the traveler's mark

He bobbed up to the surface, just off the shore of Malibu. At least, that was what his infallible sense of the world he had explored for so long told him.

The sun, the sky, the water, the bluffs on the shore, the enormous, sprawling houses all told him: Malibu. He was back in the Federated States of North America. God. He had been here only fifty years ago.

He swam ashore. He must have drifted a little in the current, because he landed on a private beach, fenced off and leading uphill to a large tan house, stuccoed and immaculately landscaped, endowed with a vanishing-horizon pool, the trend of a few decades ago.

Naked. He wished he had privacy. The golden sand felt good under his feet, though, and the sun warmed him. Up ahead, a young woman with dark hair emerged from a pair of French doors, carrying a book and a pack of cigarettes. Parliament Lights, from what he could see at this distance.

A woman. It had to be a woman. Embarrassed, he made his way up the wide steps and strategically positioned himself behind a strange tropical plant with long, waxy leaves. They were dark green.

He cleared his throat, and called out, "Hello? Excuse me?"

The woman, who had been positioning herself to sink down on a chaise lounge, froze. Slowly, she turned around and saw him. Her eyes lit up with anger and she strode down to him. Young, he thought. Her eyes were wide, deep, and dark, and her skin had a depth to it. Perfectly-formed, though slender, she made him wonder if she was part Indian.

"What are you doing here?" she snapped. "This is private property." Then she realized his situation. "Oh, my God," she breathed. "You're naked. Jesus. They told me this might happen." A sudden change in attitude. "Get away from me, you pervert!"

"No, no," he said. "I am not perverted. I just...lost my clothes and I need something to cover myself with. Please? I am in trouble. I need your help."

She paused. "Yeah, right," she said. "You just 'lost' your clothes. Sure. You'd better get moving before I call the police."

"I can explain," he said quickly. "I just need something--a towel, a dishcloth, anything. Please."

The desperation in his eyes must have convinced her, because she bit her lower lip and thought for a moment. "All right. But I've got a gun, so don't do anything I wouldn't like. Stay right here."

"Happily!" he said. She narrowed her eyes, hesitated, then made her way up the paver-crusted steps and into the house.

A few moments later, she emerged, carrying a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. "Those were my ex-husband's," she said. "You can have them."

"Thank you!" he said, more grateful than he expected. Had it been that long since he had last died? Yes--over two hundred years, since the Opium Wars. He quickly slipped into them and breathed a deep sigh of relief. He had forgotten how comfortable cotton t-shirts and shorts were over the fifty years since he had left the United States--now the Federated States, consolidated along with Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America above the Panama Canal.

He stepped out from behind the bush, and the woman reached behind her back threateningly. He raised his hands and said, "I am harmless, I assure you. In fact, I can leave right now if you'd prefer."

She relaxed. "Got someplace to be?"

"Frankly, no," he said. "I am what you might call a gentleman of leisure. Although these days, life has been slightly less leisurely than usual."

She nodded. "Must be, if losing your clothes wasn't accidental or depraved. C'mon," and she headed up the steps, el-Musafir in tow. They stopped on the porch. "Want something to drink?"

He was achingly thirsty, and starving to boot--the resurrection always took its pound of flesh, so to speak. "Yes, that would be wonderful." His stomach growled loudly, and she paused and looked back at him, one perfect eyebrow arched.

"Perhaps some food, too?"

Embarrassed, he said, "That would also be wonderful!"

She laughed, apparently in spite of herself. "Have a seat," she said, pointing at the chaise lounge. "I'll be right back."

He eased himself down onto the lounge, noting the fine wood of its frame and the smoothness of the cloth over the plush cushion. This woman was wealthy. As he looked out over the ocean, this impression was reinforced. A pair of squat palm trees framed the view on both sides of the vanishing pool, and all was lush, dark-green vegetation and bright red tropical flowers down the hill to the beach. The water was that rare turquoise that comes from just-right weather conditions, and the sky was a deep blue, filled with immaculate white clouds like sailing ships. The whitecaps came rushing into the beach, breaking in a roar of sound that was only audible from his vantage point as a gentle shushing. The roof that sloped over the porch blocked out the sun at this time of day, but the terminator was already halfway across the pool.

The sunsets here must be incredible, he thought to himself. He had seen Pacific sunsets many times, but the feeling of privacy here, engendered by tall bushes and a solid wood fence on both sides of the yard, must, he felt, make this woman feel as though the sunset was hers and hers alone. What a life.

Her voice broke into his reverie. "Admiring the view?" with just a small note of pride.

He shook his head. "Admiring the life."

She laughed and handed him a bottle of water and a plate heaped with eggs, bacon, sausage, and biscuits. At his look of surprise, she shrugged and said, "Leftovers from breakfast. My cook always makes more than I need and boxes them up for my lunch. C'mon, make some room for me."

He smiled and folded his legs under him, Indian-style, resting his plate on his lap and unscrewing the bottle cap.

After he had chugged down the entire bottle, she said, "I'm Marath, by the way."

He nodded and swallowed his last mouthful of water. "El-Musafir." Then he caught himself. "Well. Perhaps not anymore," and he smiled again. A shadow crossed her face, fleetingly.

She inclined her head slightly, turned it to her left, and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "What does that mean?"

He laughed. "It's a long story. Pardon me," and he began to devour his breakfast. He couldn't help himself; the food just kept shoveling itself into his mouth, and it was all good, so good. His eyes closed in pleasure, and his stomach cried out for more.

When he finished, he opened his eyes to find Marath staring at him. But all she said was, "Is that good enough? Or should I go shoot an elephant?"

He laughed. "An elephant sounds lovely! But no, this is perfect. My God." He sighed again and leaned back against the lounge, his eyes closing. It felt so good, having food in his stomach. This would be the first time this body had tasted or eaten anything, and the effects of the food was making him languorous. Dimly, he felt Marath extricating the plate from his hands, getting up, and he heard the French doors open and close. Then there was nothing.

Glinting light woke him up. The sun was dancing on the water. Marath was nowhere in sight. Quickly, he sat up and looked around him. He was alone. Panicked, he thought briefly about drugged food, but the truth soon came to him.

He had forgotten. It'd been so long since he'd last died that he had forgotten the effects of eating for the first time after a resurrection. His body needed downtime to begin processing food and storing away the useful nutrients, so it shut him down, in effect, to ensure as little activity as possible.

What must Marath have thought? He stood up, looking down the hill to the beach. Nothing. He turned around and went through the French doors. High walls, vaulted ceiling, expensive tile on the floor supporting expensive rugs and expensive furniture. The wall was turned off, a blank rectangle of black in the center to represent the minimum viewing window. And there was Marath lounging on the blue plush couch, a book in her hands. She looked up and smiled.

"Feel better?" He nodded wordlessly, and she laughed. "First time I've had a guy fall asleep on me. Come sit with me and tell me your long story," and she sat up.

His mind working furiously, el-Musafir smiled weakly and sat down. The slatted blinds on the French doors let in long, skinny strips of light and painted Marath in a chiaroscuro that molded itself to her slight body. A stripe of light fell across her eyes, but they were so dark that the light was absorbed rather than reflecting any color.

"So," she said. "Why were you swimming naked off my beach?"

"I wasn't swimming," he said. "I got mugged on a pier a few miles away from here, I think. They beat me up pretty badly and, I guess, stripped me and threw me off. I just woke up this morning, saw the public beach next door, and started swimming, and the current brought me here."

She nodded for a minute. "Sure. Sounds plausible."

"So, uh...sorry to have bothered you, but I'm going to go."

"Just a minute there, pod-ner," she said. "Sit back down. So you got beaten up, huh?"

"Yeah, I sure did," he said, smiling.

"Must ache pretty badly, huh?"

Ooh, shit, he thought to himself. God damn the resurrection. "Actually, no," he said brightly. "It must have been a couple days ago."

She sighed. "Cut the shit. I know that whole line's a crock. I'd have believed you if you said you just decided to go skinny-dipping, lost the suit, and got stuck in a riptide that carried you here."

El-Musafir blushed and laughed. "Actually, that's what really happened. But if it had happened to you, would you be so willing to share that?"

Marath looked thoughtful. "True. So what do you do for a living?"

He shrugged. "Well, as I said, I'm a gentleman of leisure. Independently wealthy. I travel around and take stupid risks for kicks."

"What's with the name? El-Musafir. You don't look Middle-Eastern."

Time to tread carefully. "It's more like a nickname. A friend gave it to me when I was younger. She was Syrian, and said that it meant 'The Traveler.' It stuck because I really do travel quite a lot. In fact, I don't even have a permanent address." He paused, and looked at Marath, whose face had just gone pale. "Is everything okay?"

She opened her mouth to speak, the phone rang, and she closed it again. "Just a moment," she said. She stood up and went through a doorway in the viewing wall into the next room.

He heard her pick up the phone. Her voice, though slightly muffled, was audible.

"Hello? Yes, it's me. Yes, I remember. Really? Oh. Oh. Oh, my God. It was him? Are you sure? Really? Okay. But didn't you say...I see. Well, okay." Long pause. "Yes, I'll let you know if I hear anything. Yes, I Googled the name this morning, I do it every morning. No, nothing turned up. Yes, I know. Okay. All right. Thanks for...telling me. Bye."

There was a long silence. No sounds of movement from the other room. Just as el-Musafir was starting to become concerned, Marath emerged slowly through the doorway, her face gray. Now he was really concerned.

"What's wrong?"

She shook her head. "Nothing I'm ready to discuss right now." She flopped down on the couch. "Tell me about you."

El-Musafir was nonplussed. "I'm a strange naked man who washed up on your private beach and stole your husband's clothing before eating all of your food and falling asleep on your back porch. Shouldn't I be leaving?"

