"Is here. Is Abumaha
Blinky. Didn't know?"
     Arlene had been half listening, bored as the rest of
us, but she jumped into the conversation with both
feet. "Abumaha built the thing? Our Abumaha?"
"Our Abumaha, Sanders-san." Tokughavita slicked
back a patch of hair that insisted upon curling around
forward.
     I leaned over and shook him awake, describing
Ninepin, but Blinky didn't have the faintest memory
of building it! "Must jolly well have been under spell
of Resuscitators, pip-pip."
     I spread my hands helplessly. "Well, did you take
any notes? Draw schematics?"
     Blinky's face brightened. "Maybe, maybe, Jack!
Kept data stack from way back, maybe used from
force of habitat." He disappeared, reappeared ten
minutes later in high excitement. "Yes, yes, is on
nodule, damn good lucky!" Sears and Roebuck seized
the interval in between to escape with their lives.
I gestured to the engineering lab and we sealed
Blinky Abumaha inside. The other five who knew
engines prepped the ship.
     Nearly a day passed, but there still was no word
from Blinky. When I knocked, he muttered some-
thing incoherent and refused to come out, not even to
eat. Sears and Roebuck had completely disappeared
into the bowels of the ship--God only knows how
they even fit through the passageways!--but they
must have found a cabin far away, because we didn't
see them again for the rest of the trip.
     The ship was fully set, waiting for the command,
when finally the scuzz emerged, rank and disheveled,
and rolling out behind him was . . .
     "Ninepin!" Arlene and I shouted simultaneously.
The little bowling ball was crystal-translucent this
time, not green at all. It said nothing, merely rolled on
past, right over my toe, to a console that controlled
the compression field for the hydrogen--and inciden-
tally interfaced the ship's mil-net. Ninepin II bumped
into the bottom of the console again and again until I
picked it up (it allowed me to do so) and placed it
directly onto one of the nodule sockets. Ninepin
glowed brightly for nearly an hour.
     "He's downloading the entire freaking ship!" Ar-
lene whispered in awe.
     Then it stopped and announced, in a peevish,
irksome voice, "Have finished inloading. Please re-
place on deck."
     I picked him up and put him down, squatted over
him, and started the interrogation. "Ninepin, do you
know where the tunnels are to escape from this
boulder?"
     "No," he said succinctly.
"We can't get out?" Arlene demanded. "You mean
we're stuck here forever?"
     "Can get out, not stuck. Not tunnel, emergency
escape separation."
     I leaned over the ball. "Okay, Ninepin, listen
closely. I have more seniority than anyone else in the
service, so I'm in charge of PARI. I need to know how
to activate the emergency escape separation. Now
how do I do it?"
     Everyone--all the humans and Sears and Roebuck
were still MIA--leaned close to hear the answer, but
Ninepin wanted to verify my authority. "Taggart
Flynn, born 132 BPGL; joined service 113 BPGL;
time in grade, 263 years. Seniority confirmed. Rank:
sergeant; command nonauthorized, higher ranking
personnel present."
     We all turned to Overcaptain Tokughavita, who
turned red under the attention. He cleared his throat,
looking at me.
     "Toku," I said, "why don't you give me the au-
thority?"
     He inhaled deeply, looking from one anxious face
to another. Then he seemed to deflate, nodding in
acquiescence. "By powers vested in me by Commons
of People's State of Earth," he intoned, "hereby
commission Taggart Flynn Lieutenant of Citizens of
State." My mouth dropped open, but Tokughavita
wasn't finished. "Hereby . . . resign own commission
and resign Party membership." He looked defeated,
but determined.
     The scream heard across the galaxy was my own.
Despite it all--though I smashed the idea down a
dozen times when some Fox Company chowderhead
would suggest it, and ignoring my feelings in the
matter--in the end, the damned Marine officer corps
got its claws into me after all! My face turned purple
with anger, and Arlene laughed her butt off. "So what
is your first order, Lieutenant?"
     Still flushing, I barked, "Nothing to you, Edith!"
This provoked a new round of laughter from Arlene,
so I gravely repeated my order to Ninepin: "The
emergency escape separation, activation!"
     "Separation initiated at Lieutenant Taggart's or-
der," announced the damned bowling ball. I swear,
when I become king, all Data Pastiches will be
annihilated.
     Nothing seemed to happen. We sat around the table
looking stupid until suddenly Arlene glanced out the
viewport. "How cow! Fly, c'mere, you're not going to
believe this!"
     I leaned over her shoulder, stared out the porthole,
and gasped. The entire moon was splitting in two! A
crack formed in the wall of the great central lunar
chamber our ship was trapped in. It grew wider and
wider, and soon I could see stars through the crack. In
the space of fifteen minutes, the two hemispheres of
PARI pushed apart from each other, connected by a
thousand telescoping pylons. The connecting tubes
snapped off like reeds in a storm. Of course, all this
destruction and horrific shifting of forces happened in
utter silence, since there was no atmosphere inside
the hollow sphere.
