of daily life? Many of the largest roads were tollways. Oxygen was un-metered, but paid for by a monthly fee to the only real civic agency the Heinleiners tolerated: the Oxygen Board. Electricity was so cheap it was free. Just hook a line into the main. And here's the real secret of Mr. Smith's success, the reason a fairly unlikable man like him was held in such high esteem in the community. He didn't charge for the null-field jig-saw network that hermetically sealed Heinlein Town off from the rest of Luna--that had made their way of life possible. If you wanted to homestead a new area of Delambre, you first rented a tunneling machine from the people who found, repaired, and maintained them. When you had your tunnel, you installed the tanks, solar panels, and heaters of the ALU's every hundred meters, then you went to Mr. Smith for the null-field generators. He handed them out free. He had every right to charge for them, of course, and nary a Heinleiner would have complained. But just so you don't think he was a goddamcommunist, I should point out that while he gave away the units, he didn't give away the science. The first thing he told you when he handed you a generator was, "You fuck with this, you go boom." Years ago somebody hadn't believed him, had tried to open one up and see what made the pretty music, and sort of fell inside the generator. There was a witness, who swore the fellow was quickly spit back out--and how he ever fell into a device no bigger than a football was a source of wonder in itself--but when he came out, he was inverted, sort of like a dirty sock. He actually lived for a little while, and they put him in the public square of Virginia City as a demonstration of the fruits of hubris. So there you have the economic, technical, and behavioral forces that shaped the little hamlet of Virginia City, as surely as rivers, harbors, railroads and climate shaped cities of Old Earth. Since no pictures of the place have yet been allowed out by the residents, since I've gathered that, to most people, "Heinlein Town" conjures thoughts of either troglodyte caverns dripping slime and infested with bats or of some superslick, super-efficient techno-wonderland, I thought I should set the record straight. To visualize the public square in Virginia City, think of a brighter, cleaner version of Robinson Park in Bedrock. On a smaller scale. There was the same curving roof, the same stingy acre of grass and trees in the center, and the same jumble of packing crates stacked higgledypiggledy around the green acre. Both of them just grew that way--Robinson Park in spite of the law, Virginia City because of the lack of it. In both places squatters appropriated discarded shipping containers, cut windows and doors, and hung their hats in them. There and in Bedrock the residents didn't give a hoot for stacking the damn thing warehouse-fashion, in neat, squared-up rows. The result was sort of like a pueblo mud dwelling, but not nearly so orderly, with long crates spanning empty space or jutting out crazily, ladders leaning everywhere. There the resemblance ended. Inside the Bedrock hovels you'd be lucky to find a burlap rug and spare pair of socks; the Heinleiner modules were gaily painted and furnished, with here a window box full of geraniums and there a rooftop pigeon pen. The lawn in Virginia City was golfgreen trim and trash free. Bedrockers tended to stack themselves twenty or thirty deep, until whole impromptu skyscrapers toppled. None of the Virginia City dwellings were more than six crates from the floor. The square was the hub of commerce in Delambre, with more shops and cottage industry than anywhere else. I usually went there first on my weekend visits because it was a good place to meet people, and because my peripatetic guides and shameless mooches, Hansel, Gretel, and Libby, were sure to pass through on a Saturday morning and see if they could hit up good ol' Hildy for a Double-fudge 'n' Rum Raisin Banana Split at Aunt Hazel's Ice Cream Emporium and While-U-Wait Surgery Shoppe. On the day in question, the day of the Big Glitch, I had parked my by-now quite considerable tuchis in one of the canvas chairs set out on the public walk at that establishment. I nursed a cup of coffee. There would be plenty of ice cream to eat when the children arrived, and I had no particular taste for it. I'd made worse sacrifices in pursuit of a story. Each of the four tables at Hazel's had a canvas umbrella sprouting from the center, very useful for keeping off the rain and the sun. I scanned the skies, looking for signs of a cloudburst. Nope, looked like another day of curved metal roofs and suspended arc-lights. You can't beat the weather inside an abandoned fuel tank. I looked out over the square. In the center was a statue, a bit larger than life-size, of a cat, sitting on a low stone plinth. I had no idea what that was all about. The only other item of civic works visible was a lot less obscure. It was a gallows, sitting off to one side of the square. I'd been told it had only been used once. I was glad to hear the event had not been wellattended. Some aspects of Heinleinism were easier to like than others. "What the hell are you doing here, Hildy?" I heard myself say. Someone at a neighboring table looked up, then back down at her sundae. So the pregnant lady was muttering to herself; so what? It's a free planet. From beneath the table I heard a familiar wet smacking sound, looked down, saw Winston had lifted one bleary eye to see if food was coming. I nudged him with my toe and he sprawled sybaritically on his back, inviting more intimacy than I had any intention of giving. When no more attention came, he went to sleep in that position. "Let's look this situation over," I said. This time neither Winston nor the lover of hot fudge looked up, but I decided to continue my monologue internally, and it went something like this: What with umpty-ump suicide attempts, Hildy, it's been what you might call a bad year. You greeted the appearance of the Silver Girl with the loud hosannas of a Lost Soul who has Seen The Light. You brought her to ground, using fine journalistic instincts honed by more years than you care to remember--helped by the fact that she wasn't exactly trying to stay hidden. And--yea verily!--she was what you'd hoped she'd be: the key to a place where people were not content to coast along, year to year, in the little puddle of light and heat known as the Solar System, evicted from our home planet, cozened by a grand Fairy Godfather of our own creation who made life easier for us than it had ever been in the history of the species, and who was capable of things few of us knew or cared about. Let me hear you say amen! Amen! So then . . . so then . . . Once you've got the story a certain postreportoral depression always sets in. You have a smoke, pull on your shoes, go home. You start looking for the next story. You don't try to live in the story. And why not? Because covering any story, whether it be the Flacks and Silvio or V.M. Smith and his merry band, just showed you more people, and I was beginning to fear that my problem was simply that I'd had it with people. I'd set out looking for a sign, and what I'd found was a story. The Angel Moroni materialized out of good old flash powder, and was held up with wires. The burning bush smelled of kerosene. Ezekiel's wheel, flashing across the sky? Look closely. Is that bits of pie crust on it, or what? How can you say that, Hildy? I protested. (And the lady with the sundae got up and moved to another table, so maybe the monologue wasn't as interior as I had hoped. Maybe it was about to get positively Shakespearean and I would stand up on my chair and commit a soliloquy. To be or not to be!) After all (I went on, more calmly), he's building a starship. Well . . . yeah. And his daughter is building pigs with wings, and maybe they'll both fly, but my money was on needing protection from falling pigshit before I held an interstellar boarding pass in my hand. Yeah, but . . . well, they're resisting in here. They don't kow-tow to the CC. Not two weeks ago you were moved almost to tears to be accepted among them. Now we'll do something about the CC, you thought. Sure. One of these days. Two things had come clear to me once the fuzzyheaded camaraderie had worn off and my cynicism reasserted itself. One was that the Heinleiners were as capable of lollygagging procrastination as anyone else. Aladdin had admitted to me that the resistance was mostly a passive thing, keeping the CC out rather than bearding him in his lair, mostly because no one had much of a clue as to how to go about the latter. So they all figured they'd take the fight to him . . . when they felt like it. Meantime, they did what we all did about insurmountable problems: they didn't think about it. The second thing I realized was that, if the CC wanted to be in Heinlein Town, he would be in Heinlein Town. I wasn't privy to all their secrets. I didn't know anything of the machinations that had brought the MacDonald-clone to Minamata, nor much of anything else about just how hard the CC was trying to penetrate the little Heinleiner enclave. But even such as me could tell it would be easy to get a spy in here. Hell, Liz had visited the previous week-end, with me, and had been admitted solely on the strength of her reputation as a person of known Heinleiner tendencies. Some sorts of checks were run, I'm sure, but I would bet anything the CC could get around them if he wanted to infiltrate a spy. No, the CC was surely curious about these people, and no doubt frustrated, but the CC was a strange being. Whatever cryogenic turmoil was currently animating his massive brain was and probably would remain a mystery to me. It was clear that things were going wrong, or he'd never have been able to over-ride his programming and do the things he'd done to me. But it was equally clear that most of his programming was still intact, or he'd simply have kicked down the front door of this place and marched everyone off for trial. Having said all that, why the disillusion, Hildy? Two reasons. Unreasonable expectations: in spite of all good sense, I had hoped these people would be somehow better than other people. They weren't. They just had different ideas. And two, I didn't fit. They didn't need reporters in here. Gossip sufficed. Teaching was taken very seriously; no dilettantes need apply. The only other thing I was interested in was building a starship, and I'd be about as useful as a kewpie with a slide rule. "Three reasons," I said. "You're depressed, too." "Don't be," Libby said. "I'm here." I looked up and saw him sit down after first carefully placing a dish oozing with chocolate, caramel, and melting ice cream on the table in front of him. He reached down and scratched Winston's head. The dog licked his nose, sniffed, and went back to sleep, ice cream being one of the few foodstuffs he had little interest in. Libby grinned at me. "Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," he said. "No problem. Where's H & G?" "They said they'd be along later. Liz is back, though." I saw her approaching across the village green. She had a bottle in one hand. The Heinleiners made their own booze, naturally, and Liz had professed to like it on her earlier visit. Probably that little dab of kerosene they added for flavor. "Can't stay, folks, can't stay, gotta run," she said, just as if I'd urged her to stick around. She produced a folding cup from her gunbelt and poured a shot of pure Virginia City Bonded, tossed it down. It wasn't the first of the day. That's right, I said gunbelt. Liz had taken to Heinlein Town from the first moment I brought her in, because it was the only place outside of the movie studios where she worked that she could wear a gun. But in here she could load it with real bullets. She currently sported a matched pair of Colt .45's, with pearl handles. "I was hoping we could go do some shooting," Libby