

Daddy came around the corner of the house-Tommy could hear the hum of the trimming shears. Saturday was garden day. “Oh, Tommy, you didn’t! Not another one of those damn holes. Just look what you’re doing to the azalea bushes. I only planted them last spring. Why are you always digging? I just don’t get it.”

Tommy felt his ears pressing flat against his nose, and he whimpered, in his low range where he knew Daddy couldn’t hear. Subsonic, his mother said was the word. He didn’t know what that meant. She said it meant “under sound” but how could there be sounds “under” sound? Mommy said he’d understand when he was older. He’d understand a lot of things when he was older. But right now, here, his father was yelling at him, and he didn’t understand.

“But, Daddy, I just want to nest, won’t you show me how to use the level to get the floor right?”

“No, stop that digging right now. I said stop it! Can’t you see what you’re doing to the azalea?”

Tommy hesitated, rocking, not sure how to get out of the hole without touching any of the bushes around the rim. He hadn’t really noticed them before, but now that he thought about it, he remembered that the ground around his nest was surrounded by little bushes, prickly, not tasty at all, not worth any bother. But now it seemed that Daddy liked them, that he was really mad. Tommy had never heard his father so mad before. He poked his left upperhand over the rim, trying to find a spot safe for climbing out of the hole. Feeling flat grass under his palm, he dug into the wall with his feet and midhands, scrambling up and over, landing in a heap on the grass. One foot snagged on a prickly bush, and he cringed, ears flat, waiting for another yell from his father.

“Oh, Tommy, how could you? Just look at them, you’ve exposed their roots. I don’t know what you were thinking. Well, come on, help me get this dirt back where it belongs, cover up these poor roots. Hurry, maybe we can repair the damage if we’re quick.”

Tommy wanted to know why they needed to hurry, what was so special about these little bushes, but he guessed he’d better ask later. Right now, he gathered up the scattered dirt, careful not to further disturb the bushes, and pushed it back into the hole. He sighed. It had promised to be such a nice, comfortable little nest, but it was clearly not to be. Was there some other place he would be allowed to dig? He kept on moving dirt, circling until he ran into his father.

“There, kiddo, we’ve got the hole filled in. It’s not too bad, eh?”

“Daddy, can I make a hole somewhere else?”

“Why? What makes you want to dig like a-ah, skip it. But stop with the digging, just stay out of the yard, all right? I’ll be in, in a bit, after I finish fixing up this mess. Go on and do your homework.”

Tommy slunk back to the house, rumbling to himself. At least Daddy wasn’t so mad anymore, but Tommy still didn’t know why he wanted the bushes instead of a nice deep round smooth hole. And Daddy never could explain things properly anyway. Maybe Mommy could help. He perked up, wiggling his ears, rubbing them along the edges of his nose. His mother always found the right thing to say, and would give his back a nice rub, too. He’d go inside and wait for Mommy.

But when his mother finally got home, she didn’t come upstairs to Tommy’s room. He could hear her downstairs, talking to his father. It must be about me, Tommy thought, I bet they’re talking about me. He sneaked out to the landing, careful to allow only his ear to round the corner of the wall. Because his hearing wasn’t as good as theirs, sometimes his parents forgot to be careful about their “private”

conversations. His father’s rumble was easier to make out than his mother’s lighter voice.

“But why does he have to be so, you know, so strange.” Tommy imagined his father pacing up and down, making that tangy frustration-scent. His mother’s laugh surprised him, it was sharper and higher than the laugh she made during their tickle-fights.

“Honestly, Dave, do you hear yourself? What in the world were you expecting out of this little adventure?

What were any of us expecting?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t know. I think maybe we believed that it would all be, well, over sooner. I mean, who could have imagined, years without other people, without civilization. How long until we get our lives back?” A smacking sound against wood. Then his mother’s voice.

“Honey, it’s not that simple. How long until we figure them out? I know the situation is strange. Yes, it’s lonely out here. And Tommy. I admit he’s not what we would have expected. What we might have wanted. But this is what we got, and the Froggies need us. They were just living, going about their business; they didn’t invite us down for a visit. We’re the ones who decided to invade their home. It’s not like Tommy got a vote, is it? God, Dave, too bad you had to marry a xenoanthropologist!”

Tommy hated the hysterical note in her voice. He didn’t understand what they had said, but he knew it was about him and that his father was still mad at him. But Mommy wasn’t making it better, she wasn’t making Daddy laugh and calling Tommy to start a game of hop-and-catch. He decided he didn’t want to hear any more. He hopped morosely back to his room and crawled into bed.

Soft. Warm. Deep, buried safe. Rubbing skin against skin, neighbor bristles poking his tender underbelly flesh, ow. Poke, poke, squirm, nestle down, deeper. Push aside slippery limbs, slide over brother-backs and sister-backs, around and through the tangle of skin and bristles. He breathes in gingery musk of contentment and peppery hunger, finally food-smell, he burrows inward to the source. Gleaming warmth in the center of the depression, it smells of wet and orange. He bites, sucks, ah.

Sunday morning, when he came downstairs for breakfast, his father was gone. “Daddy had to go away for a little while, he needs to get important things for us,” his mother said. “I’ve got to talk to Amanda and Gillian today; they’re coming over for lunch. You can play with little Heather and Erin. But no digging in the garden, you hear me? Your father was quite upset about the damage to his plants. You know how hard-“ She stopped talking and started rubbing his back. “-I guess we didn’t tell you about it, did we?

Those plants Daddy made, they’re special. He’s been studying Minervan biochemistry for six years now, and he thinks he’s starting to recognize which protein sequences control the regeneration functions. Do you remember when we talked about biochemistry?”

Tommy wrinkled his nose. He really liked it when his mother talked with him about science-things, because she got so serious and excited, both at the same time. He didn’t know what any of the words meant, but just a few months ago he’d figured out that if he nodded his head up and down and said,

“How does it work?” every time she paused, she would keep talking for a long time. So he said, “Yes, I remember,” and she kept talking, words that sounded fun on the tongue, like multicellular and unprecedented and embryonic and miraculous. That last one was particularly juicy. “Mommy, how does miraculous work?”

Her delighted laughter washed over him, and he rolled over onto her legs, reaching up to tickle her ribs with his midhands. “Where did your midhands go, Mommy? Did you lose them when you were little?

Will something happen to mine?”

“Shh, you’ll learn all about it when you’re older.” He didn’t know why she sounded so sad, but she sent him off to study before Heather and Erin came over. He went to his room obediently, but he couldn’t concentrate. Those dreams, they were so yummy, but so strange. Everything was different in the dreams. When he heard the rumbling of a land-rover through the trees, he hopped down quickly, running to meet his friends.

Heather and Erin hooted out greetings as they bounded to meet him. “Hello, hello, no school today, yippee, yea!” “Let’s go digging, Tommy-Tom, digging, dig, yea!” Erin pounced, and landing on his back, grabbed his ears. “Ride ‘em cowboy,” she squealed. He could smell her excitement, and reaching back a midhand, he snagged her foot to flip her off him. He got her wrestled to the ground, but then Heather landed on his head, covering his ears and nose with her tummy. Unable to hear or smell, he kicked his legs in the air helplessly while the girls tickled him. Trying to squirm out of Heather’s grasp, he suddenly remembered that dream last night. He bucked his legs until he was free, and grabbed each of them by their upperhands. “Hey, you guys ever, you know, dream? Like, like this? Us, touching, food-smells?”

He trailed off uncertainly. Heather smelled like confusion, but Erin rumbled with impatience.

“Who has time for dreams, let’s dig us a nest!” and she bounded away.

“No, no no no no no!” Tommy hopped frantically after her. “No digging, Daddy says no!” He quivered, worrying she’d already started making holes. Maybe she was hurting one of the bushes right now.

“Erin, stay away from the prickly-bushes. They’re special, Mommy says special, be careful!” He caught up to her, sighing when he realized she was still poking around the underbrush, looking for a nice spot to dig.

“Hey, lookee here, Heather-Tommy started a nice hole, feel the soft squishy dirt right here.”

“No, Erin! Daddy filled it in, he says no more digging. C’mon, let’s go exploring.” He had to distract her, and he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist a challenge. “I found a bush I couldn’t crawl through, follow me, I bet you can’t get through it either.”

He led the girls into the forest, away from Daddy’s bushes, to the funny hard bushes he’d found last week. The branches of these bushes all ran into each other, as high as he could reach, and never had any break in them.

The three children pushed into the branches, squirming their arms into the tiny holes, but the strange branches held firm. Heather tried digging under the bush, but she couldn’t find any roots, just dirt so hard they couldn’t break it up.

Erin tried to jump over, but it was too high.

Tommy scrambled up and down the branches. “Erin, Heather, try this, it’s fun.” They played, running all over the wide flat surface, up, down, around. But when they climbed too high, the upper branches were too sharp to touch.

“Ow.” Erin discovered that the hard way. And they couldn’t swing properly, like they did from regular trees, moving through the forest without ever touching the ground. The branches didn’t sway and bend, or extend toward the other trees.

They decided to go home and tell their mothers about the fantastic plant, so monstrous big and tough. But when they got back to Tommy’s home, their mothers were busy talking, didn’t want to listen to the kids.

“Erin, sweetie,” her mother said, “don’t worry about the funny bushes. Why don’t you go get a snack in the kitchen? I bet Tommy’s mommy has cookies.”

That night, Dave returned from his supply run. Jo-ann stroked the bright fabrics, the rich yellows and orangey-reds that didn’t exist in Minervan nature. They watched the sun set, lilac in a pistachio sky. While they sorted out clothes for Amanda and Gillian, Jo-ann told her husband that the children had discovered the fence around the compound. “I think they know something is wrong.”

“They’ll be asking hard questions soon. It won’t be much longer now,” he said. “And the pressure is coming from the other side as well. When I was Out There, I saw the flashes of incoming ships breaking hy-perspace. Big flashes, probably heavy-duty cargo haulers.”

“God, they’re stepping up the schedule. How much time do you think we have?” She couldn’t seem to stop chewing on the edge of her finger.

“It can’t be soon enough. I want to get back to civilization. Don’t you?”

“Dammit, don’t you care what happens to them? This has to work.”

Tears ran down her face. ‘You know how much the children, the Froggies need us.”

Dave put his arm around her, pressing into the knot of tension in her shoulder. “I know, honey, but I want my life back. Why do we have to give up so much for them when they won’t even admit we’re here?

Sometimes I hate them.”

She jerked out of his embrace, stood rigid facing away from him. “Don’t ever say that! They’re the victims. You can’t forget that. We have to fight for them, whatever it takes. They deserve to get their planet back!”

“Even if they don’t know we’ve taken it?”

“Even then.” She couldn’t make herself turn around.

Dave didn’t say anything more.

One year later

“Mommy, Mommy, I had the strangest dream last night. You were in it, and I was in it, and Erin and Heather, but we were big, bigger’n you, and the smells, I never breathed such smells before, excitement, and something spicy, strong, kinda scary, we were pressing in, pushing into you, and you were scared, you got smaller and we were pushing you between us, and somebody was angry, someone different, with a big nimbly voice like Heather but more, stronger I think. I didn’t like it, Mommy!” He wrapped all six limbs around her and squeezed, first the right three, then the left, right, left, rocking her in his distress. Jo-ann tried not to panic at being enveloped. A hug that had had a certain weird charm when he had been less than three feet tall felt different now that he’d grown so much. She stroked his back, murmured,

“There, there, it’s okay.”