     The PARI moon base cracked in half like a planet-
egg, the two pieces rushing away from each other at
107 kilometers per hour, according to the radar
tracker. We waited impatiently--it would be at least
two hours before they had separated far enough to
risk a straight-line barrel-run with the ship, newly
christened the Great Descent into Maelstrom by
Blinky Abumaha . . . and the Solar Flare of Righteous
Vengeance Against Enemies of People's State by
Tokughavita. I planned to let the two of them duke it
out for control of the history books.
     I sat in the captain's chair--we had one, despite the
weird individualistic streak of our communist apos-
tles, not quite as iconoclastic as the Freds--with
Ninepin on my lap, stroking his smoothness as I
would a puppy's fur. He didn't object; he didn't take
any notice until he was asked a question. I suppose I
may as well have been petting a network terminal, but
I had developed an affection for the talking bowling
ball. Sure got me in trouble a lot, but then so did a
puppy.
     "My God," I said for about the millionth time. It
was all I could think, watching the enormousness of
the engineering. "I hope Sears and Roebuck know
what they're missing."
     "Oh, they're probably watching and pouting from
their stateroom. Yeesh!" Arlene leaned over and
asked Ninepin the question that I should have asked
minutes before: "Who built this place? Was it human-
Resuscitator symbiots?"
     "Not symbiots," said Ninepin. "Human construc-
tion. Mission launched nine years before People's
Glorious Revolution, construction begun in year 96
PGL, completed 142 PGL. Disrespect to Death-
Bringing Deconstructionists assigned to PARI lunar
base launched year 13 PGL."
     "My God." This time it wasn't me; Arlene was the
inadvertent petitioner. I was too busy wondering how
many other far-flung human bases there were . . . and
what terrifying aliens were following them home.
"Wait," said Arlene, "that's too long.... We're
only 107 light-years from Earth. How come it took the
Disrespect, ah, 137 years Earth-time to get here?"
"Disrespect to Death-Bringing Deconstructionists
stopped at following ports of call between Earth and
this system, designated PM-220: planetary system
designated--"
     "Skip it," she said. The names wouldn't mean
anything to us anyway.
     At last, although the moon continued to split apart,
we had a clear enough path to the stars. I suggested
that Blinky could probably pilot the ship out of lunar
orbit, and he decided I wasn't an idiot and throttled
up the engines. I wasn't sure I liked this system: I'm
used to giving and getting orders, not having a philo-
sophical discussion whenever we needed to move. But
it had its advantages: every man and woman in the
armed forces was capable of acting entirely
     autonomously--a whole military full of Fly Taggarts
and Arlene Sanderses, no matter what silly political
ideology they espoused!
     There was no hurry. The ship would take many
days to ramp up to speed, then an equivalent number
to slow down. In between, we had five months of
subjective travel time--five months! I thought about
complaining, writing a strong letter to the manufac-
turer. But the weird fact of proxiluminous ("near
lightspeed") travel was that notwithstanding our sub-
jective travel time of five months, vice the seven weeks
for the Res-men, both trips would take just about 107
years in Earth-time, with us lagging only about
twenty-five minutes behind. If it weren't for our
twenty-nine days of acceleration vice only six days for
the Disrespect, we would arrive while they were still
maneuvering into orbit.
     But with that damned acceleration factor, the New-
bies would have a three-week jump on us. I shuddered
to think what they could do in twenty-three days to
poor abused Earth, still reeling from the three-
generation war with the Freds when Tokughavita and
his crew left.
     There was no hurry, but my heart was pounding,
my pulse galloping a klick a minute. It was all I could
do to sit in the command chair and act, like, totally
nonchalant, like I did this sort of thing every day:
jump in my proxiluminous-drive starship and pursue
molecular-size aliens who wanted to infect all of
Earth and "fix" us!
     "Hey, Tofu," I said. He didn't notice or didn't catch
the reference. "So when did the Resuscitators find
you guys and infect you?"
     Tokughavita looked pensive. "Do not know. Been
trying to clarify. Were not symbiots when left People's
Planet, sure of that."
     "Don't you remember?"
"No memory. Remember actions, not when in-
     fected by Resuscitators--may not have noticed if
turned off sensory inputs. Long before landed at PM-
220, rebuilt engines en route, went over ship systems
with hand of history."
     The overcaptain didn't know, or the aliens had
blocked it from his mind. They left Earth 137 years
ago Earth-time, but they had visited many other
planetary systems and bases before arriving at this
one. The molecular Newbies could have infected the
humans at any port of call along the way.
