“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  “You will. Come in and you’ll see.”

  “So you can leave your gate.” He had stopped in front of the airlock.

  “No, not a bit. It’s nice here. You’ll see that, too. Besides, my friends come around to talk and bring me stuff. Nobody minds being watcher. Nobody minds anything here.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Except one thing. I’ll tell you about that later, after you’ve seen. I’ve never done it, but I guess it can be icky.”

  “I can leave whenever I want to?”

  “You won’t want to. Just climb in, and I’ll shut the big door for you.”

  “But I can?”

  “Naturally you can. Only the people who leave don’t want to. That’s the thing I said could be bad. Leaving. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  He mounted the few steps, and the hatch swung swiftly shut behind him. This airlock was the size of a small room. There were chairs, pictures on the walls, and a fireplace, complete with fire. He walked toward it for a better look, and discovered that the hatch had severed his lifeline. “Hey!” he said.

  Then, “Penny? Are you still there?”

  There was no reply.

  The fireplace was real and so was the fire. The logs, however, were not. Some flammable gas with a small feed of oxygen, March decided.

  He heard his air supply switch over, and thought of returning it to suit air but did not. The new air he breathed smelled better, a clean fresh smell as though it had known a windswept meadow by the sea. Walking around the airlock quickly, he found that he was not dizzy and was not blacking out.

  “This,” he told his mike, “is surely the strangest of all the memorials, as well as the biggest. If Penny’s not a real and living person, her voice certainly conveys that impression.”

  A wall of the room swung back. “Welcome,” the girl standing a foot beyond its arc told him. She sketched a curtsy, lifting a diaphanous scarlet skirt. “Welcome to paradise, Mr. March Wildspring. May you remain long and return soon.”

  “Thank you.” He stepped down from the airlock, and discovered that he was smiling. “Okay if I take off my helmet?”

  “Oh, yes! Aren’t you sure there’s air here? If there wasn’t, I’d die.”

  “I know there is.” He unscrewed his helmet. “You’d die if you’re real. Are you?”

  “You betcha!” She giggled. “Want to touch?”

  “Sure. Give me your hand.”

  “You can’t feel much through that glove. I know. I used to have a suit like that, only mine was white and not so big. I kept wanting to take the gloves off.”

  “Your hand.”

  She held it out. “It doesn’t have to be there. You could touch other places. I wouldn’t mind.”

  Leaving the airlock, he took her hand. “You’re not a hologram.”

  “Of course not. I’m a real live person. Not exactly like you because of the sex thing. Only real close. How do you like me up top?”

  “Good.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Nice molding.”

  “I’m not molded! I grew up. I’m a real person, too. Kissing would prove it. Want to kiss?”

  “Later, maybe. Right now I’d like to see paradise.”

  “That’s good. Take off your suit. I’ll put it in one of these box things for you.”

  “I’ll keep it on. I’m holding onto my helmet, too.”

  “That way everybody will know you’re new, March. It’ll be a lot of trouble. You’ll see.”

  “But I can keep it if I want to?”

  “I guess so.” She sounded doubtful. “I’ve never done this before. Watched a gate. This is my first time and they never said anything about suits. So I guess you can. Or if you can’t, somebody will tell us. Only I’ll be in trouble.”

  “I’ll explain that it was my fault.”

  “Thanks.” She led him past the wall-mounted lockers and the benches on which newcomers presumably sat to take off their boots, and into a wide and apparently sunlit room. A well-remembered face pontificated about politics on a digivid there, too proud to notice the incomplete jigsaw puzzle on the floor before him. A dozen plates held half-finished food, and dolls and a teddy bear occupied comfortable-looking chairs; on the farther side of the room a wide arch opened out onto what appeared to be a sunlit garden on Earth.

  He hurried to it, then stopped to stare.

  “Isn’t it pretty?”

  Slowly he nodded.

  “How about me? You can see me better in this light. Aren’t I pretty, too?”

  Turning, he studied her. “You are. You’re really quite beautiful.” It was the truth.

  She laughed, delighted, and smoothed her lustrous coppery hair with both hands.

  “Is it all right if I jump?”

  “You better not. People turn around funny sometimes. Come down on their heads.”

  “I’ll risk it.” Gathering all his strength, he sprang into the air, rising to a height of twenty feet or more. The garden spread as far as he could see, its low hills dotted with little sunlit lakes, trees, tents, airy cottages, and fountains. A quick sweep of his digicorder took it all in—or so he hoped. Skillful manipulation of his suit jets landed him on his feet.

  “You’re good at it,” the young woman told him.

  “Not really.” He grinned. “I’m wearing a lot of heavy gear and not as young as I used to be. In a way that was an advantage. I knew I wouldn’t come down any faster than I had gone up.”

  “Want something to eat? Or just walk around?”

  “Just walk around. I’d like to talk to some other people.”

  “In your orange clothes?” She giggled. “You will.”

  They had not gone more than a thousand yards when they were surrounded by a crowd. More than once, he had found himself in crowds of actors at parties, and the feeling was much the same. Not all the men were tall, but most were handsome; those who were not, were attractive without being handsome, with kind, honest faces suggestive of good humor or sparkling wit.

