“Hurry up,” said the operator. “It costs a fortune to keep the connection open. We’re talking light-years here, you know. You’re not going on a weekend trip to Atlantic City.”

  “All right,” said Courane. He took a firm grip on his zipper bag, opened the door, and stepped through.

  Behind him there was the sound of a door sighing closed. He turned, but there was no sign of the portal. There wasn’t so much as a shimmer in the air.

  He was on another world.

  It wasn’t what Courane would call an especially attractive world. Naturally, he hadn’t had any choice in the matter, but if he had he might have picked a place where the colors of the sky and ground and growing things were more in harmony. The sky was bleak and clothed with storm clouds. The light had an unsettling greenish cast to it. The tall grass and the leaves on the twisted trees were the precise red-purple of a flea gorged with blood. Courane's face showed distaste, but in a moment he settled himself enough to look around.

  The sun—Epsilon Eridani—was low in the sky, but there was no way for him to say if it was morning or late evening. Not far was a large house with a bam and a silo. That was his new home, evidently, and he took a deep breath and headed toward it. He felt strangely nervous. He didn’t know why he was so anxious; he couldn’t fail here. There would be no evaluations. This was the end of the line, the bottom of the barrel. If there were any others in the house, they were there for the same reason he was. Birds of a feather, they had been marooned together.

  The house had a large front porch with several comfortable old chairs arranged so die tenants could sit and watch the grotesque dull red grasses waving in the winds of approaching storms. A half-filled pitcher rested forgotten on the porch railing.

  There was neither bellpush nor knocker beside the screen door. Of course not, Courane thought, applauding his own perception; they wouldn’t often receive package deliveries or weary travelers. “Hello?” he called. There was only silence. For a moment he had the horrible thought that he was alone, not only on the porch but on the planet, that TECT had banished him to solitary confinement on a strange world. But a moment later a woman came around the comer of the house. She was his mother’s age, in her middle or late forties, with short blonde hair and a youthful face. She didn’t show the signs of years of toils beneath the foreign sun. Although she wore no makeup, there were no lines of pain or hard work around her mouth or eyes. She wore a plain gray dress that was imperfect enough to have been made here at home. She smiled and came toward him, one hand extended.

  “Hi,” she said. Her voice was low and friendly. “My name’s Molly. We didn’t know anyone was coming today.”

  “TECT didn’t tell you?” he said, taking her hand.

  “No. Doesn’t make any difference, though. I’m glad I was around when you got here. Everyone else is either working around the farm or too sick. So come in, put your bag down. What’s your name?”

  “Courane. Sandor Courane. I’m from a little town in Europe. Greusching.”

  “We’ve got a few Europeans here,” said Molly. “A few North Americans, one Pacifican girl, and some folks from other colonies.”

  “How many altogether?”

  “Twelve. Two of them are kids. Isn’t that awful? Two children, both boys, neither of them older than eleven.” She looked across the yard, lost in thought. “So come in.” She smiled and held the screen door open.

  Courane steadied the woman’s body with one hand. His shoulder ached from carrying her. The day was hot and there was no breeze at all. The sand had given way to small rounded stones, and the footing was difficult. The ground had risen slowly, and as he paused he looked out over a gentle declivity that stretched before him all the way to the horizon. He would have to carry her down into the basin in search of the river. The only proof that there was a river was the note pinned to the woman’s clothing. Courane accepted its authority without question. It didn’t occur to him to ask if the note might belong to another time, another situation, another world perhaps, that there might be no river within the limit of his strength and perseverance. There were low gnarled trees scattered around the floor of the depression, and clouds in the distance gave hope of rain and an end to his thirst. He did suffer a growing fatigue, an exhaustion that almost overpowered him when he became conscious of it. When he remembered, it was with a clarity and a force that consumed him; he was aware of nothing else, nothing at all in his present condition. His past was denied to him, so far as voluntarily calling it up. But when it visited him unbidden, it blinded his senses and hungers to everything else.

  Courane shifted the corpse to the other shoulder, settled his burden more comfortably, and descended into the desert basin.

  ** TWO

  Courane sat by the river with Rachel and watched the dead autumn leaves shuffle in the brisk wind. He didn’t know what to say to the young woman. She was pleasant enough, of course, as well as intelligent, but Courane was embarrassed by her attention. Everyone on the farm knew that he had paired off with the Paciflcan girl, Alohilani. Courane hoped that Rachel understood the social conventions of their small community. He hoped that she wouldn’t make any emotional demands of him. Under the best of conditions in the past, he had never been very good at handling that kind of thing. “How long have you been here now?” she asked. Courane picked up a stone and tossed it in a high arc into the coffee-brown river. “Not quite five months,” he said. Questions like these were discouraged among the colonists. Rachel had been there for more than a month; she ought to have known better.

  The sky was clear, an unusual occurrence, and Courane laid back in the rough grass and closed his eyes. There was a tense silence between them.

