 
Nothing But Light

by Doug Hoffman

Copyright 2013 Doug Hoffman

Smashwords Edition

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# Table of Contents

Dedication

Nothing But Light

All Change

Orientation

The Mechanic

A Prayer of Understanding

The Flea Train

God's Claw

Apogon and Demester

First Contact

Gator & Shark Save the World \-- Excerpt

# Dedication

To the folks who keep me going: my wife, Karen, and my son, Jake.

# Nothing But Light

It seems only yesterday I used to believe

there was nothing under my skin but light.

If you cut me I could shine.

But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,

I skin my knees. I bleed.

From "On Turning Ten," Billy Collins

"All Change" was originally published as "The Gorjun is Free" in Continuum Science Fiction, Fall 2005.

"Orientation" was originally published as "Heaven on Earth" in Worlds Apart #1, July 2006.

"The Mechanic" was published in Crime Scene Scotland, April/May 2004.

"A Prayer of Understanding" was originally published as "Saul the Deserted" in Neverary #8, 2006.

#  All Change

Isaiah and I were having a genuine father-son moment when he ruined it with a question. We were twenty minutes into our trip to South Padre Island and already hot and miserable; we rolled down the windows and spritzed ourselves with a spray bottle, but it didn't help much. Isaiah closed his eyes and nodded time to Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" while I imagined a thousand other Texas highways like this one, each with its arrow-straight plunge to the horizon, its mini-malls and car lots shimmering in the distance.

"It looks so unreal," I said.

"Convection currents distort the light."

"Like Schlieren lines in a glass of hot tea."

He considered this, then said, "Okay."

Could I push him a little? "It's Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle on the macro scale."

"Hardly." The boy had no tolerance for imprecision.

I tried to think of something, anything to keep the conversation going, but then I realized I didn't have to say anything. We were sharing the moment together, just this twelve-year-old savant and his pathetic dad. And that's when he killed it with a question.

"What are you gonna say to Mom?"

Dog, meet bone. Have at it, boy.

I kept my eyes on the road. "You can ask all you like, Iz, but the answer's the same: I don't know. You'll find out when I do."

"Wouldn't we be better off if Mom died?"

"What the hell kind of question is that?"

"It's a perfectly valid question."

I knew better than to argue with him. He'd declare the question grammatically correct, or point out the legitimacy of analyzing a hypothetical situation.

He couldn't let it go. "People mourn when a loved one dies," he said. "Then they move on. We're not moving on."

"I've moved on."

Isaiah snorted and I kept my mouth shut. And thus we settled back into our usual silence, the only cool thing in the car.

Southbound I-37, leaving San Antonio, a butterfly smacked the upper right-hand corner of the windshield, well outside the wiper's arc. My gaze kept shifting to the creamy yellow splat. I kept glancing at Isaiah, hoping he would be the first to insist the mark had to be cleaned, and he kept his gaze leveled on me. I thought we were playing obsessive-compulsive chicken, but he had other designs.

"Why does Mom want to see me?"

At least this was a safer question. "She's your mother."

"Then why didn't she want to see me last year?"

_Damn._ I should have seen that one coming. I signaled to take the next turn-off.

"Tank's three-quarters full," Isaiah said.

"I need to clean the windshield."

"Okay."

I added a quarter tank just to use the station's windshield scrubber. It took some effort, cleaning that smudge and all the other little flecks and splotches on the windows. Before long, I was sweat-soaked and ill. I needed a cold drink, and I figured Isaiah did, too.

Where the hell was he?

Just past the air and water station, someone had parked a trailer on a patch of dirt and set out a vast array of garbage. Isaiah loomed over the tables; I knew he would find some especially useless bit of junk.

Other places had garage sales. Here, we had trailer sales.

I hollered, "Watch out for fire ants!"

I knew he'd heard me, because he started kicking up dust. He wore Bermuda shorts, top-siders with no socks: South Padre Island attire. Kid was obviously excited to see his mom, not that he'd admit it. I had to intuit his emotional state from his choice of clothing.

"Dad, come look."

Not again. Last time this happened, I'd had to spend twenty-five dollars on a collection of rusty gears. "You have money."

"Not this kind of money."

I couldn't go into his room anymore. I'd cleaned it once and he wouldn't talk to me for a week. (He'd said: _Just because you don't understand the order, doesn't mean it isn't there._ ) We had a different definition of garbage, Iz and I, and an entirely different attitude towards chaos.

I brought the car around and parked twenty feet from the trailer sale. Trudging across hard-packed caliche, I kept my eyes on the ground, scanning for fire ants. Ahead, a large woman in a yellow sun dress straddled a leather trunk. Her irises were the color of wheat, same color as her skin. She worked her few teeth with a toothpick.

"Fine boy," the woman said. "What is he, nine?"

"Twelve," Isaiah said. "Dad, look."

He held up two handfuls of metallic lumps: long, knobby, the color of pig iron.

"Shaped like coprolite," I said.

"Coprolites are fossilized dinosaur feces," Isaiah explained to the woman, who returned a dead-eyed stare. "Dad's a geology prof at the U."

"Hundred bucks for those," she said.

"A hundred dollars?" I asked.

Something in the boy's eyes sparked and sizzled. He was breathing hard, too. "Dad . . . please?"

If a hundred dollars will make my kid happy, why not? But I was curious what he saw in these things. "What's so special?"

"They assemble! You wouldn't expect . . ." He threw up his hands. "Just look."

He took something resembling a scrofulous banana and stood it on end. It remained that way, canted fifteen degrees off vertical. He took a second piece that looked like a warty, broken cigar, and set it at right angles across the banana, forming a lumpy T. Then he took a convex disk that looked like a used condom for a horse. He placed it atop the T and spun it.

The whole thing rotated as a unit, precessing like a gyroscope.

"Wild, huh?" he said. "The pieces are balanced. There are seven here, like a Soma cube or a tangram. It's a toy."

Nothing shaped like that should have balanced so well, nor spun so smoothly. I couldn't take my eyes away. I remember thinking, _If I blink, it'll fall apart._ Isaiah could never make that a second time.

"A hundred dollars," I said.

Isaiah must have heard it in my voice, that sense of wonder. He smiled, probably knowing he had me on his side. But the trailer lady misunderstood me.

"The gorjun's free," she said. "Hundred bucks for the story."

"It's free, Iz," I said. "Let's take it and go."

"Dad!" He turned to her and said, "Gorjun. Like the Gordian knot?"

She blinked. "Huh?"

"The Gordian knot," he said. "Tied by Zeus, impossible to unravel, whoever solved the puzzle would rule all Asia. _You_ know."

She shook her head, and Isaiah gaped. Sometimes he made the wildest assumptions about what the rest of us knew. Anyway, I gave her five twenties and suddenly we were family, the two of us enveloped in her arms in a muzzy, beer-scented hug that had to be as painful for Isaiah as it was for me. A wave of nausea crashed over me and my ears buzzed. But then Isaiah said, "Thanks, Dad." It was such a heartfelt thanks, I knew I'd done the right thing. The buzzing subsided.

"You won't regret this," he said. "You'll need an ally when we get to South Padre."

I gave him a curious look, thought about what I should say; but then the woman began her story.

"I was set up on the 59 northeast of Beeville," she said, pointing vaguely across the highway. "Just after sunset, not a car for miles, and who drives up but a little grey alien on a moped. Little grey alien with cat's eyes, a turned-up nose, and scales. He looks over my wares and says he needs my Osterizer. Says the motor is just what he needs to fix his ship."

"I don't believe this," I said.

"Neither did I. Imagine, telling me it's just what he needs to fix his ship. Little shrimp couldn't haggle worth a shit. So I told him what I told you. One hundred dollars."

"Let me guess," I said. "He didn't have any money, just a bunch of alien credits, worthless on Earth. But he did have the gorjun."

"That's about the shape of it," she said. "But now it's yours, and I have my hundred bucks."

Isaiah said, "Did he say what it was?"

"Nuh-uh. All he said was, I needed it more than he did."

Isaiah put the road atlas on his lap and began working with the gorjun. The Impala's shocks were a bad joke, and the atlas hardly provided a level base, yet he created perfectly balanced seven-piece sculptures one after the other. And such sculptures: tangrams and Soma cubes you could form into shapes that meant something. No matter how he arranged these lumpy things, they looked like metallic poops floating in zero gee.

How did they balance like that?

"You believe it's from outer space?" I asked.

"Of course not," he said, not taking his eyes off the gorjun.

"How can you be so sure?"

"She would have asked a lot more than a hundred dollars."

"You're forgetting, not everyone's as bright as you."

That gave him pause. I thought he might toss my question back at me: _How can you be sure it isn't alien?_ But he didn't. "You know," he said, "I was wondering. What are you gonna say to Mom?"

I sighed. "What do you think I should say to Mom?"

I took my eyes off the road to look at him. That expression, why couldn't I read it? Such a young smile, eyes moist. Was he relieved? Happy? He said, "Tell her she needs to come home."

Sure, maybe I expected a tearful reunion scene when Cynthia opened the door, but she and Isaiah exchanged a "Hey," and I got a look. We drifted into the living room and Cynthia asked him about school, whether he had a girlfriend, what books he was reading. Her patter seemed stiff enough to be scripted, and she ran out of steam after five minutes.

In the midst of a silence filled with sweat and harsh grins, I punched up my courage and said, "We want you to come home, Cynthia."

I thought maybe she hadn't heard me. She said, "Where are you staying tonight?"

"Here, I thought."

She arched an eyebrow. "It'll get a little crowded when Glenn gets home."

Isaiah and I said together: "Glenn?"

I'm not sure what happened after that. I remember dull anger, raging incoherent thoughts, a dim awareness that Isaiah had holed up in the den while I followed Cynthia into the kitchen, not knowing what I would do or say next. Now I stood in the kitchen, six feet away from my wife whom I hadn't seen in over two years, while Isaiah played with the gorjun behind two slammed doors. So much for an ally.

She dried a wine glass with a terrycloth towel. My eyes moved from her slender fingers to her red hair (tied in a bun), to her shirt (V-neck, royal blue), to her denims (tight). I wanted her and I hated her for making me feel that way.

"I could have prepared him for it," I said.

"Smart as he is? He had it figured out a long time before you."

"I don't think so."

"Ask him," she said. She wouldn't look at me.

"What, and humiliate him even more?"

"He's the one who's humiliated?"

Oh, how I hated her.

"Please, Cynthia. We need you to come home."

"And it's all about you, isn't it? But don't you see? It'll be the same as before. You're the same. I saw what you did to the pillows on the sofa. You didn't think I'd notice?"

I kept my mouth shut. I couldn't remember rearranging the throw pillows, but I didn't doubt what she'd said.

"You say things will be different," she said, "but I've heard it a million times. Nothing ever changes--you're still you."

Whatever.

I brought in Isaiah's suitcase and set it next to him. "What are you doing?" he said.

"I'm going to the Holiday Inn," I said. "I'll come by tomorrow and say goodbye before I leave."

He put the gorjun pieces into a burlap rice sack the trailer lady had given us for free. "I'm going with you," he said.

I didn't argue with him. For that matter, neither did his mother. The phrase _A mother's love_ came to my lips and remained unspoken. It felt like a punch line. I kept thinking about the unnaturalness of it, as if the laws of physics didn't apply this far south. Maybe when we got home, the gorjun would become nothing more than a collection of foundry debris.

We camped out at the Holiday Inn with no plan other than the vague idea we were on vacation. The next morning, we drove to Brownsville and hit a Borders Bookstore, then came back and camped by the pool. I'd bought Carl Hiaasen's latest book and Isaiah picked up his third copy of _The Two Towers_. Why he couldn't just remember to pack the damn book, I'd never know.

He stayed up past midnight playing with the gorjun. Next day, before we went to the pool, he made me lock it in the Impala's trunk. He claimed he was afraid the housekeeper would take it, but I suspected he had other motivations. On our second night, he returned it to the sack after playing for only a half hour.

"What's the matter?" I said.

"I can't stop thinking about it."

"Just like a Soma cube."

"It's awful," he said. "I keep rearranging it in my head. Have you noticed that every piece can grip every other at least three different ways?"

"No, I haven't. You won't let me play with it."

"It wouldn't be healthy for you," he said.

The next night, we ate fried scallops at Joe's Crab Shack, came back to the hotel, and Isaiah didn't even take the gorjun out of its sack. I watched an old _Blackadder_ on cable while he read _The Two Towers_. He'd made a lot of progress.

"Shit!" Isaiah slammed down the book, opened the burlap sack, and dumped the pieces on the round oak table near the window. I thought of Richard Dreyfuss in _Close Encounters_ , building mountains from mashed potatoes. Of kids spending hours on end playing the same computer game.

Then I remembered Rick Barnes, whom I'd known since college. Rick lived in Austin, where he practiced patent law and ran ads on cable: _Market your invention now!_

Cynthia may have griped about money, but I'd always been happy on a professor's salary. Or rather, I would have been happy, had she not been so damned unhappy. No, if I'd been alone, this crackpot idea never would have occurred to me. But I had Isaiah to think of, too.

Isaiah insisted on going everywhere the gorjun went. Like a Vatican bureaucrat, he feared Rick and I would defile his Shroud of Turin.

"How do you know X-rays won't hurt it?"

"We need to know if it's homogeneous," I said. "I don't know any better way to do it."

"How do you know we can spare a milligram for the mass spec? You'll unbalance the whole thing."

"Look, do you want to know what it's made of, or not? Wasn't it you suggested it's made of some mineral that's never been seen before on Earth?"

In the end, he agreed to let us take samples from each piece, but after we took the first sample he insisted on playing with it for an hour, just to be sure.

The results were far from exotic. The pieces were isodense and homogeneous, composed of a nickel-tin alloy with traces of copper, silver, molybdenum, and iron. Isaiah, Rick, and I read the report together and exchanged glances.

"What do we do now?" I asked Rick.

"You need a working prototype," he said. "You have a working prototype."

"You can't have this one," Isaiah said.

Rick said, "I know a good plastic extrusion man."

Three weeks later, we had our first plastic prototype. Isaiah took it into the kitchen and shooed us from the room. Ten minutes later, he joined us on the deck, looking like his hamster had died.

"Well," he said, "now we know whether the alloy's important."

Rick clucked his tongue and sighed. "This might price us out of the low end toy market," he said.

"Not at all," Isaiah said, grinning fiendishly. "It spins like a top."

We made it our summer project. Isaiah and I learned everything we could about manufacture, distribution, and marketing. Rick said we were wasting our time, but he didn't understand; we couldn't hand over control without some knowledge of the process.

As for Cynthia, we heard not a peep. Neither Isaiah nor I mentioned her again.

On Rick's advice, we decided to market the gorjun through LenCo, a local distributor of scientific toys like Grow-Your-Own Mystic Crystals, Uncle Josey's Silkworm Farm, Monty's Metaphysical Magnets, and Angelica's Amazing Flower-Pressing Kit. Rick figured the gorjun would create its own sensation. He maneuvered a sweetheart deal for us with LenCo, so that when the gorjun turned into the next Rubik's Cube, we'd have a lion's share of the profits.

Not that the money mattered, really, but college tuition wasn't cheap, and Isaiah had his heart set on early enrollment next year. And besides, it was the principle of the thing. Why should some multinational make a killing off the gorjun?

We called it Wacky Wiggle Worms, by the way. That's market research for you.

Two weeks after we released our first lot of five hundred, Isaiah went back to school. He soon fell into a routine: he'd come home, finish his homework, eat dinner with me, then play with the gorjun. I had a similar routine, except instead of playing with the gorjun, I read the emails to our website.

Note from LenCo: _We've cleared five hundred units in under three weeks. Figure we can place another fifty thousand internationally. You guys moving forward on contracts?_

Note from Rick: _Here's that background information on international distribution contracts. Don't sweat it, I've done this before._

"Dad, Dad!"

I sprinted into the kitchen. Last time I'd heard anything like that, he'd cut himself slicing a bagel. Two seconds later, my heart pounding, I found him all in one piece standing over the gorjun.

Nevertheless, he looked funny. Pale.

"What is it?"

"How well do you remember the beanie?"

He held the piece that looked like a giant used condom. AKA the beanie.

"What do you mean?"

"Look. The perimeter is studded with big bumps and little bumps . . ." He explained the pattern to me, but I couldn't follow him. He finished with, "Get it?"

"If you say so."

"Look at it now."

The beanie felt cool and slick. Two large knobs interrupted each group of small knobs. The central portion, which used to be uniformly convex, was now half convex, half concave, each region flowing into the other like a yin-and-yang symbol. "It's different," I said. Something cold opened in the pit of my gut.

"It's the same for the others," he said. "Every piece has changed."

I didn't doubt him. If anyone knew those pieces, he did.

We'd kept one plastic gorjun for ourselves in the garage, still in its neon-bright wrapper. Isaiah studied the pieces for thirty seconds, and said, "It's the same as the one in the kitchen."

"How . . . ?"

He shrugged.

I said, "But it's just a shape."

"I've been thinking," he said. "A tangram starts as a square. A Soma cube starts as a cube. Maybe this thing started off as a four-dimensional cube, or maybe an even higher-dimensional object."

"Oh, come on! You're talking like you believe that trailer lady's nonsense about the alien."

He shrugged.

I pleaded: "It's just a shape."

"I think it's a four-dimensional shadow of a higher-dimensional object," he said. "We're only three-dimensional beings--four, if you count the fact we exist in time--so all we can appreciate are the objects' four dimensions."

That's my boy, unfazed by the impossible. I felt defeated by his even tone, his persistence. The indisputable fact of the gorjun's changes made my feelings and everything else irrelevant. Maybe some idiot alien on a moped really had needed an Osterizer motor to fix his ship. It didn't matter: the gorjun existed, and that required a logical explanation. I'd have to deal with it just as Isaiah did, as a puzzle to be solved.

I said, "So if you can reassemble a tangram back into a square, and a Soma cube back into a cube, what do you think the gorjun makes?"

I'd never seen him with such a wicked grin.

We spent the rest of the evening in the kitchen, monkeying with the gorjun. We worked well together, I noticed, and it wasn't lost on me that this odd collection of shapes had succeeded where a half dozen parenting books and thirteen hundred dollars' worth of family counseling had failed. The gorjun had brought us together.

I thought, too, of the Gordian knot of Zeus. The legend attributed the puzzle's solution to Alexander, who solved it by slicing the knot with his sword. Folks usually interpreted the story as a metaphor for violent conquest, but Isaiah and I knew otherwise: Alexander had been thinking outside the box. And so we tried to do just that. We approached the problem intuitively, no preconceptions, long on instinct, short on analysis. I kept thinking: _Just because you don't understand the order, doesn't mean it isn't there._

By 3:30 AM, we were both too tired to go on. I pushed the pieces together into a pile.

The beanie leaped above the pile. Suspended midair, it spun clockwise over the other six pieces. A minute later, it reversed its rotation. A minute later, it reversed again. I got on the phone, called Rick, told him, _I think you should come over here._

"Where's here?"

"The house in Leon Springs. You need to see this. The gorjun is doing things."

Silence at the other end of the phone. Rick believed all business could be conducted by phone. He probably dreaded the trip down from Austin.

"Why don't you just tell me what it's doing."

"You wouldn't believe me. Oh, and Rick? Can you tell LenCo to hold distribution of the next fifty thou?"

More phone silence. Then, "They shipped last night, man. No can do."

The following evening, Isaiah and I stared at the gorjun. We hadn't touched it since early morning, and the beanie still spun like a top.

"It's a perpetual motion machine," I said. "This isn't supposed to happen."

Formerly, whenever we'd spun the gorjun, it would wear itself out. And it had never leapt into motion of its own accord.

"It's not exactly a perpetual motion machine," Isaiah said. "It spins forty-seven seconds clockwise, then the same interval counterclockwise, then it repeats. If you average it out over time, the angular momentum would cancel, wouldn't it?"

"It's not supposed to work that way, and you know it."

Isaiah pointed at the spinning beanie. "Something else you ought to know," he said.

"What?"

"Our toilets are flushing funny. It's happening at school, too."

The doorbell rang. It was Rick. Isaiah led him into the kitchen, and the three of us stared at the gorjun.

Rick took the salt shaker.

Isaiah said, "What are you . . . ? _Oh_."

Rick unscrewed the shaker's top and poured salt over the beanie. A cloud of crystals swirled midair, then reversed.

We drove back to that same service station off I-37, but the trailer lady wasn't there. Then we went to the only other place we could think of--Highway 59, northeast of Beeville, where she had supposedly encountered her moped-riding alien. Ten miles outside of Beeville, we found her at the roadside, hawking "authentic Navajo spirit jewels" to a busload of Canadian tourists.

"No refunds," she said when she recognized us.

"That's okay," said Isaiah. "We only want to talk."

She squinted at us.

"I brought money," I said, and she brightened.

Isaiah said, "We want to know if that story you told us is true."

She motioned for us to wait. When the last Canadian tourist left, she took a twenty from me, then another twenty, smiled, and spat on the ground.

"Bullshit, like all my stories," she said.

"Then where did you get it?" I said.

She pointed her thumb at a low, oak-stippled hill five hundred yards off the road.

"I was closing up for the evening when I saw this explosion. I went to take a look, and found a meteor cracked open like an egg. Meteor's all smoking red and fuming, but this thing was inside, cool as a pint of sherbet."

"No bullshit?" said Isaiah.

She shook her head.

"Then, why'd you make up the other story?"

She shrugged. "That's what I do."

Less than ten minutes later, we crested the hill. We found no meteor, no crater. We did find a quarter acre of tropical rainforest. And when we got home, the gorjun was still spinning.

This was not the only special shape.

A seven-year-old boy in Wichita formed his gorjun into something resembling a conjoined-twin giraffe. The rigid plastic giraffe necks softened and entwined, unwound, then entwined in the opposite direction. It blew every fuse in his house.

A Winnipeg girl formed her gorjun into a three-foot-tall tower that began hopping in place. The room became glacial so fast the girl had to be treated for frostbite.

At first we followed the gorjun's progress by our emails--some bemused, others threatening litigation. Later, as the wonders multiplied, we didn't need to read emails. The changes were as obvious as the sun in the sky.

Sunsets were green now, and the aurora borealis could be seen as far south as Monterrey. Blue dust devils chased each other down the streets, glittering like fireworks. On the coast of Southern California, the surf was spectacular.

The last week of September arrived, traditionally one of the hottest times of the year for south central Texas, yet we didn't have a single daytime high above seventy-six degrees.

One morning, I awoke to find Isaiah frying hamburger meat for a small brown Chihuahua. "Since when do we own a dog?" I asked.

" _Pendejo_ ," the dog said. "Who says you own anybody?"

Last night, Isaiah and I spent the evening on the deck drinking virgin Margaritas and watching the aurora. Life was good.

This morning, I woke up to find Cynthia sleeping beside me.

I shook her until she opened one eye. "When did you get here?" I asked.

"I love you," she said, and rolled over.

I found Isaiah in the kitchen fixing French toast. "Mom's back," I said.

"I know." His face had a freshly-scrubbed glow. "She tucked me in last night. Kissed me on the cheek."

"You two are nuts," the dog said. "That bitch has been here for weeks."

We ignored him. One of these days we would have to ask him his name.

"Do you understand any of this?" I said.

"Here's what I know." Isaiah flipped the toast. "I have to stand back three feet when I flush the toilet, or else I might get sucked in. If I don't put a teaspoon of salt into the French toast batter, it burns every time. My tennis shoes won't stay knotted so I have to wear loafers. It's easier to pedal my ten-speed at the highest gear ratio than the lowest. The fire ants are weaving flower necklaces and hanging them off the deer grass."

He poured me a cup of coffee with cream, no sugar.

"And I know that Mom kissed me on the cheek last night, and told me that she loves me."

I sipped the coffee. Nowadays, it tasted much better without sugar.

I would have to learn to accept change.

A vivid rainbow encircled the moon, and smaller glories ringed the stars. The air smelled of sagebrush and cinnamon. At my side, Cynthia draped her arm casually around my waist as if it were the most natural act in the world. She squeezed me tighter and gave an excited ooh when a red shooting star cleft the sky, leaving a wake of violet ripples. Isaiah peered into his telescope, muttering to himself about subtle shifts in the fundamental constants; Cynthia and I exchanged a glance, the smile of proud parents.

When Cynthia ducked inside to make tea, Isaiah said, "Are you happy now, Dad?"

Something about his question chilled me. Like he expected a thank you.

"Isaiah, I'm still wondering if you understand what's happened."

He laughed to himself and rested his arms on the deck railing.

I said, "You solved the puzzle, didn't you?"

"There are lots of solutions, like with a tangram or a Soma cube. You just have to decide what you want to make."

"But what about those other gorjuns? When will things stop changing?"

Isaiah gave me an exasperated sigh. "What do you want, Dad? Mom's home."

He looked hurt. Frustrated. In that moment, he wasn't the prodigy who would start classes at the University of Texas not long from now. He was the twelve-year-old boy suffocating in a state of pique because his dad just doesn't get it.

A trio of violet orbs sped across the sky, accompanied seconds later by a low sonic boom.

"Sure, kid," I said, and his expression softened. I hugged him close and wondered if we would have moments like this tomorrow, and if tomorrow would look anything like today. "Life is very good."

*

As a kid, Robert Silverberg's wonderful _Beyond Control_ (1974) was one of my favorite collections. Some kids like science fiction for the wow factor, but I liked watching the shit hit the fan. I also loved Jerome Bixby's "It's A Good Life," which has a similar _Oh, holy crap, noooo!_ mood. Anthony Fremont commits atrocities out of anger; given power similar to Anthony's, what would a more mature young person do for the sake of love? Hence, "All Change."

# Orientation

In medicine, we call it checking orientation. What's your name? Where are you? What's the year, the month, the day? It's a running gag in my surgical internship; we'll buttonhole some slack-jawed bastard sleepwalking through his last hour of a thirty-seven hour stint, check his pupils with a penlight, ask the questions. Laugh like madmen if he screws it up. And now, as I drag-ass through the parking lot with my grandfather at my side, I put myself to the test. _My name is Alex Marks. I'm in the Safeway parking lot, Alhambra, California, USA. It's Thursday, March . . . March 21, 1991._

Still here, still sane, still oriented to person, place, and time. I'm better off than my detox patient, whom we're buffing up for colon cancer surgery. _What's your name?_ I asked him.

Watcher Namie.

Who's the president?

President Bushwhack.

And I'm better off than my grandfather.

I'm tired, post-call spent-to-the-marrow tired, but I know we left Papa Nate's Thunderbird in the handicapped spot around the corner. He won't listen. He keeps edging the shopping cart to the right, convinced I parked his Thunderbird under the trees.

"Damn you, good for nothing," he says, smoothing sweat from his forehead. The slow precision of the gesture reminds me that this is a Jew who hung with Zoot Suiters. "The heat will crack the vinyl. On a day like this, she must be under the trees."

At last we turn the corner. "Look, Papa, there's your hot rod. See?"

He smiles his dreamy smile. "Drives like a cream puff. Only sixty thousand miles, and here she is, twenty years old."

"Thirty-four."

He gives me a bug-eyed stare, knotting his fists.

"Mischief-maker," he says. "Lying son of a bitch and a bastard!"

_Take a deep breath,_ I think. _Don't respond._ I pop the trunk and load the groceries: hearts of romaine, butter lettuce, radishes, onion. Papa's a monster for produce, green grocer that he was and, deep down, still is. He pushes me away, not gently.

"DMV." Every letter a curse. "Gonifs. They can take my license, but damn you, I can load my own bags."

I unlock the doors, roll down the windows, take the driver's seat, and wait. Last week, Papa Nate wandered off. Dad told me Papa didn't get past the watermelon display inside the store. "But you need to watch him, Alex," Dad said. "Every second." So, yes, maybe I should keep my eyes on the rear view mirror, but I've had two hours of sleep in the last two days, and guess what, the eyelids sag. Mom couldn't understand why, post-call, the last thing I would want to do is babysit Papa. "He's your grandfather," she said, as if the intrinsic logic of those words should elicit my unquestioning obedience. And here I am.

My eyes unseal when the passenger door opens and closes. I smell Papa's signature blend of camphor, onion, and Old Spice, and I feel the car sag on that side, but no, I don't actually look over to see if he's there, I just turn the ignition and release the parking brake. I'm about to put the car in reverse when a hand slaps repeatedly on the trunk and a stream of Yiddish invective reaches me through the window.

The passenger door opens and closes for a second time. Papa sits down.

"Crazy pisher, you want to kill me next? What's your hurry?"

Now I'm awake.

"Sorry, Papa Nate. I thought you were . . ." _Thought you were sitting right there a moment ago._ But I can't say it; Papa's confused enough without me tormenting him with my sleep-deprived hallucinations.

"I should stand there like a kopf tukhas while you run me down like a dog? Like a _dog_."

I'm worried he'll call Mom. I can picture him in his kitchen white-knuckling his black princess phone, saying, "Like a dog, Sarah, the good for nothing tried to run me down." But by the time we get to the Atlantic and Garfield intersection he's already forgotten my lame attempt at grand-patricide. He has moved on to something new. His eyes gleam. "Know what I got Monya?"

If I were the mazik, the mischief-maker Papa seems to think I am, I'd point out I was there the whole time. I shepherded him through his grocery spree, I ran interference for him when he argued money with the checker. ("What did I buy, gold bricks?") Or I'd remind him that Monya, my grandmother, passed away ten years ago, God rest her soul. Instead, I say, "What, Papa?"

"Nutella. It's forbidden for her sugar diabetes, but doctors, what do they know."

The mazik would say, "I'm one of the bastards, Papa, have been since I graduated med school last June," or perhaps, "You're right, Papa, what do they know? Dr. Eisenberg gave you medicine for your high blood pressure and you threw it away. And here you are, fit as a fiddle."

Instead: "That's nice, Papa." Nana Monya will be so happy, I should add, but I can't bring myself to conspire with his fantasy, not to that degree.

We get to Papa's house and I carry the groceries into the kitchen's permanent twilight. ("Who needs light? I should keep the power company clothed and fed? The gonifs!") I sack the fridge for untouched, past-expiration heads of lettuce, brown-green fluid swelling the corners of the plastic bags. Papa Nate checks the rooms, calling Nana Monya's name. And my heart breaks. Just as his breaks, every time I'm forced to remind him of the truth.

