1995, Revised 2018

Robert Reed is a prolific author with a fondness for the novella. Among Reed’s recent projects is polishing his past catalog, then publishing those stories on Kindle, using his daughter’s sketches for the covers. His novella, “A Billion Eves,” won the Hugo for Best Novella in 2007. His latest novel is The Dragons of Marrow.

WAGING GOOD

Robert Reed

1

The spaceport resembled a giant jade snowflake set on burnished glass. Not a year old, it already absorbed much of the moon’s traffic. Unarmored and exposed, the port didn’t have a single combat laser or any fighting ships at the ready. Fat new shuttles came and left without fear, a casual, careless prosperity thriving below. Who would have guessed? In the cold gray wash of earthshine . . . who could have known . . . ? When Sitta was growing up, people claimed that Nearside would remain empty for a thousand years. There was too much residual radiation, wise voices said. The terrain was too young and unstable. Besides, what right-thinking person would live with the earth overhead? Who could look at that world and not think of the long war and the billions killed?

Yet people were forgetting. That’s what the snowflake meant. For a moment, Sitta’s hands trembled and she ground her teeth. Then she caught herself, remembering that she was here because she too had forgotten the past, or at least forgiven it. That’s when she sighed and smiled in a tired, forgiving way, and blanking her monitor, she sat back in her seat, showing any prying eyes that she was a woman at peace.

The shuttle fired its engines, its touchdown gentle, almost imperceptible.

Passengers stood, testing the gravity. Most were bureaucrats attached to the earth’s provisional government—pudgy Martians, with a few Mercurians and Farsiders thrown into the political stew. They seemed happy, almost giddy, to be free of the earth. The shuttle’s crew were Belters, spidery-limbed and weak. Yet despite the moon’s pull, they insisted on standing at the main hatch, smiling and shaking hands, wishing everyone a good day and good travels to come. The pilot—three meters of brittle bone and waxy skin—looked directly at Sitta, telling her, “It’s been a pleasure serving you, my dear. An absolute joy.”

Eight years ago, banished from Farside, Sitta carried her most essential belongings inside an assortment of hyperfiber chests, sealed and locked. All were stolen when she reached the earth, and that’s where she learned how little is genuinely essential. Today, she carried a single leather bag, trim and simple. Unlockable, unobtrusive. Following the herd of bureaucrats, she entered a long curling walkway, robot sentries waiting, politely but firmly asking everyone to submit to a scan.

Sitta felt ready.

Waiting her turn, she made the occasional noise about having been gone too long.

“Too long,” she said twice, her voice entirely convincing.

The earth had left its marks. Once pretty in a frail, pampered way, Sitta had built heavier bones and new muscle, fats and fluid added in just the last few months. Her face showed the abuse of weather, save around her thin mouth. Toxins and a certain odd fungus had left her skin blotchy, scarred. Prettiness had evolved into a handsome strength. She needed that strength, watching the robots turn toward her, a dozen sensitive instruments reaching inside her possessions and her body, no place to hide.

But these were only routine precautions. More thorough examinations were endured in Athens and the orbiting station, and she was perfectly safe. There was nothing dangerous, nothing anyone could yet find—

—which was when the nearest robot hesitated, pointing one gray barrel at her swollen belly. What was wrong? Fear began, and remembering the sage advice of a smuggler, Sitta hid her fear by pretending impatience, asking her accuser, “What’s wrong? Are you broken?”

No response.

“I’m in perfect health,” she declared. “I cleared quarantine in three days.”

“Thank you.” The robot withdrew the device. “Please, continue.”

Adrenaline and the weak gravity made the next stride into a leap. The walktube took a soft turn, then climbed toward the main terminal. Another barrier had been passed. Sitta coached herself: A simple ride to Farside, another cursory scan at the border, then freedom for the rest of her days. The impulse was to run to the public railbugs, but the spectacle of that was sure to draw all sorts of unwanted attention. Forcing her legs to walk, she kept thinking, “I just want it done. Now. Now!”

Two signs greeted her entry to the terminal. “WELCOME TO THE NEW NEARSIDE INTERPLANETARY TRANSIT FACILITY AND PEACE PARK.” And beyond those tall, viscous letters was a second, far less formal sign. Sitta’s name was written in flowing liquid-light script, accompanied by shouts and applause, a tiny but enthusiastic crowd of well wishers charging her, making her want to flee.

“Surprise,” they called out.

“Are you surprised?” they asked.

Nervous faces crowded close, examining her scars and general weathering, everyone fighting the urge to blatantly stare. Then she set down her bag, taking a breath and turning, showing her profile, making everyone gawk and giggle aloud.

Hands reached for her belly.

Pony, flippant as always, exclaimed, “Oh, and we thought you weren’t having any fun down there!”

Insensitive and graceless, and every other face tightened, ready for her anger. But Sitta politely smiled, whispering, “Who could have guessed?” Not once, even in her worst daydream, had she imagined that anyone would come to meet her. How could they even know she was here? With a voice that sounded just a little forced, Sitta said, “Hello. How are all of you?” She grasped the nearest hand and pressed it against herself. It was Varner’s hand, large and masculine, and soft. When had she last felt a hand both free of callus and intact?

“No wonder you’re home early,” Varner observed, his tone effortlessly sarcastic. “What are you? Eight months along?”

“More than six,” Sitta replied, by reflex.

Icenice, once her very best friend, came forward and demanded a hug. Still tall, still lovely, and still overdressed for the occasion, she put her thin long arms around Sitta and burst into tears. Wiping her face with the sleeve of her black-and-gold gown, she stepped back and sputtered, “We’re sorry, darling. For everything. Please—”

Varner said, “Icenice,” in warning.

“Accept our apologies. Please?”

“I came home, didn’t I?” asked Sitta.

The question was interpreted as forgiveness. Every face grinned, yet this was far from the same old gang. Where were Lean and Catchen? And Unnel? The Twins had made it, still indistinguishable from each other, and Vechel, silent as always. But there people hanging in the background, wearing the suffering patience of strangers. Spouses, or spies? Sitta had to imagine this was some elaborate scheme meant to keep tabs on her. Or perhaps some species of slow, subtle torture was being unleashed, as a prelude to things even worse.

Everybody was talking; nobody could listen.

Suddenly Varner—always their reasonable, self-appointed boss—shook people and declared, “We can chat on the rail.” Turning to Sitta, he winked while asking, “May I carry this lady’s satchel?”

For an instant, in vivid detail, she remembered the last time she had seen him.

Varner took her hesitation as a refusal. “Well, you’re twice my strength anyway.” Probably true. “Out of our way, people! A mother needs room. Make way for us!”

They used slidewalks, giant potted jungles passing on both sides. Staring at the luxurious foliage, unfruited and spendthrift, Sitta wondered how many people could be fed with crops grown inside those pots, and how these treasures might be transported to the earth.

More thoughts needed to be choked to death.

Turning to Icenice, she examined the rich fabrics of her gown and the painted, always perfect breasts. With a voice intense and casual in equal measures, she asked, “How did you know I’d be here?”

Icenice grinned and bent closer. “We had a tip.”

Sitta was traveling under her own name, but she’d left the Plowsharers in mid-assignment. Besides, Plowsharers were supposed to enjoy a certain anonymity, what with the negative feelings toward them. “What kind of tip, darling?”

“I told one of your administrators about us. About the prank, about how sorry we felt.” Her long hands meshed, making a single fist. “She knew your name. ‘The famous Sitta,’ she called you. ‘One of our best.’”

Nodding, Sitta made no comment.

“Then just yesterday, without warning, we learned that you’d been given a medical discharge, that you were coming home.” Tears filled red-rimmed eyes. “I was scared for you, Sitta. We all were.”

“I wasn’t,” said Varner. “A little cancer, a little virus. You’re too smart to get yourself into real trouble.”

Sitta made no comment.

“We took the risk, made a day of it,” Icenice continued. She waited for Sitta’s eyes to find hers, then asked, “Would you like to come to my house? We’ve planned a little celebration, if you’re up to it.”

She had no choice but to say, “All right.”

The others closed in on her again, touching the belly, begging for attention Sitta found herself looking upward, hungry for privacy. Through the glass ceiling, the gibbous gray face of the earth showed featureless and chill; and after a long moment’s anguish, she heard herself saying, “The last time I spoke to you—”

“Forget it,” Varner advised, as if it was his place to forgive.

Icenice assured her, “That was eons ago.”

It felt like it was minutes ago. If that.

Then Pony poked her in the side, saying, “We know you. You’ve never held a grudge for long.”

“Pony.” Varner had a gift for delivering warnings with a person’s own name. Sitta made no sound, again glancing at the earth.

Again, Varner touched her with his soft heavy hand, meaning to tease sure her in some fashion. Suddenly his hand jumped back. “Quite a little kicker, isn’t he?”

“She,” Sitta corrected, eyes dropping.

“Six months along?”

“Almost seven.” She held her leather bag in both hands. Why couldn’t she just scream at them and run away? Because it would draw attention, and worse, because someone might ask why she would come here. Sitta had no family left on the moon, no property, nothing but some electronic money in a very portable bank account. “I guess I don’t understand . . . why would anyone even bother—”

“Because,” Icenice proclaimed, taking her best friend by the shoulders. “We knew you deserved a hero’s welcome.”

“Our hero,” people muttered, those words practiced, but poised. “Our own little hero.”

And now she was a hero. The ironies made her want to laugh, just for an instant. She had come to murder them, and she was heroic?

“Welcome home,” they shouted, in unison.

Sitta allowed herself another tired smile, letting them misunderstand the thought behind it. Then she glanced at the earth, longing in her gaze, that world’s infinite miseries preferable to this world’s petty, thoughtless abuses.

2

The war ended when Sitta was four years-old, but for her and her friends it hadn’t existed except as a theory, as a topic that fascinated adults, and as a pair of low-grade warnings when the earth fired its final shots. But they were never endangered. For all intents and purposes, the war was won decades before, the earth in no position to succeed, its enemies able to weather every blow, then take warm pleasure in their final campaigns.

