, leaning forward conspiratori- ally. "Practice makes perfect. They'll improve at making food for us." She stretched like a cat. "Fine with me," she said. "Who would have thought the hardest part of keeping us alive would be feeding us?" The medbot had sounded proud when it rattled off the information. Their first analyses had told them most of what they needed to know, but not every- thing. They knew we needed calories, proteins, amino acids, vitamins, but they did not know the proper combinations or amounts! The big problem for our hosts was figuring out how to synthesize the amino acids we eat. This was a subject about which I was plenty igno- rant. Ever since I started blowing away imps and zombies and ugly demons of all descriptions, my education had been improving. Fighting monsters must be the next best thing to reading your way through the public library. They both beat going to college, if I could judge from the usual butthead who thought he was hot snot because he dragged part of the alphabet behind his name. The medbot was a bit technical in its non-flawless English but "Dr. Sanders" helped me pick up the basic points. The alien chef took some of his own food and injected it with human amino acid combinations. The first attempts were served to a high-tech garbage disposal. Arlene rambled a little about random com- binations of four amino acids, then reached her climax. The ropy things on the barber pole began to throb, and out of the top came a bottle of white pills, a present from the alien gourmet. We'd have to take those pills if we wanted to live. The pills were blockers. While experimenting con- tinued in the higher cuisine, the pills would increase the safety margin. Where had we heard that before? They would chemically block anything harmful. Without them we were doomed. Naturally I wanted to meet our benefactor as much as Arlene did. We'd exhausted the possibilities of conversation with the medical barber pole. So when the medbot told us we could meet our favorite alien we were eager to tote that barge, lift that bale, swim the highest mountain . . . whatever. The medbot's instructions were clear. "The next time you eat, stay in the place where you eat." So we did. We didn't have any important date to break. Arlene had tried to talk Albert into joining us, but his appetite seemed even smaller than mine. He was off meditating again. Seemed like brooding to me. I wouldn't call it sulking. Hidalgo was still under medical supervision. So Arlene and I were the ones who attended the great meeting between worlds. "Look!" said Arlene, stifling a gasp. The chef was coming. The chemist was coming. The alien who gave a rat's ass about us was striding up the silver walkway, and he seemed eager to meet us. We could tell from his very human smiles. Two smiles, exactly the same, because he was a they-- identical twins moving in unison. They were more than twins. They were mirror images of each other. Arlene started to laugh. I tried to shush her, but it was no good. "I can't help it," she said. "Arlene, this is important. Put a sock in it." "I can't help it," she insisted. "They look . . . they look like Magilla Gorilla!" 22 Alone. Silence. He drifted. It was different than before; he had not been alone before. Now there were no voices. The last words had been a metallic voice complaining there was a slight problem. Now there was nothing. Then there was sound. He heard her plainly. His dead wife was paying him a visit. Rita. She was dead. Sliced and diced by a steam demon back on Earth. She couldn't be here. "Esteban," she whispered in the dark, as she used to do when she woke up before him shortly before dawn. "You're not here," he told her. It was the first time he'd heard his own thoughts since he was cut off from the others and placed in this true limbo. "You've summoned me." "You're a dream," he replied morosely. "I don't want to talk to you. I want to meet the aliens." "But I'm the alien, Esteban. The only alien you've ever really confronted." "No, I've fought aliens. Red devils. Shot the grin- ning skulls and been ripped by their razor-sharp teeth." "You felt my teeth first. Felt my lips." "Go away. Leave me alone, you traitor. I must return to my men. To my men and Sanders. They need me. I must complete my mission among the friendly aliens." Rita's voice was like a song he'd heard one too many times. "I was your friend." "Never that. You were my wife." She was sad. "You didn't try to be my friend. I thought you didn't love me. So I didn't want to have your alien growing inside me." Anger filled his mind, and he was nothing now except his mind. Cold. Hot. The desire to hurt. To fire a chain gun. To wield a chain saw. To fire a rocket that would obliterate all memories of his marriage. The steam demon hadn't been able to do that. "Please leave me alone," he pleaded. "I must concentrate on the mission. Discipline. Responsibili- ty. Command. Must return to the team. Save the Earth. Destroy the enemy. Save . . . loved