This is Papa's hell. It's called multi-infarct dementia, this micro panzer blitz that shells his brain, laying waste to grey matter wedge by tiny wedge. Bits of atherosclerotic plaque lodge in his cerebral arteries, starving downstream tissues of blood. The damage is permanent, but further deterioration can be prevented when the illness is due to high blood pressure, which in Papa's case is true, and the patient takes his medication, which in Papa's case is not true.

I saw his MRI scan earlier this year. Mom brought a copy home for her son the doctor.

"I'm a surgical intern," I said, "not a radiologist."

"You're a doctor, aren't you?"

Defeated, once again, by the inescapable logic of Mom. So I held the films up to the yellow glow of the dining room's faux-gold chandelier and thought, Yup, that's a brain. Yet even in that light, even with my not-a-radiologist-but-almost-a-surgeon's eyes, I couldn't help but notice the mosaic of irregular smudges. Subcortical infarcts, they call 'em in the biz.

"Nu?" Mom said. When she's upset, she reverts to her cradle-Yiddish roots.

"It's not Alzheimer's," I said, as if I knew what I was talking about.

"Oh, thank God," Mom said.

"Just means he has to take his diuretic," I said, "and his ACE inhibitor."

"In English, Alex."

"His blood pressure pills."

"Like that's going to happen." This from Dad in the kitchen, fussing with a beef roast and his new toy, an electric rotary slicer, just like they have in the deli.

"Morty," said Mom, "you tell him, he respects you--"

"Like hell he-- _shit!_ "

A heartbeat later, I was in the kitchen holding a soapy dishrag tightly against Dad's thumb, ignoring Mom's screams of, "Blood, Morty. Blood!" And, "Do I call 911?" This effectively changed the subject.

Papa Nate won't be put in a care facility, declaring, _I'll die first,_ and by some odd sixth sense resistant to the ravages of his illness, he avoids setting fire to his kitchen, and never once wanders away from the house, either of which mishap would land him in the dreaded verkakteh nursing home. Some nights, he eats sardine-on-rye sandwiches dripping golden mustard, others, scrambled eggs and onions. On Friday nights, he has dinner at my parents' house. It pleases him to see Mom say the blessing over the candles, even though neither of them was ever devout. Mom would like to feed him every night, and to her credit has repeatedly invited him to take permanent residence in my vacant room, but Papa Nate will have none of it. One night in seven, that's all he'll spare. Friday night.

Today is Thursday. I'm sure of it. I take call Wednesday and Sunday, so this must be Thursday. This provides greater depth to my bewilderment when, fifteen minutes after leaving Papa's house, I stop by my parents' place to report on Papa's status, only to find Papa sitting on the couch between Mom and Dad, album opened on his lap, looking over old photos. Papa's fingertips frame a faded sepia-toned portrait; his eyes are moist. "Prettiest girl in Lodz," he says.

"Papa Nate," I say, but after that I'm speechless, thinking: _Quarter hour ago, I left you at home._

Perhaps Dad picked Papa up seconds after I left. That's right. Then he hauled ass over here, blowing his way through the red lights and stop signs.

Mom tells me in her don't-screw-this-up tone, "Alex, I invited Papa over for ribs, and he said yes."

"No, it's not that," I say. "It's just--when did you call him?"

"An hour ago," said Mom. "He said yes, so I sent your father to pick him up--"

"You asked me to take him shopping."

"I tried to page you," she said, "but when it's your mother's number, you never call. Everyone else you call right away like there's a fire, but not when it's your mother's number."

"No, no, you don't understand, I did take him--"

Papa's head snaps up from the photograph. "What?" he barks. "What's this, you're raising your voice?"

"Shah, Papa," says Mom. "He's overtired, poor baby, he works so hard. Don't pay any attention."

Dad says, "It's okay, Alex. On the way home after dinner, Papa and I, we'll hit Safeway."

And Dad winks at me. _Don't mind-fuck the post-call surgical intern,_ I'd like to say. Instead, I retreat. There's a pass-through between the kitchen and the dining room, so I can spy on my parents and Papa as I lift the receiver and call Papa's home number. Ten rings, no answer; but then Papa picks up the phone and gives me his stock greeting: "What do you want?"

"Papa?"

"Who is this?"

That's what I'd like to know, but the voice is unmistakable.

"It's your grandson, Papa. It's Alex."

"What do you want? Why are you mumbling?"

I'm mumbling because I don't want my grandfather in the living room to hear me talking to him on the phone. I should hang up now, having got what I came for, but Papa would only speed-dial my parent's number-- _this_ number--and bitch about how his good-for-nothing mazik of a grandson has nothing better to do than make prank calls to his poor grandfather. I admit there's some appeal to this course of action; at least then, when someone else answers the phone and hears Papa Nate, I won't be the only one losing my mind. But no, that's not me. I don't hang up on my grandfather, even if he's back home clenching the princess phone like a club while he's also sitting in my parents' living room filmy-eyed over his long-dead Monya. I can't hang up the phone. I have to say something.

"Papa Nate, what are you having for dinner?"

"That's why you call me? You should worry what you're having for dinner. Don't waste my time."

He hangs up on me, which is a relief. Saves me from having to think what to say next.

Papa turns the page in the photo album and says, "Look, Sarah, look how beautiful."

Something electric passes between Mom and Dad, as if they were simultaneously goosed by the same cattle prod: something so new and devastating that the mere sight of their reaction makes my skin prickle. If my father had sliced his thumb open again, I couldn't spring to their side any faster. But it's not my emergency room response that's kicked in; it's something far more primal. It's the irresistible urge to gawk at a fatal accident.

Or, at least, that's what I tell myself in the instant it takes me to run to the couch. But when I follow their gaze and see what they see--when I blink, and blink again, and digest the contents of the old photo--I realize how thoroughly I misunderstood their reaction.

And, still, I understand nothing.

Tomorrow, I'll remember how Papa sat beside me on the passenger seat as Papa loaded groceries into the Thunderbird's trunk, and I'll think, _So what? Get over it already._

Perhaps after nine hours' sleep, it'll all make sense: that I watched Papa sniff nectarines at Safeway while Dad brought him home for ribs. That I uselessly patted Papa's arm as he wept over the "news" of Nana's lethal heart attack, ten years past, while at the same instant he was making Dad cry with laughter over the tale of his and Monya's first kiss--a stolen kiss: _Like she swallowed a bumble bee!_ That Papa, in his home on Atlantic Boulevard, hung up on me, just as he turned the page and said, _Look, Sarah, look how beautiful._

And maybe, just maybe, when I'm well-rested, I'll figure out an explanation for the faded sepia-toned photo that fills the page before my eyes: Monya, seated, the eighteen-year-old Polish debutante, her hands folded primly in her lap, her dark lips tightly pursed, as if refusing further fraternization with bumble bees and their ilk; Nate, standing, a twenty-year-old rogue forced to wear a formal suit, his expression fierce as he tries to ward off the evil eye and fails; and Nate, standing behind Monya, a seventy-eight-year-old man with multi-infarct dementia, his hands resting lightly on the young girl's shoulders, his face a vision of bliss.

Maybe tomorrow I'll understand, but for now, I run to my old bedroom, blithering. Once again, I'm an adolescent in a world that makes no sense, a world that seems bent on driving me to madness.

When I left for college, Mom didn't turn my room into a shrine. She completed the evacuation I began when I boxed my books, rolled up my posters of the Periodic Table and the Horsehead Nebula, and packed all of my clothes that still fit and didn't scream geek. When I returned for winter break, I found my room playing host to a sewing machine, an exercise bike, and a treadmill. She'd mothballed my bedspread. In its place was a pastel floral quilt with frilly lace borders, and a half dozen stuffed animals, poofy blonde doggies with pink bows in their hair. Mom, like her mother Monya before her, is unsentimental, yet given to fits of kitsch.

I remember Monya's voice: _You gotta roll with the punches, Sarah._

Someone knocks on the door.

"Go away." By which I mean: Unless you have a damn good explanation for this insanity, leave me alone.

"Mazik, open the door."

I open the door. Papa Nate enters, head bowed slightly, rubbing his bald spot. It's a familiar gesture. When he was younger, when he still made sense, he'd joke: _I'm shining it, Alex. That way I can flash Morse Code signals to the aliens._

We sit together on the bed.

I say, "Tell me that was my great-grandfather in the picture, Papa Nate. Tell me that was your father."

He stares at me without blinking, so sad, so quiet. I start to wonder if he's understood my request, or if he's already forgotten the photo. And if I go back to the living room and look in the album, will the photo still be there? Will he still be in it?

He shakes his head.

"You want me to believe that's you in the photo?"

He nods, and I wonder, irrationally, why he's waited until now to spring this on me . . . on us. Couldn't he have waited until I was better rested? Catch me on a pre-call Saturday night, Papa. You'll get me at my best.

"This makes no sense," I say. He lays his hand on my shoulder. His gaze is unwavering.

"I can't remember when," says Papa Nate.

"When what, Papa?"

He shrugs. The words are lost, buried somewhere in those gravestone smudges on his MRI. I wonder: What spot in the brain binds us to the river of time? Is it in the hippocampus? The pineal gland, the cingulate gyrus, the basal ganglia? How many other victims of strokes, tumors, and gunshot wounds walk the earth in a dozen ages, a dozen bodies?

What's the year, Papa? The month, the day?

From college physics, I remember learning about the transmission of electromagnetic radiation down a waveguide, such as a hollow metal pipe. A signal--a group of electromagnetic waves bearing information--travels down the waveguide with a group speed that cannot exceed the speed of light. Yet electromagnetic radiation not bearing information can travel at phase speeds exceeding the speed of light. No information is transmitted, so Einstein rests peacefully in his grave. The impossible is rendered possible.

I could ask Papa Nate: For you, what day is it today? Who will win the third race at Santa Anita? What will be the next winning lottery numbers? But he won't know, and even if he did know at some point, he won't remember it now. No information will be transmitted. The impossible is rendered possible yet again.

But doesn't Papa Nate's presence here constitute information?

_You're grasping at straws,_ I think. _You're being hyper-rational._ And in echoes of my mother's arctic voice: _You're a doctor._ _Figure it out._ But medicine isn't rational. The unexpected happens all the time. Healthy people drop dead and the autopsy shows nothing. Aggressive cancers explode, peppering the body with metastatic shrapnel, only to disappear without a trace.

My father's voice from the hallway, creased with anxiety: "Alex. Come here, please."

What now?

It's the group photo we took on the beach: Sanibel Island, Florida, August 1974. I know this because, for my parent's thirtieth wedding anniversary, I had the original color-adjusted, blown up, mounted, and framed. On the back of the original, as on the backs of all our photos, the identifying information appears in Mom's over-slanted, flowing script.

We're standing in two lines, kids in front, parents and grandparents in back, adults on the side leaning towards the middle so we can all fit into the photo. There's me, the little pisher, holding my sister Melany's hand, Melany who died the next year when she was struck by a VW van. The twins, my older brothers Nathan and Robert, kneel down in the front row so they won't block my parents, who stand behind them. My cousins, Mimi and Cheryl, round out the bottom row. Behind us are my parents, Uncle Sol and Aunt Sylvia (Mimi's and Cheryl's parents), Monya and Nate . . . and Nate the Elder, smiling impishly.

"I'd always assumed he was Sarah's grandfather," says Dad. "You know, the family resemblance."

I may be uncertain as to the other photos, but this one I know to the last detail. Where Papa Nate now stands, there used to be a glimpse of sand and sea, and the tip of a palm frond, out of focus. This is not the photo I remember. But Dad--what does he remember? _I'd always assumed he was Sarah's grandfather._ Is Dad editing his memories, splicing in Papa Nate's presence at all the major scenes of his and Mom's life? Maybe it's easier that way. Maybe it's too much for Dad to deal with, the idea that Papa Nate's image could appear magically, like secret writing held to the flame. Or maybe it's not Dad's memories that are falling under the editor's knife, but reality itself, or rather, the memory of reality, one mind at a time. And tomorrow I'll wake up recalling Papa Nate lifting me out of my crib.

I always thought he was my great-grandfather. Now I know better.

We're sitting on the couch again, watching Papa Nate as he relishes one photograph after another. He beams at a photo of the bride Monya at her wedding. She's dancing with seventy-eight-year-old Papa Nate; the cameraman has caught her delight as she's twirled with surprising vigor by this strange old man who calls himself her husband. And why shouldn't she be delighted? Thanks to Papa Nate, she knows she'll be adored forever by her chosen. How many brides know that?

I am witness to the transmission of information across time.

I look at Mom. If Mom is grasping at straws like me and Dad, she doesn't show it. She's admiring the photo, too, and from her expression she is at peace. She's rolling with the punches. She touches the photo with one hand, Papa Nate's knee with another. "Do you remember, Papa?" she says.

And Papa Nate replies, "Like it was yesterday."

*

My own Papa was a Jewish-Polish immigrant, a storyteller with a wickedly deep sense of humor (he would show me the scars on his scalp "where they took away my horns"), a veteran of the Bostonian Yiddish theater scene of the twenties and thirties, a believer in every get rich quick scheme he ever heard. He was a baker who wanted to be discovered by Hollywood. He wanted this so much, in the sixties he paid for publicity photos of himself in suit and tie, trench coat and fedora, and even a Nazi uniform, swastika and all. The caption reads: **A very fine European Actor -- Speaks all Foreign Languages -- Has slight accent.** **In the sixties, what work could such a man find? If he had to dress like a Nazi to land a role, he'd do it.**

But my Papa was not Papa Nate. He and my grandmother fought each other like Tasmanian devils.

# The Mechanic

Couple weeks back, I was having coffee with some woman I'd met through the Craigslist personals. She asked what I did for a living, and I told her the truth. I get tired of lying about it. People have their preconceptions, all the tripe they've learned from television and movies, and usually I can deal with that. They assume I'm wealthy. They assume I lead a glamorous life. This woman, though. Wow. She went right to the meat of it.

"How do you deal with it?" she asked. "People dying."

When I played it back later, I remembered that she breathed a little harder, gripped her iced whatever that much tighter. Some people have a thing about death. But at the time, I was so happy to have a question I could answer without (I thought) revealing anything that I plunged into it with a big, dopy smile on my face.

"It's no big deal. Really."

"How . . .?" She winced. She couldn't even finish her sentence. I knew I had violated one of those taboos that I really wish someone would codify and publish.

Did I backtrack? Did I expend one gram of effort to make her think a warm-blooded mammalian heart beat in this chest? Nah. With the same plastic spoon, I stirred my coffee manically and dug myself an even deeper hole.

"Most of them deserve it anyway," I said, not meeting her gaze. "You know--how they've lived their lives. If anything, I make the end easier for them."

The silence stretched on long enough that I had to make eye contact. She looked at me as if she were thinking, _And this is why we have the first meeting in a public place._ It was not an attractive look. It felt like a mirror, and I don't like that. I could hurt her later, but I was beginning to realize there wouldn't be a later.

_Death's not the same to me as it is to you,_ I wanted to explain. _I was eight when I saw my dad die, almost nine when I watched my stepdad do the same. You could say I grew up with Death._

Instead, I shrugged, put a few bills down for the tip, and left.

Northbound 101, halfway through the Avenue of the Giants, Dad stopped at a roadside tourist hole. On this hot July day, he poured sweat like he'd just left a sauna. Dad was a large man. He smelled big, wore Elvis Costello glasses you could burn ants with, and was so fat his belly had a belly. I loved him so much I'd have died for him. He lived with frustration every day of his life, but he never hit us, never once raised his voice.

No, Dad took out his frustrations on food.

While Mom went to the outhouse, Dad and I went inside to look at trinkets. I remember shelves of lacquered redwood clocks and windmills, hordes of redwood bears that looked like fat redwood rats. But what fascinated me were the plastic-wrapped redwood seedlings on sale for two bucks a pop. Dad bought me one. He never said no to me.

Up front, a row of glass jars displayed every hard candy I could think of and a few more besides. "Everything from Abba to Zabba," Dad said. Next to the register was a big jar of homemade pickles. I ogled the candy; Dad ogled the pickles.

Dad paid for the seedling, and as he turned to go, he brushed against a display of inch-tall novelty coffee mugs. Six mugs spilled to the floor, and the tiny handles broke on two.

The counterman said, "You break it, you pay for it." He had a wispy yellow moustache, and lips the color of corpse skin.

"I'm sorry," said Dad, smiling, "but you had it too close to the edge."

"You break it, you pay for it, you stupid fat bastard."

Dad just stood there, breathing heavier than usual.

He had to put up with stares and dumb jokes all the time, but I imagine this was the first time he'd had to deal with raw, unfiltered hatred. He lost his temper. He swept the display to the floor, opened the dill jar, and grabbed a pickle. The counterman hollered, cursed, grabbed the phone. Dad took my hand--gently, I remember that--and led me outside while stuffing the pickle into his mouth.

He halted on the steps and put his hands to his throat. I knew right away he'd choked on the pickle, and I had to save him. I threw my arms around his huge gut. Did I have some notion of performing the Heimlich maneuver, or was I was trying to hang on to him a few seconds longer? I don't know. All I remember is how he crumpled to the ground, and how I fell with him. I saw his face, but I've made myself forget that, too.

He left us enough money to bury him and pay off the car. Not long after the funeral, Mom began to wait tables at a breakfast joint called Lottie's Pancakes. The job paid minimum wage, and life was lean. "Breakfast diners don't tip worth a shit," Mom used to say.

Every day, I watched her put on black nylons, a short brown skirt, a frilly white blouse, a name tag, and white Keds. She had little feet, and she didn't amount to more than five-one. She left the top blouse buttons unbuttoned and pushed her breasts up. "To make an impression," she once said. In that, she was successful.

Soon after I started third grade, Eric Binder showed up at our breakfast table. Mom had been dating and I hadn't even known. All those nights when she'd left me with the landlady's daughter, I figured she was working a second job.

It upset me. After she introduced us, I told him he looked like a frog. He was short, shorter than mom. He had a long upper lip, a wide mouth, bulging brown eyes, and no neck. When he smiled, his mouth became that much wider. "Can I call you Kermit?" I asked.

"You can call me _Sir_."

There was something calculating about his smile. Later, I realized he'd taken notes. Eric Binder always settled a score.

I think now of certain guys I've seen, hard cases sliced ear-to-ear, a wide arc descending one cheek, crossing the corners of the mouth, and ascending the opposite cheek: a permanent rictus, a punishment reserved for stool pigeons. If I saw Eric now, I'd think of those hard men; at the time, I thought of frogs. I imagined him opening his mouth, his fleshy, pink tongue darting out, coiling around my waist, and hauling me in. I tried to imagine the darkness inside him, but I couldn't.

Six weeks later, Mom became Mrs. Eric Binder.

I won't say he beat us for no reason. Eric always had a reason. The best thing about his beatings was the way he framed them with lectures. They were question-and-answer lectures; Eric believed in the Socratic Method of abuse. You had to demonstrate a clear understanding of why you were about to be beaten, and afterwards, you had to describe precisely how you'd be different in the future. If you were insolent during the question-and-answer period, he educated you with back-handed slaps. (He wore three rings on his right hand.) These slaps were not part of the correctional portion of the program, and could be elaborated or abbreviated at will. As for the beating, that was administered with a leather belt. He tried to confine his beatings to the back, buttocks, and legs, but sometimes he didn't try very hard.

The toughest thing was watching him hit Mom. He made her quit her job, but when she began volunteering at the public library, he beat her for it. He even beat her for shopping at a different supermarket.

"Your boyfriend works there," he said, working the strap. "What did you say to him?"

When he said _your boyfriend_ , I felt hopeful for a moment, until I realized he was just being Eric.

One day, he chased her from the bedroom. She was naked save for plain white panties (he'd made her throw out her colored underwear), and I watched as he beat her back and ass. Later, I went into my bedroom closet where I'd hidden a double-edged razor I'd stolen from his bathroom drawer. I cut the backs of my fingers with it, shallow scratches, just enough to draw blood. It helped. It usually did.

When Mom married Eric, we left our apartment and moved in with him. I don't know what attracted Mom to Eric, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the house. Mom was raised in a trailer park, and had always been proud she and Dad could afford a nice apartment. But Eric lived in a chalk-white, two-story, Southern plantation-style home with columns out front. Yes, we had columns, while our neighbors lived in stucco-sided ranch houses.

We lived next door to the Seymours. They had two teenage girls, and a boy, Carl, who'd been born with a cleft lip and palate. Carl was eleven. He told me he played with me because I was the only neighborhood kid who didn't give him a hard time. He told me he'd had his mouth fixed when he was little, but the other kids still thought he looked and talked funny. I didn't think he was funny-looking. He was tall for his age, with chestnut hair and hazel eyes. He could sink nine out of ten baskets from the end of the driveway, and could hold his breath for ninety-five seconds. The best I ever managed was forty-one.

Eric spent every Saturday afternoon restoring a cream-yellow 1959 Plymouth Fury. One day, while Eric worked on the Fury, Carl and I played Stratego on the Seymours' porch. That's the day I showed Carl my back.

"You're shitting me," he said. "Your dad did that to you?"

"Stepdad. Yup."

I let him touch the scars; it felt good having his warm fingertips on my back. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had touched me.

"Your dad doesn't hit you?" I said.

"I'd kill him if he did."

"Yeah, right."

"Anyway, I wouldn't just let him do it."

"I don't have much choice," I said.

I put my shirt down. The whole time I had my shirt up, Eric's head was under the Fury's hood. I'd wanted him to look up and see me showing off my scars. Maybe he'd feel ashamed and stop hitting me. Or maybe he'd get really pissed and kill me.

_Either way,_ I thought. _Either way._

When I got home after Dad died, I planted my redwood seedling in a Dixie cup using soil from our backyard. I knew enough to punch a hole in the bottom, and I watered it every day. It never grew. That didn't bother me; redwoods take thousands of years to become giants, so why should I expect it to shoot up in less than a year? I hadn't even grown an inch that year. The seedling stayed green, and that was good enough for me.

One day, I was in my room watering my tree when Eric snuck up behind me. This was one of his favorite things to do. He had sprayed my door hinges with WD-40 so he could ease the door open and watch me, catch me by surprise. Once, I turned my bed and desk to face the bedroom door, but he beat me for it. He beat me, he said, for being fearful and suspicious, when those feelings have no place in a family.

That's why I had my back to the door the day he caught me watering my tree. I used an old film container to give it water, and I used a pencil to break up and aerate the soil. I'd just finished doing this when Eric set his hands on my shoulders. Whenever he did that, I wanted to throw up.

"Why are you doing that?" he said.

"I'm just watering my tree."

"But it's obviously dead. You can water it all you like, but your plant dried out months ago."

I didn't say anything. I knew he was wrong, but I'd learned not to disagree with him. I never knew what might set him off.

"Look," he said, and pinched the seedling at its base between his thumb and forefinger. With his other hand, he pinched the trunk the same way, right above his other thumb and forefinger. "If it's alive, could I do this?"

His topmost thumb and forefinger swept upward, stripping away every last tiny leaf and branch. I was left with a fibrous, naked stem.

"You see, Russell, if it were alive, I wouldn't be able to do that."

Point proven, he smiled and patted me on the shoulders.

"Now, clean it up," he said.

Eric owned about a hundred videotapes. I got out of school at 1:30, and Eric didn't get home until 4:00; this left me time to do my chores, watch one video, and finish my homework. One afternoon, after finishing a video, I went into the kitchen to see Mom. She was always in the kitchen, scrubbing something. She never had time to watch videos.

"Mom?"

"Russell?"

"When I grow up, can I be a mechanic?"

"Honey, you can be whatever you want." She said it quickly, without much thought. After drying a few more dry dishes, she added, "But a mechanic, that would be nice. This family needs a good mechanic."

I was happy she saw it my way.

Carl came over a few days later and we watched the video together.

"I don't get it," said Carl. "Why's it called _The Mechanic_?"

I'd given this a lot of thought. "Because he fixes problems," I said. "Permanently."

"What kind of problems?"

"Just watch."

Midway through the video, Carl said, "That's one hell of a way to fix a problem."

"See what I mean? Fix a problem that way, it never comes back. Problems can't come back from the grave. Dead is dead."

Carl wore a look of wonderment and joy, as if I had opened up a new world to him. I recognized the feeling. By the movie's end, we were improvising lines.

"You better be dead sure, Russell," he said. "Dead sure, or dead."

"Carl, I've got my own rule book."

We talked about the movie. I liked how Charles Bronson's character, Arthur Bishop, reduced his target to a dossier of photographs and pages of notes, and how there was never, ever a chance he'd be caught. Carl liked how Bishop listened to music while he planned, how he executed his contracts so artfully, and how the work had made him wealthy.

We each took a plum-sized chunk of Play-Doh and worked it to strengthen our hands, just like Bishop did with his lump of wax. We rewound the video part-way and watched the ending again, pumping Play-Doh the whole time.

A week after I showed Carl my back, and three days after Carl and I watched _The Mechanic_ for the first time, Mrs. Seymour visited Mom. Carl and I were watching the movie again when we heard his mom's voice coming from the kitchen. It was difficult to hear them above the running water and the clack of dishes and silverware, but we heard enough.

". . . understand . . . loves us . . . man."

I'd heard it from her enough times to fill in the rest for Carl: "You don't understand. He loves us. He's a good man." Then I said, "You told her about my back."

"I had to," said Carl.

Mom turned off the tap, and we could hear her next sentence clearly. I could imagine her flicking water from her hands as she said, "That man is the best thing that ever happened to us."

I said, "I told you I don't have much choice."

Carl was quiet after that.

After Carl left, Mom put her hands on my shoulders and said, "Whatever goes on in this household is family business. You mustn't tell anybody, ever. Promise me."

Sure, I promised. But some promises are meant to be broken.

Carl sank baskets, and his mom took a picture of him with a Polaroid. Afterwards, she sat down next to me on the porch, whisking the photo through the air.

"He's good," she said.

"I'd be happy to make just one basket."

"Oh, you will. Give it time." She stopped whisking, and we watched the photo sprout muddy pastel colors from a field of grey. She said, "He's got the height, he's got the skills. I just wish he'd play with the other kids."

"They won't play with him," I said. "They make fun of his scar, and the way he talks."

She looked at me funny. After a while, she sniffed, and turned her face.

"Is that what he told you?" she said, and I nodded. Her voice was choked, like Mom's. "They've come by three times wanting to play ball, and he turned them away every time. That's three times that I've seen. No telling how many times they've been by."

This confused me, so I said, "I'm going to be a mechanic when I grow up."

"That's nice," she said, her voice a million miles away. "Russell?"

"Mm-hm?"

"Are you okay?"

"I'll be okay." By then, I'd decided what I had to do.

"Really? I don't know." She sniffed loudly and wiped her nose on her fingers.

I said, "Mrs. Seymour? Can I borrow the camera?"

"Ask Carl. It's his."

After she went back inside, I snatched the ball from Carl and missed a basket.

I said, "Your mom says the other kids wanted to play with you, but you wouldn't play with them."

He took the ball and nailed a basket. "I don't like them. I don't understand them."

"What about me?"

Carl shrugged and passed me the ball, bouncing it off the asphalt.

"When can we watch the movie again?" he said.

I took Polaroids. I took notes. I assembled a dossier.

I arranged my dossier of Eric Binder in my bedroom closet on the underside of a cork bulletin board. These days, I came to the closet to study Eric's dossier, adding notes and observations. I no longer felt the need to cut myself, but I saved the razor. I didn't know if it might be useful someday. As an almost-nine-year-old, I had access to so few choice weapons.

One day, I turned the bulletin board over and showed the dossier to Carl.

"Cold," he said. "Just like Bishop."

We both wanted to be Bishop. Neither of us wanted to be Jan-Michael Vincent's character; hell, we could barely remember his first name. Vincent's character was an irritating pretty boy, and in the end, he got what he deserved. But if you were Bishop, you could live with yourself.

He read the headings of my notes: "Known statistics. Habits. Health." Then he examined the photos. "What's this?" he said, tapping a black photo with his index fingernail.

"Eric sleeping," I said. "I was afraid to use the flash."

We played AC-DC on my tape recorder. I didn't like heavy metal; it was Carl's tape. Whenever Carl came over, I let him play what he liked.

He rubbed his index finger across his lips while he scanned the board, just like Bishop.

Finally, he said, "How you gonna do it?"

"When he's hunched over the Fury's engine, I'm gonna hit him with a wrench. I won't stop until he's dead. Then I'll slam the hood down on his head to make it look like an accident."

More lip-rubbing. "That might work," he said.

Arthur Bishop said, "Murder is only killing without a license."

It made sense. It was wrong to murder. It was also wrong to beat your wife and stepson bloody, and it was wrong to remain a victim. Killing Eric Binder, that was right. Once I understood that, the rest was simple. But nothing is ever simple.

I wish I could say that Eric did something extra-awful the day before I made my move. But he didn't. It was just more of the same, and that was bad enough.

You're probably thinking, why not go to the police, or show your back to a schoolteacher, or a minister? I don't know. Maybe because I knew Mom wouldn't back me up. I'd heard stories of fathers who'd iced their whole family, and the records later showed the psycho had been reported for assault a half dozen times before. Or maybe I wanted revenge.

No: I wanted to be The Mechanic. I wanted to fix this problem.

Saturday afternoon, Eric was messing with the Fury; Carl shot baskets. I watched him sink four, five, six in a row. Sure: what did he have to be nervous about? We had it all planned. I'd do the deed, and all Carl had to do was remember the story we'd agreed upon.

I took off my sneakers, snuck over to Eric's toolbox, and found the heaviest wrench.

I'd be cool when the cops came, so cool they'd be suspicious; but then I'd say, "He's not my dad. He's my stepdad. Besides, look what he did to me." Then I'd show them my back. "You think I'm gonna cry over that asshole?"

That's what I'd say.

Eric was an asshole; Carl said it all the time. For Carl, people were either cool or assholes. It was a comforting world view.

I padded up behind Eric and drew back the wrench. I thought of him hitting Mom's naked back and thighs with his belt.

Eric twisted his head around. Saw me. Jerked up fast and struck his head on the hood, but he didn't pass out. He put a hand to his head, his froggy eyes popped out, and he yelled, "Russell!" I threw the wrench at him, but it only bounced off his shoulder. He took two shuffling steps towards me, winding up to sock me with his fist, and I thought, _That's new. He's never punched me before._ But the punch never landed. I heard a crack. Last time I'd heard a crack like that, Carl's father had backed his car over a terracotta pot.

Eric folded to the ground like a load of wet laundry. Carl stood over him with a ball-peen hammer. He said, "Right tool for the job, Russ."

