“You’ll be living with us in America now,” Mrs. Howarth said.

  “I want to live in Biafra,” Agnes said. Her voice was so loud that it could be heard throughout the airplane.

  “Don’t we all,” said a woman farther in the front. “Don’t we all.”

  The rest of the flight Agnes passed in silence, unimpressed by the clouds and the ocean below her. They landed in New York, changed planes again, and at last reached Chicago. Home.

  “Home?” Agnes echoed, looking at the two-story brick house that loomed out of the trees and lawn and seemed to hang brightly over the street. “This isn’t home.”

  Brian couldn’t argue with her. But Agnes was a Biafran, and there would never be home for her again.

  Years later, Agnes would remember little about her escape from Africa. She would remember being hungry, and how Brian gave her two oranges when they landed at the Azores. She would remember the sound of antiaircraft fire, and the rocking of the plane when one shell exploded dangerously near. Most of all, however, she remembered the white man sitting across from her in the dark airplane. He kept looking at her, then at Brian and Agnes Howarth. Brian and his wife were black, but their blackness had been diluted by frequent infusions of white blood in past generations; little Agnes was much, much darker, and the white man finally said, “Little girl. You Biafran?”

  “Yes,” Agnes said softly.

  The white man looked angrily at Brian. “That’s against the regulations.”

  Brian calmly answered, “The world will not shift on its axis because a regulation was broken.”

  “You shouldn’t have brought her,” the white man insisted, as if she were breathing up his air, taking up his space.

  Brian didn’t answer. Mrs. Howarth did. “You’re only angry,” she said, “because your Biafran friends asked you to take their children, and you refused.”

  The man looked angry, then hurt, then ashamed. “I couldn’t. They had three children. How could I claim they were mine? I couldn’t do it!”

  “There are white people on this airplane with Biafran children,” Mrs. Howarth said to him.

  Angry, the white man stood, “I followed the regulations! I did the right thing!”

  “So relax,” Brian said, quietly but with command in his voice. “Sit down. Shut up. Console yourself that you obeyed the regulations. And think of those children with a bayonet slicing—”

  “Shhh,” Mrs. Howarth said. The white man sat back down. The argument was over. But Agnes always remembered that afterward, the man had wept bitterly, for what seemed hours, sobbing almost silently, his back heaving. “I couldn’t do a thing,” she heard him say. “A whole nation dying, and I couldn’t do a thing.” Agnes remembered those words. “I couldn’t do a thing,” she sometimes said to herself. At first she believed it, and wept for her parents in the silence in her home on the outskirts of Chicago. But gradually, as she forced her way past the barriers society placed before both her sex and her race and her foreign background, she learned to say something different:

  “I can do something.”

  She went back to Nigeria with her adopted parents, the Howarths, ten years later. Her passport showed her to be an American citizen. They returned to her city and asked in her real family where her parents were.

  “Dead,” she was told, not unkindly. No relative closer than a second cousin was left alive.

  “I was too young,” she said to her parents. “I couldn’t do a thing.”

  “Me too,” Brian said. “We were all too young to do anything.”

  “But I’ll do something someday,” Agnes said. “I’ll make up for this.” Brian thought she meant revenge, and spent many hours trying to dissuade her. But Agnes did not mean revenge.

  Hector 1

  Hector felt large when he saw the light, large and full and light and vigorous, and the light was the right color and the right brightness and so Hector gathered himselves and followed the light and drank it deep.

  And because Hector loved to dance, he found the right place and began to bow, and spin, and arch, and crest, and be a thing of great dark beauty.

  “Why are we dancing?” the Hectors asked themself. And Hector told himselves, “Because we are happy.”

  Agnes 2

  Agnes was already known as one of the two or three best skipship pilots when the Trojan Object was discovered. She had made two Mars trips and dozens of journeys to the moon, many of them solo, just her and the computer, others of them with valuable cargos—famous people, vital medicines, important secret information—the kind of thing valuable enough to make it worth the price of sending a skipship from the ground out into space.