     Arlene and I discussed it in private. "So what did
happen to them?" I asked. "They left Newbie-prime
in a ship, attacked Fredworld--then what? What
happened to their ship?"
     She shrugged, making a nice effect with the front
part of her uniform blouse. "Search me." (I wouldn't
have minded.) "They must have headed here, but I
don't know why or how . . . Jesus, Fly--maybe they
didn't set out for Skinwalker; maybe they only ended
up here later. Remember, it was forty years that the
dead Newbie was on Fredworld. . . . Plenty of time
for them to meet humans somewhere, change their
course, and send out a general Newbie alert to tell all
their buds where they were going." Arlene stood at the
porthole, watching us drift slowly toward the crack.
She spread her arms wide, stretching and almost
touching the bulkhead on either side, so narrow was
it.
     We kicked the idea around a bit, but really there
was no way to settle it. Some questions must remain
forever unanswered.
     I returned to the bridge when we approached the
edge and forced myself to sit still and not bounce up
and down like an orangutan in a banana factory.
Blinky Abumaha piloted the ship about like I fly a
plane: we didn't actually crash into anything, but it
wasn't for lack of trying. By the time we finally found
a big-enough hole that Blinky could make it through
without scraping the sides--about seventy
     kilometers--my jaw ached from clenching it, and my
lips were like rubber from the frozen half smile I had
maintained. I was surprised my armrests didn't have
finger marks on them. But we finally, by God, made it
out of the PARI moon--intact.
     Blinky slowly burned the engine up to 104 percent,
the highest it was rated, and Sears and Roebuck
entered in the relative coordinates, direction and
distance, to Earth. We kicked the puppy into over-
drive, and the huge boot of massive acceleration
slammed us all back against the aft bulkheads. Sud-
denly, I wasn't sitting in my chair; I was lying back,
like in a dentist's office. . . .
     I skip five months.
Oh, all right, I can't completely skip it. We spent the
coasting time training in every tactic of the Light
Drop that Arlene and I could remember, plus any-
thing we missed that the Glorious People's Army had
developed . . . some pretty hairy tactics involving
scanning lasers and enemy eyeballs, life-stasis projec-
tors, crap like that.
     Sears and Roebuck had nothing to offer. Either the
Klave had long ago given up actual physical fighting--
which I doubted after hearing Arlene describe their
performance among the Res-men--or else they just
weren't very personally creative in the mayhem de-
partment. In any event, they sealed themselves into
their stateroom again, and I didn't dare force it open
for fear I'd find the walls papered with everything
from nude pictures of Janice De'Souza to a Chatty
Cathy doll. "Go to away!" they shouted in response to
determined knocking.
     "Skip it this time," Arlene suggested. "What do
they have to offer anyway?"
     So we did. It was all right. We humans were plenty
ingenious enough for the entire Hyperrealist side.
In five months, I was unable to instill a sense of
cohesion among the apostles; they just didn't get it.
They were the most mixed-up mob I'd ever seen in
vaguely uniform uniforms. Somehow, they had a
perfect fusion of utter individuality and total commu-
nalism: they assumed that naturally the State would
provide everything that its citizens could need or
want, but they refused to accept the concept of duty to
others even in theory! It didn't wash. They kept
yammering about something called a "post-economic
society," which I figured meant they had so much of
everything that material goods were literally worth-
less; even a beggar could pick discarded diamonds off
the streets and dine on caviar every night.
     I have no idea what to call that system: Commu-
nist? Capitalist?
     Heaven? It was a chilling thought: maybe the Char-
ismatics were right, and the Rapture had come.
Maybe when I got back, Jesus would be sitting there
on His throne, wondering where we'd got to all these
years.
     This continued off and on every day for five long
months ... so I'm just going to skip it, if that's all
right with everyone. Satisfied?
     We followed our course to the sixth decimal place
and decelerated to match velocities with Earth at
about six hundred kilometers low orbit . . . and fi-
nally, the damned Klave appeared! They pushed into
the bridge as if nothing had happened, slapping
everyone on the back in congratulations and pouring
around a seemingly endless bottle of some queer
liqueur that tasted like head cheese. The rest of us
were being dead serious--and here were Sears and
Roebuck tripping happily through the low-g bridge,
talking a klick a second! "Shut up, you idiots," I
snapped. "Can't you see we're at general quarters
here? Where are the damned Resuscitators?"
     Where indeed? Blinky and Tokughavita, along with
a weapons sergeant named Morihatma Morirama
     Morirama, had figured out how to work the particle
beam cannons, which basically were human versions
of the Fred ray. They sat, one in each cockpit, waiting
tensely for first sight of the Resuscitator ship, the
Disrespect to Death-Bringing Deconstructionists.