Eric was still alive, breathing funny. We had to work fast. Carl jacked up the front of the car. We worked together, first to get the front right tire off, then to roll Eric underneath the bare wheel and position him so the injured part of his skull would be under the wheel. Meanwhile, Eric made wet, blubbery noises with his lips. Carl studied the layout and let some air out of the three remaining tires. "So it'll land just right," he said.

Eric's eyes flickered. His last word was, "Ungh?" and then Carl kicked out the jack.

Maybe there was an easier way, but that's how we did it.

Carl and I agreed on a story: the basketball hit the rim, bounced funny, and knocked the jack out from under the car. For practice, we told this story to Carl's mom before the police came. The cops questioned us separately, just like we knew they would; Carl's mom backed us up, and that helped. She lied and said she saw it happen. At the time, I thought it was so cool of her to help us like that, but now I realize any mom would have done the same. Well, maybe not my mom.

Afterwards, Carl took me up to his bedroom and showed me the dossier he'd prepared on Eric. It showed a thoroughness that put mine to shame. Anyway, we knew we had to do something about the dossiers. The next day, while Carl's dad was at work, we gathered up all our photos and notes. We stuffed them into a brown paper lunch bag and burned them on the Seymours' backyard barbecue. If Mrs. Seymour saw us, she didn't ask questions.

I won't kid you that life was wonderful after we boxed Eric; life has never been easy. But it was better.

When I look back, I'm amazed at how much The Mechanic shaped us both. We parroted tag lines; we tried to cop the same attitude. We both embraced Arthur Bishop's philosophy: as a man, you had to stand outside of everything. You had to have your own rule book.

Carl became a contract hitter for the Chicago mob. I paid him $7.58 for his first hit; he didn't want the money, but I insisted. Over the years, we've done small favors for one another, done what we could to make each other's lives a little easier. Fourteen years passed before I used his professional services again. His rates had gone up, but that's another story.

And me? I also found a way to stand outside of it all, wield the power of life and death over thousands. Sure, there are rules, but I have more control over them than you can possibly imagine.

I became a doctor.

*

I wrote "The Mechanic" for friends who knew what I did for a living. It tickled me to have them think I might be a murderer. Over time, though, the ending has grown on me, and I've often wondered how adult life would be for Russell and Carl. Russell would be the protagonist, naturally; hit men in the media are as common as femmes fatale, but sociopathic doctors (Dr. House notwithstanding) are a rarer breed. There are fruitful themes to explore: how much of our humanity do we forfeit when we become physicians? What proportion of our empathy is play-acting? For those doctors who facilitate a comatose patient's death, is there a gray zone where their work approaches murder for hire? I imagine Carl reentering Russell's life with an offer and an argument: _How is this any different from what you do every day of your life?_

Consider it a backburner project.

# A Prayer of Understanding

A white owl cleft the evening sky from north to south. Among my people, such would herald a month of sorrows, but in our polyglot band--Saul's Cutthroats, we called ourselves--no two could agree upon the sign's meaning. Fiercely we disputed the omen, raising a din to match Babel. All argument ceased when Micah, breathless, entered camp.

"What news from the scouts?" I asked.

"The Philistines are seven thousand--"

Someone cursed. "We've prevailed with worse odds than that," said one.

"Seven thousand strong in archers," said Micah, and I thought of the owl. "Five times that in armored sword," he said, and I worked the sum.

Few of us were hardened. Most, like me, were unwhiskered boys. Tomorrow we would range against over forty thousand Philistines wielding iron against our bronze and flint. Micah had not even numbered the chariots.

A silence followed, interrupted only by the field knife of Omeros the Ionian: _hek, hek, hek,_ as he chopped rosemary, coriander, and rock salt together on an oaken board. All eyes turned to him. His knife paused midair; his gaze met ours.

"Uz," he said. "Fetch the haunch."

I blinked. "No verses to stir the blood, poet?"

Omeros sighed. "Hazael, I must consider my audience. This group--they've no common language, and beliefs as different as river stones. How . . . ?"

"Try," I said. "In Hebrew." It was the only language most of the men understood.

His eyes smoldered. I feared what he might do with that knife. He stood proud and said, "Of thousands, they number forty-two, to our meager four. Tomorrow, we must be alert, for the Philistines stand a fighting chance."

Some laughed, others scratched their heads. Micah dove into his tent with a surly, "I'll be in prayer."

"Inspirational," I grumbled once the men had dispersed.

Bright-eyed Omeros smiled, sat cross-legged, and returned to his blade-work.

" _I, Hazael of Paddan-aram, chronicler of Saul's Cutthroats, shall tell of King Saul's melancholia. The prophet Shmuel lay dead and buried. The Israelite nation grieved, though none so loudly as Saul, who nursed a private grief as well: his god would not speak with him. He was bereft--"_

"'His god would not speak with him'?" Omeros said. "That tells me nothing. Your words should be flesh and blood--more real than you."

"I asked the spy," I said, meaning Micah, the only Israelite of our number. "Evasive as usual."

A tent flap opened. "I am not a spy," Micah said. "I merely told Hazael that the king's relationship with the Lord is no business of an Aramean scribe." He eyed me with regret. "Indeed, I told Hazael far more than I should have."

Omeros rubbed the haunch with the spice mixture. "Hazael," he said, "return to your chronicle."

" _The Philistines brought swordsmen, archers, and iron chariots to Shunem; we of the Israelite army made camp at Gilboa. When Saul saw the Philistine forces, he was sore afraid--"_

"You don't know that," Micah said.

"We call it dramatic license," Omeros said. "He can say whatever he likes of Saul as long as it fits the regal character."

"King Saul shows no fear." Micah sniffed and returned to his tent.

Omeros wrapped the haunch in grape leaves, then slathered on handfuls of mud. "Pay no attention to the Hebrew," he said, throwing the mass onto the coals. "He lacks a dramatist's fine perception. Read on."

" _While Saul mourned--for himself; for David, his treacherous general; Shmuel, his fickle prophet; even for his errant god--we, Saul's Cut-throats, reclined by our campfires, hungry, lonely for our loved ones, frigid beneath the wine-dark sky--"_

Omeros flicked mud in my face. " _Wine-dark sky?_ You've gone too far, word-thief!"

"Be quiet," I said. "I pay you a great compliment, stealing your words."

I dodged a handful of mud.

After the dogs took what was left of the haunch, and the men retired to their tents, Omeros and I lay before the fire, studying a lambskin bearing Hebrew and Aramaic script. Omeros pointed to a word.

"Ox?"

"Truth."

He pointed to another. "Water?"

"Mother. You're not trying."

"It's hopeless," he said. "If you told me you'd dipped two fighting cocks in ink and forced them to contend atop this skin, I'd believe it utterly."

"That is a strained image, poet."

"Frustration kills the Muse." He rolled over. "I need a woman."

We lay together and stared at the heavens. The fire snapped. A cool wind whisked through the walnut trees; I thought I heard the cry of vultures.

"You never sing the same tale twice," I said. "Your memory is boundless. What need have you of writing?"

"The work is too grand, Hazael. It exceeds the capacity of any one man."

"Surely not beyond your--"

"Without writing, the work dies with me."

We lay together in a silence broken only by his occasional low muttering. I asked, "To whom do you pray?"

He grunted. "You assume much."

"You must have gods."

He grunted again.

"Do you worship the Baalim?"

He rolled away from me.

"Tammuz? Osiris? Ishtar? Dagon?"

"I've no need."

"You don't believe in any gods?"

"I believe in all gods. I defer to none."

"You admit the gods exist?"

Omeros groaned and rolled to face me. "Of course they exist." He tapped his temple. "In the minds of men. As for the corporal existence of the numinous, I believe only what I can see and touch."

"So, to whom will you pray for success in battle?"

"The camp dog has already given up that bone, Hazael." He lowered his voice. "I've no need of prayer. I cannot die tomorrow."

"How do you know that?"

We pulled closer together, our heads nearly touching. "There is a sorceress in Endor," he said quietly. "A hag who divines from the entrails of black doves and bewitches the dead. Thus saith the witch: 'Of glowing stock thou art, a tarnished nation now. Poet, with thy bright words, thy kin shall glow again.'"

"That could mean anything!"

"There's more. 'Itinerant thou art, telling thy tale of brave Akhaian warriors to all with ears to hear, and thou shalt die white in thy beard, glad in thy days.' Thus spake the shade of swift Achilles."

"Achilles' shade . . . no common witch, but a necromancer!"

We heard a rush of snapping twigs from behind Micah's tent. I scrambled over, lifted the flap, and found an empty bedroll.

"The spy has fled!" I cried. "Cursed be this mouth of mine!"

"What is it?" Omeros said.

"By order of the king, all witches must be put to the sword. Even to consult with one is criminal."

Omeros stretched out by the campfire.

I asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to sleep."

"But the law--"

"Means nothing to me," he said. "I have decades ahead of me. Brilliant Achilles said so."

Omeros began to snore, but I didn't believe it. I said, "You call Achilles brilliant because he told you what you wanted to hear." He responded with a malignant fart, forcing me to retire to the far side of the fire.

Later, a rustling sound roused me from a dreamless sleep: Micah. He seemed ill.

"The king would see you," he said. "Bring the poet."

As Micah led us through the Israelite encampment, a secret smile graced Omeros' features. _And why shouldn't he smile?_ I thought. _Saul cannot harm him; he's protected by the shade's prophecy. He smiles because at last he meets the king--fine material for a poet._

We had just passed the Danites' quarter when Omeros murmured, "Micah, why does the king ask to see us now?"

The Israelite jumped. I wondered if he'd heard the note of accusation in the poet's voice.

"He is troubled."

"By the scouts' report?"

"When the Bethlehemite defected, he took six hundred men with him."

"Bethlehemite?" mouthed Omeros.

I whispered, "Since David left, Micah can't bear to call him by name. David's 'the Bethlehemite', or 'demon spawn of Judah.'"

"He betrayed the king," Micah said. "Saul apologized to him at Hachilah Hill, and blessed him as a son. That heart-worm of Judah, he fled to the Philistines the very next morning."

"But why does he want us, Micah?" Omeros said. "To soothe him with our tales?"

"We're here," Micah said.

The king's tent lay among olive trees in a glade staked out with torches; two spearmen guarded the entry. In the flickering light, Micah looked pallid. His cheek twitched.

"Why?" Omeros repeated.

A tremor seized Micah's right hand. "If you had seen Saul in his glory--"

"I have," I said. "I heard him prophesy at Kiriath-jearim, and I saw him slay hundreds at Michmas."

"And now, to see him like this . . ." Micah closed his eyes and trembled. "You are my friends. He is my king."

Micah turned away. Omeros clapped me on the shoulder, and we pressed onward.

Saul: head and shoulders above other men, with dark curls that seemed to glisten still from the anointing oil. His back was to us, and he spoke--to us, or to himself, I did not know. Saul's words fell like petals from a blackened flower.

"He broke my heart. I cannot go on."

Did he speak of David, Shmuel, or his god? But he had not finished.

"I must know."

Candles smoked near his bedroll. On a low table sat a flagon of beer, a dish of skewered meat, and a bowl of figs, all untouched. A grey bundle dented the shadows nearby.

"I am alone."

His pain forced me to speak. "We are here, my lord."

Saul turned. His jaw was clenched; darkness rung his eyes.

"My son's shield-bearer," he said. "And the famed poet."

Omeros bowed. "You pay us high honor, sire--"

Saul waved him silent. "I understand you know of a witch who still remains in the land. Micah thinks I mean to torture the information from you, then make an example of you both. Impalement, perhaps, or a gutting."

Omeros spoke. "You would know the necromancer's location. For other purposes."

Saul nodded. I marveled at the poet, so perceptive in the minds of men.

"You will take me to her," he said.

So swiftly he moved to the grey bundle that I startled and jumped backward. He hefted it and tossed it our way; Omeros caught it.

"We travel as Edomites," he said. He parted the tent flap and spoke to his spearmen. "Do not enter this tent, nor allow others to pass, on pain of my displeasure."

He did not pause to see if they understood. They were professionals, as were we all. No longer were we farmhands, apprentices, loving sons, orphans capering for scraps. We were soldiers now. This long in service to the king, we could tell ourselves this, and almost believe it.

Quietly we left the Israelite camp and continued in silence until quit of Gilboa. Omeros led, I followed beside, and the king trailed ten paces behind. We had come to a darkened wood when Saul caught up with us, and after another mile, he spoke.

"Another king once ruled this land."

In that wooded blackness, I could not see his expression.

"You must mean the prophet," Omeros said. "When the Israelites asked for another ruler, I doubt he took it well."

"Our Lord was king," Saul said. "We rebuked _Him_ by our request. For that, we would be punished."

His tone was matter-of-fact, pitiless as knives.

"Yet I understand your mistake," Saul continued. "Like a king, Shmuel gave me tactical orders: go to Rachel's Tomb. Go to the Plain of Tabor. Go to Kiriath-jearim, where the spirit of the Lord will pass over you. Simple. Go to market; buy an ephah of ale; return home; become a prophet. And his next instruction to me? 'Prepare yourself for kingship as best you can, for God is with you.' "

"'As best you can'," I murmured.

Omeros said, "How does one learn to rule?"

"Only from another king," I said. "But Shmuel didn't stay with you."

"Shmuel told me to go to Gilgal ahead of him. He would join me in seven days, to slaughter peace-offerings. _Wait seven days,_ he said, _and I will come to you, and tell you what to do._ "

"But he arrived late," I said.

"What is a day? A week?" Alongside us he walked, darkness moving through darkness. "I did as the prophet asked, and at Kiriath-jearim, the Spirit filled me. I prophesied . . . ah!" His cry was palpable. "I do not remember what I said, and the Spirit never returned. All I have is a memory of being whole in God."

"You were given instructions, but no instruction," Omeros said. "No true counsel. Sooner or later, you had to err."

"And with my first sin, I was cut off. Shmuel's curse, once tendered, was never withdrawn. _Your kingdom shall not endure._ "

"All along, he meant for you to fail," Omeros said. "That is why you seek him now, through the necromancer. You will wreak your revenge."

"No," Saul said. "I want what I had. To be whole again, in God."

We kept our silence. As we marched, the trees thinned, the stars lit our path, and a granite monolith appeared, sharp as a raven's beak, dividing the southern sky.

"There," Omeros said. "We are not far now."

Hag was poetic license, for the witch of Endor burned with youth. Small-framed she was, with dark tresses to her waist, predatory eyes black as coal, and full lips concealing a mouth that could rend flesh or call down the heavens. She sat across from us, leaned forward, and pushed the bag back toward Saul.

"Keep your silver," she said. "I'm no harlot."

"Do you know me?" Saul said.

Her eyes became slits; her breathing slowed. "A wanderer." And to Omeros: "I know you, but you've adopted foreign garb. What treachery is this?"

Saul looked to Omeros. The poet said, "My friend has need of your art. We have had to travel in secret."

Saul took her by the wrist. "Please! Divine for me through necromancy; raise up whomever I ask."

She laughed and I knew her to be young, only recently come to her blood. Her breasts, denting her gown, were scarcely the size of halved apricots. She tossed her hair.

"Surely you know the king has banished all necromancers. Would you entrap me?"

Saul stood. "As the Lord lives, this task will not be held against you as evil."

The witch rose, crossed to a shelf, and took a pinch of some grey, viscous substance from an open gourd. She sucked it from her thumbnail and left the tent. The king charged after, with us trailing behind.

She stirred a pot of stew bubbling over her campfire. "Wanderer," she said. "If I were a necromancer, whom would you have me raise?"

"Raise for me the prophet Shmuel," Saul said.

The girl laughed again: music like distant bells. She began to speak, but at once choked on the words and fell to her knees, clawing her throat. Saul ran to her, pulled her hands away so she could do no more damage, and held her tight against his breast. She vomited clear bile. Saul mopped her face with his robe. The girl blinked, saw his face, and her eyes grew wide again. She tried to pull away, but he held her fast.

"Why did you deceive me!" she cried. "You are Saul!"

"Fear not," he said. He squeezed her tight until her struggling ceased. "What did you see?"

"A great man ascending from the earth!"

"What man?" He shook her fiercely. "What man!" I moved to intervene, but Omeros held me back.

"Old . . . garbed in black . . ." Her voice faded into low moans. Saul let her go, and she scrabbled away to her tent. Fool that I am, I thought it was over.

The stew pot sizzled; I got up to take it off the coals. Omeros shook his head and nodded towards Saul. The king's pupils were pinpoints and his forehead and cheeks glistened with sweat. He stared above us. I turned and knew the world was mad, and nothing could be assumed.

Silver fire shot to heaven and fell to earth as smoldering stars. The air crackled. Sun-bright lines streamed from a dark figure, and where the lines crossed my flesh I felt pain like a broken tooth. I saw no old man garbed in black. I knew only flame, and ice, and pain. My eyes closed and still the image burned.

A voice tore my mind like a harrow.

Why did you disturb me, to raise me up?

Saul spoke. I do not know if he saw what I saw, or felt what I felt, but he found the strength to talk with this specter, and for that I will forever honor his memory.

"I am in great distress, for the Philistines assemble against me."

The sun-bright lines surged forth like water from a ruptured dam, lashing my body, scalding my eyes with their rage, yet Saul's voice grew stronger.

"God answers me no more--through neither prophets nor dreams. You promised to tell me what to do!"

The shade of Shmuel spoke again. I put my fists to my ears to block those acid words; I curled into a ball, tried to roll away.

Why do you ask me, since the Lord has turned away from you and has become your adversary?

More words and pain poured forth, a message so dire I knew I would never be warm again. And in the midst of those words, I opened my eyes to see Omeros wading into the stream of slivered light, reaching upward . . .

The poet flew past me, cracked against the ground, rolled, and lay still.

Where once the light had stormed, now livid red slashes writhed and faded to black; where the air had screamed, numbing silence reigned; the specter was gone.

The king fell to the ground, limbs trembling. I ran to him, restrained his arms, and the witch helped. Saul was cold as a winter stream. Life had fled from him, yet still he breathed.

"All is lost," he said. "Lost. We shall be delivered unto the hand of the Philistines on the morrow: I, my sons, all of the Israelites."

The witch covered him in blankets. "See to the poet," she said to me.

Omeros had recovered. He sat as I had seen him countless times before--back straight, legs crossed, gaze fixed on the far distance.

"What did you see?" I asked.

"A Fury. I touched it."

I put a hand on his forehead: icy as morning stone.

"Help me up, Hazael. Take me to the fire."

He leaned heavily upon me, favoring his left leg.

"The king?" he said.

"A wreck. If he leads us to war like that, I've no doubt of the prophet's sight."

Omeros seemed to look through me as if I were less material than the specter.

"Talk to him, Hazael. Don't let the villainous shade win."

"Talk to him? I?"

He looked away.

"Stir his blood, scribe. Say something inspirational."

I know now that Saul truly prophesied on that day on the Hill of God, Kiriath-jearim, when he howled with the other Hebrew prophets; when, as the Israelites say, the spirit of God passed over him. I knew him not as the king. No one did, save Shmuel. But Saul had the mark of royalty--the glow in his eyes, the glamour upon him. He who would be king drew us to him, moths to a young torch.

That he raved of doom, of a nation once cherished by God abandoned to wolves, of collective sin and mass reckoning, of death and devastation--it mattered not; his bearing won us to him. After all, quotidian crime and ultimate retribution were the common fodder of prophets. The future king trod a well-worn path.

Yet perhaps I should have hearkened more closely to the one detail that set Saul's prophesies apart from the rest. _He's madder than most,_ I thought at the time, and forgave him for it once he had regained his senses, and proven himself a humble man. We forgive much in our great ones; atrocities to make a murderer weep are but a mote of ash to be wiped from the eye and forgotten, if only they lead us to glory. And yet this dust mote should have made me tear, and blink, and see.

For the focus of this apocalyptic sand storm of woe was the oracle himself: Saul, son of Kish, central victim of his own prophesies. Afterwards, he did not remember his own predictions. He beamed at the first person to meet his gaze.

"Wondrous day! I have been graced by God; I am complete. Of what did I sing?"

"Glad tidings," I said, and bought him a tankard of mead.

I couldn't burden him with the truth. If, like Omeros, your fortune shines, then perhaps prophesy breeds courage and wisdom; for the rest of us, it lofts a mirror to our inevitable doom. Prophesy impedes the business of living, and is a blight upon the afflicted.

The king shivered in his blanket, a broken man. How could I make him see the truth--that he had banished necromancers from the land, yet had still to banish the prophet from his heart?

"Eat," the child-witch said. Her stew was burnt so she pushed a triangle of flatbread against his lips. It fractured, fell to the ground as crumbs.

"Lost," he said.

"If you want him to eat," I said, "prepare something with flavor, not that tasteless fare."

Her eyes flashed and she leapt on me, beating her fists against my chest.

"Son of a whore, what would you have me do!"

From within her house, a calf lowed. Our eyes met and I saw her rage dim.

"Kill it," I said.

I knelt by Omeros. "We need--"

"Thyme and rosemary on the hillside ten paces behind me. The girl should have a pouch of salt nearby; and if luck is with us, she'll have salted paste of pomegranate."

"I'll ask."

We busied ourselves. At first, Saul remained in his sluggish repose, but stirred when the calf squealed and spilled blood upon the stones. The king came to our side and showed us the lawful way to bleed the beast. He butchered it with his field knife, then passed us cubes of fatted meat for the stew pot. I gathered herbs, and wood for the fire.

As the pot bubbled, Omeros sang of his wandering Akhaian, Odysseus, beloved of Athena: of his persecution by Poseidon, vengeful over Odysseus' murder of his son, Polyphemus; of his thralldom to the beautiful Kalypso, and of Hermes mission to free the hero from the divine nymph's grasp.

"Pushed by one god, pulled by another, and bedded by a third," I said. "That fellow should take some responsibility."

Omeros smiled; Saul leveled his gaze at me. "The greatest Israelite discovery, Hazael, is that we do not need a pantheon of gods to torment man. The One suffices."

The poet laughed, then I, and finally Saul. The child-witch ogled us as though we were possessed by demons. Perhaps we were.

And so it happened that I never had to face the challenge of breathing words of wisdom into the ears of a king; the words breathed themselves as if by accident, albeit with the poet's help. Saul was himself again. No: he had changed. I heard strength in that laugh, and joy, and neither faded as the evening ebbed.

Well past midnight, the king urged us to return to camp. He set out on his journey with surety in his step, and he did not look back to see if we followed. He walked on, loudly speaking Hebrew words of blessing, but his tone was that of a curse.

I helped Omeros to his feet. He reached for the girl; she took his hands, and guided them to her face. He bent down, kissed her forehead, then fumbled for a moment before kissing her dark lips.

"I'd do the same for you, scribe," he said, "but it might get back to the Israelites."

"You're blind," I murmured.

"Indeed. My vision fled the instant I touched the prophet."

"Then why are you so damnably happy?"

"Tonight I have touched the numinous, and I have witnessed a king's rebirth. I've learned more blind than I'd absorbed from a lifetime of vision. And if I had any trace of regret, it vanished with this observation." He pulled the child-witch close. "The lips of a virgin now taste twice as sweet."

"But your work. You'll never learn to write!"

"I never would have. No matter; I have you."

We heard later of Saul's end. Surrounded by the enemy, he faced certain torture, mutilation, and death. He remained the master of his fate: he fell upon his sword and took his own life.

I could not let blind Omeros die or fall captive, so I escorted him to safety. Were we deserters? Yes, but not cowards. Great courage it took to negotiate those hills without falling amongst the Israelite troops or the Philistine horde. And so we both survived the next day's ravages, though not by the means I had imagined.

A week later, as we sojourned north, I read this passage to Omeros:

" _I bring this new testament of Saul, king of the Israelites, a mortal man who died for the sins of his god--"_

"Stop there. Who is your audience?"

I shrugged.

"Have I taught you nothing? You must always consider your audience. To wit: your new myth, if told to my people, the Ionians . . . do you know how they would respond?"

"Er . . ."

"More like, 'yawn'. For our heroes, dying for the sins of the gods was a commonplace. And if you preached this to the Israelites, how would they respond?"

"They'd shun me, stone me, or worse."

He slapped his hands together. "I've made my point. You have no audience."

But I did have an audience, other than Omeros: an audience of One. That night, I dreamed of a burning bush. The flame produced neither soot, nor smoke, nor ash, and consumed nothing. _Not very original,_ I thought in the dream, but then the One resounded with a mighty, soul-shattering voice:

SCRIBE.

I remembered enough of the Hebrews' ways to respond as one does to their deity.

I am here.

YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT SAUL'S PARTING PRAYER. IT WAS NOT A CURSE.

No, Lord?

IT WAS A PRAYER OF UNDERSTANDING.

He forgave you, Lord? Is that preferable to a curse?

It seemed the Israelite god was in no mood to answer questions. The fire twisted about me, licked me with its flame, whispered into my mind that we would meet again, and was gone.

I never told Omeros of the dream. Necromancers he believes (if they tell him what he wants to hear), and the spirit world he has learned to accept. But dreams, I fear, are still beyond him.

*

I've long felt that the weight of Judaeo-Christian tradition gives Saul a black eye, but is altogether too forgiving of David. Sure, Saul's kind of a dick when he goes out of his way to try to kill God's beloved, David, but people forget that Saul was God's beloved, too--for a very short time indeed. What must it feel like to be raised so high, only to be abandoned? I'm reminded of a line from the movie, _The Prophecy_ , in which the angel Gabriel explains why he couldn't take his grievances to God: _Because He doesn't talk to me anymore._ Christopher Walken's delivery of the line speaks volumes. Exaltation is a drug, and the hangover is a bitch.

# The Flea Train

The human soul is difficult to interfere with. You hesitate how far you should go.

– Charles Loring Brace

Eyes close. That's what they do. My memory thrashes, drowning beneath the weight of closed eyes.

When the living rock claimed my baby brother Paulo, he closed his eyes the way he had done so many times at Mama's breast, all needs fulfilled. Mama had closed her eyes an instant before, when she tackled the bare-chested laborer, that man who looked so much like Papa.

When the policewoman took my brother Jorge and me, her eyes closed, too. She shut herself away from our screams for Mama, her eyes no longer eyes, but dark gashes.

The last pair of eyes belong to Ezar, the sponsor on the Flea Train. He was a man with long, dark eyelashes, a thin, waxed moustache, a delicate mouth. As the dark ones pulled Jorge from my arms, Ezar said, "Your brother will be safe, warm, and loved." Ezar's eyes closed, too.

When my eyes close, I remember everything. You ask how I came to be here, to be the woman I am today? Listen.

I am the nine-year-old tomboy in her dirty red bandana, tan cotton shirt, and blue jeans. I'm tall, with dark eyes and darker brows, breasts that only wrinkle my shirt, yet are already tender; my thin, strong fingers clutch my brother Jorge's wrist. Mama, Paulo held tight to her chest, leads us through a dark culvert smelling of algae. A train roars above us, and ahead, through the opening at the end of the culvert, I see the orange light of day.

We emerge amidst bluffs covered with lavender larischzi flowers, billions of them, each no larger than a grain of sand. The smell is indescribable. I want to climb a hill, roll all the way down, and pop up covered in pollen, smiling like a pixie. Yet it's slow-going up the nearest bluff, thanks to the sword grass that stabs through the larischzi carpet. Oversized blades slap my forehead and tickle my ears.

Near the top of the bluff, Mama halts. "Tssst!" She waves me to her side. I pull Jorge's wrist and we run to her. She whispers orders. "Over the next hill," she says. "Don't let them see you." Like predatory cats, we creep up the next hill, and at the crest, we pause. Before I see it, I hear the terraformers' living machine, the arcology's leading edge. It roars and pops like a broken radio. Like soda, when you place your ear to the glass. Like a beehive.

I raise myself on my forearms and part the sword grass. I have my wish; I'm covered in lavender dust, head to toe. So are we all. And now, as if a new, rose-pink sun were rising, the horizon glows with color. "It's surging," Mama says. "Be patient." We have little else to do but wait.

Soon, the leading edge fills my view, the horizon's full length: a wall of pink foam ten times my height, many times more than that in places where the engineers have left sufficient minerals and food. In front of the pink chaos, like a disturbed mound of ants, machines grunt and whir and busy themselves. Yellow tractors haul tree trunks, hay bales, and the _ladrillos_ \--gargantuan 'bricks' of compacted human waste. Yellow bulldozers carve furrows in the hard-packed clay. Shouted commands, some English, some Spanish, drift to us across the breeze, mostly garbled, occasionally (by some atmospheric anomaly) clear, as from ten feet away. _Venga horita. Cross-cut here. 24 by 32 stack, got it? Allí, pendejo._ And laughter.

"When it presses forward," says Mama, "the coneys bolt for cover. Papa said so." Jorge and Paulo, they're too young to remember Papa. Only I remember Papa. He was a foreman on an edge gang, and he died in a place like this.

"Why here?" I ask. Meaning, aren't there safer places to hunt?

But Mama says, "There's dozens of coneys down there. Most are scattered by the noise of the engines, but a few stay in their homes until the very last minute, when they feel the ground thunder."

We watch the gangs assemble _ladrillos_ into mockeries of buildings. A bank here, a market there. Paired hay bales laid end-to-end: these will be park benches. Cleared brush is piled in a crude circle. Here will be the park fountain. Here will be bleachers for the baseball diamond. The breeze carries the odor of the _ladrillos_ , like freshly-strewn manure. Papa came home smelling like that.

Down we creep, edging closer to the gangs.

"When the edge flows, be ready, Julieta," Mama says. "The coneys will come this way. You'll see." Her voice has an edge. Half starved, she's more alive now than at any time since Papa died.

In the thicket, the sour reek of the _ladrillos_ is stronger; and now I smell the edge itself, the buzzing pink multitude, the living cloud. It smells like the ocean, but I will not know that for many years. (Arturo drives me home. He's speechless; his surprise gift, this weekend vacation of ours, has failed miserably. What can he say to his Iron Woman--a pun on my family name, Fierro--who now sobs inconsolably beside him? "You said you'd never seen an ocean," he says at last. I could only think: _Now I've seen it and smelled it; get me the hell out of here._ )

A caravan of red toning-trucks crawl up an access road, led by a yellow pilot-truck with warning lights flashing, horn tooting _beep beep beep_. Every forty feet, the last truck separates from the caravan, turns toward the leading edge, and stops. Soon, there is a dotted line of red trucks, each bearing a ten-foot-tall aluminum tuning fork, paired tines as big around as men's thighs.