She laughed. "First, it's my ex-husband. We split up months ago. Second, that just makes things more interesting." At his dubious look, she continued, "See, I'm also independently wealthy. I got so much money in the settlement that I probably won't need to work again. And I'm not the hard-working type, so I mostly just lounge around here, go to the gym, and shop."

He nodded. "You should travel. See the world."

She laughed, but her look grew curiously intense. "How long have you been traveling?"

He shrugged. "All my life. My mom died soon after she gave birth to me, and my dad was a traveling salesman. He got a home-schooling certification, though, so I spent my life on the road. When I became an adult, I went to college, patented part of the technology behind the viewing wall--" he poked his thumb at her wall, and continued, "--made a lot of money off of it, and I've been back on the road ever since."

She looked impressed. "That's quite a good story. What's your real name?"

Uh-oh. "I don't give it out. I don't even use it, really. I consider myself a citizen of the world, and 'el-Musafir' is my name. Although I've been thinking about changing it." There.

"Why?"

He shrugged and shifted position. "It feels worn-out, I guess. I've gone by el-Musafir for so long that it almost seems threadbare. It's high time I got a new identity." He nodded definitively. "Yes, indeed."

She laughed and leaned forward. "Tell me a story you heard on your travels."

"Hmm." El-Musafir thought for a while. Why not? "All right. This is a story I heard in India. It's thousands of years old, said to date back to the time of the Aryans, a pale-skinned people who inhabited the Subcontinent and outlying regions almost five thousand years ago. Supposedly, the Persians and modern-day Iranians are descended from this culture."

Marath nodded. "I've heard about them. Weren't they supposed to be blond-haired and blue-eyed?"

He shook his head. "That was a popular myth that was...strongly supported by people who liked the idea of an, oh, sort of a master-race. Hitler was one of those. This way, he had a biological and racial reason to cleanse the Jews and Gypsies, and essentially anyone else who didn't fall into that ideal." She winced, and looked chagrined at the idea that she had fallen into that trap. "Right. Anyway, the world was different in those times. It seems like the farther back you go, the world's population of demons, spirits, and gods takes off, exponentially. With that comes a rise in the sheer...amount of magic loose in the world."

She had a funny, crooked half-smile on her face. "You almost sound like you were there."

He shrugged. "The way the story was told to me, it almost made me feel like I was there. The guy's face--this was on the outskirts of Chennai, by the way, in the lower-caste administrative region--he had this amazing sense of wonder and belief that I couldn't help but think the story actually happened, you know?"

She nodded. "Go on."

"There was a young boy who lived in a village in the northwest of what we now recognize as the nation of India," began el-Musafir. "His was a family of extremely poor farmers. Still, life wasn't too nasty, brutish, or short, as the philosopher said. Family life was an important aspect of this culture, and everyone was taken care of by everyone else. I suppose you could call it prehistoric Communism. The village would gather all the produce harvested by its members, and a group of 12 farmers would take it to the regional market every week, sell it all off, and come back and divide the money evenly among all the villagers."

Marath sighed. "It sounds like a recipe for trouble."

He nodded. "It was, but not for a long time. You see, the largest farmers had been raised in that environment, and had always been fed and protected by the village. They saw it as a strong social obligation and were pleased to be able to contribute to the unity of their people. That village had been around for five hundred years or more, since it had been supposedly founded by the ancestors of the local witch, who were gods of some kind or other. Thus, they lived on blessed ground." He paused. His throat was dry. "Would you mind if I had some water?" Marath nodded and fetched him a glass.

"Thank you," he said, and continued. "In the time of our youthful main character's eleventh summer, a new family came, with six children. The head of the household had heard about this village and its unusual arrangement of guaranteeing health for every resident, and had been attracted to this idea. He really was rather wealthy, and had brought many supplies and slaves with him. He claimed a huge tract of uninhabited land just outside the largest fields belonging to the village, and he farmed that for several years, participating in the profit-sharing arrangement. The field was too far away to live on and still benefit from the tightly-knit life in town, so he built a fine home near the center of the village for himself, his wife, and his children, and a large building to house his slaves on the land he had claimed."

He took a drink of water, and thought about how to go on. "He brought in a lot of food and, I guess, what you could consider money, for the village. Everyone was incredibly well-fed. By the time our humble protagonist saw his eighteenth year, he was in quite vibrant health. Unfortunately for him, things were about to go very wrong."

"It was the new guy," Marath guessed. "He got tired of seeing all his food and money go to the other villagers, right?"

"No, not at all," el-Musafir replied. "At least, not on the surface. You have to remember, this man was from a different culture. He was used to the usual, sell-things-for-profit, look-out-for-yourself kind of thing. And no matter how much he enjoyed his new lifestyle, it was inevitable that he would say something comparing the village to the city where he used to live in southern India."

Marath sat back. "From southern India to the northwest? That's a long way to go just to move house."

He shrugged. "Like I said, it's just a story."

She nodded. "Sorry for the interruption. Keep going, please."

He spent a moment figuring out where he had left off. "Ah. Well, over the course of a few years, he apparently inadvertently poisoned the minds of the largest farmers, and they began to wonder why they had to put up with the comparatively small amount of money and food they got in return for their huge harvests. They forgot about their childhoods and about their children, and began to think only of what they would gain if the current order of things...was changed."

He sighed. "What happened was, I suppose, unavoidable. Those major farmers--there was a handful of them--began arguing among themselves and the other villagers about making the distribution of wealth more proportionate to each individual family's contribution. The poorer farmers protested, saying that their families would starve, but were answered only with sneering words about their lack of effort." He shifted position again--his right leg had been folded up under his left, and it had gone to sleep. He lifted both legs up and crossed them at the ankles on the coffee table and continued, "Eventually, it came to pass that those big farmers realized that their slaves, if combined, constituted an army with which their supposedly fair share could be seized by force.

"It happened the weekend that our young boy, now a young man, was selected to go to market for the first time. The poorer villagers, however, were suspicious of the larger farmers, so created a story about an unusually large harvest that needed all hands to work. And so it was that this boy went to market, unaccompanied by grown, experienced men. This was difficult for him, since there was so much food that it normally required at least six men to transport and sell it, but the villagers told him to feel free to practically give it away. They knew that the chance of them never surviving to see the next profit was far too high."

"So how did he manage it?" Marath said.

"They sent their youngest children with him," said el-Musafir. "Only those who had not seen fourteen summers went, and those helped him transport the food in the twelve carts and took care of their younger siblings. The parents of the village didn't want the children to be involved in a massacre."

"So how many in all?" Marath asked.

"Nearly thirty children, plus our boy," said el-Musafir.

"This boy has no name?"

El-Musafir shrugged. "His name was lost to history. This is a legend, remember."

She nodded. "So what happened next?"

He sighed deeply. "Tragedy. When they arrived at the market, word spread that this week's harvest from their village was manned only by vulnerable children. Everything was seized by the market slavers, and by the weekend, only our main character remained, deemed too old for the purposes for which children were often bought, and too young for the hard work of adulthood. The children had all been carried away and sold, and the meat and produce had all been stolen. One young man was not enough to protect the village's merchandise, so to speak. Even the carts and horses were stolen, and he was forced to walk back to the village. It took him nearly three days to cover the distance, which might have saved his life."

He stared at his feet, remembering. "When he returned to the village, there was utter devastation. The major farmers had attacked the rest of the village, but the villagers, anticipating the attack, were prepared. Nearly everyone on both sides had been slaughtered, and every home burned to the ground--except one."

Marath's mouth fell open. "The new guy's?"

He shook his head. "He had, apparently, been totally oblivious to what was happening, and when it happened, he tried to call his slaves in from the field. His work force was almost as large as the others' combined, and the village might have been saved. Unfortunately, his message was intercepted and the messenger killed, and his family then massacred. By the time the boy arrived in the wasteland where he had once lived, all the survivors had fled, except, of course, for one. She lived in the untouched home."

Comprehension dawned in Marath's face. "The witch's house."

El-Musafir nodded. "Even in the throes of war, the fighters feared the witch so much that her home was virtually unscathed. Yet, curiously, their fear of her did not stop them from destroying the town her own ancestors had allegedly founded. When the boy arrived, the witch was waiting for him. She was young, and quite beautiful--or she had been several days before. This time, her face was lined and aged, and she was ugly with fury.

"' Why do you walk? What has happened to the children?' she cried. 'Where is the food? What have you done?'

"Trembling, he explained what had happened, and she flew into a rage.

"'Damn you,' she shrieked. 'Those children were the future of this village! With them, there might have been hope of rebuilding. You have performed the final act of destruction, of desecration! I curse you with eternal life! You have walked here instead of ridden, and you will never stop walking! Your hair will never again grow upon your head! The grass will never grow under your feet! You will never grow old! You will wander the world until you find this village as it once was once again! DAMN YOU!'"

Marath's breath caught. "And was the curse fulfilled?"

He spread his hands. "No one knows. There are stories in the region of a young man who visits the area once every couple hundred years. He enchants a young woman with stories of his travels and then vanishes again, leaving heartbreak and bitterness behind him." He shrugged. "I'm sorry if I depressed you. It's not the happiest story."

She smiled suddenly. "No! I'm fascinated. I've always wondered--" and she looked surprised and slightly chagrined, and her mouth snapped shut. Then--"Ah, well. Are you hungry again, el-Musafir?"

But something had caught his attention. "Wondered what?"

"Nothing important," she said, and shrugged. "I've got some watermelon if you're up for it. I'm in the mood for something sweet."

It was hard for him to let go of it, but he nodded. "Certainly," he said stiffly. She paused for a moment, looking at him with--what? Intense interest, slight fear, some awe? More and more, he felt certain that he was in a dangerous position.

"Actually, you know what?" he said. "I think I had better go. It was very nice meeting you, Marath, and I thank you for the clothes, the food, and the time to rest."