Victory was a good thing. The four year-old girl understood good and evil, winning and losing, and why winners deserved their laurels and losers earned their punishments. She also understood, in some wordless way, that Farside was a special place meant for the best people. Its border was protected by fortifications and energy barriers. Several thousand kilometers of dead rock lay between its blessed people and the enemy. Bombs and lasers could obliterate Nearside, melting it and throwing up new mountains; but on Farside, for more than a century, the citizens suffered nothing worse than quakes and some accidental deaths, friendly bombs and crashing warships doing more harm than the entire earth could manage.

Other worlds told different stories. They were always fighting for survival, every life endangered. No place was safe but the back of the moon, and that’s why Farsiders were the great winners. Sitta’s family made its fortune in genetic weapons—adaptive plagues and communicable cancers, plus a range of parasites. Following a Farside custom, her parents waited until retirement to have their child. It was the same for Icenice, for Varner, for everyone, it seemed. Sitta was shocked to learn as a youngster that near-youngsters could make babies. She had assumed that humans were like the salmon swimming up from the Central Sea, a lifetime of preparation followed by a minute of desperate spawning, then death. That’s how it was for Sitta’s parents; both of them expired even before she reached puberty. An aunt inherited her—an ancient, stern and incompetent creature—and when their relationship collapsed, Sitta lived with her friends’ families, all pleasant and all indifferent toward her.

Growing up, she learned about the great war. Tutors spoke about its beginnings, and they lectured for hours about military tactics and the many famous battles. Yet the war was relentlessly unreal. A giant and elaborate theory presented for her entertainment. She liked the battles for the visual records they left behind, colorful and modestly exciting, and she observed the dead with clinical detachment. Sitta was undeniably bright—her genes had been tweaked to ensure quick, effortless intelligence—yet in some fundamental way, she had gaps. Flaws. Watching the destruction of Nearside and Hellas and dozens of other tragedies, she couldn’t truly envision the suffering involved. The dead were so many abstractions. And what’s more, they were dead because they deserved their fates, unworthy of living here, unworthy of lovely Farside.

In the beginning, the earth had ten billion citizens. It was a wonderland with skyhooks and enormous solar farms, every sort of industry and the finest scientists. The earth should have won. Sitta wrote the same paper for several tutors, pointing out those moments when any decisive, coordinated assault would have crushed the colonies. Yet when chances came, the earth lost its nerve. Too squeamish to obliterate the rebels—too willing to show a partial mercy—it let the colonies breathe and grow strong again, ensuring its own demise.

For that failure, Sitta had shown nothing but scorn. And her tutors, to the machine, agreed with her, awarding good grades to each effort, the last of them adding, “You have a gift with political science. Perhaps you’ll enter government service, then work your way into a high office.”

Such a ridiculous suggestion. Sitta didn’t need careers, what with her inherited wealth and all these natural talents. But if she wanted to work, regardless of reasons, the girl was certain to begin near the top of any organizational heap, inhabiting some position of deserved authority.

She was an important child of important Farsiders.

How could she deserve anything less?

3

The railbug was ornate and familiar—an old-fashioned contraption with a passing resemblance to a fat, glass-skinned caterpillar—but Sitta needed a moment to recall where she had seen it. Free of the port, streaking across the smooth glass plain, she was sitting on one of the stiff seats, stroking the dark wood trim. There was a time when wood was a precious substance on Farside, organics scarce, even for the wealthiest few. Remembering smaller hands on the trim, she looked at Varner and asked, “Did we play here?”

“A few times,” he replied, grinning.

The bug had belonged to his family, too old to use and not fancy enough to refurbish. She remembered darkness and the scent of old flowers. “You brought me here—”

“—for sex, as I remember it.” Varner laughed and glanced at the others, seemingly asking them to laugh with him. “How old were we?”

Too young, she recalled. The experience had been clumsy, and except for the fear of being caught, she’d had little fun. Why did anyone bother with sex? She would ask herself that for weeks. Even when she was old enough, screwing Varner and most of her other male friends, part of Sitta remained that doubtful child, the fun of it merely fun, just another little pleasure to be squeezed into long days and nights of busy idleness.

The railbug was for old-times sake. That’s what she assumed, but before she could ask, Icenice began serving refreshments. “Who wants, who needs?” There was alcohol and more exotic fare. Sitta chose wine, sipping as she halfway listened to jumbled conversations. People told childhood stories, pleasant memories dislodging more of the same. Nobody mentioned the earth or the war. If Sitta didn’t know better, she would assume that nothing had changed in these last years, that these careless lives had been held in stasis. Which might be true, in a sense. But then, as Icenice strode past and the hem of her gown lifted, she noticed the gold bracelet worn on the woman’s left ankle. Sitta remembered that bracelet; it had belonged to the girl’s mother, and to her grandmother before. In a soft half-laugh, she asked, “Are you married, girl?”

Their hostess paused for an instant, then straightened and smiled, her expression almost embarrassed. “I should have told you, Sorry, darling.” A pause. “Almost three years married, yes.”

The buzz of other conversations diminished. Sitta looked at the strangers, wondering which one of them was the husband.

“He’s a Mercurian,” said her one-time friend. “Named Bosson.”

The original Icenice adored men in the plural. The Icenice she remembered gave herself sophisticated personality tests, then boasted of her inability enjoy monogamy. Married? To a hundred men, perhaps. Sitta cleared her throat, then asked, “What sort of wonder is he?”

“Wait and see,” Icenice advised. She adjusted the straps of her gown pulling them one way, then back where they began. “Wait and see.”

The strangers were staring at Sitta, at her face.

“Who are they?” she whispered.

And finally they were introduced, more apologies made for tardiness, Pony claimed the job, prefacing herself by saying, “We’re all Farsiders here.” Was that important? “They’ve heard about you, darling. They’ve wanted to meet you, and for a long, long while . . .”

Shaking damp hands, Sitta consciously forgot every name. Were they friends to the old gang? Yet they didn’t seem to fit that role. She had to resurrect that ridiculous theory about spies and a plot. There was an agenda here, something she could feel in the air. But why bring half a dozen government agents? Unless the plan was to be obvious, in which case they were succeeding.

A social pause. Turning her head, Sitta noticed a long ceramic rib or fin standing on the irradiated plain. For an instant, when the earthshine had the proper angle, she could make out the bulk of something buried within the glass, locked securely in place. A magma whale. At the height of the war, when this basin was a red-hot sea stirred by thousand megaton warheads, Farsiders built a flotilla of robotic whales. Swimming in the molten rock, covering as much as a kilometer every day, they strained out metals and precious rare elements. The munition factories on Farside paid dearly for every gram of ore, and the earth, in ignorance or blind anger, kept up its useless bombardment, dredging the ocean, bringing up more treasures from below.

The rib vanished over the horizon, then with a quiet, respectful voice, Icenice asked, “Are you tired?”

She was sitting beside Sitta. Her gown’s perfumes made the air close, uncomfortable.

“We haven’t worn you out, have we?”

Sitta shook her head, honest when she admitted, “I feel fine.” It had been an easy pregnancy. Then placing a hand on her belly, she lied. “I’m glad you came to meet me.”

The tall woman hesitated, her expression impossible to read. There was sternness in the voice when she said, “It was Varner’s idea.”

“Was it?”

A sigh, a change of topics. “I like this place. I don’t know why.”

She meant the plain. Bleak and pure, the smoothest portions of the glass shone like black mirrors.

“There is a beauty,” Sitta allowed.

Icenice said, “Which makes it all so sad.”

“Why? What’s sad?”

“They’re going to tunnel and dome all of this.”

“Next year,” said an eavesdropping Twin.

“Tunnels here?” Sitta was dubious. “You can shield a spaceport and a rail line, but people can’t live out here, can they?”

“Martians know how.” Icenice glanced at the others, inviting them . . . to do what? “They’ve got a special way to clean the glass.”

“Leaching,” said Varner. “Chemical magic combined with microchines. They developed the process when they rebuilt their own cities.”

“People will live here?” Sitta wrestled with the concept. “I hadn’t heard. I didn’t know.”

“That’s why they built the port in the first place,” Varner continued. “All of this will be settled. Cities. Farms. Parks. And industries.”

“Huge cities,” muttered Icenice.

“This ground was worthless,” growled one of the strangers, “Five years ago, it was less than worthless.”

Varner laughed without humor. “The Martians thought otherwise.”

Everyone looked dour, self-involved. They shook their heads and whispered about the price of land and what they would do if they could try again. Sitta thought it unseemly and greedy. And pointless.

Pony said, “You know, it’s the Martians who own and run the spaceport.”

Sitta did her best to ignore them, gazing back along the rail, the earth dropping for the horizon and no mountains to be seen. They were at the center of the young sea, her home world smooth and simple. Far out on the glass, in a school of a dozen or more, were magma whales. As their sea cooled, they must have congregated there, their own heat helping to keep the rock liquid for a little while longer.

Sitta felt a strange, vague pity. Then fear. Shutting her eyes, she tried to purge her mind of everything fearful and tentative, making herself strong enough, trying to become as pure as the most perfect glass.

4

Sitta couldn’t recall when the prank had seemed fun or funny, though it must have been both at some moment. And she couldn’t remember whose idea it was. Perhaps Varner’s, except the criminality was more like the Twins or Pony. It was meant to be something new, a distraction that involved all of them, and it meant planning and practice and a measure of genuine courage. Sitta volunteered to tackle the largest target. Their goal was to quickly and irrevocably destroy an obscure species of beetle. How many people could boast that they’d pushed a species into oblivion? Rather few, they assumed. The crime would lend them a kind of notoriety, distinctive yet benign. Or so they told themselves, feeling clever and alive.