"Stay here, Julieta," says Mama as she walks out in plain sight.

_The coneys will come this way. You'll see._ That was the last thing Mama said to me. _Stay here, Julieta:_ I do not know the woman who said this. Only now do I understand the madness that seized her, took her from me: the vision of a man, a ghost of the one she loved, the one who was ripped from her, whom now she might save, so that he could live again.

Many things I see suddenly.

The first foreman (white hard hat, white cotton shirt stained in the armpits, a thin black goatee; his mouth opens to reveal rotten teeth) sees Mama, shouts, waves his hands.

A second foreman, naked to the waist, uses hand signals to guide a bulldozer as it backs out from a narrow side-channel. The channel's high embankment blocks him from the first foreman's view, but we can see him from our bluff. Mama can see him. She ignores the first foreman's cries and walks onward at increasing speed, Paulo held close. She's heading for the second foreman, the one with the broad, dark back, sweat glinting in the sunlight like liquid diamonds. The one who looks like Papa.

A whistle blows; workers retreat to safety and don their earmuffs. This part of the edge is about to move. The first foreman jogs toward Mama, still shouting. Only now do I understand that the second foreman is at risk; he's hand-signaling the first foreman, perhaps warning him that he and the bulldozer driver are still at risk. But the first foreman sees only Mama.

The second foreman hollers something, looks around, sees Mama and frowns. He bolts to the bulldozer, opens the driver's-side door, pulls the driver out. The whistle blows again, two short peeps. Workers mill in groups, laughing, lighting cigarettes. The first foreman has almost reached Mama; he pulls a radio from his pocket, then throws out the other arm to clothesline Mama. She veers, hits his nose with the heel of her palm, and leaves him gushing blood. His hands fly to his face, the radio drops . . . and the whistle howls.

The tuning forks' tines blur, and a tone screams through my head. I cover my ears. I try to cover Jorge's ears with the crooks of my arms, but he's struggling too much. Pink foam surges forward. Pink foam pours over the block forms: here will be a bank, there a market. Just beyond the side-channel: this will be a park. The side-channel itself is a flash flood, a surging river of pink foam.

The second foreman and the 'dozer driver leap over the embankment, but the two are not yet safe. The foam rolls forward, spilling over the embankment, a juggernaut that eats ladrillos and defecates stone. Mama runs toward the men, shouting. And now I see what Mama sees, and what the men cannot know. A half-shell of ladrillos, bowed wood, and straw thatch: here will be a child's make-believe cave, shelter from the summer's heat, and refuge from the approaching pink horror. From her angle, Mama sees the cave; the men, running toward it from behind, see only a hillock.

I, too, run forward, dragging Jorge after me. I make it as far as the first knot of workers, who catch us and hold us tight. The one who holds me tries to turn me away from the disaster, but I squirm free in time to see Mama tackling the second foreman; and like a seed from a crushed grape, Paulo is forced from her arms. She and the man roll together into the cave. Mama rises, holds up her empty arms and howls, closing her eyes. The sizzling pink fury crests above them and swallows the rags holding Paulo.

Paulo rises in the tide. He'll float above it all, I think, unharmed. He's okay. You can tell by the way he closes his eyes, so peaceful. Like a baby at his mother's breast. Stomach full, all needs fulfilled.

The tuning forks are silent, but I hear them still.

The bottle-blonde agent comes by gyro. She arrives before the newsmen, even before the ambulances. Luz is her name. Luz tries to calm us with her words. "Your mother and father are fine," she says. She thinks the shirtless man is Papa. "They're only bruised."

"Papa's dead," Jorge says.

"No, no!" Luz says, kneeling down, smoothing tears from Jorge's eyes. "He's fine. You'll see."

Although the foam no longer flows, it is still active, still a threat. I do not know if Mama and the second foreman are safe in their cave. I say to myself: this will be over soon. They'll pull Mama free, take her to the hospital. Maybe we'll spend the night in the old arcology. The three of us can laugh at this city of petrified shit, and by tomorrow, we'll be back in our cabin on the mesa. But Jorge's moaning _dead dead dead_ , and the bottle-blonde agent's saying, "No, hijo, he's breathing, he called out to us."

I throw my arms around Jorge and squeeze him to me. " _Boba_ ," I tell the agent, "Our papa's dead. That man is not our papa."

Another police car rolls up. One grey-shirt detective interviews the 'dozer driver, who managed to outrun the foam's edge until, finally, the toner-trucks timed out, the air silenced, and the edge again became an unmoving wall. Other detectives circulate among the workers, taking statements. A police photographer takes pictures of the first foreman, who will forever hold his face with both hands, forever be hard as granite. Of Paulo, there is no trace.

Luz blinks at me. She looks baffled. I repeat: _That man is not our Papa._ She begins to understand just as the winch hauls the paramedic, the shirtless man, and Mama from the cave.

"Mama!" I yell, but Mama is fastened to the board, and another paramedic gives her oxygen. One of them adjusts the sheet, but not before I see her marble foot, her pink calf. Mama cannot answer, will never answer. I pick up Jorge. I'm going to run to Mama, but Luz wraps me in a bear hug and holds me back. They slide Mama into an ambulance. The ambulance leaves, followed by a police car.

_Mama!_ Jorge and I scream. _Mama!_

Luz closes her eyes.

We have our first and last gyro ride. As we ascend, the arcology's leading edge becomes a snake that curls, east and south, the barest arc of a vast circle. Within the bounds of this circle lies Synton Arcology: a maze of orderly residential blocks below us, taller buildings beyond.

Stunned past grief, I tell myself a pretty lie. They're flying us to the hospital, so we can be there when Mama arrives. Above the engine noise, I shout to Luz, "We're going to the hospital?"

She pats me on the knee, points to her ear, shakes her head. The gyro banks east. This is promising; we're heading towards a cluster of three-story buildings. This could be a hospital. I squeeze Jorge tighter. We land on an oil-spotted concrete diamond beside a building. I see no white coats, no ambulances, no red cross. The box-like buildings are perforated by row after row of narrow, rectangular windows. Windows too small to squeeze through.

Luz exits the gyro and helps Jorge and me out. She takes my hand, pulls me gently towards the nearest building. "Your mama's this way," she says, and I want to believe her, so I follow--past two blank-faced guards, past double doors that click shut with stainless steel certainty, past two-foot-tall letters that read SYNTON ORPHANAGE.

A sloe-eyed boy appears. He's older than me, maybe nineteen, with greasy, tangled hair, and a sleepy smile. He's on crutches.

I read the two-foot-tall letters again. I look at Luz. She looks at me, biting her lower lip.

My voice is empty. " _Puta_ ," I say. Luz drops her gaze. "We are not orphans."

"Join the crowd," says the boy.

Luz leaves as soon as the papers are signed, but in the boy, I've gained a guide. His name is Stephan.

"I'm crippled up from polio," he says.

"That sounds bad."

He shrugs. "Epidemic of '93. No one figured colonists' babies would need vaccines."

It's my turn to shrug. I haven't understood a word.

"But these are a blessing," he says, tapping his crutches. "Saves me from woosh!" His left hand soars skyward. "One-way ticket on the Flea Train. _Tren de pulgas, muchacha._ "

Shaking my head: "I'm sorry?"

He rolls his heavy-lidded, deep brown eyes, and smiles. "You like stasis couches?" he says. "Sorry. Mean joke. Come on, let me show you the other 'orphans'."

As we walk (Jorge to my left, his hand in mine; Stephan to my right, taking long strides with his crutches), I tell Stephan how my Papa was foreman on an edge crew, and how he died, consumed by the foam. I tell him about Mama and the shirtless man and the foreman-turned-statue. Meanwhile, we pass a cafeteria, a classroom, and a library. All are empty.

We come to a nursery where rows of infants lie in clear plastic bassinets. I think of Paulo, and I cannot speak. Nurses in starched pink uniforms mill around, feeding, burping, changing.

"This one," says Stephan, nodding at the nearest infant, "has rich parents. Her father is podiatrist to the Satrap. Her mother's a poet. Unfortunately, little Marta is illegitimate. Her mother slept with an architect. Her husband would have forgiven her for--how you call it? her poetic license--but the architect, he wouldn't shut up. The Satrap, he hates scandal close to him. And so, one evening, quiet as moths, someone like your agent took baby Marta. Another orphan for the train."

"This baby?" I said. "This one?"

"Eh, this one, that one, what difference does it make? All babies look the same." He made a sweeping gesture with one arm. "Some of these kids, their parents are addicts. Satrap says drug addicts can't be nurturing parents, so he takes the kids and puts them up for adoption. No one adopts in a week or two, it's the train for them. One thing you can say about Synton Orphanage, we're never crowded."

"No orphans?"

He shakes his head. "Kids of political prisoners, kids whose folks pissed off a neighbor, got fingered for some violation of the Satrap's Moral Code. Kids whose parents are too poor to fight back. Poor, criminal, insane--take your pick. What do you think they'll say about your mama?"

All three, I think, but I'm crying now.

"Sorry, muchacha. No more lies, that's my policy. With what you and your brother have in store for you, you gotta be tough. It's the Flea Express for the both of you. The Orphan Train. A train that climbs on a column of white explosions, rrroarrrr, kaboom! Like any kid's dumb enough to believe it's a goddamned train . . ."

Stephan introduces us to the other older children: Coral, whose father was editor for _La Flecha_ , the underground newspaper; Roy, whose mother cooked crack in her soddy on the mesa; Trey, whose parents were guerillas, both killed in an attack on the northern edge.

"When you clean house," Stephan says, "what do you do with the dust balls?"

"We should be grateful they don't burn us," I say.

"No. Gratitude is what they want. And it's the only thing you can deny them."

He limps his way closer to me, sets aside one crutch, and gives me a half-hug. "All you have is you," he says. "Your dignity. Understand?"

I nod.

"You give them that, you have nothing."

"I have Jorge."

He shakes his head. "All you have is you. Don't even give them your tears."

Two weeks later, they assemble us in the classroom to meet the sponsor, Ezar Donlevy, a bald man with round, brass spectacles, blackbird eyes, a trim grey suit. He has a cane of carved ivory, but he walks without limping. Ezar examines each of us, nodding his approval.

"Children," he says, "tomorrow you will embark on a marvelous journey." His voice is a chirp. "The inner colonies are dying, children. The planets are beautiful, and rich, but the colonists, many cannot have children. They are sad, lonely, brave folks. They will love you and give you a safe home. You'll have opportunities you'd never have here."

Stephan, lurking at the back of the room, snorts. Roy and Coral begin to whimper. Ezar, striding to and fro during his speech, comes level with Trey. Trey spits in his face. Ezar swings the cane casually, striking Trey on the ankles; the boy falls to his knees.

"You'll learn manners on the train," Ezar says, smiling easily. "All of you."

In the morning, we are taken to the shuttle under armed guard. I have a window seat. The shuttle takes off like a plane, rises and banks to the north, tips its left wing to the ground. Below me, I see Synton Arcology, a round pink blemish with a pustular center. At my side, Jorge has already fallen asleep. Soon we dock with the flea train.

It's hard not to wonder at it all. Three weeks ago, I hadn't even traveled by car. Now, I've ridden a gyro, a shuttle, and today this cruiser, this white dagger with thin black stripes, like spiders' legs. The flea train, tren de pulgas. Alone in our cabin, I cry for Mama, but only once. I realize I must be strong for Jorge. And for me.

We are the lucky ones, I guess; right after boarding, the infants were put in stasis couches, neat rows and columns, like a store that sells silver coffins. The sponsor has other plans for us. Back at the orphanage, we were examined by doctors and dentists, given purgatives and other drugs; here, they cut our hair, clean our teeth, exercise our muscles. They feed us drugs to help us learn, then they teach us to say please, thank you, and excuse me. They lecture us on how to cook, clean, and farm. How can we learn these things without doing? (And yet the lessons stay forever, it seems. I can still make a bed so that a bullet, dropped on the top cover, will bounce a foot.)

The instructors inspect, test, coach, punish us until we are good little orphans. They teach us to smile on command. Always, Ezar stands behind the instructors, arms folded across his chest, beaming proudly at us. We are like his children, he says.

One day--it feels like a special day, somehow--he speaks to us differently.

"When I first laid eyes on you children, my heart ached. I saw hopelessness. I saw futures lacking in promise. Human refuse, left to molder. And I knew I had to do something. But it is so hard, knowing what to do, how far to go." He nods and smiles at us, like we're a fine array of polished brass sculptures. "Yet, with the lot of you standing before me like this, I cannot help but feel I was right."

The instructors lead us aft, to a hold we've never seen before. Within, a silver coffin awaits each of us.

Before I've fully woken up, they've washed me and dressed me in new clothes. We're placed on a shuttle and slung down to a swirled blue-grey ball Ezar calls Opisthen IV. They set us out in a line; behind us, the instructors wheel cart after cart of infants in bassinets.

The sun here is too bright. My eyes sting. My empty stomach aches for food.

Men and women arrive in battered green lorries. They are dark, so dark; dark as boots. Most walk right past us to browse among the infants. One fellow and his plump wife walk up to us older kids. The husband lifts my chin, puts his dirty finger in my mouth to feel my teeth. He squeezes my arms, harder than he needs to. He moves on to Jorge and does the same to him.

Ezar stands close by, his cane ready for any insubordination.

The dark ones come back to Jorge and me. I grab Jorge, pull him close. The wife looks me in the eye and shakes her head imperceptibly. The husband swoops down, lifts Jorge from my arms, and says, "This one."

"NO!" I shout, but Ezar holds me back with his cane. Jorge screams, holds his arms out to me.

"It's alright, Julieta," Ezar says. "Your brother will be safe, warm, and loved."

They will not have my tears. But they will have my curses.

" _Malparido! Tarado! Hijo de puta!"_

I exhaust my vocabulary, then I repeat. Ezar bears it with tight lips and closed eyes. When I'm exhausted, he pats me on the head, and says, "Dear, our next stop is Sestinus Achtzehn. They need girls there. Even potty-mouthed hard cases like yourself."

There. That's all I will tell you. It's all you need to know. How I came to Sestinus, how I escaped my colonist 'parents' and lived among the breakaways--the rebels, and how we taught the colony a lesson: it's all a matter of public record. I suggest you read it.

I will only add this one thing: they took everything from me, everything but the one thing they couldn't take. And that made all the difference.

End transcript. Interview 17.3.42, Julieta Fierro-Orlando, Governor-Elect of Sestinus Achtzehn.

*

Charles Loring Brace's Orphan Train ran from 1853 to 1929, transporting a quarter million homeless and orphaned children from east coast metropolises to western small towns. Some of these children were adopted and likely became beloved family members, but many found themselves in a sort of indentured servitude. Children were transported under far less than optimal conditions, were inspected much as slaves had been, were separated from their siblings.

When I first heard about the Orphan Train, I thought of that common science fiction trope relating space colonization to the American Wild West. I wondered how many of the Orphan Train children rose above their circumstances and succeeded in life--hence this story.

# God's Claw

French Fry was cancer-thin, nothing but sinew, skin, cigarette sweat. Some obscure medical condition allowed him to pop his eyes at will, so he had cultivated a stare that burned holes in mirrors (so the villagers said), cracked beer bottles by force of will, cowed toddlers, won bets. He made a fair living giving folks the evil eye. Right now, his eyes raked the spitted, sizzling creature turning slowly over the fire.

"Don't undercook it," he said. "Whatever it is."

"You'll mess up the prayer," Claw said. Claw was a boy--most villagers agreed on this--perhaps ten years old, mostly human. Although, to look at those hands, people would say, you had to wonder what manner of beast gave him suck.

"What the hell you prayin' for, anyway?"

"Bad weather."

Claw pulled the carcass from the fire, and with his dark, curved nails, ripped off one haunch for French Fry and one for himself. The rest he threw into the fire.

"What you doin' that for!" French Fry said. He grabbed the burning spit, but Claw's hand shot out, wrapped itself around French Fry's wrist, and squeezed. French Fry pulled away with a whimper.

"We eat what we must," Claw said. "The rest we burn for M'don-El."

French Fry rubbed his wrist. "M'don-El. Some kinda angel, like Gay-bri-El?"

Claw shrugged.

"This weather ain't bad enough as it is?"

"The rain drives prey to my box," Claw said. "I sacrifice prey to M'don-El. M'don-El brings the driving rain."

Using the haunch as his pointer, Claw inscribed a circle on the night sky.

"Burnt offerings, just like one of them old gods," French Fry said. "Know what the old gods liked better than anything else?"

Claw shook his head.

"Virgin sacrifice."

"What's a virgin?"

French Fry brayed, then choked on his saliva. "Good one, Claw! What's a virgin!" He shook with laughter. "What are we eatin', anyway?"

"Ms. Henderson's poodle." Claw ignored the way French Fry's mouth gaped, spittle trailing to the ground. "And you ruined my prayer."

The following night was clear and warm, and no prey came to Claw's box. The morning after, he left his alley and headed into the village, passing a shanty town of shipping trunks and busted refrigerators inhabited by children. The children glared as he passed; one smaller and darker than Claw waved a stained shiv.

Here, a rifle barrel edged out of a tin-sided foxhole; over there, French Fry and a couple of drunks laughed as they shot dice against a blasted concrete wall.

Claw cautioned himself against wandering eyes. _Looking invites lookers._ He focused on his goal, the safest place in the village: the Teacher's Union, a cluster of tents that had been the village center since before the Dirty War.

The sound and smell of sizzling bacon came from the Teacher's Union. When prayer failed and the weather was good, Claw came here for an easy meal.

Principal Estrada fried bacon in a cast iron pan over an open fire. At his side was a slender young woman Claw didn't know. Her face was pinched, but pretty; she had long, straight blonde hair, ruddy cheeks, blue eyes. She wouldn't take her eyes off Claw, so he stared back.

Estrada grinned. He glanced at his feet, then at Claw, as if gauging the distance between them. Claw thought him odd. Estrada was the only old man he'd ever known.

"Keepin' up with your studies, Claw?"

"Yes, sir."

"Charlotte brought eggs and bacon." The woman winced when Estrada said her name. "Eggs fried in bacon grease. Ever have that?"

"No, sir."

Claw smiled at Charlotte, but she wouldn't smile back.

"Sir?"

"Yes, son?"

"What's a virgin?"

Charlotte looked like she'd swallowed bad meat. She threw a hand over her mouth and disappeared into a tent. Estrada barked a laugh.

"You've a way about you, Claw, no denying." Then Estrada answered Claw's question.

Claw asked, "Why would anyone want to do that?"

"That's how babies are made. Besides, it feels good." He glanced at Claw while he turned the bacon. "Don't worry. Way you look, you won't ever need to understand."

"What's wrong with how I look?"

"It's called personal hygiene." Estrada studied him and frowned. "Watch the bacon, will you?"

Estrada ducked into his tent, and emerged a moment later holding a thin metal strap.

"It's a file," he said. "I'd give you a nail clipper if I had one."

"What's it for?"

"Those nails, son. Ever wonder why people call you Claw?"

It was a thoughtful gift. After breakfast, Claw took it home to his box and sharpened his nails.

Eight days of dry, grey weather: no rain, no prey for M'don-El.

One day, while Claw crouched between two tents eating a sausage and egg sandwich he'd cadged from Estrada, a smaller, younger version of Charlotte appeared before him. Her blonde hair was tied in two knotted ropes with curly red ribbons at the ends. Her earlobes were dotted with matching red stones, bright like a serpent's eyes. (His Sunday School teacher, Ella Sue, spoke of a fire-eyed serpent. No matter how much she said the serpent was evil, Claw heard in her voice that she believed otherwise--that the serpent was playful, wise, and necessary.)

The girl's cheeks were plump, and her mouth hung open. Her eyes were pale blue. She said, "Mama says you smell. You're dirty and you're a hazard."

He offered her the rest of his sandwich. She stuffed it whole into her mouth, the way Ella Sue said a serpent took a rat.

"What's your name?" Claw said.

"Tina."

"You're Charlotte's daughter?"

She nodded, then took his left hand in hers and tested the point of one fingernail against the ball of her thumb. Then she pulled her hand back, stiffening at the sound of her mother's voice. She and Claw crawled forward between the tents, squatting low. Estrada and Charlotte were arguing near the campfire.

Estrada said, "It's safer to keep him well fed. Don't you see the sense in that?"

"Fine!" Charlotte's jaw muscles bulged like tiny fists. She wore her blonde hair loose, not bound in ropes like Tina, and she tossed her hair to make a point. "It's not your money and it's not your food but fine. Just keep him away from my daughter."

"Madame," Estrada said. "Perhaps you should keep a closer eye on the girl."

When Estrada nodded towards their hiding place, Claw and Tina stood. They approached, holding hands.

Charlotte gaped. "Young lady, what are you eating?"

Tina chewed faster, trying to get it all down. Charlotte charged, took her arm and twisted, holding her palm below Tina's lips. "I said, _what are you eating?_ "

Tina spit the sodden bread into her mother's hand.

"Claw and me--"

"Claw and I," her mother said.

Tina smiled, slow and cruel.

"Claw and I? We found a rat."

Another dry, clear evening; nothing came to the box but mosquitoes. Claw left his box and headed for the village bonfire. Perhaps the warmth and light would draw prey near.

He crouched in the shadows, watching, listening. They were telling stories.

Bull Strider told about the war, how latecomers like him didn't have all that protective gear, just a cloth to wrap your ear and nose holes. When the sands rose, it didn't matter how well you wrapped the cloth. Your ears would fill with grit. Your nostrils ran with slurry.

Claw wondered if M'don-El could raise sand like that.

Con told about the East Side riots on the third day, when the Fists stormed the armory and killed seven Guardsmen. He smiled at the memory; he was a Fist. "Still am," he said, with a nod like a cleaver chop.

Claw was an alley's length away, but French Fry looked right at him and said, "I was at Honey Cove when Renie had Claw."

No one spoke.

"Renie wasn't nothing but a Honey Cove crack whore," he said. "They say when Claw was born, she didn't want him, not looking like that. Then Social Services told her what he was worth, so she kept him. When her tits ran dry, she fed him juice from pickle jars and whatever else she could find. Once I saw her giving him chocolate laxatives she'd found behind the Rexall. Usually she let him fend.

"Lord, how he cried. Cried so loud, she'd shake him and shake him, but that only made it worse. She'd wrap him in a dog blanket, stick him in a shopping cart, and wheel him halfway across the Cove. She'd disappear for days, but that was okay. We took care of little Claw.

"One time when he cried, she covered his mouth with tape. That's when we decided enough's enough. We waited, and once she passed out from her liquor, we tied her neck with packing twine, and twisted, and pulled, and pulled.

"I did the only Christian thing I could do. I took him. We left Honey Cove and came to the village--he was barely three months. And we been raising him proper ever since."

"Takes a village to raise a child." A woman's voice.

"You the kid's dad?" said Travis.

French Fry spat into the fire. "Half o' Honey Cove fathered Claw."

Claw bolted, clattering through shadows. Someone followed. He turned and reared, nails ready, but pulled up short. Something, perhaps a hint of light from the bonfire, highlighted an ear lobe with its bright red stud. A ruby: that's what Tina called it.

They stood outside the box, hand in hand. Tina strummed the roof of Claw's box and said, "Show me inside."

Tina entered first. "Smells in here," she said. "It's warm. And dry. And dark, like I'm blind."

He showed her his Thinking Chair. She used her hands to see.

"It's a toilet!" She laughed, but quickly stopped.

"Ella Sue called it my Thinking Chair. She was my Sunday School teacher."

"You went to Sunday School?"

"That's what Ella Sue called it."

In the darkness, Claw sensed her head, her hands, her heart. She touched his dreadlocks. "I feel safe here," she said.

"You'll always be safe here."

Her hand found his and pulled it close.

"You can touch my boobs," she said. She guided his hand. "I'm an early developer. That's what Mom said."

They breathed together.

"Like being raked with needles," she said. "Gives me shivers. . . You wouldn't hurt me?"

"I'd never hurt you."

She let him work her nipple for a while, then pushed his hand away, carefully.

"I'd better get back," she said. "If Mom figures out, I'm dead."

She kissed her fingertips and touched them to his cheek. After she'd left, he sat quietly, smelling her scent on his fingertips.

In the dream, he was cloaked in flame. Millions of brilliant white motes swirled around him, and his skin tingled as the sparks danced, teased, and whirred. The fiery motes buzzed, and a voice condensed from the hum.

He killed your mother. They all did.

You know what to do.

Claw's eyes opened to darkness. He erupted from the box in one swift, fluid motion.

The bonfire was down to embers, and French Fry's lean-to was empty. The concrete wall was quiet, save for the moans of Bull Strider and a slab of naked flesh whom Claw didn't recognize. From the Teacher's Union, he heard a slap and a scream. Tina's problem would have to wait; tonight he came for French Fry. But where was he?

Claw had a flashbulb-sharp memory of French Fry slapped by a black girl named Estelle. Estelle was nice. Estelle fed Claw. Estelle said: _French Fry. That's 'cuz you so short and greasy._

Somewhere, a dog howled at the moon. The haze was thin tonight, so the moon shined like a new penny, framed by a ring of brown light. Ella Sue had called it a glory. Then Claw heard a familiar voice from behind, a voice that filled him with gratitude to his god.

"What in hell--"

M'don-El will provide.

Claw turned; M'don-El guided his hand. Claw watched in wonder as his hand arced gracefully through the air and scooped out French Fry's neck, soft as wet mud. French Fry fell, forever silent.

Claw hooked his arms beneath French Fry's armpits and dragged him three blocks to his favorite altar. The body was short, but heavy. Claw's upper arms ached, his head throbbed. He stopped twice to rest and catch his breath. At last he arrived at the empty lot. The freeway interchange loomed above like a pagan shrine. To the south, a single star shone above two yellow arches--the only star powerful enough to burn through the haze.

The first time he saw it, he hadn't even known it was a star. He ran back to Ella Sue's shack, pulled her out of bed, dragged her to the lot, and pointed upward.

She was perplexed at first; then she cried, "Oh," and said God's True Name.

Later, he tried to spell it. He showed the name to Ella Sue, and said, "This is the one I pray to."

He'd made a mess of the name. She did her best to rewrite it: M'don-El.

"I thought I knew all the angels," she said. "But maybe he's your special guardian angel."

Claw didn't tell her it was God's True Name. Ella Sue had very particular ideas about God.

But now, with French Fry's corpse heavy in his arms, there it was: M'don-El's star directly above the yellow arches, where he'd first seen it! This had to be a good sign. He combed the lot for tinder, and soon built a bonfire bigger, hotter, nobler than the villagers'. When Claw's arm hairs curled and smoked, he gave French Fry to the fire, gave him to M'don-El.

Great sacrifice required great finesse. Claw's prayer was majestic, a soaring, savage work of art. And though he did not want to eat of this meat, he knew he must; M'don-El expected it.

There was a moment's doubt when he remembered the bones. Everything had to be consumed in the fire, or else the prayer would fail. Once, Bull Strider had nailed a pigeon with a BB gun. "Flying rat," Bull declared, and gave the body to Claw. After he'd burned it, the BB remained, and there had been clear skies for a fortnight.

With the best sacrifices, M'don-El granted him an extraordinary blaze. Claw knew the Lord Himself must be present in this slowly turning column of fire; at some level, he understood that his usual fire would not consume a human body, even one as gaunt as French Fry's. And now the column of surging white light faded to yellow, red, black, and the interchange's orange glow prevailed once more. Searching the remains beneath that glow, Claw found ash, and nothing more.

Morning brought hail big as egg yolks. Most villagers took shelter in their homes, but a few stood outside under trash can lids and oil pans, viewing the wonder.

Tina stood at Claw's side, using a tattered issue of Vogue for protection. She had fingerprint bruises on her arms and neck.

"I think it's cool!" she shouted above the hail.

Shaking his head, Principal Estrada scanned the village: the ground white and lumpy; lean-tos battered, tents crippled.

"They say God hates trailer parks," he said. "But I figured this place was beneath His contempt."

"Nothing is beneath His contempt," Claw said.

Hail came in flurries, night and day.

One night, something entered his box. He knew the creature from its smell: squirrel. His ears rang from the hail, but Claw imagined he could hear the squirrel's chook chook. He felt it twitch, sensed its heat. Claw's hand rose . . . and faltered.

This one I will not take.

Now I see M'don-El's Plan.

It was a long walk to Honey Cove. He knew he'd find bricks there to make another altar. M'don-El would provide.

Weeks passed. His box was warmer now, sometimes intolerably warm, but it was a pleasant home to return to after a hard night's work. And when he returned, more nights than not, Tina was there. He would crawl in quietly so as not to wake her.

He made three trips each week to Honey Cove. It was a big shanty town right next to a train station where people came and went, and no one was ever missed. Always, he had to empty their pockets of hairpins and river stones, coins and combs and wallets. Everything must be consumed, or the sacrifice would be for naught.

At first, the weather was spectacular. Gale-force winds uprooted the sturdiest huts and lean-tos. Chain lightning smashed the gamblers' wall. But now there was only rain.

M'don-El wants more.

One day, he saw Tina in his alley. Her mouth was swollen; she couldn't or wouldn't talk. Her face, arms, and legs were solidly bruised. Her ponytails were dirty, and when they swung, the pain made her close her eyes.

M'don-El wouldn't mind if he settled a debt.

The night was warm, and the rain was light as mist. He padded like a cat on the prowl, curling the long way around the village so he could approach Charlotte's tent from the rear. How he would pull Charlotte away without Tina's knowledge, he didn't know, but M'don-El would provide.

But he needn't have worried. Tina's bedroll was empty; Charlotte was all alone. Tina must have been making her way to his box.

Charlotte's breathing filled the tent; her hair hung loose over the stack of papers she used for a pillow. The tent smelled of her. In the distance, a howl rose, ululated, fell, and rose again. It was the sound of something old, bitter, and hungry. It was the sound of prayer.

His hand struck, and he knew at once it was wrong. The neck was too soft, too small. He stopped, but not soon enough. His hand filled with warmth. _No, no!_ This girl's hair was loose; Tina never wore her hair loose. Then he remembered how it hurt her when her ponytails swung back and forth.

Across the Quad, he heard Principal Estrada's voice. A woman laughed.

He would not eat this flesh.

What would happen if he didn't give her to M'don-El? He didn't want to find out.