Marath looked woeful. "No, el-Musafir. Please don't leave."

He knew, then. The phone call, the reaction to his name, the intense interest in his story. "And why not? So I can be caught by your cousins again? So they can drain me dry and use my blood so they can wage their war of wealth and bitterness for all time?" He shook his head. "No. Good-bye, Marath. I had hoped--" but he snapped his jaw shut to prevent the rest from coming out. "Good-bye."

"Wait," she said. "I admit it. I'm a Nurian. That Syrian woman who loved you so much a thousand years ago is one of my ancestors, okay. I know the story of the mysterious el-Musafir, the wandering immortal, the broken-hearted lady Nur who waited for him until she died, blah blah blah. I know all about my cousins' plans. But you have to believe me..." she paused. "Did you hear me lie to my cousin Jamal on the phone? Why would I do that if I were on his side?"

"I don't know," he said angrily. "So you could wring me for every single fascinating detail before you turn me over to your murderous bastard relatives. I wish I had never met that bitch Nur--no, I wish I had strangled her!"

"Jesus Christ, el-Musafir," Marath said, disgusted. "I know you don't mean that. You should know there are two sides to the Nurian order. There's Jamal's side, and then there's mine. You don't understand how fascinated we are with you, how much we desperately want to hear your stories--and write them down."

He paused, his brow furrowing, his eyes narrowed. "Write them down? Really?"

She nodded calmly. "Yeah. If I assume rightly, according to the story you just told me, you're nearly five thousand years old. Those are a lot of memories, and some of them might get lost. Do you even know what your name was at the time?"

He hesitated, sat down on the couch again. "No. I don't, actually." And he looked up. "But wouldn't Jamal be angry if he found out about this?"

She smiled. It was not a happy smile. "Jamal can be taken care of."

"And Malik?"

"Malik is on our side. His closeness to Jamal makes him useful." She sighed and sat down at the kitchen table, tapping the glass surface with her fingernails. "Frankly, we've been planning on removing that side of the family for a long time. All it would have taken was you. And now here you are." She looked at him intently in the eye. "Do you see?"

El-Musafir felt a slight shock. "Are you talking about murdering your family?"

Marath shrugged. "Jamal and I are the descendants of two Muslim brothers who lived in the fifteenth century. One--my many-times great-grandfather--sought his fortune in India. In fact, that's where my grandparents on my mother's side come from. The other stayed in the Levant." She looked down at the table. "Our ancestries diverged over six hundred years ago. The only thing we have in common, really, is the knowledge of Nur's story. We aren't truly family, as far as I see it."

"Yes, I could see it that way." He thought a moment, and laughed. "The Chronicles of the Traveler. Is that what you were thinking?"

She smiled. "More or less, yes. A personal account five thousand years long."

El-Musafir shook his head. "I die for the first time in two hundred years, killed by the descendants of the woman who named me, and I am resurrected near the home of yet another descendant of this woman. I had forgotten."

Marath nodded. "It is an enormous coincidence. But--forgotten what?"

"Hm? Oh. Yes. Until a few days ago, I hadn't died for two centuries, you understand. But before then, it happened rather often." He sighed. "Often enough for me to learn that the resurrection can be...affected, directed, shaped, whichever word you want to use."

"How?" she said.

"I honestly have no idea," said el-Musafir. "But every time I come back, I usually find myself floating in the water off a place that invariably becomes highly significant in my life. It's almost as though...but it can't be."

He heard Marath's breath whoosh as if in exasperation. "What can't be?"

"As though the curse is actively seeking out situations that might bring me closer to its own fulfillment," he said. "Silly, isn't it?"

She looked thoughtful. "About as silly as the curse itself, I'd say."

He laughed. "Once, I found myself in a puddle in the heart of China. That was just before I got involved in the Opium Wars. There was no major body of water nearby, and I suppose the puddle was good enough for me."

But he liked the idea Marath had planted in his mind. He really, really liked it. He was surprised at how good it sounded to him. But--"You must understand that I am extremely peripatetic and difficult to get in contact with while I am traveling. How do you propose staying in touch long enough to record my tales?" An expansive sort of anticipation was blossoming inside him.

Marath looked hesitant. She bit her lower lip, and said, "Well. If you don't mind, I'd like to travel with you. Would that be a problem?" At his surprised look, she went on quickly, "You could just write your stories down in letters and mail them to me instead. I don't have to go with you." She looked wistful. "I'd sure like to, though."

El-Musafir turned this thought around in his mind. Surprisingly, he found himself eager to find out what it was like, traveling with a companion after being alone for five millennia. "For how long?"

She spread her hands. "However long it takes."

There was one important thing. "You know, I'm not sure," he said. "It may prove to be...difficult. You might be traveling with me for a very long time, and I'm not sure how you'd feel. I don't grow any older, you see. I have looked like this for five thousand years. Do you understand?"

She laughed. "El-Musafir, believe me. I'm not that vain. And this is strictly on a play-it-by-ear basis, you know. I may wind up trading off with another cousin ten years from now if I find myself in a place where I'd want to settle down, or I might be with you until I die." She shrugged. "I'm flexible."

"Okay," he said slowly. "But you must also realize that I live on a very small income. This time around, I'm a moderately well-known political theorists, and I live off of the money I make making speeches and appearing on panels. You will need to get used to that sort of lifestyle." Then he stopped, remembering. "Shit. I have to change my name and profession now. I can't risk Jamal capturing me again."

Marath rolled her eyes. "Jamal will not be around for very much longer, remember? As soon as we find out that he and all of his kind have been wiped out, you can pick up where you left off."

He smiled grimly. "And in the meantime?"

She shrugged. "We'll stick around here. It's safe. Do you mind staying in one place for a month or two?"

El-Musafir thought about that. He stretched and felt his newly-made spine pop in several places. This couch really was comfortable. After five thousand years...

"No," he said. "I don't mind."

traveler's rest

El-Musafir had seen the world many times. Each circumnavigation brought something new in every place he had been before, even in the many cities that had existed for thousands of years.

El-Musafir meant "The Traveler." He had picked up that name many hundreds of years ago as he traveled through the Levant, playing various portable musical instruments and performing a number of street acts to earn the money he needed to survive.

It was in Damascus. He had just finished a tale describing the hilarious customs of the northwestern barbarians. The group of wide-eyed children hanging onto his every word and bursting into laughter as he described moon-worship or blue-painting hadn't said much. It was a pretty young girl, Nur, who had dubbed him el-Musafir after the crowd had cleared. The conversation had happened over rose tea and lamb with several of her friends. Technically, they were forbidden to interact, but Nur was the daughter of a wealthy man who owned the rest where they ate.

"How many countries have you visited?" she asked, eyes bright with curiosity.

He shrugged. "All of them, at one point or another."

"But surely that must take hundreds of years!"

He laughed. "And do I look so old to you?"

"No," she said seriously. "At least, not for the most part. Your eyes are very deep, though, as though they've seen many more things than they should have."

"Ah!" he said. "The glory of sleep-deprivation. I'll get more sleep tonight, Inshallah, and perhaps in the morning I'll look like a new-born babe!"

She giggled. "You must have traveled every day of your life. Each morning, a new city, and each week, a new country."

He nodded. "Very much like that. My father was a traveling merchant with a shipping concern, and I took over his position after he died. I've seen many, many things. Did you know there's a huge land to the west?"

Nur laughed again. "Of course. It's called Africa."

"No, I mean further west. Beyond the great sea on Africa's western coast. Further west even than Iberia. The people there are brown. Not like the Moors, which tend to be darker, but with a much stronger reddish tinge."

She listened raptly as he explained their custom of chewing coca leaves and cacao nuts. The hallucinogenic enemas of the Aztecs elicited serious doubt and profound hilarity. The rainforests of the southern continent awed her, especially when he described the giant insects.

When he was done, she smiled impishly and said, "It doesn't matter now that you won't tell me your name. I have a new one for you. You will henceforth be known only as el-Musafir. The Wandering Muslim! That should serve as your answer when people ask from now on."

Surprised, he turned it over on his tongue. El-Musafir. It tasted good on his tongue, and he felt it sliding down over him like the most comfortable robe he had ever worn. And now, for almost a thousand years, he was still known as el-Musafir, the world over, by the people of the hidden places. He had long, long since forgotten the name he had been born with.

And now el-Musafir was returning to the Levant, to Damascus for the first time since he been named. Damascus had seen much since his last visit, and now it was, once again, one of the greatest cities of the world. The Caliph had his Rose Palace there, and it was said to exceed the Taj Mahal in beauty. El-Musafir doubted that that was possible--he had seen the magnificent tomb just after it was first constructed, and the sight had stayed with him for over four centuries. The New Caliphate had its stunning wonders, yes, but they did not always supplant the glory of the past.

The train stopped in Beirut on its southward journey. Here, it would turn east towards al-Fayhaa, the Fragrant City, Damascus. He couldn't wait. Perhaps he'd see something of Nur in the face of some random Damascene woman. It was one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world; perhaps her father's rest was still there in some form or another.

Of course, it was ridiculous to expect anything. It had been ten centuries; her descendants were now so numerous that any trace of her would have been obliterated in the noise of millions of other ancestors.

Mostly, he just wanted to see Damascus again. He had heard that the New Caliphate rebuilt it after the devastating regional war that had occurred in the middle of the last century, using money from its wealthiest provinces to transform Damascus into one of the most advanced cities on the continent. Dubai, of course, had protested the intrusion into the royal coffers, but had backed down after the Caliph threatened them with military action and sharia law.

Indeed, el-Musafir reflected, it was quite interesting how the New Caliphate had learned the lessons so painfully taught during the past two centuries. There had been considerable liberalization and re-interpretation of the word of Mohammed, allowing for the liberation of women and strong economic competition--over most of the Caliphate's territory. The strict Wahhabis had settled in Saudi Arabia and Iran and pursued strict sharia. They represented the Muslim equivalent of the Jewish kibbutzim and were the home of the Caliphate's most fearsome military wing.

