Remembering Siri
                                 by Dan Simmons
Introduction
I'm interested in how few writers cross the osmotic boundaries between science
fiction and horror, between genre and what those in genre call mainstream. Or,
rather, I should say that I'm fascinated with how many cross and do not return.
Part of it, I think, is the vast difference in states of mind between dreaming the dark
dreams of horror and con-structing the rational structures of SF, or between tripping
the literary light fantastic and being shackled by the grav-ity of "serious" fiction. It is
hard to do both—painful to the psyche to allow one hemisphere to become
dominant while bludgeoning the other into submission. Perhaps that's why
readership of SF and horror, genre and New Yorker fiction overlap less than one
would think.
Whatever the reason, it's a pity that more writers feel constrained—sometimes by
limitations of talent or interest but more frequently by market considerations and the
sim-ple fact that they find success in one field—to stay in one genre.
Of course, the exceptions are always interesting. George R.R. Martin moves easily
between genres and ex-pectations, rarely repeating, always surprising. Dean Koontz
left SF just as he was becoming a star there—possibly because he sensed his destiny
lay in becoming a supernova elsewhere. Edward Bryant took a "sabbatical" from SF
a few years ago and has been producing world-class horror ever since. Kurt
Vonnegut and Ursula K. LeGuin "graduated" from SF to mainstream acceptance.
(To Vonnegut's credit for honesty if nothing else, he allows as to how he gets
nostalgic every once in a while, opens the lowest desk drawer where he keeps his old
pulp SF ef-forts, and then urinates into it.) Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and
others write their most memorable fiction in SF, but they deny any association with
the field. Neither lady mentions urinating into desk drawers, but one sus-pects that
they would feel a certain pressure on their re-spective bladders if forced to accept a
Hugo or Nebula.
Harlan Ellison simply refused ever to be nailed down to a genre—even while he
revolutionized them. We all have heard the stories where Ellison suffers the
ten-millionth reporter or critic or TV personality who is de-manding to know what
descriptive word comes before "writer" in this case. Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror?
"What's wrong with just ... writer?" Ellison says softly in his most cordial cobra
hiss.
Well, what's wrong with it is that the semi-literate have feeble but tidy little minds
filled with tidy little boxes, and no matter how much one struggles, the newspaper
article (or review, or radio intro, or TV superimposed title) will read something akin
to—"sci-fi guy says his sci-fi stuff not sci-fi."
And the next step is for someone to stand up at a con-vention (sorry, a Con), grab
the microphone, and shout—"How come you're always saying in interviews and
stuff that you're not just a science fiction writer? I'm proud to be associated with
science fiction!" (Or horror. Or fantasy. Or ... fill in the blank.)
The crowd roars, righteousness fills the air, hostility lies just under the surface as if
you're a black at a Huey Newton rally who's been caught "passing"—revealed as an
oreo, or a Jew in the Warsaw ghetto who's been caught helping the Nazis with the
railroad timetables, or—worse yet, a Dead Head at a Grateful D. concert who's been
found listening to Mozart on his Walkman.
I mean, you are at this guy's convention. (Sorry, "Con.")
How do you explain to the guy gripping the mike that there are a thousand pressures
forcing a writer down narrower and narrower alleys—agents trying to make you
marketable and pulling their hair out because you insist on staying a jump ahead of a
readership, publishers trying to shape you into a commodity, editors trying to get
you to Chrissakes be consistent for once, booksellers com-plaining because your
new SF novel just came out and it looks silly racked with your World Fantasy
Award winning novel (which is really about Calcutta and has no fantasy in it), which,
in turn, is next to your Sci-Fi opus and your fat horror novel (it is horror, isn't it?
There wasn't any blood or holograms or demon-eyed kids on the cover...) and now
... now! ... this new book has come out ... this thing ... and it looks, oh sweet
Christ, it looks ... main-stream!