_No, no,_ as he carried her to the altar. He laid her down and began to gather kindling. M'don-El's star glittered through the haze.

_No, no,_ when he should have been praying.

Later, once the embers cooled beneath the falling mist, he swept the ashes away. Something hard and small caught his fingertip. He searched the ashes with his hands.

Like I'm blind.

Then he found a second one, hard, round . . . red.

Like a serpent's eyes.

Fiery hail rained down. The village was ankle-deep in drifts of glowing ash. Everything burned: every tent, box, and lean-to. Tall fires raged in the distance.

Claw stood at the mouth of the alley, watching smoke rise from the village; lately, the screams came less often. As flying cinders found new caches of fuel, gouts of flame leapt upward. A sudden gust of wind drove a handful of fist-sized coals up the alley and into the box. Instantly, the glowing coals winked out, and there the box sat, warm and inviting. _You'll always be safe in here._

His thoughts tumbled. _Keep him away . . . Hair loose . . . Never loose._ And, finally, a startled understanding: _I'm not empty._ But despair was a paltry possession.

He turned his back on the box.

A dust devil grew from puff to towering, inverted pyramid, gathering thousands of pebble-sized cinders into its whirling, luminous core. And then it gathered Claw. The pain was awesome; death came in gentle, rhythmic turns; as he died, Claw's mortal senses were stripped bare, replaced by senses wholly different, yet terribly familiar.

He heard the whistle of hissing logs, the crackle of burning leaves. He turned and saw French Fry, now a fiery scarecrow, emerge from his box. Beyond the noise of the snapping, sputtering flame came other sounds: one exultant howl, joined by a dozen others; a string of raspy woofs; a guttural laugh.

"Short and greasy," French Fry said, stretching his arms. "Means I burn hot and fast."

Claw turned back to the village. It was whole again: nothing smoldered, there were no cinders. In his death-vision he saw the Teachers' Union as if it were a dozen feet away. A pale white hand emerged from a tent, pulling the flap aside. He wanted to be holding that hand now, wanted it more than anything he'd ever desired in life. But two arms of fire embraced Claw from behind, crushing him with the utmost care and love. French Fry hugged him tight and licked his ears with flame.

French Fry said, "You had it made, kid. The old gods love virgin slaughter. They drool for it. And then you had to fuck it up."

A despairing wail escaped Claw; he knew what French Fry said was true.

The hand holding the tent flap faltered, vanished into the cool dark. The tent receded from view as French Fry dragged him back to the box. The flames whispered, "M'don-El wants a virgin, boy. A perfect sacrifice."

The howls built to a crescendo.

It made so much sense; why fight it? Only . . . there was a voice ringing in his mind, the voice of Ella Sue, saying something she'd said so many times. He hadn't understood it then, but he understood it now.

Just say no, Claw.

"No."

And that was all it took. Now Claw could pull away from the flame, could ignore the hissing, sputtering fury behind him. The creature at his back roared like a beehive, rasped like the clash of fiery swords; now it rumbled like a distant storm; finally, its voice diminished to a hiss, a sigh, a terminal breath.

All was silent, and the canvas tent was near. A hand appeared, and then, in the cool dark, he found Tina's face. She smiled at him. Her eyes were perfect rubies: serpents' eyes.

He fell into her arms, and the cool dark drew over them both.

*

There's so much horror in everyday life, why do we even need to inject a supernatural element into our fictional horror stories? I had that thought in mind when I started writing this story. M'don-El was supposed to have been entirely a figment of Claw's imagination. I couldn't quite pull it off--there's the all-consuming tower of flame that burns French Fry, and the firestorm that destroys the village. And yet I hope that most of the horror derives from the child abuse, abandonment, and casual cruelties that have created Claw and are destroying Tina. M'don-El is merely saturated fat-laden icing on the cake.

# First Contact

From the Grith Lyssomes' _Catalog of Benevolent English, Volume 3._

**Silk Road** [B. Eng.:Ancient Earth trade route linking continental distances]: Benevolent term describing the set of all planets and satellites they have deemed Useful; alternatively, the set of singularities connecting those planets and satellites.

**Useful** [B. Engl: serviceable]: Of value to the Benevolents for purposes of trade or self-gratification. Typically refers to a planet, species, or system.

**Benevolent** [B. Engl: etymology unknown]: Self-descriptive term used non-ironically by a species of human-obsessed sentients who, by default, dominate galactic trade, tourism, and media (as of this printing). _Cf_ goon, Blue Bastard.

Three human-sized flies lay atop a rust-colored sandstone bluff. One snored fitfully, his proboscis scrolling in and out like a child's party favor; he alone was ignorant of the eight-foot-long tarantula hidden somewhere inside the cantina on the plain below. The second fly acted bored, yet betrayed his anxiety by meticulous, compulsive eye-grooming. The last fellow, the swarmlet's commanding officer, engaged himself in a fervid mental leg-wrestle over the issue of fate. On the one leg, thoughts of imminent doom plagued him; on the other, he was sure such thoughts were the product of hindbrain irrationality.

Legs three through six were still undecided.

Lieutenant *Hack*-ssst-pbbbt stared at the plain until all 4,096 facets of his compound eyes began to water. He rustled his wings in a brief but intense fit of nerves. For the last four hours, he and his swarmlet had watched for signs of life from the cantina, but there had been nothing, not even a tumbleweed.

He rolled his proboscis and thought, _This is the beginning, or perhaps the ending, of an extremely tasteless joke. Three Grith Lyssomes enter a bar . . ._

Hack wrested the compound field goggles from the fellow to his left, Ensign Argh-pffff-uhh, who, despite a lack of muscles of facial expression, responded with a fair imitation of a pout. To Hack's right, Ensign EEEck- _whir_ -al'Ghanadi buzzed abruptly in his sleep, then returned to his staccato, flatulent snores.

"Lieutenant," Ensign Argh said, "kindly tell me again why we're here."

Hack had long since tired of Argh's repeated questioning. Perhaps Argh thought if he asked enough times, Hack would eventually break down and reveal some dark, closely held truth. The young fly probably nurtured the hope that Hack held some trick or secret weapon in reserve. Hack knew from their earlier conversations that Argh couldn't believe the Chancellery would place them in danger without the basic tools for survival.

Sadly, Hack _could_ believe it. He well remembered then-Lieutenant Brek's report to the Chancellery on the Uixos disaster. Brek had lost thirty-three brave buzzers on that planet of giant, arguably sentient hummingbirds, and what did he have to say for himself? He'd begun the presentation thus: "When we drill down on the numbers from the Uixos expedition, you'll perceive that our learnings represent a healthy return on our investment." After that, it was nothing but poo charts and spreadsheets. Thirty-three lads were an investment, and Brek was made Lieutenant Commander before week's end.

"Same answer as before, Ensign. They have something we want."

"And you'll be damned if you know what it is."

"Chancellery told me as much as I need to know," Hack said, wishing this were true. He tried to brush his anxiety away with a foreleg, but failed. Lieutenant Commander Brek troubled him. It was hard not to grouse about it; they'd gone through the U together, and the Academy afterward. _Think and talk like a Benevolent and they promote you. Improve the efficiency of the aft disruptor array by three-point-two percent, and they stick you on a rock with huge spiders._

"So, Lieutenant," Argh said, and Hack's antennae cringed. Not for the first time, he wished the ensign were a mute. "What did you do to deserve this?"

On the jumps over to M833, the three of them had traded increasing outlandish backstories. EEEck favored tales of the many wealthy females who had promised him exclusive breeding rights, should he return from a successful mission. He'd grow misty-eyed thinking of all the maggots he would sire, and then he would withdraw to the bilge to have a good wank. Argh's stories, while also amorous, tended toward the desperate. Some newly pupated buzzette, daughter of an Exchequer secretary, claimed he had tarnished her virtue, or perhaps (in a particularly expansive mood) he had been caught in the shit with seventeen of the Chancellor's granddaughters. Silly stuff. Hack stuck to fantastical stories of alien races accidentally offended, Grith Lyssome admins obliged to make amends, Hack himself the obligatory goat . . . the truth, in other words, more or less, but Argh never seemed to buy it.

"You go first," Hack said, not feeling particularly imaginative.

Argh regurgitated onto a wad of regulation Meals Ready for Vomit and sucked the dissolving goo into his proboscis. Hack watched the process wistfully and thought, _What I wouldn't give for a nice, hot plate of Malibu Chicken to barf on._ Malibu Chicken! Those idiotic humans were good for a few things.

"Yeah," Argh said, and cleared his throat. "What the hell, why not. I was an Assistant Project Manager on the Defenestrator 2020."

"Huh?" Hack's antennae straightened attentively: this had the ring of truth.

"It was supposed to be a kick-ass Lattice browser. People could use their Satellite monitors to access the Lattice and watch Satellite broadcasts at the same time."

"Sounds neat," Hack said, meaning it. He missed his Satellite.

"We caved to market pressure and released it early. Well, our Trash Can glitched a little. Liked to pluck files from the hard drive and make them disappear."

"That's a problem."

"Especially when we'd already sold two million units to the Benevolents. They called it the Black Hole 2020. Can you imagine? So the boss made an example of me, and here I am. An innocent victim of Silk Road economic pressures."

Hack scanned the area with his goggles. Save for an arrow-straight dirt road and the one lonely structure they had dubbed 'the cantina,' the plain lacked all the marks and errors of civilization. Down there, they would be exposed; but here on this bluff, sandstone boulders twice their height gave them cover to the sides and rear. From above, they were hidden by a single massive slab that rose like the pale hand of a corpse thrust upward from a freshly turned grave in some very cheesy horror flick . . .

_Stop it,_ Hack thought. _This is not some third rate Hollywood monster movie you catch on late night Satellite. Those are intelligent, civilized creatures down there, and first contact is never easy. They'll be just as frightened of us as we are of them._

Besides, they had no need for cover from above; the Tromatopelmans, for all their supposed technological superiority, had no apparent knack for aeronautics. But in the shade of this ten-ton stony wedge, Hack felt safer nonetheless.

They were almost inconspicuous, as inconspicuous as three five-foot-tall dipterans could be, accoutered in chartreuse backpacks and bright red jersey shirts. _We're fine,_ Hack reflected, _provided we don't move._

Hack had chosen this surveillance post while still on the lander. The decision required several carefully considered assumptions, a protractor, a trigonometric hand calculator, a convenient scrap of paper (Ensign Argh's letter from home, actually), and a sharpened Number Two pencil.

It was the pencil he missed most. They had grounded the lander on the far side of the bluff so as to approach their present position unobserved by the cantina's inhabitants. During the climb, Hack had slid on some loose gravel, slamming his pack against the rocks. The pack's delicate contents were safe, thanks to protective padding, but the pencil, hastily inserted into a side pouch at the last moment, had been reduced to splinters.

Through the goggles, the cantina took on a kind of grainy detail. Hack figured it was woven from silk, as were all Tromatopelman buildings. Its resemblance to a cantina came from its low-slung form, and the flapping grey-white rectangles that looked so much like shuttered windows and doors. Dark forms stirred inside, like dangled objects waving to and fro in a gentle breeze.

Hack reviewed his scanty knowledge of the Tromatopelmans. Based on the Grith Lyssomes' earlier probes, the sentient inhabitants of M833-G1a were terrestrial octopods. Their bodies had two segments: a large, plump, bristled abdomen (which had prompted all manner of tasteless hairy butt jokes) and an armored cephalothorax. From foreleg to hindleg, distal tip to distal tip, they measured eight feet in length, minimum.

Hack knew little else about them. His head was crammed with a wealth of Tromatopelman trivia; for example, they consumed oxygen and expelled carbon dioxide and methane. The lander's computer had used that fact to determine the cantina held no more than two inhabitants.

He also knew the Tromatopelmans had ignored all six _Hello, Stranger!_ probes, and he'd heard rumors that he and his two ensigns were not the first party to attempt contact. Unpleasant rumors. Which is why he had wedged his swarmlet into the best-concealed location he could find.

He fiddled with the radio, thinking about their lander hovering 18,000 feet above, awaiting Hack's command to return. Not that he would trigger the landing sequence prematurely; the Chancellery had no tolerance for failure. And so he sat there wondering, worrying. _Carbon dioxide and methane. Signs of life, or signs of decay?_

Hack pinched EEEck until the ensign buzzed fitfully and sputtered awake.

"We're talking life stories," Hack said. "What brought you here?"

"I was dreaming of shit," EEEck murmured.

"Son," Hack said, "after we're done with this mission, we'll have our freedom, and enough cash for a banquet of the most delectable shit on Ephys."

"What was the question?"

Hack told him.

"Decimal place error," EEEck said.

"That's all?" Argh said.

"I was working on the power drive for the newest Benevolent luxury liner, the Spaceways Dromedary. I designed the dies used to create gaskets for the liner's nuclear cooling towers."

"Oh," Hack and Argh said together.

"Bad enough the prototype imploded," EEEck said. "But then its orbit decayed, and it collided with Chadeep's Strato-R&R. Then the whole mess came down to Ephys in the middle of the Western Amadinian Scrivener's Club's twenty-second annual All-You-Can-Suck Picnic. But it was an honest error. Anyone could've slipped up like that."

"Chht!" Hack said, waving them silent. He'd seen a different sort of movement within the cantina's shadowy interior.

A heavily bristled leg appeared at the door. Then another, and another.

"I want to see," EEEck said.

The Tromatopelman emerged from the cantina. He was brilliant orange, with a charcoal black starburst pattern on his carapace. He turned to face them, and pawed the air with his forelegs.

"Such pretty colors," EEEck said. "It's like he's waving hello."

"Pretty, huh?" Argh shook his head.

Lieutenant Hack tapped the goggles. "Getting all this, Commander?" He tapped again, wondering if the goggles' audiovisual uplink to the mother ship still worked. After a sudden burst of static, Hack heard a smattering of cheers and expletives aboard the _Fex_ , from which Hack gathered the officers were playing another round robin of Pong. Then the Commander's voice thrummed Hack's antennae with unshakeable confidence.

"You bet, Hack. Get your butts down there! It looks like he's extending the open legs of friendship. Wait. What's he doing now?"

"Going back in," Hack said. The Tromatopelman disappeared, all except for the rearmost portion of his abdomen. His two spinnerets laid down a few fresh strands of silk in the door's threshold. It was a slow, irregular motion, the stubby, brush-like spinnerets dipping down to touch ever so gently the jamb, the frame, the swinging door, and the white rectangle lying before the door like a freshly washed welcome mat. It was executed with such lazy, lackluster effort that it seemed almost an afterthought. And then he vanished altogether.

"Seems friendly enough," EEEck said.

"Commander," Hack said. "You said _he?_ "

"Too dinky to be a female, Hack."

"Right," Hack said. _One Tromatopelman, and a little one, at that._ "We're going in."

Ensign Argh said, "To do what, exactly?"

Hack stared at Argh, dumbfounded. Had his ensign's briefing been even more slipshod than his own?

"We go down there," Lieutenant Hack said, "and, carefully, we ask that whiskery gentleman to take us to his leader."

Although the cantina was only four hundred yards away, the first hundred were straight down; or so thought Lieutenant Hack, whose previous concept of exercise involved head rotation stretches in front of his computer monitor, and random acts of buzzing.

"Don't see why we can't fly down," Argh said.

"In full pack?" Hack asked. "In this flimsy excuse," gasp, "for an atmosphere?"

EEEck centered his pack, which had slid partway down his left wing. "What's in here, anyway? Two years' worth of MRVs?"

"We have only two days' worth of MRVs," Hack said. He unzipped the pack's main compartment, revealing a matte-finished black metal object. It might have been a collapsed camera tripod. "This, my friend, is a rasper."

"At least one of us thought to bring a weapon," EEEck said.

"No weapons," said Hack. "This is a peaceful operation, whether we like it or not. No, son, the rasper is our communication device."

"Okay . . ."

"We know from our probes that the Tromatopelmans communicate by stridulation."

Argh raised a foreleg.

"Give me a chance," Hack said. "Stridulation is the act of rubbing the pedipalp against the chelicera."

Argh waved his foreleg madly.

"The pedipalp is an anterior appendage," continued Hack, "rather like a short leg. From the probe data, we know the males use their pedipalps during mating, to deposit a sperm packet inside the female's genital opening."

"I didn't need to know that," Argh said.

"Genital opening," EEEck said. "You'd think they'd come up with a more romantic term."

"I expect the Tromatopelmans have all manner of names for it," Argh said. "Honey pouch. Fur pocket. Ruby-fruit jungle."

"As I was saying, they also use their pedipalps for communication, by rubbing them back and forth against their chelicerae. The chelicerae are another pair of short appendages at the creature's head. They're twenty-four inches long in an adult female Tromatopelman."

"And I suppose they use them for oral sex," EEEck said.

"In a manner of speaking," Hack said. "The chelicerae conceal the fangs, which fold under like a pocket knife."

"So the fangs are two feet long?" EEEck asked. Hack nodded.

"I _really_ didn't need to know that," Argh said.

Lieutenant Hack struggled down the bluff, his pack chafing his every last bristle. He distracted himself from the irritation by mentally composed his next log entry.

This planet's sun, M833, is a cheeky red giant with an ascendant attitude and an imposing flare. It crests the sky in minutes, but clings to high noon for hours, a scarlet bitch with no sense of astrophysical propriety.

He waved his swarmlet to a halt. They were one hundred yards from the base of the bluff, two hundred yards from the cantina. The plain was flat to the horizon, where the orange ground met the sky in a bar of rosy haze. Aside from the cantina, the plain's only features were a number of tall, worn boulders limned in red; occasional leafless trees with violaceous limbs, and branches that clawed the sky like a thousand arthritic fingers. Low, round bushes, like fluffs of rusted steel wool, lay scattered in the spaces between. At their feet, clusters of ruddy, welt-like succulents speckled the ground. Everything under M833 looked awash in blood.

They rested and watered, then walked another hundred yards before Lieutenant Hack stopped again. "We'll assemble the rasper here," he said, indicating a patch of pea gravel and yellow sand. This was the flattest area he could find; between them and the cantina, the ground became progressively rougher as the isolated clots of succulents thickened and merged into a lumpy lawn.

The two ensigns opened their packs with enthusiasm. "Like opening a box of scumber cordials," said EEEck, who then produced a pair of dish antennae ("Ears," Hack said), while Argh discovered a miniature solar-powered workstation ("And that's the brain.")

"I've gotta go drain the main vein," EEEck said.

"Whatever," Argh said.

Hack began to assemble the rasper. It was, indeed, a tripod, designed to support both the workstation and a scythe-like pendulum-bob that on closer inspection looked like a metal file. As Hack fiddled with the manual controls, he was intrigued to note that the file's surface teeth varied in spacing: now compressed, now rarefied. Finally, he attached a bowstring to the base of the workstation, and anchored it to a piton he'd hammered into the hard-packed ground.

He twanged the bowstring and, by messing with another knob, caused the sound to flutter and swoon.

"That thing sounds like one of those crappy old soundtracks," Argh said. "Some old monster movie they show on Satellite, late at night, when anyone with a real life is fast asleep."

Hack ignored him and booted up the workstation.

"I can't believe EEEck thinks that critter's friendly," Argh continued. "He seems bloody awful to me. Like death riding in on eight legs. Like the Gates of Hell had opened and belched forth the distillation of every maggot's nightmare."

"Argh."

"Sir?"

"You're being ridiculous. This isn't a monster movie. The Tromatopelmans are sentient creatures, well beyond our own scientists in many . . ." Hack's train of thought faded away. "Anyway, the workstation controls the tension on the line, the grade-space on the bob, and the pendulum speed. We should be able to play a symphony on this thing."

"Can you make it say, _Don't kill us?_ " Argh asked.

"We've been monitoring their radio transmissions for the last eleven years. Their language was a bit of a challenge. Still is."

"How's that?"

"Inflections, I suppose. Something's missing. The same sound spectrograph might correspond to three, sometimes four different words."

"So, 'don't kill us' might come out, 'don't spare us'," Argh said. "Is that about right?"

"Yes," Hack murmured, but he wasn't paying attention. He was caught up in the workstation's initialization procedure, and was trying his best to remember the appropriate answer to the query, AUTOLOCK LOW PASS FILTER . . . ON/OFF?

Commander Keesp had insisted they bring a manual, but Hack left it in the lander. As far as Hack was concerned, software manuals were for pussies. On a whim, he typed MAYBE, curious to see what error message this might provoke. _Initialization not complete_ , read the monitor. IT DEPENDS, Hack typed, but never found out the workstation's resposne. For at that instant, two noises pierced the desert silence: a rabid chittering, and then an impossibly high-pitched, keening wail. Both noises came from behind the stone column Ensign EEEck had chosen to conduct his personal business.

The chittering struck fear into Lieutenant Hack's nine hearts, but nothing like the dread inspired by the wail, which he knew only too well as the loathsome, maniacal laughter of Ensign EEEck.

They found him in the column's shadow, recumbent, his attention fixed on a cleft in the sandy earth. Suddenly, he rolled from belly to back, stirring up clouds of yellow dust with his gleeful buzzing; peals of laughter jiggled his chubby frame. He rolled again to stare into the cleft, and some new prodigy captured his fancy. When Hack arrived, EEEck's wailing was so loud and uncontrolled, Hack had no choice but to box the ensign's antennae. Then there was a different sort of wail.

The chittering came from the cleft. No, not a cleft, a pit. Those squat, ruddy succulents they'd seen before, so like strings of copper coins, bordered the pit's edge, trailing down into its shadows. At the pit's bottom, Hack could just make out several plump, buck-toothed tetrapods. They were jumping.

EEEck stopped laughing long enough to say, "Can we take one home? _Please?_ No. two. We need two."

As Hack's eyes adjusted to the shadows, he counted seven creatures. They were a foot tall and half again as long, their mouths hidden by two long, curved incisors, their eyes large and round and dark and blinkered from the sides. Their fat bodies were covered in flattened quills, and their short, hairless tails (which they wagged feverishly) resembled dirty tubers. Although they could jump three or four times their body height, it wasn't nearly enough to free them from the pit.

"I was taking a whizz," EEEck said. "This pit looked handy enough. I guess I woke them."

Once Hack's eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that one creature had mounted another, and now was pumping it into a squealing, chittering frenzy; a second couple soon followed suit. Meanwhile, the remaining three formed a living pyramid. One creature jumped atop the backs of the other two, then jumped again, trying to clear the pit. But to no avail.

Hack took a few steps away from the pit and studied the area. Argh threw him a questioning glance, but Hack could only shrug. Something was wrong, but he couldn't put words to it; not yet. He scrutinized the pit, estimating its dimensions, and wondered about the fringe of succulents that circled its mouth, dangling round, coppery leaves into its depths. He looked around and saw other patches of succulents scattered throughout the area. They'd been noticing these patches these ever since they'd come down from the bluff.

Hack, focused as he was on this conundrum, barely heard EEEck say, "Aw, little feller. You want a leg up?"

Hack found a good-sized rock, a ten-pounder at least, and dropped it onto a patch of succulents. Nothing. He picked it up and moved to another patch. If only he had his sharpened Number Two pencil and a bit of scratch paper, he knew he could figure this one out, just knew it.

"Oh, damn! Get it off me, get the little bastard off of me!"

Hack and Argh arrived in time to see EEEck fling one of the creatures off his foreleg. The hapless fellow hit bottom with an unpleasant crunch.

From the field goggles strung around Hack's neck, the Commander's voice crackled:

"EEEck! Report! Are you injured?"

"No! The son of a bitch tried to hump me!"

Hack studied the bottom of the pit. Now three couples were going at it.

"I wish we could bottle some of that," Hack said. "I could take it back to the wife and--wait a second. Moment ago, weren't there seven of them down there?"

"Right, Lieutenant," Argh said.

"Now there's only six."

Hack produced a penlight and ran its spot along the floor of the pit, illuminating three pairs of humpers (as Hack now thought of them), some dark pellets that could only be humper-stools, a roiling ball of debris, chewed roots, and drifts of pea gravel.

_A roiling ball of debris?_ "What do you make of that, Ensign?"

"It's a dead one," Argh said. "I see two long teeth, and the body is covered with--well, back home we called them BB bugs. They roll into a ball if you pester them. They'll eat carrion, shit, anything at all. Those buggers'll overrun your pantry if you give 'em half a chance."

"That's what I thought." Hack's sense of something misfiled, or of a calculation not checked, had grown into an uncomfortable ache. Damn! He needed his drafting desk, his laptop, and a high speed modem. Even some graphing paper and a Number Two pencil would do.

Hack scanned the horizon. As M833 dipped away from high noon, the bluff began to cast a shadow, as did the lifeless trees and towering stones that dotted the plain. Nearer still, the rasper and their opened packs lay undisturbed. _Initialization not complete,_ he remembered with irritation. There was the cantina, partly obscured by the stone column, and there was the Tromatopelman, sitting atop his roof, grooming his chelicerae. Two black stilettos glinted red in the sunlight.

_Extending the fangs of friendship,_ Hack thought.

And there was Ensign Argh, patiently waiting, picking his proboscis. Then Argh began throwing pebbles at the humper's corpse, forcing the bugs to abandon their meal. There wasn't much left of the humper: quills, teeth, vertebral column. Hard to believe it had been mating with Ensign EEEck's foreleg only moments earlier.

_Oh._ "Ensign."

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"Where's EEEck?"

"Went off to take another whizz, sir. That run-in shook him up a bit."

"But . . ."

"Shy bladder. He has trouble, you know. Going."

"No, Ensign. Where's EEEck now?"

They approached the rasper with caution, calling EEEck's name as they went. Every few yards, Hack dropped the stone on a patch of succulents. He had a good idea what he was looking for, but until he found it and proved his hypothesis, it would never occur to him to warn Argh. When Hack had his head wrapped this tightly round a problem, nothing else mattered.

On the fifth patch, the stone fell through.

"Ensign." Hack studied the shadows, thought he saw a dark something swipe across the pale stone.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"Don't step on the plants."

_Tunnels,_ Hack thought. _Traps and tunnels_.

"Lieutenant?"

Surveying gear. Someone who knows how to use surveying gear--yes, that would be nice. Scale drawing. Plot the traps. Plot the cantina. Plot the tunnels--a probability plot, assuming parsimony, a 'least work' hypothesis. Will we need a geologic report?

"Lieutenant, is that the rasper?"

It came from the cantina: a grating sound, as of a comb drawn across sandpaper. The Tromatopelman sat on his roof, rubbing his left pedipalp against his left chelicera.

"No, Ensign. Just that handsome devil."

Then, from behind and below them, came an answering rasp.

And that's when they heard from Ensign EEEck.

As they ran towards the source of that single, horrible scream, Argh's gibberish resolved at last into a meaningful sentence. He drew to a halt, panting.

"Why Lieutenant? What does it mean? Why would he cry out his name?"

"I don't know, son."

"I'm scared, Lieutenant."

"I am too, son." With great uncertainty and no small amount of discomfort, Hack raised a foreleg and patted Argh's left wing.

"Lieutenant, how old are you?"

"Thirty-three. Why?"

"Well, sir, you see, I'm forty."

"Funny thing, son--I thought you a much younger fly."

"Good genes and, you know, I've stayed out of the sun." Hack looked up at M833. "Mostly. But, well, you see, sir, this 'son' thing. I wish you'd stop. It's weirding me out."

Hack's goggles crackled. Ki Ki again.

"What's going on down there, Hack? Have you made contact?"

"Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Well, sir, I believe Ensign EEEck has made contact. We're heading over to check it out."

"Keep me posted, son."

Hack and Argh exchanged glances; Hack shrugged. "I guess it's a command thing," he said.

In a sour mood, they set off again in the direction of EEEck's scream.

They found the new pit just past the rasper, twenty yards closer to the cantina. It had a small opening, about as big around as one Grith Lyssome, and with their large heads only one of them could look into it at a time. Hack ran the spot of his penlight over the base of the pit, clucking his proboscis.

"Please, sir, what is it?" Argh said. "More BB bugs?"

"Nope."

Argh sighed, wiped his eyes.

Hack said, "I'm guessing BB bugs don't eat red jerseys."

On the cantina roof, the Tromatopelman waved his forelegs, as if conducting a symphony of extremely slow musicians. Tiring of that, he rasped his pedipalp against his chelicera, a low, doleful note.

Directly below them, the second Tromatopelman answered.

Hack and Argh conferred in whispers, hoping not to disturb their senior officers' game of Pong.

"We should ask first," Argh said.

"Sudden change of heart, ensign?"

Argh sulked. Hack continued, "Ensign, what do you think Ki Ki will say? C'mon back, boys, strong work? Of course not. He'll tell us to start up the rasper and make contact. Do you really think he'll abandon the mission just because of EEEck?"

"They'll throw us back in the Pen."

"Indeed, but we'll live to tell the tale." Hack sucked on an antenna as he pondered the ensign. Argh seemed unconvinced; his wings trembled anxiously. "If we tell them our plans, they'll recall the lander to the Fex. Then where will we be? Nowhere. We have to act first."

"I don't want to go to jail, Lieutenant. I want to go home. I want to see my wife and kids." Argh reached into the pocket of his jersey and produced a four-by-four color photo. He passed it to Hack, who studied the print. The back was dated.

"A fine clutch of grubs."

"Have you ever seen a more handsome swarm of little wigglers?"

"Never," Hack said. Truthfully, all maggots looked the same to him. He wasn't fond of children, so it was just as well his wife was frigid.

At that moment a question crossed Hack's mind and, typical of his kind, he asked it.

"Ensign, how long did you say you'd been in the Pen?"

"Eight months. Why?"

Hack checked the photo's date again. "Allowed conjugal visits, did they?"

"Of course not. What's your point?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing." He glanced at the waving Tromatopelman, then studied the ground below. He sighed. The problem could not be solved, not without a good pencil, and at least a single sheet of premium white bond. _No spare pencils. No paper,_ Hack thought. We've been led into insanity by savages. And with that, he came to his decision. "Ensign Argh, if you like, you can stay and talk to our fur-assed friend up there. I'm calling down the lander."

"Lieutenant?" Argh waved his foreleg at the cantina, the horizon, the rust-colored bluff. "You never did say what you did to deserve all this."

They could see the lander now, a twinkling shard of red set against a dull yellow sky.

"I used to be Chief Engineer for the science scout _Speck_."

Argh's proboscis unwound into a flaccid ribbon, wet testimony to its owner's shock.

" _Chief Engineer?_ You guys walked on water! What in heaven's name did you do?"