They waited a long time. Arlene and I sweated a
liter each standing in the control room with the
artificial gravity set to 0.3 g, 0.1 g in the crawlways:
just enough to avoid total vertigo, but still allow for
rapid movement across the ship using our special low-
grav combat tactics. We waited a long time, too.
After seventeen orbits, radiation detection sweeps
of the stratosphere, infrared examination, every
damned thing we could think of, we faced the stun-
ning truth.
     There was no Res-man ship, not in orbit, not on the
surface. The Disrespect had not made it yet. We were
alone orbiting Earth . . . and there wasn't a trace of
our spacefaring technological civilization.
     We were home, but nobody had bothered leaving
the lights on.



     20

     We broke into the outer layers of atmos-
phere. The Great Descent into Maelstrom of Solar
Flare of Righteous Vengeance Against Enemies of
People's State--my impossibly ugly compromise be-
tween Blinky and Tokughavita--nicknamed the
     Great Vengeance, to make it at least pronounceable,
was a damned good ship. We flew lower and lower,
stabilizing fins and the hypersonic air-cushion keep-
ing the ride so steady that it almost seemed like a
simulator. We skimmed quickly over Asia Minor and
Western Europe, crossed England, and brushed the
Arctic en route to Newfoundland. Blinky curved our
orbit, blowing fuel like he didn't care. "Can fill damn
quick from ocean--good jolly job!"
     Arlene grinned, but I didn't really like his attitude.
Sears and Roebuck were behaving even stranger.
They planted themselves at the perfect viewing port
and hogged it utterly, staring down at the planet
surface with a longing that I just couldn't understand.
It wasn't even their planet! They didn't respond to
queries, and we basically just forgot about them while
we studied the remains of the Earth.
     Still no response from below. There were many
cities left, and as we got lower, they didn't look
particularly devastated by war. But everywhere we
saw nature encroaching on human habitation . . . like
all those creepy movies where the magnificent Indian
city with spires and domes is overrun by the jungle--
vines and creepers and baboons invading in the Raj's
palace.
     Nobody contacted us; no ships flew up to assess us.
There was no fire-control radar sweeping the Great
Vengeance, not even any ground response. The Earth
slumbered like a doped-up giant.
     So where the hell were we supposed to go?
Arlene had her own agenda. "Ninepin," she said,
"who was actually with, ah, Gallatin Albert when he
died?"
     "Lovelace Jill only companion when died in year
31 PGL."
     Arlene frowned. "Didn't anybody else see the
body?"
     "Body exhibited in Hall of People's Heroes 31 PGL
to 44 PGL. Body interred beneath rebuilt Tabernacle
of People's Faith of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake
Grad."
     Arlene gasped. I don't know why--was she still
harboring hope that she would find Albert alive and
well?
     "A.S.," I said, "I think you should accept what is.
He loved you, but he's dead. Christ, girl, it's been
something like five hundred years!"
     She didn't look up. "And he was working on life
stasis when he died."
     "But there wasn't even a prototype until seven
years after he died. Get ahold of yourself, Lance. Let's
get a little reality check going here." I walked to the
video screen that showed the for'ard view. "Don't you
think if Albert were still around that Earth would
have more civilization left than that?" We were cur-
rently skimming low over the Big Muddy, north up
the Mississippi River at midnight. There were settle-
ments and even lights, but no evidence of high
civilization other than electricity.
     Tokughavita came up behind me and put his hand
on my shoulder. I jumped. It was the first friendly
contact from the amazingly solitary humans of the
twenty-first century. I guess he had been watching me
and Arlene--we had always tended to touch a lot, just
as friends. "World is gone," he said, voice heavy with
emotion withheld. "Where are Resuscitators? Ex-
pected they at least would be here."
     I smiled grimly. "Maybe Fly and Arlene killed
'em."
     "Maybe they got bored and evolved again," said my
counterpart from across the cabin. "Maybe they e-
volved into something completely different and forgot
all about us."
     "Who knows?"
Tokughavita didn't seem satisfied with our left-
hand, right-hand explanations, but it was the best we
could give him. We would never know why the
     Newbies never arrived--but thank God they didn't.
The Northeast Corridor was in the same condition
as the Mississippi Delta: houses, buildings, roads
intact, the power grid still working, but no evidence of
anything but habitation. "I want to go to Salt Lake
City," Arlene declared. I snorted in exasperation, but,
hell, I didn't have any better suggestion. We turned
west.
     "Toku, what was life like when you left?" I asked.
He seemed at a loss for words. "People taken
control of State from greedy-capitalists, run for good
of all."
     He said greedy capitalists as if it were a hyphenated
word, a linked concept. "You what--nationalized the
industries?"