said. "Not today, sweetie. I just dropped by to get a bottle, and retrieve my dog. Next weekend, I promise. But you buy the lead." "Sure." "Has he been a good dog?" Liz cooed, crouching down and scratching his back, almost toppling over in the process. She was probably talking to Winston, but I told her he'd been good, anyway. She didn't seem to hear. Libby leaned a little closer to me and looked at me with concern. "Are you really feeling depressed?" he asked. He put his hand on mine. All I really needed at that point in my life was another case of puppy love, but that's just what had happened. At the rate he was going, pretty soon he'd be humping my leg, like Winston. For pity sake, Hildy, give it a rest. "Just a little blue," I said, putting on a smile for him. "How come?" "Wondering where my life is going." He looked blankly at me. I'd seen the same expression on Brenda's face when I said something incomprehensible to one who sees nothing but endless, unlimited vistas stretching ahead. Charitably, I didn't kick him. Instead, I removed my hand from under his, patted his hand, and finally noticed the disturbance going on under the table. "Problems, Liz?" I asked. "I think he wants to stay here." She had attached a leash to his collar and was tugging on it, but he had planted his forepaws and dug in. Forget mules; if you want a metaphor for stubbornness, you need look no farther than the English Bulldog. "You could pick him up," Libby suggested. "If I had no further use for my face," she agreed. "Also arms, legs, and ass. Winston's slow to anger, but he's worth seeing when he gets there." She stood, hands on hips in frustration, and her dog rolled over on his back and went to sleep again. "Damn, Hildy, he surely must like you." I thought what he liked was hunting live prey-horses and cows, mostly, though recently a kewpie had gone missing. But I didn't mention that. Not for Libby's tender ears. "It's okay, Liz," I said. "He's not much trouble. I'll just keep him this weekend and drop him by your place on my way home." "Well, sure, but . . . I mean I'd planned to . . ." She groped around a little more, then poured herself another drink and made it vanish. "Right," she said. "See you later, Hildy." She slapped my shoulder in passing, then took off across the green. "What was that all about?" Libby asked. "You never know with Liz." "Is she really the Queen of England?" "Yep. And I am the ruler of the Queen's navee!" He got that blank look, field-tested and honed to perfection by Brenda, then shrugged and applied himself to demolishing the melting mess in front of him. I guess Gilbert and Sullivan was too much even for a Heinleiner youth. "Well . . ." he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, "she sure can shoot, I've gotta say that." "I wouldn't get into a fistfight with her either, if I was you." "But she drinks too much." "Amen to that. I'd hate to have to pay her liver-replacement tab." He leaned back in his chair, looking well satisfied with life. "So. You taking me back to Texas this Sunday evening?" In a weak moment I'd promised to show all three children where I lived. Hansel and Gretel seemed to have forgotten about it, but not Libby. I'd have taken him, but I was pretty sure I'd spend most of my time fighting him off, and I just wasn't up to it. "Afraid not. I've got too many test papers to grade. All this traveling to and from Delambre's gotten me far behind in my teaching duties." He tried not to show his disappointment. "Next time," I told him. "Sure," he said. "Then what do you want to do today?" "I really don't know, Libby. I've seen the stardrive, and I didn't understand it. I've seen the farm, and Minamata, and I've seen the spider people." I'd seen even more wonders than that, some of them unmentioned here because of promises I made, others for reasons of security, and most because they simply weren't that interesting. Even a community of wild-eyed genius experimenters is going to lay some eggs. "What do you think we should do?" He thought it over. "There's a baseball game over in Strangeland in about an hour." I laughed. "Sure," I said. "I haven't watched one in years." "You can watch if you want," he said. "I meant, we sort of choose up sides, you know, depending on how many people show up . . ." "A pick-up game. I thought you meant, like--" "No, we don't have--" "--the Heinleiner Tanstaafl's against the King City--" "--that many people in here." "Forgive me. I'm still a big-city girl, I guess. You need an umpire?" I smacked my bloated belly. "I brought my own pads." He grinned, opened his mouth, and said "We could everybody freeze, and nobody will get hurt." At least that's what it sounded like to me, for a split second, before the synapses sorted themselves out and I saw the last seven words had come from a tall, bulky party in an alarming but effective costume, holding a rifle in one hand and a bullhorn in the other. Once I spotted him, I quickly saw about a dozen others like him and the same number of King City police, moving across the square in a ragged skirmish line. The cops had drawn handguns, something seldom seen on Luna. The others had big projectile weapons or hand-held lasers. "What the hell are they?" Libby asked. We'd both stood up, like most of the other people I could see. "I'd guess they were soldiers," I said. "But that's crazy. Luna doesn't have an army." "Looks like we got one when we weren't looking." And quite a bunch they were, too. The KC cops were equally men and women, the "soldiers" were all male, and all large. They wore black: jumpsuits, equipment belts, huge ornate crash helmets with tinted visors, boots. The belts were hung with things that might have been hand grenades, ammunition clips, or high-tech pencil sharpeners, for all I could tell. It later turned out they were mostly props. The costumes had been rented from a film studio, since the non-existent Army of Luna had nothing to offer in the way of super-macho display. They came in our general direction. When they encountered people they pushed them to the floor and the cops started patting them down for weapons, and slipping on handcuffs. The soldiers kept on moving, swinging the muzzles of their weapons this way and that, looking quite pleased with themselves, all to the booming accompaniment of more orders from the bullhorn. "What should we do, Hildy?" Libby asked, his voice shaking. "I think it's best if we do what they say," I said, quietly, patting his shoulder to settle him down. "Don't worry, I know a good lawyer." "Are they going to arrest us?" "Looks like it." A cop and a soldier marched up to us and the soldier looked at a datapad in his hand, then at my face. "Are you Maria Cabrini, also known as Hildegarde Johnson?" "I'm Hildy Johnson." "Cuff her," he told the cop. He turned away as the policewoman started toward me, and as Libby moved to put himself between me and the cop. "You keep your hands off her," Libby said, and the soldier pivoted easily and brought up the butt of his gun and smashed it into the side of Libby's face. I could hear his jaw shatter. He fell to the ground, totally limp. As I stared down at him, Winston waddled out from under the table and sniffed his face. The cop was saying something angry to the soldier, but I was too stunned to hear what it was. "Just do it," the soldier snarled at her, and I started to kneel beside Libby but the cop grabbed my arm and pulled me up. She snapped one cuff over my left wrist, still looking at the retreating back of the soldier. "He can't get away with that," she said, more to herself than to me. She reached for my other hand and it finally sunk in that this was more than a normal arrest situation, that things were out of joint, and that maybe I ought to resist, because if a big ape could just club a young boy senseless something was going on here that I didn't understand. So I yanked my right hand away and started to run but she was way ahead of me, twisting my left hand hard until I ended up bent over the table with her behind me, pressing my face into the remains of Libby's sundae. I kept fighting to keep my right hand free and she jerked me upright by my hair, and she screamed, and let go of me. They tell me Winston came off the ground like a squat rocket, that great vise of a jaw open wide, and clamped it shut on her forearm, breaking her grip on me and knocking her to the ground. I fell over myself, and landed on my butt, from which position I watched in horrified fascination as Winston made every effort to tear the limb from its socket. I hope I never see anything like that again. Winston couldn't have massed a seventh as much as the policewoman, but he jerked her around like a rag doll. His jaws opened only enough to get a better grip in a different place. Even over the sound of her screams I could hear the bones crunching. Now the soldier was coming back, raising his rifle as he came, and now a shot rang out and blood sprayed from the front of his chest, and again, and once more, and he fell on his face, hard, and didn't move. Then everybody was firing at once and I crawled under the metal table as lead slugs screamed all around me. The fire was concentrated at first on a window high in the stack of apartment crates surrounding the square. Part of the wall vanished in plastic splinters, then a red line thrust into the wreckage and something bloomed orange flame. I saw more gun barrels sticking out of more windows, saw another soldier go down with the lower part of his leg blown off, saw him turn as he fell and start firing at another window. In seconds it seemed I was the only person there who didn't have a weapon. I saw a Heinleiner crouched behind the gallows, snapping off shots with a handgun. His null-suit was turned on, coating him in silver. I saw him hit by a half a clip from an automatic rifle. He froze. I don't mean he stood still; he froze, like a chromium statue, toppled with bullets still whanging off of him, rolled over on his back, still in the same attitude. Then his null-suit switched off and he tried to get up, but was hit by three more bullets. His skin had turned lobster-red. I didn't understand that, and I didn't have time to think about it. People were still running for cover, so I did, too, past overturned tables and chairs and the dead body of a King City policeman, into Aunt Hazel's shop. I scurried around and crouched behind the counter, intending to stay there until someone came to explain what the hell was going on. But the itch is buried deep, and makes you do stupid things when you least expect it. If you've never been a reporter, you wouldn't understand. I raised my head and looked over the counter. I can replay the tape from my holocam and say exactly what happened, in what order, who did what to whom, but you don't live it that way. You retain some very vivid impressions, in no particular order, with gaps between when you don't have any idea what happened. I saw people running. I saw people cut almost in half by lasers, ripped by bullets. I heard screams and shouts and explosions, and I smelled gunpowder and burning plastic. I suppose every battlefield has looked and sounded and smelled pretty much the same. I couldn't see Libby, didn't know if he was dead or alive. He wasn't where he had fallen. I did see more cops and soldiers arriving from some of the feeder tunnels. Something crashed through the windows in front, something large, and tumbled over the ice cream freezers there, turning one of them over. I crouched down, and when I looked up again there was the policewoman, Winston still attached to her arm, which was in danger of coming off. It was a scene from hell. Crazed by pain, the woman was swinging her arm wildly, trying to get the dog to let go. Winston was having none of it. Bleeding from many cuts, he ignored everything but his inexorable grip. He'd been bred to grab a bull by the nose and never let go; a K.C. policewoman wasn't about to get free. But now she was scrabbling