  Agnes was a pilot for IBM-ITT, the largest of the companies that had invested in space; and it was partly because IBM-ITT promised that she would be pilot on the expedition, that the corporation won the lucrative government contract to investigate the Trojan Object.

  “We got the contract,” Sherman Riggs told her, and she had been so involved in updating the equipment on her skipship that she didn’t know what he meant.

  “The contract,” he said. “The contract. To go to the Trojan Object. And you’re the pilot.”

  It was not Agnes’s habit to show emotion, whether negative or positive. The Trojan Object was the most important thing in space right now, a large, completely light-absorbent object in the Earth’s leading trojan point. One day it had not been there. The next day it had, blotting out the stars beyond it and causing more of a stir in the space-watching world than a new comet or a new planet. After all, new objects should not suddenly appear a third of the way around Earth’s orbit. And now it would be Agnes who would pilot the craft that would first view the Trojan Object up close.

  “Danny,” she said, naming her Leaner, the lover/engineer who always teamed with her on two-person assignments. On a long trip like this, no pilot could stand to be without his or her Leaner.

  “Of course,” Sherman answered. “And two more. Roger and Rosalind Thorne. Doctor and astronomer.”

  “I know them.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “Good enough. Good. If we can’t get Sly and Frieda.”

  Sherman rolled his eyes. “Sly and Frieda are GM-Texaco, and there isn’t a chance in hell—”

  “I hate it when you roll your eyes, Sherman. It makes me think you’re having a fit. I know Sly and Frieda are hopeless, but I had to ask, didn’t I?”

  “Roj and Roz.”

  “Fine.”

  “How much do you know about the Trojan Object?”

  “More than you do and less than I’ll need to.”

  Sherman tapped his pencil on his desk. “All right, I’ll send you straight to the experts.”

  And a week later, Agnes and Danny and Roj and Roz were ensconced in Agnes’s skipship, sweeping down the runway at Clovis, New Mexico. The acceleration was frightful, particularly after they were vertical, but it was not long before they were in a high orbit, and not much longer than that before they were free of the Earth’s gravity, making the three-month trip to Earth’s leading trojan point, where something waited for them.

  Hector 2

  Hector said to himselves, “I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty,” and the Hectors gave themself plenty to drink, and when Hector was satisfied, for the moment, he sang a soundless song that all the Hectors heard, and they, too, sang:

  Hector swims in an empty sea

  With Hectors all around.

  Hector whistles merrily

  But never makes a sound.

  Hector swallows all the light

  So he’s snug out in the cold.

  Hector will be born tonight

  Although he’s very old.

  Hector sweeps up all the dust

  And puts it in a pile:

  Waybread for his wanderlust,

  More Hectors in awhile.

  And the Hectors laughed and also sang and also danced because they had come together after a long journey and they were warm and they were snug and they lay together to listen to themself tell himselves stories.

  “I will tell,” Hector said to himselves, “the story of the Masses, and the story of the Masters, and the story of the Makers.”

  And the Hectors cuddled together to listen.

  Agnes 3

  Agnes and Danny made love the day before they reached the Trojan Object, because that made it easier for both of them to work. Roj and Roz did not, because that made it easier for them to stay alert. For a week it had been clear that the Trojan Object was far more than anyone on Earth had suspected, and far less.

  “Diameter about 1400 kilometers on the average,” Roz reported as soon as she had good enough data to be sure. “But gravity is about as much as a giant asteroid. Our shaddles are strong enough to get us off.”

  Danny spoke the obvious conclusion first. “There’s nothing that could be as solid as that, as large as that, and as light as that. Artificial. Has to be.”

  “Fourteen hundred kilometers in diameter?”

  Danny shrugged. Everybody could have shrugged. That’s what they were here for. Nothing natural could have suddenly appeared in Earth’s leading trojan point, either—obviously it was artificial. But was it dangerous?

