“Now you say left third or right, and I say bottom third.”

  She stopped to look around at the shemale. “Then we’ll skip it.” The shemale had lions-mane hair and enormous green eyes. Not at all like the near-brother Fil? Thinking that, she was secretly pleased.

  House or hice? If she were permitted more than one, would she want one like this? She shuddered.

  “Fil soft-pedals everything, but Father will tell you truth.”

  Was it time to resume walking? She decided against it. “What about you?”

  “Oh, I won’t tell you anything.” The shemale paused thoughtfully. “Or at least, nothing you might believe.”

  “You just told me something.”

  “Doesn’t count.” The shemale’s glowing teeth were not pointed, yet she knew somehow that they were terribly sharp—sharp as knives. What a horror it must be to have teeth like that!

  “What does your father want?”

  “You.” The shemale moved off.

  What if he cannot have me? “You mean he asked your semi-sibling to call me. What for?”

  “He wasn’t paid. He must do what Father says. So must I.” This was said without looking back.

  All right, two can play that game. A black leather divan waited between pillars. She crossed the room to it and sat down. There was a mirror in the shadowy distance, and she studied the images in that. Did she look tough enough? Clever enough? How tough was she? Really now? Though she did not move, the she in the mirror brushed back a lock of dusky hair.

  A tall woman appeared at her left elbow. She looked around, half expecting to see no such woman; but there was indeed a lofty figure wrapped in black there.

  “May I sit with you?”

  “I am sitting without permission,” she remarked at length. “I will make no objection to your sitting, at present.” She hesitated. “Are we inside or outside? I thought I knew but…”

  “You have come to doubt yourself.”

  No. To be rid of doubt. She nodded.

  “What you see could be a dream, an illusion. An hallucination—”

  “Or a reality,” she finished.

  “Not so. No one can see reality. The mind processes a pattern of light reported by the optic nerves. The mind interprets that.”

  “What if I were to touch you?”

  The tall woman—seeming even taller now that she was sitting—laughed. “Your touching me would have no effect. Everything is unreal and real. We may see the real part or the unreal part.”

  “Or both.”

  “Or neither. I look for oranges, I see apples which are figs.”

  “Really figs?”

  “Is anything?”

  “May I speak to Fil?”

  The woman in black laughed. “Of course not.”

  “Why not? We communicated. That’s why I came.”

  “He has left, gone deaf, is sleeping or insane. More if you like.”

  She nodded. “I understand. Unending fantasies and failures bar my way.”

  “Those you dispatch, you will leave behind you. When you have gone, they will rise and make haste so as to be ahead of you.”

  “Fil and I spoke shortly before I landed. Fil has golden hair and the voice of two poets.”

  “You thought him here.”

  “He said he was. I had no reason to doubt him. He promised to show me the Egg, so he must have been here.”

  “He was on a seaplane flying at a depth of five hundred fathoms.”

  “I take it the plane is bound for a volcano.”

  The tall woman in black said nothing.

  “I have come to see the Egg.”

  “Or something else. Or nothing.”

  “Fil knows that—knows why I came. I told him.”

  “He is dead.”

  “You said he was on a seaplane.”

  The tall figure in black laughed. “Now I say that it crashed. Answer, clark!”

  “Into the sea, you mean.”

  “It struck the side of a submerged mountain.”

  “I brought you something.” Reaching into a pants leg, she produced a bauble.

  The black-robed woman stared through tall eyes. “Is this valuable?”

  “It is invaluable.”

  “Then come.” The black-robed woman led the way to a crystal pillar standing among ferns. “I have no reason to spare you.”

  She went closer, to better see the Egg behind the crystal. It was copper-brown, with dots of rose, sallow, and ebony.

  “In there? Is all the old humankind in there?”

  The black-robed woman nodded, but by then she had seen the crevice, a crack no longer than her smallest nail. It grew by the width of an eyelash as she watched.

  She stepped back, and fled.