"That's what I'm telling you. We'd docked at Punta R&R to fuel up, and I took a working leave to do some buying for our department. On Punta, you know, they have the biggest Bly's Electronics in the galaxy."

Argh trilled his wings. "Wow!"

"Wow is right. Y'know, it's one thing to say 'buy it online', but there's nothing like being there. I mean, sometimes you don't realize you're out of nylon cable ties until you're right there in Bly's and they're staring you in the face. And you know they have the best price on contraband Coca-Cola and Pringles on the Silk Road. Not to mention the finest pornography culled from all thirty-seven Exotic races."

"Isn't that what Satellite's for?"

"No substitute for hard copy." He'd hid a few zines on the lander, in fact. _For research. Yeah._ "Besides. I do Bly's for the gear, but I stay for the show."

"The show?"

"Sure. The blue bastards run Bly's, and you know how they feel about us. They shoehorn themselves into those environmental skin-suits because they think we carry disease, or smell funny. Imagine, dozens of those uneducated cretins selling integrated circuits to the very same folks who designed them."

"I'll never understand it," Argh said. He lay on his back, two bent forelegs pillowing his head. "We sell tech to them so they can sell it back to us. It's madness."

"It's convenience. Besides, you're forgetting the porn. And the Pringles. Anyway, three weeks earlier, Bly's had darted me a gross of defective 8-input NAND gates, so I brought them in for exchange. They wouldn't exchange them. Tried to give me a gross of dual 4-input NAND gates instead."

"You have to be joking."

"Want to know what the floor supervisor said?" Hack tried his best to imitate a Benevolent's nasal twang. 'Two times four equals eight, sir.'"

"The ignorant goon! What did you do?"

"Ensign, I did what any self-respecting Grith Lyssome would do. I tore open his skin-suit's faceplate and spit on him."

The management charged him with assault. He was tried by an impartial Roon Vissar court ( _impartial, hah! As if those ignorant canines could ever be_ _impartial_ ), convicted and remanded to Ephys, where he languished in the Pen for six months before Lieutenant Commander Brek came to him with an attractive offer: time served, restoration to his previous duties, and a healthy bonus in the bargain.

_It seemed like such a good idea,_ Hack thought as he watched the lander circle the plain, homing in on their signal. A wonderful idea. And any resemblance of the scenario to certain chintzy Hollywood creep shows had, at the time, seemed so very droll.

"She'll study the fine topography," he told Argh. "Find a nice, soft place to land."

"Arrogant bastards," Argh fumed. "I don't see why we have to kowtow to the Benevolents. They need us more than we need them."

"That's not the party line, Ensign. Officially, we exist in a state of mutualism. Symbiosis, if you will. Without the goons, our way of life would collapse. It's thanks to them we have full employment on Ephys, not to mention a nineteen-figure economy."

"So it's all about money."

"That's all it's ever about."

Argh sat up, brushed himself off, then gestured his head towards the cantina, where the Tromatopelman obsessively groomed his fangs. "Tell me, then: how shall we bribe that hairy devil on the roof?"

Landing gears whined from eighty feet above. They watched, both rubbing their forelegs together for luck, as six jointed legs unfolded from the lander's underside.

"With any luck," Hack said, "we won't have to."

There was a brief, queasy moment when Hack thought the ship might land on the cantina. _Now that would make for a provocative first contact,_ Hack thought. But as the lander approached, its destination became all too clear, and Hack's queasy feeling evolved into one of outright nausea.

It had centered itself over the succulent lawn.

"You don't suppose--"Argh began.

The first leg touched solid ground beneath the plants, and held fast; then a second made contact; then a third. The lander's exhaust blew sand and bits of plant matter their way, forcing Argh to turn, using his body to protect his eyes. But Hack had to watch. It was as if he'd been drugged by some evil mastermind, and could do nothing but observe every last horror while remaining fully conscious.

Stop it, fly! How many times must I say it? This is not a horror movie.

Oh.

The fourth leg hit the ground but the lander kept sinking into the oasis of fleshy red-brown leaves. Now all six legs were on the ground, but the lander's sensors perceived that the truly solid stuff was many feet below. And so the craft continued its descent while the legs creaked, strained, and finally screamed: _Snap. Snap. Snap._

"With any luck, Lieutenant?"

Snap.

"It's okay,ensign," Hack said. He barely recognized his own voice. "We don't need her to land again, really. She just needs to take off, right?"

"Right, sir."

They sidled near the crater's edge. With unusual detachment, Hack counted five separate tunnel entrances in the crater's walls--tunnels easily large enough for an adult Tromatopelman. At the crater's bottom, amidst a welter of plant debris, the lander settled in place. Automatically, six banks of cheery red rim lights flicked on, one by one. The hatch opened automatically, and an aluminum ladder descended.

Hack scratched his head. "It's a simple matter of moving from here to there."

"You first," Argh said.

"We go together on the count of three," Hack said, and both Grith Lyssomes nodded.

"One . . . two . . . three."

They stared at one another with 8,192 eyes.

Argh observed, "If you were a Roon Vissar, I could throw a stick down there, and you'd fetch."

"And if this were truly a military operation, I could order you down there."

"True."

" We're being foolish, Argh. Those tunnels look ancient. Haven't been used in years."

Somewhere nearby, they heard the sound of stridulation, barely muted by the crumbling sand.

"You're absolutely right, lieutenant. We are being ridiculous. Let's try it again, on the count of three."

They nodded together, one crisp, decisive nod.

"One . . . two . . . three!"

"This isn't working," Hack said.

"It may not matter," Argh said. "We're running out of options." He gestured with a foreleg. The cantina Tromatopelman had left his post on the roof, and was ambling towards them at a gentle, deliberate crawl.

"I don't deserve this," Argh said, and jumped into the crater.

Suddenly, irrationally, it seemed to Hack that Ensign Argh had just morphed into a double-sized Tromatopelman. The Tromatopelman, a female and evidently the one who had been hiding all of this time, covered Argh's body that fast.

And still the male crawled closer.

"Sir!" Impossibly, it was Argh. Hack strained to see into the dimly lit crater. Amazing! Argh had seized one of the snapped-off landing legs, and was using it even now to stave off the female's advances. "Some help would be appreciated, lieutenant."

Think. Think. A weapon. We have no weapons.

No weapons?

Hack ran to the rasper and dismantled it with one powerful blow from a foreleg. He grabbed the scythe-shaped pendulum-bob, turned, and ran back to the crater. Not a weapon, but it would do some damage. He prepared to leap into the crater . . .

And noted, with a sense of awe and admiration, how the male had closed the remaining thirty yards between them faster than any of Hack's eyes could see. He hadn't blinked. He couldn't. And as the male gathered him up with his forelegs, pulling him upward to those very clean fangs, Hack had time for only one thought.

If only I had a Number Two pencil. A long one. And very sharp.

And then he had time for one scream.

Safe and cozy on board the Fex, Lieutenant Commander Brek-ek-ek-ex and Commander Keesp-ag-ag-ag-uhh (Brek and Ki Ki to their troops) finished watching the tape for the third time. They sat together in uncertain, subdued silence.

"Well," Commander Keesp said at last.

"Yes. Well," Brek said.

"Shall we watch it again?"

"No, sir, I think not. Sir?"

"Yes?"

"What do you suppose he meant at the end, when he screamed, _You're just a fucking movie trope?_ "

"I'm sure I have no idea, Brek." The commander cleared his proboscis, then wiped at the mess with a foreleg. "Well, son, what have we learned from all of this?"

_That our Pong tournament was ill-timed?_ But Brek thought better of saying it, and instead muttered, "That we're not cut out to be adventurers?"

"Quite. So. Where do we stand?"

Brek debated whether this last question was meant figuratively or literally. He decided it was safer to hedge, and asked, "Stand, sir?"

"Indeed."

Ah, great. Well, there's nothing for it. Figurative it is.

"We've lost three more stout fellows," Brek said, "and we've lost the lander, too."

"Yes. And?"

"We know their nanotech skills are better than ours--"

"Indeed," the commander said, pleased to find himself back on solid ground. "That's why we're here, after all!"

"So they must have a keen grasp of solid state physics."

The Commander groomed his abdomen, waiting for Brek to proceed.

"Depending on their skills," Brek said, "they could derive enough information from the lander to figure out space flight. And if they crack the ship's computer, they could find the singularity matrix."

"You're saying we may just have screwed the pooch? Pardon the Humanism."

"I'm saying we've met a race of giant octopods who are technologically advanced; who--with what they learn from the wrecked vessel--may have the wherewithal to grasp space flight and the subtleties of singularity astrogation; and who seem to have an unnatural affinity for our species."

"Huh?"

"They find us yummy, sir."

The Commander rubbed his anal glands pensively. "Then, what should be done, that's the question. What . . . should . . . be . . . done."

Brek recognized this slow cadence. It meant that the Commander needed a brilliant idea, and the Lieutenant Commander's continued livelihood depended on his ability to come up with one. "Uh . . . I have an idea, sir."

"Out with it, son!"

"We should send in the Marines."

"The Marines." The Commander twirled his proboscis speculatively. "Colonel Mike Kirby, you mean?"

"We send in Colonel Kirby, sir. We send in _all_ the Colonel Kirbys."

*

"First Contact" is an excerpt from my unpublished trilogy _, The Correspondent's Daughter._

I do apologize for the cliffhanger: Hack and Argh have apparently become lunch, leaving Keesp and Brek to deal with a catastrophic breach of technology; Brek's natural response is to recruit a squadron of Green Berets. Trust me, it all makes sense.

# Apogon and Demester

" _Apogon and Demester" is another excerpt from_ The Correspondent's Daughter. _The characters in this story are Brakans. All you need to know is that Brakans used to be birds, but evolution transformed their wings into arms with clawed hands. Meet Cree, a bright young chick; Sul, Cree's mother and a propagandist for the ruling coalition; and Tui, Cree's father and a journalist of considerable repute._

Cree squirmed on her wooden perch. Ten minutes into Pre-Scriptural Analysis, boredom had drained her will to live. The teacher, Mrs. Beadle, had that frazzle-feathered look of the very old, like a living, breathing dust-coney, and her voice never once varied from its reedy monotone.

Cree wasn't the only one in the doldrums. Tarik Nebabob nailed her with two spit-balls, and then Erla Empilio passed her a note. Cree unfolded the paper, keeping her eyes on Mrs. Beadle and nodding in response to the teacher's droning words. When the old crow turned to the blackboard to list The Seven Paths to Hell, Cree stole a look at Erla's note. It was a picture of Cree, crudely drawn in crayon, holding a squirming black beetle in her beak. Or at least Cree thought the beetle squirmed; seven black lines of varying lengths poked out from the bug's oval black form.

Cree wondered which were legs, which were antennae, and what had happened to the one missing appendage.

Erla whispered, "Do you get it? Beadle. Bee-tle."

Cree nodded once, just as Mrs. Beadle spun around to face the class.

"You, dear," she said to Cree. "Can you name the seventh Path to Hell?"

No, she couldn't name the seventh Path to Hell, nor could she name any of them. With a sudden, dull ache in her gizzard, she realized she had read today's assignment without learning a bit of it. The words had entered her eyes and flown out the back of her head, never pausing in her brain, not even for an instant.

Now, _that_ was a curious thing.

A dozen little arms waved. That white-beaker Milvin Nubel tried to hit the ceiling with his dirty talons, and even that dummy Tarik Nebabob moaned, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" _What a creep,_ Cree thought. She burned over the spit-balls. The kid's grandfather was some sort of government bigwig, and all the teachers treated him as if he defined clever. Which meant he could probably get away with murder.

"I'm waiting," Mrs. Beadle said.

She hadn't released Cree from her frigid gaze. Cree looked at the board, read Paths One through Six, and thought of the worst thing she could imagine, something that hadn't yet found its way onto the list. "Lying?"

Giggles and twitters from the class; Tarik's moans redoubled.

"No, dear. I'm sorry, although that is a good guess." Mrs. Beadle aimed a mangy arm at Tarik. "Tarik. Can you tell me--"

"Nonconformity!" Tarik hollered.

Nonconformity? What kind of lame answer is that?

"Good, good! Now who can tell me what nonconformity means . . ."

On, and on, and on. Cree looked at the clock. Fifteen minutes gone, twenty-five to go. She folded Erla's note, working as stealthily as she could. She doubled it along the diagonal, made the crease a sharp one, opened it, and folded two corners into the center. She continued to bend, fold, crease, bend backward, open, and fold again, until the form of a long-beaked predatory bird took shape in her claws.

Aikah, engulfer of shadow. You're not a myth, are you, Aikah? You're here with us: deadly, invisible, vengeful.

Twenty minutes to go.

"And who made the watch?" Mrs. Beadle asked.

"The watchmaker!" Milvin Nubel said.

"That's correct, dear, but please wait until I call you. Now, then: who made you?"

Cree watched in horror as Mrs. Beadle's lifeless eyes turned to her.

"You, dear. Who made you?"

_I am Aikah, the engulfer of shadow._ _I shall blend into this perch, disappear from sight, and the class will cry out in amazement._

"Please, child. The watchmaker made the watch; who made you?"

Of course. It was a ridiculously simple question, after all.

"My mom and dad made me," she said.

Mrs. Beadle crunched in disgust. "No, child. Haven't you read your assignment in My First Book of Proverbs? Who . . . made . . . you?"

I know this one. I read it in the library. I couldn't believe it, so I read it three times.

"Mom and Dad made me. They had sex, and six weeks later, Mom laid an egg."

Mrs. Beadle clawed her chest and tried to retch something from the depths of her crop. The class twittered. Tarik Nebabob fired a fresh volley of spit-balls, and one hit Cree in the eye.

"Hey!" she roared, but then Mrs. Beadle stabbed her scaly talon at _Cree_ , not the bratty Tarik. She screamed as if someone were choking her, "Mister! Enra! Ket! 'Soffice! Immediately!"

Behind Cree, Erla, not bothering to whisper, said, "Oooh, you hopped in it now."

Cree left the room feeling glum. _Why is this happening to me?_

"You've always been a lovely, bookish child," Mr. Enraket said. "You and your sweet sister, Nez. Always in the library, your beaks tucked into one paperback or another. Think of the Hagiographa as another good book."

Cree squirmed. _'Good.' That's the hitch._

She had always liked Mr. Enraket. He didn't have a feather on his head because his wife had pecked them all out--that's what Erla said. But he never raised his voice, never made those awful crunching noises adults made when they decided you were naughty or stupid. He had a way of saying, "How are you, Cree?" that made her believe he meant it. And in his office, he had the coolest aquarium, full of brilliantly colored saltwater fish.

That's why she never really minded these trips to the principal's office.

"Let's try this again, okay?" he said. "It's the simplest of catechisms. The watchmaker makes the watch. There must, therefore, be some higher power who made you."

Afternoon light glinted off the louvered window behind him. She saw him only in silhouette. He had stacks of papers on his wooden desk, a genuine quill ink pen, and a book, _The Problem of Pain_ , by C. S. Lewis. She knew that author; he was a human, and he'd written _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ , which she had finished a few weeks ago.

She liked the talking lion in that book, Aslan. Preachy character, but Cree thought he meant well. And besides: there were many clever creatures on the Silk Road, but no talking lions. She gave Lewis points for originality.

Mr. Enraket sighed. "Ki-Ni, dear. Ki-Ni made you."

This made no sense at all, but Mr. Enraket was a nice bird. He would listen to reason.

"Look," she said, "assuming Ki-Ni exists, doesn't he have better things to do than have sex with my mom?"

" _Assuming?_ " Mr. Enraket's beak fell into his hands.

Cree sighed, and stared at the fish tank.

For Cree's mother, it hadn't been a particularly enjoyable morning in the Department of Influence. Her boss, Avren, had been so hung over, she'd had to pull his tail back onto his perch. Then he insisted she table all of her usual work so that she could sit in for him at his meetings. General Osschtuper had nearly asphyxiated her with his cigar smoke, and after that she'd had to smooth the feathers of some Seminary cock upset over a supposed breach of protocol.

Sul was back at her desk, beak poised over a bowl of hot tea, when her phone rang. She didn't recognize the voice.

"Mrs. Pakar? Oh, this is difficult. Mrs. Pakar, it's about your daughter."

"Which daughter? Is she all right? Who is this?"

"Principal Enraket. Cree's fine, Mrs. Pakar. Oh, if only you could come down to my office, and we could talk about this in a civilized manner."

Enraket: yet another cock giving her orders.

"Fine," Sul said, hung up, and gathered her belongings.

The afternoon sun shone through the windows behind Mr. Enraket, forcing Sul to squint at his silhouette. _To heck with that._ She didn't take the proffered perch beside her daughter, but instead hopped over to Mr. Enraket's bookshelves, raked her talons against their leather spines, perused the titles with a show of thoughtfulness, and eventually positioned herself between the principal and the window. Mr. Enraket had to move his perch sideways in order to look back and forth between mother and daughter.

_Now, this is a better tableau._ Sul ignored her daughter and focused all her attention on Mr. Enraket. "Suppose you tell me what this is all about."

Mr. Enraket cleared his throat. "Bowl of tea, perhaps?"

"No, thank you."

He squared up a stack of papers on his desk and scratched the carpet.

"Mrs. Pakar, first let me say that I respect your decision to educate your daughter on biological matters so early in her life, but most of her classmates are still quite--"

"Biological matters? What are you saying?"

"Sex, Mom," Cree said.

"You'll speak when spoken to," Sul snapped, then glared at Mr. Enraket. "My daughter knows nothing of carnality."

"Her comments today would suggest otherwise. In her Pre-Scriptural Analysis class, her teacher asked her an elementary question: who made you? And Cree . . ."

The cock looked like he had a cramp. Sul let him twist for a few breaths before proceeding.

"I understand," she said. "I assure you, I will deal with this at home."

"There's more."

Sul waited. She knew his type: the self-confident petty bureaucrat, so forceful when dealing with underlings, so insecure when speaking with his betters.

"I was hoping not to involve you in this at all," he said, "so I temporarily assumed responsibility for Cree's catechesis. When I explained to her that Ki-Ni made her, she said, and I quote, 'Assuming Ki-Ni exists, doesn't he have better things to do than have sex with my mom?' Isn't that right, dear?"

Cree nodded.

"Assuming, Mrs. Pakar. _Assuming._ "

Sul sagged back against the window. "I see."

"Mrs. Pakar, I've long strived to accommodate your daughter's special needs--"

"Her _what?_ "

"Surely, you realize that Cree is a special needs child."

Sul gaped, then closed her beak with a snap. "Oh. You mean gifted."

He stared down at his desk, shuffled papers, and said, "No, ma'am. I mean faith-impaired."

Sul's head spun. _This isn't happening._

Mr. Enraket gestured to the empty perch beside Cree. Without thinking, Sul hopped over and perched.

"There have been other instances," he said.

Sul looked up.

"Last year," he said, "she expressed her disbelief in Ki-Ni's Annunciation." He opened a cream-colored folder and read from it. "'Sixteen chariots can't just float down from the sky, trumpets blasting. That defies the Law of Gravity.'"

He turned a page, and read from it in a monotone.

"Three months ago, the choir instructor asked her why she'd laughed over the line, 'In Heaven we shall gain our wings.' Cree responded, 'Isn't that an example of de-evolution?'"

Cree snickered. "Sorry," she said. "That line still cracks me up."

Sul shot her a poisoned glance. Then Mr. Enraket turned another page.

"Last week--sorry, ma'am, I'm well aware of your high position in the Nest; I know how difficult this must be--"

"Never mind that. Go on."

"Last week, she questioned the Canonarch's infallibility."

Sul snorted. "Well, that's disputed even amongst his closest Secretaries."

"Yes, I realize, but what Cree said, was, 'So, I'm supposed to believe whatever some drug-addicted old cock says?'"

Cree didn't hear that from me, that's for certain. Tui!

"Ma'am, it would be one thing if your daughter were the only student at this school. We have the other chicks to think of, too. And, well, there have been incidents. Children in your daughter's classes who ask questions. Difficult questions." He began fingering a separate stack of papers. "And Cree tends to support them when they do."

"I understand. Plainly, her father and I will have to have a long talk with the girl."

"I wish it were that simple." He ruffled in frustration. "We did speak with you about this issue before, and I had hoped--"

"You spoke with me?"

"Open house three months ago. Mrs. Beadle spoke to Mr. Pakar."

Tui.

"I'm sorry I have to say this; I really am. I think Cree is a fine child. I believe--I know she has a good heart. But I don't think her needs are being properly addressed by the non-secular education we provide here at Eiyah First Preparatory."

Sul gasped.

"Her consistently unique outlook is a disruptive influence upon the other children. And so I have taken the liberty to discuss her education with Principal Ursokoi at Northern Eiyah Public 32. It's a fine school, attended by the children of a good many University professors. Principal Ursokoi says that with Cree's test scores, not only would they be happy to have her, they could even advance her to the fourth grade . . ."

Mom was madder than usual.

They perched in the parked car, engine idling; they hadn't left the school parking lot. Cree wished Mom would stop rat-tatting her talons against the dashboard, wished she'd yell, wished she'd say something.

"Mom."

Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.

"Mom. It's only 1:40. Nez doesn't get out for another half hour. Can't we go home?"

Mom stared forward with dull, dark eyes.

"No, dear. We're going to stay right here and finish our conversation."

_We're not having a conversation,_ Cree thought, and then, _Public school. Yay!_

No more Morning Prayer. No more choir practice. No more Pre-Scriptural Analysis. She could go to school with her friends from the neighborhood, take the bus like a regular kid, gossip about the same teachers, read the same books. Konni Bulwes had told her about a fourth grade class called Critical Thinking. Konni hated it, but Cree thought it sounded great. And fourth grade--how cool was that? No more boring math review, no more adding column after column of one-digit numbers, no more word problems that began _Tuki has five millet seed cakes and she gives four to Benk_ , no more spelling word lists where every word was one-syllabled, no more art classes where all you ever drew was the Huuran flag.

"Who told you about sex, Cree? Was it Ayin or Dru?"

Cree choked on a laugh.

Mom's head sank forward against the steering column. "It was your father, wasn't it?"

"No, Mom. Yuck!" She laughed, ignoring her mother's glare. "I read about it in the school library."

At that, Mom brightened. She knotted her right hand and punched the dash.

"Now I have that bastard."

Mom said bastard!

"I'm going right back in there. I'll tell him we're going to the Board, to the PTA. We'll tell every last member of the Church that Eiyah Preparatory Academy has sex education books in its library, right in plain sight, where even a third-grader can read them. You'll be back in school tomorrow, and there's nothing that officious little tsaretski can do about it!"

Cree's dreams collapsed with a silent crash.

"Mom, no. I don't want to go to Eiyah Preparatory. I want to go to public school."

"But, but, honey. You've been expelled. Doesn't that bother you?"

"I've been transferred. And no, it doesn't bother me."

To Cree's horror, Mom sobbed. Just one sob, followed by a long, shuddering breath. She trembled all over. It lasted about five seconds, and then Mom was a rock, like usual.

"Is it true that you don't believe?"

"Sure, Mom, I believe."

"In Ki-Ni?"

Lying is the worst thing.

"I believe what I see. I believe what I can figure out for myself."

Mom took another shuddering breath. "Honey, you have to believe in Ki-Ni. Ki-Ni is the single most important thing in life."

"But Mom, Ki-Ni said, 'Do to your neighbor that which he plans for you. That is the whole of the Law; that is life itself.' It's the whole Law, Mom. Isn't that the most important thing?"

Something seemed to break loose inside Mom. She whirled on Cree. "How dare you throw the Lord's words at me. You insolent chick, I will not engage in sophistry with you. You will be silent!"

How dare you yell at me. And how dare you tell me what I have to believe!

Cree boiled inside. She screamed at Mom, but only within the confines of her skull.

I'm going to public school. I'm going to fourth grade.

Mom gripped the steering wheel like she wanted to snap it to pieces.

"You believe in Ki-Ni. I won't hear another word."

"Dad doesn't believe in Ki-Ni."

Cree glanced at her mother from the corner of her eye. Mom didn't shriek, didn't strike her, didn't say a word. The world didn't end.

"I'm taking you home," Mom said after a long silence. "You'll go to your room and stay there."

She released the parking brake, backed out the car, and left the parking lot. Three blocks later, she murmured, "I'll deal with your father."

Tui whistled merrily as he entered the front door. What an amazing day it had been.

Dru, Ayin, and Nez perched in the den, watching cartoons. He gave the kids a silly two-taloned salute, and they looked at him. Good heavens, what did _that_ look mean?

He decided to hop over to the kitchen and give Sul the good news that he was taking the job, but he found an empty kitchen. No Sul, just a spotlessly clean stove and a cold oven.

_So she's in a mood. This news will cheer her up._ He found her in the room, poised on the edge of their sleeping perch, her back rigid. The lights were off.

"I took the position," he said. "Reed agreed to everything I asked for. Everything! Eli's going to provide me with full time staff to check my transmissions against what shows up on Satellite. Not only that, but I'll have a dedicated uplink to the Laroptans. Sul, this thing's tight as a drum. Nothing can go wrong."

She stared straight forward.

"Guess what else? The Arch-pastor has invited you, me, our whole family to a prayer breakfast this Sabbathday. Isn't that wonderful?"

Her head inclined upwards. When she met his eyes, he thought his bowels would liquefy. He remembered a look like that. He'd once done a story on the namboe processing plant south of Propys. The manager gave him a tour of the plant, and even let him take photos of the killing floor, where a leather-smocked fellow with blood-smirched gray feathers dispatched weanlings with a ball-peen hammer.

That fellow had the same look in his eye.

She sniffed and said, "I suppose you think that entitles you to some sort of reward?"

For dinner, Cree's father brought her a bowl of groatmeal with brown sugar and bits of dried yumplash sprinkled on top.

"Dad . . ."

He hugged her, and she hugged him back, hard.

"We'll talk later, Cree. Eat your dinner."

She ate alone, with little appetite. She half expected her sister and brothers to come and tease her, but no one came, no one passed a note under the door. Night fell. She huddled on her perch reading one of her human books until her father opened the door a crack and said, "Lights out, sweetheart. Time for sleep."

He started to close the door, then seemed to think better of it. He came in and hugged her again.

"Dad . . ."

"Later."

He turned out the lights and closed the door. She found her flashlight, held it in her beak, and kept reading.

Time passed. Mom and Dad started arguing. She heard her mother say her name, not once, but several times. She didn't have to tiptoe out into the hall to hear the words; her mother's voice was clear and strident. _Cree said this. You said that. How can I raise my children the right way if you . . ._

You, you, you . . . the way her mom said it, _you_ became such a scary word.

Oh, Dad.

Cree began to cry.

Silence came after what seemed like an eternity, and then she heard a door open and close. Cree hopped to her door, eased it open, and watched Dad carry a sleeping shawl down the hall and into the den. She hopped after him as quietly as she could, opened the door a tiny crack, and peered in at him. He had turned on a light and thrown the shawl over his shoulders, but he didn't look sleepy, only drained. The dark emptiness of his gaze made her heart ache. _We start out full, we become empty._ The words came to her in an oddly grown-up sounding voice. She didn't know their source, and the words scared her, made her want to cry out. Instead, she hopped into the den.

Dad looked up, cocked his head.

"You've been crying," he said, and then she was in his arms, holding him as tightly as she could, sobbing without restraint. He stroked her head and cooed, and eventually she calmed.

"I'm sorry I got you into trouble," she said.

He laughed. "Cree, no matter what you might think, that argument wasn't your fault."

"It was. How couldn't it be?"

"Look, sweetheart, I don't expect you to understand, but I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe. It's your mother's problem if she can't accept that."

So, it was all Mom's fault? As much as Cree liked the idea, she couldn't sense the truth in it. She felt so guilty.

"Why can't I believe what Mom believes? Am I really faith-impaired?"

He laughed again, and seemed to brighten. "I'd be proud of that if I were you."

"But, I don't want to make Mom mad, I don't like it when she gets--"

"Doesn't she make you mad?"

"Yes, but--"

"And wouldn't you rather go to public school?"

"Oh, yes, Dad, yes, with all my heart!"

"Then you're going to make Mom mad. Conflict is inevitable." He smoothed her shoulder feathers and billed her once, softly. "As for belief, would it help, I wonder, if you thought of Ki-Ni, and all the stories about Ki-Ni, as myths?"

She considered it. Myths were just stories. Everyone knew myths were untrue. All except for Aikah.

"Yes," she said. "But that won't be enough for Mom."

"Forget your mother for a moment. I'm trying to find a way for you to see the value in religion. Not just the Church of Ki-Ni, but all religion. There's a lot of religion in the world, Cree, and if you never learn respect for it, if you disregard all of it as lies, then you'll anger more people than just Mom. Not only that, but you'll miss out on a wealth of wisdom, too."

"But if it's only a bunch of myths, what's so good about it?"

He gave her a little hug, then hopped off his perch and went over to the bookshelves. He found an old, oversized book, hardbound, its spine broken and frayed at the ends. She approached and looked at the title: _Pantheoses_.

"The old religion!" she said. "Does Mom know you have this?"

"Your mother never looks at my books. You can borrow this, if you like, but never let her see it. She wouldn't understand, and there's no way you or I could explain it to her."

He leafed through the glossy pages; Cree saw brightly-colored illustrations on every third page, and between each illustration, a new story set in a large, bold typeface. There were no English letters, though, only groups of slashes, scratches, and crosshatches.

"It's the old language," Dad said. "My mother taught it to me, and someday I'll teach it to you. See this one?"

"It's tic-tac-toe!"

"It's a sound." Dad hissed, then crunched. "As in the word _hiss*crunch*cheep_ , which means 'antagonism,' or 'conflict.'" He flipped the pages. "Ah, here we go. Apogon and Demester."

The illustration showed a young bird with brilliant red and blue feathers plunging down from a great height, his feathers stripped away by the rushing wind. He looked like an ordinary young cock, although quite handsome. But instead of arms and hands, he had wings.

"In the old days, Cree, before we had nations--"

"Before we spoke English?"

"Oh, dear, yes. We've only been doing that for the last thirty or so years. Before that, we sung to one another."

"Really? Could you do it, too?"

"No! I'm not that old. Your grandparents, though . . . my mother crooned like an angel, and my father, well, that's why she married him. So she said.