How do you explain that every modifier before writer becomes another nail in the
coffin of your hopes of writ-ing what you want? What you care about?
So you look at the guy with the mike and you stare down the irate booksellers and
you put your editor on hold, and you think—I can explain. I can tell them that the
one wonderful thing about being a writer is the free-dom to explore all venues, the
luxury ... no, the respon-sibility ... to work with the dreams the Muse sends you, to
shape them to the best of your ability and to send them along whether a
guaranteed readership is waiting or not; I can explain the compulsion to write a
good book whether the cover artist knows what to do with it or not, explain the
honor involved in trying new things despite the fact that the manager at the local
B. Dalton's has racked your most recent novel in occult non-fiction and asked ...
no, ordered the distributor not to send any more books written by this obvious
schizophrenic. I can explain all that. I can take every single reader, every defensive
SF chauvinist and horror fan and snooty New York reviewer and sparrowfart
reader of "serious fiction," and show them what being a writer means!
And then you look out at the guy with the mike, and you think—Nahhh. And you
say, "My next book'll be SF."
The next story is SF. I loved writing it. I loved returning to this universe when I
finally used "Remembering Siri" as a starting point to write the 1,500 or so pages of
HYPERION and THE FALL OF HYPERION .

Oh, and the seed crystal for this tale was the thought one night, while dozing off,
What if Romeo and Juliet had lived?
You know—Romeo and Juliet? By that sci-fi/fantasy/horror hack who wrote
sit-coms and historical soap op-eras in his spare time?
Watch for the allusions. And the illusions.
                                          ***
I climb the steep hill to Siri's tomb on the day the is-lands return to the shallow seas
of the Equatorial Archipel-ago. The day is perfect and I hate it for being so. The sky
is as tranquil as tales of Old Earth's seas, the shallows are dappled with ultramarine
tints, and a warm breeze blows in from the sea to ripple the russet willowgrass on the
hill-side near me.
Better low clouds and gray gloom on such a day. Bet-ter mist or a shrouding fog
which sets the masts in Firstsite Harbor dripping and raises the lighthouse horn from
its slumbers. Better one of the great sea-simoons blowing up out of the cold belly of
the south, lashing be-fore it the motile isles and their dolphin herders until they seek
refuge in lee of our atolls and stony peaks.
Anything would be better than this warm spring day when the sun moves through a
vault of sky so blue that it makes me want to run, to jump in great loping arcs, and to
roll in the soft grass as Siri and I have done at just this spot.
Just this spot. I pause to look around me. The willowgrass bends and ripples like the
fur of some great beast as the salt-tinged breeze gusts up out of the south. I shield
my eyes and search the horizon but nothing moves there. Out beyond the lava reef,
the sea begins to chop and lift itself in nervous strokes.
"Siri," I whisper. I say her name without meaning to do so. A hundred meters down
the slope, the crowd pauses to watch me and to catch its collective breath. The
proces-sion of mourners and celebrants stretches for more than a kilometer to where
the white buildings of the city begin. I can make out the gray and balding head of my
younger son in the vanguard. He is wearing the blue and gold robes of the
Hegemony. I know that I should wait for him, walk with him, but he and the other
aging council members can not keep up with my young, shiptrained muscles and
steady stride. Decorum dictates that I should walk with him and my granddaughter
Lira and the other ladies of the society.
To hell with it. And to hell with them.
I turn and jog up the steep hillside. Sweat begins to soak my loose cotton shirt
before I reach the curving sum-mit of the ridge and catch sight of the tomb.
Siri's tomb.
I stop. The wind chills me although the sunlight is warm enough as it glints off the
flawless white stone of the silent mausoleum. The grass is high near the sealed
en-trance to the crypt. Rows of faded festival pennants on eb-ony staffs line the
narrow gravel path.
Hesitating, I circle the tomb and approach the steep cliff edge a few meters beyond.