ones." "Love," she repeated. "Part of love is forgiveness." "You killed our--" "Love." "You murdered the--" "Alien." "You're--" "Dead!" She shouted the last word. "Like our alien, I'm dead. You'll be dead too, if you don't open yourself to new experiences. You must know what you're fighting for. You can't just fight against, other- wise the blue sphere shouldn't have bothered saving you." Hidalgo heard himself say, "I was bleeding to death. Why should I be saved and finish the journey only to die at the moment of success?" He felt his tongue move in his mouth. He felt his throat swallow. He had a body again. Now if he could only find out what they had done with his eyes so he could open them. "I'm sorry, Fly," I said, finally regaining control. After encountering so many terrible faces, I was shocked to see something so friendly and funny. I stopped laughing. But the aliens still looked like cartoon characters. To describe one was to describe the other. The heads were large, like a gorilla's, with huge foreheads. The eyes were wide-set. The nose was cute, like a little peanut. Their hair was walnut-brown. They had a kind of permanent five-o'clock shadow, like the cari- catures of the first president of the United States to have his name on a moon plaque: Richard M. Nixon. Their complexion was a yellowish green; maybe they had a little copper in their blood. Their bodies were massive and looked strong. The arms were a bodybuilder's delight. They were longer than a human's; I'd bet they were exactly the right proportions for a gorilla. Then again, I might still be trying to justify my reaction; the forearms bulged too much for the simian comparison. They were exactly like cartoons--I thought of Popeye the Sailor and Alley Oop. I couldn't figure out how Fly had kept from laughing! The big chest seemed even larger compared to the narrow waist. I couldn't help noticing a detail that Fly would probably miss: the tailoring of their clothes was first-rate. They wore a sort of muted orange flight suit with lots of vest pockets. Except for all the pockets, the suits were surprisingly similar in design to standard-issue combat suits, Homo sapiens model. Some of the aliens didn't wear clothes at all, or if they did, I couldn't tell. It was reassuring to find these similarities to ourselves in our new-found friends. They even had cute little combat boots so I couldn't check on how far the gorilla comparison actually went. There was no doubt about these guys being friends. "Welcome to you," they said in unison. All that was missing was a reference to the lollipop guild. There was some serious English teaching going on here. "Are you brothers?" Fly asked before I could. "We are of the Klave," they said. "Can you speak individually?" I asked. "Yes," they said in unison. I was good. I didn't laugh. While I was working to keep a straight face, Fly took command of the situa- tion. He stood up from the relaxichair, which seemed to sigh as he departed, and touched one member of the dynamic duo. "What's your name?" he asked. "We are of the Klave." He repeated the procedure with the next one and received the same answer. Then he followed up: "That's your race? Your, uh, species?" Magilla number one looked at Magilla number two. I think they were deciding which one would speak so we wouldn't suffer through the stereo routine again. One of them answered: "The Klave R Us." "How many?" The other took his turn. "Going to a trillion less. Coming from a hundred more." A general would like slightly better information. I joined Fly. He was on one side of them so I took the other, effectively bracketing them. Now we had a mjnage a quatre. I touched the one nearer to me and asked, "Do you have a name separate from the other?" "Separate?" he asked. Apparently there were some problems with the English lessons. "This part of we?" asked mine. I nodded. They put their heads together. They weren't doing any sort of telepathy. These guys were whispering the same sentence. Sounded like a tire going flat. Then they looked up at the same time. Mine spoke first: "After looking to your special English ..." "Americanian," Fly's gorilla picked up the sen- tence. "We are giving ourselves to a name," mine finished. Then we stood there like four idiots waiting for someone to say something. We'd succeeded in getting them to speak separately, but now they played sentence-completion games. What the hell, at least they gave themselves a handle: "We are Sears and Roebuck. We are your friend. We will take the battle to all enemies, and together we fight the Freds." Alone. Silence. She drifted down deserted streets. In the late afternoon the temperature dropped quickly. Jill put her windbreaker back on, but she was still cold. She didn't like coffee, but she was glad to have the hot cup in her hand; and she needed the caffeine. Swirling the remains in the Styrofoam cup, she looked thoughtfully at the light brown color that came from two powdered creams. But it still tasted bitter, just