  They circled the Trojan Object dozens of times, letting the computer scan with better eyes than theirs for any sign of an aperture. There was none.

  “Better set down,” Roz said, and Agnes brought her skipship close to the surface. It occurred to her as she did so that she and Danny and the others changed personality completely when they worked. Fun-loving, filthy-minded, game-playing friends, until work was needed. Then the fun was over, and they became a pilot and an engineer and a doctor and a physicist, functioning smoothly, as if the computer’s integrated circuits had overcome the flesh barrier and inhabited all of them.

  Agnes maneuvered her craft within three meters of the surface. “No closer,” she said. Danny agreed, and when they were all suited up, he opened the hatch and shaddled down to the surface. “Careful, Leaner,” Agnes reminded him. “Escape velocity and everything.”

  “Can’t see a damn thing down here,” he answered in a perfect non sequitur. “This surface material sucks up all light. Even from my headlamp. Hard and smooth as steel, though. I have to keep shining my light on my hands to see where they are.” Silence for a few moments. “Can’t tell if I’m scratching the thing or not. Am I getting a sample?”

  “Computer says no,” Roj answered. As the doctor, he had nothing better to do at the moment than monitor the computer.

  “I’m not making any impact on the surface at all. I want to find out how hard this thing is.”

  “Torch?” Agnes asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Roz protested. “Don’t do anything to make them mad?”

  “Who?” Danny asked.

  “Them. The people who made this.”

  Danny chuckled. “If there’s anybody in there, they either know we’re out here or they’re sure enough we can’t get in that they don’t care. Either way, I’ve got to do something to attract their attention.”

  The torch flared brightly, but nothing was reflected from the surface of the Trojan Object, and only the gas dissipated with the torch made it visible.

  “No result. Didn’t even raise the surface temperature,” Danny said.

  They tried laser. They tried explosives. They tried a diamond tip on a drill for repair work. Nothing had any effect on the surface at all.

  “I want to come out,” Agnes said.

  “Forget it,” Danny answered. “I suggest we go to the pole, north or south. Maybe something’s different there.”

  “I’m coming out,” Agnes said.

  Danny was angry. “What the hell do you think you can accomplish that I haven’t done!”

  Agnes frankly admitted that there wasn’t anything she could possibly do. While she was admitting it she clambered out of the skipship and launched herself toward the surface.

  It was a damn fool thing to do, as Danny informed her loudly over the radio, just as he turned to face Agnes and flashed his light directly in her eyes.

  She realized to her alarm that he was directly below her—she couldn’t turn around and shaddle down. She slipped to the right, instead, and then tried to turn around, but because of her panic at the thought of colliding with Danny (always dangerous in space) and the delay as she maneuvered to avoid him, she struck the planet surface going a good deal faster than should have been comfortable.

  But as she touched the surface, it yielded. Not with the springiness of rubber, which would have forced her hand back out, but with the thick resistance of almost-hard cement, so that she found her hand completely immersed in the surface of the planet. She shone her headlamp on it—the smooth surface of the planet was unbroken, not even dented, except that her hand was in it up to the wrist.

  “Danny,” she said, not sure whether to be excited or afraid.

  He didn’t hear her at first because he was too busy shouting, “Agnes, are you OK,” into the radio to notice that she was already answering. But at last he calmed down, found her with his headlamp, and came over to her, shaddling gently to stay tight to the surface of the Trojan Object.

  “My hand,” she said, and he followed her shoulder and her arm until he found her hand and said, “Agnes! Can you get it out?”

  “I didn’t want to try until you saw this. What does it mean?”

  “It means that if it was wet cement it’s hard by now and we’ll never get you off!”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Agnes said. “Test around it. See if it’s different.” Except for the torch, Danny made all the same tests. Right up to the edge of Agnes’s suit the Trojan Object’s surface was absolutely impenetrable, completely absorbent of energy, nonmagnetic—in other words, untestable. But there was no arguing the fact that Agnes’s hand was buried in it.