     "Industry run for good of all. But so efficient,
paradise continued."
     "For the workers?"
He looked puzzled. "No workers. Work old con-
cept, not modern. Workers abolished before People's
Glorious Revolution."
     Now I was the confused one. "Wait a minute--then
who ran the industries?"
     Toku looked back at Blinky Abumaha for help.
"Good damn system," Blinky added. "Automated,
workers not necessary, just get in the way--jolly
good!"
     Arlene started to get interested, since the conversa-
tion was taking a notably academic tinge. "So wait
... if there were no workers, then who was being
exploited by the greedy capitalists?"
     This stymied both Blinky and Tokughavita. "Never
thought damn-all about exploitation. Machines, arti-
ficial intelligence . . . can greedy-capitalists exploit
electronics?"
     I turned away. The conversation had veered way
over my head. Arlene continued, but I ignored them
all. I don't deal well with academics, as you've proba-
bly figured out by now.
     We were fast approaching Salt Lake City--or Salt
Lake Grad, I remembered Ninepin calling it. It must
have been winter in the northern hemisphere; we
kicked through an overcast sky, and suddenly the
rebuilt Cathedral loomed before us. "Jesus freaking
Christ!" I yelped, freezing the economics lesson be-
hind me. Arlene and everyone else rushed to the
video, then to the actual viewports, evidently not
believing the image on the screen.
     The new Cathedral of the People's Faith of Latter-
Day Saints rose about six hundred stories into the
Utah sky, a veritable Tower of Babel! It had a ball at
the very top. An observation deck? A radar system?
"Jeez, Fly, it looks like a huge fist of triumph raised
over the Earth."
     "Built after Freds repelled," Tokughavita con-
firmed. "Celebrates victory."
     Suddenly, every warning light on the bridge went
off at once. The place lit up like a Christmas tree, and
about six different kinds of sirens sounded. "Mises!"
Blinky swore at the con. He jerked on the stick, and
the whole freaking ship swerved violently to the left
and up, flinging us all to the deck. I was pressed hard,
nine g's at least! Then the acceleration let up.
I painfully picked myself off the deck, shaking like a
pine needle in a strong wind. "What the hell was that
about?"
     "Force field," said our pilot, face pale. "Damn jolly
strong. Almost killed--crash, crash!"
     We circled Salt Lake Grad for more than forty
minutes, mapping the exact extent of the field. One of
the crew was a mathematician, a girl named Suzudira
Nehsuzuki; she calculated the highest probability that
the center of the field was at the Tabernacle. My guess
was that it all emanated from the bulb at the top of
the structure, more than a kilometer above ground
level.
     "Fly," said my lance. "I can't tell you why ... but I
must get inside that Tabernacle."
     "Criminey, don't you think I know why? Albert's
buried there, he spent the last years of his life there.
Why shouldn't you want to see it?"
     "Fly--I want to contact it."
"Contact what?"
     "The Tabernacle!"
"Arlene, do you feel all right? It's a building, for
Christ's sake!"
     She turned to stare at me; her eyes were filled with
the intelligence of fanaticism. I took a step back; I'd
never seen her like that! "Fly . . . what was Albert
working on just before he died?"
     "Um, life stasis."
"What else did he work on?"
     "What else? I don't remember anything else."
"Worked on SneakerNet," Tokughavita said from
behind me. I jumped, then was annoyed at being
startled. I sat on a chair at the radio station and stared
at the video monitor as we endlessly circled the
looming Tabernacle.
     "He worked on artificial intelligence! Fly, I'll bet
that building has some sort of net, and it's probably
intelligent, and it's probably been sitting here for five
hundred years waiting for me to get back!"
     Jesus, talk about your megalomania! Then again,
wasn't that precisely why Albert spent the last years of
his life desperately trying to extend his life, so he
could see Arlene Sanders again when she returned?
"Go ahead," I ordered, rising from the chair and
offering it to her. "Talk your brains out."
     Arlene sat down and stared at the controls. "I don't
know how to turn it on," she admitted. Tokughavita
reached over her shoulder and flipped the switch.
I noticed that when he did, he snuck a glance down
her cleavage. Somehow, that made me feel better. No
matter what weirdo hybrid of communism and capi-
talism they had developed, they were still, by God,
human beings.
     "What frequency does this broadcast on?" I asked.
"All," Tokughavita said.
     "All right, which frequencies, plural?"
"All," he repeated. I finally got the message that he
had set it to transmit on all possible frequencies . . .
though I couldn't understand how that was possible.
"Arlene to Tabernacle," she said. "Arlene calling
Tabernacle. Come in, Tabernacle."