  The women were cute. Or pretty. Or beautiful. All of them.

  He raised his hands for silence. “I’m looking for a missing woman. Her name’s Robin Redd, and I think she ran in here because she thought a man named Jim was going to kill her. I’m not Jim. I’m a friend…” He let his arms drop.

  “Not a friend.” The speaker was a silver-maned man who looked as though he might once have been a judge—or played one on vid. “Who are you, then?”

  “I used to be her husband, sir.”

  “If she’s in here she’s safe, son. Perfectly safe.”

  A score of voices seconded him.

  “Why do you want to take her back to a place of danger?”

  March drew a deep breath—air so clean and pure it might have come from a mountain top. “I’ll take her back only if she wants to go, sir. If she wants to stay here, that’s fine. But I want to know where she is, because she may need help if she’s not here. Do you know?”

  The silver mane was shaken. “I do not, but I’ll try to find out. What’s your name, son?”

  “March Wildspring.”

  The young woman said, “Marchy hasn’t decided to stay yet, Barney. How can I talk him into it?”

  Someone in the crowd asked, “Just talk?” and there was laughter.

  The silver-maned man joined it with a throaty chuckle. “When he’s seen a few more like you—”

  Quickly, the young woman raised an admonitory hand. “That’s enough of that. Please! He’ll think I’m easy. I’m not, Mr. Wildspring. Don’t let this dress fool you. Nobody wears much in the way of clothes in here.”

  A beefy man with a likable grin pointed to March. “Nobody but you, that is.”

  It got another laugh.

  “Folks!” March raised his voice. “I’m looking for Robin Redd. I don’t want to hurt her.” He scanned the crowd through the viewfinder of his digicorder. “If any of you know her, will you please tell her March is looking for her? She can stay here if she wants to, or I’ll take her back if she’d prefer to go.”

  That raised the biggest laugh of all.

  · · · ·

  A rustic bridge crossed one of several small lakes. The young woman paused halfway across to point out their reflections in the water. “Look there, Mr. Wildspring. See how good-looking you are?”

  He did, seeing a grimly handsome man with abundant brown hair and finely chiseled features; this flattering reflection wore what appeared to be a Day-Glo orange military spacesuit. The young woman beside him was clearly the young woman with him. He raised an arm; the reflection raised an arm as well.

  “Aren’t we an attractive couple?”

  “Yes,” he said, “we certainly are.”

  “If you were to take off all those clothes, would you just throw them away?”

  “No. No, Penny, I certainly wouldn’t want to do that. If I were to take them off, I’d want a safe place to put them, a place I could find again without much trouble. I’d want to be able to get them back in a hurry if I needed them.”

  “That’s good.” The young woman looked thoughtful. “He might want to send you out. He does that sometimes. They can come back later, I think. But they have to go if he says so.”

  “He runs this? What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s a big statue of him in a park. We could probably find out there. Everybody just says ‘he.’ Everybody knows what it means.”

  “I’d like to see that statue and take some pictures.” March indicated his digicorder. “But first I’d like to go on across and get a few of you posing in the middle of this bridge. It should be a lovely shot. Can I do that?”

  “It sounds like fun.” She smiled. “Just tell me what poses you’d like.”

  “I will. You’re not afraid I’ll run off on my own?”

  She cocked her head, looking more charming than ever. “Are you going to?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good. Strangers need somebody. A guide. That’s why we do it. But you wouldn’t have to trick me. Anytime you want to go, you can do it. I’ll go back to the gate and wait for you.”

  “All right, I’ll remember that. But wouldn’t he have sent somebody else to watch the gate by now?”

  “I suppose. I guess so. How’d you like me to pose?”

  “Sitting on the railing, I think.”

  “So you can get my legs. You’re right, I’ve got good legs. How’s this?”

  It was fine, her long, smooth legs out over the water, one delicately rounded calf resting on the rail, the foot of the other leg hooked around one of the supports, and her gossamer skirt hiked halfway up her thighs. He backed down the bridge, passing a sleeping man and shooting as he went, stopped his digicorder briefly to note the precise number on its whirling dial, and shot more from the bank.

  When he rejoined her, he said, “That was beautiful. I’ve got a couple of questions now. No, three questions. All right if I ask them?”

  Her smile would have melted stone. “If I can’t answer, we’ll find somebody who can.”

  “First question. If this were Earth, people would’ve cut their names into this rail. Hearts, with MW plus KC. All that kind of stuff. Nobody’s carved anything in this one. Why is that?”

  “On Earth we do it so people will remember.” The young woman said slowly, “and so we’ll remember ourselves. We think maybe it will never happen, he’ll dump me or I’ll dump him. But years from now when I’ve almost forgotten, maybe I’ll see this. I’ll think, oh yeah, he wasn’t good-looking or talented, but he had the best heart. If things had gone a little differently…”

  March said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t. I was just thinking. It’s all different now. Different here. That’s what I think. We know we’re going to remember this place and the people we love here. Remember everything about it forever and ever. What’s hard is remembering how it was before we got here. Like, I used to have a little apartment back on Earth. It was just two rooms and a bath, and nothing in it could be very big at all. There was a cabinet I couldn’t open that had been built into a corner a long time ago and painted white. The white paint had stuck the doors shut.”