like coffee. At least she had managed to find food in the abandoned grocery store. The sun was at a late afternoon slant, making objects caught in the light stand out from their surroundings. She was grateful she had sunglasses. She was less grateful that she was lost. Something had gone wrong with Ken's plan. He'd talked the captain of the sub into meeting her, but only if she arrived on schedule. She hadn't. The sub was long gone by now. Captain Ellison couldn't be expected to endanger his crew any longer than necessary. Left to her own devices, as usual, Jill worked her way back to L.A., where the first sight greeting her was a zombie window washer. The thing saw her with its watery eyes and began shambling in her direction, brandishing a plastic bottle full of dirty water. Jill was fresh out of ammo. She hated to run, especially from a zombie, the very bottom of the monster food chain. But running was a lot better than being groped by those rotting hands with the jagged yellow fingernails. So she hauled ass. A normal zombie might not run very fast. This one didn't have the energy to do anything but curse. It wasn't until Jill was three blocks away that she wondered if maybe the creature really wasn't a zom- bie. The thought that some homeless person had been missed by both sides in the war made Jill's skin crawl. Jeez, it was possible. The zombies might not notice a bum, especially if he'd been sleeping in the right garbage and had a sour odor on him. The big mon- sters might assume he was a zombie, and any humans coming through the area would think so too. The idea made her literally sick. She threw up and covered herself in an odor like that of sour lemons, which would be useful if she needed to pass for a zombie herself. She looked bad enough. She hadn't slept in days. The circles under her eyes and the graveyard pallor of her skin gave her a living-dead appearance. She didn't like the sick feeling in her gut. A drug- store sign beckoned. She went in, hoping to find something that would settle her stomach. Jill wasn't so exhausted that she forgot to take precautions. She took out her piece even though it was empty. Always a chance she could bluff her way out of trouble if she encountered a human foe. The first tip-off was the clean floor. An abandoned store would have been a disgusting mess, but this place was spotless. Broken windows had been boarded up. She felt like kicking herself that she hadn't picked up on so obvious a clue from outside. Then she heard low voices. Unmistakably human. Not broken bits and pieces of language repeated without meaning. Whoever they were, they sure as hell weren't zombies. For one thing, zombies didn't listen to really bad classic alternative rock. What sort of people were in enemy-occupied terri- tory? They could only be guerrillas or traitors. She examined her surroundings more closely. The origi- nal contents of the store shelves were missing. She'd made a bad choice as far as her stomach was con- cerned. Large boxes stood in place of a drugstore's normal stock. Shafts of light from the setting sun slid past the boarded windows and illuminated the box next to her knee. She looked inside and saw that it contained bottles of a nutrient solution made from hydrogen cyanide. She almost whistled but stopped herself. It would be a good idea to find out if the voices belonged to friend or foe. She had a sinking feeling they were the enemy. This stuff could be used in the monster vats, or in some stage of the creatures' development. She'd find out while there was daylight. For all of her adult accomplishments, Jill was little-girlish enough to tiptoe without making a sound. On little cat feet, she crept over to an air vent where she could hear the voices much better. Two men were talking in the next room. She couldn't see them, but she heard every word, loud and clear. "The masters say we will inherit the Earth," said the deeper voice. "They've already taken care of the meek," replied the higher voice, snickering. He sounded like Peter Lorre out of an old horror movie. Jill didn't need them to spell it out: these were human traitors. The real McCoy. These dips hadn't crawled out of any vat. She was shocked that these human bad guys couldn't come up with a better name for the Freds than "the masters." Really . . . "I was at the general's briefing," said the deep voice. "He told us the resistance is so desperate they've started a propaganda campaign to convince people that the masters have enemies elsewhere in the universe." "Yeah, I heard that, too." The other one snickered. "The masters are the only life besides us. They've told us. Except for life they create, of course. That's why we're so important to them; we're the only other intelligent life in the galaxy." Jill had heard enough. Fly had often asked what she would do if she got a crack at human traitors. She'd wondered about that, too. Now she had her chance to find out. Dr. Ackerman thought Jill was a genius. As young as she