for her holster, forgotten in her fear and panic. She got her gun out and aimed it toward the dog. Her first shot went wild, killing nothing but an ice cream freezer. The second shot hit Winston in the left hind leg, where it was thickest, and still the beast didn't let go. If anything, he fought all the harder. Her last shot hit him in the belly. He went limp--everything but his jaw. Even in death he wasn't going to let go. She took aim at his head, and then slumped over, passed out at last. It was probably for the best, because I think she would have blown her own arm off, the way she had the gun pointed. Later, I felt sorry for her. At the time I was simply too confused to feel much of anything but fear. I mourned Winston later, too. He'd been trying to protect me, though I recall thinking at the time that he'd over-reacted. She'd only been trying to handcuff me, hadn't she? And what about the soldiers? It had looked to me as if the Heinleiners had fired the first shot. All sane reasoning would lead me to think that, if that first soldier hadn't been hit, this could all have ended peacefully at the jailhouse with a lot of lawyers arguing, charges brought, countersuits filed. I'd have been out on bail within a few hours. Which was still what I'd have liked to have done, and would have, but any fool could see things had gone too far for that. If I stepped out waving a white flag I was pretty sure I'd be killed, apologies sent to the next of kin. So Hildy, I told myself, your first priority is to get out of here without getting shot. Let the lawyers sort it out later, when the bullets aren't flying. With that end in mind, I started crawling toward the door. My intent was to stick my head out, low, and see what stood between me and the nearest exit. Which turned out to be a black boot planted solidly in the doorway, almost under my nose by the time I got there. I looked up the black-clad leg and into the menacing face of a soldier. He was pointing a weapon at me, some great bulky thing I thought might be a machine gun, whose muzzle looked wide enough to spit baseballs. "I'm unarmed," I said. "That's the way I like 'em," he said, and flipped up his visor with his thumb. There was something in his eyes I didn't like. I mean, beyond everything else I didn't like about the situation. Just a little touch of madness, I think. He was a big man with a broad face entirely innocent of any evidence of thought. But now a thought did flicker behind those eyes, and his brow wrinkled. "What's your name?" "H . . . Helga Smith." "Nah," he said, and dug into a pocket for a datapad, which he scanned with a thumb control until my lovely phiz smiled back at us. He returned the smile, but I didn't, because his smile was the worst news I'd had so far in a day filled with bad news. "You're Hildy Johnson," he said, "and you're on the death list so it don't matter what happens here, see?" And he started working on his belt, one-handed, the other hand keeping the gun pointed at my forehead. I found myself getting detached from events. Maybe it was a reflex action, something to distance oneself from an abomination about to happen. Or maybe it was just too many things that couldn't be happening. This can't be happening. I'd silently shrieked it one too many times and now a mental numbness was setting in. I ought to be thinking of something to do. I ought to be talking to him, asking questions. Anything. Instead, I just sat there, squatting on my heels, and felt as if I'd like to go to sleep. But my senses were heightened. They must have been, because with all the shooting going on outside (how could he do this in the middle of a war?), and over the scream of a dying compressor motor in the overturned freezer I was able to hear a voice from the grave. A growl. The soldier didn't hear it, or maybe he was too busy. He had his pants down around his heels and he knelt in front of me and that's when I saw Winston, dragging his hind leg, bleeding from his gut, eyes filled with murder. The man lowered himself over me. I wanted Winston to bite him . . . well, you know where I wanted Winston to bite him. I got second best. The bulldog fastened on the soft flesh of the soldier's inner thigh. The man's leg jerked in pain, and he was flying over me. I grabbed the strap of his rifle as he went by. He had strength and mass on his side, but there was the little matter of Winston. The dog had cut an artery. The soldier tried to wrestle his rifle away from me with one hand and pry Winston loose with the other and ended up doing both things badly. Blood was spraying everywhere. I was screaming. Not the big full scream you hear at the movies, and not a scream of rage, but a highpitched scary thing I was powerless to stop. Then I got one hand on the barrel of the rifle, and one hand on the stock, and fumbled for the trigger as he realized what was happening and gave up his struggle with Winston, concentrating on me. He got his hand over the barrel. Sadly for him, it was over the end of the barrel, and when I squeezed the trigger his hand wasn't there anymore. It wasn't anywhere anymore, but the air was full of a red mist. The soldier never did stop fighting. I guess that's why they're soldiers. With Winston hanging from his leg, his pants around his ankles, missing a hand, he still came at me and I swung the rifle up and held the trigger down and didn't really see what happened next because on full auto-fire the weapon packed such a kick that I was knocked on my ass again, and when I opened my eyes he was mostly on the walls, except for bits here and there on the floor, and the one big piece still in Winston's mouth. I could say I paused and reflected on the enormity of taking a human life, or how nauseated I was at the sight of his dismembered body. I did think of those things, and many others. But later. Much later. At that time my mind had collapsed on itself and was only large enough to hold a few thoughts, and only one of those at a time. First, I was going to get out of there. Second, anybody between me and getting out of there was going to have a Hildy-sized hole drilled right through his or her stinking carcass. I had killed, and by god I meant to keep on killing if that's what I had to do to get to safety. "Winston. Here, boy." I got up on one knee and talked to him. I didn't know what to expect. Would he recognize me? Was he too far gone in bloodlust? But after a final shake of the soldier's leg, he let go and came to me. He was dragging his hind leg and he was gut-shot, but still walking. I will admit I don't know why I took him. I mean, I really don't. My holocam recorded the scene, but it doesn't tape thoughts. Mine weren't very organized just then. I remember thinking I sure as hell owed him. It also crossed my mind that I was probably safer with him than without him; he was one hell of a weapon. I prefer to think I thought those things in that order. I won't swear to it. I scooped him up in one arm, holding the rifle in the other, and stuck my head around the corner. Nobody blew it off. Nobody seemed to be moving at all. The square was a lot smokier and there was still a lot of gunfire, but everyone seemed to have taken cover. I could do that, too, and wait for somebody to find me, or I could use the smoke to hide in, knowing I could easily stumble on someone else who was doing the same thing, and was a better shot than I was. I don't know how you make a decision like that. I mean, I made it, but I don't recall weighing the pro's and con's. I just looked around the corner, didn't see anybody, and then I was running. Actually, running is a very generous word for what I did, with a dying dog tucked under one arm and a heavy weapon dangling from the other. And don't forget a belly the size of Phobos. Thank god holocams record only what you see, and not what you look like. That couldn't have been an image I'd like preserved for posterity. My goal was the entrance to a corridor that led back toward the Heinlein, and I was about halfway there when someone behind me yelled "Halt!" in a firm and not-at-all-friendly voice, and things happened very fast . . . and I did everything right, even with all the things that went wrong. I turned and kept back-pedaling, slowly, and I dropped Winston (who uttered the only yelp of pain he made through his entire heroic ordeal--and I'm sorry, Winston, wherever you are). I saw it was a King City cop, and he was young, and he looked as scared as I was, and he carried a huge drilling laser, which was pointed at me. "Drop your weapon," he said, and I said Sorry, chum, this isn't personal, only not out loud, and I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, and it was then I noticed the blinking red light on this curved metal thingy that must have been the ammo clip, and which must have been saying feed me!, or words to that effect in gun-language, and understood why what I'd thought was a short burst had had such a cataclysmic effect on my would-be rapist. So I dropped the gun and I held up my hands, and I saw Winston making his last dash, hobbling across the ten meters or so that separated us, and I put my hands out, palms up, and I shouted No!, and I will swear in any court in the world that I saw the man's finger tightening on the trigger from ten meters away, with the muzzle wavering between me and Winston as if he couldn't decide which to shoot first. And I know this is flatly impossible, but I even thought I saw the light start to come out the end of the weapon in the same fraction of a second that I grabbed my null-suit control and twisted it hard. I was dazzled by green light. For a few moments I was blind. When vision returned the world was full of multi-colored incandescent balloons that drifted here and there, obscuring the world, popping like cartoon soap bubbles. I was sweating horribly inside my suit-field. It could have been worse. Outside the field, most everything seemed to be on fire. About the only way you can go wrong with a laser is to shoot it at a mirror. You couldn't blame the cop for that. I hadn't been a mirror when he pulled the trigger; it was that close. But he really should have let go a lot sooner. Everywhere the beam hit me, it was reflected back, but because the human body is much a complex shape the reflected beam went all over the place. The resulting scorch line hit the walls in many places, melting plastic panels and starting fires behind them. It hit the cop at least three times. I think any of them would have been fatal without quick treatment. He was lying still, with flames engulfing his clothing in three deep, black slashes. Somewhere in its wild gyrations the beam had hit Winston. His fur was on fire and he wasn't moving, either. I was trying to think of what to do when a high wind rose. It briefly whipped the flames into a white-hot frenzy, but then it snuffed them out. All the smoke cleared in an instant and the scene took on that crisp clarity you find only in vacuum. I turned, and ran for cover. =*= =*= =*= =*= CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR I crouched in a pile of chrome-plated pipes not twenty meters from two patrolling figures in spacesuits, trying to pretend I was just another piece of bent pipe. I wasn't quite sure how to go about this. Don't move, and think tubular thoughts, I finally decided, and it had worked so far. I was keeping one eye on the clock, one eye on the soldiers, and one eye on the blinking red light in my head-up display. Since this adds up to three eyes, you can imagine how busy I was. I was the busiest motionless person you ever saw. Or didn't see. As if that weren't enough, I was calling every telephone number in my vast mental card file. Forget those trivial inventions like fire, the wheel, the bow and arrow, the plow. Man didn't become truly civilized until Alex Bell uttered those immortal words, "Shit, Watson, I spilled acid all over my balls." Hiding there with my oxygen running out, my only hope of staying