Then his words registered. “Honey, what did you just say? What was the nimbly voice like? Was it Heather?”

“No, I said, bigger, stronger.”

“Like Daddy?”

“No, like us kids, we all sound different from you, you know, squeaky and deep, with the undersounds and the oversounds you can’t hear. But different from us, too. Like, more, more tones. You know, like all three of us at once. But one person. I don’t know . . .” His voice trailed off, uncertain. She rocked him sideways, smoothing down his bristled mane, thinking furiously. “Honey, I’m just going to call Heather’s mommy, I’ll be right back. Would you like it if Heather came over today?”

* * *

Jo-ann slipped into her office, making sure the door was closed before she activated Amanda’s monitor.

“Oh, my God, Amanda, you’re not going to believe this! It’s incredible, this is it, what we never understood, it’s dreams! They talk in their dreams! Quick, get Heather, bring her over to my place, I’ll call Gillian and get them here, too; we’ve got to find out what they’ve been dreaming.” Jo-ann rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, talking way too fast.

“Whoa, Jo-ann, slow down, will you? What’re you talking about, dreams?”

“Has Heather mentioned any of her dreams to you? Ever, anything? Like, about the Froggies.” Jo-ann found herself whispering the last word, and looked guiltily over her shoulder.

“No, I don’t think so. You know, Jo-ann, it’s something we try not to discuss. In fact, if you recall, we agreed to steer our exercises and games away from any mention of, um, well, them. I still can’t believe we’ve kept the charade going as long as we have. Sometimes, after Heather has been sitting near me, touching my skin, I see her stroking her own skin, stroking the smoothness. I know she’s wondering.”

“But the dreams, what about her dreams? Find her now, ask her! They’re talking to the children in their dreams! Tommy just told me about a “big” voice, a multitonal voice, with subsonic and ultrasonic frequencies.”

“I don’t know, that could be some kind of racial memory. We still don’t have any idea how their minds work. It’s a goddam miracle that they’re prewired for verbal language acquisition. The Froggies never seem to ‘talk’ to each other, and they sure as hell don’t listen to us!”

“But wait, I didn’t tell you the rest of his dream. Tommy said there were three of them, bigger than me, surrounding me, pushing me. Me! That’s no racial memory.”

“I don’t know.” Jo-ann could hear the doubt in Amanda’s voice. “Maybe he’s got the racial one mixed up with his own experience. You’ve got to be careful about how you apply our standards to them. Haven’t you heard of going native?”

They both laughed, a little. We can still laugh, Jo-ann thought. That’s something.

“Just get Heather and come on over.” Jo-ann breathed deeply against the tension in her chest. She suddenly needed to be done with all the subterfuge and misdirection. Closing her eyes, she tried to relax the tight skin of her face. “We need to be straight with them if we’re going to sort this whole mess out. It’s time we end the experiment.”

When Amanda and Gillian arrived with Heather and Erin in tow, they gathered in Jo-ann’s living room. She asked Tommy to tell all of them what he’d just told her. She and Amanda and Gillian watched the two “girls,” trying to guess their reactions to Tommy’s dream. Six years, and they were still guessing at the body language. Distress was easy, ears flat against their noses. The xenoanthropologists had certainly seen enough of that in the early years. But also sensual pleasure, ears swiveled back, nose flaring, a little rippling along the back where the midhands were joined to the rib cage. And frustration, a curling of the tail along with a sharp scent, something like sun on rotting leaves. They’d had to come up with a whole new vocabulary to describe these things, the smells and the body language. She wondered about the sounds outside human frequencies, but it was too difficult, finding the time to review the recordings, with no idea what she was looking for. So frustrating, nobody to talk to, to compare notes with, just each other. Some days Jo-ann longed to let her old thesis advisor in on the secret. He would have such great insight. But she knew better than to entangle him in this crazy scheme of hers. Heather and Erin were definitely interested in Tommy’s dream. Jo-ann was pretty sure she saw recognition in Erin’s stance, but Heather was harder to read. Her posture was something Jo-ann hadn’t seen before, spine arched to the left, right midhand curved inward to the rib cage, mane bristles fanning outward, throat-sac swelling. Jo-ann wondered whether Amanda might be right, that “Heather” was actually a male.

Jo-ann looked over at Gillian, twitched her shoulder toward Erin.

“Erin, sweetie,” Gillian said, “did you ever have a dream like that? This is very important.”

“Ye-es,” Erin said slowly. “I think so. I’m in the forest, and there’s lots of people there. We all smell like this,” Jo-ann breathed in, caught a suggestion of cucumber and tar. Maybe we should kidnap a professional perfume-maker, she thought, squashing an unsteady giggle. But Erin was still talking. “We’re in the sunshine, it’s very hot, our backs hurt, the echoes between the trees are big, like lots of trees are gone. The ground is hard and lumpy, uneven, deep holes. But not nests, not soft dirt and smooth walls and level floors. Just holes all hard and twisted, no shade, no resting. Everyone is moving around, making the noises you can’t hear. I think they’re angry.”

Amanda was looking at Gillian’s “daughter” with narrowed eyes. Jo-ann saw a slight tremor in her knee; she must realize that the time of the children’s innocence was ending. Oh, how I wish we could just tell them about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. She waited for Amanda to look up at her, saw the watery brightness in her eyes, nodded. “Heather, do you dream?” Amanda asked softly, blinking. Heather turned her head between Erin and Tommy, extending her nose flaps and breathing in the smells of her siblings. She straightened out of her crouch, and she made small curving motions with her mid-hands, as though to gather them in to her. But when Amanda repeated, “Heather, Heather,” she swiveled her ears toward her mother.

“No, Mommy, no dreams. Tommy and Erin, they’re sad. But it’s exciting, too. Mommy, what are the dreams?” Erin and Tommy came over to her, each extending a midhand to Heather so that the three of them made a chain, facing the women. Jo-ann braced herself.

“Children, we have to tell you something very difficult. This is a sad story, and you aren’t going to be very happy with us after we’ve told you, but it’s very important. It’s a story where you have an important job to do. So listen carefully. You know we’ve told you that there are people out in the jungle, people who look different, people who don’t talk like we do. But there’s more to it.” God help us, there’s a lot more to it, Jo-ann thought to herself. “There are people, people like Amanda and Gillian and me and Tommy’s dad, only they aren’t like us, either. They want to exploit the mineral resources of this planet. Tommy, you remember when we talked about geology, right?”

Jo-ann looked hopefully at Tommy, who whistled his confusion. “Honestly, Jo-ann, you don’t think they actually understand all that science you lecture them about, do you? They’re only six years old, and we don’t even know what that means, really.” Gillian stared at the children, tapping her fingers and squinting in concentration. “Let me see,” she muttered. “Okay, kids, try this. You know how you like digging those holes, those ‘nest’ thingies of yours? And you remember how Tommy’s dad got mad when you were digging in his yard? See, you wanted nests, but your nests interfered with his plants, so you couldn’t have your nests and his plants in the same place. So what did you do about it?”

Erin was focused on Tommy, who had drifted into the corner as Gillian spoke, but Heather answered.

“Now we dig in Erin’s yard, not anywhere near Uncle Dave’s magic plants.”

“Exactly!” Jo-ann started to feel hopeful as Amanda took up the thread. “There are two groups of people, and one group wants to let the plants be, and the other group wants to dig up lots of holes. But there’s a problem, because they both want to be in the same yard. Do you see?”

Erin finally raised her head. “Why? Can’t they just go away? Don’t they know they’re not wanted?”

Jo-ann shivered as she listened to Erin’s words. They might have sounded naive, but there was a quality to her smell that made Jo-ann wary. She wondered whether Erin had made the connection between herself and the Froggies in her “dream.” She took a deep breath. This was as good a place to start as any.

“Erin, do you know who it is in your dream? You know, don’t you? You know why your mommy and I don’t have midhands, why we can’t hear all the noises you make.” Her mouth was dry, and she had to concentrate not to look over at Tommy. She knew he watched from the corner ears swiveled forward almost touching his nose. She wanted to stroke his back, but she kept her eyes on Erin.

“They’re people like me and Tommy and Heather. But not like you. Or you, Mommy. You’re not my mommy, are you?”

After a moment, Gillian said, “No, I’m not.”

At Gillian’s quiet answer, Erin crumpled. She lay curled in a little ball, pressing her upperhands and midhands against the floor, left, then right, then left. Gillian stepped toward her, then hesitated. The hairs on Jo-ann’s arms stood up. She suspected that Erin was making some noise in the ultrasonic. She knew she ought to do something, but for a moment, she just stood there, looking at Tommy. He lay curled in the corner, shivers rippling up and down his spine. He keened in the top of his range, knowing his mother wouldn’t hear. He wanted her to hear, but he wanted her to hear him for real, hear the sound he was making now. He didn’t want to make her noises, the flat weak noises she made. He wanted her to know his voice, the voice of the people in the dream. Why couldn’t she understand?

“You’re my mommy,” he wailed in that voice, “you have to listen to me. How could you hurt me like this, I want to hurt you, I want you to hurt, too.”

Under his keen, he heard Mommy talking to Heather’s mommy. ‘Yes, yes, of course we could show the board video of them talking. Hell, we could probably convince them to go and talk to some experts appointed by the board. It would take some prep time, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be easy, but eventually I’m sure we could convince the board that these three are capable of speech.”

Erin’s mommy said something, but he didn’t care. He rocked himself back and forth. He tried to stop keening, but he couldn’t. Mommy not Mommy? He couldn’t think. He kept rocking, hoping it would all stop. But Mommy was still talking, and everything stayed the same.

“The Hugonaut Corporation will argue that Froggie society is pre-verbal, that although they bear the capacity for speech in their vocal cords, they have not yet developed a language. No language, no sentience. That argument won last time, and it will win again. And they’ll make the kids out to be circus freaks. While they’re still this young, and so confused about their identity, they won’t make the most convincing ambassadors. No, Gillian, in order to get those damn miners off the planet, we have to prove communication among the Froggies. Dream communication. And for that...”

“We need the children,” finished Gillian reluctantly.

The girls lay huddled in little balls. Amanda crouched next to Heather, talking urgently. Heather’s throat-sac vibrated-she was probably rumbling in the subsonic. Gillian rocked with Erin, rubbing her head along the side of Erin’s jaw. Jo-ann wasn’t sure if Erin was responding to the touch. After an eternity, Tommy’s quiet drew her to him. She breathed, trying to slow her heartbeat, and looked into the corner. He was huddled in on himself, ears completely flat alongside his nose, everything tucked under.

“Tommy, come here. Honey, I’m sorry.” She reached out, hesitated, touched his head, stroked his back. She picked him up, like she used to when he was little, and carried him outside. They sat in the garden for a while, Tommy on her lap. Dave came out and sat down next to them.

“Why, Mommy? Oh, not-Mommy. Not. Why do I live here if you’re not my Mommy?”

Always before, she knew the words to answer his questions. But not this time.

“We came here, before you were born, Tommy. Me and Amanda. Daddy was here already, studying the plants, so Amanda and I came to meet the Froggies.”

“What is Froggy?”