The ark system was built early in the war. It protected biostocks brought from the earth in finer days; some twenty million species were in cold storage and DNA libraries. A tiny portion of the stocks had been used as raw material for genetic weapons. Sitta’s parents built their lab beside the main ark, and she had visited both the lab and ark as a girl. Little had changed since, including the security systems. She entered without fuss, destroying tissue samples, every whole beetle, and even the partial sequencing maps. Her friends did the same work at the other facilities. It was a tiny black bug from the vanished Amazon, and except for ancient videos and a cursory description of its habits and canopy home, nothing remained of the organism, which was exactly as planned.

Sitta would have escaped undetected but for the miserable luck of a human guard who got lost, making a series of wrong turns. He came upon her moments after she had sent the beetle into nothingness. Caught sooner, her crime would have been simple burglary and vandalism. As it was, she was charged under an old law meant to protect wartime resources.

The mandatory penalty was death. Gray-haired prosecutors with calm gray voices told her, “Your generation needs to behave.” They said, “You’re going to serve as an example, Sitta.” Shaking ancient heads, they declared, “You’re a spoiled and wealthy infant, contemptible and vulgar, and we have no pity for you. We feel nothing but scorn.”

Sitta demanded to see her friends. She wanted them crammed into her hyperfiber cell, to have them see how she was living. Instead she got Icenice and Varner inside a spacious conference room, a phalanx of lawyers behind them. Her best friend wept. Her first lover said, “Listen. Just listen. Stop screaming now and hear us out.”

He told her that behind the scenes, behind the legal facades, semi-official negotiations were underway. Of course the Farside government knew she’d had accomplices, and a lot of officials were afraid that the scandal would spread. Friends with pull were being contacted. That’s what he assured her. Money was flowing from account to account. What Sitta needed to do was to plead guilty, to absorb all blame, because the judge was ready to find for clemency, using some semi-legal technicality. Of course there had to be a staggering penalty. “Which we will pay,” Varner promised, his voice earnest and strong. “We won’t let you spend a single digit of your own money.”

What were her choices? She had to nod, glaring at the lawyer while saying, “Agreed. Good-bye.”

“Poor Sitta,” Icenice had moaned, hugging her friend but weeping less, relieved that she wouldn’t be turned in to the authorities, that she was perfectly safe. Stepping back, the tall girl straightened her gown with a practiced flourish, adding, “And we’ll see you soon. Very soon, darling.”

But the judge wasn’t compliant. After accepting bribes and hearing a few inelegant threats, he slammed together the Hammers ofJustice and announced, “You’re guilty. But since the beetle is missing, and since the prosecution cannot prove its true worth, I cannot, in good conscience, find for the death penalty.”

Sitta stood alone with eyes shut. Then she had heard the word “clemency” and opened her eyes, except nobody but her had spoken.

The judge delivered a hard, withering stare. Sitta would hear that voice for years, syllable by syllable. “I sentence you to three years of involuntary servitude.” Again he struck the Hammers together. “Those three years will be served as a member of the Plowsharers. You’ll be stationed on the earth, young lady, at a post of my approval, and I just hope you learn something worthwhile from this experience.”

The Plowsharers? Those were the very stupid people who volunteered to work and die on the earth, and this had to be a mistake, and how could she have misunderstood so many words at one time . . . ?

Her friends looked as if they were in shock. All wept and bowed their heads, and she glared at them, waiting for even one of them to step forward and share the blame. But they didn’t. Would never. When they looked at Sitta, they saw someone who was about to die. The attrition rate among the Plowsharers was appalling. Had Varner and the others tricked her into confessing, knowing her fate all along? Probably not, no. They were genuinely surprised. She thought it then and thought nothing for the next eight years. But if they had come forward, en masse . . . if another eight families had embraced this ugly business . . . there might have been a reevaluation . . . an orphan’s crime would have been diluted, if only they’d acted with a dose of courage . . . the shits . . .

The earth was hell. A weak Farsider would die in an afternoon, slain by some nameless disease or embittered Terran. Yet not one good friend raised a hand, asking to be heard. Not even when Sitta screamed at them. Not even when she slipped away from her guard, springing over the railing and grabbing Varner, trying to shake him into honesty, cursing and kicking, fighting to shame the idiot into the only possible good deed.

More guards grabbed the criminal, doing their own cursing and kicking before finally binding her arms and legs.

The judge wore an ear-to-ear grin. “Wage good,” he called out, in the end. “Wage plenty of good, Sitta.”

It was a Plowsharers’ motto: Waging Good. And Sitta would remember that moment with a gallows’ clarity, her body being pulled away from Varner as Varner’s face grew cold and certain, one of his hands reaching, pressing at her chest as if helping the guards restrain her, and his tired thick voice said, “You’ll be back.” There wasn’t a shred of confidence in those words. Then, “You’ll do fine.” And finally with a whisper, in despair, “This is for the best, darling. For the best.”

5

The mountains were high and sharp, every young peak named for some little hero of the war. Titanic blasts had built them, then waves of plasma broke against them, fed by the earth’s weapons and meant to pour through any gaps, flooding Farside with the superheated materials. But the waves had cooled and dissipated too quickly. The mountains were left brittle, and in the decades since, at irregular intervals, different slopes would collapse, aprons of debris fanning across the plain. The old railbug skirted one apron, crossed another, then rose into a valley created by an avalanche, a blur of rocks on both sides and Varner’s calm voice explaining how the Martians—who else?—had buried hyperfiber threads, buttressing the mountains, making them safer than mounds of cold butter.

Then they left the valley, passing into the open again, an abandoned fort showing as a series of rectangular depressions. Its barrier generators and potent lasers had been pulled and sold as scrap. There was no more earthshine and no sun yet, but Sitta could make out the sloping wall of an ancient crater and a wide boulder-strewn floor. The border post was in the hard black shadows; the railbug was shunted to a secondary line. Little gold domes passed on their right. They slowed down and then stopped beside a large green dome, fingers of light stabbing at them.

“Why do we have to stop?” asked one of the strangers.

And Pony said, “Because,” while gracelessly pointed toward Sitta.

“It should only take a minute or two,” Varner said, winking at her, maintained that picture of calm ignorance.

A walktube was spliced into the bug’s hatch, and with a rush of humid air, guards entered. Human, not robotic. And armed, too. But what made it most remarkable were the three gigantic hounds. Sitta recognizing the breed in the same instant she realized this was no ordinary inspection. Her composure wobbled but held strong. It was Varner who jumped to his feet, muttering, “By what right—?”

“Hello,” shouted the hounds. “Be still. We bite!” They were broad and hairless, pink as tongues and free of all scent. Their minds and throats had been surgically augmented, and their nostrils were the best in the solar system. The earth’s provisional government used these animals, and if smugglers were found with weapons or contraband, they were instantly executed, that work given to the hounds as a reward.

“We bite,” the hounds repeated. “Out of our way!”

A Belter walked into the railbug, long limbs wearing grav-assist braces. Her bearing and the indigo uniform implied a great rank. Next to her, the hounds appeared docile. She glowered, glared. Facing her, Varner lost all of his nerve, slumping at the shoulders, whimpering, “How can we help?”

“You can’t help,” she stated. Then, speaking to the guards and hounds, she said, “Hunt!”

Sensors and noses were put to work, scouring the floor and corners and the old fixtures, then the passengers and their belongings. One hound descended on Sitta’s bag, letting out a piercing wail.

“Whose is this?” asked the Belter.

Sitta kept control her face, her voice. If this woman knew her plan, then they wouldn’t bother with this little drama. She’d already be placed under arrest. Everyone she knew or had been near would be isolated, then interrogated . . . if they even suspected . . .

“It’s my bag,” Sitta allowed.

“Open it for me. Now.”

Unfastening the simple latches, she worked with cool deliberation. The bag sprang open, and she retreated, watching the heavy pink snouts descend, probing and snorting, wet mouths pulling at her neatly folded clothes. Like the bulky trousers and shirt Sitta wore, these were simple items made with rough, undyed, and inorganic fabrics. The hounds could be hunting for persistent viruses and boobytrapped motes of dust. Except a dozen mechanical searches had found her clean. Had someone recently tried to smuggle something dangerous into Farside? But why send a Belter? Nothing made sense. Sitta felt empty and unready. Then at last, with loud, disappointed voices, the hounds said, “Clean, clean, clean.”

The official offered a grim nod.

Again Varner straightened, skin damp, glistening. “I have never, ever seen such a . . . such a . . . what do you want . . . ?”

No answer was offered. The Belter approached Sitta, her braces humming, lending an unexpected vigor. With the mildest voice, she asked, “How are the Plowsharers doing, miss? Are you waging all the good you can?”

“Always,” Sitta replied.

“Well, good for you.” The official waved a long arm. Two guards grabbed Sitta and carried her to the back of the bug, into the cramped toilet, then stood beside the doorway as the official looked over their shoulders, telling their captive, “Piss into the bowl, miss. And don’t flush.”

Old, weakened glass. That’s what Sitta was. A thousand fractures met and she nearly collapsed, catching herself on the tiny sink and then, using her free hand, unfastening her trousers. Her expansive brown belly seemed to glow. She sat with all the dignity she could muster. Pissing took concentration, courage. Then she rose again, barely able to pull up her trousers when the Belter shouted, “Hunt,” and the hounds pushed past her, heads filling the elegant wooden bowl.

If so much as a single molecule was out of place, they would find it. Ifjust one cell had thrown off its camouflage—

—drained of thought, Sitta retreated into a trance that she had mastered on the earth. On their own, her hands finished securing her trousers. A big wagging tail bruised her leg. Then came three voices, in a chorus, saying, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Yes? What did yes mean?

The official smiled, giving Sitta an odd sideways glance. Then there wasn’t any smile, a stern unapologetic voice saying, “I am sorry for the delay, miss.”

What had the hounds smelled?

“Welcome home, Miss Sitta.”

The intruders retreated, vanished. The walktube was detached, and the railbug accelerated, Sitta walking against the strong tug. Varner and the others watched her in silent astonishment, nothing in their experience to match this assault. She almost screamed, “This happens on the earth, every day!” But she didn’t speak, taking an enormous breath, then kneeling, wiping her hands against her shirt, then calmly beginning to refold and repack her belongings.