Still, it didn't matter how liberally or conservatively each individual Muslim province practiced its collective faith; the New Caliphate was in control from western North Africa to Indonesia in an unbroken band cutting India off from the Chinese Hegemony and slinking under the belly of the Central Asia Confederation, which was currently dominated by Russia in a nasty deja-vu dream of the USSR.

Muslim extremism was almost unheard of now; the fundamentalists had land, money, and the satisfaction of the New Caliphate that they had spent nearly a century building. The Westernized provinces had all of that, in addition to the comfort that was contingent upon the recognition of their Muslim-ness as a state under the New Caliphate; even Israel fell under this auspice--Jerusalem was the Caliph's permanent home and the capital of the thousands of miles of Muslim lands.

The train left Beirut, traveling at nearly 430 miles an hour. It was therefore a shock when the explosive under the third car detonated, and the entire train derailed, plowing into the Damascene suburbs and setting off larger explosions as it mowed down hydrogen tank after hydrogen tank on its slow roll to a full stop. The carbon-fiber alloy superstructure of the train prevented it from disintegrating, but that only meant greater devastation for the people who lived in its path.

After the train came to a rest, it didn't take very long for the surviving passengers to participate in a mad scrabble to get out through any opening available. El-Musafir sensed that it wasn't over yet.

He was proven right when a hissing sound became audible. The other passengers had realized that all the doors and windows were sealed, and the skin of the train didn't permit any rips to penetrate its fabric. They were trapped, and the air quickly turned strange, and el-Musafir knew no more.

. . .

He woke up in a dark room. The walls were plastered stone, and extremely thick, judging from the tiny window set near the ceiling, which admitted the only light in the room. A line of four grim-faced men stood in front of him. They wore the traditional desert garb of the Badawi, an anachronism of this Age of the New Caliphate--outside of Iran or the Sinai Peninsula.

He mumbled. "Persian?"

One of them spoke sharply, the right-hand of the center pair. "El-Musafir. The Traveler. Is it you?"

"It is what I am called," he said. "What is this?" The four men had given each other significant glances at his affirmation.

"Is it true," the left-hand center man said, "That you are many thousands of years old?"

El-Musafir rolled his eyes in the automatic denial. "What a silly idea. Why am I tied up like this? Are you a terrorist organization?"

Right-hand center shook his head. "We are not terrorists, but freedom-fighters."

El-Musafir had to laugh. "There is no difference between the two, only in where you stand."

"Spoken like a true immortal," said left-hand center. He wore a beard, unusual in the modern Caliphate, and it betrayed a tinge of reddish-brown--even more unusual. He and right-hand center seemed to be the key people here. The bracketing pair were, presumably, their guards.

"Or a simple political theorist," el-Musafir said. "You assume far too much."

"Yes," said right-hand center. "A political theorist who travels from country to country, giving lectures and panel discussions, earning enough money to pay his way to the next stage."

"What a coincidence it is," said left-hand center, "That you carry the same name as the original el-Musafir, live the same lifestyle, and look the same." He sneered. "Surely you think we're stupid."

Wait. Look the same. "What do you mean, look the same?"

"We have drawings," said right-hand center. "Handed down over a thousand years by the founder of our order and our ancestor, a Damascene woman named Nur."

El-Musafir froze, his mind numbed. The shock on his face must have been evident, for both men leaned forward expectantly. But he said nothing.

"Nothing?" said left-hand center gently. "We are not your enemies, you realize."

"Yes," said right-hand center. "Our ancestor remembered you fondly. We have her personal writings from that time, and she spoke quite highly of you. After you moved on from Damascus, she was quite sad that you had not invited her on your travels." He paused. "You may call me Malik, and my cousin Jamal."

El-Musafir sighed. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps I have the same name, but that is nothing strange. Perhaps we share the same name because we share the same lifestyle. There is no reason to suggest a connection."

Jamal nodded to the guard on his right, who fetched a three-ring binder of laminated sheets. "Were you aware that Nur was also quite an accomplished artist with charcoal?"

El-Musafir laughed. "I have never heard of Nur, so how would I know anything about her artistic inclinations?" But his humor was silenced as the guard opened the binder to the first page and he found himself staring at his identical likeness, sketched and shaded in black on parchment.

He sighed. "Nur must have been a rich woman indeed. To waste parchment on such frivolity..."

"It was not frivolous to her," Malik said. "She spent the rest of her life waiting for you to return to Damascus, but knew that if she ever saw you again, she would have aged, while you would not have grown any older. So she moved on with her life, had several husbands and many children, and told all of them about you. She told your stories for you, showed them these drawings."

Jamal stepped in. "Her eldest son had a bit of an Oedipal complex, I'm afraid. He saw her longing to see you again, and after she died, he turned it into a family organization of sorts. So the story of el-Musafir has been handed down through countless generations."

"What sort of family organization?" el-Musafir asked, his curiosity piqued.

"Ah," said Malik. "We own a quite healthy banking and hotel business group with offices all over the New Caliphate. You are scheduled to speak at a conference at one of our hotels in Damascus three days from now. That is how we found you--one of our younger cousins manages that hotel, and when he saw your name on the conference register, he alerted us."

How odd, el-Musafir thought. "Why didn't you simply contact me at the hotel when I arrived, instead of blowing up a train?"

"Our mission has evolved over the centuries," Jamal said. "You see, we were once based in Dubai, and were about to build our largest, most advanced hotel on some property on Palm Jumeirah when our funds were seized by the New Caliphate to rebuild the Levant following the war with the West."

"When military action was threatened," added Malik, "All of our investors pulled out of the project, and we nearly went bankrupt. It was quite a nice property..." he trailed off wistfully.

"Nevertheless, we realized that although the New Caliphate has liberated much of our people from the confines of backward religiosity while still enabling us to follow the word of the Prophet, we would never truly be free as long as the Caliph remained in power," said Jamal. "And so we fight."

"An economic vendetta?" asked el-Musafir, surprised. "You've killed thousands of people over a failed investment?"

Malik shrugged. "The Westerners have done much worse in the name of money. And the New Caliphate is indeed a threat. As long as the Wahhabis are still permitted to live their lives, the horrors of fundamentalist Islam will always lurk in the background."

"The Caliphate," said Jamal, "is only interested in accumulating more power and money. Though we certainly can't say that in public, of course. And therein lies the problem. We will never be able to compete with the West or the Chinese Hegemony as long as we still have an authoritarian ruler who insists on following Islam."

"Good God," said el-Musafir. "The Muslim world is far better and healthier than it has been for thousands of years, and still you are trying to quash Islam?" His eyes narrowed. "Where were you born?"

Jamal and Malik looked at each other, and laughed. "I was born in Baghdad during the American occupation," said Malik, "and Jamal is Saudi."

El-Musafir relaxed. "Not Western, then."

"No," said Jamal. "Though my father was a British soldier, and Malik is the product of rape, committed by an American soldier on an Iraqi woman."

"So you should hate the West," said el-Musafir. "Being the products of Western oppression. I'm surprised your mother wasn't killed."

"Not at all," said Malik. "Our family's perspective is slightly different, being based as it is on a thousand years of family tradition, and the idea of immortality." He leaned down suddenly. "And that is why you are here."

El-Musafir sighed. "When have I ever given you to think that I am what you claim?"

Jamal shrugged. "Never. But there are ways and means of discovering the truth without any admission on your part." At el-Musafir's doubtful look, he went on, "After all, living for a very, very long time, it only makes sense that accidents happen quite often. You should be caked with scars, yes?"

Oh, shit, though el-Musafir. "But the fact that I am not should then prove that I am only mortal."

"Or it may mean that you have some healing factor," Malik said. "One that prevents you from being fatally hurt or dying." He drew out a large hunting knife from its holster on his belt. "If so, it should apply even to smaller wounds."

"Come on," said el-Musafir. "Are you being serious with this? You can't possibly believe that I'm unkillable. Why does it matter so much, anyway?"

"We need you," said Jamal. "You must be studied, and the secret to your longevity discovered and put to good use."

"Ridiculous!" el-Musafir snapped. "Even if I am what you say I am, how would studying me help anyone? Suppose that it is true, and others can be made immortal. How would that be at all beneficial? There wouldn't be room for everyone if births kept occurring, but death stopped happening."

Malik laughed. "You assume far too much altruism of us, el-Musafir! No, we plan on only helping ourselves. We plan on outliving the New Caliphate by many thousands of years. Time itself will grow our investments beyond all bounds."

"Is this what the lady Nur wanted?" el-Musafir said, disgusted. "To turn me into a factory of immortality? I am glad I left! I would want no part of her now!"

"Silly," said Jamal, incongruously affectionate. "Nur had no conception of the potential of immortality. She only wanted you." He nodded at Malik, who leaned forward with the hunting knife in hand, and sliced el-Musafir's face open on the right side, temple to jaw. Blood came out, hot and pulsing, and el-Musafir grimaced with the pain.

"Interesting," said Jamal. "So you can feel pain. Unfortunate, but survivable."

"Fool," el-Musafir ground out. "What makes you think there is anything scientific in immortality? There may not be a gene or magic potion in my blood that lets you live forever."

"The wound is not closing," Malik said, looking worried.

"Because," said el-Musafir, exasperated, "I am not immortal. I can not live forever. I am only a political theorist who experienced an unfortunate coincidence of nomenclature. That is all there is to me. You are trying to kill an innocent man!"

"Ah, well," said Jamal. "Now that you've heard all of this, you are no longer innocent, my dear el-Musafir. The true test will be your death. If you die, and are not resurrected, we will know that we were wrong. If you come back, then we will know we were right, and you will have to, I'm afraid, lend your help to us."