“People like you and Heather and Erin. Lots of them, all over the planet. But they wouldn’t talk to us. I tried and tried. Amanda tried, and Paul, people you never even met. No matter what we did, they just ignored us.” The years-old frustration choked in her throat.

“Froggies?” At least he had stopped rocking, and his ears were starting to swivel back.

“Yes, like you but bigger.”

“Not like you?” The ears rotated forward, hovered just over his nose.

“No. Not like me at all.”

“You mean, I have another mommy somewhere? A real mommy? Where? Tell me where!” He squirmed out of her lap and hopped in place, little hops that barely disturbed the dirt. She felt the crushing weight of his hope as he stumbled back into her lap. “I don’t know, exactly.”

“Didn’t you meet her?”

“No, I, um, didn’t.”

“Will you help me find her?” His ears swerved wildly, back and forth.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

She looked pleadingly at Dave, who frowned. She kept her eyes locked on his until he nodded.

“Tommy,” he said, “this is your home, here with your mother and me and Heather and Erin.”

“No it’s not! I’m going to find my real mommy.”

He burst out of her lap, leaping away from the house, toward the woods.

“Tommy, no!”

Tommy climbed. Whistling in distress, ears wrapped securely over his nose, he pulled himself up the tall unbending branches. Higher and higher, until he reached the nasty prickers. As he had suspected, there were no branches above the prickers. Probing with his tail, he searched for a gap in the prickers, but they were close together, only as far apart as his upperhand was wide. Pulling all four lower limbs as close to the top as he could, he braced his upper hands in the gaps between the prickers and launched himself up and over. Owww, that hurt, a sharp pain pulling along his left side. Crash! He landed hard, in a bush, a regular bush, much softer than the pricker bush, but still not exactly soft. Moss would have been nicer. He licked his side where the pricker had torn. It throbbed. He whimpered, low in his throat-sac. Dave slammed his hand on his thigh. “Let the little-let him go. Let them all go, goddammit! Isn’t six years enough? Six years of isolation, six years without anyone to share my research with? No, I’m not done. I know you’ve tried to understand my work, but dammit, you have Amanda and Gillian to talk to, to share your theories with. I’m sitting on a gold mine of genetic possibility here, and God knows what they’re doing with these plants, out there in the real world. All the duplicated research, the dead ends I’ve wasted years on. Maybe all my work is for nothing.”

“Like mine?” Jo-ann asked, her voice low and rough. She didn’t want to cry. “Tommy was our son, is our son.”

“He’s not our son! He never was, he was just an experiment. A scientific experiment.”

Jo-ann gasped in shock and wrapped her hands around her stomach. “He’s our son,” she repeated, rocking back and forth.

Dave sighed, loud, and ran his hands through his hair. “Ah, sweetie, I’m sorry. He’ll come back. Or maybe Heather and Erin will know how to find him. They’ve got great sense of smell, don’t they? I bet they can follow him just fine.”

“And then what? Even if we find him, he hates me.” Jo-ann snuffled, wiped her nose. “He’ll never forgive me.”

“Jo-ann, look at me. I’m not sure how the kid will feel. How would you feel?”

“I would feel-I don’t know. I wonder if he can find his, the mother of his litter.” Jo-ann wondered again if Froggies had mother-child relationships like humans. For that matter, how many people did she know who had mother-child relationships the way humans supposedly did? And then there were those who could never even try.

“Maybe we should let him look for her,” Dave said gently. As they stood up to go inside, Erin and Heather came charging out of the house. Heather first, bounding across the yard, veering around Dave and Jo-ann. Erin followed, stopping once, turning her head toward the house. Gillian stood in the doorway, raised her hand, but didn’t speak. After a moment, Erin raced after Heather. Jo-ann walked toward Gillian.

“They’re going with Tommy,” Gillian said unnecessarily.

Tommy heard whuffing and whistling, nearby, behind. He smelled Heather and Erin. He pinged in that direction-there, beyond the barrier. “Guys, hey, here I am,” he called. “Over the top, come on, let’s go find Froggies. People like us ...”

“How do you get over?” Erin asked.

“Grab the top, between the sharp prickers, jump hard.” Tommy perched on a nice soft mound and directed them. “Here, there’s moss on this side if you jump from here.” He yelped as Heather landed on his foot. They tried to scramble out of the way, but Erin was too fast. The three rolled off the mound in a tangle of limbs.

“Hey, watch out, you.” Heather started tickling Erin’s ribs. “Look who’s talking, foot-stomper,” Tommy said, pinning Heather. “Erin, I’ve got her. Get her, fast.” But Erin, ever unpredictable, pounced on Tommy, using the tip of her tail to tickle his midback, right where he couldn’t reach. “Aaagh, no fair. Heather, help me.”

“No way.” And Heather started tickling Tommy, too. He laughed helplessly until he could barely breathe.

“Stop, stop, I’m going to tell-“

All three froze. Tommy keened a bit. Heather rubbed her head along his jaw. Erin patted his lower back gently.

“Tell who?” Erin mumbled. They rocked for a moment, in silence. “What are we gonna do?”

“I want to find our real mommies. Do you think they miss us?” Tommy couldn’t help shivering, even though the midday sun was hot on his back.

“How do we find them? We don’t know where they live.” Heather scratched her toe in the dirt. Around them was the restless whirling of small fliers everywhere. Erin twisted her head right, up, left, down, chasing their movements. Pollen floated by Tommy’s nose; he sneezed.

“Let’s see where the small flier is going. Maybe he’s got a nest.” Erin bounded away through the trees.

“Erin, wait, we should stay near the running-water sound. We don’t want to get lost.”

“Why not?” she said, but she stopped chasing the little creature.

“No, Erin, Tommy’s right. I want to stay near the water, too.”

“Okay, but I don’t think it’s going to take us to the Froggies.”

Tommy asked, “Do you think it’s different, out here?” He knew, from the way the prickers had curved out at the top, that they would not be able to return over the barrier.

“I don’t know, smells the same to me. Same trees, same dirt, same bugs.” Erin grabbed a fuzzy insect with her tail and popped it into her mouth to prove her point. “Yup, tastes the same, too.”

Heather hrrmmed, low in her throat. “Feels different. This plant, here, feel this, the leaves are fuzzy, sharp edges. I never found one like this before.”

Tommy returned from the edge of the clearing. “Nothing around here like Daddy’s plants. The new ones are tasty, though.”

They hopped for a while through the forest, keeping close to the stream.

“I’m tired. Can we stop and eat?” Heather was always the first to think of food.

‘Tommy, did you notice, something feels different, inside, here. Like, back home, there’s always a feeling, that this way is nicer than that way, you know, the paths where it’s easier to move along, like in my backyard from the door to the orange tree, and at your house out to the special bushes ...”

“Yeah, it’s moved, here. Pulls another way now.” While they were talking, Tommy noticed that Heather was sniffing around for the peppery plants they liked to eat. “Guys, over here, yummy food, come eat!”

She had dumped over an insect hive, and they devoured the citrusy nectar inside. Sated, worn out by the excitement and the sun, they curled up for a nap.

Symbols, a series of indentations in dirt, flickering one after the other. Dreaming fingers trace the surfaces, next, next, next. There, a repeat? Impossible to say. Impressions come from nothing, then flicker away. The symbols continue, a steady flow. Suddenly, the hand is grasping wet fruit, squeezes, pulp drips between startled fingers. A puff of air across the hand, all clean! Then fingers are racing over new surfaces, tracing more symbols. The same symbols come back, sometimes, here and there. Then just as quickly disappear, replaced by something new. Next, next, next. Another squeeze of rotten fruit, smell, too, this time. Whew!

Tommy, stretched, woke up, untangled himself from the others. “I just had the weirdest dream-“

Erin giggled. “Couldn’t be any weirder than mine.”

“I bet mine was the weirdest,” Tommy said.

“No, mine. I had funny dirt-pictures, lots and lots of them-“

“-and rotten fruit, too, in the middle, then at the end, it stank,”

Tommy finished.

“No way, that was my dream,” said Erin.

“What do you think it means?” asked Tommy.

Heather interrupted. “What are you guys talking about?”

“The funny dreams,” Erin said. “Didn’t you have them?”

“No. I don’t get it. Dirt-pictures? How is that a dream?”

Erin emitted the confusion-scent. “I’m not making it up.”

Tommy realized something was different. “Hey, Erin, did you feel it?

The pull was different in the dream. The direction, just a little more that way.”

“It was the same as my dream, last night,” said Erin. “And mine. Mommy said it was the ‘Froggies’ in the dream. Maybe this was them, too,” said Tommy.

“So if we go more this way, until the pull direction is like in the dream-“

“Maybe we’ll find the Froggies,” said Tommy.

The two headed out through the trees.

Heather refused to budge. “Guys, this is stupid! You want to follow directions from your dreams? I’m not going.”

“Aw, come on, Heather, where else are we going to go?”

Waiting was almost worse than bad news. At least with bad news, there was something to react to, something to attack. Here, Jo-ann had to sit, trust in Amanda and Gillian to present their case to the Department of Xenoanthropology. They had gone through their archives, putting together the video to showcase the intelligence of their Froggie children. Without live testimony, she wasn’t sure how convincing it was. But with the kids gone over the wall, they finally had to admit that they’d gone as far as they could, separated from the outside world. So many times over the years, they had wished for colleagues to brainstorm with, computers powerful enough to find meanings in the ultra-and subsonic frequencies. If there were any. But the ethics panel would have had a field day with her methodology. Looks like they’d have their chance now.

She went out to the garden. Dave, whistling tunelessly, was tending to his hybridized azaleas. She wondered what he was thinking. “How are they coming?”

“Good, actually. I finally got that mite infestation killed off. Mostly weeding, right now.”

“Okay, I get that the mites aren’t really mites. They just act like mites, right? But how do you decide what’s a weed?”

“Like anywhere else. Weeds are the plants with the strongest roots.” Dave sawed off the base of a thick vine and carefully unwrapped its reaching tendrils from around the new growth of his azalea.

“No, really.”

“Really. Weeds are total nutrient hogs. They suck all the minerals out of the soil, but don’t produce interesting fruit or fragrant flowers.”

“I don’t know-vacuum cleaners of the plant world, could be something valuable there.”

“Well, someone Out There is probably working on it. But I think I’m getting close to isolating the regenerative function. I’ve produced it in the azaleas, and now the orange bush.”

Jo-ann saw his pride in his plants, but also how it ate at him, not being able to share the work with colleagues. “You know, you don’t have to wait with me. You can go back, show these plants right away.”

“I don’t want to leave you here alone. . . .”

Tension-she thought her head would burst. She rubbed her temples. “You know what, the hell with this. No way are they going to buy those videos. They’ll say we faked it. Without a live demonstration, our case won’t be strong enough. I’ve got to find Tommy, bring him back to the Department. Then they’ll believe me and fund another effort to establish communications.”

“Um, Jo-ann, I’m not sure how likely-“

“If we had better computers, we could analyze the subsonics.”

“Jo-ann, we’ve been over this-“

“If they see Tommy, they’ll understand. I’ve got to find him. Where are those aerial maps?”

“Honey, slow down. This is not a good idea.”

“Don’t you want Tommy back? Oh, skip it, you never did care.”