  Leif in the Wind

  “He’s been out there,” Ena said, “for an hour and fifty-two minutes. It took him twenty-eight to nail that plate back down. I’ve been trying to get him to come back in ever since.”

  Brennan rubbed his chin. It was a big one, and required quite a bit of rubbing. “He answers you? He replies?”

  “Sometimes. Not always.”

  “But he’s conscious?”

  “I think so.”

  “Fugue state?”

  Ena shrugged.

  “Talk to him.”

  “I’ll try.” Ena’s gesture switched on the mike. “This is Ena again, Leif. Brennan is here with me now. What are you doing?”

  “Watching the sunrise, Ena. The planetary shadow is fading. Fading… This sun appears behind the horizon curve, just peeping out past it now. I can feel the first breezes of its solar wind.”

  Brennan tried to make his voice soft. “You can’t possibly feel a solar wind, Leif. You’re suited up.”

  “I feel it.”

  Ena said, “Please come back, Leif. We’ve completed the survey, done everything we were supposed to do, and—”

  Brennan interrupted her. “The job’s finished, Leif. There’s no life down there. We have rock samples, cores, the works. Habitable planet, no life. Seed it and there could be colonies here in two hundred years. Maybe less.”

  Leif said nothing.

  Ena said, “I’ve never begged a man for anything—”

  “Birds. I see birds.”

  Brennan snorted. “You don’t see birds, damnit! There aren’t any, and if there were, you couldn’t see them from up here.”

  Ena said, “Think of me, Leif—if you won’t think of yourself, at least think of me. The trip home will take fifteen more years. What if Brennan dies?”

  Silence.

  “Walt died. So did Barbara and Alaia. Brennan could die, too. I’d try to take the ship home all by myself, and I’d go insane. I couldn’t bear it. You know what the tests showed—nobody could.” She paused, waiting. “Think of me if you won’t think of yourself.”

  Leif exclaimed, “You should see these birds! The detail! The colors! The combs and crests and wattles!”

  Brennan said, “You’re dreaming them, Leif.”

  “I couldn’t dream anything like this. It isn’t in me. It isn’t in anybody. They’re so big, and they get smaller as they come closer. Smaller and smaller, like jewels.”

  Ena looked at Brennan, expecting him to reply, and saw that he was suiting up. She switched off her mike. “Are you going out there after him?”

  “If I have to, yes.”

  “I know you could outwrestle him, but can you catch him?”

  “I’ll have to.”

  She switched her mike back on. “Leif, I’m offering everything I’ve got. I’ll be your slave if you’ll just come back.” She gulped, and wondered whether her mike had picked it up. “I’ll do your details, all of them, and mine, too. We’ll be heroes when we get home, and I’ll give you a bath first, and clean and press your uniform. I’ll shine your boots and polish your brass. You said I was beautiful once, remember? Wouldn’t you like a beautiful slave?”

  Brennan muttered, “Did he really?”

  “I’ll—sleep with you like you wanted, Leif. You can do whatever you like with me, and I’ll do whatever you tell me to. Please?”

  Leif said, “They’re nesting in me, all the beautiful birds. Perching on nerve fibers, sipping from tiny veins, Ena. Fluttering and singing. This is how a tree feels in summer.”

  Wearily, Ena switched off her mike. “He doesn’t care about me.”

  “He doesn’t care about us,” Brennan told her. “Not now he doesn’t.”

  Leif said, “The wind murmurs in my branches, and the birds nest there.” He sounded rapturous. Ena’s screen showed a silver starfish, arms wide, legs spread, face invisible behind the glare of sunlight on his visor. Slowly, the starfish revolved, rolling like a wheel.

  She heard the airlock open. “You’re going after him?”

  Brennen stepped into the airlock. “Wish me luck.”

  “I do,” she said. The airlock closed, and she added, “I wish you both luck. I hope you don’t kill each other.”

  Still later: “Most of all I wish me luck.”

  Was there nothing she could do but sit and watch? She unsnapped her belt, floated up, and pushed off.