The willowgrass is bent and trampled here where irreverent picnickers have laid their
blankets. There are several fire rings formed from the perfectly round, perfectly
white stones purloined from the border of the gravel path.
I cannot stop a smile. I know the view from here; the great curve of the outer harbor
with its natural seawall, the low, white buildings of Firstsite, and the colorful hulls
and masts of the catamarans bobbing at anchorage. Near the pebble beach beyond
Common Hall, a young woman in a white skirt moves toward the water. For a
second I think that it is Siri and my heart pounds. I half prepare to throw up my arms
in response to her wave but she does not wave. I watch in silence as the distant
figure turns away and is lost in the shadows of the old boat building.
Above me, far out from the cliff, a wide-winged Thomas Hawk circles above the
lagoon on rising thermals and scans the shifting bluekelp beds with its infrared
vi-sion, seeking out harpseals or torpids. Nature is stupid, I think and sit in the soft
grass. Nature sets the stage all wrong for such a day and then it is insensitive enough
to throw in a bird searching for prey which have long since fled the polluted waters
near the growing city.
I remember another Thomas Hawk on that first night when Siri and I came to this
hilltop. I remember the moon-light on its wings and the strange, haunting cry which
echoed off the cliff and seemed to pierce the dark air above the gaslights of the
village below.
Siri was sixteen ... no, not quite sixteen ... and the moonlight that touched the hawk's
wings above us also painted her bare skin with milky light and cast shadows beneath
the soft circles of her breasts. We looked up guilt-ily when the bird's cry cut the
night and Siri said, "It was the nightingale and not the lark/That pierc'd the fearful
hollow of thine ear."
"Huh?" I said. Siri was almost sixteen. I was nineteen. But Siri knew the slow pace
of books and the cadences of theater under the stars. I knew only the stars.
"Relax, young Shipman," she whispered and pulled me down beside her then. "It's
only an old Tom's Hawk hunt-ing. Stupid bird. Come back, Shipman. Come back,
Merin."
The Los Angeles had chosen that moment to rise above the horizon and to float like
a wind-blown ember west across the strange constellations of Maui-Covenant, Siri's
world. I lay next to her and described the workings of the great C-plus spinship
which was catching the high sunlight against the drop of night above us, and all the
while my hand was sliding lower along her smooth side, her skin seemed all velvet
and electricity, and her breath came more quickly against my shoulder. I lowered my
face to the hollow of her neck, to the sweat-and-perfume essence of her tousled
hair.
"Siri," I say and this time her name is not unbidden. Below me, below the crest of
the hill and the shadow of the white tomb, the crowd stands and shuffles. They are
impatient with me. They want me to unseal the tomb, to enter, and to have my
private moment in the cool silent emptiness that has replaced the warm presence that
was Siri. They want me to say my farewells so they can get on with their rites and
rituals, open the waiting farcaster doors, and join the waiting worldweb of the
Hegemony.
To hell with that. And to hell with them.
I pull up a tendril of the thickly woven willowgrass, chew on the sweet stem, and
watch the horizon for the first sign of the migrating islands. The shadows are still
long in the morning light. The day is young. I will sit here for awhile and remember.
I will remember Siri.


Siri was a ... what? ... a bird, I think, the first time I saw her. She was wearing some
sort of mask with bright feathers. When she removed it to join in the raceme
qua-drille, the torchlight caught the deep auburn tints of her hair. She was flushed,
cheeks aflame, and even from across the crowded Common I could see the startling
green of her eyes contrasting with the summer heat of her face and hair. It was
Festival Night, of course. The torches danced and sparked to the stiff breeze coming
in off the harbor and the sound of the flutists on the breakwall play-ing for the
passing isles was almost drowned out by surf sounds and the crack of pennants
snapping in the wind. Siri was almost sixteen and her beauty burned more brightly
than any of the torches set round the throng-filled square. I pushed through the
dancing crowd and went to her.