"Anyway, as you know, millions and millions of years ago we had wings. Apogon was a young cock who could fly like no other bird had flown before. He flew spirals within spirals. And, fast? I'll tell you how fast. Where he lived, only the birds with the sharpest eyes could see a spire-shaped rock on the horizon. There was a second rock, like a jutting wing, halfway between them and the horizon. Apogon would race anyone, and he would give the challenger a head start. The challenger could begin from the wing-rock, and they would see who reached the spire first."

"Apogon won every time?"

"Yes, and he became quite boastful. 'I'm the fastest bird in the world. No one can beat me, not even Demester.' Demester was the God of Ill Winds. Apogon said, 'I'll give him the same head start I've given each of you, and He will still lose.' Demester appeared before them in all of his divine glory, and accepted Apogon's challenge."

"Did Demester lose, too?"

Her father closed the book and tapped it with one talon.

"In this version, Apogon lost, and Demester stripped him of his wings as punishment. He became like us. But there's another version. In that one, Apogon wins the race, and Demester strips him of his wings out of anger. Now, both of these stories share the same moral. Can you see what that would be?"

Yes, she could. She remembered it from her catechism. "'Pride goeth before the fall.'"

"Correct. And it's not a bad piece of truth, when you get right down to it. But when you look at the myth in its entirety--when you look at both versions--a deeper, more profound truth emerges. Do you see it?"

She considered both stories. Even in the second version, she could still apply the same bit of nonsense about pride. Really, they were both silly tales. It was pointless, a person not using her abilities to their fullest. She shook her head.

"The truth is this," Dad said. "Don't voluntarily enter into a no-win situation."

_Now_ she saw it.

"A myth captures a bit of wisdom," Dad said, "but not all myths are equally worthwhile. Some myths harbor good wisdom, while some are, well, kind of bad. That's why each of us must decide which myths are worth believing."

"But, how will I know?"

"You'll know it in your heart. You're a good person, so you'll choose only good myths to believe in."

"I trust you, Dad. I'll ask you what I should believe."

"No, honey." He stroked her cheeks, where tears had matted down her feathers. "You're too smart for that, and I may not always be here to guide you."

_What?_ "You're leaving us?"

Dad laughed--a little too hard, she thought.

"Good heavens, no! But it's a simple fact, no one lives forever. That's all I meant to say."

He escorted her back to her room, lifted her onto her perch (unnecessary, but nice, just the same), and billed her good night for the second time.

The door clicked shut, and now she felt even worse than before. All she could think about was a world without Dad.

Moonlight shone through her window, casting tentacled shadows from the old pelarch tree that leaned outside like an invalid. A wind picked up, moaned like a revenant, and the pelarch's stray branches flailed the roof like a dozen chains. For hours she clung to her perch, waiting for an oblivion that never came.

Shadows danced across her ceiling and the revenant howled, whipping its chains.

*

This is not the reader's introduction to Cree. By this point in the story, she has already gotten the better of her siblings and blooded her first Benevolent. If you're suspecting there's more trauma in Cree's future, you'd be right.

# Excerpt from Gator & Shark Save the World

Gator & Shark Save the World _doesn't have it all, but it has everything that matters: badass senior citizens, polygamous doomsday preppers, electromagnetic zombie nazis, the end of the world as we know it, and a teen protagonist brave enough to tie it all together._

ONE: WHEREIN I DEMAND HARD COPIES

Forest and I went round and round about the photographs.

"It's a memoir," I told him. "Memoirs start when you're a tyke. The photos will help me remember."

"People don't want to know all that," he said. "You should go straight to the weird shit."

He sat at the foot of my hospital bed, looking like a farm boy in his jeans and red flannel shirt. Sometime between Cape Grange and now, he'd started wearing his hair in short dreads. He looked good, and I was delighted to see him, even if we did bicker. Of all my visitors, Forest alone made me feel like everything would be okay. No pity in those eyes, only that half-squint, the sideways tug at his cheek like he was trying not to laugh.

There was only one other person I'd rather have sitting with me, but his doctors kept telling him, _You have to take it easy. Conserve your strength._ My grandfather looked--oh, hell. Let's just say I didn't think I could put too many demands on him.

"People need background," I said. Then I had to shut up awhile because the storm pounded the windows, put on a tantrum of lightning and thunder, like Thor himself was mightily crisped. I found out later, folks had already started calling it the Storm with a capital S. Like Noah's Flood, which would surely come next.

When we could talk, Forest poked his thumb toward the ceiling. "Some folks say it's the Beast."

I snorted. "Then it's up to me to explain things. The assassination, the deportations, the weather. The official story makes no sense, so folks are making it up."

"Start your memoir at the election, then."

Forest really didn't want to drive to D.C. I wasn't happy about putting him through it, either, but I needed something real in my hands. "Look, I'm sorry. I know it's not easy traveling in all that wet, but I want my photos."

"Would be easier to get one of the president's staff to scan and email 'em."

I stared him down, then looked at the scar on the wall where he'd unscrewed the plasma screen. We'd come to realize the electromagnetic spectrum held its own unique perils, so I would no sooner open an email attachment than I would keep a television in the same room with me. Forest knew this.

"Point taken," he said, following my gaze.

"It's not over. They're still out there."

"I know."

_Bang, crash._ Our eyes were on the Storm, or what we could see of it through the window. I knew from my bedside clock that it was close to sunset. The sky glowed dirty orange and had been like that for hours, as if the world had stopped turning, as if sunset would never come. Crazy thought, but you know what was really crazy? The fact that it wasn't quite as crazy as it would have been ten days ago.

"I want my photos," I said. "Folks have to understand about Dad and me. And Gator."

He shrugged and I knew I'd won. "How you gonna start it?" he asked.

I made my voice all regal, like Bette Davis in one of those old black-and-whites I'd watched with Gator so long ago.

"I'll say, 'It is I, Kathryn Melissa Buscage, the media's darling, formerly America's first daughter, bane of her father's short sorry existence, and co-savior of the world. I am Kath to my friends, Widget to the Secret Service--may they sauté merrily in hell for that and other atrocities--and forever Shark to my beloved grandfather, Gator. No, no, please, _do_ sit down. Thank you.'"

When we stopped laughing, Forest said, "Well, ain't you Miss Pompous of twenty twenty-five. Just say, 'It is I, the Whore of Babylon.'"

"The press can be so cruel."

Forest came back that evening with the photos. He left them in a box on my bedside table where I could reach them. He's a good friend. The best. We could've been boyfriend-girlfriend in a very different kind of universe.

So now it's morning and I'm lying here watching Alice in Wonderland decals peel off the walls--something about the humidity, I guess. The nurse keeps offering to bring in a TV. She doesn't understand how I can just lie here with nothing to do.

My physical therapist comes at 9:00 AM. I wonder if I'll be able to wiggle my toes today.

TWO: I CAN MAKE FRIENDS

My grandfather takes photos the same way you or I do, but when I was growing up, he preferred using the Brownie box camera his father gave him. Gator bought his film on the Internet and developed it in his own darkroom. I remember the red light bulb that washed out all color, the cold and damp, the rattle of the fan, and the chemical reek which was almost a taste.

Gator's hobby wasn't all that much of an aberration. Some folks participate in Civil War re-enactments, some operate ham radios, some write blogs. Advanced tech is not always better tech. So I guess I could take Forest's advice and have someone digitize these photos, but I have to wonder if they would still be the same. There are ways to change the past. There are ways to distort reality. I've seen it happen.

Here's a good one. I'm three. My head is angled backward to help me balance Gator's black black sunglasses on the bridge of my tiny nose. Look at that smile. This is one blissed kid. And why shouldn't she be blissed? There's Mom's knee, fuzzed out in the background. There's Dad, gesturing at someone with a tumbler of stink-a-drink. And there I am, a happy Shark, having a ball with her gramps' sunglasses. Mom's alive, Dad's a drunk, but at least he's an unambitious drunk.

Here's another. Oh, man, Griff's Skeet and Waffles. I can almost taste the maple syrup. Feed your face and bang out a few hundred rounds--where else can you do that? This time I'm wearing my own black black sunglasses, and I'm using both hands to hold Gator's SIG-Sauer P229e. The glasses are Gator's birthday present to me, and so is the P229e, sort of. We're doing what Gator calls "practice practice." The piece is unloaded, but he's letting me fire at an off-camera target.

That's your kindergarten teacher, he might have said. Oooh, what's she reaching for in her purse? A yummy chocolate bar? No! It's a Smith and Wesson M&P 9c! Boom, you're dead.

Trust no one, Shark.

He talks me through it one step at a time, and when I pull the trigger, he shouts a satisfyingly loud bam!

Even with her sunglasses on, you can tell this kid is concentrating. There is no joy here. This Shark means business. I'm five and Mom's dead. Dad's a U.S. senator, the asshole. But Shark has her Gator.

Oh, God. Look at this one. Not a Brownie photo, not one of Gator's big, darkroom-made glossies, but a cell phone pic shot by one of Dad's aides. It feels cheap in my hands, this thing coughed up from a color printer.

I'm six going on seven, and it must have been, what, early 2016? The scene is a Republican fundraiser, a barbecue hosted by the American Legion. I'm wearing my sunglasses. Back then, I wore them outdoors rain or shine, and would sometimes need to be reminded to take them off indoors. Hey, other kids have security blankets. At least I didn't insist on carrying the P229e.

A woman with a lacy white blouse and red skirt stands beside me, her back to the camera. She's holding out a burger dripping juice and ketchup, nearly pushing it into my face. There you have it: The origin of a lifelong aversion. The photo doesn't show it, but I can't forget her ferocious, unblinking intensity as she says, "What a yummy sandwich! Heavens, what I wouldn't do for such a sandwich. Come on, sweetie, take it, it's de-lish-e-us!" That's when someone took the photo.

I didn't know who she was, why she was nagging me, or why she called a hamburger a sandwich. I wanted to run away but I was afraid to turn my back on her. Amazingly, it was Dad who came to my rescue.

"Give it a rest, Liz," he said. "She ain't votin' for another twelve, thirteen years."

"Dale, honey, you're such a cynic." Though she was talking to Dad, she didn't break eye contact with me, didn't stop waving the burger at my nose. But with Dad's arrival, I could run.

The photo has an odd chromatic aberration, a blue-green aurora arcing over the woman in question. The woman who would, that fall, win the United States presidential election.

When Gator first saw the photo, he said, "Since when do cell phones have light leaks?"

"What's a light leak?"

"Or maybe not a light leak." His voice became oddly formal. Theatrical. "Did you feel it, young Skywalker?"

"What?" I squeaked.

"A great disturbance in the Force!"

He giggled himself silly and wouldn't explain the joke. I walked away, disgusted. The man constantly made references I couldn't understand.

Oh! Here's one of mine, must have been a few years later. The point of view is crazy. Dizzying. Dark bars stripe the foreground, unfocused--grass, maybe. Treetops stab a cirrus-filled sky.

It was the weekend. Dad was on a fact-finding mission in Aruba and Gator had Shark-sitting duties. He was still in the Secret Service, though. When the phone rang that morning, I knew by the look on his face we wouldn't be hitting the matinee for Pixar's _Taxi Driver: The Musical in 3D._

"Assignment, Shark."

"Oh," I said, making it a three-syllable word, ending on a high note.

"Road trip, Upstate New York, someplace northwest of Newburgh."

"That's like an eight-hour drive!"

"Six, but we'll make it in five, piece of cake. We'll get her done, get some dinner--now don't make faces, I know a place does a great black bean burger. And there's an inn off the Interstate, they got hot tubs in the rooms. It's a mini-vacation. Work and play, a real two-fer."

When we got there seven hours later--this campground with cabins and trailers--he left me in the car with nothing but his tablet for entertainment. Told me not to wander off. Booby traps, he said.

I was in the middle of _Harriet the Spy_. Gator's recommendation. "I want you to grow up to be an independent-minded woman," he said. So naturally I wandered the grounds, taking pictures with the tablet's camera. Mostly shots of double-wides, rusted hibachis, and dog poops. I lost track of time, but it was getting close to sunset. I'd just completed my series entitled _Broken Bird Feeders of the American Northeast_ when someone crept up on me. "Hey."

I nearly dropped the tablet. I turned and saw a tall black kid.

He reached for my tablet. "Gimme that. You ain't supposed to be--"

I launched myself at him. Don't know what I did, but we were both on the ground tumbling and grappling for the tablet. I accidentally snapped the photo in question and then did something that made him yelp and say, "Awwww, shit, girl!"

I ran as fast as I could, but I heard him behind me, closing the gap. When I got to Gator's car, the kid came to a sudden stop behind me.

Gator was waiting. He looked annoyed, but not angry. Never angry. Plenty of that from your daddy, he used to say.

"There you are," he said, and we drove off.

"Yeah, there's more going on here," Gator said, as if I'd asked a question. "Ain't done here, not by a long shot."

"We're not going home tomorrow?"

"What? No, of course we're going home tomorrow." He looked over his shoulder at the campground receding behind us. I looked back, too, and saw the boy standing there, shaking his head, eyes smoldering. His chest was heaving from the run, and so was mine.

That was how I met Forest.

"Good people here," Gator said. "We'll have to come back sometime when things aren't so hectic."

Some years later, maybe halfway through Dad's second term as senator, I asked Gator a question.

"Fox says Dad is moderate-leaning. It's always, 'Moderate-leaning Republican Senator Dale Buscage.' What do they mean? He either is a moderate or he isn't, right?"

I was thirteen at the time; the year was 2022. Gator had been retired for three years, sacked from the Secret Service by President Bracken during one of her mad purges. We were at the ranch in Duffy for Dad's Thanksgiving recess. The previous day, I'd had to watch Dad chop the heads off a half dozen turkeys at an NRA picnic. After that, he'd had a town hall meeting at the American Legion, but I was spared that special torture. Gator took me to a Vern & Cotswold for a banana split and root beer float (we would order one of each and swap halfway through). But I wasn't spared dinner with Dad, asbestos chicken at First Baptist. I ate both of our sides of carrots and peas, and filled up on bread.

Next morning my grandfather and I were back at the ranch, practicing our tae kwon do forms in the bamboo-floored den Gator had converted to a dojo. Wall of window in front of us, couple acres of lawn one story down, then a white picket fence, a line of poplars, Division Road, and finally cattle grazing just close enough to see but not close enough to smell, provided the wind didn't turn. Rancho de Photo Op, Gator used to say.

I asked my question, and Gator launched a hellacious front-kick. Amazing. The man worked out in soft body armor and scarcely broke a sweat. He said, "Means he's good at pandering to the center while keeping the base happy."

Tinkle of ice behind us--Dad, scotch rocks in one hand, morning newspaper in the other. A newspaper! Dad, the drunken Luddite, couldn't manage to get his news off the Internet like the rest of us.

What would I do without my funny pages, darlin'?

Ever hear of web comics, Dad?

"Pandering, hell," he said, eyes all daggers at Gator.

Yeah, we both knew he was back there. It was part of our long-running game to crisp Dad's ass. I know why I did it, but I could only guess at Gator's reasons.

"Means I'm positioned for twenty twenty-four, Kathryn." He was the only one left who called me that. Kathryn, or Kathy, or Kate, or--this one's really vile--Katydid. "Moderates're the only Republicans folks'll vote for anymore after that debacle with Liz Bracken."

"Means he won't support the death penalty for abortionists," Gator muttered, talking over Dad. Kick. "Means he thinks gays may still deserve a few rights in the courtroom."

"Watch what you say round my little girl," Dad said. "She don't know nothin' about no gay abortionists."

Gator humphed. I got a chill up my spine and faltered on my front snap kick. I turned to face Dad, who slouched against the door jamb, staring into his drink.

"Wait," I said. "Lizette Bracken. _President_ Bracken?"

"Bitch damn near kilt the party."

"You don't come up for reelection until 'twenty-five."

He tipped his drink toward me and nodded. "Smart girl."

"So you're thinking about the presidency in twenty twenty-four?"

"Country's hungry for some Buscage."

Swaying a bit, he jiggled his scotch rocks and made his way down the hall. In those days, Dad had the look of a fatter man who had discovered Jesus, Son of Atkins, or a good bariatric surgeon. In Dad's case it was all three. He liked to sneak up on us during our workouts, ogle us with the dismay of a missionary watching the funeral practices of a heathen race. He'd say, Can't fight the fat, Katydid. It's in your genes. Then he'd explain his jeans/genes pun and laugh like he'd never used that one before.

Don't worry, Sweet Stuff, I'll pay for a gastric girdle when the time comes.

The man missed the whole point of tae kwon do. He saw two people moving and grunting. The man missed the point about a lot of things, but I suspect you know that already. I know, don't speak ill of the dead. But some people.

Anyway, there he went, swaying and swaggering, having just dropped the P-bomb on me and Gator. I stood there, numb. It was the first I'd heard of a presidential run.

Gator had stopped working through his form. He stood at my side, breathing evenly. We heard Dad's bedroom door open and close.

"I can't believe it," I said.

"He always wanted to get traded up to the majors," Gator said.

"I thought the Senate was the majors."

"Not to Dale." He shook his head the fewest number of degrees necessary for a head shake to qualify as a head shake. "That boy will always be a disappointment to me."

I should explain that Gator is not Dad's father. He's Dad's father-in-law. His real name is Lester Earnley, so you can see why he would prefer _Gator_. He's Lester Earnley, father to Lisa Earnley, my mother, whom Dad left during her second round of chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Vomiting women with crooked wigs are not photogenic on the campaign trail, after all.

Dad left her, and then he divorced her (which Dad said was just a formality anyway, since they hadn't been husband and wife for a good long time), and then her health insurance cut her off, and then she ran out of money, and then she died.

To his credit, Dad claimed he didn't kill her. "I'd have given her the money," he told me more than once. "All she had to do was ask." You'd think Dad of all people would understand pride.

Damn chemo was killin' her anyway, Katydarlin.

Dad claimed he didn't leave her during chemo. In my father's never-to-be-published biography, _Buscage: The Man, the Myth_ , by Maria Antonia Borges (the woman Dad left Mom for), a copy of which I stole from Dad's email, he claims he left Mom "some four years before we had Kathryn," which Gator said shouldn't confuse me. "People are complicated," he said.

Dad got his start as a personal injury lawyer, but in 2022 you wouldn't have known that from his Wikipolitics entry. I'm sure he must have employed a small army of volunteers to scrub the wiki clean of all evidence of McBuscage. As much as I'd like to take credit for _McBuscage_ , it's Gator's. Dad was McBuscage long before I was born. At county fairs, Wal-Mart parking lots, pet supply warehouses and anywhere else he could find people, he would distribute flat refrigerator magnets adorned with his phone number and his unsmiling three-piece-suitedness and his motto: _Dale Buscage, Your Accident Attorney. I Fight For YOU!_ At the bottom of the magnet were the words: _Over $175,000,000 Recovered._

Recovered, as if the money generated by Dad's ambulance-harrying exploits had been salvaged from waterlogged Spanish galleons.

Gator used to keep a collection of these magnets. They were material evidence of the falsity of Wikipolitics's claim that Dad cut his teeth as a public defender. The collection was chronological: _Over $10,000,000 Recovered. Over $85,000,000 Recovered. Over $175,000,000 Recovered. Over $400,000,000 Recovered._ He made his money from folks who didn't realize hot coffee would be, uh, hot, and folks who stayed awake nights finding new uses for their ladders.

Then one day, a friend and client--a drunk-driver for whom Dad had successfully sued a manufacturer of flavored vodkas--told him: _You could be in the State House. I could put you there._

He was an heir to the McKilbey Laser Tattoo Removal fortune and he had the money to make things happen. He liked Dad. They'd been to the same university, though at different times. They were drinking buddies. So this dude bribed the right people, and Dad, who had never voted in his life, was born again as a lifetime registered Republican who had never missed an election. You won't find that in Wikipolitics, either.

After Mom died, why did Dad suffer Gator's presence? You'd think Gator would've reminded Dad of his shame vis-a-vis my mother. But Dad had no shame, had even less ability to control my grandfather, and in any case no one gets between Shark and Gator.

Gator used to claim Dad kept him around because he was the ideal drinking partner. "He buys all my drinks and I give him nothing but shit," Gator once said. "I appeal to his sense of self-loathing."

After Dad's big Thanksgiving Day reveal in Duffy, we flew back to D.C. My life threatened to become a mess of lunches, dinners, and speaking engagements. He ruined my winter break with ribbon-cutting ceremonies and the occasional stacked-audience town hall extravaganza. Life was hell. One day, I took Gator's advice and showed up at a Daughters of the American Revolution pancake breakfast wearing retro black eye shadow, and burst into streaky histrionic tears when a purple-haired Daughter put two strips of bacon on my plate.

"It's a pig, not a portion, damn it!" I shrieked, and threw my plate to the floor.

Dad looked mortified, then resolute. By that afternoon, he had me in a psychiatrist's office. Dr. Albion, this heavyset old guy who smelled like eggs and picked his nose when he thought I wasn't looking, spent most of the interview taking a detailed sexual history and explaining to me that the newest generation of antidepressants had a decreased risk of suicide, but an increased risk of weight gain and hair loss.

"Small price to pay for an even keel," he concluded.

I left the crumpled prescription in the front lobby's waste can and told Dad that Dr. Albion had recommended an even stricter vegan diet and exercise. Vigorous daily exercise.

It worried me, the possibility that I'd overplayed my hand with the strict vegan diet thing, but Dad never even blinked. "Glad to hear it," he said, and his nose stayed buried in the funny pages. So I bought some new running shoes with Dad's money, and pounded pavement.

This worked for a while. But one Sunday when I thought Dad was going to a G Street prayer breakfast, I ducked out early and ran the Mall until I was certain he must have left. When I came home, he was waiting for me with the Cadillac and a carry-on bag. I eyed the bag with suspicion. My mind raced.

I knew Gator was off doing mature-person things with his ex-Secret Service pals, lawn bowling or vlogging or raving--who knew what these sixty-somethings got up to in their spare time? I wondered if Dad knew that Gator was out of the picture. He must have. He had that crafty grin, the one he wore when he thought he was holding all the cards.

"We never get much time together, Katydid. It's either school or you're at target practice with your granddaddy or you're running yourself ragged. It's this grueling campaign. A real family-destroyer."

"Easy solution," I said. "You haven't even announced your candidacy. Call it quits and no one will be any the wiser."

Even his scowl looked like something he'd pulled from a bag of well-practiced expressions.

"Not how it works. Not how it works at all. This political business, if you're not reaching for the stars, you're already six feet under. But that's not what--"

"Strom Thurmond. Robert Byrd."

"Like I'd want to spend the rest of my life doing this? Now, honey--"

"'Course not. Legislating is hard work. Not half as hard as being the Vanguard of Democracy, but still. How are things looking for that morning show on Fox? Probably be a cinch after a near-miss presidential run."

"You're cynical, what you are."

"We've been through this before, Dad. I'm a realist. You call realism 'cynicism' whenever reality is disagreeable."

I could hear the man's teeth grind. He had no answer to my last comment, so I anticipated a change in tactics. But I really thought I had won.

"Anyway," he said, "what else were you gonna do today? I know you finished your homework. You always finish your homework first thing."

"So?"

"So it's not like you have any real friends. Might as well keep your poor father company."

I sulked.

"Lester's off with his friends. And anyway, ain't healthy, girl in the prime of her youth spending so much time with an old man. You should have a boy. I already had three girls by your age. Oh, they were lovely. Lovely."

"Too much information," I said, but I'd lost my spirit. I felt weakened, gut-shot. He'd won the damned argument.

On and on. It makes me so tired to think about it now. And I suppose you think it saddens me that I'll never have the chance to argue with Dad again. That I treasure even those memories, now that he's gone.

Um, not really. Mostly, I'm relieved.

"Press been harshing your daddy about your mama," Gator explained later. "He needs you by his side. It shuts up certain people."

So I figured. Anyway, we went on a Sunday picnic that happened to include a ninety-minute trip in the Cessna, barbecued ribs that looked dry and chewy (not that I tasted them), and a few hundred Southern Baptists.

He never left my side, kept his hand in mine or hugged me or gave me occasional cute little forehead kisses, fawned for the Baptists, fawned for the cameras, fawned on me more than he had the whole rest of my childhood put together.

This had to stop.

I wasn't really spending all that much time with Gator. Dad exaggerated. Sure, we did breakfast together all the time. Gator slept (or didn't sleep) at odd hours and would sometimes show up before sunrise to whisk me off to some hole-in-the-wall waffle house.

"But it's only five-thirty," I'd whine, and he'd say, "Doesn't matter. Gotta get there early to case the joint. Only a slacker eats breakfast after eight."

But on many occasions, I kept to myself. One Saturday some weeks after that Baptist picnic, Gator went paint-balling with his buddies, and he asked me along. I begged it off. We'd done it once about a year earlier and I'd had a blast until I realized they were letting me win. Bunch of gentlemen.

The night before, I'd finished writing the weekly prayer for ninth grade English, then skimmed my reading for Early Christian Philosophers until I fell asleep, my drool making a wet mess of Anselm of Canterbury's Ontological Argument. I woke up, put on some sweats, did bathroom stuff, then ran around the block until I saw the Cadillac peel away. I showered, made myself a peach smoothie, finished my Algebra-Trig problem set. Thought about working on my project for Biology, but it was too damned depressing.

Surely there was something else I could do with the day. The Smithsonian had a new Creation Science exhibit, which would jibe well with that dreaded Biology project. Or I could cross the Southeast Freeway blindfolded, which would be about as much fun.

Not like you have any real friends.

I'd thought about it, of course, usually in the context of, _If I make up some friends, how long before Dad figures it out?_ I didn't put it past him to have someone tail me. Mind you, I could have had friends if my father had put me in a normal school. But G Street Academy of the Word it had to be. _Part of my bona fides,_ Dad explained. I'd been there since seventh grade.

If I had friends my age, what would we be doing right now? Surround-skyping. Raiding our fathers' bars for gin and vermouth so we could blow bile-laced martinis out our noses. Malling.

Now there was a thought. And I knew just the place.

Hanson's Sphere: No ordinary mall, but a Wonder of the Modern World. So people said. A testimony to the indomitable American spirit, blah yadda yadda blah blah. Erected lightning-fast in twenty months, at a cost of 23.7 jillion dollars. Interior cavity so huge that on particularly humid Virginia days, condensation dripped from the arching rafters like a spring shower. And so far unvisited by yours truly.

I had to admit the idea gave me the shivers. Near-misses creep me. But hey, I'm not superstitious; it's crazy to think a place would want to kill you, right? Something like thirty thousand people per day overcame their dread of terrorism and radiation exposure to shop there. Sweet Jesus, the risk was part of the attraction: consistently in the top 10 of ClothesMonkey's best-selling tees was their _Grandma and Grandpa took me to Hanson's Sphere and all I got was this lousy tumor._

The place technically was Hanson's Corner Sphere, which makes as much geometrical sense as Hanson's Corner Center--almost as if one ludicrous name had to be replaced by another to maintain balance in the universe. Five hundred plus stores, sixty-two restaurants and fast food eateries, one amusement park, three arcades, one petting zoo, a five-story aquarium, a branch outlet of my gym and two other chain gyms besides, two luxury hotels and one not-so-luxury hotel. People came here as if it were Disneyworld. People came here and never even visited the Capitol, which I didn't understand. Even if you're apolitical, D.C. is still a pretty neat place.

It was one of those days when the weather couldn't make up its mind if it was late winter or early spring. I took the Orange Line to the West Falls Church Metro station, then grabbed a taxi and asked the cabbie to circle the place at a distance. Twenty, thirty dollars of driving. The words formed in my mouth: Take me home. Amazing, how different my life would have been had I said those three words.

"I'll get out here," I said, and hoofed it.

Yes, Dad would have preferred me to call a pool driver for this adventure, but I wasn't one to take advantage of senatorial perks at the taxpayer's expense. It never occurred to me I might be an attractive kidnapping target, but back then, I wasn't. No more than any other congressional brat, of which the DC area had scads.

You have to walk to the Sphere if you want to appreciate it. Once you're in the parking lot, it's nothing but flying buttresses and oh, hey, look, they got the patio tables at Gordon Biersch to form Southern Tasmania. They have helicopter tours for folks who want the full Sphere experience, but folks like me showing up on a whim aren't about to get tickets.

I was walking down Watson, appreciating the sheer oppressive scale of the Sphere (ah, Brazil, you are one big motherfucker), when I passed a Hookah Hut and heard a braying horse, a clucking chicken, and an oinking pig. Oh Holy Jesus on a roller coaster, not them. They sat around an outside table sharing a pipe, blissed and giggly and grinning at me through a fog of apple-scented smoke. I wanted to ask if their parents had signed the tobacco consent forms or if they'd faked the signatures, but I knew I'd sound like a stick.

"Well, looka there. Gal reminds me of the highway between Fort Worth and Dallas. No curves."

That was Selena Goldsmith, fellow ninth grader, horse-brayer, whose weirdly corrupted Southern accent made me laugh even if she was making fun of me. Long black hair, dark eyes, dark skin, all-around delightfully Semitic good looks. Get her alone and she could be remotely friendly. I envied her lush hair, and her robustness, for lack of a better word; whenever Dad harshed me for my wiriness ("Need to get some meat on them bones, girl. Eat some cheesecake, will you?"), I thought of Selena. I envied the ease with which she could smile or erupt into laughter without warning, so different from dirge-worthy me. Her dad represented Borough Park, Brooklyn, an intensely Republican Hasidic enclave. She was the only Jewish student at G Street Academy. Teachers would politely elicit her religious opinions. Like, "Selena, as a Chosen Person, what can you tell us about the miracle of Chanukah?"

"I say, I say look at me when I'm talkin' to you. Nice girl, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice."

Julia Wynne, ringleader of the three, and highest ranking since her father, Butch Wynne, was Speaker of the House of Representatives. Strawberry-blond, all forehead and chin, hidden piercings she would reveal to her friends in the locker room after phys ed. Skeet shooter, flautist, and recent pig-impersonator. She wore new black jeans and a white tee featuring a red-lipsticked cartoon girl, busty-trampy and strawberry-blond like Julia. The caption read, _When the Rapture comes, you can have my crotchless panties._

She intimidated me because she was popular and brash. She was the kind of girl who could give you a nickname that would stick with you to the grave.

"I hope your innards turn to outards and your ears go visey-versey!" Destiny said, the third girl.

"What the hell was that?" Julia asked.

"Yosemite Sam," Destiny said. "See?" She flicked her Surround's cloud to public so we could see her web-feed, but she left it oriented on herself. Everything looked backward.