  “I understand.” He laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “I was pretty sure there was nothing in there, but I always wondered. Now I’m here, and it feels like it happened a long, long time ago to somebody else. Somebody in a show I saw one time, and I wish she’d broken that cabinet open.”

  The young woman slid from the railing, cocked her head, and smiled. “That wasn’t a good answer, but I don’t think I can answer any better. You said three questions.”

  “I did.” March sighed. “Here’s the next. There’s no litter on the lakeshore and no junk floating in the water. There aren’t even any cans for garbage. Why not?”

  “Because it’s ours. This whole place is ours. He gave it to us. We’re his, and we own this. It’s where we live. On Earth everything belongs to the government, really. In America it does, anyway. They pretend it’s yours, but do something they don’t like and you’ll find out. This really is ours. We can cut down the trees and pick the flowers, but we don’t want to. Not mostly. If there were more people, it might be different.”

  “He sends some away, you said.”

  Looking pensive, the young woman nodded. “He might send me away someday. I hope not.”

  “They go back to Earth?”

  She nodded again.

  “What do they do there?”

  “I don’t know, and that’s more than three. All right, I do. They do whatever he’s asked them to, and when they get it all done they get to come back.”

  “Those weren’t my third question,” March said, “just follow-ups. Here’s the third. When I jumped and looked around, I could see little houses, and when we were up on the bridge I could see two and a tent. Do they have vids in there? Any of them? You had a vid in your room at the gate.”

  “I’m not sure, but I think that anybody who wants one gets one. Some people don’t. Is there something you want to watch?”

  “Yes. I used to work for UDN, and—well, it’s kind of complicated. But there are things I want to see. Maybe even things I want to show you. There’s no hurry, though. Let’s go look at his statue.”

  · · · ·

  It was large and imposing, but not at all what March had expected. An elderly man, bald and rather fat, knelt. His enormous bronze hands were held out to those who had followed a narrow and seemingly aimless path through a wilderness of flowers. They seemed to shelter a sleeper at his feet.

  “He looks like my father,” March murmured.

  “Like my grandfather,” the young woman said. “I’ve never been here. I’m new, and I hadn’t gotten around to it. If I’d known how beautiful it was, I’d have come sooner.”

  March retreated to the path. “I’m going to pan the gardens and stop on you, looking at the statue. Look up at it while you count to ten, normal speed, then turn and look at me and smile.”

  She did. When he appeared to have stopped recording, she said, “I’ve found a little notice that tells you about it. The statue’s twelve feet high, and the figure of the Founder would be twenty-three feet high if he were standing up. The bronze is eight inches thick. Most statues like this are thin, it said, but they could make this one almost solid because its base sits right on the solid rock of this asteroid. Is it an asteroid? That’s what they said.”

  “I suppose. Does it give his name?”

  “Let me see. ‘It is composed of copper, tin, and gold, the proportions being fifty, forty, and ten; all three metals were mined during the excavation of the perfect world in which you stand. The sculptors worked from photographs and digivid recordings made during the last years of the Founder’s life. The ancient lost wax method was employed to create the statue, although it required wax brought from Earth. His body has perished, but his mind lives on and is your god.’ No name. It doesn’t name the artists, either.”

  “It would be an interesting thing to know,” March said. “I’m going to keep trying to find out. How many people are there in here?”

  The young woman shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  “Guess.”

  She hesitated. “I’m going to say five hundred. About that.”

  “I would have said fewer. Half that, maybe. Even if you’re right, it should be possible to ask all of them.”

  “About this girl Robin Redd?”

  “No. I know where she is, Penny. The name of the Founder’s going to be harder, I think.”

  “I don’t, because I don’t believe you know where that girl is. You couldn’t.”

  “I do.” March sounded as tired as he felt. “You—”

  The statue spoke, surprising them both. Its voice was deep, resonant, and kind. “I am pleased—oh, wonderfully pleased—to announce that we have been joined by four this wake. That is the highest total since the five of December twentieth and surpasses the three of February third. Our newest lovers are Robin Redd, Katarina ‘Kit’ Carlsen, March Wildspring, and James Frankie Redd. Welcome, all!”

  March could only stare.

  “My dear children,” the statue continued, “this wake has wound to a pleasing end. The time of rest is upon us. Repose with me in your humble homes, and repose with whom you like. Sleep, and I promise you that all your dreams will be pleasant ones.

  “Though nightmares stalk the dark, if you sleep they cannot trouble you.”

  “Nightmares?”

  The young woman said, “I don’t know about them. I guess I’ve been asleep.”

  “If they can’t hurt sleeping people, how bad can they be?” March was conscious of a slight dimming of the light; the meter built into his digicorder confirmed it.

  “Just sleeping people who are inside somewhere.” The young woman looked frightened. “That’s what I think. We need to get inside.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No! Let’s go. These people are nice. Somebody will take us in.”

  The light had dimmed again, very slightly.

  “Can you jog, Mr. Wildspring? I can, and I think we ought to jog until we find someplace that will take us in.”