     A voice responded instantly. "Tabernacle here . . .
but how do I know you're really Arlene?" It sounded
so damned familiar that for a moment I didn't even
recognize it. Then our video monitor went to snow,
and a moment later, a face appeared. It was a face I
knew very, very well--it was her face.
     "Jill!" I screamed.
"Hello, person who looks like Fly Taggart," Jill
said. "I'm not really Jill--I'm an AI program that Jill
Lovelace set up. Who are you? And who are those pair
of gorillas you brought with you?"
     I glanced behind, honestly confused who she
meant. So that's how familiarity breeds contentment!
Or does it breed? "Jill, meet Sears and Roebuck--
don't ask which is which, they won't understand
you." The Magilla Gorillas simply nodded gravely,
impatient for the ground.
     Her little blond girl's face simpered a bit, as kids do
when you introduce them to a new relative and
they're trying to be polite and grown up, but in reality
they haven't a clue why they should care who the new
person is. "They're a Klave pair--"
     "Man! Really? Cool!" It took me a moment to
realize she was being slightly sarcastic. "Love your
store, guys. Now, if you don't mind, who the heck are
you two, too?"
     "What the hell do you mean, who are we?" Arlene
demanded. "We're Sergeant Fly Taggart and Lance
Corporal Arlene Sanders, United States Marine
Corps!"
     "Prove it."
Arlene and I looked at each other. "How can we
freaking prove we're really Fly and Arlene?" I asked.
Jill's image smiled. "What's the password?"
     I sat down again next to Arlene. A smaller televi-
sion monitor at the console in front of us showed the
same image as the for'ard video screen. "Jill," I said
patiently, "we didn't set up any password with you."
"But you know it anyways, dudes."
     "We do?"
"It's something you said to me ... something only
you two would remember." Jill's face wasn't the aged
grandmother she must have been when she died;
instead, it was the Jill we knew from before--just a
year or so ago, from our point of view. Still, I became
so terribly homesick, looking at that fifteen-year-old's
face; she was like a little sister or something--a bratty
little sister, but still the closest thing to family I had
left, besides Arlene. Everyone else I had ever known
on Earth was long since dust in the dust.
     "When did I say it?"
"You said it the first time you really trusted me.
You made me feel totally adult, like a woman. The
President of the Council of Twelve always, you know,
made me feel like a little girl.... He was totally the
Bomb, I'm not dissing him! But he always thought of
me as a kid."
     I closed my eyes, straining to remember. Her first
test by fire came when we took the truck with the
teleport pad inside. Something appeared--what was
it? "Arlene, remember back on Earth, with Jill and
Albert, when we hijacked that truck? What was the
monster that teleported into it?"
     "Um . . . Jeez, that goes back a ways. Wait--I've
got it. It was a boney. We killed it, but it shot its
rockets and just missed you, Jill, honey."
     The Jill image shuddered. "Yeah, I remember that!
And you're right. . . . That's when you said the pass-
word to me. Remember, Mr. Fly? Remember what
you told me after the rockets went on either side of
me?"
     Damn it all to hell--I didn't remember! I remem-
bered saying something . . . but what was it? I shook
my head sadly.
     "Look," Jill said, "let me cheer you up with a little
game. You ever play Charades?" I nodded dumbly,
and she continued. "I'll start: you watch and guess the
phrase I'm thinking of."
     The camera pulled back--or the animated image
shrank--and we saw a full-body shot of Jill. She held
up four fingers. I wasn't sure what to do, but Arlene
said, "Four words." Then Jill held up one finger, then
one again. "First word . . . one syllable."
     Jill frowned like an angry mother and pointed
savagely to the side. "Point," I guessed. "Look, look
out!"
     "Leave, get out of here," Arlene suggested.
Jill kept pointing. "Leave, go away, go--"
     Jill smiled and pointed at us with both hands.
"First word is Go?" I asked. Jill nodded emphatically.
She held up two fingers, then one touching her
elbow. "Second word, one syllable." I was starting to
get the hang of the game. Then Jill really threw me for
a loop: she slapped her waist, pantomiming drawing a
pistol and shooting someone.
     "Shoot!" Arlene shouted. "Draw, fire, stick 'em
up!"
     "Pow, bang--ah--gun, bullet, gunfighter.. .."
Jill touched her ear. "Sounds like," Arlene mut-
tered. Then Jill stuck her thumbs into the shoulder
holes of her sleeveless shirt. "Shirt?" I guessed, and
Jill rolled her eyes.
     She touched her ear again, then closed her eyes and
smiled blissfully. "Sounds like nap?" Arlene asked.
"Sap, map, crap--"
     "Sounds like sleep! Weep, heap, teep . .."
"Teep?" demanded my lance. "What the hell is a
teep?"
     "It's where indies sleep," I griped.
