Now it is unmistakable that even in the German word Beruf, and perhaps still more in the English calling, a religious conception, that of a task set by God, is at least suggested.

—Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Makassar, 3049

On Saturday afternoon, the eighteenth of August, Amari Selkirk Alidade Clarke Hathaway (Asach) Quinn sat down with a silk-smooth pen and a stack of creamy blank parchment, and commenced to write a novel. A book, in any case. A novel perhaps. It was a decision on the order of marriage or advanced degree-taking.  It was not that the completion would mark an entirely new life. It was rather that the decision itself was life-ordering. On Saturday morning, Asach Quinn would not have made such a decision at all, but on Saturday afternoon did, and in so doing ended an era of waffling, and pondering, and unending waiting for some kind of unnecessary permission, and just got on with it.

It was unapparent why Asach had taken so long to arrive at this literary gate. Asach sported the requisite advanced degrees, the marriage, no end of supporters, and even talent. And the experience: that elusive life experience, intense, and intended to inform.

Asach had lived in the Americas. Not in the sense of an Old Earth America, the United States of, as opposed to some other land. The Americas, as in all of them. All of those planets that had taken their names, and tried to resurrect some version of their customs, from the cities and states of that ancient republic.

That meant Asach had lived in many flavors of revivalisms and pretenses of resurrection on a dozen member worlds, and another score at least passed through. Had drunk deeply of millennium-old, Pre Empire, Pre-Secession, Pre-transport nostalgia.

Had lived in towns where wheat and monotony were punctuated only by rampant gossip. In villages that had only ever existed as adjuncts to slave markets or recruitment centers or training posts for grunts and jarheads and navvies. In world-class cities big enough to be Targets; cities old enough to have flown five flags before the Crown was welded to The Seal. In cities that remade themselves each decade with such enthusiasm that their natives became economic refugees, fleeing the booms that transformed fishermen’s shacks into priceless boutique-side properties.

Had lived in desert vastnesses so unending that news of rain was carried on late-night breezes spiced with the scent of sage and desert varnish. In rolling hills so dense with trees that travel anywhere was like being catapulted through green tubes of foliage, with nothing to see for a hundred miles but litter and fat beasts browsing in the verges. In America the beautiful, America the urban, America the wild, America the suburban, America of the (pseudo-)potato salad and (mock-)apple pie.

And Asach had not just traveled geographically. Asach had known poverty, and at least seen rich; had known position, and had stood next to power. Most people had, at best, some dim opinion of parochial rivalries, but walked, at best, in the footsteps of their high school valedictorian. Asach had seen levels of society so low, and so high, and so bizarre, as to be unimaginable to broadly-defined middle-class harmony. Or working-class dissent. Or upper class segregation. Yet, for fifty years, Asach had written nearly nothing of import. Reams of drivel—term papers, and white papers, and reports daily, weekly, monthly, and annual. Proposals, and abstracts, and summaries, and overviews, and briefing notes, and speaking points, and outlines as uninspired as obligatory postcards home. All, in the end, barely necessary, and even less memorable.

It began with a cup of coffee. Asach wrote: About Coffee, and underlined both words with one stroke. And then sat and pondered for a good long while about every angle, drip, and smell related to coffee. A diner, with chicken-fried steak. And pie. Asach wrote: Pie, and underlined that, then thought some more about coffee. Coffee could carry you anywhere. Just the geography of coffee could fill walls of maps. Just the price of coffee—Oh Brother! Can you spare a dime?—could fill hours with economics and trade news, fair and unfair. Midnights of exhausted wakefulness: that was the taste and sludgy smell of bad coffee, instant coffee, reheated coffee, coffee ersatz and chicory.

Asach sighed, and put down the pen. The problem with writing was where, and what to begin. The mind begged to write into being every moment of intensity, or imagination, or serendipity. The pen demanded rather more organization than Pie and Coffee. It demanded a sense of place, and a sense of being. Coffee’s place was everywhere Asach had ever been or cared to go, and its being was most of humanity. It was exquisitely broadening, but insufficiently narrowing. A book needed characters. Asach sighed again, picked up the pen, and wrote: People. And then pondered some more. 

Saint George, New Utah, 3049

Zia stopped, half whirling, and tugged in exasperation at her billowing black dress, snagged on the iron stump of a sawed-down street sign.