“Okay, that’s enough. Don’t even say that. I’ve stuck it out for six years. You find one other person who would have done this for you. But it’s over. Let it go, goddammit. Come back with me. Tommy is better off out there.”

“To hell with you then. I’m going to find him.”

He came after her. “Jo-ann, wait, at least wait until you hear from Amanda and Gillian.”

The children made their way down the hill. A huge clearing filled the space below, and the smell of themselves came up to them. Their ears and noses quivered with excitement, and Erin kept dashing ahead.

“Wait up, Erin, I’m tired,” Heather said.

“But smell, smell that, can’t you tell, it’s people like us. I want to meet them. Hurry!”

Tommy slowed down, slower even than Heather. “I don’t know. What if they don’t like us?”

The sun was getting cooler, near end-of-day, and by the time they made their way down to the valley, it was becoming night-cold. They headed for the strongest concentration of the smell, so tantalizing, so familiar. “Why don’t we hear anything?” Heather asked.

Tommy decided not knowing was worse. He said, “I don’t know. Let’s go find out.” He approached a drop-off in the floor of the clearing, arched his ear out over the opening. He heard breathing, like Heather and Erin sleeping, but more. He curved his tail out, slow and careful, gently reached into the hole. He touched smooth surfaces, tummies and backs and limbs like his, only bigger. Lots and lots of them, all twined together. Throat-sacs quivered softly, chests rose and fell, ears swiveled back and forth. He extended an upperhand, stroked the length of an arm. Suddenly, a hand grasped his wrist. He jumped, squeaking in surprise, and jerked out of the grip. He backed away.

“Tommy, what is it,” said Heather, “what happened?”

“There’s lots of, I don’t know-people?-sleeping here, all together, and I went to touch, and something grabbed me.”

“Guess they didn’t like you poking them, huh?”

“Yeah. But they didn’t say anything, either.”

“I don’t get it.”

It was the strangest night. The adults-Froggies, Tommy supposed-moved slowly around the valley, eating plant leaves and insects. He browsed next to one, but the adult did not pay any attention to him or the girls. The feeding adults exuded the gingery scent of lazy contentment. A few Froggies splashed in the lake, slurping up the water-plants. Heather took a quick dip, reported that the water-plants didn’t have much flavor and that the adults didn’t seem to mind her company.

Finally, impatient, Erin went up to one and said, “Hi, I’m Erin. Who are you?” The Froggie did not answer, only shook its head as if distracted by a buzzing small flier. Frustrated, she tried talking to another, and another, but each ignored her. Once, Tommy touched an adult, tapping its upper arm for attention. The adult’s skin rippled, as though an insect had bitten it. It stepped away from Tommy, emitting a tangy, tarry annoyance-smell. Taking the hint, Tommy was careful not to touch any of the others.

“Hey, guys, will they talk to you?”

“Not me, it’s like they don’t know I’m here,” said Heather.

“They act like I’m a bug crawling up their butts,” said Erin.

“Ew, Erin.”

“Well, they do. I guess they only like to eat. They’re just like you, Heather.”

“Oh, Erin, you are so funny. All they do is eat and sleep. It’s boring. I want to go home.”

“But we have to find our real mommies,” said Tommy.

“But how?” asked Heather. “Nobody wants to help us. We don’t know how to look for them. We don’t know what they smell like, even.”

“I guess,” Tommy sat, ears drooping over his nose, making small snuffle noises. Erin rumbled, low, in frustration. “How come they didn’t come for us?”

“Maybe they don’t know where we are,” said Tommy.

“How come they sent us away in the first place?” Heather said.

“I want to go home,” said Erin.

The humidity eased off; the air on Tommy’s back warmed. The strange Froggie creatures returned, one by one, to their round earth-holes. Hopping around to investigate, Tommy realized that each of the holes had trees deeply overhanging, providing protection from the sun all day long. Remembering the intense pain of his first sunburn, he approved their planning.

Erin came up behind him. “I wonder why they go in there, during the day.”

“There’s nice trees overhead-I bet it’s cool and comfy.”

“I’m going to find out.” She hopped over to the rim. Uh-oh.

“Erin, I don’t think they like us.” But she was already over the edge, snuggling down among the adults.

“Do they mind?”

“Don’t think so. Hey, it’s really neat down here, all slippery-smooth, legs and tummies rubbing everywhere. Feels like . . . like something, I can’t remember. But it’s nice, come try.”

Tommy poked a doubtful ear over the edge, considering. Wumpf! Something solid struck his back and he fell in, landing right on top of Erin.

“Hey, watch it!”

“It’s not my fault-somebody pushed me. I bet they’re coming down, better move over.” They squeezed in among the others, twining tails and arms through the gaps, settling their backs against the smooth dirt floor. “Erin, feel, the ground is so nice and even.”

“Yeah, it’s just right. But getting crowded, my feet are squashed. Scoot over.”

A strange muffled cry reached his ears. “What was that?”

“Sounded like Heather, I think.”

“Heather! Heather, where are you?” No answer.

Tommy got worried. “I better go find out where she is.” He tried to untangle himself, but couldn’t get free. Every time he almost got his arms out, a new adult would come in and snuggle up with him. So many of them, each pressing into him, not letting him loose. “Erin, help, I can’t get out.”

Her voice was languid, “ ‘S’okay, Tommy, just go to sleep.” He struggled harder, but felt his limbs getting heavier. He couldn’t seem to get a full breath. The more he pulled upward, the more some other would push down on him. His thrashing slowed, stopped. He drifted into uneasy oblivion. This time the dreams almost made sense.

Patterns of swirling smells-sun on dirt, ripe peppers, wet leaves, ice melting in spring, burning lichen, fresh blood, rotten green-fruit-each came and went in almost repetitious sequences. Sounds, really low, below what Mommy could hear, ran as a constant undercurrent. But not quite. Just when Tommy thought he had it figured out-the pollen smell always came after ice, and the sound shifted from an even thrum to a slightly higher pulse-the next time around it was different. They went on forever (small flier dung in snow, ripe ice-fruit, pollen, burning leaves) evoking days of playing in the snow with Mommy, of hunting for new fruits with Heather and Daddy, collecting flowers in spring, jumping in leaf piles with Erin in the fall.

Late-afternoon sun filtered through the overhanging leaves. The adults began crawling out of the nesting hole in a messy confusion of limbs. Flailing, he got his toe in someone’s ear, and received a swat on the leg. On the next try, he connected with dirt. Keeping all his hands and feet close together, he made his way up the wall without stepping on anybody else. Safely out, he scooted away toward Erin.

“Erin, hey, Erin, what did you dream about?”

“Sad smells, smells from Mommy and the aunties and Uncle Dave.”

“But right before we went to sleep, I thought I heard Heather,” said Tommy.

“Heather, Heather,” they called.

From far away, near the lake, they heard intense scuffling. Tommy bounded toward the noise. “Heather, is that you? What happened?”

Heather was alone by the lake, cleaning her arms fastidiously. “At first they were just ignoring me, like they were all day. Then when it started getting hot they headed into their nest-holes. I couldn’t find you guys. One of them grabbed me and pushed me into a hole and I tried to get out, but more and more of them jumped in, they were all on top of each other and on top of me, and I couldn’t move, I could hardly breathe. Then they were sleeping, and I slept, too. When we all woke up it was hard getting out of that nasty hole.”

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” said Erin.

“I poked somebody in the ear,” offered Tommy.

“But did you have the funny smell-dreams, Heather?”

“I guess, there were smells, yes, I remembered snow, and that time we found the dead hrroat. . .”

“Yeah, I got that one, the smell of blood.” Erin hopped a bit with excitement. “Tommy, do you really think they talk in the dreams?”

“Maybe. Maybe they only talk in dreams. Maybe that’s why they ignore us when we’re all awake.”

“Maybe it’s bad manners to talk when we’re awake.”

“So if we wait until we sleep again-“

“We could try to talk, too,” Erin said.

Heather snorted. “You guys want to go back into those holes, try to dream-talk to the weird Froggie people?”

Tommy rippled the skin along his spine, considering. “Maybe . . . If we can get them to talk to us, they’ll help us find our real mommies.”

“Yes!” said Erin. “I think we should stay more, find out what the dreams are all about.”

The communicator shrilled.

“Jo-ann!” Dave called. “It’s Amanda!”

Reluctant, she came into the kitchen, activated the monitor. “What? Of course. What else would they say.” She threw down the control. “That’s it. They didn’t buy it. I’ve got to find Tommy, he’s the only way to make them see reason.”

“Do you even know where to look?”

“I’m going to try the hills west of here. There was a group living up by that hidden lake six years ago.”

He sighed. “Do you want company?”

“You mean it?” She looked at him, surprised. “No, I made this mess, I’ll clean it up.”

“I’ll be here when you get back. Take the flare gun.” He kissed her. For the first time in six years, Jo-ann left the compound. At the gate, she paused. Strange, the trees beyond looked just like the trees of her home, but they weren’t the familiar trees. Larger maybe, or perhaps the leaves were rougher. They looked subtly wrong. Funny how a person gets used to the everyday things, doesn’t like it when something new stares back. She shrugged the thought aside. In her pack she carried her old aerials, marked with the route to the lake. The stellar cartographer had made the aerials for her team back when they first arrived to investigate the Froggies.

Recollections of her first landing on Minerva came to her as she went in search of the children. The shuttle rocked lightly as it settled onto the surface. The gate creaked as she pushed it open. She walked out into a field of tall cinnamon grass. Pushing through a cluster of dense prickly bushes, she checked her map against the readings on her sextant. The sun glowed dim and lilac in the pale green sky. She squinted at the sun, wishing again that compasses worked on Minerva. The breeze, redolent of sweet marjoram and din, brushed against her face. She sniffed, searching for a trace of Froggie; she hoped the local group was still there. The blades of the grass made quiet shushing sounds as she walked. A noise on her left made her jump, but it was just a hrroat grazing, pulling leaves off the high branches with its tail. Hills rose on the horizon, draped in swaths of olive and pomegranate foliage. She skirted the herd, following the stream up through the hills. She reached the edge of the field; the smells of salt and ozone drifted up to her.

Climbing over the slippery shale rocks, she approached the ridgeline. At her feet a cliff dropped sheer into the cobalt sea, mauve and lavender shale glistening in the ocean spray. She looked down into the valley: Froggies, at least thirty of them, gathered by the lake. The group was still there.

Adrenaline rushed through her; her heart raced. She hadn’t visited any Froggies since Tommy. She shielded her eyes against the late-afternoon sun. From this distance, she couldn’t tell if the children were down there. She climbed down the hill, breaking through the brush and sending up clouds of pollen. Once, she almost stumbled into an insect hive, only frantic windmilling saved her from collision. Just like bees on Earth, these bugs would sting if something disturbed their hive.

She hiked on.

Tommy dreamed.

Low sounds, moving in even cadence up to a middle range, slowly back down to the initial note. Up and down, hypnotic. An even pace, as of walking. The pattern repeated, louder then softer. Even after a few days, he was never sure when a dream was trying to tell him something and when it was just there for itself, just art. Erin thought some were math, formulas for things they hadn’t learned yet. Heather thought most of them were just pretty pictures. Tommy wanted to figure out who was sending each dream. If he only knew who was talking, he might be able to talk back. But so far, he could find nothing individual in the dreams. They all had the same direction-pressure, and none contained the distinctive smell of any of the Froggies he had encountered.