The others were embarrassed. Dumbfounded. Intrigued.

It was Pony who noticed the sock under the seat, bringing it to her and touching the bag for a moment, commenting, “It’s beautiful leather.” She wanted to sound at ease and trivial, adding, “What kind of leather is it?”

Sitta was thinking: What if someone knows?

Months ago, when this plan presented itself, she assumed that one of the security apparatuses would discover her, then execute her, She allowed herself a ten percent chance of surviving to this point, which seemed wildly optimistic. But what if there were people—powerful, like-minded people—who believed that she was right? No government could sanction what Sitta was attempting, much less make it happen. But they might allow the means to slip past them.

That woman smiled at me!

“Are they culturing leather on the earth?” asked Pony, unhappy to be ignored. Stroking the simple bag with both hands, she commented, “It has a nice texture. Very smooth.”

“It’s not cultured,” Sitta responded. “Terrans can’t own biosynthetic equipment.”

“It’s from an animal then.” The girl’s hand lifted, a vague disgust showing on her face. “Is it?”

“Yes,” said the retired Plowsharer.

“What kind of animal?”

“The human kind.”

Every eye was fixed on her.

“The other species are scarce,” Sitta explained. “And precious. Even rat skins go into the pot.”

No one breathed; no one dared move.

“This bag is laminated human flesh,” she told them, fastening the latches. Click, click. “You have to understand. On the earth, it’s an honor to be used after death. You want to stay behind and help your family.”

A low moan fled Icenice.

And Sitta set the bag aside, watching the staring faces as she added, “I knew some of these people. I did.”

6

The Plowsharers were founded and fueled by idealists who never actually worked on the earth. A wealthy Farsider donated her estate as an administrative headquarters. Plowsharers were to be volunteers with purposeful skills that would help the earth and its suffering people. That was the intent, at least. Finding volunteers worth accepting was the trouble. A hundred thousand vigorous young teachers and doctors and ecological technicians could have done miracles. But the norm was to creak along with ten or fifteen thousand ill-trained, emotionally questionable semi-volunteers. Who in her right mind joined a service with fifty percent mortality? Along the bell-shaped curve, Sitta was one of the blue-chip recruits. She had youth and a quality education. Yes, she was spoiled. Yes, she was naive. But she was in perfect health and could be made even healthier. “We’re always improving our techniques,” the doctors explained, standing before her in the orbital station. “What we’ll do is teach your flesh how to resist its biological enemies, because they’re the worst hazards. Diseases and toxins kill more Plowsharers than do bombs, old or new.”

A body that had never left the soft climate of Farside was transformed. Her immune system was bolstered, then a second, superior system was built on top of it. She was fed tailored bacteria that proceeded to attack her native flora, destroying them and bringing their withering firepower to her defense. As an experiment, Sitta was fed cyanides and dioxins, cholera and rabies. Headaches were her worst reaction. Then fullerenes stuffed full of procrustean bugs were injected straight into her heart. What should have killed her in minutes made her nauseous, nothing more. The invaders were obliterated, their toxic parts encased in plastic granules, then jettisoned in the morning’s bowel movement.

Meanwhile, bones and muscles had to be strengthened. Calcium slurries were ingested, herculian steroids were administered along with hard exercise, and her liver succumbed as a consequence, her posting delayed. Her threeyear sentence didn’t begin until she set foot on the planet, yet Sitta was happy for the free time. It gave her a chance to compose long, elaborate letters to her old friends, telling them in clear terms to fuck themselves and each other and fuck Farside and would they please die soon and horribly, please?

A fresh liver was grown and implanted. At last, Sitta was posted. With an education rich in biology—a legacy of her parents—she was awarded a physician’s field diploma, then given to a remote city on the cratered rock of northern America. Her hyperfiber chests were stolen in Athens. With nothing but the clothes she had worn for three days, she boarded the winged shuttle that would take her across the poisoned Atlantic. Her mood couldn’t have been lower. That’s what she believed, and then, gazing out a tiny porthole, she discovered a new depth of spirit. Gray ocean was giving way to a blasted lunar surface. It was like the moon of old, save for the thick acidic haze and the occasional dab of green, both serving to heighten the bleakness, the lack of all hope.

She decided to throw herself from the shuttle. Placing a hand on the emergency latch, she waited for the courage; but then one of the crew saw her and came over to her, kneeling to say, “Don’t.” His smile was charming, his eyes angry. “If you need to jump,” he said, “use the rear hatch. And seal the inner door behind you, will you?”

Sitta stared at him, unable to speak.

“Consideration,” he cautioned. “At this altitude and at these speeds, you might hurt innocent people.”

In the end, she killed no one. Embarrassed to be found out, to be so transparent, she kept on living; and years later, in passing, she would wonder who to thank for this indifferent, precious help.

7

Farside, like every place, was transformed by the war. But instead of world-shaking explosions and craters, it was sculpted by slower, more graceful events. Prosperity covered its central region with domes, warm air and manmade rains beginning to modify the ancient regolith. Farther out were the factories and vast laboratories that supplied the military and allied worlds. Profits came as electronic cash, water and organics. A world dry for four billion years was suddenly rich with moisture. Ponds became lakes. Comet ice and pieces of distant moons were brought to pay for necessities like medicine and sophisticated machinery. And when there was too much water for the surface area—Farside isn’t a large place—the excess was put underground, flooding old mines and caverns and outdated bunkers. This became the Central Sea. Only in small places, usually on the best estates, would the Sea show on the surface. Icenice had lived beside one of those pond-sized faces, the water bottomless and blue, lovely beyond words.

It was too bad that Sitta wouldn’t see it now. Looking about the railbug, at the morose, downslung faces, it was obvious that she was doomed to be uninvited to every celebration. That incident with the bag had spoiled the mood. Would it be Varner or Icenice who would break another promise? “Some other time, darling. Where can we leave you?” Except they surprised her. Instead of excuses, they began to have the most banal conversation imaginable. Who remembered what from last year’s spinball season? What team won the tournament? Who could recall the most obscure statistic? A safe, bloodless collection of noise set everything right again, and Sitta ignored the prattle, leaning back against her seat, her travels and the pregnancy finally catching up with her. She dropped into sleep, no time passing, then woke to find the glass walls opaque, the sun up and needing to be shielded. This was like riding inside a glass of milk or a cloudbank, and sometimes, holding her head at the proper angle, she could just make out the blocky shapes of factories streaking past.

Nobody was speaking; furtive glances were thrown her way.

“What do they do?” asked Sitta.

Silence.

“The factories,” she added. “Aren’t they being turned over to civilian industries?”

“Some have been,” said Varner.

“Why bother?” one of the strangers complained.

“Bosson uses a few of them.” Icenice spoke with a flat, emotionless voice. “The equipment is old, he says. And he has trouble selling what he makes.”

Bosson is your husband, thought Sitta. Right?

She asked, “What does he make?”

“Laser drills. They’re retooled old weapons, I guess.”

Sitta had assumed that everything and everyone would follow the grand plan. Farside’s wealth and infrastructure would generate new wealth and opportunities . . . if not with their factories, then with new spaceports and beautiful new cities.

Except those wonders belonged to the Martians.

Varner wore a stern expression. “If you want to sleep, we’ll make up the long seat in the back. If you’d like.”

On a whim, she asked, “Where are Lean and Catchen?”

Silence.

“Are they still angry with me?”

“Nobody’s angry with you,” Icenice protested.

“Lean lives on Titan,” Pony replied. “Catchen . . . I don’t know . . . she’s somewhere in the Belt.”

“They’re not together?” Sitta had never known two people more perfectly linked, save for the Twins. “What happened?”

Shrugs. Embarrassed expressions, and pain. Then Varner summed it up by saying, “Crap finds you.”

What precisely did that mean?

Varner rose to his feet, looking the length of the bug.

Sitta asked, “What about Unnel?”

“We don’t have any idea.” Indeed, he seemed entirely helpless, eyes dropping, gazing at his own hands for a few baffled moments. “Do you want to sleep, or not?”

She voted for sleep. A pillow was found and placed where her head would lay, and she was down and hard asleep in minutes, waking once to hear soft conversation—distant, unintelligible—then again to hear nothing at all. The third time brought bright light and whispers, and she sat upright, discovering that their railbug had stopped, its walls once again transparent. Surrounding them was a tall, delicate jungle and a soft blue-tinted sky of glass, the lunar noon as brilliant as she remembered. Through an open hatch, she could smell water and the vigorous stink of orchids.

Icenice was coming for her. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “I was just going to shake you.”

The others stood behind Icenice, lined up like the best little children; and Sitta thought:

You want something.

That’s why they had come to greet her and bring her here. That’s why they had endured searches and why they had risked facing any grudges that she still might feel toward them.

You want something important, and no one else can give it to you.

Sitta would refuse them. She had come here to destroy these people and devastate their world, and seeing the desire on hopeful, desperate faces, she was so deeply pleased. So blessed. Rising to her feet, she asked, “Would someone carry my bag? I’m still very tired.”

A cold pause, then motion.

By different straps, Varner and one of the strangers picked that bag of human flesh, eyeing one another until the stranger relinquished the disgusting chore with a forced chuckle and bow, stepping back and glancing at Sitta, hoping she would notice his attempted kindness.

8

Artificial volcanoes girdled the earth’s equator, fusion reactors sunk into their throats, helping push millions of tons of acid and ash into the stratosphere. Constant eruptions maintained the gray-black clouds that helped block the sunlight. Those clouds were vital. Decades of bombardment had burned away forests, soil and even great volumes of carbonate rock. There was so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that full sunshine would have brought a runaway greenhouse event. A second Venus would be born, and the oceans would rise into the stratosphere, and then the world would be broil until dead. “Not a bad plan,” Sitta’s parents would always claim, perhaps as a black joke. Perhaps. “That world is all one grave anyway. Why do we pretend?”