  Walt should have looked just as she remembered him from last time—so quickly frozen that no big crystals had formed, eyes shut, and very, very dead.

  He did not. Dead, yes, but still there. So quickly frozen, she thought, that his soul had not had time to leave his body. Brennan thought it might be possible to reanimate him back on earth, and Brennan might be right.

  Walt’s eyes were not completely shut. Surely they had been before?

  Surely. But Walt was peeking out like one who feigns sleep.

  “I may sleep with Leif if Brennan brings him back. I’ll have to sleep with Brennan. You’re dead, Walt.” Ena paused. “You’re dead for now, anyway. I won’t be cheating on you.”

  From behind a plastic shield as clear as air, Walt watched her in silence.

  “You understand, don’t you?” She began to close the lid. “Besides, I—we’re not all that different from you, we women.”

  She returned to the bridge, floating along ovoid black corridors that should have echoed but did not. It had been wrong to silence them, she thought. The sound absorption was too good, it worked too well. Ghosts whispered in the black corridors now, Alaia’s ghost and Barbara’s.

  Walt’s ghost.

  On her screen, Brennan had a line around Leif’s waist and was playing it out behind him as he returned to the ship. Brightly lit by rising Beta Andromedae, the slack orange line traced fantastic loops and whorls against the still-dark planet they orbited. Ena switched on her mike. “Did he give you any trouble, Brennan?”

  “Not a bit.”

  Changing viewpoints, she watched Brennan enter the airlock, turn, and begin hauling Leif in. No resistance, but… She inserted a sedative cap in the injector. Leif, she told herself, was not particularly strong. And pushed aside the knowledge that all psychotics were.

  Inside, he removed his helmet without assistance. His expression was rapt, his eyes elsewhere. The neck was one of the best places.

  Leif relaxed, swaying, and Brennan said, “That was probably a good idea.”

  “It can’t hurt.” Ena was opening Leif’s suit.

  “I’m full of birds,” Leif told her.

  “I see.”

  “They’re nesting in me. Have I mentioned that?”

  Absently, she nodded.

  “We are their trees. That’s why there are no trees down there. We trees have just arrived.” Leif paused. “I would like to sit down.”

  “No reason not to,” Brennan told him. “Step out of the boots and I’ll put you in a chair.”

  When Leif did not move, Brennan lifted him out, the magnetic boot soles holding them to the deck. When Brennan had Leif in his console seat, Ena belted him in.

  The first jump covered four thousandths of one light-year; recharging for the next would take thirty-six hours.

  “Are we going home?” Leif asked. He sounded sleepy, and had not touched the buckle that held him in his seat.

  Brennan said, “Right.” He was refolding Leif’s suit.

  “You’ll have to walk in the spinner,” Ena told Leif, “just like Brennan and me. Just like you did on the trip out. Can you do it?”

  Leif seemed not to have heard her.

  “Two hours a day,” Brennan said. “If you don’t, your legs will break when we get home.”

  Ena was inspired. “Your limbs, Leif. That’s your arms and your legs. You know what happens when limbs break.”

  Leif stared at her. “The nests fall down.”

  “Exactly!”

  “I’m going into the spinner now.” Leif released his buckle. “Three hours. Three hours every day for me. I won’t forget.”

  When Leif had gone, Brennan chuckled, wrapped Ena in his arms, and kissed her. When they parted, he whispered, “You were always the smartest woman on board.”

  They were recharging for the fourth jump when Ena heard the first bird, its clear trills carried through the ventilation system. A twenty-minute search found it in Specimen Storage number 3, where it had nested among her neatly labeled sacks of rocks.

  It was somewhat larger than a crow, and was not (she decided) exactly as a bird should be. That sinuous neck, armored in diamond scales, might have belonged to a snake; the sides of its long, curved beak were toothed like the blades of saws. It spread its wings when she approached, threatening her with retractile claws that sprouted from their forward edges.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Ena said softly. “Really, I don’t. You’re very, very valuable to all three of us. You’re an alien life-form, you see.” It was difficult to remain calm.