"Why couldn't you just let me go?" said el-Musafir desperately. "You already know I am a mortal, if not because that is what I have been telling you for the past hour, then because my face has been flayed open, and remains that way!"

"That still would not satisfy me," said Jamal. "No, we're going to have to take it further. Go on, Malik."

Malik reached out and laid el-Musafir's throat open from side to side, sawing so deeply that his head fell backward and exposed his severed windpipe, which whistled. Blood gouted out so strongly that Malik's arm was painted a deep red, and his watch stopped.

Both men and their guards waited for a very long time. By the third day, the body had begun to stink, and they had to admit defeat.

El-Musafir, the Immortal Traveler, was dead.

that corporate guy

There was a period, lasting almost four months, where I was convinced that if nobody was looking at me, I would vanish.

I sought a lot of company in those days. Always had to have someone with me, to observe me while I was being. After a while, when people started refusing to visit me or let me visit them, I'd go to a Wal-Mart somewhere and wander the store.

Maybe it was just the way I tried to make them stay up all night, watching me while I slept. I was afraid that if I disappeared, I wouldn't come back. I developed a new, convoluted way of speaking that involved words like unwas or unbe, and no amount of conversation with Wal-Mart associates--isn't that a ridiculous term? As though they weren't trodden-upon minimum-wage part-time workers without benefits--would convince them that I was right.

But maybe if there are virtual particles that don't exist unless they're observed, maybe there are virtual people, too.

The interesting thing is that if you unwere, so to speak, the question becomes--are you aware of your nonexistence?

Yeah, yeah, and if all the stuff that happens to you when you're not being observed actually happened or if it was all false memories.

But then where do the false memories come from?

Who knows? Aliens, God, the government, your own brain. Maybe from that ninety percent that nobody uses.

You know, it's been proven that it's a myth that you only use ten percent of your brain. It's a question of how many areas are activated at any given moment, but it's all used.

Really? I didn't know that. But that's neither here nor there, I guess. The thing that really got me is--how do you prove that you actually exist while you're unobserved? The only observer in that case is yourself, which is basically the least reliable observer possible.

Maybe you do it by changing something while you're alone. The location of a mug, for example. That proves that you were there and did something, and therefore you still exist when nobody's watching.

See, that just tells you how messed up I was in those days. I never thought of it that way. I guess it could work. Otherwise, you're assuming that the universe recognizes individual intention and consciously puts it into practice in order to maintain the illusion of unobserved corporeality. Which is silly...right?

Right, and I say that emphatically. Let's move on. For nearly two years, you went in the opposite direction, believing that the entire universe was actually contained in your head, and you were the only real intelligence. What prompted that?

I guess it was mostly my rebellion against my behavior during the months before then. I wound up getting secretly dosed with acid by someone who thought it was pretty funny. During the trip, I was forced to really look at myself and the sheer...pathetic need I had to be around people, to be seen. And then I...I guess you could say I zoomed around the reality curve and felt like I'd gotten a peek around the world's rim, and saw myself. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the entire universe really was contained in my head, in my brain to be more precise, and that everything I perceived had been processed by my brain. It really wasn't much of a stretch between that and thinking that I literally carried the cosmos around in my cranium.

That's a very interesting viewpoint. Technically, you're not too far off--since for us, the universe is perceived through our senses, which is processed and recorded by our brains, we all do, in a sense, carry around whole universes in each of our minds. In that sense, I can certainly understand where you were at that point in your life. But why did you begin behaving as though we all, literally, existed inside your head?

Why did I start thinking that I'd disappear when nobody was looking?

You're just plain crazy?

Yeah.

What snapped you out of that?

Who said I snapped out of it?

Well, you stopped killing people, so the assumption goes...

Yeah, you're right about that. I guess I...stopped when I thought of "Think globally, act locally." That was when I realized that it didn't matter what was real or wasn't--the key was just to accept whatever was happening and behave accordingly. Just go with the flow.

Good philosophy. So you're more or less normalized now?

More or less.

You're not concerned about the fact that you experienced no legal consequences for your actions whatsoever? And the effects of that on your psyche?

Frankly, what I am is grateful. I'm over it now. Never again. I'm glad I never got caught, because that would have really screwed me up. Now, stop talking. The other nice, normal, coffee-buying folks are looking at me strangely, and I really need this job.

Please don't be offended, okay?

Okay?

time on my hands

Okay, fine. I stand indicted. I thought he was just lazy.

But in my defense, it was a pretty fair assumption to make. And we all did--Mom, Dad, and I all thought he didn't do shit. He's asleep when we leave the house for school or work or whatever, and he's in the recliner staring dully at the TV when we get home. It seemed like he didn't move at all, all day, outside the usual trips from bed to chair, chair to kitchen, chair to bathroom.

But whatever. That's not going to help me now.

Bi Cui slapped me, and I felt some snot fly. "Where is he?" he said.

I sobbed a little. God, such an asshole. It was a good thing he didn't know I kind of got off on the pain, even if I hated the intention behind it. "I don't know!" I said. "I never even knew he was getting up to this kind of stuff!"

He slapped me again, hard enough that I felt my jaw pop. "Bullshit! You're his bitch sister! You know something!"

I ground my teeth. "If you'd fucking stop hitting me, I might actually be able to tell you what I know." I fixed him hard in the eye and let him see that what he'd done had had little or no actual effect on me. "I thought you future types were supposed to be more civilized. Isn't that how it usually goes in those faggoty science fiction books?"

He looked faintly surprised, but snorted. "Not the ones about space pirates."

"Whatever. Can I at least explain myself before you get slap-happy again?" At his nod, I went on. "Like you said, yeah, I'm his sister. But we've never, uh, gotten along. He's a lazy fuck. At least, I thought so."

"Ooh! Do go on!" he said, all sarcasm.

"See, we--my parents and I--never see him doing anything. He's either sleeping or watching TV when we get home, and he apparently didn't feel the need to tell us anything about what he was up to."

He nodded. "Ah. So you never figured out that he was a--"

"--Time-traveling gentleman adventurer?" I said ironically. "No."

Bi Cui shrugged, and Hai Chang could be heard scoffing faintly in the background. "I was going to say thief and murderer, but different strokes..."

"Sure," I said. "You, for example. You're Shen Bi Cui, filthy pirate and scourge of the Solar Ecliptic. Or extralegally opportunistic businessman. Different strokes indeed." My lip curled. "Or maybe you're just a thief and a murderer. And rapist. And egg-sucker."

He snickered. "Are you trying to get killed?" As I opened my mouth to reply, he snapped his hand up. "Don't answer that, cunt. It doesn't matter, anyway. You're, like, blood. He'll come for you. And when he does, it's throat-slitty time, see?"

"Wow. English education is terribly advanced in 2429, isn't it?" I wriggled a little bit, shaking my shoulders just enough to let my boobs jiggle. "These cuffs are making me really sore. Can't you at least loosen them?"

"Fuck that," said Bi Cui. "You think I'm stupid or something? Those things are staying on."

"You a fag?" I asked suspiciously. "A nice dinner, some titty-shaking, and still nothing?" I leered at Hai Chang. "He a good lay?" He shrugged and made a "so-so" gesture. I couldn't help it. I giggled.

Bi Cui growled. "Iesu. What a pain in the ass you are. Your fucking mouth. Your brother can't come soon enough, man." He stood up, six-foot-seven of Afro-Sino-Caucasian, and said, "I'm getting out of here. You behave."

"Gonna leave me Hai Chang so I have something to play with?" I said, wheedling.

"I can't trust him around you." This pleased me, somehow. "Redpath!" A tall, blond man stuck his head through the cell door. People were tall in the 25th century. And hot. I could enjoy captivity up here. "Stay in here and watch her. She tries anything, club her and call me."

After Bi Cui left, it was quiet and dark. I was alone except for Redpath, who stared at me in unblinkingly stony silence, standing with arms folded with the cell door behind him.

My brother. Who the hell would have thought? Bi Cui, being new to this time-traveling hostage-taking thing, had told me about the situation from the start. He was honest, even if he was everything I had thrown back at him, and worse.

Henry Callahan, time-traveler? Nothing about him even remotely suggested this hidden double life. Yet Bi Cui swore up and down that it was my brother who had infiltrated his clan on orders from the Royal Family, dug up information on his dealings, and sold the information back to Her Majesty's Secret Service. The Service had then used my brother's information to undercut the pirates on their business dealings, surprise their raiding parties, and basically ruin their bottom line.

He was found out in the end, thanks to the incompetence of a Service agent who let slip his name and description under torture. The Royal Family had had the trainer responsible for the agent's conditioning executed, of course, which was something that was apparently par for the course in the Solar System, circa 2429. Being a time-traveler, of course, Henry was impossible to trap in a situation he didn't want to be in.

Apparently, though, the world in general had become the kind of situation he did want to be around for. Humanity had gone to the stars, colonizing over 40 worlds around local stars and making alliances with new races on another 40-plus. In the process, they had abandoned the Solar System as a group of useless worlds, and the British Royal Family, being tied to their old memories of empire, had stayed and conquered all comers. Still, pirates were a major issue, threatening the Royal Family's monopoly on all trade, transit, communication, and entertainment inside the Kuiper Belt (the Oorts had long since been mined for extrasolar transportation fuel, and were now virtually nonexistent, but the Kuiper had been left for defense purposes by Royal decree, according to Bi Cui (via considerably fewer words)).

The Family had since become a dynasty of ruthless capitalistic benevolent despots, and had relocated Buckingham Palace (and most of Europe) to the atmosphere of Jupiter as their private estate.

In the meantime, outside the Solar System, it was business as usual, Star Trek style. Peaceful federation of multiple races, the most populous of whom were the Usans--the new name for "human" since the proliferation of nano-based AI and even stranger forms of sentient human-based life had rendered the classical idea useless.