The music continued, a shuddering upwelling of individual notes. Pushing out of the void, they rushed past, stuttering one after the other; then meandered, slowed. Dripping, finally, one by one, into a pool of growing silence. Pause. A new sound began, higher, faster, unsteady, demanding. His heart raced, anticipation.

By the time she reached the valley floor the sun hovered on the horizon and near-dark draped the valley in exaggerated shadows. Emptiness and holes littered the valley floor. A blue-green mist drifted over the waters of the lake. All was still, no creatures moving in the dusk.

Memory suddenly assaulted her:

The three of them timed the raid for dawn. It was Gillian’s suggestion, because they’d never seen a Froggie active during daylight hours. They had located a good prospect, a sleep-pit with three different litters. Amanda had argued for the importance of a genetically diverse sample. The sky hovered close above them, a soft, flat gray green, as they hiked down into the valley. The Froggies were wrapping up their nocturnal foraging, their target mothers herding their litters into the western pit by the lake. The three women crept forward and paused, but they saw no response to their presence. “Now, “Jo-ann hissed, and they darted forward into the crowd. With shaking hands Jo-ann reached past the slippery arms of the mother and grabbed a squirming bundle of baby Froggie. She turned, smothering a ery as she felt the mother’s arms wrapping around her shoulders, and bolted for the woods. She heard a human grunt behind her and glanced back to see Amanda recovering from a fall. The other woman ran from a crouch, a small Froggie in her arms. Gillian raced up from the other side and the three scrambled into the woods. They ducked past low branches and around tangled bushes, running flat out until they reached the clearing where Dave held the idling helicar. “You get them? “ he called, leaning out of the pilot’s seat. The women mumbled breathless assents as they jumped into the cargo hold.

“Go, go, go,”Jo-ann yelled, and Dave activated the throttle, lifting the helicar up and away. In all that time, Jo-ann had never let herself wonder if the Froggie mother had missed her child.

“Tommy?” she called.

No answer. Could the local group have left the valley? Petrified, she realized that she had no idea where else to look for the children.

“Tommy, Tommy, are you there?” she called again, her voice thin and strained. Still no answer. What if they were gone forever? Was Dave right, did they belong with their own kind?

What about the ethics panel, would they understand why she had to take them? She hadn’t had any choice-she needed to find a way to save the Froggies, all of them. The panel would have to understand. She managed a hoarse shout. “Tommy!”

Nothing.

She walked into the valley, toward the lake. Halfway there, she came upon a pit, wide and deep, centered under a cluster of trees. Looking in, she saw a tumble of sleeping Froggies, piled one upon another. For a dreadful moment, she thought she was looking at a grave. But peering closer, she saw the gentle rise and fall of ribs. Asleep, under shade, as always during the heat of the day. She sighed with disappointment and started to move away.

She paused midstride, remembering the dreams. Tommy had described dreams with intent, dreams that had meaning, that spoke of her and of the devastation to their planet. Could they be talking to each other in their dreams? What if they were dreaming now, dreaming with each other, sharing their thoughts about the human presence on their planet? About her? Her mind boiled with wild thoughts. Could she join in their dreams, explain to them the threat posed by the Hugonauts? Maybe she could find the Froggie mother from so long ago. Maybe she could explain. Holding her breath with fear, she peered farther into the hole.

There, that corner, a bit of exposed floor, room for her to step in, if she was careful. She reached out a hand to grip the edge of the hole, noticing how it shook before she grabbed on to an exposed root. She swung her leg over, and dug the toe of her boot into the loamy wall-soil. Hugging her body tight against the dirt wall to avoid stepping on exposed limbs and faces and stomachs, she slid down into the pit. The sensation of drowning swept over her, and she realized she had been holding her breath. She gasped, dragging the musky air of the sleeping creatures deep into her lungs. Panting, she looked around, noting the way the Froggies wrapped their limbs around each other, torsos touching, heads resting against neighbor backs. She hesitated, then lay the flare gun down, slowly leaned over and unsealed one boot, then the other.. ..

Naked, she curled up on the ground, aware of the touch of the skin of the Froggies on her legs, her back, her arms. Leaning back, she rested her head against the bristly spine of her neighbor and closed her eyes. As often in the dreams, smells and touch began to mix in with the sounds. Poke, squirm, nestle down, deeper. Push aside slippery limbs, slide over brother-backs and sister-backs, around and through the tangle of skin and bristles. He breathes in gingery musk of contentment and peppery hunger, finally food-smell, he burrows inward to the source. Gleaming warmth, it smells of wet and orange. He bites, sucks-But these images-he recognizes them-his own memories! They were dreaming his dream, the feeding-nest he remembered before any other. His dream, and, he realized, Erin’s, and Heather’s, from their earliest days. How could they share his memory? As he wondered, the link of images broke. He felt physically jarred, shoved and pulled. An ugly smell oozed into his mind, cucumbers and tar, mixed in with smell of Jo-ann. Their anger toward her burned into him. Dislocation. Terror. Isolation.

Abruptly, he woke.

Years ago, Jo-ann had tried out the department’s sensory deprivation tank. Floating in viscous liquid, body temperature, suspended, no pull of gravity, she drifted. Eyes covered, ears plugged, a mask over her nose and mouth delivered tasteless, odorless air. At first her mind had raced, thoughts of her research, of Dave. Then it slowed, lingered on one image, a hand, for an endless time, then a color, yellow. Maybe a banana. She felt her thoughts congeal, she could watch them pass across her inner vision, one by one. The first time she took off her clothes for Dave. Delivering that paper on chimp language development at the Xenoan-thropology Conference. Her first alien sunrise. The hospital, the doctor’s head moving back and forth, so slow, while Dave’s fingerbones pressed against hers. Each thought arrived, first a pinprick, then a small intrusion, growing larger and rounder and fuller, until she held the entirety of the memory for an unbearable moment, and then the process reversed, the thought shrank and collapsed smoothly upon itself, disappeared. Then the next arrived, just a hint, growing into her mind. These dreams were both like and unlike.

No visual component at all. Utter darkness. A suffocation of blackness, obliterating her sense of self. But the growing world of smell, sound, touch surrounded her, rebuilt her awareness one touch at a time. She could not interpret what she experienced, searched in vain for patterns. The images swirled around her floating weightless existence, pushed against her skin, tugging her this way and that. Sounds, not human, strange combinations. Here and there, blank spaces in the flow, perhaps when the sound traveled beyond human ears, and the dreaming of human ears. Smells of the planet, smells of memory, but not her memory, emotions she had never felt, never imagined. Sliding skin, silky like no human skin, smells that she might have found revolting, but here, these smells evoked hunger and delicious satiation. And there, that smell! she recognized the smell of Tommy, her Tommy. Her baby was here! She cried her relief. And there, Erin, there Heather. Abruptly, she woke, and quickly dressed as the nest came alive.

The Froggies were moving, writhing their plenitude of arms. They reeked, a new smell, cucumbers and tar. Their motions were smooth and graceful, but Jo-ann saw danger in them. The two aliens nearest her stood to their full height, towering over her, pressing her up against the dirt wall. She struggled to breathe.

“Wait, wait! Tommy, where are you? Tommy, help me! You don’t understand. I need to talk to you. You have to listen, the Hugonauts are taking your planet! Tommy!”

They leaned in, one on each side, pushing against her shoulders, her rib cage. She squirmed, hunched her shoulders to protect her head, but they kept coming closer. She crouched defensively, but when the one on the right grabbed her arm with his midhand, she panicked. She twisted savagely, kicked its leg, dived past and scrambled for the surface. It tried to keep hold of her arm, but she bit the grasping midhand and the creature jerked back with a squawk. The other grabbed at her thigh, but she kicked out wildly and it could not find purchase on her leg. She had just got her head over the edge of the hole, when the Froggie managed to pull her leg back, dragging her down again.

She screamed, drove her elbow into its ribs. When it bent forward, she punched it, right on the nose. The high-pitched keen hurt her ears, and guilt stabbed her, but she forced herself back, up the wall. Her hand reached out, grabbing for roots, for leverage, and when she felt something hard under her palm, she latched on and pulled with terror. But it was no root, it came down so quickly that she fell. She landed next to the flare gun, and looked at it in amazement. As she hesitated, the Froggies piled onto her, one, two, another. She couldn’t see. Sobbing, she curled in on herself, cradling the flare gun to her stomach.

Her hand found the switch, she rolled and released.

Chaos.

The screams of the aliens deafened her. She thrashed out, bucking and clawing, stepping on arms, walking up an exposed back, kicking the grasping hands. A tail reached for her waist-she slapped it with the flare gun. Tears poured down her cheeks, blinding her. She scrambled over the rim, ran a few feet, tripped and collapsed. The smell of burned flesh filled her nostrils, but it was not the smell of human flesh. She retched.

“Tommy?” she cried.

“Mommy, is that you?” A half-pint Froggie leapt awkwardly out of the pit. “Mommy, what was that?”

“Oh, Tommy,” she looked back over her shoulder, “Tommy, they were hurting me. I didn’t have a choice. Are you okay? Where is Erin? Heather?”

He reached out his upperhand, almost touched her, pulled back. She smelled devastation. “Mommy, you did this, didn’t you? Why did you come here? They are so angry with you. You have to go.”

She scrubbed at her eyes, reached out to her son. She touched his back, stroked the silky skin. He shuddered and moved away. “You have to go,” he repeated.

“But the dreams, I felt them. I felt you in the dreams.”

“You, humans, you aren’t allowed there. You have your place and this is our place.”

“I need to help you-“

Erin and Heather appeared, coming out of the same hole. Erin charged at Jo-ann. “Auntie Jo-ann, you did a bad thing. You hurt someone, there’s blood!”

She looked toward the Froggie nest. Sitting on the edge, one of the aliens cradled the stump of its midarm. Blood, brown and thick, oozed out of the stump evenly, not pulsing as from a human injury. Shocked, she watched. She tried to speak, but couldn’t get words past the lump in her throat. The bleeding slowed. She blinked, and the bleeding had stopped completely. A final drip, and the flesh at the end of the Froggie’s arm collapsed inward. Amazed, she realized that the Froggie would live-its gate circulatory system had acted as a natural tourniquet.

But now the children approached, focused on her, backs bristling with anger.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I never wanted to hurt anyone. But you have to tell them, there are bad people, the Hugonauts-“

Heather interrupted. “What’s so bad about them?”

“They want to destroy the planet. They want to dig holes, really big holes that kill the forest and the animals, to get at the rocks underneath. They would dig and dig until there was nothing left. Not your nice nesting holes, much bigger. They’ve messed up other planets before, and now they want to take your home away.”

“But you’re the one who messed things up. You took us away from our real home, didn’t you?” said Erin.

Jo-ann felt Erin’s accusation driving at her, but she had to concentrate on explaining the important issue to them. “Yes. I did. But you have to understand, I need to talk to them. All these years, I’ve been trying to prove that they communicate. So we can keep the planet safe. And it’s the dreams, you children found the answer, they talk in dreams. I felt it, too! I felt I was in their dreams. . . .”

Tommy whipped his tail around, as though he would slap her, but just brushed the tip across her forearm.

“No! I told you already. You can’t feel them-it’s not allowed. They’re very angry with you.”