It was just too typical. Nothing worked. The streets had not been swept in a month, and trash was drifting around a desiccated dog that no-one wanted to touch because it was, well, dead, and a dog. For three days, there had not been enough electricity to fill the water tanks on the roof, so now the laundry was piling up to the rafters and the kids were whinging with the awful pouty, edgy crankiness that is the inevitable aftermath of sticky drinks and too little sleep.

Ollie had been gone for hours in a probably vain attempt to fill the transporter’s fuel cells, so that they could tap the fuel, in order to power the generator, in order to run the equally cranky air conditioner and get at least a few hours respite from the heat. Ollie— the head of TCM Contract Security; the man of a thousand eyes. Ollie Azhad, who recruited the local lads; the silent lads; the lads impossible to notice, and had thousands of plain-clothes troops assigned all over Saint George. Ollie-the-rock, now reduced to waiting, himself, personally, in refueling lines.

Dirt was everywhere, billowing down the street in dust devils and forced by the hot, dry wind through every crack. Not that the city government could do anything about the wind, but it just seemed to illustrate the point, in that it was the wind that had snatched her dress and wrapped it around this damnable post—because the one thing the city had managed to do was enforce the signage easements. There might not be fuel, or electricity, or even dead dog removal, but what there was, was a row of sawn-down signs denoting some bureaucrat’s bizarre notions of progress.

It was just too much. Furious, framed with a quavering halo of brown, wind-whipped dust, sick to death of the outfall of economic embargo and frustrated nearly to tears, Zia jerked again at the snagged hem, muttering curses alternately against her ridiculously conservative mother-in-law and the ridiculously officious city bureaucracy. The struggle was its own sort of respite: the world shrank; life shrank; into this one, dress-wrapped, but imminently winnable battle. She dropped her shopping bag and seized the offending fabric with both hands, yanking and swearing and just daring them to win. All of them—the heat, the wind, the dirt, the kids, the mother-in-law, the bureaucrats—just daring them to even try to make even one more day even one bit more miserable then it already was. She just dared them, and yanked with a fury.

Tanith, 3049

Rain lashed the driveway, running in sheets under the truck's wheels; giving life and body to the heavy weight of humidity. Harlan Clegg folded over his keyboard, tap-tap-tapping in the disjointed hammering of a four-finger typist who nonetheless stabs out sixty words per minute regardless of weather or circumstance. Folded over, around, peering through the little porthole of a view screen, hunched into a little universe of safe, virtual space defined by secrecy, unconnected to the gentle peeping of tree frogs emerging to dance their little rituals of increase.

Tap-tap-tapping; peering, the screen glare casting his shirtfront with a bluish glow. He paused a moment. His brow furrowed slightly. He inhaled sharply. He stabbed the transmit key, sending his resume hurtling through the torrents with electronic certainty.

Then, staring blankly at his now-blank screen, he sat a while, still folded around his blue virtual space, while the rain sheeted in a solid grey mist through the trees.

There was a kind, hard edge to certainty. You could decide, right or wrong, but just decide, and then you stopped being virtual, and started being hard and certain as the rain-pelted trees. As certain as the peepers in their quest to spawn in the midst of a hurricane. The wind could blow and blow; the trees could lash; you could just laugh at the rain hitting the truck like a shower of lead pellets, and all of that became real and green and smellable, and not hunched and wavering and peering. One keystroke, and you could walk right through the screen and into another life.

New Scotland

They were back upstairs in the anteroom. Back at the table. This time, Rod Blaine was with them. Renner was not playing Renner. Neither was he smoking. Blaine said nothing, for a very long time. Jackson feigned relaxed, patient interest, but clearly he was bored, and tired, and wanted to go home.

Blaine’s fingers lay flat on the table, his thumbs wrapped beneath the edge. Still flat, they drummed a random, rhythmless sequence as he stared fixedly at the two men. Finally he seemed to reach some decision.

“I’d rather hoped that either one of you might have carried that debate.”

Jackson stopped feigning patience. Renner merely shrugged.

“Let alone both of you?”

Renner shrugged again. “You saw what it was. We made the pitch, and—”

“And lost control of the Commission. ”

Jackson was visibly irritated. “I’d hardly say lost control. You got your—representative—in, didn’t you?”

“My representative? How amusing. I should have thought Quinn was your representative?”

“Whatever. In any case—”

“Whomever. In any case, at the cost of showing my hand.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do.”

Jackson widened his eyes and shook his head in mock abject ignorance. “Please! Do enlighten me!”