  The bird rattled its feathers—a warning buzz, loud and abrupt.

  She kicked off from a specimen bag, backing away. “I’m going to bring you something to eat. I don’t know what you’ll like, so I’ll try several things.” Could it eat their food?

  Brennan was checking the recharge readings. “Pile’s running good,” he told her. “Next jump should be right on schedule.”

  “Leif’s birds are real.” She had drifted over to her console.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Seeing his skepticism, she nodded. “Sure. But don’t you hear that noise? Listen. I think it’s coming through the vents.”

  After a moment he left his seat and kicked off, stopping aft vent. Ena smiled to herself.

  “That’s a bearing getting ready to fail. Probably one of the fans. I’ll see to it.”

  As he shot out into the corridor, she called, “Good luck!”

  She was checking the pile herself when Leif wandered in. “Do you need me?”

  “Not really.” She smiled. “The best thing you could do right now is to shower and put on a clean uniform. Will you do that? For me?”

  Leif nodded.

  “Thank you! I really appreciate it. Put the one you’re wearing in the laundry, and I’ll see to it. Don’t forget to empty the pockets.”

  “There’s nothing in there.” Leif seemed to wait for her to speak. “All right, I’ll empty them anyway.”

  It was almost time for the jump when Brennan returned. “There’s a bird on the ship!”

  “No shit?” Ena feigned surprise.

  He grabbed at a handy conduit and swung to a stop, panting. “Sweetheart, you ought to see it! It’s taller than I am.”

  “If you’re going to sniff solvents,” Ena said icily, “I don’t want you to call me sweetheart. Cut it out. Cut it out right now. This is the only warning you’ll get.”

  “It’s down on H Deck. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “One of us has to stay on the bridge, and since you’ve been sniffing, it had better be me.”

  “Leif can do it.”

  “Leif isn’t around, and God only knows what he’d do if he were alone here.”

  “It’s real. Do I have to take a picture?”

  Feeling almost sorry for him, she shook her head. “No. No, you don’t, Brennan. Catch it and throw it off the ship. It’ll be out in space somewhere, and I can pick it up in my viewer.”

  “Don’t you understand what this means?”

  “Yes. It means that Leif can infect others with his hallucinations. Or else you’ve been sniffing. I like the second one better.”

  “I’m going to catch it,” Brennan told her. “Catch it and confine it. Then I’m going to show it to you. Don’t jump without me. You’re not qualified.”

  “You mean I don’t have the paper. By this time I know how to do it as well as you do.”

  “Don’t jump!”

  Then he was gone. Ena smiled to herself as she tried to track him through the surveillance cameras. When FULL CHARGE appeared on her upper-left screen, she jumped.

  · · · ·

  A day and more passed before Brennan returned. Ena slept on the bridge, tethered to a hatch handle and hanging weightless among 552 instruments. Leif wandered in and volunteered to bring her food and water. She was using the surveillance cameras to search for Brennan when Brennan touched her shoulder.

  “You jumped—I felt it.” He was trying hard to look severe, but could only look haggard and triumphant.

  “Sure,” Ena said. “I knew you would. I jumped, and that’s why the pile’s burning and power’s flickering. I don’t know what that vibration is, but it darned near—”

  “Very funny.” Brennan belted himself into his console seat. He studied the screen, clicked twice, and studied it again.

  “Did you catch the bird?”

  “I did.” Brennan nodded. “I got a number three cargo net and rigged it up to close when the bird tried to get through. When it was ready, I drove the bird in front of me with a welding torch.”

  “Where is it now?”

  He sighed. “Empty ration locker, or I hope it is. It may still be tangled in the net. I don’t know.”

  “We can’t keep it there for fifteen years.”

  “Right. We’ll let it out, v-tape it, kill it, v-tape it some more, strip the bones and save them.” Under his breath he added, “If it has bones.”

  Ena said, “Tissue specimens, too. Maybe we should freeze the head.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “It tried… Tricks. You wouldn’t believe me.”