It was five years ago for me. It was more than sixty-five years ago for us. It seems
only yesterday.
This is not going well.
Where to start?


"What say we go find a little nooky, kid?" Mike Osho was speaking. Short, squat,
his pudgy face a clever carica-ture of a Buddha, Mike was a god to me then. We
were all gods: long-lived if not immortal, well-paid if not quite divine. The Hegemony
had chosen us to help crew one of its precious quantum leap C-plus spinships, so
how could we be less than gods? It was just that Mike, brilliant, mercu-rial, irreverent
Mike, was a little older and a little higher in the Shipboard pantheon than young
Merin Aspic.
"Hah. Zero probability of that," I said. We were scrub-bing up after a twelve-hour
shift with the farcaster con-struction crew. Shuttling the workers around their chosen
singularity-point some 163,000 kilometers out from Maui-Covenant was a lot less
glamorous for us than the four month leap from Hegemony-space. During the C-plus
por-tion of the trip we had been master specialists; forty-nine starship experts
shepherding some two hundred nervous passengers. Now the passengers had their
hardsuits on and we Shipmen had been reduced to serving as glorified truck drivers
as the construction crew wrestled the bulky singu-larity containment-sphere into
place.
"Zero probability," I repeated. "Unless the groundlings have added a whorehouse to
that quarantine island they leased us."
"Nope. They haven't," grinned Mike. He and I had our three days of planetary
R-and-R coming up, but we knew from Shipmaster Singh's briefings and the moans
of our Shipmates that the only groundtime we had to look for-ward to would be
spent on a 7 by 4-mile island adminis-tered by the Hegemony. It wasn't even one of
the motile isles we had heard about, just another volcanic peak near the equator.
Once there, we could count on real gravity un-derfoot, unfiltered air to breathe, and
the chance to taste unsynthesized food. But we could also count on the fact that the
only intercourse we would have with the Maui-Covenant colonists would be through
buying local artifacts at the duty-free store. Even those were sold by Hegemony
trade specialists. Many of our Shipmates had chosen to spend their R-and-R on the
Los Angeles.
"So how do we find a little nooky, Mike? The colonies are off limits until the
farcaster's working. That's about 60 years away, local time. Or are you talking about
Meg in Spincomp?"
"Stick with me, kid," said Mike. "Where there's a will, there's a way."
I stuck with Mike. There were only five of us in the dropship. It was always a thrill to
me to fall out of high orbit into the atmosphere of a real world. Especially a world
that looked as much like Old Earth as Maui-Covenant did. I stared at the blue and
white limb of the planet until the seas were down and we were in atmo-sphere,
approaching the twilight terminator in a gentle glide at three times the speed of our
own sound.
We were gods then. But even gods must descend from their high thrones upon
occasion.

Siri's body never ceased to amaze me. That time on the Archipelago. Three weeks in
that huge, swaying treehouse under the billowing treesails with the dolphin herders
keeping pace like outriders, tropical sunsets filling the evening with wonder, the
canopy of stars at night, and our own wake marked by a thousand phosphorescent
swirls that mirrored the constellations above. And still it is Siri's body I remember.
For some reason—shyness, the years of separation—she wore two strips of
swimsuit for the first few days of our Archipelago stay and the soft white of her
breasts and lower belly had not darkened to match the rest of her tan before I had to
leave again.
I remember her that first time. Triangles in the moon-light as we lay in the soft grass
above Firstsite Harbor. Her silk pants catching on a weave of willowgrass. There
was a child's modesty then; the slight hesitation of something given prematurely. But
also pride. The same pride that later allowed her to face down the angry mob of
Separat-ists on the steps of the Hegemony Consulate in South Tern and send them
to their homes in shame.