At this, Blaine’s thumbs slipped from beneath the table, and pressed into two thumb-shaped indentations on its edge. His fingers tapped that a-rythmic sequence again.

“Perhaps this will jar your memory. It is a report on the First Jackson Mission to New Utah. The so-called failed mission of 3035? When, according to your report, New Utah refused accession to the Empire? Was formally declared an Outie world? Anathema? Placed under permanent Trade Ban? Anyway, this is another report, written by someone Bury termed ‘useful to the Empire of Man.’ ”

Milky light glowed in a square just below the polished surface. Blaine dragged his fingers downward over the glow, twice, then dragged his index finger rightwards across a row, then tapped twice on a point about a hand’s breadth above his navel. Text appeared, floating in the milky haze. He placed one finger in each of the topmost corners, crossed his hands, and shoved his fingers across the table toward Renner. The text page rotated one-hundred eighty degrees, appearing right-side up to Kevin. Renner glanced at it briefly, then with two hands tapped once in the uppermost corners, then again to the left of the page. A copy appeared. With his left palm on the table, he shoved it toward Jackson, who reached out, dragged it palm-wise the rest of the distance, then re-oriented it.

Jackson was visibly annoyed that he’d been second-in-line for the handout. Until he began reading.

PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

His Excellency Horace Hussein Bury

Sinbad

Eid-al-Fitr, 3035

My dear Abu Nadir,

A pleasure, as always, to find myself in your service. I trust this letter finds your family well.

Attached is my full report on the Jackson Mission to New Utah. I believe that you will find it interesting reading. Here follows a summary of the most salient issues.

Bottom line: The delegation is deeply divided, and have papered over their differences with the creative fiction that New Utah has “refused” accession to the Empire.

The reality: The New Utah True Church has become dominated by its paramilitary arm, the True Church Militant (TCM), over which the Elders of Maxroy’s Purchase have ever-diminishing, but desire total, control. Insofar as there is a New Utah planetary government, it is de facto the TCM. However, TCM authority does not penetrate deeply beyond Saint George, where it has nationalized city-state lands and therefore dominates most of the food supply. Whatever the Jackson delegation may report, the vast majority of New Utah’s citizens are at best barely aware of the Empire’s existence. The term “Outie” is a fiction conjugated by the TC on Maxroy’s Purchase, to divert attention from transgressions against the Empire perpetrated by external actors and their own paramilitaries.

Key issues: To boost short-term agricultural yields, the TCM has sanctioned return to “traditional” industrial agricultural practices, with predictable results. Soils surrounding Saint George are essentially dead, and the TCM is now dependent on commercial agrochemical inputs to maintain food production. As these must come from Maxroy’s Purchase, the True Church is desperate to maintain its monopoly on agricultural input deliveries—in order to maintain its hold over the TCM.

Most of the non-Mormon Saint George civil population, weary of the constant infighting among the TC/TCM factions, have drifted ever-further into the New Utah outback. I managed to travel as far as Bonneville, at the edge of TC authority on New Utah, where the TCM does collect annual “tithes,” but does not provide basic services. A vibrant Levantine quarter has grown up in the old Founder district there, with intermixed Muslim, LDS Sixer, Armenian, Chaldean, Fijian, and other Christian communities.

As you know, on Maxroy’s Purchase, following the self-proclaimed True Church purges of urban LDS Sixer wards around 175 years ago, missionaries from the New Ireland Church of Him made great inroads among the displaced victims of that pogrom. What is less well known (few on MP would admit to it), is that in 2965 these Purchase Himmists dispatched what they called “His Mission to Heaven” to New Utah. Most passed through Saint George, directly onward into the outback.

I am told that everything beyond Bonneville is “pilgrim country,” wherein not even the TCM holds sway. I did not manage to visit there, but did manage to speak with so-called “pilgrims” traveling incognito, en route to visit what they called their “gathering” in the outback. More they would not tell me, unless I joined them, which given time constraints I could not do.

Why, you are no doubt asking, am I conveying this colorful religious history? Because it is key to the factionalization within the Jackson delegation. “Pilgrim country” is clearly the source of opal meerschaum, on which the TCM depends for revenue to purchase agrichemicals. Yet, because of TC strictures, effectively only non-Mormons may travel and trade there. The Purchase TC position is that all Himmists are worse than non-believers: they are “excommunicants.” Therefore, no TC Mormon may missionize there, on pain of the same fate. They have got themselves into a real internal dilemma regarding church, state, and mammon—and any number of off-world opportunists (among them ITA entrepreneurs) have moved into that vacuum.