The earthly climate was hot and humid despite the perpetual gloom. It would be an ideal home for orchids and food crops, if not for the lack of soil, its poisoned water, and the endless plant diseases. Terrans, by custom, lived inside bunkers. Even in surface homes built after the war, there was a strength of walls and ceilings, everything drab and massive, every opening able to be sealed tight. Sitta was given her own concrete monstrosity when she arrived at her post. It had no plumbing. She’d been promised normal facilities, but assuming that she was being slighted by the Terrans, she refused to complain. Indeed, she tried to avoid all conversation. On her first morning, in the dim purple light, she put on a breathing mask to protect her lungs from acids and explosive dust, then left her new house, shuffling up a rocky hill, finding a depression where she felt unwatched and doing the essential chore and covering her mess with loose stones, then slinking off to work a full day in the farm fields.

A hospital was promised; every government official in Athens had said so. But on the earth, she was learning, promises were no stronger than the wind that makes them. For the time being, she was a laborer, and a poor one. Sitta could barely lift her tools, much less swing them with authority. Yet nobody seemed to mind, their public fury focused on a thousand worse outrages. That was greatest surprise for the new Plowsharer. It wasn’t the poverty, which was endless, or the clinging filth, or even the constant spectre of death. It was the ceaselessly supportive nature of the Terrans, particularly toward her. Wasn’t she one of the brutal conquerors? Not to their way of thinking, no. Acidic clouds ruled the sky. The moon and Mars and the rest of the worlds were theories, unobserved and almost unimaginable. Yes, they honestly hated the provisional government, particularly the security agencies that enforced the harsh laws. But toward Sitta, their Plowsharer, they showed smiles. They said, “We’re thrilled to have you here. If you need anything, ask. We won’t have it, but ask anyway. We like to apologize all the same.”

Humor was a shock, set against the misery. Despite every awful story told by Farsiders, and despite the grueling training digitals, the reality proved a hundred times more wicked, cruel, and thoughtless than anything she could envision. Yet meanwhile, amid the carnage, the people of this city told jokes, laughed, and loved with a kind of maniacal vigor, perhaps because of the stakes involved, pleasures needing to be taken as they were found.

Tens of thousands lived together, few of whom could be called old by Farside standards. Children outnumbered adults, except they weren’t genuine children. They reminded Sitta of five and six year-old adults, working in the fields and tiny factories, worldly in all things, including their play. The most popular game was a pretend funeral. They used wild rats, skinning them just as human bodies were skinned, pulling out organs to be transplanted into other rats, just as humans harvested whatever they could use from their own dead, implanting body parts with the help of primitive autodocs, dull knives, and weak laser beams.

By law, each district in the city had one funeral each day. One or fifty bodies—skinned, and if clean enough, emptied of livers, kidneys and hearts— were buried in a single ceremony, always at dusk, always as the blister-colored sun touched the remote horizon. There was never more than one hole to dig and refill. Terrans were wonders at digging graves. They always knew where to sink them and how deep, then just what words to say over the departed, and the best ways to comfort a woman from Farside who insisted on taking death personally.

Despite her hyperactive immune system, Sitta became ill. For all she knew, she had caught some mutant strain of an ailment devised by her parents, those circumstances thick with irony. After three days of fever, she ran out of the useless medicines in her personal kit, then fell into a delirium, waking at one point to find women caring for her, smiling with sloppy toothless mouths, ugly faces lending her encouragement, a credible strength.

Sitta recovered after a week of near-death. Weaker than any time since birth, she shuffled up the hillside to defecate, and in the middle of the act she saw a nine-year-old sitting nearby, watching without a hint of shame. She finished and went to him. And he skipped toward her, carrying a small bucket and spade. Was he there to clean up after her? She asked, then with a wise tone, added, “I bet you want it for the fields.”

The boy gave an odd look, then proclaimed, “We wouldn’t waste it on the crops!I”

“Then why?” Hesitating, she realized that she’d seen him on other mornings. “You’ve done this other times, haven’t you?”

“It’s my job,” he said, a prideful smile behind that transparent breathing mask. She tried to find her other stone piles. “But why?”

“I’m not suppose to tell.”

Sitta offered a wan smile. “I won’t tell that you did. Just explain what you want with it.”

As if nothing could be more natural, he said, “We put your turds in our food.”

She moaned, bending as if punched.

“You’ve got bugs in you,” said the boy. “Bugs that keep you alive. If we eat them and if they take hold—”

Rarely, she guessed.

“—then we’ll feel better. Right?”

On occasion, perhaps. But the bacteria were designed for her body, her chemistry. It would take mutations and enormous luck . . . then yes, some of those people might benefit in many ways. At least it wasn’t impossible.

“But why keep this a secret?”

“People like you can be funny,” the boy warned. “About all kinds of stuff. They thought you wouldn’t like knowing.”

Disgust fell away, leaving her oddly pleased.

“Why do you hide your shit?” he asked. “Is that what you do on the moon? Do you bury it under rocks?”

“No.” Farside came to her mind’s eye. “No, we pipe it into the Sea.”

“Into your water?” His nose crinkled up. “That doesn’t sound very smart, I think.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” she agreed. Then she pointed at the bucket, saying, “Let me keep it. How about if I set it outside my door every morning?”

“It would save me a walk,” the boy agreed. “It would help both of us.” He nodded, smiling up at her. “My name is Thomas.”

“Mine is Sitta.”

A big, long laugh. “I know that.”

For that instant, in the face and voice, Thomas seemed like a genuine nine-year-old boy, wise in the details, innocent in the heart.

9

Icenice’s home and grounds were exactly as Sitta remembered them, and it was as if she had never been there, as if the scenery had been shown to her in holos while she was a young and impressionable girl. “Privilege,” said the property. “Order.”

“Comfort.” Sitta looked down a long green slope, eyes resting on the blue pond-sized face of the Sea, flocks of swift birds flying around it and drinking from it and lighting on its shore. After a minute, she turned and focused on the tall house, thinking of all the rooms and elegant balconies and baths and holoplazas. On the earth, two thousand people would reside inside it and feel blessed. And what would they do with this yard? With everyone staring, Sitta dropped to her knees, hands digging into the freshly watered sod, nails cutting through sweet grass and exuberant roots, reaching soil blacker than tar. The skins of old comets went into this marvel, brought in exchange for critical war goods. And for what good? Pulling up a great lump of the stuff, she placed it against her nose and sniffed once, then again.

Silence was broken by someone clearing his throat.

“Ah-hem!”

Icenice jumped half a meter into the air, turning in flight and blurting, “Honey? Hello.”

The husband stood on the end of a stone porch, between stone lions. In no way, save for a general maleness, did he match Sitta’s expectations. Plain and stocky, Bosson was twenty years older than the rest of them, and a little fat. Dressed like a low-grade functionary, there seemed to be nothing memorable about him.

“So does my dirt smell good?” he shouted.

Sitta emptied her hands and rose. “Lovely.”

“Better than anything you’ve tasted for a while. Am I right?”

She knew him. The words; the voice. His general attitude. She had seen hundreds of men like him on earth, all members of the government, all middle-aged and embittered by whatever had placed them where they didn’t want to be. Sitta offered a thin smile, telling Bosson, “I’m glad to meet you, finally.”

The man grinned, turned. To his wife, he said, “Come here.”

Icenice nearly ran to him, wrapping both arms around his chest and squealing, “We’ve had a gorgeous time, darling.”

No one else in their group greeted him, even in passing.

Sitta climbed the long stairs two at a time, offering her hand and remarking, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Have you?” Bosson laughed, reaching past her hand and patting her swollen belly. “Is this why you quit playing the Good Samaritan?”

“Honey?” said Icenice, her voice cracking.

“Who’s the father? Another Plow?”

Sitta waited for a long moment, trying to read the man’s stony face. Then, with a quiet, stolid voice, she replied, “He was Terran.”

“Was?” asked Icenice, fearfully.

“He’s dead,” Bosson answered. Unimpressed; unchastened. “Am I right, Miss Sitta?”

She didn’t respond, maintaining her glacial calm.

“Darling, let me show you the room.” Icenice physically moved between them, sharp features tightening and a sheen of perspiration on her face and breasts. “We thought we’d give you your old room. That is, I mean, if you want to stay . . . for a little while . . .”

“I hope you remember how to eat,” Bosson called after them. “This house has been cooking all day, getting ready.”

Sitta asked nothing. She didn’t mention the husband or invite details about him. Yet Icenice felt compelled to explain, saying, “He’s just in a bad mood. Work isn’t going well.”

“Making laser drills, right?”

The girl hesitated on the stairs, sunshine falling from a high skylight, the heat of it making her perfumes flood into the golden air. “He’s a Mercurian, darling. You know how bleak they can be.”

Were they?

“He’ll be fine,” Icenice promised, no hope in her voice, “A drink or two, and he’ll be sugar.”

Following the familiar route, she was taken to an enormous suite, its bed able to sleep twenty and the corner decorated with potted jungles. Bright gold and red monkeys came close, begging for any food that a human might be carrying. Sitta had nothing in her hands. A house robot had brought her bag, setting it on the bed and asking if she wished it unpacked. She didn’t answer. Already sick of luxuries, she felt a revulsion building, her face hardening. Misreading her expression, Icenice asked, “Are you disappointed with me?” Sitta didn’t care about the girl’s life. But instead of honesty, she feigned interest. “Why did you marry him?”

Bleakness seemed to be a family trait. A shrug of the shoulders, and she said, “I had to.”

“But why?”

“Because there was no choice.” She said it as if nothing could be more obvious. Then, “Can we go? I don’t want to leave them alone for too long.” The robot was left to decide whether or not to unpack. Sitta and Icenice went downstairs, discovering everyone in the long dining room, Bosson sitting in a huge feather chair at one end, watching his guests congregating in the distance. His expression was both alert and bored. Sitta was reminded of an adult watching children, always keeping count of the pretty baubles. Sitta arrived, and whispers died.