Into this environment my brother had come. He adopted the ridiculous name, "the time-traveler Jin," and skipped around the settled planets going on adventures and making shitloads of money and stuff. He had made first contact with the residents of Yaanek, second planet of Epsilon Indi, ended the Alnitaki desktop slave trade, and translated the voluminous archaeological records of Gliese 581b, known as Waterfall to Usans everywhere and home to one of the most ancient and most extinct civilizations in this part of the galactic arm.

From what I had gathered from Bi Cui, the time-traveler Jin's activities had extended to various other temporal locales as well, like the attacks of the Sea Peoples on Egypt, the Opium Wars in China, the Rationalist Insurrection on New London two hundred years ago, and now--the rampant piracy around the Sun.

Goddammit. Even I was beginning to think of him as the time-traveler Jin. It worked, though. As far as I was concerned, this was a total stranger. Not my little brother Henry, who was too smart for college and too smart for life. I knew my brother as someone who had given up, as a thing of disgust and pity and wasted potential. And his only excuse was a shrug and a diffident, "What can I say? I have a lot of time on my hands."

Not this--this--gentleman adventurer. That was the perfect term, slapped together in one of my very common moments of sarcasm. This guy, who skipped around the universe, pulling off heroic deeds and exploring strange planets and people, waging wars that had ended centuries before he was born and choking off pirates who operated centuries after he would die. This life was too big for my brother.

And I had gotten sucked in. Bi Cui bumped into me at Starbucks this morning, very charming-like. He was this tall, beautiful man of so many races mashed together that I went all stupid, thinking immediately about what our babies would look like. He suckered me into meeting for dinner after work, so I went. A most interesting meal later, we were walking outside when he suddenly pulled me into an alley. I giggled, thinking he wanted to make out in the dark, when a flash and a roar happened, and I found myself in a dark room with his fist planted in my stomach.

Remembering that fist made me angry. Damn him. Damn him for being so tall and pretty, damn him for making me like him, damn him for being an asshole 25th-century pirate who wanted to put my brother down. Everything flashed with red, and before I knew it, I was out of the handcuffs, across the room, with my fingernails sinking into Redpath's throat (what an appropriate name) and my fingers sinking in after them, and his windpipe, carotids, and pretty much everything I could fit in my grip getting torn out.

He died immediately, of course, in a big splash of blood that washed over me like a bucketful of hot water. Some part of my mind was positively terrified, but the rest of my head was completely calm. This was new to me. A thing had taken over my body, made of seemingly boundless rage and spooky smarts.

I swiped his key, a small button I had seen flashing on the lapels of the men who had entered and exited the cell since my arrival. On second thought, I took his jacket and pants, too--my twenty-first century leather flares and fashionably-cut small jacket over a white tight-fitting shirt might be too conspicuous.

First thing: where the hell am I? Affixing the key to my new lapel, I walked through the door. The hallway outside was brightly-lit with taupe walls and white linoleum. It looked like a hospital. I cursed silently to myself--no way to skulk along in this. Next order of business, then: shut off the power.

I ducked into a maintenance closet to take stock. Pockets: folded-up piece of clear cellophane-like plastic, three inches on a side; pen; knife handle without a, uh, knife, but with a button on the side, which cleared things up when I pressed it and the wicked ten-inch-long blade sprang into existence; six small colored spheres with no discernible purpose or function; and a six-inch-long cord that stiffened into a short rod when I shook it but did nothing else.

Uh, okay. Whatever. Still, the cellophane--why would Redpath carry it around? I unfolded it and tugged it a little to smooth out the crease. It suddenly went rigid and became something like a paper-thin piece of glass. The surface opaqued suddenly, and there was a little desktop that looked a lot like a Windows computer back home. A computer, made of transparent plastic sheeting? Nice!

After fiddling around with it a little bit, I found a sort of GPS/encyclopedia-like thing that apparently was quite good at context-based information. It helpfully informed me that I was in an abandoned medical complex on Callisto (right under the Queen's nose? Ballsy), there was no way to shut off the power because it sprang directly from the photovoltaic sheathing on the building, but that I could, however, pop one of the mysterious spheres to change my appearance for an hour, and that more spheres were available if I wished to purchase more.

They were color-coded--colors with red in them for female, colors with green in them for male. There was one brown one that I didn't want to think about, but the hell with it. Then the little computer dinged with a tooltip that informed me that holding it over the spheres would enable the computer to tell me what I'd look like with each one.

Jesus. I was growing to like the 25th century. Then the computer dinged again, and I was looking at Bi Cui.

At least, a short video of him.

"Yo, Redpath. Better stop raping the ape-girl soon--we're gonna be there in 15. Clean her up if you have to, it's my turn. Smack her around a little if that mouth of hers is still going, though. See ya."

Bastard. My glee at high-tech vanished under a renewed curtain of rage. I grabbed the spheres out of the left pocket of Redpath's former jacket--heh--and held the computer over them. The brown one reminded me of Tilda Swinton, which wasn't such a bad prospect, but the pink and orange were both hot ladies, one of whom vaguely looked like me. I wondered briefly why Valspar was carrying around those options, but preferred not to speculate. The turquoise one was a thick-necked blond man with close-cropped hair, the lime-colored one was a long-haired, vaguely Latino-looking guy, and the pure green was Redpath himself! What luck!

I checked the receipt time on the video message, and popped the Redpath pill. Immediately, a prickly feeling covered me from head to toe, and my jacket and pants fit. A new weight between my legs grabbed my curiosity, and after feeling and inspecting it for a minute or two (definitely not shabby, brief regret at having already done him in, then--), remembered what I was doing and moved down the hallway to the cell.

The lapel-key let me in, and a quick check assured me that Redpath was still pretty well dead. I dragged his döppelgangerish corpse over to the chair, lifted him up, and sat him on it. Tying his wrists together with the rod-cord from my pockets, I stood up, grabbed his hair and pulled his head up. His mouth opened wide and I dropped the girl-pill down his throat. He bristled and shuddered for a second, and a girl who kind of looked like me grew out of him. I let the head drop and backed away toward the door. It looked so much like me, and I felt so different--especially with that new sense of friction in my pants--it was eerie.

I heard footsteps, and my mind quieted. I picked up the handcuffs and retreated into the darkness behind the cell door, just as it slid open and Bi Cui entered with Hai Chang close on his heels.

Bi Cui snickered as he saw the quiet girl on the chair. Then he saw that the girl was wearing Redpath's underclothes and was covered in blood.

"What the hell?" he said, turning around, but I had already silently slit Hai Chang's throat (Redpath's body moving quickly, silently, and incredibly smoothly--this guy was born to kill people) and let him fall, his blood spraying Bi Cui's leather jacket. "Red--" he began, reaching his right arm arm up to his lapel, looking surprised. I stopped his arm, twisted it as hard as I could, forcing him to turn away to relieve the pain, then snapped the handcuff on his right wrist as I grabbed for his left arm and cuffed it.

I shoved him as hard as I could, enjoying the weight and strength I could feel in Redpath's body. He toppled backward, on top of the dead seeming-girl, pitching over backwards, his weight snapping the corpse's neck and cracking its ribs as he forced its head into its chest.

"Hi, Bi Cui!" I said brightly, dancing an impromptu jig. "It's your happy hulking henchman!" I leaned over. "Or is it?" I brought out the knife, snapped its blade into being, grabbed his right ankle, and sliced the tendon there, loosing a lot of blood and quite a bit of noise from his handsome mouth, the mouth that I had only a few hours before so desired to taste. I moved up to his right knee while he was still stunned by the pain, and severed the tendons there, too, so he could only move his right leg at the hip joint.

He figured out it was me, of course, after I cut his lips off of his face, which didn't happen for nearly forty-five minutes. He wasn't very bright, for a pirate who had pissed off the tribe of murdering corporate nobility that ruled the Solar System. He gasped and his teeth chattered, really quite a funny sight without his lips on. He was quite difficult to understand without them to shape sounds.

"Oo!" he grunted, which I took to mean "You!" "Haa-ah?"

"I assume that means 'how,'" I said. "I'm not sure myself, but I get the feeling my little brother's not the only one who likes to have a little fun outside the bounds of all reason, you know?" I sighed. "But you know what, Bi Cui? It's really, really annoying to listen to you try to talk. So, uh, let me just do a little something."

He was a lot quieter after I cut out his voice box. After I trimmed down his ears, removed his cheek flesh, cut off his nose so his breath whistled through the wasted passages, surgically (I like to think so, anyway--I am not a surgeon, naturally) cut the muscles out of his arms and stomach, he was getting faint from loss of blood.

I needed to know how to get out of this time and place. I needed to find my brother and get him to take me back. I snapped my fingers over his face, and his eyes flicked open and looked at me, mad with pain. I held my index finger before his eyes, and I saw them focus on it. Good.

"So. Blink once for yes, twice for no. I have questions to ask you. Do you understand?" He blinked once. "Good boy. Have you heard from my brother yet?" Blink blink. "Have you tried to contact him?" Blink--blink blink. Hm. Problematic.

I thought for a minute or two. Then it came to me. "Can you contact him directly?" Blink blink. Ah. "You have to use an intermediary?" Blink. "The Royal Family?" Blink blink. "A specific individual?" Blink blink. This was strange. "You have to put the general word out that you want to talk to him?" Blink. Ah. Wait a minute. "How fucking long were you going to keep me here?!" Blink blink blink blink blink blink..."Shut up." Blink. "Jesus. Did you do that yet?" Blink. "A long time ago?" Blink. "When you first brought me here?" Blink blink. "Just now?" Blink blink.