Julia rolled her eyes. Selena slapped her forehead, all high drama. "Goddamn it, we were doing Foghorn Leghorn."

And there's Destiny in a nutshell. If the other two razzed me with Scarlet O'Hara-isms, Destiny would do a Blanche DuBois. The trio's weakest link, as my grandfather would later say. Destiny Hope Blank was the daughter of Sebastian Blank, an Exxon lobbyist. I'd met her during my brief, disastrous career in Band--Destiny played clarinet, and I tortured cats and dogs with my wicked string bass riffs. Destiny was elfin. Adorable. Boys who spoke to her never looked higher than her breasts, which seemed fated for greatness. She would absorb their wisecracks with faux ignorance, but I often wondered about the faux part. Destiny had hair the color of a Norwegian rat. That she routinely brought home straight As seemed proof that grading at G Street was negotiable, but the bidding began well above the pocketbooks of your average congressperson.

I don't know why they used to harsh me over my accent. I don't even have much of an accent, not like Dad. I shun _ain't_ and _y'all_ and I don't drop terminal consonants unless I'm regally crisped. Anyway, I'd like to say that a dozen snappy comebacks came to mind, but in truth, I had only one thought.

Hey, look. Instant friends.

"I'm going to the Sphere," I said. "You guys eat yet? My treat."

We lunched at Crème-Cream. If you're going to do the Sphere experience, you might as well make a pilgrimage to where it all went down. Crème-Cream was the centerpiece of a dessert court that included a Mrs. Fields, a Sees Candywiches, a Thirty-one Flavors of Popcorn, and a new Elvis-themed place that would dip your cones first in butterscotch glaze, then in any of two dozen different kinds of jimmies. Past the food court we could watch the Sputnik-o-Fun zip by, children howling, and beyond that cruised huge dull-eyed groupers, reef sharks, and manta rays in their massive tubular aquarium.

Selena polished off her chocolate pastry cream-filled cruller in three bites, leaving behind a walnut-sized hunk that she cupped between her hands. She opened her palms a crack and peeked inside to see if it glowed. I decided that if I had to hang out with the Capitol Hill Gang, it wouldn't be so bad as long as Selena was around.

"How often do you suppose people call in bomb threats?" Destiny asked. "You know, just to be dicks."

Julia triggered her Surround and tapped the space before her eyes with a sugar-dusted fingernail.

"Here it is. _Harper's_ , last March. Number of bomb threats received by all public institutions in the State of New York, per month: one point five. Number of bomb threats received at Hanson's Corner Sphere, per month: five point nine."

"Hmm. Something like seventy per year," I said. "That's a lot of dicks."

"All depends on what you're used to," Julia said, winking at me. The three of them chortled. She fiddled with her Surround, copped another Southern belle accent. "If that girl had as many dicks sticking out of her as she's had stuck in her, she'd look like a porcupine."

Selena had her Surround up in record time. Her contribution: "Girl looks like she's had a country mile of dick in her."

Destiny struggled with her Surround. "Um, she really likes dick," she said, not even bothering with the accent.

"C'mon, you guys," I said. I held up my left hand, displayed the silver band around my ring finger. "See? I still wear my seventh grade chastity pledge. I'm a good girl."

"Easy to abstain when you don't have a boyfriend," Julia said.

"So says the girl who would be the first to die in a horror movie," Selena said. "Anyway, I'm betting mall security ignores those bomb threats. What could make it past the metal detectors and Geiger counters?"

"Biological agents for one." I grabbed another cruller and talked through the pastry cream. "A clever terrorist would come back here. Like, 'I'll show you we're still relevant!' Look, President Walsh made a big fat deal about rebuilding Hanson's on Ground Zero, remember? And he built a big fat globe to hit us over the head with the 'one world' symbolism. Want the U.S. out of the U.N.? Fuck you! Here's a big fat globe. It's like he's asking for another attack."

"So you buy the Administration's story." Julia collapsed her Surround and gave me a curious half-grin. She made air quotes. "Domestic terrorism."

"Sure," I said. "The dirty bomb had the same isotopic signature as a domestic cache in Nevada. They had a record of the break-in. Christ, Julia, Revere's Riders claimed responsibility."

"Convenient, don't you think?" Julia licked the sugar off her nails, catlike. "Walsh probably started thinking about his second term on his first day in office. One month later this happens." She silently mouthed the word _boom_. "Remember how quick the Administration was to put the blame on President Bracken's incompetence?"

"You sound like Fox's flavor of the month," I said.

"And you sound like that public radio moonbeam, Sean Penn. I'm only saying it was convenient. Worst terrorist act on U.S. soil since 9/11 and our Democratic Administration pins it on a right-wing militia."

"Because they did it."

"Children!" Selena said. She knitted her brow at me. "Honestly, Kath, you'd think your father wasn't running for president. Don't you want him to win?"

I wasn't going to touch that. "Who says he's running?"

Destiny tsked. "Well, duh."

Ouch. Accused of denseness by Destiny Blank.

"Hey," Selena said, "where were you all on The Day? I was with my family in Rhode Island."

From this interruption, I gathered that Selena was the group's peacemaker.

"Turkey coma," Destiny said. "I have grandparents in Lexington. Um, Kentucky. I missed the first day back at school because the airports were still on blackout."

"Me, too," Julia said. "I was stuck in Akron at the family manse. Dad was able to jet back when the news came, but he wouldn't take me. How about you?"

I squeaked, "Me?"

"Yes, you," Julia said. "Gang member for a day. Cough it up."

I wondered if they knew, but how could they? This was my story, after all. Not what you'd call common knowledge.

"I almost died here."

Selena nearly choked on her cruller. "You were here?"

"I didn't say that. But I was supposed to be here. T minus two days, my grandfather tells me his girlfriend Gina is gonna camp out by the Apple store. Remember? That's when they first released the Surround. My grandfather thought it might be fun for all three of us to camp out. He said he would buy me a Surround. It would be my Christmas present. And besides, it would be fun. People were bringing tents, sleeping bags--it was crazy. You remember how it was. It was like The Event.

"But my father wouldn't hear of it. Said that while he usually trusted my grandfather to watch over me, the After Thanksgiving Day crowds would be too crazy. You gotta understand, my grandfather is ex-Secret Service. Got fired one of those times President Bracken channeled Caligula. So what I mean is, he's an awesome bodyguard. My father didn't need to be so over-protective. We had this huge fight, he forbade me, blah yadda yadda blah blah. I told him to go fuck himself. Gator--my grandfather--he said, 'Don't talk to your daddy that way even if he is dead wrong.' I ran off to pout, and next morning my father gave me a Surround, a full day before the release. I have no idea how he got one."

"Wow," Destiny said. "So, like, your dad saved your life."

"For which I was grudgingly grateful, until the fourth or fifth time he brought it up. Almost always it was in the context of my poor judgment, or my grandfather's poor judgment, or 'Father Knows Best so you should shut up and do as I say.' Trust me, it gets old real fast and gratitude has a limited shelf life."

"Wow," Destiny said again, and they were all quiet for a while, perhaps thinking about Kevin Devaney and Ruth Ann Moore, two 7th graders we knew who had died in the Crème-Cream dirty bombing. _We have all lost someone dear,_ isn't that what President Walsh said at the memorial ceremony? G Street Academy lost five kids, three of them from congressional families.

"Wait a second," Selena said. "What about your grandfather and his girlfriend?"

I didn't trust myself to talk. I forced it out.

"My grandfather took me out to dinner and a show." A vegan Chinese place near Georgetown, where I ordered my favorite dish: crispy-fried sweet-and-sour walnuts. The show afterward was _A Christmas Carol_ , with Will Smith as Scrooge. All as consolation for not being at The Event. "And, Gina, well. You know."

Poor Gina. Poor Gator.

"Kathryn, if you're not too terribly busy with that wild social calendar of yours, I got a National Press Club luncheon this Saturday. Gonna be lobster, honey. You know how much you love Maine lobster."

He could never seem to remember my dietary predilections. I'd given up trying.

"Can't, Dad. We've got a prayer due in English next Monday and you know how Christ-challenged Selena can be."

"You could see your little girlfriend Sunday. Problem solved. I need you, honey."

"Sorry. Meeting with Julia and Destiny on Sunday to film our Spanish video. That's gonna take all fucking day."

"Language, baby girl."

"Anyway you don't need me, you need a date. What's Maria Antonia Borges doing?" I loved using the woman's full name. I put lots of dramatic effort into it. "You know how much the press loves Maria Antonia Borges."

"Goddamn paparazzi crucify me every time they catch us in public."

"Revel in it, Dad. Announce your engagement. You know you want to. And you'll put an end to those appalling _Beltway's Most Eligible Bachelor_ stories."

"Well, that's just . . . just the opposite, that is. I don't want to give those pricks a story about Maria, I want to shut 'em up!"

"Oooooh. You want to shut them up about Maria Antonia Borges." I waited for him to nod or say yes, but all he did was frown. "Bring a boy instead." Then I sang the titular line from Bonnie Raitt's "Something to Talk About," a song which still got radio airplay hourly back in Duffy.

"Dammit Kathryn, other legislators have family who support them, not grind 'em down like Brillo underwear."

"But I _am_ helping you. Admiral Wynne's smoking a brisket for Sunday night and I'm invited. Think how much his endorsement would help you in the Ohio primary."

"And I'm to believe you'll be singing my praise, that it?"

"Man asks, I'll tell him about all your good qualities."

He opened his mouth, then thought better of whatever it was he was about to say. His frown deepened and he slunk off, shaking his head and muttering, scotch rocks jiggling all the way.

I decided it was good to have friends.

THREE: DAD JUMPS THE SHARK

A hush settled upon us when He entered the debate hall--a "respectful" or "appalled" silence depending on your political religion. The machine that kept him alive swaddled him in metal, made him look like a young boy's fantasy of a killer robot: brushed titanium chassis, rows of yellow and green LEDs. The head alone defied the Transformers resemblance, betrayed the weakness of the flesh. His hairless scalp, forehead, and jowls had been given the cosmetic brush of health, but the slackness remained. The eyes looked upward at the nimbus of his Surround, but at this distance we couldn't tell if they flitted in the expected manner. To me they looked like fish eyes. And no amount of makeup could conceal the line of drool on his chin--his highest chin--glinting under the stage lights.

"He's so brave," Julia's step-mom said. She had entered the Wynnes' family room silently, as if someone had rolled her in on a dolly.

"Shut it, Kitty," said Julia's dad, Butch Wynne, whom nearly everyone called the admiral.

She shared my name, Julia's step-mom. I wondered if the admiral ever called her Katydid. She was closer in age to me and Julia than she was to the admiral. Mrs. Wynne had waist-length blond hair, large blue eyes, and an expression just like His. Absent. If she took offense at the admiral's remark, she didn't show it.

We were watching the first Republican Primary debate on the Wynnes' plasma wall. I could have attended the debate in person, or I could have had the Capitol Hill Gang over to the townhouse, where we'd have drunk Dad's booze and smoked his pot at our leisure. But Admiral Wynne had a plasma wall and, more importantly, a direct feed from the St. Louis Veteran's Memorial Auditorium. The rest of the country would see the three-minute-delayed version--even the live audience, seated in their replica auditorium about 120 miles away. The three-minute-delayed version would contain only such gaffes as the Republican National Committee permitted the public to see.

Which is how we heard His opening remarks, but the rest of you didn't.

Fox's man of the hour gave the introduction, but I tuned him out. I was too busy trying to determine what was wrong with Mrs. Wynne's eyes. Nevertheless, I picked up _fully recovered from His third stroke_ and _miraculous Surround Voice technology_. The camera cut to the audience's standing ovation; the rest of the country would see a seamless pan, and would never doubt that He and the audience were in the same room. Then He cleared His throat in a remarkably lifelike manner and said, "Kill. Me."

They were croaks, not words. It was easy to imagine He'd said something else. Most stunning of all, he'd said it in His own voice, not the Surround Voice. And perhaps He realized how frog-like He sounded, how easy it would be for the announcer to attribute some alternate interpretation to the two noises. So he cleared the rattle from his throat and spoke again. This time, there was no mistaking it: "Kill me. Then do. Yourselves. Y'fuckers."

"I knew this would be a total balls-up," the admiral said. "Didn't I say so, Jul?"

"Sure did, Pop," Julia said. She adored her dad, hated her step-mom. It was all very predictable. "You said, 'Put Him out to pasture and anoint some other mouthpiece.'"

Since the admiral shared my opinion of Him, I hazarded an observation. "Ever notice how we never see live footage of Him anymore? Not since the second stroke. Just His voice on the radio."

Mrs. Wynne was transfixed by the plasma wall. Her lower lip trembled. "There's some mistake. There has to be."

Selena and I exchanged looks. Destiny munched popcorn and Julia gave a loud, "Shhh." Something that sounded like Him was introducing the seven Republican nominees, and Julia wanted to hear it.

"Go upstairs then, hon," the admiral told his wife. "Watch it in the bedroom. You'll get the saccharinized version. Not a single mistake."

Amazingly, Kathryn Wynne did just that. She nodded, then turned painfully, like she'd been kicked in the ribs. She left as silently as she'd entered.

"I told her she should watch upstairs but she never listens," the admiral said. "Most people, you know, just like the saying goes. They can't handle the truth. Not like you girls, not like you at all. You're the future of America, every single one of you."

After that first outburst, there were no more dire pronouncements from Himself. He made his introductions, laid down the ground rules, and asked questions with the same bullying vitriol He'd possessed as a much younger man. Were His eyes really darting about, pulling from his word-cloud so that the software could reconstitute His famous, pulpit-pounding oratory skills? I doubted it. We'd all heard His first sentence.

In any case, the camera never peered close enough to allow us a glimpse of His eyes. His eyes, which we'd been told were the only things left He could move.

The admiral cornered me during the post-debate analysis--we call them postmortems. I had no stomach for it, so I volunteered to get more popcorn, plus another Diet Coke for Destiny and Julia. I had a can in both hands and the bowl resting on my forearms when the admiral snuck up and surprised me.

To my credit, I didn't drop either soda.

"Maid'll get that," he said while I swept popcorn back into the bowl with my fingers. I ignored him. One, I didn't want to look like total spume to my new friends, and two, I had on my running shoes and didn't want to get kernels stuck in my soles.

Above me, I heard him say, "Your father did well tonight."

Here I must confess to having had a small, a _very_ small, a _nano_ crush on the man. He had this stage presence--tall, with strong cheekbones and chin, blue eyes, an absolutely squirmy set of eyebrows. He looked like he'd stepped right out of an old black-and-white movie. I appreciated that he spoke to me as an equal, and that at times he made me feel like I was the only person in the room. I suppose I should have been severely shivered by Butch Wynne, especially since his wife had less than ten years on me. I should have been thinking _predator_ , not _sperminator_. But the man gave me the vapors.

"You could help," I said. Unsurprisingly, the Speaker of the House was unwilling to get down on his knees for a little popcorn-picking. So I added, "You really thought he did well? Because with every _ain't gonna_ , my soul died a little."

"That's authenticity, Kathryn." He tapped his finger against his temple. My God, was he suggesting Dad's folksiness was clever? "Don't be so hard on the man. We all do it."

"You don't understand. He talks that way at home, too."

"I guess I don't understand. If that's the way he talks at home--"

"He's magna cum laude from Duke. Graduated seventh in his class at Stanford Law School. He doesn't have to say _ain't gonna_."

He clucked his tongue. I finished my cleaning, rose, and upended the bowl of popcorn into the sink.

"Maybe it's just too difficult, switching back and forth," he said. "Or, maybe he's a lunatic."

I let that one go. Started up another bag in the microwave.

"Aw, don't sulk," he said, smiling at me in a way I didn't especially like. "You never struck me as a naïve girl. Don't make me doubt my judgment."

_You said it yourself,_ I thought. _Dad's a lunatic. And don't you think I might like to have a father who's not acting for at least a few minutes a day?_ But I kept silent, and the admiral moved on.

"Anyway, that father of yours has a tough row to hoe. Smart money's on Joe Tripp, and after that General Holloway. People love actors, especially those action-adventure types. And the General, well, people eat up a war hero. And it's a plus he didn't piss his pants tonight."

"That we know."

He nodded. "That we know. So he and Joe will get all the attention, you wait and see. Tell your father he needs a little fireworks. Being solid on the debates, not looking like a loop-de-loop, well, that worked in Lizette Bracken's day. But it's not 'sixteen anymore, know what I mean?"

"Yes, sir." (And why was he telling me this, anyway? Did he really think I had my father's ear?)

He finished his drink and washed out the tumbler. He'd been sipping cranberry juice on ice. I never saw the man touch alcohol.

"Dale will get his chance, you'll see. He's a smart one." He faked a Southern twang. "All them _ain't gonnas_ , don't pay them no mind. Them _ain't gonnas_ gonna land him in that big White House, you jes' wait. He'll have his place in the sun all right."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"I know. It was written all over you tonight." He was talking like an Ohioan again. "Tell him to stop yapping about America's damaged infrastructure. Yes, yes, we all hate rolling brown-outs, and yes, the country's power grid is shit, but that kind of talk isn't going to capture the electorate's imagination. Especially not the Republican electorate. Hellfire, for a few minutes I thought I was listening to a Democrat. "Tell him to grab a little limelight, Kathryn. Tell him. So when opportunity knocks, he'll be the first to answer the door. Anyway. Guess I should head upstairs and make peace with _my_ Kathryn."

"Is that what you call it?"

He grinned. "You say g'night to my girls, y'hear?"

I did what he asked. I passed on his g'night to the rest of the Capitol Hill Gang. But I didn't give my father Butch Wynne's advice.

He'd already figured it out for himself.

Unless you are a monomaniacal Buscage Family junkie (and as for you assholes, I know your usernames by heart--stop spamming me, please), you probably don't remember much about Dad's May 26, 2023 press conference, other than some vague notion of what he said and the media shitstorm it created. As for the opening of his presser--his oh, God help me, confession--you probably don't remember anything at all. None of that appeared on the news. You could have recovered summaries and even unexpurgated transcripts from a variety of web sources, but I'm probably the only one who bothered to find them. Because I had to read it, corroborate it with my memory. Because I couldn't believe he'd said that. I mean, I must have turned beet red standing by his side, and my tears were not tears of sorrow (as suggested by the few reporters who noticed) but tears of mortification. I could have died.

Yes, I am a drama queen. This is not news.

Perhaps you're wondering why I was even there. True enough, I'd had a ready-made excuse: A date. An actual date. Some friend of a friend of Destiny's older brother Mitch, a senior from one of the more secular Georgetown high schools who had seen me sitting with Destiny and the rest of my crowd at a varsity football game. I don't remember his name--sorry, whoever you are--and I confess (there, Dad, now you've got me doing it) that I only agreed to the date to cover myself for a Friday night. Julia and the rest were going to glam up for a karaoke videobar, and I couldn't see myself singing backup for a girl-band. Not when it required me to wear nothing but a torn halter top and thong underwear.

I had my excuse ready and waiting, but Dad disarmed me almost at once.

"It's like this, Kathy." He used Mom's name for me. "This may be the most important press conference of my life. I have something important to say--to the nation, but mostly to you."

"I'm right here, Dad."

"Some things a man's gotta say in public. It's about me, it's about you, it's about this election, and the people in it, and how it affects us all so very very deeply. I know you haven't been happy with me running. I know that."

"Dad, you're not going to--" _Drop out?_

He shushed me with a hand wave. "You'll see. Trust me, you'll be happy you came."

Lying bastard.

It wasn't a huge crowd. He'd only attracted every major TV and Internet news service as well as the few remaining newspapers; I didn't see anyone from the Southwest Business Journal, and the Anchorage Daily News was conspicuously absent as well. He held it on the Capitol steps and did the presidential thing, perching himself behind a black walnut podium, framing himself with an American flag on either side. Dad had good handlers.

A couple of professionals in a motorhome fussed with my dress and made up my face. After they finished, I didn't even know me. Then they positioned me next to Dad. I was flustered by all the attention; I couldn't remember getting from the Winnebago to the dais. He beamed at me and, since I had convinced myself he was going to announce his withdrawal, I beamed right back at him. Flashes flashed. Those were the "after" photos you saw on the net and in the news, because in the true "after" shots, I was hardly photogenic.

Dad welcomed everyone and said he hoped they'd all indulge him just a smidge 'cuz he had some opening remarks. Then he blathered on a bit about the state of the nation, the state of the world, and how now, more than ever, it was critical that the Leader of the Free World be a man of impeccable character.

_Really, Dad?_ I thought. _You're going to admit to being peccable?_

He had a firm two-handed grip on the podium as if it might get away.

"Sadly, since Man's Fall from Grace, none of us are perfect." Is perfect, Dad. Is. "That's what the Bible tells us and I can tell you right now that it's as true for me as it is for my honorable opponents. You deserve to know all about us. How else you gonna choose? And so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna tell you everything about me, all the dirt. I want you to know what rumors are true so you'll know the rest are lies.

"First, some of you maybe heard I like my drink. Well, I do. But I never touched a drop when I was on duty, I never once drove when I was even part tipsy, I never let it get between me and my family or me and my constituents. I know when to work and I know when to play, and like a lot of you, I work hard and play harder. Is it true I could whup all my opponents in beer pong? Well I don't know, but consider this a challenge, boys!"

Polite laughter from the assembled crowd.

"No, it's not my drinking that shames me."

I had a moment's prescience, and my gut knotted itself. Despite my schooling, I'm not a praying girl, but I prayed he wouldn't go there.

"My, my second wife. Lisa. Lisa Earnley."

He went there. Of course he went there. I found myself wondering if Gator were watching this on his little 36-inch plasma TV, and whether that screen would survive this presser.

"The mother of my daughter. The mother of my daughter. I didn't fight for that relationship. It started to rot like a summer peach and I let it. By the time she was diagnosed with cancer, we were worlds apart. You all know how I finally left her when she was ill . . . but that's not what shames me."

He put a good hitch into his voice. I gave it a 9.7.

"We weren't man and wife by then, hadn't been for a good long time. Weren't even living in the same city. I was in love with the author, Maria Borges and, well, the guys here all know that love makes you stupid. I wanted to see more of Miss Borges, but we weren't about to sin. Y'all know how much my faith means to me. So I thought, the only upright thing to do is to divorce Lisa first.

"Call it mean, call it stupid, call it evil what I done. I'm sorry for it. God knows I'm sorry for it. But the real pity is what I done, or didn't do, to the marriage in the first place. Letting it rot like that. Not fighting for it. Not working at it. And for that I am truly, deeply sorry. I am ashamed before the world, and I want to ask my beloved daughter Kathryn for her forgiveness. I know how much it hurt you, sweetheart, the way I treated your mother. If you can forgive me, maybe the rest of them can, too."

Well, what was I supposed to do? I'd have looked churlish if I'd told him what I really thought. And, okay, maybe I wanted to believe this was a sincere apology. So I nodded, we hugged, and that was the other photo many of you saw from Dad's May 26 presser.

The camera flashes slowed. People began raising hands, yelling questions. Presser things.

"No, please," Dad said. "I got more to say."

He went back to grabbing the podium like he was riding a Segway, and waited until the reporters were silent.

"There you are," he said. "I've come clean. And now I appeal to my honorable opponents to do the same."

Yup, just when I thought it couldn't get worse. Thought-beams of _No, Dad, no!_ went unheard. If Dad were tweaked for Surround I could have messaged him, but Dad's technotardity was unblemished. He didn't even like using a smart phone.

"I have knowledge, ladies and gentlemen of the press, terrible knowledge. Now, it's not my place to name names, but I happen to know that two of my opponents have had multiple extramarital affairs, and one of 'em has his name in a certain madam's little black book, and no one would accuse him of bein' a missionary, if you know what I mean."

I felt sick. The world started to look blocky, the colors surreal, like I had fallen into a thirty-year-old computer game. My dinner had taken a U-turn at my small intestine and was hurrying the hell up my throat.

Dad pulled a McCarthy.

"Three of my opponents have profited from insider trading and one has a serious gambling addiction, owes a six-figure sum to a man you wouldn't want to meet in no dark alley. Another got a DUI fixed through his daddy's connections. Most peculiar of all, one had a number of homosexual dalliances in his youth. Search me out, all of you, you won't find no such skeleton in my closet--though as a young boy, my adoration of President Ronald Reagan verged on a, what do you call it, a 'man crush.'"

Snickering laughter from certain members of the press, but it sounded tinny and fake, like a laugh track. And I was stepping backward, away from Dad, feeling for a seat that wasn't there, and bodies were all around me and faces looked down on me and my back was on the cold, cold floor.

I went down like a sack of drowned kittens. And in so doing, I did my father one final service for the evening: I got him out of answering any of the media's questions.

The postmortems, and there would be many, focused on either (A) Dale Buscage's "daring gambit" or (B) the identities of the people on Dad's list of shame. No one mentioned me. No one mentioned the long-dead Senator Joseph McCarthy. "Americans have no history," Gator once said.

Gator's was the only post-mortem I cared about.

When I got home, he was waiting at the door. He smirked at Dad, shaking his head slowly. Said, "I'm taking your daughter," and Dad shrugged. If Gator were taking me away for good, would he still shrug like that? I doubted it. I was a valuable commodity.

"Get in the car," Gator said.

I got in. Part of me wanted to curl up in bed, but I knew I would never sleep. And I think Gator knew it, too.

Whenever we were in DC, we used a dojo near Georgetown University, a converted brownstone owned and operated by one of Gator's friends from his time in the Navy SEALs. We headed there now. It didn't take a detective to figure this out, since he'd put our gear on the back seat.

"You doing okay?" he asked after a few minutes of silent driving. He kept his eyes dead forward.

"Did you watch that?"

"I did."

"He's not going to get away with it."

"He will."

I fumed all the way to the dojo. I was crisped because I knew he was right. He was always right.

When we got to the dojo, he handed me my gear. "Meet me in the back room, come out fighting, and don't even think about going easy on me." Then he disappeared into the office to pay his respects to Brad Kim, his SEAL buddy.

When I came out of the dressing room, he had on all his protective gear.

"Someone told me you kick like a girl," he said.

Despite his drumbeat of nasty taunts, I pulled my kicks and punches. I don't care how much gear you're wearing, some of these blows hurt. I didn't want to give him premature senility or a subdural hematoma or something.

"Harder," he said, pinching his brows together, beckoning me with his hand.

"No."

"Harder, goddamn it."

"No."

"Pretend I'm--who was that boy you were supposed to have gone out with tonight? Pretend I'm him, and I've just tried stealing second base."

"I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Then pretend I'm a mugger, someone who chose the wrong woman to mess with. He snuck up on you and--"

Well, that did it. I didn't see a mugger. You know who I saw. At some point I began swapping four-letter words for the usual shouts, no doubt violating at least a few of my tae kwon do precepts, but Gator kept encouraging me. So I kicked and punched until I was sore, and before long I was saying, "Why, goddamn it, why!"

He didn't answer, just kept on being my punching bag. But when I shouted, "Stupid. Idiot," he stopped me.

"No, Kathryn. Not stupid. Unprincipled. And brilliant."

I couldn't look him in the eye. _Brilliant?_ I thought. _Really? You're supposed to be on my side!_ "Clearly, I should have taken it easier on your head."

He put a hand on my shoulder. The other lifted my chin so I had to look at him. "Point number one. What the base likes more than anything else is ruthlessness, capisce?" There was mischief in the man's eyes. "And here they are, staring a possible two-term Democratic presidency in the face. What they don't want is a replay of two thousand twelve. They need someone who can take it to Walsh, bloody him up a bit. They'll forgive your daddy's moderate leanings if they think he's the man for the job."

I growled.

"Point number two. The others might not know it yet, but what Dale did will separate the wheat from the chaff."

"God."

"What?"

"On the ride home with Dad, when I was giving him the silent treatment? He said, 'All I done was separate the sheep from the goats. You'll see.'"

"Exactly."

"Yeah, but how?"

"Because the smart ones will know what they need to do. The dumb ones will let this crush them. They'll threaten lawsuits, they'll issue denials." He eased himself down--he likes to play old person every so often--and patted the tatami beside him. "They'll do everything but come clean. And I'm guessing Dale doesn't think Joey Tripp's one of the smart ones."

I flopped into a half-lotus. "What about the General?"

"Holloway? Holloway can't come clean. He's the gay one."

How Gator knows these things, I do not know.

"Point number three. He may not even realize there's a point number three, but he will soon enough. You ever see the movie _Jaws_?"

"I am not discussing porn with my grandfather."

"Smart ass. It was a shark movie. Robert Shaw, great actor. Plays a sea captain, right? And he tells these two greenhorns about the _Indianapolis_ , a cruiser torpedoed by the Japanese in World War II. Tells them about the survivors floating in the water, waiting to be rescued, getting picked off by sharks.

"So I want you to imagine that your daddy and the rest of 'em, they're survivors from a wrecked ship, like the _Indianapolis_. They're out there in the cold, floating in their life preservers, and they see sharks out there, dorsal fins cutting the water, circling closer. Sniffing things out . . . not really sure yet. By some stroke of good fortune an aircraft flies by, sees the survivors. And by some stroke of bad fortune it's a tiny thing, a two-seat chopper. Drops a rope ladder. Whoever makes it to that rope ladder first, well, he's gonna survive, right? No telling about the others.

"Now your daddy, he sees a few of the others are closer to the rope than he is, so what's he do? Takes his pocket knife, slices his palm. Bloodies the water. Sharks go crazy, make their move. My question to you is, does your daddy have any advantage over the others?"

I saw it. Of course I saw it. "Sure. For a few seconds, he knows what's coming and the rest don't."

Gator pulled off his head gear. "Best person to take advantage of chaos is the one who starts it in the first place."

That's all the postmortem I ever got from him. Afterward, I was so busy wondering how Dad had gotten dirt on the other candidates, it never occurred to me to wonder how Gator had known about my almost-date. I'd never once mentioned it.

***

About the Author

Doug Hoffman lives in Bakersfield with his wife, son, cats, snakes, and tarantulas. He wrote his first story at age five on a sheet of typing paper, but couldn't close the deal with his next-door neighbor. Aside from writing, he enjoys eating, cooking, eating what he cooks, and for variety, baking. His novel, Gator & Shark Save the World, is available for the Kindle at Amazon.com.

Connect with Doug online at:

His blog, Balls and Walnuts, http://ballsandwalnuts.com

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/doug.hoffman2

Twitter, https://twitter.com/dshoffman

Goodreads, http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7067439.Doug_Hoffman