It was Bosson who spoke to her, jumping up from his chair with a laugh. “So what was your job? What kind of good did you wage?”

Sitta offered a lean, unfriendly smile. “I ran a hospital.”

Varner came closer. “What kind of hospital?”

“Prefabricated,” she began.

Then Bosson added, “The Martians built them by the thousands, just in case we ever invaded the earth. Portable units. Automated. Never needed.” He winked at Sitta, congratulating himself. “Am I right?”

She said nothing.

“Anyway, some Plow thought they could be used anyway.” He shook his head, not quite laughing. “I’m not a fan of the Plows, in case you haven’t noticed.” With a soft, plaintive voice, Icenice whispered, “Darling?”

To whom? Sitta looked at the man, finding no reason to be intimidated. “That’s not exactly a unique opinion.”

“I’m a harsh person,” he said, in explanation. “I believe in a harsh, cold universe. Psychology isn’t my field, but maybe it has to do with surviving one of the last big Terran attacks. Not that my parents did. Or my brothers.” A complex, shifting smile appeared, vanished. “In fact, I watched most of them expire. The cumulative miseries of hard radiation . . .”

Using her most reasonable voice, Sitta remarked, “The people who killed them have also died. Years ago.”

He said, “Good.”

He grinned and said, “The real good of the Plows, I think, is that they help prolong the general misery. People like you give hope, and what good is hope?” His opinions weren’t new, but the others appeared horrified.

“Things are getting better!” Icenice argued. “I just heard . . . I don’t remember where . . . that lifespans are almost twenty percent longer than a few years ago.”

“The average earthly lifespan is eleven years,” Sitta said.

The house itself seemed to hold its breath. Then Pony, of all people, said, “That’s sad.” She seemed to mean it, hugging herself and shaking her head, repeating the words. “That’s sad. That’s sad.”

“But you got your hospital,” Varner offered. “Didn’t it help?”

“In some ways.” Sitta explained, “It didn’t weather its storage well. Some systems never worked. Autodocs failed without warning. Of course, all the biosynthesizing gear had been ripped out on Mars. And of course I had no real medical training, which meant I did a lot of guessing when there was no other choice . . . guessing wrong, more than not . . .”

Now she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. Nobody liked the topic, save Bosson. Yet no one knew how to talk about anything else.

The Mercurian approached, hands reaching for her belly, then having the good sense to hesitate. “Why carry the baby yourself? Your hospital must have had wombs.”

“They were stolen.”

Which he must have realized for himself.

“Before the hospital arrived, they were removed,” she said.

Icenice asked, “Why?”

“Terrans breed as they live,” Bosson said. “Like rats.”

Incandescent rage was building inside Sitta, and she enjoyed that emotion, relishing the clarity it afforded her. Almost smiling, she told them, “Biosynthetic machinery could do wonders for them. But of course we won’t let them have anything sophisticated, since they might try to hurt us. And that means that if you want descendants, you’ve got to make as many babies as possible, as fast as possible, hoping some fraction will have the right combinations of genes for whatever happens in their unpredictable lives.”

“Let them die,” was Bosson’s verdict.

Sitta didn’t care about him. He was just another child of the war, unremarkable, virtually insignificant. What drew her rage were the innocent faces of the others. What made her want to explode was Varner’s remote, schoolboy logic. With his most pragmatic voice, he said, “The provisional government is temporary. When it leaves, the earth can elect its own representatives, then make its own laws.”

“Never,” Bosson promised. “Not in ten thousand years.”

Sitta took a breath, held it, then slowly exhaled.

“What else did you do?” asked Icenice, desperate for good news. “Did you travel? You must have seen famous places.”

As if she’d been on vacation.

“Besides the hospital, what did you do?”

“I was picked as a jurist,” Sitta offered. “Many times. And being a jurist is a considerable honor.”

“For trials?” asked Pony.

“Of a kind.”

People fidgeted, recalling Sitta’s trial.

“Jurists are trusted people who watch friends giving birth.” She waited a moment, then added, “That was my most important job before I had my hospital.”

“But what does a jurist do?” asked one of the Twins.

They didn’t know. A glance told her as much, and Sitta enjoyed the suspense, allowing herself a malicious smile before saying, “We used all kinds of parasites in the war. Tailored ones. Some burrowed into fetuses, using them as raw material for whatever purpose the allies could dream up.”

No one blinked.

“The parasites are geniuses at hiding. Genetically camouflaged, but swift when the time comes. The jurist’s job is to administer better tests after the birth, and if there’s any problem, she has to kill the baby.”

There was a soft, profound gasp.

“Jurists are armed,” she continued, glancing at Bosson and realizing that even he was impressed. “Some parasites can remake the newborn, giving it claws and coordination.”

The Mercurian showed serene pleasure. “Ever see such a monster?”

“Several times,” said the retired Plowsharer. “But most of the babies, the infected ones, just sit up and cough, then look at you. The worms are inside their brains, manipulating their motor and speech centers. ‘Give up,’ they say, ‘You can’t win,’ they say. ‘You can’t fight us. Surrender.’”

She waited for an instant.

Then it was important to add, “They usually can’t say, ‘Surrender.’ It’s too long, too complicated for their new mouths. And besides, by then they’re being swung against a table or a wall. By the legs. Like this. If you do it right, they’re dead with one good blow.” And now she was weeping, telling Icenice, “Give me one of your old dolls. I’ll show you just how I did it.”

10

Sitta expected to leave after her mandatory three years of service. To that end, she fashioned a calendar and counted the sun-starved days, maintaining that ritual until early in her third year, not long after the long-promised hospital arrived. Expectations climbed with the new facility. At first, Sitta imagined that the city’s expectations were what made her work endless hours, patching wounds when the autodocs couldn’t keep up, curing nameless diseases with old, legal medicines, and tinkering with software never before field tested. Then there was a day—she was never certain which day—when she realized that the Terrans were happy for any help, even ineffectual help, and if all she did was sit in the hospital’s cramped office, making shit and keeping the power on, nobody would have complained, and nobody would have thought any less of her.

She applied for a second term on the stipulation that she remained at her current post. This set off alarms in the provisional capital. Fearing insanity or some involvement in illegal operations, the government sent a representative from Athens. The Martian, a tiny and exhausted woman, made no secret of her suspicions. She inspected the hospital several times, hunting for biosynthetic equipment, for any medicines too new to be legal. Her hatred for Farsiders was blatant. “When I was a girl, I heard about you people,” she reported. “I heard what you did to us, to all your ‘allies’ . . . and for nothing but profit.”

Sitta remained silent, passive. There was no victory in any argument.

“I don’t know who I hate worse,” said the woman. “Terran rats, or Farside leeches.”

In the calmest of voices, Sitta asked, “Will you let this leech stay with her rats? Please?”

It was allowed, and the Plowsharers were so pleased that they sent promises of two more hospitals that never materialized. It was Sitta who purchased and imported whatever new medical equipment she could find, most of it legal. The next three years passed in a blink. She slept four hours on the good night, and she managed to lift lifespans in the city to an average of thirteen and half years. With her next reapplication, she asked Athens for permission to remain indefinitely. They sent a new Martian with the same reliable hatreds, but he found reasons to enjoy her circumstances. “Isn’t it ironic?” he asked, laughing aloud. “Here you are, waging war against the monsters that your own parents developed. The monsters that made you rich in the first place. And according to import logs, you’ve been using that wealth to help the victims. Ironies wrapped in ironies, aren’t they?”

She agreed, pretending that she’d never noticed any of that before.

“Stay as long as you want,” the government man told her. “This looks like the perfect place for you.”

Remaining on the earth, by her own choice, might be confused for forgiveness. Yet it wasn’t. Indeed, the dimensions of her hatreds became larger, more worldly. Instead of being betrayed by friends and wrongfully punished, Sitta had begun to think of herself as supremely fortunate. She felt wise and moral, at least in certain dangerous realms. Who else from Farside held pace with her accomplishments? No one she could imagine, that unexpected pride making her smile, in private.

Free of Farside, Sitta heard every awful story about her homeland Every Martian and Mercurian relished telling about the bombardment of Nearside during those first horrible days, and how convoys of refugees had reached the border, only to be turned away. Farside began as a collection of mining camps and telescopes, and there wasn’t room for everyone. Only the wealthiest could immigrate. That was Sitta’s family story. Every official she came across seemed to have lost some part of his or her family. On Nearside. Mars. Ganymede. Even on Triton. And why? Because Sitta’s repulsive ancestors needed to build mansions and jungles for themselves. “We don’t have room,” Farsiders would complain. And who dared argue the point? During the war, which world would risk offending Farside, losing its portion of the weapons and other essentials?

None took the chance; yet none would forget.

The naive, superficial girl who had murdered a helpless beetle was gone. The hardened woman in her stead felt outrage and a burning, potent taste for anything that smacked of justice. Yet never, even in passing, did she think of vengeance. It was impossible to believe that she would escape this battered plain. Some accident, some mutated bug, would destroy her, given time and the proper circumstances.

Then came an opportunity, a miraculous event in the form of a woman traveling alone. Eight months into a pregnancy that was too perfect, she was discovered by a local health office and brought to the hospital for a mandatory examination. Sitta had help from her own fancy equipment, plus the boy who had once happily collected her morning stool. He was her protégé. He happened to find the telltale cell inside the fetus. In a soft, astonished voice, he said, “God, we’re lucky to have caught it. Picture this one getting free.”

Sitta heard nothing else that he said, nor the long silence afterward. Then Thomas touched her arm—they were lovers by then—and in a voice that couldn’t have been more calm, Sitta told him, “It’s time, I think. I think I need to go home.”