Jesus. I was getting fucking tired of this twenty-questions shit. "So indicate by blinking, how many hours ago." After the twelfth blink, I was getting an odd idea. "Shut up. Did you have to time-travel to do it?" Blink. Now I saw. He had kidnapped me, tried to pump me, then when he left, he had time-traveled to sometime recent and put the word out then, so that my brother would show up...when?

"How many days ago?" He looked desperate. "Weeks?" Blink blink blink blink. "A month ago?" Blink. "Did you give him a specific time and place to show up?" Blink. "Today?" Blink. "On this moon?" Surprised look, blink. "Yes, I fucking figured it out. In this building?" Blink. "In this room?" Blink. "Are you a fucking idiot?" Serious consideration, shrug, blink. "Okay." I checked the computer. Four hours after noon, local time. "It's four o'clock, give or take a few minutes."

He started blinking very rapidly then, and I felt a soft whoof behind me, then something heavy smashed into the back of my neck and I blacked out.

A slapping sound half-woke me. Pain on my face woke me up the rest of the way, and I grabbed the hand slapping my cheeks.

"Whoa," said a voice I knew. "Take it easy. It's me, Henry."

I opened my eyes and looked downward. My body had transmogrified back to the one I was born with. Henry--the time-traveler Jin--whoever--squatted next to me. I groaned. "Goddammit, Henry, what the fuck's wrong with you? My head's pounding."

He shrugged. "You looked like Redpath. I thought you were one of the bad guys until I saw that," and he waved his hand at the blinking chunk of meat that was still lying on top of a big, blond, male corpse that was tied to a chair. "That's fucking Bi Cui, dude. I couldn't get anywhere near him, and you fucking tortured him?"

Swaying with my monster headache, I stood up, walked over to Bi Cui, and collapsed his windpipe with my foot. Looking up at my little brother, the Solar System's most vicious pirate shuddering and convulsing for breath under my dainty little appendage, I shrugged.

"What can I say? I had a lot of time on my hands."

getting booked

These days, I get ready to pull my hair out. They ask such stupid questions.

"Where's the kids' section?" Right behind you, marked with a sign approximately the size of the universe.

The phone rings. "I need the number for the Zambian Embassy in Berlin." Did you try calling the Zambian Embassy in New York?

"Do you have a book called Systematic Theology?" Yes, only 17 of them. Which one would you like? "The one called Systematic Theology." All right. Sure you can carry all those books?

Then there are the kids. "Do you have parental authorization for Mixing Milk Chocolate the Old-Fashioned Way? Because you seem to be a bit young for that kind of thing."

"Stop pulling down the drapes."

"Stop writing on the walls."

"Get out or I'll call the police."

It had already been a long day. When that cute guy walked up, the only thing I noticed was the inquisitive expression on his face. My right eye was already starting to spasm a little bit.

"Do you have..." he began.

My fingers curled, gouging deep grooves in the countertop. He noticed, and stepped back a little.

"Whoa," he said. "Bad day?"

"How may I help you?" I gritted. He hesitated. "Go on," I ground out. "Get it over with. Please."

He looked doubtful, and, perhaps, just a tiny bit afraid. "Did--did you know there's a whole bunch of cut-up books in the nonfiction section?"

I went very still. "Come again?"

He nodded. "Yeah. There're like ten books on the floor, completely destroyed."

I was so tense I couldn't move my neck, and it took every ounce of energy and control I had to speak. "Show me."

As he backed away, I stalked around the counter. He kept backing up, as though afraid to let me out of his sight. Silly man. Somehow, we reached the non-fiction section, and he pointed out the aisle. A small pile of paper was visible. Before I knew it, I was squatting next to it, looking for anything salvageable.

The guy was right--ten fucking books. Hacked up. As though with an axe. Or a Ka-Bar. The covers were torn up, shreds of useless cardboard. The dust jackets and Mylar sleeves had been julienned.

How the fuck had this happened? How had these little assholes gotten away with this without anyone noticing? Fuck that. Fuck this.

I cordoned off the aisle with imitation police tape and stormed off to the security camera console.

It took less than a half-hour to find the little pricks who did it. A pair of teenage boys I recognized. They came in every day to look at porn on our computers, rearrange our shelved books, and steal office supplies. The little bastards.

I looked up their addresses in the library database. I knew their names from the computer sign-up sheet, so it was a fairly simple matter. A consult with Google Maps helped me plot my route. A quick trip to the hardware store secured me some rope, duct tape, rubber tubing, a good, strong hunting knife so sharp it was like a scalpel, and a short length or two of barbed wire.

No need to involve the police.

the berries of the sun

Tap was stealing berries from his neighbor's field when the American landed.

It started with a thrumming that ratcheted up so high he could feel it in his bones. It was mostly overcast, so the sudden breakout of the sun attracted his attention immediately. It shone through a spinning, perfectly round hole in the clouds. The hole was at the center of an enormous twisting that spun the sky like water in a drain--and a small black pellet emerged.

The American grew larger as it descended, the sun glinting off its armor and refracting strangely through the repulsing field. The armor was thick, rendering sex indeterminate.

The American drifted north of him, where the village was. He broke into a run, dodging through the woods and emerging in the center of the village just as the American touched down. A crowd was already beginning to form.

The flag of its country was emblazoned on its shoulder-plates. The faceplate of its helmet flicked to an image of the flag, too. Tap had heard that the military engineers had programmed the armor to display images of the flag during contact with enemy locals, thinking it would make them dream of freedom and see liberation in the carapace of the invader.

The gabble of the crowd rose to fever pitch, then fell silent as the American spoke, its voice magnified and harshened by the induction through its armor.

"I am Corporal John Helmsley of the United States Peacekeepers," it--he--said in their language. Tap thought it was being translated by the armor. He had heard many amazing things about American technology. "The front is projected to advance to within a mile of this village by the end of this week. I have been ordered to offer you a choice: evacuate as soon as possible, or provide support. Those who evacuate will be unharmed, while those who help will be protected to the best of my ability. Any attempt to undermine the United States' efforts in the liberation of your people will be dealt with swiftly and finally."

"What about food?" someone shouted. The soldier turned slightly in the voice's direction.

"I have been authorized to spin an adequate food supply for those who remain," he said. "Those who will evacuate will not be fed. There is an American supply depot six miles west of the village where you may restock on your way out."

"That's where the front is!" a woman protested. "We could be killed!"

"Our respective governments," said the soldier testily, "have reached an agreement in which refugees may enjoy safe conduct while evacuating."

"What if we go east?" another man said, leering. "What if we don't want to place ourselves in the hand of the infidels, huh?"

A crackly sigh was audible. "That's your problem, not mine. Either you take off, or you help me out. I don't give a shit either way."

Muttering, the crowd dispersed. Soon, there was only Tap and the soldier left. He walked up to the American.

"Corporal Helmsley, you said?" Tap asked.

The helmet nodded. "And you?"

"Tap."

"Very nice to meet you, kid." The American extended a hand, and Tap took it. The hand was sheathed, of course, but the underside of the glove was made of a silky-smooth, warm fabric that felt disquietingly like human skin. There was a pause.

"Do you have to live in there?" Tap said.

The soldier shrugged. "Yeah. Can't be too careful when you're surrounded by potential enemies."

"Doesn't it get hot and smelly in there?"

The soldier laughed. "No, not at all. The suit's air-conditioned." He paused. "Shouldn't you be with your parents?"

Tap was silent a moment. "They're dead. Some government soldiers came through here on their way to the front, and my father wouldn't feed them. I'm the only one left."

The American's air changed, somehow. Tap got the feeling that there was a look of considerable pity behind the American flag. He shrugged and said, "Anyway, I'm all right. I just steal some food now and then."

"But nobody helps?"

"They all have their problems."

"Jesus, kid," said the soldier. "How old are you?"

Tap squinted. "Nine, I think."

"Shit." The soldier sat down, stirring up a small cloud of dust. With interest, Tap watched the dust settle onto the carapace, only to be puffed off again by the microscopically small air-conditioning vents. "You hungry?"

He nodded wordlessly.

"What do you like?"

A strange question. Tap looked at him suspiciously. "Trying to make friends with the enemy?"

"How about feeding a starving orphan? I feel bad for you, kid. This whole war's pointless as hell, and you're stuck in the middle of it. Soon enough, the front will come, and then it'll really suck." The soldier stood up. "But hell, if you're too good to accept anything from the beast, fine. Not my god damn fucking problem." He enunciated the spaces between the words in the last sentence.

"No, wait," Tap said. "Yes, I'd love something to eat. I like cinnamon beef pastries."

The soldier paused. You sure you want to accept anything from the enemy here, where everyone can see you?"

Tap shrugged. "It's not my god damn fucking problem."

The soldier laughed--somehow, the armor managed to transmit surprise. "All right. Let me put together something for you." The armor began to thrum soothingly, and Tap found himself feeling much calmer. Then something clacked, and a small octagonal door popped open in the soldier's breast. Inside was something small and round, like a seed. The soldier took it out, the door swung shut and melted into the breast, and he tossed it onto the ground.

The seed flowered immediately. It put out four shoots of white that curved up, then down, then back up again, their ends widening and flattening into circles. The shoots stiffened and creaked upward, bearing the seed up, and a white post shot out of it and bloomed into a flat circle. The whole thing squeaked as it hardened into some sort of white-painted metal construct that, as a shiny glaze ran down it, suddenly became a table with four attached seats.

"Sit down, Tap," said the soldier. Tap sat. The soldier reached out with both hands and held them almost a meter apart on the tabletop. Impossibly thin filaments shot out and twined themselves between the soldier's gloves and tangled themselves in the middle as they intersected. More and more filaments spun out of nothing and were pulled inwards into a solid mass that was rapidly forming out of their intersection. Before long, there was a steaming beef pastry, lightly dusted with cinnamon and powdered sugar, sitting in front of Tap.