was, she already knew there was a reality beyond cyberspace, and that reality was just as impor- tant when it wasn't virtual! She had many interests-- like chemistry, for instance. While Tweedledumb and Tweedledee continued stroking each other, Jill checked the contents of the other boxes. The enemy was using this drugstore as a place to stockpile . . . everything Jill needed to make cyanogen. The traitors were still chatting and playing their lousy music, making enough noise to cover the sounds of Jill's makeshift chemistry set. They didn't even hear her setting up the portable battery-powered fan next to the vent. She combined the ingredients and started them cooking. Then she stood well back from the deadly cyanide gas, covering her mouth with a rag she'd found in the crate with the fan. The last words she heard from the traitors came from the deep voice before it wheezed, coughed, and choked. "The masters say the Earth is the most important place in the galaxy to them right now," he said, "and we're in the center of the action." As Jill left the drugstore, she looked up at the darkening sky. "You're on your way to Phobos now. After that you'll go so far away I'll probably never see any of you again. I did those two creeps for you. Good-bye, Albert, Arlene . . . Fly." 23 "Earth is not very important." "Come again?" asked Arlene. Sears and Roebuck didn't pick up on her hurt tone. They were simply answering my question with unfail- ing honesty. I wondered if all the Klave were like this. "They're not passing value judgments, Arlene," I said. "If the facts offend our pride, it's not their fault." If looks could kill, my best buddy would have fried Fly on a stick. "Don't patronize me," she said-- which was the furthest thing from my mind. "I was surprised, that's all. Why would the Freds produce a ton of damned monsters and flood our solar system with them if Earth is not important?" "Don't ask me, Arlene. Ask them." We turned to Sears and Roebuck. They said noth- ing. So Arlene carefully repeated her diatribe for them. Boy, did they have an answer. "Earth is skirmish-zoned. They don't care go to humans. Galaxy is setting for whole game. You'd call galactic diplomacy by other means. No war goes to Earth. Your space is too small. Earth is move in game. All are having you here because you matter. All parts matter to the Klave. Whole game matters to the . . ." He used a word to denote the Freds. There was no English equivalent, and a Klavian word slipped in. To human ears, it was noise. "Is it only the Klave who fight the Freds?" asked Arlene. Sears and Roebuck understood well enough when we spoke of the enemy. For whatever alien reason, they didn't call them Freds. I hoped I could persuade them to start using all our words if only so I wouldn't have to listen to a sound that put my teeth on edge. In answering Arlene, they used another nails-on- the-blackboard sound to describe the larger group of aliens of which the Klave formed only a small part. "All here are opposed to %$&*@@+." "Please," said Arlene, "could you call them Freds? That's a word we can understand." "Freds," said our new pal. "See, that didn't hurt." I thanked them. "Sears and Roebuck are real gentlemen," said Ar- lene. S&R smiled. It was great finding aliens who could smile even if it happened to be their version of a frown (for all we could tell). We didn't ask. We didn't want to mess with it. They were in there pitching. They made another noble attempt in their peculiar English to give us an education in galactic history. I never dreamed there was so much going on behind the attack on humanity. Suddenly the zombies, imps, demons, ghosts, flying skulls, pumpkins, superpump- kins, hell-princes, steam demons, spider-minds, spider-babies, fatties, bonies, fire eaters, and weird- ass sea monsters all seemed trivial in the grand scheme being laid out for us. The monsters we fought were bit players. And why not? Humanity was a bit player in the galactic chess game being played out by the Freds and the message aliens. And suddenly it was clear why we hadn't been greeted by a brass band and presented with a key to the city when we arrived. We were not big time. But it was also evident why we had been invited. We were in the bush leagues, but at least we were in the game. Turned out it wasn't only the old mud ball that didn't rate star treatment. There were a lot more important bases than this one. I shook my head. I was just a poor old Earth boy on his trip to the big burg. This was the galactic base to me, even if it happened to be in the boondocks. When I told Sears and Roebuck how I felt, they looked at each other as if they were checking out a reflection in a mirror. Then they said, "You will be informed soon-time about location. You won't go to boondocks, in your words." They returned to their main theme. Once again I was impressed that the Klave seemed concerned about all life victimized by the baddies. So it made sense that we did rate special treatment from Sears