Jill was getting frantic. She finally pointed at her
ear, waited a beat, then pointed at herself. Arlene
muttered, "Sounds like . . . pest?"
     Jill almost yelped with satisfaction, but she kept her
mouth shut, just pointing at Arlene. "Pest?" asked my
lance. "Go pest? Go pester? Go best?"
     Suddenly I jumped to my feet--I remembered!
Dramatically, I stabbed a meaty forefinger at our
long-dead companion. "Go west, young lady!" I hol-
lered.
     The image of Jill moved into extreme close-up on
her mouth. "You have spoken the password. You now
have infinite power! You may pass, Sahib."
     Blinky's voice from the back was an anticlimax.
"Ah, force field down. Good damn show, that."
"On to the Tabernacle," I suggested. "Put her down
on that bulby thing, if there's enough room--that is,
if you don't mind, Blinky." I really hated this new-
jack command and control system.



     21

     Blinky Abumaha continued to circle the Tab-
ernacle, fearsomely eyeing the bulbous tip. "Ah," he
said, "ah, not sure is--not sure sir is too damn good
idea, on the top."
     Arlene and I exchanged a glance back and forth,
then we both turned the withering glare on Abumaha.
"Can I, Fly?" she asked. I gallantly gestured her
forward. "Blinky, don't take this the wrong way,
honey, but--to quote Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove,
'I've been to a world's fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and
that's the stupidest damn thing I ever heard!'"
The pilot looked simultaneously relieved and cha-
grined. "Not serious? Just jolly joke? Oh, terrible
fun--ho, ho!" He sounded genuine in the laughter,
but seemingly unsure what he was laughing at.
"Just put us down a quarter klick away," I clarified.
"We'll, um, walk the rest of the way."
     We landed with much ceremony, a celebration that
continued well past the first moment Arlene and I and
Sears and Roebuck could squirm free. The Klave,
having already had their celebration when we made
orbit, disdained the party. Thank God. I didn't think
I could take any more of that head-cheese liqueur!
Finally, we wriggled off and marched resolutely
toward the Tabernacle: Arlene in the lead, pulling us
forward like an anxious puppy on a leash; Sears and
Roebuck at the tail, looking worlds-weary; and poor
Fly Taggart, Lieutenant Fly Taggart, stuck in the
middle like the wishbone. From this short distance,
less than 250 meters, the building utterly dominated
one whole quarter of the sky, looming up so high we
couldn't see the top for the weather--gray, ominous,
overcast.
     Suddenly, before progressing more than fifty strides
from the ship, Sears and Roebuck stopped. "Will we
be okay," they said anxiously.
     "Yes, we're fine," I reassured them.
"No, no, not to ask! Will we be okay, is calling on
the telephone our uncles."
     "Huh?" I scratched my head. They were making
even less sense than usual.
     Arlene, savagely impatient with her goal in sight,
broke into the conversation. "Oh, wake up, Fly! I
mean, sir. They're saying they don't want to go any
farther; they want to call their uncles, probably on the
lunar base, to come pick them up and take them
home."
     My jaw dropped. "S and R, is that what you're
saying?"
     "In ungood typical English of Arlene Sanders is a
yes," they said.
     "Sears--Roebuck--are you aware of the fact that it
has been about five hundred years since you left the
Klave base?"
     They grabbed each other's head and pumped
vigorously--frustration at my little-child inability to
grasp the obvious. "Yes, yes! Is impatience why uncles
wait with much foot-tapping for Sears and Roebuck's
return!"
     I shrugged. I know when I'm beat. "So long, boys,
can't say it's always been a treat, but it's been real."
Even Arlene turned her attention away from her
true love's final resting place to smile in farewell.
"Don't take any wooden Fredpills," she said, thor-
oughly confusing the Klave.
     "Has been it a slice," said the pair of Magilla
Gorillas. Without another word, they turned left and
strode off, marching in unison, subvocalizing all the
way to each other. They disappeared around a tall
ancient-looking column that supported a statue of
what looked like Brigham Young, and we never saw
Sears and Roebuck again.
     We didn't speak, Arlene and I, the rest of the way to
the Tabernacle. There wasn't much to say. She knew
what she hoped to find; I knew she was fooling herself.
The building had a gigantic ceremonial door--and by
"gigantic," I don't mean just huge! Just the door alone
was bigger than the entire Tabernacle itself had been,
before the Fred nuke. But when we touched it, it
swung open swiftly and silently, and musical chimes
played us in, sounding like a chorus of angels after our
ordeal. I think they played some vocal work by
Handel, but I didn't recognize it.
     The interior of the Tabernacle was hollow.