The table extruded a transparent goo that reached up and up before hardening itself into an elaborately fluted glass that immediately filled with something thick and light brown. A sheet of plastic wrapped itself into a straw in the middle of the glass.

"What's that?" said Tap.

"Try it," said the soldier.

He picked up the glass and sucked on the straw. His mouth was immediately flooded with thick, ice-cold, foreign sweetness that made him gasp and start suckling greedily at the same time.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," said the soldier. He took the glass out of Tap's grip. Right then, Tap's head filled with blinding pain, and he groaned involuntarily.

Poison! He turned and began to run, but his view was blocked by the American, who had appeared there so fast that he had been there almost even before Tap had decided to run. "You poisoned me!" he gasped.

"Chill, little man," said the soldier. "The pain's gone now, isn't it?"

He was right. "What--"

"It's the cold. When you go drinking a milkshake that fast, the brain has a hard time equalizing the temperature between the roof of your mouth and the rest of your head, so it sends a bunch of blood in. That's what makes it hurt." He let go of Tap. "Drink it slowly and eat in between sips. Then you'll be fine."

It was true. Tap felt much better. And anyway, he had no choice, given how fast the soldier seemed to be. He turned back to the table, and shoved the beef pastry into his mouth. Behind him, he heard a small crackly sigh.

. . .

The village was almost empty. There was only Tap and two other families, both of which were headed by former anti-war activists who had been blinded by the government for their behavior.

The soldier had spun them all fine houses, all airy lacework and filigree. He had stocked the new homes with printers that could make any food at any time, in any quantity. When asked how they worked, the soldier shook his head.

"Don't ask me," he said. "All I know is that they get stuff out of the ground and the air and they use that, like my armor does. The rest of it's beyond me."

They were waiting. The front was getting closer every day. They were all working, tearing down houses and buildings and making enormous piles of rubble for the soldier to use. He could spin amazing weapons out of them if he had to. The youngest children kept their eyes on the hills, wandering through the woods and watching for fighters.

Everyone had been installed with speakers and microphones in their skulls so they could communicate with the American and each other.

One morning, they woke up and were surrounded. Legions of local soldiers circled the small clearing where the soldier had spun their fine new houses.

"Out!" called the leader. It took several tries to wake everyone up. Tap was one of the last to walk outside and face the line of grim-faced insurgents.

"I am Captain," said the leader. "What is this fancy silver shit?" No response, only sullen glares. He shot the youngest child, who swung over backwards and hit the ground. The boy's mother suppressed a gasp, but her mouth turned into a hard line as she stared back at Captain, and her eyes flashed with a surfeit of fury and hatred. Still nothing was spoken.

"Well? Nobody?" Captain chuckled. "You--" he pointed at the dead child's older sister. "Come forward."

As she did so, she began to hum. The tune was unrecognizable, and as Captain shifted his weight, uneasy at this strange reaction, Tap began to notice a humming sound underlying the girl's song. Before long, Captain had noticed, and was looking around.

"What the hell's that?" he demanded. Stolid silence. He cocked his rifle, took careful aim at the little girl's head, and squeezed the trigger.

There was a sharp ricocheting sound, and one of the insurgents made a strange "Urk" sound and collapsed. The American strode forward and took ahold of Captain's rifle. The rifle burst into white light, which flowed out of Captain's hands, burning him badly, and puddled on the ground.

"Go home," said the American. Tap and his fellow villagers turned and ran into their homes.

They didn't come out for a long time. The gunfire was close, loud, and unremitting. The silvery lacework rang like a bell, hurting Tap's ears. It went on for what seemed like hours. Trying to busy himself, he grew a beef pastry and chocolate milkshake from his kitchen table, and dialed up a popular Australian sitcom on the wall opposite him. He turned the volume up on the house's inductive framework until it gave him a headache, but still the gunfire went on.

And then it stopped. Tap reeled from the absence of sound. And then it came again, a monstrous, white light that made the house ring like a great brass bell, and Tap was laid low by the sheer force of sound, struck unconscious by the vibration, it seemed, within his soul.

He woke up two days later. Walked out of his house. And there was nothing. No trees, no buildings, nothing but a vast, blackened plain that crunched under his feet. Bending down and feeling the earth, he realized that the ground had melted like glass. Nothing was in sight except the three silver houses that the American soldier had built.

where the grass grows

Quick sat in the vernal grass. The green spoke to him.

Nile was lying on his back, the pulsing blue of the sky contrasting with the hurried nickering of the puffy white clouds. The wind was blowing concordantly and the clouds objected but were secretly resigned to their fate and glad that someone was motivating something for a change.

Then Nile's mind leapt up and he saw the world in cross-section from ground to space from a long way away. The atmosphere was a thin sheath of glass on a varicolored bead, and he felt his lungs strain to breathe such a tiny trace of silicon.

Quick's hidden patterns were dancing behind the world. They thrummed, flicking through all the colors of the spectrum and all the sounds of the scale and he was pleased to see real. The grass shone musically, the soil hollowly solid inside it. He could feel the minds of everyone around him, and it all sang.

Before Quick realized it, Stephen was standing next to him.

Across the street, Linda was visiting. She was in advancing middle age, lean, with blonde hair swiftly tending towards white. Her clothes were well-cut, well-put-together, and her cell phone was masterfully concealed within the buttons on her blouse. Her older sister, Sandy, was taking what seemed to be several hours in the small market. She could hear the cheerful shouts through the thin glass doors as Sandy small-towned with the proprietors. Linda, a denizen of Toronto, found that the brilliantly blue sky bothered her.

To take her mind off of the unnatural cleanness, she fixed her gaze on two young men in the grass of the park across the street. Lightner was a sweet little town, complete with a town square that came packaged with a park in the middle of it.

They weren't speaking. One was lying down, the other sitting up and focusing rather intensely on the grass. They had a glazed look that seemed somehow familiar to Linda.

In a jangle, Sandy was next to her, laden with several bags of items she had been coerced into buying in the course of her realization of small-town life. She followed Linda's gaze to the two boys in the park and huffed quietly.

"Hmm?" Linda said absently, not taking her eyes off of the young men.

Sandy looked at her, appraising her sister deeply, which went unnoticed. "If you need some really good acid, I can go back into the market and get some for you. Got plenty at home, though, if you don't mind sharing."

Linda was startled out of her reverie. "What?"

"Acid. LSD. Those boys are probably tripping some serious balls right now. You look like you'd like to join them,"wink, wink, nudge, nudge. "So I'm offering you some of mine."

Linda could think of nothing to say except, "What?"

"Didn't I tell you?" At Linda's doubtful look, "Well, acid's been legal in Lightner for a few years now. If you want to drop some, let me know."

Linda's mouth fell open. "You've got to be kidding. Right?"

"Nope."

"Wouldn't the federal government have some issues with that?"

Sandy scoffed. "They think of it as a very interesting social experiment. Everyone in town trips once in a while. It was bad at first, but the cops finally figured out how to deal with it, so it's safe, fun, and really quite nice on a day like this."

She suddenly looked wistful. "I should have brought a few tabs. Well--the hell with it. Be right back," and she vanished back into the market.

A third man had joined the tripping twosome on the grass. He had their full attention now, and was holding his left hand up. The two boys were staring at it, fascinated, and before long, both their left hands were in the air, and they were looking at their own hands and at each others'.

The third man suddenly made a motion, as though he were touching the surface of a still pond, middle finger outstretched and gently stabbing forward, then back. The two boys immediately looked euphorically astonished and did the same thing, and managed to somehow look even more delighted.

One of them stood up and stuck his index finger into the air, and began moving it around slowly. He shouted something indistinct to his stoned compatriot, who stood up and did the same thing. They laughed, a sound of pure joy and surprise, and began dancing around, fingers outstretched. The third man stood up and followed them, saying something that made them fall face-down and rub their faces in the grass quietly.

"That's Stephen," Sandy's voice said. Linda startled and turned around to see a considerably-sized piece of brightly-decorated paper waving in her face.

"That's acid?" she said.

"Yup. Mick in there--" she pointed at the market. "--cooks it up in the back. Some the best shit outside of San Francisco in the Sixties. Want to take it now?"

"Who's Stephen?"

Sandy looked diffident, all of a sudden. "I guess you'd call him a mind-cop." At Linda's confused look, she went on, "Those kids probably pissed someone off on their way to the park, and they called the cops. Since acid's legal here, and they apparently didn't do any real damage, they sent Stephen. He works over in the hardware store, and he's one of the best guides in town."

"And a guide would be..."

"Someone who knows how to manipulate someone else's trip. Here, they're used by the cops to keep stoned folks under control until they either come down or go home." Sandy shrugged. "Either way, if you're not going to enjoy this dynamite blotter, I'm still going to take some. It's a great day for it!"

A precipice of doubt. Linda leapt. "Let me try it. So Stephen's good?"

Sandy laughed. "The best. For six months after the cops started using him, everyone thought he was a figment of our imaginations. Mysterious guy shows up and blows your trip up while he gets your body down. Ever tripped before?"

There was the precipice again. "No..."

Sandy shrugged. "Fuck it. Stephen's right there anyway." She ripped the brightly-colored paper in half and shoved it into her mouth, chewing contentedly.

As Linda sucked in her half, Sandy ran across the street to speak to Stephen.

Mr. Walpole wasn't paying attention. When his car hit Sandy, he thought that her body bouncing across his windshield was a great bird, fluttering against his brain and spewing a fountain of coppery-smelling wine into his eyes, swerved off the road, and plowed into the front of the market, crushing Mick's wife into the butcher case, her flesh becoming indistinguishable from the LSD-laced beef filets.

Quick thought the crunching, shattering sound was the dissolution of his ego. Nile thought it was the sky speaking.

Stephen's head swiveled around and he began to run toward the market. Linda thought, She wasn't kidding. This is amazing shit. I never thought anyone could run so slowly.