I have great fear as to how this dilemma may be resolved. Rumor has it that Lillith Van Zandt is bankrolling the so-called Outie piracy, and has secreted a battalion of Friedlander armor in the Oquirrh mountains outside Saint George. How or if the Van Zandts intend to weigh in is unclear to me, but if true, the presence of Friedlanders could only mean that there will likely be civil war to break this impasse over control of the pathetic trade in outmoded agrochemicals and shiny rocks.

In summary: Horace, you and I already know that there is nothing of sufficient financial interest to tempt Imperial Autonetics into this backwater fray. It is too remote, the trip too costly, and the products too few to justify the expense.

But New Utah is a big world. The First Empire Naval surveys were only perfunctory, and concentrated (a) geographically, around Saint George Province, and (b) in scope, primarily in search of commercially viable weapons-grade metal ores. While TC/MP claims to control the planet are absurd, New Utah is certainly neither of threat or of interest to the Empire. What may interest you is the vibrant, peaceful, and in its own way cosmopolitan Levantine community in Bonneville—and the attendant possibilities for further exploration of parts unknown.

Please commend Capt. Fox for his alacrity and discretion. I assure you that no one aside from Fox and the Governor himself were aware of my presence, let alone my mission.

Warmest regards to Cynthia,

Asach

While Jackson read the letter, Blaine’s eyes never wavered from his face. Renner finished first. He let out a low whistle, then sat back. With his finger, he circled the “bottom line” paragraph, then stroked and stabbed it with his finger. A crimson oval surrounded the text, with an exclamation point in the margin. He then ticked next to “Outie is a fiction,” and finally “the Governor himself.” Red checkmarks appeared beside the text. He then put his hand flat on the desk, centered on the message, and pushed it back across the table to Blaine.

Blaine nodded curtly, and turned it right side up, without actually looking down. Jackson looked up, confused; uncertain.

“Did you meet Asach Quinn during that first mission to New Utah?

“Well, yes. Quinn was—”

“And do you agree with the substance of this report?”

“Well, it wasn’t made to me, and I—”

“That’s not what I asked you. Do you agree or not?”

“I stand by the official report of the Commission.”

“I’d advise you not to hide behind your Commissioners. After all, you appointed them.”

“I don’t know why you would trust a private letter written by a low-level advisor over the official summary of the Governor’s Commission.”

“There! You see? Your Commission. Able Spacer Lawrence Jackson’s Commission!. As against the word of an independent advisor appointed by—”

“My Lord Blaine! I may once have been a mere able spacer under your junior command, but I now hold a Knighthood that stands me credit against anyone, even if I had to earn my title. As for Quinn, Quinn’s a well-known class traitor who denies any responsibility for—”

 “Ah, indeed! Just the point, Sir Lawrence. Governor Sir Lawrence. Governor Sir Lawrence Jackson, what is the unofficial motto of this Empire?”

Jackson was clearly confused as he delivered the schoolboy response. “The Empire of Man decides the fate of worlds.”

“And who embodies the Empire?”

“The Emperor, of course”

“Yes.”

Blaine let that soak in a moment. “The Emperor. Not Commissioners. Not the ITA. Not the aristocracy. Not his appointed Governors. And especially not ex-Able Spacers.”

“Now see here—”

“No, you see here, Sir Lawrence. That’s the deal, you see. It’s a deal as old as the Magna Carta. It’s a deal that anyone with inherited title gets drubbed in from their first suckle, whatever way their family decides to gamble thereafter. And it’s the deal you sign up for when you accept the Knighthood. The Barons get to run their realms however they see fit, but the King gets to pick the Barons. They do not, ever, under any circumstance, get to appoint themselves. And it is the sworn duty of the King’s Chivalry to defend that principle. Or did you miss that little part of the oath when the sword tapped your manifestly unworthy shoulders?”

Renner twisted in his seat. “Look, Rod, don’t you think you are being a little—”

“Sir Kevin. Do not presume upon our friendship. You have always suffered the cheerful delusion that the aristocracy works for you. It does not. It works for itself. It works to earn and preserve its Baronage. In furtherance of that aim, we may delegate privilege, but we never, ever delegate power. As you well know.”