alive lay in getting some help over the telephone, and if it worked I resolved to light a candle every year on Mr. Bell's birthday. My situation was dire, but it could have been worse. I could have been a member of the King City police dragooned (I later learned) into the first wave of the assault on Virginia City. In addition to the hazards of an armed populace, not to mention the meanest, gamest dog who ever lived, they had the added problem of not having pressure suits when the second wave, which attacked from the surface, began cutting the cables which brought power from the solar panels topside, which powered the null-fields which kept the air in. That's what had happened just after I was lasered by the last cop. It was the air rushing out of the public square that had first fanned, then extinguished the flames on Winston's corpse. It wasn't a blow-out like the one at Nirvana, or I wouldn't be here to tell you about it. What we're used to in a blow-out is a lot of air rushing through a relatively small hole. You get picked up and battered, then you get squeezed, and even in a null-suit your chances of survival are slim. But when a null-field goes, it goes all at once, and the air just expands. You get a gentle wind, then poof! Like a soap bubble. And then you get a lot of cops and soldiers grabbing their throats, spitting blood, and falling quietly to the ground. I saw two people die like this. I guess it's a fairly quick, peaceful way to go, but I still get nauseous just thinking about it. At the time I thought the Heinleiners had done it. It was a logical tactic. It was the way they customarily fought fires, and god knows there were plenty of fires by the time the air went. And it just didn't make sense that their own people would cut the power, knowing the first group didn't have suits. Well, it was their own people who did it, and it wasn't the only thing about the assault that didn't make sense. But I learned about that much later. Hiding there in the pipes all I knew is that a lot of people had tried to kill me, and a lot more were still trying. It had been a game of cat and mouse for about three hours since the nullfield power went down. The power loss had immediately turned the corridor I meant to travel to the Heinlein from a silvery cylinder into a borehole through eons of trash, just like the one I had traveled to lo those many weeks ago to enter this crazy funhouse in the first place. That was a damn good thing, because not long after the blowout I met the first of many pressure-suited people coming down the path in the other direction. We didn't actually meet, which was another good thing, because he or she was carrying a laser just like the one that had almost fried me. I saw him (I'm going to say him, because all the soldiers were male and there was something in the way he moved) while he was still some distance from me, and I quickly melted into the wall. Or into where the wall had been, you see. There were thousands of gaps along the corridor large enough for even a pregnant woman to squeeze through. Once into one of the gaps, however, you never knew what lay beyond. You had entered a world with no rational order to it, a three-dimensional random maze made of random materials, some of it locked in place by the pressure of other junk above it, some of it alarmingly unstable. In some of these hidey-holes you could slip through here and squeeze through there and swing across a gap in another place, like in a collapsed jungle gym. In others, two meters in and you found a cul-desac a rat would have found impassable. You never knew. There was simply no way to tell from the outside. That first refuge was one of the shallow ones, so I had pressed myself against a flat surface and began learning the Zen of immobility. I had several things going for me. No need to hold my breath, since I was already doing that because of the null-suit. No need to be very quiet, because of the vacuum. And in the suit he might not have seen me if I'd been lying right in his path. I told myself all those things, but I still aged twenty years as he crept by, swinging his laser left and right, close enough that I could have reached out and touched him. Then he had passed, and it started getting very dark again. (Did I mention all the lights went out when the power failed? They did. I'd never have seen him if he hadn't been carrying a flashlight.) I wanted that flashlight. I wanted it more than anything in the world. Without it, I didn't see how I'd ever make it to safety. It had already gotten dark enough that I could barely see the useless rifle I'd carried with me, and wouldn't see anything at all when he'd moved a little farther along. I almost jumped out of my skin when I realized he could have seen the flashing red light on the empty clip as he passed; I'd forgotten to cover it up. If only I had another . . . then I looked more closely at the clip. It had an opening at the end, and a brass shell casing gleamed in there. I realized it was two clips taped together. The idea was to reverse it when you'd used up the first. God, soldiers are tricky bastards. So I reversed it, almost dropping first the clip, then the rifle, and I leaned out into the corridor and squeeze off a shot in the direction the soldier had come from to see if the damn thing worked. From the recoil I felt, I knew it did. I hadn't counted on the muzzle flash, but apparently the man didn't see it. Stepping out into the corridor, I fired a short burst into the soldier's back. Hey, even if I could have shouted a warning to him in vacuum, I really don't think I would have. You don't know the depths you can sink to when all you're thinking about is survival. His suit was tough, and my aim was not the best. One round hit him and it didn't puncture his suit, just sent him stumbling down the path, turning, bringing his weapon up, so I fired again, a lot longer this time, and it did the trick. I won't describe the mess I had to sort through to find his light. # My fusillade had destroyed his laser and used up my last ammo clip, so encumbered with only the flashlight and what remained of my wits I set out looking for air. That was the trick, of course. The null-suit was a great invention, no doubt about it. It had saved my life. But it left something to be desired in the area of endurance. If a Heinleiner wanted to spend much time in vacuum he'd strap a tank onto his back, just like everyone else, and attach a hose to the breast fitting in front. Without a strap-on, the internal tank was good for twenty to thirty-five minutes, depending on exertion. Forty minutes at the outside. Like, for instance, if you were asleep. I hadn't done much sleeping and didn't plan on any soon, but I hadn't thought it would be a problem at first. All or the corridors were provided with an ALU every half-kilometer or so. The power to these had been cut, but they still had big air tanks which should still be full. Recharging my internal tank should be just a matter of hooking the little adapter hose to my air fitting, twisting a valve, and watching the little needle in my head-up swing over to the FULL position. The first time, it was that easy. But I could see even then that having to search out an ALU every half hour was the weakest point in my notvery-strong survival strategy. I couldn't keep it up endlessly. I had to either get out of there on my own or call for help. Calling seemed to make the most sense. I still had no idea what was happening beyond the limits of Heinlein Town, but had no reason to suspect that if I could get through to a lawyer, or to the pad, my problems would not be over. But I couldn't call from the corridor. There was too much junk over my head; the signal would not get through. However, through sheer luck or divine providence I was in one of the corridors I was fairly familiar with. A branch up to the left should take me right out onto the surface. It did, and the surface was crawling with soldiers. I ducked back in, thankful for the mirror camouflage I was wearing. Where had they all come from? There were not regiments, or divisions, or anything like that. But I could see three from my hiding place, and they seemed to be patrolling except for one who was standing around near the entrance I'd just exited. Guarding it, I presumed. Perhaps he just meant to take captives, but I'd seen people shooting to kill and wanted no part of finding out his intentions. One of the other things I'd been lucky about was in seeing the man in the square who'd been hit by bullets while wearing his null-suit. Otherwise I might have wrongly concluded the suit, through which nothing could pass, could render me immune to bullets. Which it would . . . but only at a cost. This was explained to me later. Maybe you already figured it out; Smith said "as should be intuitively obvious," but he talks like that. Bullets possess kinetic energy. When you stop one dead in its tracks, that energy has to go somewhere. Some of it is transferred to your body: e.g., the bullet knocks you over. But most of the energy is absorbed by the suit, which promptly freezes stiff, and then has to do something with all that energy. There's no place to store it in the null-generator. Smith tried that, and the generators overheated or, in extreme cases, exploded. Not a pretty thought, considering where it's implanted. So what the field does is radiate the heat away. From both surfaces of the field. "I'm sure it's a symmetry we can defeat, given time," Smith told me. "The math is tricky. But what a bulletproof jacket it will make, eh?" It sure would. In the meantime, what happened is you got parboiled. Getting rid of excess heat was already your biggest problem in a null-suit. You could survive one hit in a suit (several people did), but usually only if you could turn it off pretty quickly and cool yourself. With two or more hits your internal temperature would soar and your brain would cook. The suit was supposed to turn itself off in that case, automatically. But naturally it wouldn't turn off if there was vacuum outside. It won't do that no matter how extreme conditions inside got; vacuum is always the worst of any set of evils. If I got shot now, I'd cook, from the skin inwards. # I didn't start out singing hosannas to the name of A.G. Bell. For the first hour I wanted to dig him up and roast him slowly. Not his fault, of course, but in the state I was in, who cared? After filling my tank again I made my way to the top of the junk pile. This was possible-though by no means easy--because where I was, near the Heinlein, the thickness of the planetary dump was not great. By squirming, making myself small, picking my way carefully I was soon able to stick my head out of the mess. Any of a thousand passing satellites ought to have a good line of sight at me from there, so I started dialing as fast as my tongue could hit the switchboard on the insides of my teeth. I figured I'd call Cricket, because he . . . . . .could not be reached at that number. According to my head-up, which is seldom wrong about these things. Neither could Brenda, or Liz. I was about to try another number when I finally realized nobody could be reached, because my internal phone relied, when out on the surface, on a booster unit that's standard equipment in a pressure suit. How could I be expected to think of these things? You tap your teeth, and pretty soon you hear somebody's voice in your ear. That's how a fucking telephone works. It's as natural as shouting. I sure as hell thought about it then, and soon realized I had another problem. The signal from my phone wouldn't get through my null-suit field. The Heinleiners used the field itself to generate a signal in another wave band entirely, so they could communicate with each other, suit-to-suit, and nobody, not even the CC, could overhear them. I was screwed by their security. I thought about this a long time, keeping one eye on the oxygen gauge. Then I went back to the dark corridor