  “I still haven’t gotten used to it all,” she said at last. “The colors of the sky and sun, I mean. And the stars at night being different.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  “I’m glad I work in the house. I don’t think I would want to work around the farm. The animals are so strange. So are the crops in the fields.”

  “You’ll work on the farm soon. You won’t stay in the house. They keep you there until you get adjusted. But we need you outside. There’s never enough help.” Rachel brushed her long dark hair with her hands and drew it over her shoulder, across her breast. Then she lay back beside Courane. “How sick is she?” she asked.

  “Alohilani?”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s very sick.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Sandy. Really. She’s a beautiful girl.”

  “You should have known her before she became ill.” Rachel sighed and rolled over in the grass. She plucked a long blade of the red weed, looked at it, and frowned. “Let’s talk about something else, all right?” she said. “Sure,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?” “Are you happy here?”

  Courane sat up and brushed damp soil from his shirt. He looked astonished. “Happy?” he said. “We’re in prison. How can you be happy in prison?”

  Rachel gazed at him, her large brown eyes brilliant with unshed tears. “I’m happy,” she said. “I’m happier here than I’ve ever been before. TECT was perfectly right, sending me here. I only wish it had happened sooner. I met you here.”

  Courane raised a warning hand. “Rachel, please. I’m glad you’re happy, but I hope it isn’t just because of me. I can’t be a part of it for you. I’m in love with someone else. ”

  “I know that.”

  “You’ve only been here a little while—”

  “Why do you call it a prison?” she asked. Rachel sat up and looked toward the river. “Just because you aren’t free to go back to Earth? I think this is my home. I think this place is beautiful, once you get used to the strange things. In its own way, it’s much more beautiful than Earth. The open space and the clean air.” She looked back into Courane’s face, but she saw only bitterness there. Rachel shook her head. “I love those little animals, the ones that hop like frogs but look kind of like chipmunks. The yellow fuzzy things.”

  “I do too,” said Courane.

  “What are they called?”

  “There isn’t a name for them. Why don’t you think of one?”

  Rachel laughed’ Courane stood up and helped her to her feet. Together they walked back to the house. Courane was glad the conversation had turned away from unpleasantness.

  * * *

  On Earth it was early January in the year 7 YT. “YT” originally meant “the Year of Tom,” the last of the Representatives, but since T was also the first letter of TECT, no one felt the need to change calendars again upon Tom’s retirement. When Courane arrived on Planet D, it was the middle of the local summer, July of the year 124. He was happy, in a way; his exile enabled him to bypass the rest of the Asian winter and walk through a portal into summer. On his first day on the farm, this minor advantage was the only one that presented itself. Courane waited skeptically for the self-esteem and satisfaction that TECT had promised. He decided to relax in the main parlor, and made himself comfortable while he waited.

  He was alone for a good part of the day. There were no electronic entertainment devices, of course, and no one had been permitted to bring books or fiche with them. Courane sat and looked at the wood-paneled walls in growing boredom. The house’s tect was tied directly into TECT’s main and subsidiary memory units, but Courane hadn’t learned that yet. He could have summoned up any of the resources available to anyone on Earth, but instead he sat and waited, afraid to violate any strange local customs or practices. If he were expected anywhere or if he were required to do anything, he was sure someone would tell him. And if the house rules forbade anyone telling him, he hoped someone would let him know about that. In any event, the safest thing seemed to be just to hang around, to be available until he was given a definite role to play.

  After a long while, Molly came into the parlor. “Have you been sitting here all this time?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Courane.

  “How monotonous. I guess everyone else is busy. I hope I’m not the one assigned to show you around; I’ve got much too much to do. If it were my job, though, I’d remember it.” Her face became suddenly serious. “I think I’d remember it,” she said softly. “I’ll be right back.”

  “No need on my account,” said Courane. He just wanted something to eat.

  A few minutes later, she returned. She smiled. “I was right, it isn’t me. Sheldon is supposed to give you the

  tour. Have you met Sheldon?”

  “The tall man? Bald? From some place in North America? I met him briefly. He said he’d be around to take me upstairs. That was hours ago.”

  “Ah, well. This is a busy working farm. We’ll try to fit you into the routine as quickly and smoothly as we can. We really need you. We have four people in the infirmary and we haven’t had anyone sent in a long time.” “How often do you get new recruits?” asked Courane. “Oh, I’d guess about every couple of months. Our months, not Earth months.” The farm’s year was divided into fifteen months, each with about thirty-five days. Courane would have to get used to the planet’s seasons. The winter was harder, the summer was milder, and spring and fall didn’t seem to last very long at all.

  “Are all your new people like me?”

  “Like’ you?” she asked, not understanding what he meant.

  “Misfit types, eliminated by TECT.”

  Molly looked away. “One thing—what was your name?”

  “Call me Sandy.”

  She smiled again. “All right, Sandy. The first thing you learn is that you never pry into anyone else’s past. If someone wants to talk about it, fine, but you don’t ask. Do you understand?”

  “Sure.”