“But, Tommy, I knew you were there, I could smell, such strange smells, but with you mixed in, and some chemical, like tar. What were they saying, do you know?”

“Mommy, no. You’re not my mommy. You stole us. They say, Go.”

“Go,” said Heather.

“Go,” said Erin.

“But you have to help. ...”

She searched for the words to explain why she needed them. Why she needed the Froggies to listen to her, to welcome her. She had been so sure, those years ago, sure that the Froggies would answer her, and she would show everyone their intelligence, show that Jo-ann had seen the truth everyone else had missed. And now she had it, their communication dancing through her mind. (Go, Tommy had said. He had told her to leave. Go, echoed in her ears.) These amazing creatures would hare their dreams with her. The children would have to understand. They had to see how she needed them to translateHer thoughts came to a grinding halt. Words left her. She paused, lingered over that last word, see. She looked. The children sat before her, one two three, and they were not human children. She spoke, they spoke back, she thought they were talking with each other. But, even though the children used the same words she used, they did not see what she saw. They did not see the Hugonauts strip-mining their planet. They did not see the people in the courtroom laughing at them, at her for declaring their intelligence. They did not see. She had no idea what they perceived, inside their heads. After the briefest glimpse, she knew that she would never know what they imagined, or what they needed.

They had chosen, and they had not chosen her.

She couldn’t help it; she started crying. “I just wanted to find a way to talk to them. I thought you kids would talk to me.”

She reached out to Tommy. He stepped back.

“You are wrong. You don’t belong here. They’ve explained it to me. This is our place, not yours. We don’t come into your world. You stay out of ours.”

“Tommy, I love you.”

“You go now.”

Dave was waiting at the gate. As Jo-ann stepped out of the trees, he reached out a hand. He waved in question toward the trees behind her. She shook her head.

“Did you find them?”

“Yes.”

Dave folded his shirts, stacking them in a careful pile. Jo-ann crammed her data cells into the mem-erase, one after the other.

Jo-ann felt him watching her. “These aren’t the important ones. Just baseline material.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

While he tucked glassware in with the shirts, she moved around the house, restless, picking things up and putting them down again, collecting data cells for the ruthless scrubbing of the mem-erase. Feeding her latest collection into the machine, she reached with her other hand for the data cell propped on the table by the sofa, the one with their favorite pictures of Tommy, of the three of them making up the game of hop-and-catch. As she picked it up, it was pulled back. Startled, she turned her head.

“Not that one,” Dave said. “I want to keep it.”

“No need for it, might as well reuse the data cell. They’re not cheap.”

Dave didn’t let go. After a moment, Jo-ann let her hand drop. She looked out the window at the garden. She felt Tommy stroke her hair. She watched again as Dave carefully snipped the encroaching vines off his azalea bushes.

She thought, Vines wrap around your heart-when you try to pull them out, you only tear yourself. Writer collaborations are strange things-when they work, they’re marvelous meldings of two (or more) fertile minds into something not quite like each of them separately. We have two such collaborations in this book, and this first one has proved fertile, indeed. Barry Malzberg, besides being a N. Y. Giants football fan, has been a wonderfully iconoclastic writer from the original New Wave to now. His stories are instantly recognizable as Malzbergian- intense, almost frantic in narration, cerebral and emotive at the same time. Kathe Koja first made a name for herself in the dark fantasy field.

They’ve written some wonderful stories together. “What We Did That Summer” is one of them, and was one of the first stories I bought for this volume.

What We Did That Summer

KATHE KOJA AND BARRY N. MALZBERG

Boy, I sure miss those aliens, he said. What? She had to put down her beer for that one but there was nothing stronger than amusement now; she was not surprised; it was not possible any longer to surprise her. Say that again, she said, leaning into the metal ladderback of the kitchen chair, the one with the crooked leg that when it moved scraped that red linoleum with the textbook sound of discontent. Say it again and then explain it.

Nothing to explain, he said, I just miss them. We called them aliens, those girls, it was our word for them, they would have done anything. Anything, you wouldn’t believe, he said, nodding and nodding in that way he had. Not for money, you know, they didn’t want money or presents, whatever. It was like a contest they were having between themselves. Almost like we weren’t there at all, he said, and sighed, scratched himself in memory as she watched without contempt, watched all this from some secret part of herself that was not a failed madam, not a woman whom he had once paid, regularly though never well, to fuck; not a woman whose home now permitted no yielding surface whatsoever, nothing soft or warm or pleasant to the touch, no plush sofas and certainly no beds; she herself slept on a cot like a board and ate macaroni and cheese and potpies that she bought at the supermarket when they were on sale. Tell me, she said. Tell me about those aliens, why not. Let me get another beer first, though. Get one for me, too, he said, and scratched again; there was an annoying dry patch between his legs, just behind the dangle of his scrotum, not an easy place to scratch in public but at her place, well. Well well well. It had never mattered what he did here, not in the old days, the brisk wild days in which she had absorbed without delight the greater part of his pay, or that strange hallucinatory period in which he had decided he was into S&M and she had proved so thoroughly and with such elan that he was not; not during his divorce from Deborah and the unraveling that followed, and the rewinding of the skein which followed that; she was in some ways the best friend he had ever had, and it was for that reason he suspected without knowing or caring to admit that he had begun to tell her this story, this night, in this comfortless kitchen with its piles of old yellow pages and its warped unclosable window presenting its endless, disheartening view of the faraway river and all points east.

All right, she said, setting down both cans of beer; they did not use glasses; glasses were both effete and a bother with beer like this. Go on, tell me. So they fucked your heads off, you and your gang, those dumb boys you ran with, and they never took your dollar bills or the flowers you picked yourselves. Queen Anne’s lace, am I right, from the side of the road? past the beer cans in the ditches? Or the candy you bought from the drugstore, three Hershey bars for them to split? What charity, she said, laughing although not directly at him or even the boy he had been. What princes, she said, what royalty you must have been.

If you’re going to make fun, he said, subtly ashamed at the sound of his own petulance but unwilling to correct it, I won’t tell the story.

Oh yes you will, she said, not laughing now but smiling. Of course you will. Go on ahead and tell it, I won’t laugh. Much.

All right then, he said, and scratched again, but thus invited was somehow at a loss for a true beginning: he drank some of the beer, set down the can. Well, he said. You remember John Regard? John Regard, she said. I remember he was an asshole, yes. Well, think what you want, but he was a good friend to me, he used to let me borrow his car, that black-and-yellow Barracuda. Remember that?

No, she said; they both knew she was lying. If there’s going to be a lot about John Regard in this story, I don’t think I want to hear it after all.

Oh, just shut up, he said, and listen. Anyway, it was John who found them, out in the field that night; it was behind where the factories used to be, all those tool-and-die places. We were drinking beer, but we weren’t drunk, stopping the narrative there, pointing with the hand holding the can; neither of them if they noticed remarked on this irony. We were not drunk and I want you to remember that. I will, she said.

Anyway, John said he heard voices or saw a flashlight or something, and we headed over there, and we found these girls and they were naked. Three of them, bare-ass naked.

She scraped the chair leg a little, leaning with all her weight. What were they doing? she said. Nothing, I don’t know. Even from this distance, time and age, and geography she saw his wistfulness, the depth and slow passion of his wonder. They were just sitting there, he said, talking. And John saidI know what John said. Meat on the hoof, that’s what John- Will you quit? he said, with a sudden sad ferocity that silenced them both; they sat in the silence as in the middle of a large and formal room and finally he said, Just let me tell it, all right? Just let me tell the fucking thing and get it over with, and then you can say whatever the hell you want. All right? Is that all right with you, milady?

Yes, she said. Yes, it’s fine. Go on.

Well. Not sullen but disturbed, as if he had lost his place in chronology itself and would take his own time finding it. Well, anyway, he said. They were sitting there naked and John said (daring her with a look to mock) Do you ladies need some help? And they didn’t say anything at first but finally they did, one of them, she seemed like the oldest or the smartest or something, and she said, in this way that was like an accent but not really an accent, you know what I mean? Like the person is from somewhere but you can’t place where. And she said We’re having a bet. That’s what she said. We’re having a bet and we can’t decide who’s right.

And John said (leaning back a little as if back in the field, taking his time, measuring his place) Well what’s the bet? Now you have to remember we were both kids, then, you know, we were sixteen or so, and we both had pretty good rods on, looking at these naked girls there in the dirt and the weeds and so on. They weren’t really beautiful girls, they were kind of a little fat or out of shape-what’s the word?

misshapen? Is that a word?-but they were definitely girls and they were naked girls and that was good enough for us. So John said What’s your bet, and they said We are trying to bet which one of us can have the most boys.

It was very still in the kitchen; she did not say anything though he thought she would, until the silence told him that she was not going to comment on this and so Well, he said. That was all we needed to hear and, well, John said you can start with me, ladies, and so there we were. Us and those three girls. She still did not say anything until she saw that he would not continue without some kind of comment or response from her, something to keep the story moving like rollers under a ponderous piano, or someone’s obese and terrible aunt. Well, she said. There you were, like you say. I can guess what happened next. Then what?

Well that was the thing, he said. After we were done and getting dressed I asked them their names, you know, and they wouldn’t tell us, not like they were shy or something but as if they weren’t sure what we wanted. And so they wouldn’t say anything and finally I left.

You? she said. What happened to John?

He was, he had to go piss or something. I don’t remember, crossly. Anyway that was it for that night but the next night we went out there, you know, again (in that field with its weeds and chunked metal, scrap and dirt and the oily smell of the tool-and-die shops, its moonlessness and its absence of mystery) and there they were. Only this time only one of them was naked and the other two were wearing these dresses, weird dresses, you know, like old ladies or something would wear. And the smart one said She doesn’t want to make a baby, about the naked one, you know? She doesn’t want to make a baby so do something different this time.

Well, she said, and could not help smiling; and he smiled, too, and they both laughed a little, a laugh not wholly comfortable but without true embarrassment, and she said Get me another beer, will you? and he did. So anyway, he said. We did it all different ways with that girl, and the other two sat in their old-lady dresses and watched us like they were kids in school and never said a word or made any sound at all. Just sat there in the dirt and watched us do their sister, you know, until we were tired. How long did that take? she said.

A lot longer than it does now, he said, and she smiled, and he did, too. So they talked to each other in little voices and John said How about tomorrow? and they said no, not tomorrow but that they would see us soon. And then we left.

So what happened then? she said. Incidentally, you’re going to knock that beer over if you keepI see it, it’s okay. So we went back anyway (and from his face she could see he was less present in the kitchen than in that midnight field, picking his way with lust and hope through the clutter and debris, searching for three misshapen naked girls who would perform with him acts he had never dreamed of suggesting, who would do whatever he asked for as long as he could without demanding recompense or return; it was some men’s idea of heaven, she knew) but they weren’t there. We waited around and waited around and they didn’t show and so finally we left. And John went back the next night andJohn did? What about you?