and Roebuck. They were the most noble aliens on this whole colossal alien base, but they looked as if they'd just stepped out of a kid's cartoon. A cartoon I had somehow missed when I was growing up. Arlene was younger than I was, but she'd seen a lot more popular entertainment. She asked me why I was so culturally deprived. I knew how to shut her up: "I was busy preparing mentally, physically, and spiritually for my role as cosmic savior. I had no time to waste time on frivolous media entertain- ment." That showed her. I couldn't wait to find Albert and tell him the good news. As soon as Captain Hidalgo was on his feet again, he'd have to be briefed. Our mission was a success, after all. We'd found aliens who didn't want the Freds to occupy our solar system. It might not mean any more to them than a village or town in one of Earth's major wars, but we at least counted at that level. We rated Third World treatment by superior beings. The little voice in the back of my head suggested that Director Williams would be more amused by this discovery than either Admiral Kimmel or Colonel Hooker would be. Hell, I'd like to see the faces of the human sellouts if they heard where they rated in the cosmic scheme of things. Then that old mind reader Arlene asked S&R the googolplex-dollar question: "So what are you guys fighting about?" An hour later, by Earth standard time, we still hadn't grasped what S&R were trying to get across. Their odd syntax wasn't the problem. We weren't picking up on the concepts. We finally received assistance from an unexpected quarter: Albert joined us; he came swimming through the air. Not really, of course. It only looked that way. The base had gravity zones and free-fall areas. What- ever the Freds could do on Phobos, the message aliens could do better! Albert was simply taking the escala- tor. He had drifted up near the ceiling of our section. Then he slowly drifted down on a transition-to- gravity escalator! That's what it was. He moved his arms and legs as if he were doing the breast stroke, grinning at us the whole time. I hoped he was over his sulk or pout or whatever it was. I didn't buy the meditation bit. He seemed eager to rejoin his buds. And he'd picked a good moment to meet Sears and Roebuck. The moment Albert touched down, he took out a little purple ball and squeezed it. A duplicate of Albert appeared. I'd seen those toys before. We thought we had virtual reality on the old mud ball. The doppelganger matched Albert's movements per- fectly. "What's this about?" I asked. "Trust me," he said. "I'll tell you later." For the rest of the time he was with us, his three-dimensional image aped his movements a few feet away. Arlene shrugged. So what if Albert was playing games to deal with his boredom? She made the introductions: "Sears and Roebuck, I'd like you to meet another member of our team." The Magilla Gorilla faces grinned more widely than I thought possible. Looked as if their heads were in danger of splitting open. "We encountered these unit in times going before," they said. Well, I'd be dipped in a substance they recycled very effectively here at the alien base. I may have judged Albert's meditations too harshly. He waved at S&R, and both of them waved back. "We're discoursing the wordage but not reaching home plate," said S&R. Albert helped himself to a glass of water from our table. "You must have asked them for background," he said. Arlene playfully pulled at Albert's sleeve. He seemed very comfortable in the shimmering robes he'd selected. The designs looked slightly oriental to me. "Have you talked to them before?" "Yes." "Do you understand what the war is about?" she asked. Albert sat in one of the chairs we'd vacated. "Near as I can make out, they're having a religious war." S&R had mentioned diplomacy. It would have been nice if that word had registered on Arlene. She snorted when Albert said the r-word. "I'd expect that from you," she said with disdain. "Arlene!" I jumped in. "It's all right, Fly," Albert jumped right back. "I can understand why Arlene would react that way." "Excuse me," she interjected, but despite the words she didn't sound polite. "Please don't talk about me in the third person when I'm right here." Albert wasn't in a mood to back off. "We've been doing that with Sears and Roebuck, and they're right here." The man had a point. S&R politely waited for one of us to address them directly. Otherwise, they didn't budge and didn't make a peep. Albert regarded Arlene with a strong, steady gaze I'd never noticed from him before. I definitely needed to rethink my views on meditation. "Arlene," he began softly, "it might not be possible for us to understand why these advanced beings are in conflict. They have such advanced technology and powers that they can't possibly need territory or each other's resources. The war is some sort of galactic chess game. It may not be possible for us to grasp the root reasons for the war. I think the best we can hope is to make a good