  “Number two. We haven’t been eliminated. The word we like to use is ‘excarcerated.’ We made it up, and it’s a nice-sounding substitute for ‘exiled’ and we know it. But that’s the word we use whenever we discuss our situation, which we don’t do very often.”

  “I’ll remember that. Why don’t you tell me about the other people who live here?”

  “No,” said Molly, “I have to get back outside. The farm workers will be coming in soon, and you can meet them all then. Sheldon will be around to show you everything, and then there’s your first supper in about, oh, an hour and a half. In the meantime, why don’t you use the tect? It’s in the den, down the corridor there, second door on the right.”

  “Good,” said Courane.

  “I’ll see you at supper then. I hope you’re hungry.”

  Before Courane could answer, she turned and left the room.

  Sheldon found him later, sitting at the tect, playing a game of cribbage against the computer. “Hello,” said the bald man.

  Courane looked up and recognized him. He cleared the screen of the console. “Hello,” he said. “I was only—” He felt just a bit guilty about tying up the colony’s only link to Earth with his game.

  “Let’s take a walk. I’ll show you the grounds, the farm, the barn, and the animals. Then we’ll go upstairs.”

  Courane was struck by the way he said the last words. “Both you and Molly speak about ‘upstairs’ in a kind of hushed voice. What do you have up there?”

  The pained look on Sheldon’s face made Courane realize he had made just the kind of social error he had been trying to avoid. “Let’s look around the farm then, all right?” said Sheldon. Courane stood up wordlessly.

  Dreams. Courane sat up in the cold dawn and tried to remember. His dreams had become much more vivid, more like waking memories, like the visions that possessed him during the day. Like those memories, they faded quickly, mocking his vain attempts to hold on to them, to preserve them for melancholy examination. He had dreamed of the house and the people, but now he couldn’t recall who they were or what they looked like. The house—

  The sun—he called it the sun, but it wasn’t, of course; it was Epsilon Eridani—was peering over the hills that bordered the farther limits of this desert of stones. That was the way he had to go. The house was that way. The river was beyond the hills, he remembered. Many times in the months he had been on this world, he had wandered away from the farm into those hills, which now were gray with distance and dim with the mists of morning. He knew where he was, roughly speaking, and he felt good. It would take a couple of days more to cross the desert, another day among the hills themselves, and then he would find the river. How far upriver he was from the farm might determine if he’d live or die.

  He was lucid for the first time in days. He looked around, startled by how far he had marched while his mind was numbed. He shivered and wished that he had a coat. It might have been that he began the journey with more protective clothing, but he could easily have discarded it all when he wasn’t thinking clearly.

  The day’s labor called him. He stood and stretched and scratched his head. Then, when he could avoid it no longer, he turned to look at the corpse beside him.

  “I knew it,” Courane’s mother said. “I knew it from the very start. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I always knew it.” She sat at the dining table and wept. She didn’t seem to notice that neither her husband nor her son was eating. Courane’s father shrugged helplessly.

  “Don’t look at it that way, Mom,” said Courane. “I’m really excited about the whole thing. It will be a good experience for me. You know how I’ve always liked being in the country. You remember how much I liked going to camp when I was a kid.”

  “A good experience,” she said. “Sandy, an experience is something you have and then you tell all your friends about. An experience is something you come home after. Sandy, this isn’t an experience you’re going to have. You’re going away to some planet, for God’s sake.”

  “Marie,” said Courane’s father, “the boy doesn’t need this. Come on, stop crying. Be glad to see him.”

  She just looked at her husband with a strange, accusing expression. She said nothing more for a long time.

  After the dinner, they sat in the living room. “I’ve missed you, and I’ve missed this town,” said Courane sadly.

  “Your girlfriend has been asking about you,” said his mother. “Now what am I going to tell her?”

  “Girl? What girl?”

  “You know,” said his father, “oh, what’s her name? The girl who works for Dr. Klopst.”

  “Lilli? With the red hair?”

  His mother nodded. “She hinted that you were going to ask her to marry you, before you went away to Pil-essio. What am I going to tell her?”

  “Maybe she’ll wait for you,” said Courane’s father.

  “Wait?”

  “Until you come back,” said his mother in a quiet voice.

  “When I come back, it will probably be a long time from now. I have the feeling TECT is going to keep me there a long while. Until I prove myself.”

  “I knew it,” said his mother again. Her eyes were dry now, but so sorrowful and so desolate that neither man could meet her gaze. “I knew it from the very beginning,” she whispered.

  On the first floor of the large house were the parlor, the community rooms, the spacious den, the kitchen and dining room, and smaller rooms given over to activities that were both practical and entertaining. On the second floor were sleeping quarters. On the third floor, under the sloping roof, poorly ventilated and dimly lit, was the infirmary. There were always occupied beds in the infirmary.

  Before his first meal on the new world, Courane was led upstairs to the infirmary to watch an old woman die. “Her name is Zofia,” said Sheldon in a low voice.