and sneaked up on the body of the man I had killed. He was still there, though shoved over to one side of the passage. I managed to get his helmet off and lose myself back in the maze, where I used my light and a few bits of metal that came to hand to pry out what I hoped was the booster for his suit radio. I had done my work better than I knew; there was a bullet hole punched through it. I held on to it anyway. I got another charge of air and went back to the surface, where I used a length of wire to connect my pressure fitting to the radio itself, on the theory that this was the only way for anything to get out of the suit. I switched it on, was rewarded with a little red light going on in a display on the radio. I dialed Cricket again, and got nothing. So I brought all my vast and subtle technological skills to bear on repairing the radio. Translation: I whanged the sumbitch on the dashboard of the junk rover I was sitting in, and I dialed again. Nothing. Whang. Still not a peep. So I WHANGED it again and Cricket said "Yeah, what the hell do you want?" My tongue had been leading a life of its own, nervously dialing and re-dialing Cricket's number as I worked my engineering magic on the radio. And now, when I needed it, I couldn't get the damn tongue to work at all, so overwhelmed was I at hearing a familiar voice. "I haven't got time to dick around here," Cricket warned. "Cricket, it's me, Hildy, and I--" "Yeah, Hildy, you cover it your way and I'll cover it mine." "Cover what?" "Just the biggest damn story that ever . . ." I heard the sound of mental brakes being applied with the burning of much mental rubber; after the clashing of mental gears Cricket said, sweetly, "No story, Hildy. Nothing at all. Forget I said anything." "Damn it, Cricket, is the shit coming down out there, too? What's happened? All I know is--" "You can figure it out for yourself, just like I did," he said. "Figure what out? I don't know what you're--" "Sure, sure, I know. It won't work, Hildy. You've conned me out of a big story for the last time." "Cricket, I don't even work for the Nipple anymore." "Once a reporter, always a reporter. It's in your blood, Hildy, and you could no more ignore this one than a whore could keep her legs together when the doorbell rings." "Cricket, listen to me, I'm in big trouble. I'm trapped--" "Ah ha!" he crowed, confusing me completely. "A lot of folks are trapped, old buddy. I think it's the best place for you. Read about it in a few hours in the Shit." And he hung up. I almost threw the radio out across the horizon, but sanity returned just in time. With it came caution, as my eyes, following the wouldbe trajectory, saw two figures clambering up the junk. They were headed for me, probably on the scent of my transmission. I ducked over the side of the junked rover and dived back into the maze. # I still haven't entirely forgiven Cricket, but I've got to say that love died during that phone call. Sure, I deserved some of it; I'd tricked him often enough in the past. And in his defense, he thought I was trapped in an elevator, as thousands of Lunarians were at that moment, and he didn't think I'd be in any particular danger, and if I was, there wasn't anything he could have done about it. Yeah, sure. And your momma would have fucked pigs, Cricket, if she could have found any who'd have her. You didn't give me time to explain. What really high-gravved me was that, when I finally got back in position to call him again, he'd set his phone to refuse calls from me. I risked my neck ducking in for more air then finding a new place to transmit from, and what I got for my efforts was a busy signal. I got a lot of those in quick succession. Brenda didn't answer. Neither did anybody at the Nipple, which worried me no end. Think about it. A major metropolitan newspad, and nobody's answering the phone? I knew it had to do with the big story Cricket mentioned. Impossible visions flitted through my head, from a city-wide blowout to thousands upon thousands of soldiers like the ones I'd seen laying waste to the whole planet. But I had to keep trying. So I went back down into the maze and sought out my favorite airing hole. And two big guys in suits were camped out there, weapons ready. # I'd had ten minutes of air when I first backed into the pile of chrome pipes to hide from the soldiers. That had been seven minutes earlier. The first thing I'd done was cut back the oxygen dissemination rate in my artificial lung to a level just short of unconsciousness. Ditto the cooling rate. I figured that would stretch the ten minutes into fifteen if I didn't have to move around too much. So far I hadn't moved at all. The blinking red light I was watching was telling me my blood oxygen level was low. Another gauge, normally dormant, had lit up as well, and this one assured me my body temperature stood at 39.1 degrees and was rising slowly. I knew I couldn't take much more without becoming delirious; anything over forty was dangerous territory. I'm a miserable tactician, I'll admit it, at least in a situation like that. I could see the elements of the problem, but all I could do was stew about it. Those guys topside, for instance. Could they communicate my position to the gorillas guarding the air tank? They were no more than thirty meters above me; if they had any kind of generalship at all a message would soon be arriving to the guards to be on the lookout for a roly-poly, out-of-breath football trophy, known to associate with lengths of chrome-plated pipe. If so, what could I do about it? There was no hope of making my way through the maze to the next air station--which might well be guarded, anyway. So if these guys didn't find somewhere else to go in the next eight minutes, it was going to be a dead heat (terrible choice of words there) as to whether I died of suffocation or boiled in my own sweat. I didn't really have a preference in the matter; it's something only a coroner could care about. Brenda Starr, comic-strip reporter, would surely have thought up some clever ruse, some diversion, something to lure those freaking soldiers away from the air tank long enough for her to re-fuel. Hildy Johnson, scared-shitless schoolteacher and former inkster, didn't have the first notion of how to go about it without drawing attention to herself. There was one bit of good news in the mix. My tongue had continued its independent ways as I crouched in hiding, and soon I was startled by the sound of a busy signal in my ear. I didn't even know who I'd called, much less how the signal got out. I eventually surmised (and later found out it was true) that something in the junk pile was acting as an antenna, relaying my calls to the surface, and thence to a satellite. So I tried Brenda again (still no answer), and the Nipple (still nothing), and then I dialed Liz. "Buckingham Palace, Her Majesty speaking," came a slurred voice. "Liz, Liz, this is Hildy. I'm in big trouble." There was a long, somehow boozy silence. I wondered if she'd fallen asleep. Then there was a sob. "Liz? Are you still there?" "Hildy. Hildy. Oh, god, I didn't want to do it." "Didn't want to do what? Liz, I don't have time for--" "I'm a drunk, Hildy. A goddam drunk." This was neither news, nor a well-kept secret. I didn't say anything, but listened to the sound of wracking sobs and watched the seconds tick off on my personal clock and waited for her to talk. "They said they could put me away for a long time, Hildy. A long, long time. I was scared, and I felt really awful. I was shaking and I was throwing up, only nothing came up, and they wouldn't let me have a drink." "What are you talking about? Who's 'they?'" "They, they, dammit! The CC." By then I had more or less figured it out. She stammered disconnected parts to me then, and I learned the complete story later, and it went something like this: Even before the Bicentennial celebration Liz had been firmly in the employ of the CC. At some point she had been arrested, taken in, and charged with many counts of weapons violations. (So were a lot of others; the invasion of Heinlein Town had been armed with weapons confiscated during a huge crackdown--an event that never made the news.) "They said I could go to jail for eighty years, Hildy. And then they left me alone, and the CC spoke to me and told me if I did a few little things for him, here and there, the charges might be dropped." "What happened, Liz? Did you get careless?" "What? Oh, I don't know, Hildy. They never showed me the evidence they had against me. They said it would all come out in the trial. I don't know if it was obtained illegally or not. But when the CC started talking I figured out pretty quick that it didn't matter. We talked about that; you know that, if he ever wanted to, he could frame every person on Luna for something or other. All I could see was when we got to court, it'd be an airtight case. I was afraid to let it get that far." "So you sold me out." There was silence for a long time. A few more minutes had gone by. The guards hadn't moved. There wasn't anything else to do but listen. "Tell me the rest of it," I said. It seemed there was this group of people out around Delambre that the CC wanted to know more about. He suggested Liz get me out there and see what happened. I should have been flattered. The CC's estimate of my bloodhound instincts must have been pretty high. I suppose if I hadn't seen anything during that first trip, something else would have been arranged, until I was on the scent. After that, I could be relied on to bring the story to ground. "He was real interested when you brought in that tape of the little girl. I . . . by that time I was a wholly-owned subsidiary, Hildy. I told him I could find some way of getting you to tell me what was going on. I'd have done about anything by then." "The hostage syndrome," I said. The guards were still there. "What? Oh. Yeah, probably. Or sheer lack of character. Anyway, he told me to hold back or you'd get suspicious. So I did, and you finally invited me in." And on that first visit she'd stolen a nullfield generator. She didn't say how, but it probably wasn't too hard. They're not dangerous unless you try to open them up. I could put the rest of it together myself. During the next week the CC had learned enough null-field technology to make something to get his troops through the barriers, if not to equip them with null-suits or fields of their own. "And that's pretty much it," she said, and sighed. "So I guess he arrested you, and probably all those other folks, too, right? Where have they got you? Have they set bail yet?" "Are you serious?" "Hell, Hildy, I don't think he could have anything serious on you." "Liz . . . what's going on out there?" "What do you mean?" "Cricket said all hell was breaking loose, somehow or other." "You got me, Hildy. I was just . . . ah, sleeping, until you called. I'm here in my apartment. Come to think of it, the lights are flickering. But that could be just my head." She was in the dark as much as I was. A lot of people were. If you didn't leave your apartment and you didn't live in one of the sectors where the oxygen service was interrupted, the chances of your having missed the early stages of the Big Glitch were excellent. Liz had been in an alcoholic stupor, with her phone set to take calls only from me. "Liz. Why?" There was a long pause. Then, "Hildy, I'm a drunk. Don't ever trust a drunk. If it comes to a choice between you and the next drink . . . it's not really a choice." "Ever thought of taking the cure?" "Babe, I like drinking. It's the only thing I do like. That, and Winston." Maybe I would have hit her right in the belly at that point; I don't know. I know I was filled with rage at her. Telling her the dog was fried and vac-dried wouldn't have begun to get back at her for what she'd done to me. But just then I suddenly got real, real hot. I'd already been too warm, you understand; now, in an instant, my skin was so hot I wanted to peel it