11

Dinner was meat wrapped in luxurious vegetables and meat meant to stand alone, proud and spicy, and there were wines and chilled water from the Central Sea and milk too sweet to be more than sipped, plus wide platters full of cakes and frosted biscuits and sour candies and crimson puddings. A hundred people could have eaten their fill at the long table, but as it turned out, no one except Bosson had an appetite. Partially dismantled carcasses were carried away by the kitchen’s robots; goblets were drained just once in an hour’s time. Perhaps it was related to the stories Sitta told at dinner. Perhaps her friends were a little perturbed by recipes involving rats and spiders and other treasured vermin. For dessert, she described the incident with Thomas and her bodily wastes, adding that they’d become lovers when he was a well worn fourteen. Only Bosson seemed to appreciate her tales, presumably for their portrait of misery; and Sitta discovered a grudging half-fondness for the man, both of them outsiders, both educated in certain hard and uncompromising matters. Looking only at Bosson, Sitta explained how Thomas carelessly inhaled a forty-year-old weapon, its robotic exterior cutting through an artery, allowing its explosive core to circumnavigate his body perhaps a hundred times before it detonated, liquifying his brain.

That story began with a flat, matter-of-fact voice. The voice cracked once when Thomas collapsed, then again when she described—in precise, professional detail—how she personally harvested the organs worth taking. The boy’s skin was too old and weathered to make quality leather; it was left in place. Then the body was dropped into the day’s grave, sixteen others beneath it, Sitta given the honor of the final words and the ceremonial first gout of splintered rock and sand.

She was weeping at the end of the story. She wasn’t loud or undignified, and her grief had a manageable, endurable quality. Like any Terran, she knew that outliving your lover was the consequence of living too long. There was no reason for surprise, and there was no course forwards but to endure. Yet even as she dried her face, she noticed the devastation and anger on the other faces. Save Bosson’s. She had ruined the last pretense of a good time for them, and with that she thought: Good. Perfect!

Yet her dear friends remained at the table. No one slunk away. Not even the strangers invented excuses or appointments, begging to escape. Instead, Varner decided to take control to the best of his ability, coughing into a trembling fist, then whispering, “So.” Another cough felt essential. “So,” he began, “now that you’re back, and safe . . . any ideas . . . ?”

What could he possibly mean by that?

Reading Sitta’s expression, he said, “What I was thinking. We all were, actually . . . thinking of asking if you’d like to come in with us . . . in making an investment, or two . . .”

Sitta sat back, hearing the delicious creak of old wood. With a careful, unmeasurable voice, she said, “What investment?”

Pony blurted, “There’s fortunes to be made.”

“If you have capital,” said a stranger, shooing away a begging monkey.

Another stranger muttered something about courage, though the word he used was “balls.”

Varner quieted them with a look, a gesture. Then staring at Sitta, he attempted charm that fell miserably short. “It’s just . . . as it happens, just now . . . love, we have a possibility—”

“A dream opportunity,” someone interrupted.

Sitta said, “It must be.”

She fell silent, and nobody spoke.

Then she added, “Considering all the trouble that you’ve gone through, it must seem like a wondrous opportunity.”

Blank, uncertain faces. Then Varner said, “I know this is fast. I know, and we aren’t happy about that. We’d love to give you time to rest, to unwind . . . but it’s such a tremendous undertaking—”

“Quick profits!” barked a Twin.

“—and you know, just now, listening to your stories . . . it occurred to me that you could put your future profits back into that city where you were living, or back into the Plowsharers in general—”

“Hey, that’s a great idea!” said another stranger.

“A fucking waste,” was Bosson’s opinion.

“You could do all sorts of good,” Varner promised, visibly pleased with his inspiration. “You could buy medicines. Machinery. You could drop a thousand robots down there.”

“Robots are illegal,” said Bosson. “Too easy to misuse.”

“Then hire people. Workers. Anyone you need!” Varner rose to his feet, eyes pleading with her. “What do you think, Sitta? You’re back, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep helping your friends.”

“Yeah,” said Pony, “what do you think?”

Sitta waited for an age, or an instant. Then with a calm slow voice, she asked, “Exactly how much do you need?”

Varner held the number inside his mouth, which was kept shut.

One of the Twins blurted an amount, then added, “Per share. This new corporation is going to sell shares. In just a few weeks.”

“You came at the perfect time,” said his brother, fingers tapping on the tabletop.

A stranger called out, “And there’s more!”

Varner nodded, then admitted, “The deal is still sweeter. Loan us enough to purchase some of our own shares, then we pay it back to you. How does twice the normal interest sound?”

Bosson whispered, “Desperate.”

Icenice was bending at the waist, gasping for breath. “You can make enough to help millions.”

Varner offered a watery smile. “And we’ll make that possible.”

Sitta crossed her legs, then asked, “What does a share buy?”

Silence.

“What does this corporation do?”

Pony said, “They’ve got a wonderful scheme.”

“They want to build big new lasers,” said a Twin. “Similar to the old weapons, only safe.”

Safe? Safe how?

“We’ll build them at the earth’s Lagrange points,” Varner explained. “Enormous solar arrays will feed the lasers, millions of square kilometers absorbing sunlight—”

“Artificial suns,” someone blurted.

“And we’ll be able to warm every cold world. For a substantial fee, of course.” Varner grinned, his joy boyish. Fragile. “Those old war technologies and our factories can be put to perfect use.”

“At last!” shouted the Twins, in one voice.

Bosson began to laugh, and Icenice, sitting opposite her husband, seemed to be willing herself to vanish.

“Whose scheme is this?” Sitta asked Varner. “Yours?”

“I wish it was,” he responded.

“But Farsiders are in command,” said Pony, fists lifted as if in victory. “All the big old families are pooling their resources, but since this project is so vast and complicated—”

“Too vast and too complicated,” Bosson interrupted.

Sitta looked at Icenice. “How about you, darling? How many shares have you purchased?”

The pretty face dropped, eyes fixed on the table’s edge.

“Let’s just say,” her husband replied, “that their most generous offer has been rejected by this household. Isn’t that what happened, love?”

Icenice gave a tiny, almost invisible nod.

Pony glared at both of them, then asked Sitta, “Are you interested?”

“Give her time,” Varner snapped. Then he turned to Sitta, making certain that she noticed his smile. “Think it through, darling. Please just do that much for us, will you?”

What sane world would allow another world to build it a sun? And after the long war, who could trust anyone with such enormous powers? Maybe there were safeguards and political guarantees, the full proposal rich with logic and vision. But those questions stood behind one great question. Clearing her throat, Sitta looked at the hopeful faces, then asked, “Just why do you need my money?”

No one spoke; the room was silent.

And everything was made transparent. Simple. They wanted her money because they had none, and they were desperate enough to risk whatever shred of pride they had kept from the old days. How had they become poor? What happened to the old estates and the bottomless bank accounts? Curious, Sitta saw how she could torture them with her questions; yet suddenly, without warning, she had no taste for that kind of vengeance. The joy was gone, lost before one weak excuse could be made, by Varner or anyone. So with a slow, almost gentle voice, Sitta said, “I can’t. Because my money has been spent, you see.”

A chill gripped her audience.

“I used everything to help my hospital. Some equipment was illegal, and that meant bribes to have it delivered and bribes to keep it secret.” A pause. “I couldn’t buy ten shares for just me, and I’m afraid that you’ve wasted your time, friends.”

The faces were past misery. Every careful hope and earnest plan had evaporated, no salvation waiting, and the audience was too exhausted to move, too unsure of itself to speak or even look at one another.

Finally, with rage and agony, one of the strangers climbed to her feet, saying, “Thank you for the miserable dinner, Icenice.”

She and the other strangers escaped from the room and house.

Then the Twins spun a lie about a party, leaving and taking Vechel with them. Had Vechel spoken a single word today? Sitta couldn’t remember. She looked at Pony, and Pony asked, “Why did you come home?”

For an instant, Sitta forgot why.

“You hate us,” the girl observed. “It’s obvious how much you hate this place. Don’t deny it!”

Why would she deny anything?

“Fucking bitch.”

And Pony was gone. There was no other guest but Varner, and he sat with his eyes fixed on his unfinished meal, his face pale and indifferent. It was as if he still didn’t understand what had happened. Finally, Icenice rose and went to Varner, taking him in her arms and whispering, the words or her touch giving him reason to stand. From where she sat, Sitta could watch the two of them walk out on the stone porch. She kept hugging him, always whispering, then she wished him good-bye, waiting for him to move out of her sight. Bosson watched his wife, his face remote. Unreadable. Then Icenice returned, sitting in that most distant chair, staring at some concoction of mints and cultured meat that had never been touched.

And Bosson, with the shrillest voice yet, said, “I warned you. I told you and your friends she’d never be interested.” A pause, a grin. “What did I tell you? Repeat it for me.”

Icenice stood and took the platter of meat in both hands, flinging it at her husband.

Bosson was nothing but calm, confidently measuring the arc and knowing it would fall short. But the sculpted meat shattered, a greasy white sauce in its center, still hot and splattering like shrapnel. It struck Bosson’s clothes and arms and face. He gave a flinch. Nothing more. Then not bothering to wipe himself clean, he turned to Sitta, and with a voice that made robots sound emotional, said:

“Be the good guest. Run off to your room. Now. Please.”

12

Thomas’ death was tragic, yet perfect. No else knew what Sitta was carrying. The original mother thought her baby had come early and died. The hospital’s AI functions had been taken off-line, leaving them innocent. No one but Thomas could have betrayed her, and it was his horrible luck to inhale a killing mote of dust. By accident? Sometimes Sitta asked herself if it was that simple. Toward the end of the process, the boy began to wonder aloud if this was what Sitta truly wanted, and if it was right. Maybe he became careless by distraction, or maybe carelessness was to ensure that he couldn’t act on his doubts. Or maybe it was just what it had seemed to be at first glance. An accident. A brutal little residue of the endless war, and why couldn’t she just accept it?

What was living inside Plowsharer was a particularly wicked ensemble. Designed to be invisible to Terran jurists and their instruments, it carried its true self within just one in a million cells. But in the time between her first labor pains and the delivery, each of those cells would explode, invading their neighbors, implanting genetics in a transformation that would leave no outward sign of change, much less danger. The monster would be born pale and irresistible. Perhaps the finest baby ever seen, people would think, wrapping it in a blanket and holding it close to their breasts.