I remember my fifth planetfall, our Fourth Reunion. It was one of the few times I
ever saw her cry. She was al-most regal in her fame and wisdom by then. She had
been elected four times to the All Thing and the Hegemony Council turned to her for
advice and guidance. She wore her independence like a royal cloak and her fierce
pride had never burned more brightly. But when we were alone in the stone villa
south of Fevarone, it was she who turned away. I was nervous, frightened by this
powerful stranger, but it was Siri—Siri of the straight back and proud eyes, who
turned her face to the wall and said through tears, "Go away. Go away, Merin. I
don't want you to see me. I'm a crone, all slack and sagging. Go away."
I confess that I was rough with her then. I pinned her wrists with my left
hand—using a strength which surprised even me—and tore her silken robe down the
front in one move. I kissed her shoulders, her neck, the faded shadows of
stretchmarks on her taut belly, and the scar on her upper leg from the skimmer crash
some forty of her years earlier. I kissed her greying hair and the lines etched in the
once-smooth cheeks. I kissed her tears.

"Jesus, Mike, this can't be legal," I'd said when my friend unrolled the hawking mat
from his backpack. We were on Island 241, as the Hegemony traders had so
ro-mantically named the desolate volcanic blemish which they had chosen for our
R-and-R site. Island 241 was less than 50 kilometers from the oldest of the colonial
settle-ments, but it might as well have been 50 light years away. No native ships were
to put in at the island while Los An-geles crewmen or farcaster workmen were
present. The Maui-Covenant colonists had a few ancient skimmers still in working
order, but by mutual agreement there would be no overflights. Except for the
dormitories, swimming beach, and the duty-free store, there was little on the island to
interest us Shipmen. Some day, when the last compo-nents had been brought
in-system by the Los Angeles and the farcaster finished, Hegemony officials would
make Is-land 241 into a center for trade and tourism. Until then it was a primitive
place with a dropship grid, newly finished buildings of the local white stone, and a
few bored main-tenance people. Mike checked the two of us out for three days of
backpacking on the steepest and most inaccessible end of the little island.
"I don't want to go backpacking, for Chrissake," I'd said. "I'd rather stay on the L.A.
and plug into a stimsim."
"Shut up and follow me," said Mike, and like a lesser member of the pantheon
following an older and wiser de-ity, I had shut up and followed. Two hours of heavy
tramping up the slopes through sharp-branched scrub-trees brought us to a lip of
lava several hundred meters above the crashing surf. We were near the equator on a
mostly tropical world, but on this exposed ledge the wind was howling and my teeth
were chattering. The sunset was a red smear between dark cumulus to the west and I
had no wish to be out in the open when full night descended.
"Come on," I said. "Let's get out of the wind and build a fire. I don't know how the
hell we're going to set up a tent on all of this rock."
Mike sat down and lit a cannabis stick. "Take a look in your pack, kid."
I hesitated. His voice had been neutral but it was the flat neutrality of the practical
joker's voice just before the bucket of water descends. I crouched down and began
pawing through the nylon sack. The pack was empty ex-cept for old flowfoam
packing cubes to fill it out. Those and a harlequin's costume complete with mask
and bells on the toes.
"Are you ... is this ... are you goddamn crazy?" I spluttered. It was getting dark
quickly now. The storm might or might not pass to the south of us. The surf was
rasping below like a hungry beast. If I had known how to find my own way back to
the trade compound in the dark, I might have considered leaving Mike Osho's
remains to feed the fishes far below.
"Now look at what's in my pack," he said. Mike dumped out some flowfoam cubes
and then removed some jewelry of the type I'd seen hand-crafted on Renaissance, an
inertial compass, a laser pen which might or might not be labelled a concealed
weapon by Ship Security, another harlequin costume—this one tailored to his more
rotund form—and a hawking mat.
"Jesus, Mike," I said while running my hand over the exquisite design of the old
carpet, "this can't be legal."
"I didn't notice any customs agents back there," grinned Mike. "And I seriously
doubt that the locals have any traffic control ordinances."