analogy. With my beliefs, the best I can do is compare the situation to two different branches of the Southern Baptists, or, say, the Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims. From the inside, there is a huge chasm. From the outside, the distinctions may seem insignificant. If you find my analysis unac- ceptable, we will say nothing more about it, but I would like basic courtesy, if possible." For the first time in their relationship, Albert gave it to my best buddy good and hard. At least, it was the first time I ever noticed. Albert allowed himself to use a patronizing tone. I thought Arlene had it coming. Apparently so did she. "I'm sorry, Albert," she said. "Your explanation helps. You know how impa- tient I am, but that's no excuse to be rude." "Thank you," he said. This seemed like a good time to pick up the ball and run with it. "Sears and Roebuck," I addressed them. "Yes?" they replied. "Did any of the conversation we just had help, uh, clarify the problem? Unless you weren't listening, that is. We weren't trying to have a private conversation right in front of you." "Private?" "Well, you know what I mean. Private! I mean, you have such a large English vocabulary . . . however you picked it up." "Free-basing," they said. We all did a big collective "Huh?" So they tried again: "Data-basing. We draw on large dictionary stores. Private is the lowest rank in the Earth army." "Yes, well," I floundered around. "We'll return to that subject at a later time." I stared at their comic faces. They stared right back. "I've forgotten what I asked you," I admitted. "Religion unclear going to object-subject," said Sears and Roebuck. "We are sorry we fail the expora- tion." "Explanation," I corrected them without thinking about it. Jesus, I was becoming used to their sen- tences. "I don't mean to criticize you," I continued, "but we're not getting anywhere. Thanks for trying to explain." "Criticize," said S&R. "Movie critics. Book critics. Art critics. Science-fiction reviewers ..." Albert saw the direction before I did. "Is that it?" he asked, eagerly. "Do you have aesthetic differences with the Freds?" "War going on to hundreds of thousands of years," said S&R. "Go to planetary systems change. Different races are subjects, objects." "How did it begin?" asked Arlene, suddenly as enthusiastic as Albert. "You call them books," said S&R. "The Holy Tests." "Texts," I did it again, almost unconsciously. "Texts," they said. I felt like giving them an A-plus. "Books are twelve million years old. The Freds disa- gree with us." "With the Klave?" I asked. "All of us. Not only Klave-us, but all that are here us. We bring you for going to the war." "Literary criticism," marveled Arlene. I wasn't about to forget that she'd been an English major for a while. Albert clapped like a little kid who'd just been given the present he always wanted--understanding. "The two sides are literary critics, conquering stellar sys- tems to promote their own school of criticism. I love it. It's too insane not to love. What is their primary disagreement over the twelve-million-year-old books?" S&R gave us one of their best sentences: "The Freds want to take the books apart." Arlene screamed, but it was a happy kind of scream. "Oh, my God," she said, "they're deconstruc- tionists!" 24 "You'll have to fill me in on what that means," Fly whispered in my ear. I was still reeling from the implications of what I'd blurted out. I looked at Fly with the blankest stare in my repertoire. "You mean deconstructionism?" I asked. "Yeah." I wasn't about to admit to the great Fly Taggart that I had very little idea. I didn't complete my college work. I was afraid that if I started collecting degrees in the liberal arts it would handicap me for life in the real world. But I'd picked up a few buzzwords. Time to bluff my way through. "Deconstructionism is what it sounds like," I said. "Professors of literature take apart texts and examine them." "How's that different from what other professors do?" Fly wanted to know. He was so prejudiced against the typical product of our institutions of higher learning that I wondered why he was pumping me at all. I'd become the official exception to his belief that college damaged the mind. One more comment and I'd exhaust my store of information on the subject: "Well, they come up with different meanings than the authors intended." I'd shot my bolt. Before Fly could ask for elaboration and examples, I threw myself on the mercy of the aliens. "I'm sure Sears and Roebuck can take it from there," I said, "with all the information about our world they're carrying in their handsome heads." "Nice try," said Albert as he endeavored to keep a straight face. I wouldn't put it past him to know plenty about the subject, but I'll bet he was still sore about my sarcasm earlier. Dumb Arlene! Dumb. Besides, what we really needed to know was what was in those old books, if we could understand them at all. Sears and Roebuck did not rescue me. Their