That appearance was a fiction. Beneath the baby fat was a biosynthetic factory that would absorb and transmute every microbial strain. Mother and jurists would sicken in a few hours, their own native flora turned against them. No immune system could cope with such a thorough, coordinated assault. A village or city would be annihilated in a day, and with ample stocks of rotting, liquified meat, the monster would nurse, growing at an impossible pace, becoming for all intents and purposes a three year-old girl, mobile enough to wander, mute and big-eyed and lovely.

It was a weapon made inside many labs, including her parents’. That was no huge coincidence; Sitta had seen many examples of their work. But it helped her resolve. If justice was a simple matter of balance, then both were being achieved.

In a war full of famous weapons, this creation had never been discussed publicly. As far as Sitta could determine, the parasite was sent down for field tests and then lost. Probably waiting somewhere as a hibernating cyst, the cyst finally found the young woman, and that’s what Sitta took for herself. No medical authority had seen it in action. What would Farside do with such a monster? Its people had little experience with real disease, and if anything, the moon was a richer target for this kind of horror. Where the earth had few species and tiny populations, Farside had diversity and multitudes. Each beetle and orchid and monkey had its own family of microbes. A thousand parallel plagues would cause an ecological collapse, the domed air left poisoned, the Central Sea struck dead. Here was an ultimate, apocalyptic revenge, and sometimes Sitta was astonished by her hatreds, by the depth of her feelings and the cold calculating passion she brought to this work.

Doubt found her. Doubts made her awaken in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat. Then her habit was to walk under the seamless black sky, taking the wide road to the cemetery, reading the simple tombstones with her lamp, noting the dates and trying to recall who was below her feet. The earth itself was entombed in a grave, alone, and the overheated air made Sitta think of the many billions of bodies rotting in the useless ground. How could she feel weakness? By what right?

Given such a mandate, she had no choice, and turning back with resolve, she felt her way down to the city and along its narrow streets. That’s what she did on her last night in the city, the shuttle for Athens scheduled for the morning. Her leather bag was packed. She was wearing her travel clothes. Approaching her bunker home, full of distractions, Sitta didn’t notice the children at work. She was almost past them when some sound, some little voice, caught her attention, making her turn and lift her lamp’s beam, dozens of faces caught in mid-smile. What were these girls and boys doing? “You should be sleeping,” she said. Then she hesitated, lifting the beam higher, every bunker festooned with long dirty ribbons and colored ropes and stiff old flags. “What is this?” she whispered, speaking to herself. “Why . . . ?”

And she knew. An instant before her audience broke into song and a ragged cheer, she realized this was for her, all of it, and they hadn’t expected her so soon. These were people unaccustomed to celebrations, people who had few holidays, if any; and those long legs trembled, then gave way, knees into the foot-packed earth and Sitta’s eyes blind with tears. Hundreds of children poured into the street, parents at their heels. Everyone was singing, no one competent and everyone loud, and what surprised Sitta more than anything was the final proof that these were genuinely happy people.

Inside the hospital, she saw them wounded or ill, or dead. Those were the people she understood best.

Yet here were souls more healthy than hurt, and more grateful than she could believe, everyone touching her, every hand on her swollen belly, every joyous shout giving her another dose of luck, the burden of all this luck and gratitude making it impossible for her to stand, much less turn and run for home.

13

Obeying Bosson, not caring what happened, Sitta climbed halfway up the staircase before she paused, standing beside sunlight, turning when she heard a whimper or moan. Was it Icenice? No, it was one of begging monkeys. She looked past the animal, waiting for a long moment, telling herself that regardless of what she heard, she would do nothing. This wasn’t her home, nor her world—she was here to destroy all of this—and then she was walking, watching her shoes on the long lunar steps, aware in a distant, dreamy way that she was moving downhill, reentering the dining room just as Bosson finished binding his wife’s hands to one of the table’s legs.

The Mercurian didn’t notice his audience. With smooth, practiced deliberation, he lifted Icenice’s gown over her hips and head, the girl motionless as stone, her naked back and rump shining in the reflected light. Then Bosson stood over the table, selecting tools, deciding on a spoon and a blunt knife. Then he moved behind the thin rump, wiping his face clean with a sleeve, coughing once, and placing the blade against the pucker of her rectum.

The man was twenty years Sitta’s senior and accustomed to the moon’s gentle tug, and he was taken by surprise. She struck him on the side of the head, turning him, then struck his belly and kicked him twice, aiming for his testicles, earth-trained muscles making Bosson grunt, then collapse onto an elegant floor of colored tiles and pink mortar.

“Get up,” she advised.

He tried to find his balance, halfway standing, and proving that he was still dangerous, Sitta drove her foot into his chin.

Again, she said, “Get up.”

“Sitta?” whispered Icenice.

Bosson grunted, rose. She had drawn blood this time. Next a cheekbone shattered beneath her heel, and the man lay still, hands limp around his bloody head, and Sitta asked, “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you even stand up, you fuck?”

With the weakest of voices, Icenice asked, “What is happening?”

Sitta pulled the gown back where it belonged, then untied the napkins used to bind her hands. Her one-time friend looked at Bosson, and horrified, she said, “Oh this is so terrible.”

Knotting the many napkins together, Sitta made crude ropes, then knelt and tied the groggy man’s hands behind him and wrapped his ankles together and filled his mouth so that he couldn’t shout orders to the robots. When she stood again, she felt weak. Almost faint. When Icenice tried to clean Bosson’s wounds, Sitta grabbed her and pulled her toward the stairs, panting as she asked, “Why? Why did you marry it?”

“I was in such debt. You don’t know.” Icenice swallowed, moaned. “He promised to help me.”

“How could you lose all that money? Where did it go?”

“Oh,” she whimpered. “It seemed to go everywhere, really.”

Reasons didn’t matter. What mattered was bringing Icenice upstairs, the two of them moving through the shafts of sunlight.

“Everyone had debts,” the girl was explaining. “I mean, we didn’t know enough about modern business, and the Martians . . . they seemed very good at taking what we had . . .”

Sitta said, “Hurry up.”

“Where are we going?”

“Hurry!”

Her bag was where the robot had set it, on the bed, still unopened, She unfastened the latches and threw its contents on the floor, then used a tiny cosmetic blade to cut into the thick bottom layers. What wouldn’t appear in any scan were half a dozen lozenges of leather, their flesh filled with hormones and odd chemicals that nobody would consider illegal. Sitta had synthesized them in her hospital. Hesitating for an instant, she looked at Icenice and tried to decide the best way to do this thing.

“Varner wanted your money,” said the girl.

“Come on. Into the bath.”

“Why?”

“Now! Hurry!” Someone might be watching them. Sitta thought about the Belter with the dogs, wondering if she had shadowed them all this way. Stripping as she walked, she ended up naked, wading into the clear warm water, down to her chest before looking up at Icenice. “You have to climb in with me. Do it.”

Again, the girl asked, “Why?”

The lozenges were made to answer a fear. What if she found herself giving birth in the wrong place? The possibility had awakened her with a shudder. What if she found herself trapped on the earth, and this monster of hers was threatening the people whom she loved most? How could she protect the innocent ones?

“I don’t understand.” The girl was weeping, quietly devastated by the day’s events. “Why are you taking a bath now?”

One by one, Sitta swallowed those pieces of flesh, gulping bathwater to help get each of them down.

“Sitta?”

The process would take half an hour, maybe less. In minutes, the first of the drugs would cross into the fetus, crippling its genetic machinery—she hoped—giving her long enough to let the miscarriage run its course. The danger was that she would lose consciousness. The horror of horrors was that the monster would live long enough to outlast the anti-genetics, then somehow climb to the air and out of the bath, premature but coping, its transformation happening despite her desperate best wishes. That would be the ironic, horrible end.

“Sitta?”

And Sitta looked up at Icenice, then said, “In. Climb in.”

The girl obeyed, still wearing her gown, the black fabrics blacker when soaked, billowing up around her waist, then covering her breasts, “You’re my jurist,” said Sitta, looking straight into Icenice’s eyes, “When it comes, drown it. Don’t let it take a breath.”

“What do you mean?”

“Promise me!”

“Oh, my.” Icenice straightened, as if stabbed by a needle.

“Promise.”

“I can try,” she squeaked.

“You have to do it, darling. Or the world dies.”

The words were believed. Sitta saw their impact and their slow digestion, the girl becoming thoughtful, alert. A minute passed. Several minutes passed. Then Icenice attempted a weak little smile, telling her friend, “I’ve never wanted your money.”

A single red pain began in Sitta’s pelvis, crawling up her spine.

“And I’ve always wanted to tell you,” the girl went on. “When you were sentenced, and only you would be going to the earth, I knew that was best for everyone.”

Wincing, Sitta asked, “Why?”

“None of us could have survived. Not for three years.”

“And I was safe?”

“You did live,” Icenice responded, then again tried her smile. “But you always had a toughness, a strength. That’s the thing that I’ve always wanted to borrow from you. Even back when we were little girls.”

Pain came twice, boom and boom.

“I’m not strong,” Icenice said with conviction.

When was I strong? What did the girl see in me?

Then more pain. BOOM.

And when it passed, Sitta grabbed the ruined gown, pulling her friend in close to her, wrapping arms around her, and whispering with her most certain voice, “When the time comes, I’ll kill it myself.”

“Because I don’t think I could,” Icenice whimpered.

“But can you stay?”

“Here? With you?”

Sitta tried to breathe and the body froze with pain. Then a second time, she tried to inhale, which worked, and that’s when she pleaded, “Don’t leave me!”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Which was only the beginning. Because now the miseries began in earnest, and every pain before them, reaching back through Sitta’s entire life, was just the careful preparation for the scorching white miseries inside her, trying to escape.