Renner was frozen. Blaine turned back to Jackson. “I carried a grudge against Horace Bury, the richest man in the Empire, for three decades because he had played a minor role, hedging his financial bets during a local insurrection on a useless planet that was already an active threat to the Empire.”

He shot an aside to Renner. “You quite charmingly believed that grudge was personal? Because Sally got caught up in the mess and fell into my gallant, youthful arms? Don’t be ridiculous.”

 He went on. “For merely falling under suspicion, Sir Lawrence, Bury paid with a lifetime of service, with annual capital contributions to the Crown that exceeded the entire tax revenue of your pathetic backwoods planet to date, and, in the end, his life. So now, Governor, faced with this little piece of Bury’s payback, just how do you propose to earn back your neck, let alone your liberty, when you have clearly suborned the Commission’s report, attempted to hold New Utah as a vassal of Maxroy’s Purchase, and thereby committed outright treason against the Emperor himself?”

Jackson blanched, while his intestines attempted to escape through his navel.

“But you can’t prove that I knew any of this!”

Blaine’s voice was ice. “Ah, there you go, missing the point again. If you didn’t, as Governor you should have. If you did, well, then. And in any case, there is always that problem of suspicion.”

He watched Jackson’s lips turn slightly blue. He did not rise. “I will give you twenty-four hours leave to ponder my question. I trust you can see yourself out?”

To his credit, the Governor’s hands were almost steady as he latched the heavy door behind him. Renner and Blaine faced one another and broke into wicked grins.

“I trust you have people outside?’

“Oh, better than that,” nodded Renner.

“Ah. Of course. Now, lets see which way the rabbit runs.”

Renner reached for his pipe box, still smiling. Blaine rose and poured himself a stiff drink. And for his part, shivering outside in the warm night air, Governor Sir Lawrence Jackson silently vowed to personally strangle Asach Quinn.

Blaine Institute, New Caledonia, 3049

“But it’s not fair,” whinged Ali Baba. Glenda Ruth Fowler, a human child raised by a Motie Mediator nanny, marveled at this, a Motie Mediator child raised by—well, by nobody, really, at the moment. By her, if anyone. If Ali Baba had been a human, she’d call his—her—its—behavior acting out. Clearly, Bury’s death had deeply upset the—she was about to think child again, but aside from the fact that Ali Baba was not human, Ali Baba also was no longer really a child. Moties grew, and matured, very quickly.

On that horrible day on Sinbad, when Bury had died, during the final jump out of the Mote system and into the red star that meant home, in the midst of the panic—Sinbad hot on Atropos’ stern; Moties hot behind; Sinbad forced to stand alone against the Motie Khanate fleets; the Flinger going on and on and on, tossing nukes into the hearts of dozens, maybe hundreds of Motie ships still too jump-shocked to respond—on that horrible, horrible day, Glenda Ruth’s heart breaking, had Cynthia known? She’d charged the paddles, shouted “Clear!,” then “Glenda Ruth! Take Ali Baba!”

Ali Baba was howling then; ranting; furious that Bury was gone. But Glenda Ruth’s heart was breaking too, for a different reason, as the killing went on, and on, and on. She knew it then; couldn’t understand it then: the baby mediator willed and willed and willed Sinbad to win, while part of her willed that they would not. She did not wish Sinbad to lose, but she could not bear that all those Moties would die. So, it wasn’t at all that Ali Baba clung to her, it was that she clung to Ali Baba. Had Cynthia known? That on board that ship, the closest thing to her, a Motie-raised human, was Ali Baba, a human-raised Motie? Or was it just the off chance that she’d stood nearby?

He was not howling now. With the fluid shift of a Mediator-in-the-making, Ali Baba changed tactics, ceased to whine, and momentarily caught her off guard. She knew what was happening, but that did not change the flutter in her hindbrain as she responded to the summation of posture, pitch and tone that no longer signaled you have power, but instead signaled you have none, despite the paucity of words.

“Excuse me,” said Ali Baba, who, with a slight bow, left the room. To any other observer, the exit would have seemed a polite apology and graceful exit. To Glenda Ruth, it was a clear, and final, dismissal: of her; of her own desperate wish to be, if not a mother, then at least a friend, to this fragile, alien child.

Glenda Ruth’s lips narrowed to a white slash, and she closed her eyes. Her blunder was absolute. She had been forewarned, and ignored the warning. She had made the arrogant human presumption that she wasn’t meant to see Ali Baba’s personal log; that Ali Baba had been too young; too naive to adequately hide a babyish what-I-did-on-my-first-trip-to-space schoolbook exercise.