heads were full of information about our language, but they had a talent for confusion at the most inappropriate times. Like now. "Deconstruction," they said, "is the article 'de' preceding the noun, 'construction,' as in deconstruc- tion of a house." Great. They were doing a Chico Marx routine! Fly and Albert both lost it about then and broke out laughing. Well, if they could laugh at Magilla Gorillas, so could I. Our alien buds didn't join in, but I don't think they were offended. They didn't understand our humor. Not surprising, really. Humor is the last part of a culture to be internalized by an outsider, if even then. If there was such a phenomenon as Klave humor, we were just as unlikely to pick up on it. Albert came to the rescue. I wondered how much time he'd spent with S&R while I thought he was off brooding. He made it simple: "We're talking about a literary theory. The Freds have one. Your side has another. If you look up deconstructionism in a histo- ry of literature you will probably find an opposing theory that might describe your side in this galactic war." With a little nudge in the right direction, S&R could work wonders. "Justice a minute," they said. "We learn with going to photogenic memory. Decon- struction is not what we said. We understand the differential." It was my turn to whisper in Albert's ear. I wanted to be friendly with the big lug and make sure I was forgiven. "I can't decide if Sears and Roebuck are harder to understand when they think they under- stand us." "Amen," he said. I was at least half forgiven. "We know what the Klave are being in the war," said S&R. The suspense was killing me, even if Fly's eyes were beginning to get that special bored look right before he started rocking and rolling. "You are what?" I prompted S&R. "We are hyperrealists," they said. "We leave books together." "And you leave worlds alone," Albert finished, pleased at the direction our conversation had taken. S&R were on a roll. "When your unit is restored, we go to Fred invasion base and continue your part in the war. We will fighting with you." It took a moment for me to realize what they were talking about. Our unit included Captain Hidalgo. I'd never thought we'd travel these incredible distances only to pick up two new members for our fire team. I wondered how Hidalgo would deal with this develop- ment. "How far away is this base?" asked Albert. I almost chided Albert but caught myself. How could we ask the distance to the Freds when we didn't know where the hell we were? I couldn't understand the reluctance of the aliens to give us the straight of it. Could Albert be trying to trick S&R into revealing our location? Whether intended or not, that was the result. "The Fred base is two hundred bright-years away," they said. "Light-years," Fly corrected them. If he kept this up, he might have a great career ahead of him ... as an editor! I figured it was my turn. "That doesn't tell us how far the Freds are from our solar system." S&R answered immediately: "Two hundred light- years." While I marveled at another passable reply from our hosts, Fly picked up on the content. "Excuse me," he said in his I-really-can't-take-any-more-surprises voice. "What did you just say?" S&R said, "Two hundred light-years." "That's the distance from this base?" Fly asked. S&R nodded. They'd at least picked up one of our human traits. "The distance from our solar system?" he nailed the coffin shut. They nodded again. Fly sounded so calm and reasonable that I feared for all of our lives. This was worse than when he found out about the month and a half of travel time on the Bova. "Just so I'm absolutely clear," he said, "regarding the location of this galactic base, we are located exactly where?" If Sears and Roebuck had seemed like cartoon characters before, the impression was even more pronounced now. There was one word they had apparently missed in their extensive study of the English language: "oops." S&R didn't hold back any longer: "We are past the orbit of Pluto-Charon." "Why didn't you tell us this before?" I asked. "Need to know," they said. "Hidalgo part of your unit will be returned to you soon, and unit completes all." "It was getting about time to tell us anyway," Albert translated helpfully. "Let me get this straight," said Fly, oblivious to all other subjects until he was satisfied on this one. "We've been convinced of the relative unimportance of the Earth in the big scheme of things. So it comes as a shock to learn you have this space museum parked just outside our insignificant solar system." I thought Fly was laying it on a bit thick. I would have told him to take a stress pill and calm down ... if we'd had any stress pills. S&R didn't seem clued in to human frustration. When Fly calmed down, S&R attempted to explain. One thing I'll say for my pal, when he finds out he's been off the wall on something, he takes his medicine like a trooper. Hell, like a marine. Naturally, we all believed we'd traveled many light- years