I didn’t have a car, he said shortly; they both knew what that meant and neither remarked on it, John’s well-known selfishness and duplicity, John sneaking back alone in the yellow-and-black Barracuda to have them all for himself. Anyway, he said, John went back but he didn’t find them, and so we figured maybe they were gone for good. But then one night about two weeks later they came back. It was raining, we had to do it in the car. John was in backWith two of them, she said. Yes. With two of them. You want to tell my story or should I? (But it was mere rote irritation, only physical pain could have stopped this story now; it was like the last drive to orgasm, you needed a baseball bat and room to swing it if you wanted to make it stop.) So I was up front with the other one, and it rained and rained, water like crazy down the windshield and the windows. And every once in a while I would try to get her to drink some beer, you know, but she never would, she said she didn’t want any. And we kept at it all night, it was about four o’clock when finally they said they would see us later and they got out of the car and walked away in the rain, the three of them side by side like they were in a marching band or something, they kept walking until I couldn’t see them anymore. And then what? she said, imagining him sore and drunk and triumphant, prince in a circus of carnality and stretched imagination, after fucking and sucking and dog-style and what have you, what else is there, what else is left for a sixteen-year-old boy who has not yet perfected the angles and declensions of true desire? Even with her, as a man both matured and stunted by the pressure of his needs, there had come a limiting and it had come from him. Then what happened? she said again, but gently, to lead and not to prod.

He did not answer at first; he seemed not to have heard her. Then he sighed and drank the rest of the beer in the can, one melancholy swallow. Well, he said. I was all for finding out their names and where they lived and so on and so on, but John said they were probably foreigners and their fathers would shoot our heads off or cut off our balls or something if we tried. So all we did was go back to the field, and sit there, and wait.

And did they come back? she said.

Well, he said, that’s the interesting part. One of the interesting parts, 1 guess. They did and they didn’t. What I mean is that the next night out in the field we waited and waited until we had got past the point where the beer meant anything, you know that kind of drunk where every new one just seems to bring you down, make you less drunk and sadder? We sat there in the field drinking and talking about pussy and what the aliens had been like and all the time the sky seemed to be lightening up like dawn except that it wasn’t near morning and we weren’t getting anywhere at all. The nicking had seemed good at first but the longer we talked and waited the sadder it got until I had a whole new look on the situation: we were a couple of sixteen-year-old kids humping these naked girls who didn’t know any better and in a way, when you looked at it, it could have been maybe even rape. Like they were feeble-minded or something or just out from an institution, they sure didn’t act normal. How the hell did we know? How did we know? he said with a shudder, looking now as if the field in memory had become a bleak and dangerous place, a place of pain and not of happiness; and she looked at him not for the first time in a way that went past his old face, his sunken shoulders, his dumb, dragging features, and she thought You took his money and let him climb on top of you, and then you didn’t want to feel like a whore anymore, so you stopped taking his money and then sooner or later you stopped taking him and what the hell was that, now? What did that come to? Are you happy now? Never mind him: what about you?

Well, he said, the sluice of beer problematic down his throat, he swallowed as if it were his own trapped saliva, as if it was something he needed but did not want. Well just about four in the morning or something like that, John and I were so drunk and so sick we were ready to give up and go home and then all of a sudden this guy comes out of the bushes, a tall thin guy as naked as the girls had been except for this big hat he was wearing and something around his neck like a medal or a badge, it was hard to tell in the light. But he was naked as hell and I just want to tell you this part, you can believe it or not, but he didn’t have any cock or balls. He had nothing in that place, just smoothness, and he was about the scariest fellow we had ever seen, drunk or sober, because of that empty place there and a look in his eyes which even then we could tell. You’re the ones, aren’t you? he said to John and me, the same way the girls talked, that foreigner-talk, only from him it was mean. You’re the ones they’ve been doing it with.

We looked at him, and there was nothing to say. I mean, what could we say? Yes, we were doing it?

Doing what? While we were trying to figure that one out he made a motion and the girls were there, except this time they weren’t naked. They must have come from the bushes, too, but it was hard to tell. Maybe they dropped from the sky. You got to understand, we were so drunk by now and the whole situation was so peculiar that we couldn’t get a handle on it. You follow me? But those girls were chittering away and poking each other like animals and then they pointed at me and John, raised their fingers and just pointed them down. We felt pretty damned foolish, I want you to know, and scared, too; here’s some guy without a cock and balls and three girls pointing at you, it would scare anybody. Even you, he said.

She said nothing. The beer in the can had gone flat, but she did not move, to drink it, to replace it. The refrigerator buzzed and buzzed like a large and sorry insect trapped in a greasy jar. Maybe it wouldn’t scare you, he said. Who knows what scares you, anyway, but it sure scared us. No one said anything for a minute, and then I said, All right. All right, I said, we did it. They wanted us to, John said and you can say what you want about John, but that was a brave thing to say, in that field at that moment, to that guy. They wanted us to, he said, and they asked for everything and if they tell you different, it’s a lie. We gave them whatever they wanted, and if you got any quarrel, take it up with them. I don’t have a quarrel, the guy said, I only want facts. The girls were still chittering, and I could see that John was starting to shake, but I have to tell you that for me it was different. I might’ve been more scared than any of them, but whether it was the beer or not, I just didn’t give a damn. I mean, it looked like some kind of farmer’s daughter scam, you know what I mean? Like he was going to charge us for having devir-ginated his precious daughters and who the hell was he, anyway, and where was he when they were being fucked? All right, I said, John’s right. We did it because they begged for it and wanted it worse than us and that’s all there is to it. You got any problems you take it up with them. I already have, the guy said, and made a motion, and the three girls turned around and moved away from there. That’s already been achieved, the guy said. Now it comes to you. You’ve done this and you’re going to have to pay. That’s all. This is what they call the iron law of the universe, and you are caught up in it.

A pause less silence than memory’s clench, he was so far back in that night it was as if she spoke to two people, man and boy and neither truly listening. Why are you telling me this now? she said. You never told me any of this all these years. I lay under you for ten years and you treated me like shit and then you left and now you tell me this story? I don’t understand you, she said. I never understood you, realizing as she said this that it was only part of the truth: the real thing was that she had never understood anything. So why do you come back to tell me this now? she said. You were sixteen, you and John, that was, what, twenty-five, thirty years ago? What does this have to do with anything? Maybe you should just get out of here, take your ass down the hollow and split.

I never liked it, she said, leaning slightly toward him, her elbows on the table as if she sighted him down the barrel of some strange and heinous gun. I have to tell you that now. You tell me about aliens? You’re an alien. You never made me feel like a woman, you never made me feel anything at all except bad. I felt like a cornhole, is that what you call it? A gloryhole? A place to stick it into until it made come and you yelped, that was a hell of a thing. I don’t like you much for that.

Well, he said, wincing, staring at her, dragged at least halfway back from the field. Well, now, I don’t like that either. I’m almost finished now, why don’t you let me finish? I got started so let me finish and shut your mouth. All right? She said nothing. Well, he said, in such a way that made her wonder if he had heard more than every third word she had said, well this guy says again You have to pay. That is the first and only law of the universe, of time and density. If you do something you pay for it but you pay double and if you don’t understand what you were doing, well then it is triple. Here you are now, the guy said, you pay triple. Three times. Then he made some kind of motion like he was shooing us off, and the next thing I knew the field was on fire. It was fire outside like the fucking had been fire inside and everything was scorched black and then he was gone. That was the end of it-girls, guy without a cock, the whole thing. They never came back again. John was standing in the same place when the fire went out and looked about the same, but who knows, inside and outside, who can tell? He had nothing to say and I had nothing to say either. You have to pay, the guy said, that was the deal. So we had to pay, that was all.

So then what? she said.

So nothing, he said. We left the field and that was the end of it for thirty years. It’s thirty years tonight, you want to know, he said. So it’s an anniversary. I’m telling you on the anniversary. That was a decision John and I made, that with what we knew and what had happened we’d wait twenty-five years and then tell. Maybe that sounds dumb, but there’s a lot of dumb stuff around. The whole thing, I figure, was pretty much dumb from the start; that’s another iron law of the universe.

Twenty-five years, she said, or thirty? Make up your mind.

It’s thirty tonight, he said.

So what’s the point? she said. Are you going to tell me that John died and now you’re going to? Is that the payoff, that on the thirtieth anniversary of the guy without a cock telling you you had to pay, you cash in? That’s a bunch of crap, she said. You were always full of crap. In bed, out of bed, you told more lies than any man I ever knew. Enough, she said, and stood, picked up the beer cans. I’ve heard enough for now.

You’re not getting any ever again, anniversary or no anniversary, cock or no cock. Just go home. John didn’t die just now, he said. He was staring up at her without any true expression, as if his features could not form the picture his mind wanted to show. John died a long time ago, six, seven years, he got hit by a bus. In Fayetteville. I thought you knew that, didn’t you know that?

No, she said, I didn’t know. I don’t keep up with things so good anymore, I live in a shack and try to stay away from all of that stuff. I was never much for news. So John is dead, all right. And where does that leave you?

The iron law, he said, I had to tell you about that because of the anniversary. I would have told John, we would have told each other but he was dead, he got the bus up his behind first and there was nobody to tell. Maybe he took the bus up his behind, who knows? Look at me, he said. He reached for her, touched her face, dragged her face to attention. Do you see me? he said. Do you know what I got? Do you know what really went on there in that field, what it came to?

Crazy, she thought, he was crazy like the rest of them, they’d tell you one thing, anything to get inside you and then they’d yank that one gob of come out, barking and moaning and then go back to being cute until the next time. Except that this one had always been crazy, with his cowboy boots and his bondage stories and his divorce from Deborah, always mooning around, it was different for him, she knew, an entirely different thing.

They let us do everything, he said. Everything we wanted. But everything means everything, it means all of it, do you understand? He seemed very sad, as if he might begin to curse or cry. Like you used to be, he said. Just like you.

I never was, she said, simply, without heat or cruelty. I never was anything you wanted, don’t you know that? Don’t you know that by now?

You take, he said, you take and take and take and then it’s all inside you and you have to give it back. I’m not talking about one squirt, he said, not jism. This is something else. Take and take, so what else is new? she said. Just don’t give it to me. The beer cans were still in her hands; her hands were sweating. I don’t want it. Don’t you give it to me. She felt if she looked too closely at him she would see inside his skull, see his brain, the soft and desperate jelly within the cage: see the memories and thoughts, foaming, dead foam like scum on the water, polluted scum at the beach that burns your ankles when you walk too close, burns your skin like the field, burning, burning. So now we have to give it back, he said. John’s dead. If you take, you give, if you give you take. His breathing was ragged, uneven; I want to show you, he said through that breathing like a gag against his mouth, like gauze. I want you to see what I mean. What I got.

I don’t want to see anything, she said, get out of here now, but it was too late, he was pulling at his pants, pulling at himself and for one moment she thought in simple terror: They took it, it’s all gone, it’s all going to be smooth there like the guy in the story but it was not smooth, it was a general circulation cock and balls just like she remembered except somewhat looser and wrinkled, half-erect there in his hand, his hand was shaking as if in some vast vibration. As if his body existed in some other room than this. What comes out, he said, breathing, shaking. You have to see. I want you to see this thing. It was not spunk of which he was speaking, he had warned her of that, and she knew it was true. Take and take, he said, give and give. Give and take. He was getting it harder, the cock springing straight; in the empty place where the aliens had marked him the iron law was working, clamping, squeezing as his hand squeezed, as he wheezed and breathed, as he lazed and hazed, as he shook and took. She backed against the sink, turned her face away. His breath in crescendo, the refrigerator buzz, her own heart; oh, boy, you have to see this, he said. Turn around and look at this. She said nothing. Turn around and look, he said. Look at me.