  “Take a picture,” Agnes said. “What will that show? It’ll look like your wrist with the hand cut off.” But Danny went ahead and laid some of his tools on the surface to give some hint in the photograph of where the surface actually was. Then he took a dozen or more photos. “Why am I taking these pictures?” he asked.

  “In case we go back and people don’t believe I could stick my hand into something harder than steel,” Agnes answered.

  “I could have told them that.”

  “You’re my Leaner.”

  Leaners were very good for some things, but you’d never want to be the prosecutor whose case against the defendant rested entirely on the Leaner’s testimony. Leaners were loyal first, honest second. Had to be.

  “So we’ve got the pictures.”

  “So now I get out.”

  “Can you?” Danny asked. He had only postponed his concern for her; now it was back in full force.

  “My knees and my other hand were both sunk in just as deep. The reason this one is still in is because I clenched my fist and I’m still holding on.”

  “Holding on to what?”

  “To whatever this damn thing is made of. My other hand and my knees floated to the surface after a few seconds.”

  “Floated!”

  “That’s what it felt like. I’m letting go now.” And as Agnes unclenched her fist her hand slowly rose to the surface and was gently ejected. There wasn’t a ripple on the surface material, however. Where her hand was, it behaved like a liquid. Where her hand wasn’t, it was as solid as ever.

  “What is this made of?”

  “Silly putty,” Agnes said. “Unfunny,” Danny answered.

  “I’m serious. Remember how silly putty was flexible, but if you formed it into a ball and threw it on the ground, it broke like clay?”

  “Mine never worked like that.”

  “But this stuff does, in reverse. When something sharp hits it, or something hot, or something too slow or too weak, it sits there. But when I ran into it going at shaddle speed, I sank in it for a few inches.”

  “In other words,” Roj said from the skipship, “you’ve found the door.”

  They were back in the skipship inside ten minutes, and after only a few more minutes of checking everything to make sure it was in good condition, Agnes pulled the skipship a few dozen meters away from the surface of the Trojan Object. “Everybody ready?” Agnes asked.

  “Are we doing what I think we’re doing?” Roz asked.

  “Yep,” Danny answered. “We shore is.”

  “Then we’re idiots,” Roz said, her voice sounding nervous. No one argued with her.

  Agnes fired the vernier rockets on the outboard side and they plunged toward the Trojan Object. Not terribly fast, by the standard of speed they were used to. But to those aboard, who knew that they were heading directly into a surface so hard a diamond drill and a laser had no effect at all, it was disconcertingly fast.

  “What if you’re wrong?” Roz asked, pretending she was joking.

  No one could answer before they hit. But in the moment where there should have come a violent crunch and a rush of atmosphere escaping from the ship, the skipship merely slowed sickeningly and kept moving inward. The black flowed quickly past the viewports, and they were buried in the surface of the Trojan object.

  “Are we still moving?” Roj asked, his voice trembling.

  “You’ve got the computer,” Agnes answered, flattering herself that she, at least, did not sound scared. She was wrong, but no one told her.

  “Yeah,” Roj finally said. “We’re still moving. Computer says so.”

  And then they sat in silence for an interminable minute. Agnes was just about to say, “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I’ve changed my mind,” when the blackness turned to a reflective brown through the window, and then, just when they’d had time to notice it, the brown turned into a bright, transparent blue—“Water!” Danny said in surprise—and then the water broke and they bobbed on the surface of a lake, the sun dazzlingly bright on the surface.

  Hector 3

  “First I will tell you the story of the Masses,” Hector said to himselves. Actually, the telling of the stories was not necessary. As Hector drank, all that he had been through, all that he had known through the years of his life was being transferred subliminally to himselves. But there was the matter of focus. The matter of meaning. Hector had no imagination at all. But he did have understanding, and that understanding had to be passed to himselves, or in ages to come the Hectors would curse themself for having left himselves crippled.