to get to this base. Nope. Wrong about that. We thought it a strong possibility that we'd been in transit for many years, Earth standard time. Nope. Wrong again. Several other assumptions were shot down in flames as well. I remembered the director saying there was no way to pinpoint the location of the secret base, and I recall Jill teasing him about that. How desper- ately Warren Williams wanted to unlock the secrets of the stars. The poor man would probably be as disappointed as Fly to learn that there is no such thing as faster- than-light travel. Many people have never imagined otherwise, but most of them would not imagine a galactic war with a myriad of alien races either. Up to this moment on the gigantic galactic base--which happened to be parked in our own backyard--I would have thought a galactic war must prove the existence of FTL. I'd grown up reading all of the great SF writers. E. E. Doc Smith and his inertialess drive. John W. Campbell Jr. and a dozen clever ways to get around Einstein's speed limit. Arthur C. Clarke with a bag of tricks the others had missed. The discovery of a galactic war without faster-than-light travel blew my mind more completely than the spider-mind carcass Fly and I had plastered all over Deimos. S&R finally succeeded in explaining the reality to us. Fly wasn't even all that much of a science-fiction fan, and he took the news really hard. It must have been all those Star Trek shows that not even he could have missed seeing. Or maybe it was just his romantic sense of adventure. We felt as if we'd traveled across the universe, and then we find out we're next door to the old neighborhood. Albert didn't seem bothered at all. There are no articles of faith about FTL outside of science-fiction conventions. It was hard work extracting facts from S&R, but they were ready and willing if we were. Reality was like this: first of all, there is no such thing as hyper- space. Hyper kids like Jill, yes. Space, no. Everything happens at relativistic velocities. When we went through the Gate on Phobos, the trip took us almost seven and a half hours by Earth standard time, traveling just under light-speed as beams of coherent, self-focusing information. The galactic chess game stretched out over millen- nia. We hadn't asked yet, but I was ready to bet the farm that some of these suckers lived a freakin' long time. It almost had to be that way. Otherwise how could individuals maintain interest in their blood- drenched games? It had taken the Freds more than two hundred of our years to reach Earth in the beginning! This was my idea of long-range planning. This was my idea of an implacable foe. These guys got off by critiquing twelve-million- year-old books and fighting over which important commentator correctly interpreted them! Jeez, I won- dered how many alien races had been exterminated because of a bad review? At times the struggle had erupted into full-scale warfare. It didn't make Fly, Albert, or me feel any better to learn that now was a relatively calm period with only occasional brush wars along the borders. Millions of rotting human corpses were almost overlooked. The monsters sent by the Freds to either end or enslave mankind were just one more move in the lit-crit game. As we painfully pieced together the story of life in the galaxy, I had the weird feeling that the Freds took the human race more seriously than any of the "good guys." Oh, we'd connected with S&R. Maybe the entire Klave operated at their high level of ethics and decency. But even so, the best we could expect from our allies was a chance to be marines again. The Freds had sent hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of their demonic monsters to clean humani- ty's clock. Simple human pride made me feel for the first--and I hoped the last--time that the Freds were a worthy foe. They must be scared of us. The decon- structionists thought we might deconstruct them. The hyperrealists were busy with their own shit. 25 "I love you." Arlene touched my face and said, "You didn't have to do this." I thought I'd never get her alone. Then Fly obliged me by wandering off with Sears and Roebuck. They were still trying to explain to him why we exist in a sub-light Einsteinian universe. Arlene was too de- pressed to want to hear the details just now. Besides, I could turn off my Albert-projector right now. It was disconcerting to watch myself. I wasn't all that vain, and I didn't want to watch myself all the time. Of course, I'd had a very good reason for bringing the device. I'd spent time with S&R first and picked up a lot about their peculiarities. I could tell Arlene and Fly about that later. Shop talk. Business. The mission. Meanwhile, something more important concerned me: my opportunity to be alone with Arlene! Our little spat was forgotten as she held up her gold ring. I think I saw the hint of a tear in a corner of her eye. The ring was attached to a necklace. "How did you manage this?" she asked. The origi- nal ring h