Well, she had seen it, which actually left little doubt that she was meant to see it, even if it was designed to look as though she wasn’t. If Ali Baba, or any Motie, didn’t want a log read by Glenda Ruth, Glenda Ruth was hardly likely to even become aware of its existence, let alone break into the file. So how much more arrogant to presume that what she’d read indicated childish misunderstanding; that it was something she could fix with patience and time. Babyish it might look, but it wasn’t a confessional cry for help. It had been written with intent. That she’d been allowed to read it meant—what?

She replayed the text in memory. She willed a clearer mind. She opened her eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It was not a lonely cry for social contact. It was a declaration of allegiance. Only she, Motie-raised she, could know how profound a line she had transgressed; how insulting she had been to Ali Baba’s very person in demanding allegiance to her own emotional desires.

Aboard Sinbad, Mote System, 3047

Auntie Omar took me to see Grampa Horace. He was weird. He only had two arms. He had no gripping hand. He had no ear. He was all thin and pale, like a Runner, or a Doctor. But he was warm. He scratched my ear. I liked that.

Auntie Omar said the Tatars were afraid. Auntie Omar said they “do not know what they have.” Grampa Horace said “They’re holding a wolf by the ears.” That sounded scary and strange. I was not sure about ears. I knew what my ear was. But ears was something Wolves had more-than-one of. I thought maybe it meant Warrior scythes. I thought maybe a Wolf was a kind of Warrior. Auntie Omar said I was never to go to a Warrior unless MaPa, personally, said so. Not even MaMa. Not even Auntie Omar. Only MaPa. Auntie Omar said Warriors made quick work of the likes of us. Auntie Omar said only a Master could give orders to a Warrior. Auntie Omar said only my MaPa could give orders to a Warrior that I could trust.

Then Grampa Horace said my name was Ali Baba. That’s how I knew he was a Grampa. Because Auntie Omar said only Auntie Omar, or my MaPa, or a Grampa could name me. That made me sad. Grampas are old. They always die soon. That’s what Auntie Omar said. You have to learn everything they know, as fast as you can, because Grampas will die soon.

Later, Auntie Omar took me to see Grampa Horace again. He said gravity did not make him tired. He said he was attracted to me. He said I gave him pleasure. I was very proud. Auntie Omar said it is always best when your Grampa likes you. She said it does not always happen.

Then a Runner came. It said that Tartars were coming. That’s what Auntie Omar called them: Tartars. It said the Tartars had valuable Guests. It said the guests were Humans. It said the Humans were all safe. That’s what Auntie Omar told Grampa Horace: guests, humans, safe. Then Grampa Horace asked Sir Eudoxus to send a message to Lord Blaine that his offspring are safe.” Auntie Omar called MaPa Lord Cornwallis. And Grampa Horace said this message was important. And Sir Eudoxus worried that Lord Blaine would send warships. So I knew these Humans must be young Masters! Maybe that’s why the Tartars were afraid. Maybe Wolves were enemy Warriors who would kill young Masters!

So I was very afraid, too. I wanted to go to MaMa. But I did my Duty. I watched Grampa Horace. I watched and watched him. It was very hard. His arms did not move. His hands did not move. He was in his g-force bed. It was full of water, so he would squash down into it when the ship accelerated. You had to watch and watch his face. That was hard too, because it got all squashed flat. But that’s when I noticed that Grampa Horace had two ears. They were very small. They were hard to see. They were flat against his head. At first, I thought he was afraid.

But then Auntie Omar speaked to MaPa! And Sir Eudoxus speaked to their Master! And I could hear: their Master was afraid! Their Master was very afraid that Lord Blaine would send many warships. But even when Auntie Omar speaked to MaPa, Grampa Horace was not afraid. I was very proud. My Grampa must have been a very powerful Master, and Auntie Omar and MaPa had given him to me!

And then I thought: If Wolves have two ears, then maybe they are like Grampa Horace. Maybe Wolves are a special kind of Humans. Maybe Wolves are very powerful young Masters. Maybe Wolves are Lord Blaine’s children. Not just his get, like me. If Lord Blaine had many warships, I was very afraid for the Tartars. I should have been afraid for us.