off and there was a burning ache on the left side of my chest. The null-suit did what it could. I watched in growing alarm as the indicator that had been telling me how many minutes I had to live took a nose dive. I thought it wasn't going to stop. Hell, it was almost worth it. With the falling gauge came a cooling blast of air all over my body. At least I wasn't going to fry. I'd finally put together what was happening, though. For almost a minute I'd been feeling short, sharp shocks through the metal pipes I leaned against and the metal brace I had my feet on. Then I saw a bullet hit a pipe. That's the only thing it could have been, I reasoned. It left a dent, a dull place on the metal. Somebody was standing on top of the junk pile and shooting down into it at random. It had to be blind shooting, because I couldn't see the shooter. But the bullets were ricocheting and one had finally struck me. I couldn't afford another hit. So I grabbed a length of pipe and started toward the corridor. I didn't think I could do much good against the tough pressure suits, but if I swung for the faceplates I might get one of them, and at least I'd go down fighting. I owed it to Winston, if to no one else, to do that much. Getting to the corridor was like reaching for that top step that isn't there. I stepped out, pipe cocked like the clean-up batter coming to the plate. And nobody was there. I saw their retreating backs outlined by the light of their helmet lamps. They were jogging toward the exit. I'll never know for sure, but it seems likely they'd been summoned to the top to help in the search for me. How were they to know the guys on top of the pile were only a few meters directly above them? Anyway, if they'd stayed in place, I'd have been dead in ninety seconds, tops. So I gave them ten seconds to get beyond the point where they could possible see me, and I reached for the ALU adapter hose. It wasn't there. It made me mad. I couldn't think of anything more foolish than getting this close to salvation and then suffocating with about a ton of compressed oxygen at my fingertips. I slammed my hand against the tank, then got my flashlight and cast about on the ground. I was sure they'd taken it with them. It's what I would have done, in their place. But they hadn't. It was lying right there on the ALU's baseplate, probably knocked off when one of the guards decided to rest his fat ass on the tank. I fumbled it in place between the tank and my chest valve, and turned the release valve hard. I make my living with words. I respect them. I always want to use the proper one, so I searched a long time for the right one to describe how that first rush of cooling air felt, and I concluded nobody's made up a word for that yet. Think of the greatest pleasure you ever experienced, and use whatever word you'd use to describe that. An orgasm was a pale thing beside it. # Why hadn't they taken the connector hose? The answer, when I eventually learned it, was simple, and typical of the Big Glitch. They hadn't known I needed it. The cops and soldiers who had invaded Heinlein Town hadn't been told much about anything. They hadn't been led to expect armed resistance. They knew next to nothing about the nature of or limitations to null-suit technology. They surely hadn't been told there were two groups, working at cross purposes to the extent that one group would ensure the destruction of the other. All this affected their tactics terribly. A lot of people lived because of this confusion, and I was one of them. I'd like to take credit for my own survival-- and not everything I did was stupid--but the fact is that I had Winston, and I had a lot of luck, and the luck was mostly generated by their ignorance and poor generalship. I had vaguely realized some of this by the time I made my way from the ALU and to a branching corridor I thought would take me to a different surface exit. I didn't know what good it would do me, but it was worthwhile to keep it in mind. Once on the surface again, I called the Nipple and again got a busy signal, all the time keeping my eyes open for more of the bad guys. I was hoping they were all up atop the junk, possibly stumbling around and breaking legs, heads, and other important body parts. I wished Callie were there; she'd have put a hex on them. Callie? Well, what the hell. I had to dredge the number up from the further reaches of my memory, and it did no good at all. Not even a busy signal. Nothing but dead air. Then I remembered the top code. Why did it take me so long? I think it was because Walter really had impressed it on me that the code was not to be used at all, that it existed as an unachievable level of dire perfection. A story justifying the use of the top code would need headlines that would made 72-point type seem like fine print. The other reason is that I had never thought of what was happening to me as a story. I didn't really expect much from it, to tell the truth. I'd been using my normal access code to the Nipple, and that should have gotten through any conceivable log-jam of calls and directly into Walter's office. So far it had yielded only busy signals. But I punched in the code anyway, and Walter said: "Don't tell me where you are, Hildy. Hang up and move as far from your present position as you dare, and then call me back." "Walter!" I screamed. But the line was already dead. It would be nice to report that I immediately did as he said, that I wasted no time, that I continued to show the courageous resolve that had been my trademark since the first shots were fired. By that I mean that I hadn't cried to that point. I did now. I wept helplessly, like a baby. Don't try this in you null-suit, when you get one. You don't breathe, so your lungs just sort of spasm. It's enough to make your ears pop. Crying also throws the regulator mechanism out of whack, so that I wasted ten minutes' oxygen in three minutes of hysterics. Trust Mister V.M. Smith not to have reckoned with emotional outbursts when he laid out the parameters. I had cleverly retained the connector hose to the air tank, so I made my way back there and filled up again. If only I could find a loose, portable tank I'd be able to strike off across the surface. Hell, if it was too big to carry I could drag it. Did I hear someone mention the dead soldier and his suit? Great idea, but my uncanny accuracy with the machine gun had damaged one of the hose fittings. I checked when I borrowed the flashlight, and again--because I needed the air, and who knows, maybe I'd been mistaken--when I salvaged the radio. Libby could probably have fudged some sort of adaptor from the junk all around me, but considering the pressure in that tank I'd sooner have kissed a rattlesnake. These are the thoughts that run through your mind in the exhausted aftermath of a crying jag. It felt good to have done it, like crying usually does. It swept away the building sense of panic and let me concentrate on the things that needed to be done, let me ignore the impossibility of my position, and enabled me to concentrate on the two things I had going for me, like chanting a mantra: my own brain, which, no matter how much evidence I may have adduced to the contrary, was actually pretty good; and Walter's ability to get things done, which was very good. I actually found myself feeling cheerful as I reached the egress again and scanned the surface for enemies. Not finding any made me positively giddy. Move from your present position, Walter had said. As far as you dare. I moved out of the maze and dashed across a short strip of sunlight and into the shadow of the Heinlein. # "Hello, Walter?" "Tell me what you know, Hildy, and make it march." "I'm in big trouble here, Wal--" "I know that, Hildy. Tell me what I don't know. What happened?" So I started in on a condensed history of me and the Heinleiners, and Walter promptly interrupted me again. He knew about them, he said. What else? Well, the CC was up to something horrible, I said, and he said he knew that, too. "Assume I know everything you know except what happened to you today, Hildy," he said. "Tell me about today. Tell me about the last hour. Just the important parts. But don't mention specific names or places." Put that way, it didn't take long. I told him in less than a hundred words, and could have done it in one: "Help!" "How much air do you have?" he asked. "About fifteen minutes." "Better than I thought. We have to set up a rendezvous, without mentioning place names. Any ideas?" "Maybe. Do you know the biggest white elephant on Luna?" ". . . yeeeesss. Are you near the trunk or the tail?" "Trunk." "All right. The last poker game we played, if the high card in my hand was a King, start walking north. If it was a Queen, east. Jack, south. Got it?" "Yeah." East it would be. "Walk for ten minutes and stop. I'll be there." With anyone else I'd have wasted another minute pointing out that only left me a margin of five minutes and no hope at all of getting back. With Walter I just said, "So will I." Walter has many despicable qualities, but when he says he'll do something, he'll do it. I'd have had to move soon, anyway. As we were talking I'd spotted two of the enemy moving across the plain in big, loping strides. They were coming from the north, so I hefted the radio and tossed it toward the southeast. They immediately altered direction to follow it. Here came the hard part. I watched them pass in front of me. Even in a regular suit I'd have been hard to spot in the shadows. But now I started walking eastwards, and in a moment I stepped out into the bright sunshine. I had to keep reminding myself how hard Gretel had been to spot when I'd first encountered her. I'd never felt so naked. I kept an eye on the soldiers, and when they reached the spot where the radio had fallen to the ground I froze, and watched as they scanned the horizon. I didn't stay frozen long, as I quickly spotted four more people coming from various directions. It was one of the hardest things I ever did, but I started walking again before any of them could get too close. With each step I thought of a dozen more ways they could find me and catch me. A simple radar unit would probably suffice. I'm not much at physics, but I supposed the null-suit would throw back a strong signal. They must not have had one, because before long I was far enough away that I couldn't pick any of them out from the ground glare, and if I couldn't see them they sure as hell couldn't see me. At the nine-minute point a bright silver jumper swooped silently over my head, not ten meters high, and I'd have jumped out of my socks if I'd had any on. It turned, and I saw the big double-n Nipple logo blazoned on its side and it was a sweet sight indeed. The driver flew a big oval at the right distance from the Heinlein, which was almost out of sight by then, letting me see him because I had to come to him, not the other way around. Then it settled down off to my right, looking like a giant mosquito in carnal embrace with a bedstead. I started to run. He must have had some sort of sensor on the ladder, because when I had both feet on it the jumper lifted off. Not the sort of maneuver I'd like to do on a Sunday jaunt, but I could understand his haste. I wrenched the lock door open and cycled it, and stepped inside to the unlikely spectacle of Walter training a machine gun on me. Ho-hum. I'd had so many weapons pointed at me in the last few hours that the sight--which would have given me pause a year ago, say at contract renegotiation time--barely registered. I experienced something I'd noticed before at the end of times of great stress: I wanted to go to sleep. "Put that thing away, Walter," I said. "If you fire it you'd probably kill us both." "This is a reinforced pressure hull," he said, and the gun didn't waver. "Turn that suit off first." "I wasn't thinking about decompression," I said. "I was thinking you'd probably shoot yourself in the foot, then get lucky and hit me." But I