The cracked edge of the counter pressed her belly, her hip. Around her the field was burning; the air was filled with the smell of scorching grass. Awaiting landfall, awaiting the impact of metal on earth she put up one alien hand to shield her face from the sight of him, from the worst of what was to come: the mounting boys, their simple, screaming, wondering faces, the stink of grass, the fiery closure of her thighs: all their detritus poured into her cup of reparation. Alien she fell, alien she waited: alien the great locks of the ship slammed open. In that riveting metal clutch: nothing. The clinging contact, the groans of the boys. The heart in his hand: but nothing.

I could go on for hours about Michael Moorcock’s contributions to this whole mess we call science fiction-and dwell for even more hours on the marvelous things he’s done for the fantasy field. He was also the guy who took over the editorial reins of New Worlds magazine in 1964, publishing stories by Aldiss, Ballard, Disch, Sladek, and the other progenitors of the New Wave. Please: look it all up; I haven’t got the room here to list it all properly, and, frankly, the man’s achievements make me feel like a dust mote.

It’s all out there, The Eternal Champion, Elric, Cornelius-find it and read it. But not before you read what follows.

A Slow Saturday Night at the Surrealist Sporting Club:

Being a Further Account of Engelbrecht the Boxing Dwarf and His Fellow Members Michael Moorcock (after Maurice Richardson)

I happened to be sitting in the snug of the Strangers’ Bar at the Surrealist Sporting Club on a rainy Saturday night, enjoying a well-mixed Existential Fizz (2 parts Vortex Water to 1 part Sweet Gin) and desperate to meet a diverting visitor, when Death slipped unostentatiously into the big chair opposite, warming his bones at the fire and remarking on the unseasonable weather. There was sure to be a lot of flu about. It made you hate to get the tube but the buses were worse and had I seen what cabs were charging these days? He began to drone on as usual about the ozone layer and the melting pole, how we were poisoning ourselves on GM foods and feeding cows to cows and getting all that pollution and cigarette smoke in our lungs and those other gloomy topics he seems to relish, which I suppose makes you appreciate it when he puts you out of your misery.

I had to choose between nodding off or changing the subject. The evening being what it was, I made the effort and changed the subject. Or at least, had a stab at it.

“So what’s new?” It was feeble, I admit. But, as it happened, it stopped him in midmoan.

“Thanks for reminding me,” he said, and glanced at one of his many watches. “God’s dropping in-oh, in about twelve minutes, twenty-five seconds. He doesn’t have a lot of time, but if you’ve any questions to ask him, I suggest you canvass the other members present and think up some good ones in a hurry. And he’s not very fond of jokers, if you know what I mean. So stick to substantial questions or he won’t be pleased.”

“I thought he usually sent seraphim ahead for this sort of visit?” I queried mildly. “Are you all having to double up or something? Is it overpopulation?” I didn’t like this drift, either. It suggested a finite universe, for a start.

Our Ever-Present Friend rose smoothly. He looked around the room with a distressed sigh, as if suspecting the whole structure to be infected with dry rot and carpenter ants. He couldn’t as much as produce a grim brotherly smile for the deathwatch beetle that had come out especially to greet him.

“Well, once more into the breach. Have you noticed what it’s like out there? Worst on record, they say. Mind you, they don’t remember the megalithic. Those were the days, eh? See you later.” “Be sure of it.”

I knew a moment of existential angst. Sensitively, Death hesitated, seemed about to apologize, then thought better of it. He shrugged. “See you in a minute,” he said. “I’ve got to look out for God in the foyer and sign him in. You know.” He had the air of one who had given up worrying about minor embarrassments and was sticking to the protocol, come hell or high water. He was certainly more laconic than he had been. I wondered if the extra work, and doubling as a seraph, had changed his character. With Death gone, the Strangers’ was warming up rapidly again, and I enjoyed a quiet moment with my fizz before rising to amble through the usual warped and shrieking corridors to the Members’ Bar, which appeared empty.

“Are you thinking of dinner?” Lizard Bayliss, looking like an undis-infected dishrag, strolled over from where he had been hanging up his obnoxious cape. Never far behind, out of the WC, bustled Englebrecht the Dwarf Clock Boxer, who had gone ten rounds with the Greenwich Atom before that overrefined chronometer went down to an iffy punch in the eleventh. His great, mad eyes flashed from under a simian hedge of eyebrow. As usual he wore a three-piece suit a size too small for him, in the belief it made him seem taller. He was effing and blinding about some imagined insult offered by the taxi driver who had brought them back from the not altogether successful Endangered Sea Monsters angling contest in which, I was to learn later, Engelbrecht had caught his hook in a tangle of timeweed and wound up dragging down the Titanic, which explained that mystery. Mind you, he still had to come clean about the R101. There was some feeling in the club concerning the airship, since he’d clearly taken bets against himself. Challenged, he’d muttered some conventional nonsense about the Maelstrom and the Inner World, but we’d heard that one too often to be convinced. He also resented our recent rule limiting all aerial angling to firedrakes and larger species of pterodactyls.

Lizard Bayliss had oddly colored bags under his eyes, giving an even more downcast appearance to his normally dissolute features. He was a little drained from dragging the Dwarf in by his collar. It appeared that, seeing the big rods, the driver had asked Bayliss if that was his bait on the seat beside him. The irony was, of course, that the Dwarf had been known to use himself as bait more than once, and there was still some argument over interpretation of the rules in that area, too. The Dwarf had taken the cabbie’s remark to be specific not because of his dimuni-tive stockiness, but because of his sensitivity over the rules issue. He stood to lose a few months, even years, if they reversed the result. He was still spitting on about “nitpicking fascist anoraks with severe anal-retention problems” when I raised my glass and yelled: “If you’ve an important question for God, you’d better work out how to phrase it. He’s due in any second now. And he’s only got a few minutes. At the Strangers’ Bar. We could invite him in here, but that would involve a lot of time-consuming ritual and so forth. Any objection to meeting him back there?”

The Dwarf wasn’t sure he had anything to say that wouldn’t get taken the wrong way. Then, noticing how low the fire was, opined that the Strangers’ was bound to offer better hospitality.

“I can face my maker any time,” he pointed out, “but I’d rather do it with a substantial drink in my hand and a good blaze warming my bum.” He seemed unusually oblivious to any symbolism, given that the air was writhing with it. I think the Titanic was still on his mind. He was trying to work out how to get his hook back.

By the time we had collected up Oneway Ballard and Taffy Sinclair from the dining room and returned to the Strangers’, God had already arrived. Any plans the Dwarf had instantly went out the window, because God was standing with his back to the fire, blocking everyone’s heat. With a word to Taffy not to overtax the Lord of Creation, Death hurried off on some urgent business and disappeared back through the swing doors.

“I am thy One True God,” said Jehovah, making the glasses and bottles rattle. He cleared his throat and dropped his tone to what must for him have been a whisper. But it was unnatural, almost false, like a TV

presenter trying to express concern while keeping full attention on the autoprompt. Still, there was something totally convincing about God as a presence. You knew you were in his aura, and you knew you had Grace, even if you weren’t too impressed by his stereotypical form. God added: “I am Jehovah, the Almighty. Ask of me what ye will.”

Lizard knew sudden inspiration. “Do you plan to send Jesus back to Earth, and have you any thoughts about the 2:30 at Aintree tomorrow?”

“He is back,” said God, “and I wouldn’t touch those races, these days.

Believe me, they’re all bent, one way or another. If you like the horses, do the National. . . . Take a chance. Have a gamble. It’s anybody’s race, the National.”

“But being omniscent,” said Lizard slowly, “wouldn’t you know the outcome anyway?”

“If I stuck by all the rules of omniscience, it wouldn’t exactly be sporting, would it?” God was staring over at the bar, checking out the Corona-Coronas and the melting marine chronometer above them.

“You don’t think it’s hard on the horses?” asked Jillian Burnes, the transexual novelist, who could be relied upon for a touch of compassion. Being almost seven feet tall in her spike heels, she was also useful for getting books down from the higher shelves and sorting out those bottles at the top of the bar that looked so temptingly dangerous.

“Bugger the horses,” said God, “it’s the race that counts. And anyway, the horses love it. They love it.”

I was a little puzzled. “I thought we had to ask only substantial questions?”

“That’s right?” God drew his mighty brows together in inquiry.

I fell into an untypical silence. I was experiencing a mild revelation concerning the head of the Church of England and her own favorite pasatiempi, but it seemed inappropriate to run with it at that moment.

“What I’d like to know is,” said Engelbrecht, cutting suddenly to the chase, “who gets into Heaven and why?”

There was a bit of a pause in the air, as if everyone felt perhaps he’d pushed the boat out a little too far, but God was nodding. “Fair question,” he said. “Well, it’s cats, then dogs, but there’s quite a few human beings, really. But mostly it’s pets.”

Lizard Bayliss had begun to grin. It wasn’t a pretty sight with all those teeth that he swore weren’t filed.

“You mean you like animals better than people? Is that what you’re saying, Lord?”

“I wouldn’t generalize.” God lifted his robe a little to let the fire get at his legs. “It’s mostly cats. Some dogs. Then a few people. All a matter of proportion, of course. I mean, it’s millions at least, probably billions, because I’d forgotten about the rats and mice.”

“You like those, too?”

“No. Can’t stand their hairless tails. Sorry, but it’s just me. They can, I understand, be affectionate little creatures. No, they’re for the cats. Cats are perfectly adapted for hanging out in heaven. But they still need a bit of a hunt occasionally. They get bored. Well, you know cats. You can’t change their nature.”

“I thought you could,” said Oneway Ballard, limping up to the bar and ringing the bell. He was staying the night because someone had put a Denver boot on his Granada, and he’d torn the wheel off, trying to re-verse out of it. He was in poor spirits because he and the car had been due to be married at Saint James’s, Spanish Place, next morning and there was no way he was going to get the wheel back on and the car spruced up in time for the ceremony. He’d already called the vicar. Igor was on tonight and had trouble responding. We watched him struggle to get his hump under the low doorway. “Coming, Master,” he said. It was too much like Young Frankenstein to be very amusing.

“I can change nature, yes,” God continued. “I said you couldn’t. Am I right?”

“Always,” said Oneway, turning to order a couple of pints of Ackroyd’s. He wasn’t exactly looking on Fate with any favor at that moment. “But if you can...”

“There are a lot of things I could do,” God pointed out. “You might have noticed. I could stop babies dying and famines and earthquakes. But I don’t, do I?”

“Well, we wouldn’t know about the ones you’d stopped,” Engelbrecht pointed out, a bit donnishly for him. “So when the heavens open on the day of resurrection, it really will rain cats and dogs. And who else? Jews?”

“Some Jews, yes.” In another being, God’s attitude might have seemed defensive. “But listen, I want to get off the race issue. I don’t judge people on their race, color, or creed. I never have. Wealth,” he added a little sententiously, “has no color. If I’ve said who I favor and some purse-mouthed prophet decides to put his name in instead of the bloke I chose, then so it goes. It’s free will in a free market. And you can’t accuse me of not supporting the free market. Economic liberalism combined with conservative bigotry is the finest weapon I ever gave the chosen people. One thing you can’t accuse me of being and that’s a control freak.”