After that, whenever I was not with Auntie Omar, or MaMa, I went to Grampa Horace. He was mostly in bed. We were on a warship. It was going very fast. Everyone got very heavy. Grampa Horace had to stay in the waterbed, so he would not squash completely. Uncle Kevin said that we would jump soon. I call him Uncle Kevin, because he was very close to Grampa Horace. But he was not one of Grandpa’s offspring. He was Grampa Horace’s pilot. A pilot is like an Engineer, but an Engineer who can talk. Grampa Horace and Uncle Kevin talked a lot. So Uncle Kevin was like a Master too. So that was like Auntie Omar, or me. Somebody who has a MaMa who is an Engineer, and a MaPa who is a Master, and can talk to anyone. So I called him Uncle. He called Auntie Omar a Mediator.

 I did not know what jump was. It was something they had to make the ship do, to send this message about the wolves. Uncle Kevin was afraid Grampa Horace would die. Doctor Cynthia was afraid too. I told Auntie Omar that it was my Duty to stay with Grampa Horace if he was going to die. Auntie Omar was very proud.

Grampa was very warm. The bed was very soft. I fell asleep. And then! Oh, the horror! I wished that I would die! Everything went—silent! I could not hear MaMa! I could not hear MaPa! I could not hear Uncle Kevin, or Auntie Omar, or Doctor Cynthia, or anyone! I tried to hold Grampa Horace, but my arms could not hear my brain! I could not hear Grampa Horace! I was sure Grampa Horace had died!

And then, just a little, I could hear Uncle Kevin. He was making noises. They were not words, just noises. I crawled. I crawled and crawled. I thought I would die. I wished I would die. I crawled onto his chest. I grabbed his clothes and rocked and rocked. “Uncle Kevin!” I screamed and screamed. But he did not hear. And then I remembered that Uncle Kevin could not hear screams. I had to think in Anglic. I tried and tried. I had not spoken Anglic before. I had listened and listened, but I had not spoken. I tried again. And then the words came out. “Ali Baba is sick,” I said. “His Excellency is sick. So is, am I. Sick in the head, scrambled brains, wobbly eyes. Kevin?” It was very hard. But I made sure to say “His Excellency.” Uncle Kevin was just a pilot. Grampa Horace was a Great Master.

Uncle Kevin said it would be all right, but it was not. Everyone was sick. Everyone had died a little, inside. The ship was sick. Doctor Cynthia was sick. But she crawled to Grampa Horace’s side. She did things. She was his Doctor. He just lay there, on his back. But then I could hear him again. I thought: he is a very old Grampa. He should have died. It is too soon. I don’t know anything. What will I do, if my Grampa dies? What will I do without Doctor Cynthia beside his bed?

I went back to him. He did not speak. I just listened. I did my best, but I cried and cried. Uncle Kevin could not hear. Doctor Cynthia could not hear. But I thought MaMa could hear. And MaPa, and Auntie Omar, and Sir Eudoxus. I wanted them all to know: I am doing my Duty. I will do my Duty. Even this horrible sickness will not make me stop my Duty. I will not leave his side.

And then Uncle Kevin said he would do it again. Make the ship accelerate. Squash Grampa Horace down into his bed, so he could not even breathe. They were talking about the Eye. They were talking about a jump through the Eye. It would kill him! So I jumped first! I jumped as hard as I could, and hit Uncle Kevin in the chest, and said, “NO! Not Again!” But Grampa said “Here, Ali Baba,” so I went. And then the Engineers moved Doctor Cynthia’s travel couch right next to Grampa Horace’s bed. I hid my head under Grampa’s arm, and just listened. And then we jumped again.

This time, she was there. Doctor Cynthia. She was a Doctor, but she could talk to everyone too. And when the others were gone, she often talked to Grampa Horace. Uncle Kevin passed out, but she never did. I never did. She breathed for him. Breathed for Grampa. I heard her breath go into him, and come back out again. Again, and again. Again, and again. I thought there is a machine for this. But I also knew: she is doing her Duty. She is doing her Duty for him.

I could hear his heart. It never stopped. It boomed. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. On and on it pounded. I timed my breathing to it. I timed my breathing to her breathing for him. And then I heard his breath go into her. Again and again. Again and again. I was sick and afraid with joy. I thought: it is over now. It is done. He will be safe.

Even when Uncle Kevin said “Cynthia, how much can he stand.” Grampa answered. He said: “Anything. Kevin. Do what you must It is now in the hands of Allah.” I did not know who Allah was, but his heart was so strong. Grampa’s heart was strong. They all still listened to him. Whatever he said, they listened, and so did I.