turned it off, and he looked at my face, glanced down at my naked, outrageously pregnant body, and then looked away. He stowed the weapon and resumed his place in the pilot's seat. I struggled into the seat beside him. "Pretty eventful day," I said. "I wish you'd get back to covering the news instead of making it," he said. "What'd you do to get the CC so riled up?" "That was me? This is all about me?" "No, but you're a big part of it." "Tell me what's happening." "Nobody knows the whole thing yet," he said, and then started telling me the little he knew. It had begun--back in the normal world--with thousands of elevators stalling between levels. No sooner had emergency crews been dispatched than other things began to go haywire. Soon all the mass media were off the air and Walter had had reports that pressure had been breached in several major cities, and other places had suffered oxygen depletion. There were fires, and riots, and mass confusion. Then, shortly before he got the call from me, the CC had come on most major frequencies with an announcement meant to reassure but oddly unsettling. He said there had been malfunctions, but that they were under control now. ("An obvious lie," Walter told me, almost with relish.) The CC had pledged to do a better job in the future, promised this wouldn't happen again. He'd said he was in control now. "The first implication I got from that," Walter said, "was that he hadn't been in control for a while, and I want an explanation of that. But the thing that really got me, after I thought about it, was . . . what kind of control did he mean?" "I'm not sure I understand." "Well, obviously he's in control, or he's supposed to be. Of the day-to-day mechanics of Luna. Air, water, transportation. In the sense that he runs those things. And he's got a lot of control in the civil and criminal social sectors. He makes schedules for the government, for instance. He's got a hand in everything. He monitors everything. But in control? I didn't like the sound of it. I still don't." While I thought that one over something very bright and very fast overtook us, shot by on the left, then tried to hang a right, as if it had changed its mind. It turned into a fireball and we flew right into it. I heard things pinging on the hull, things the size of sand grains. "What the hell was that?" "Some of your friends back there. Don't worry, I'm on top of it." "On top of it . . .? They're shooting at us!" "And missing. And we're out of range. And this ship is equipped with the best illegal jamming devices money can buy. I've got tricks I haven't even used yet." I glanced at him, a big unruly bear of a man, hunched over his manual controls and keeping one eye on an array of devices attached to the dashboard, devices I was sure hadn't come from the factory that built the jumper. "I might have known you'd have connections with the Heinleiners," I said. "Connections?" he snorted. "I was on the board of directors of the L5 Society when most of those 'Heinleiners' hadn't even been born yet. My father was there when the keel of that ship was launched. You might say I have connections." "But you're not one of them." "Let's say we have some political differences." He probably thought they were too left-wing. Long ago in our relationship I'd talked a little politics with Walter, as most people did who came to work at the Nipple. Not many had a second conversation. The most charitable word I'd heard used to describe his convictions was "daft." What most people would think of an anarchy Walter would call a social strait-jacket. "Don't care for Mister Smith?" I asked. "Great scientist. Too bad he's a socialist." "And the starship project?" "It'll get there the day they return to the original plan. Plus about twenty years to rebuild it, tear out all the junk Smith has installed." "Pretty impressive junk." "He makes a great spacesuit. He hasn't shown me a star drive." I decided to leave it at that, because I had no intention of getting into an argument with him, and because I had no way of telling if he was right or wrong. "Guns, too," I said. "If I'd thought about it, I'd have known you'd be a gun owner." "All free men are gun owners." No use pointing out to him that I'd been un-free most of my life, and what I'd tried to do with the instrument of my freedom when I finally obtained one. It's another argument you can't win. "Did you get that one from Liz?" "She gets her guns from me," he said. "Or she did until recently. She's too far gone in drink now. I don't trust her." He glanced at me. "You shouldn't either." I decided not to ask him what he knew about that. I hoped that if he had known Liz was selling out the Heinleiners he'd have given them some kind of warning, political differences or not. Or at least that he'd have warned me, given all he seemed to know about my recent activities. I never did ask him that. There are a lot of things I might have asked him during the time we raced across the plain, never getting more than fifty meters high. If I'd asked some of them--about how much he knew about what was going on with the CC--it would have saved me a lot of worry later. Actually, it would have just given me different things to worry about, but I firmly believe I do a better job of worrying when I can fret from a position of knowledge. As it was, the sense of relief at being rescued by him was so great that I simply basked in the warmth of my new-found sense of safety. How was I to know I'd only have ten minutes with him? He'd been constantly monitoring his instruments, and when one of them chimed he cursed softly and hit the retros. We started to settle to the ground. I'd been about to doze off. "What's the matter?" I said. "Trouble?" "Not really. I'd just hoped to get a little closer, that's all. This is where you get off." "Get off? Gee, Walter, I think I'd rather go on to your place." I'd had a quick glance around. This place, wherever it was, would never make it into 1001 Lunar Sights To See. There was no sign of human habitation. No sign of anything, not even a two-century-old footpath. "I'd love to have you, Hildy, but you're too hot to handle." He turned in his seat to face me. "Look, baby, it's like this. I got access to a list of a few hundred people the CC is looking for. You're right at the top. From what I've learned, he's very determined to find them. A lot of people have died in the search. I don't know what's going on--some really big glitch--but I do intend to find out . . . but you can't help me. The only thing I could think of to do is stash you some place where the CC can't find you. You'll have to stay there until all this blows over. It's too dangerous for you on the outside." I guess I just blew air there for a while. There had been too many changes too quickly. I'd been feeling safe and now the rug was jerked out from under me again. I'd known the CC was looking for me, but somehow it felt different to hear it from Walter. Walter would never be wrong about a thing like that. And it didn't help to infer from what he'd said that what the CC meant to do when he found me was kill me. Because I knew too much? Because I'd stuck my nose in the wrong place? Because he didn't want to share the super-toothpaste royalties with me anymore? I had no idea, but I wanted to know more, and I meant to, before I got out of Walter's jumper. Walter, who'd just called me baby. What the hell was that all about? "What do you want me to do?" I asked. "Just camp out here on the maria? I'm afraid I didn't bring my tent." He reached behind his seat and started pulling out things and handing them to me. A ten-hour air bottle. A flashlight. A canvas bag that rattled. He slapped a compass into my palm, and opened the air lock door behind us. "There's some useful stuff in the bag," he said. "I didn't have time to get anymore; this is my own survival gear. Now you've got to go." "I'm not." "You are." He sighed, and looked away from me. He looked very old. "Hildy," he said, "this isn't easy for me, either, but I think it's your only chance. You'll have to trust me because there isn't time to tell you any more and there isn't time for you to panic or act like a child. I wanted to get you closer, but this is probably better." He pointed at the dashboard. "Right now we're invisible, I hope. You get out now, the CC will never figure out where you went. I get you any closer, and it'll be like drawing him a map. You have enough air to get there, but we don't have any more time to talk, because I've got to lift out of here within one more minute." "Where do you want me to go?" He told me, and if he'd said anything else I don't think I'd have gotten out of the jumper. But it made just enough sense, and he sounded just scared enough. Hell, Walter sounding scared at all was a new one on me, and did not fail to make an impression. But I was still balanced there on the edge, wondering if he'd force me if I simply stayed put, when he grabbed me by the neck and pulled me over to him and kissed me on the cheek. I was too surprised to struggle. He let me go immediately, and turned away. "You . . . ah, are you due soon? Will that be-" "Another ten days yet," I told him. "It won't be a problem." Or it shouldn't be, unless . . . "Unless you think I'll have to hide for--" "I don't think so," he said. "I'll try to contact you in three days. In the meantime, keep your head down. Don't try to contact anyone. Stay a week, if you have to. Stay nine days." "On the tenth I'm damn sure coming out," I told him. "I'll have something else by then," he promised. "Now go." I stepped into the lock, cycled it, felt the null-suit switch itself on. I climbed down onto the plain and watched the jumper leap into the sky and dwindle toward the horizon. Before I even strapped on the backpack bottle I reached up and felt Walter's tear still warm on my cheek. # I'm not sure how far Walter dropped me from my final destination. Something on the order of twenty, thirty kilometers. I didn't think it would be a problem. I covered the first ten in the long, sidelegged stride that Earth-bred leg muscles can produce in Lunar gravity, the gait that, except for bicycles, is the most energy-efficient transportation known to man. And if you think you can eat up the distance that way in an ordinary pressure suit, try it in a null-suit. You practically fly. But don't do it pregnant. Before long my tummy started feeling funny, and I slowed down, doing nervous calculations about oxygen and distance as I began to get into territory that looked familiar to me. I reached the old air lock with three hours of spare air, dead on my feet. I think I actually catnapped a few times there, waking up only as I was about to fall on my face, consulting the compass as I wiped my eyes, getting back on the proper bearing. Luckily, by the time that started happening I was on ground I knew. I had a bad moment when the lock didn't seem to want to cycle for me. Could it be this place had been sealed off in the last seventy years? It had been that long since I used it. Of course, there were other locks I knew in the area, but Walter had said it was too dangerous to use them. But use them I would, rather than die out here on the surface. It was with that thought that the cantankerous old machinery finally engaged and the lock drum rotated. I stepped inside, cycled, and hurried into the elevator, which deposited me in a little security cubicle. I punched the letters MA-R-I-A-X-X-X. Somewhere not too far away, an old lady would be noting the door was in use. If Walter was right, that information would not be relayed on to the Central Computer. There's no place like home, I thought, as I stepped into the dimness and familiar rotten odor of a Cretaceous rain forest. I was in a distant corner of the dino-ranch where I had grown up. Callie's ranch. It had always been hers, the Double-C Bar brand, never a thought of the C&M or anything like that. Not that I'd wanted it, but it would have been nice to