I don't think you quite got that; the building was
more than a kilometer high, and hollow. I felt like we
were in the center of a volcanic crater! Inside was a
huge city, with many temples and churches and such
. . . and in the very center, on a hillock, was an exact
duplicate of the original Mormon Tabernacle--
probably stone for stone, if it had religious signifi-
cance. Arlene pointed at the recreation. "There," she
said, deducing the obvious.
     We took twenty minutes to cross to the smaller
Tabernacle within. Above us, the ceiling of the outer
Tabernacle sparkled with jewels that must be worth
nothing these days but the intrinsic value of their
loveliness; in five hundred years, I would hope we at
least would have learned how to manufacture perfect
gemstones!
     But it was a lovely sight. The People's Faith of
Latter-Day Saints didn't use just diamonds; they
painted gigantic scenes in color using every imagin-
able stone, from rubies to emeralds to blue sapphires
to garnets and, yes, diamonds. It was no longer
ostentatious, since anyone could do it--even the
beggar in the street--but it was still stunning in its
simple beauty.
     Taking a last look up at a scene of angels showing
the Church Fathers' Salt Lake City (before it was Salt
Lake Grad), I followed Arlene into the inner Taberna-
cle. So far as I could tell, she hadn't even looked up at
the ceiling.
     Inside, the place looked exactly like the original:
exactly. I didn't check, but I'm sure if you made a
nineteenth-century stereovision with one picture of
the old and the other of the new, they would matte
over each other perfectly as one image, but with one
difference: the hollow interior of the tribute-
Tabernacle was completely empty, except for the
magnificent organ--and I'd bet the latter worked
perfectly, too.
     We walked slowly across the floor, our melancholy
footsteps echoing back at us. Arlene bowed her head; I
don't think she was praying.... She must have been
overwhelmed by the nearness of her love's life--and
death. I almost put my hand on her shoulder, but I
wasn't the guy she wanted just then.
     Ahead of us was a dark circle. As we got closer, I
realized it was a circular hole in the floor. A hole?
When we got to within ten meters, a grinding noise
began. By the time we reached it, I realized it was a
platform elevator . . . and there was a lone figure
standing on it, rising out of the dark depths, waiting
for us.
     Arlene halted in astonishment. "Jill!" I shouted,
rushing forward.
     "Whoa, whoa!" Jill said, putting her hands out in a
stop motion. "Don't get your skivvies in a knot,
dudes! I'm not really me--I mean, I'm not really
here. This is just a 3-D projection, and if you try to
hug me, you'll fly right through me and mess up your
knee . . . Fly."
     She looked exactly as she had when we left her, a
year and five centuries ago. She was a little taller,
maybe, but her hair was still blond, still punky. She
had the same half smile and knowing eyes, still no
makeup (thank God), and now she wore a bitchin'
black leather jacket, lycra gym shorts that hugged her
butt and upper thighs, and transparent plastic combat
boots. I stood and stared, and blow me down if you
couldn't have bet me two months' pay that that was
the real Jill, and I'd have taken you up on it.
"Jiminy!" she suddenly yelped, staring at us. "You
really are Fly and Arlene!"
     "We told you!" snapped the latter-named.
"But I didn't believe you, even after you passed,
you know, the test thing. Now that you're in here, I
just did a genetic sample thing, and like you're really
you!"
     The animated image of Jill--just an artificial intel-
ligence program, according to itself--dropped its jaw
just like the real Jill would do. She leaned over and
planted both hands on her knees to view us from a
slightly different angle. "God, how did you live for
four hundred and eighty-three years? Oh--relativity!
Right?"
     Arlene nodded, sniffed, then wiped her nose on her
military sleeve. "Jill, I ... look, I don't want to seem
ungrateful, in case you have any surprises, but--"
The fifteen-year-old stood tall and folded her arms,
taking on that slightly superior look that age is prone
to. "Don't worry, Arlene . . . I'm not going to throw
an animated Albert at you. I know you wouldn't
appreciate it. But I am here to take you downstairs,
where there's a present for you." She waited a beat,
then when we didn't move, she impatiently urged us
forward with her hands.
     We joined her on the platform, which immediately
began to sink. I didn't ask her any questions; I didn't
know what to ask. I decided it could all wait.... I
was pretty sure we could always come back later and
catch up on what she did with her life--and get
autographed copies of the books she wrote! If she
didn't save a pair for us, I'd kill her, except she was
already long dead and buried, or whatever they did
nowadays.
     It was a creepy thought, and I stole many a glance at
"Jill," trying not to think that Jill was dead. I felt a big
lumpy knot in my stomach, even though I had known
all along this would be the punishment for hopping
around the universe at proxiluminous speeds. Damn
it! I did what I had to do--we both did! Why, in the
name of God Almighty, do we have to pay such a
terrible price? Everyone we ever knew or loved, be-
sides ourselves, Arlene an