feel like more than a hired hand. Now let's not get into that. But this particular corner--and I wondered how Walter had known this--I'd always thought of as Maria's Cavern. There really was a cave in it, just a few hundred meters from where I now stood, and I had made it into my playhouse when I was very young and still known as Maria Cabrini. So it was to Maria's Cavern I now went, and in Maria's Cavern that I desultorily scraped together a mat of dry moss to lie down on, and on the canvas bag Walter had given me that I intended to rest my head and sleep for at least a week, only I never saw if my head actually made it there because I fell asleep as my head was on the way down. I actually did get about three hours' sleep. I know, because I checked the clock in my head-up display when the first labor pain woke me up. =*= =*= =*= =*= CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE If theoretical physics and mathematics had been the realm of females, the human race would have reached the stars long ago. I base this contention on personal experience. No dedicated male could ever have the proper insight into the terrible geometry of parturition. Faced with the problem of making an object of size X appear on the other side of an opening of size X/2, and armed with the knowledge to enable her to view it as a problem in topology or Lobachevskian geometry, I feel sure one of the billions of women in the thrall of labor would have had an insight involving multiple dimensions on hyperspace if only to make it stop hurting. FTL travel would have been a cinch. As for Einstein, some woman a thousand years his junior could easily have discovered the mutability of time and space, if only she had the tools. Time is relative? Hah! Eve could have told you that. Take a deep breath and bear down, honey, for about thirty seconds or an eternity, whichever comes last. I didn't describe the injuries I received on my second Direct Interface with the Central Computer for a lot of reasons. One is that pain like that can't be described. Another: the human mind doesn't remember pain well, one of the few things God got right. I know it hurt; I can't recall how much it hurt, but I'm pretty sure giving birth hurt more, if only because it never seemed to stop. For these reasons, and others involving what privacy one can muster in this open age, I will not have much to say here about the process about which God had this to say in Genesis 3, verse sixteen: "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children . . ." All this for swiping one stinking apple? I went into labor. I continued laboring for the next thousand years, or well into that same evening. There are no real excuses for most of my ignorance of the process. I'd seen enough old movies and should have remembered the--mostly comic--scenes where the blessed event arrives ahead of schedule. In my defense I can only plead a century of ordered life, a life wherein when a train was supposed to arrive at 8:17:15 it damn well arrived at 8:17:15. In my world postal service is fast, cheap, and continuous. You expect your parcels to arrive across town within fifteen minutes, and around the planet in under an hour. When you place an interplanetary call, the phone company had better not plead a solar storm is screwing things up; we expect them to do something about it, and they do. We are so spoiled by good service, by living in a world that works, that the most common complaint received by the phone company--and I'm talking thousands of nasty letters each year--concerns the time lag when calling Aunt Dee-Dee on Mars. Don't give me this speed-of-light shit, we whine; get my call through. That's why I was caught off-guard by the first contraction. The little bastard wasn't due for two weeks yet. I knew it had always been possible that it would start early, but then I'd have phoned the doctor and he'd have mailed me a pill and put a stop to that. And on the proper day I'd have walked in and another pill would have started the process and I could have read a book or watched the pad or graded papers until they handed me the suitably cleaned and powdered and swaddled and peacefully sleeping infant. Sure, I knew how it used to be, but I was suffering from a delusion that most of you probably share with me. I thought I was immune, damn it. We put all this behind us when we started hatching our kids out of bottles, didn't we? If our minds know this, how would our bodies dare to betray us? I felt all these things in spite of recent events, which should have taught me that the world didn't have to be as orderly a place as I had thought it was. So my uterus declared its independence, first with a little twitch, then with a spasm, and in no time at all in a tidal wave of hurting like the worst attack of constipation since the fellow tried to shit that proverbial brick. I'm no hero, and I'm no stoic. After the fortieth or fiftieth wave I decided a quick death would be preferable to this, so I got up and walked out of the cave with the intention of turning myself in. How bad could it be? I reasoned. Surely me and the CC could work something out. But because I'm no heroic stoic, my life was saved; after the forty-first or fifty-first pain threw me down to grovel in the dirt, I did a little arithmetic and figured I'd have about three hundred contractions before I reached the nearest exit, so I stumbled back to the cave as soon as I could walk again, figuring I'd prefer to die in there than out in the mud. I used the decreasing periods of rationality between pains to think back to my only source of folk wisdom in the matter of childbirth: those good old movies. Not the black and white ones. If you watch those you might come to believe babies were brought by the stork, and pregnant women never got fat. You would surely have to conclude that birthing didn't muss your hair and your make-up. But in the late twentieth there were some movies that showed the whole ghastly process. Recalling them made me even queasier. Hell, some of those women died. I brought back scenes of hemorrhage, forceps delivery, and episiotomy, and knew that wasn't the half of it. But there were constants in the process of normal birth, which was about all I could plan for, so I set about doing that. I rummaged in Walter's rucksack and found bottled water, gauze, disinfectants, thread, a knife. I laid them out beside me like a grisly home surgery kit lacking only the anesthetic. Then I waited to die. # That's the bad side of it. There was another side. Let's just skip over fevered descriptions of the grunting and groaning, of the stick I bit in half while bearing down, of the blood and slime. A moment came when I could reach down and feel his little head down there. It was a moment balanced between life and death. Maybe as near to a perfect moment as I ever experienced, and for reasons I've never quite been able to describe. The pain was still there, maybe even at a peak. But continual pain finally exerts its own anesthetic; maybe neural circuit breakers trip, or maybe you just learn to absorb the pain in a new way. Maybe you learn to accept it. I accepted it at that moment, as my fingers traced the tiny facial features and I felt his tiny mouth opening and closing. For a few more seconds he was still a part of my body. At that moment I first experienced mother love. I didn't want to lose him. I knew I'd do anything not to lose him. Oh, I wanted him to come out, right enough . . . and yet a part of me wanted to remain poised in that moment. Relativity. Pain and love and fear and life and death moving at the speed of light, slowing time down to the narrow focus of that one perfect moment, my womb the universe, and everything outside of it suddenly inconsequential. I had not loved him before. I had not delighted to feel him kick and squirm. I admit it: I had not entered into this pregnancy with anything like adult care and consideration, and right up to the last week had viewed the fetus as a parasite I might well be rid of. The only reason I didn't get rid of it was my extreme state of confusion regarding life in general, and my own purpose in it in particular. Since trying with such determination to end my life, I had simply been sitting back and letting things happen to me. The baby was just one of those things. Then the moment slipped by and he slipped out and was in my hands and I did the things mothers do. I've since wondered if I'd have known what to do without the memory of those dramatic scenes and sex education classes eight or nine decades before. You know what? I almost think I would have. At any rate, I cleaned him, and dealt with the umbilicus, and counted his fingers and toes and wrapped him in a towel and held him to my breast. He didn't cry very much. Outside the cave a warm prehistoric rain was falling through the giant ferns, and a bronto bellowed in the distance. I lay exhausted, strangely contented, smelling my own milk for the first time. When I looked down at him I thought he smiled at me with his screwedup, toothless monkey face, and when I offered him a finger to play with his little hand grabbed it and held on tight. I felt love swell in my bosom. See what he'd done to me? He had me using words like bosom. Three days went by, and no Walter. A week, and still no word. I didn't care much. Walter had brought me to the one place in Luna where I could survive and even thrive. There were fish in the stream and there was fruit and nuts on the trees. Not prehistoric flora and fauna; aside from the dinos and the big cycadaceous trees and ferns and shrubs they ate, the CC Ranch was furnished with completely modern life-forms. There were no trilobites in the water, mainly because nobody had ever found a way to turn a profit on trilobites. Instead, there were trout and bass, and I knew how to catch them. There were apple and pecan trees, and I knew where to find them because I'd planted a lot of them myself. There were no predators to speak of. Callie had just the one tyrannosaur, and he was kept penned up and fed bronto scraps. For that one week I led a sort of pastoral ideal cave-girl life I doubt any of our Paleolithic ancestors would have recognized. I didn't think about it much. I didn't think much about Callie, either. She didn't show up to see her new grandson. I don't blame her for that, because she didn't even know he had been conceived, much less hatched, and even if she had known she wouldn't have dared visit us because she might have led the CC to my hiding place. That's what saved us: Callie's long-standing refusal to link into the planetary data net, a bull-headed stance for which everyone she knew had derided her. I had been one of them. I remember in my teens, presenting her with a cost-benefit analysis I'd carefully prepared that I felt sure would convince her to give in to "progress," knowing full well that a financial argument was most likely to carry weight with her. She'd studied it for about a minute, then tossed it aside. "We'll have no government spies in the Double-C Bar," she said, and that was the end of that. We stayed with our independent computer system, keeping interfaces with the CC to a minimum, and as a result I could venture out of my cave and gather my fruits and nuts without worrying about paternalistic eyes watching from the roof. The rest of Luna was in turmoil now. Callie's Ranch was unaffected; she simply pulled in her arms and her head like a turtle and sat down to wait it out with her own oxygen, power, and water, no doubt feeling very smug and eager to emerge and tell a lot of people how she'd told them so. And I waited it out in the most remote corner of her hermetic realm. And while we waited, historic events happened. I don't have much of a feel for them even now. I had no television, no newspads, and I'm just like anyone else: if I didn't read it and see it on the pad, it doesn't seem quite real to me. News is now. Reading about it after the fact is history. Perhaps this