"Yes, but..." I trailed off and unrolled the rest of the mat. It was a little more than a
meter wide and about two meters long. The rich fabric had faded with age but the
flight threads were still as bright as new copper. "Where did you get it?" I asked.
"Does it still work?"
"On Garden," said Mike and stuffed my costume and his other gear into his
backpack. "Yes, it does."
It had been more than a century since old Vladimir Sholokov, Old Earth emigrant,
master lepidopterist, and E-M systems engineer, had handcrafted the first hawking
mat for his beautiful young niece on Nova Terra. Legend had it that the niece had
scorned the gift but over the de-cades the toys had become almost absurdly
popular—more with rich adults than with children—until they were out-lawed on
most Hegemony worlds. Dangerous to handle, a waste of shielded monofilaments,
almost impossible to deal with in controlled airspace, hawking mats had be-come
curiosities reserved for bedtime stories, museums, and a few colony worlds.
"It must have cost you a fortune," I said.
"Thirty marks," said Mike and settled himself on the center of the carpet. "The old
dealer in Carvnal Market-place thought it was worthless. It was ... for him. I brought
it back to the ship, charged it up, reprogrammed the inertia chips, and viola!" Mike
palmed the intricate de-sign and the mat stiffened and rose fifteen centimeters above
the rock ledge.
I stared doubtfully. "All right," I said, "but what if it..."
"It won't," said Mike and impatiently patted the carpet behind him. "It's fully
charged. I know how to handle it. Come on, climb on or stand back. I want to get
going be-fore that storm gets any closer."
"But I don't think..."
"Come on, Merin. Make up your mind. I'm in a hurry."
I hesitated for another second or two. If we were caught leaving the island, we would
both be kicked off the ship. Shipwork was my life now. I had made that decision
when I accepted the eight-mission Maui-Covenant con-tract. More than that, I was
two hundred light years and five and a half leap years from civilization. Even if they
brought us back to Hegemony-space, the round trip would have cost us eleven years
worth of friends and family. The time-debt was irrevocable.
I crawled on the hovering hawking mat behind Mike. He stuffed the backpack
between us, told me to hang on, and tapped at the flight designs. The mat rose five
meters above the ledge, banked quickly to the left, and shot out over the alien ocean.
Three hundred meters below us, the surf crashed whitely in the deepening gloom.
We rose higher above the rough water and headed north into the night.
In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.

I remember talking to Siri during our Second Reunion, shortly after we first visited
the villa along the coast near Fevarone. We were walking along the beach. Alon had
been allowed to stay in the city under Magritte's supervi-sion. It was just as well. I
was not truly comfortable with the boy. Only the undeniable green solemnity of his
eyes and the disturbing mirror-familiarity of his short, dark curls and snub of a nose
served to tie him to me ... to us ... in my mind. That and the quick, almost sardonic
smile I would catch him hiding from Siri when she reprimanded him. It was a smile
too cynically amused and self-observant to be so practiced in a ten-year-old. I knew
it well. I would have thought such things were learned, not inherited.
"You know very little," Siri said to me. She was wad-ing, shoeless, in a shallow
tidepool. From time to time she would lift the delicate shell of a frenchhorn-conch,
inspect it for flaws, and drop it back into the silty water.
"I've been well-trained," I replied.
"Yes, I'm sure you've been well-trained," agreed Siri. "I know you are quite skillful,
Merin. But you know very little."
Irritated, unsure of how to respond, I walked along with my head lowered. I dug a
white lavastone out of the sand and tossed it far out into the bay. Rainclouds were
piling along the eastern horizon. I found myself wishing that I was back aboard the
ship. I had been reluctant to re-turn this time and now I knew that it had been a
mistake.
It was my third visit to Maui-Covenant, our Second Reun-ion as the poets and her
people were calling it. I was five months away from being 21 standard years old. Siri
had just celebrated her thirty-seventh birthday three weeks earlier.
"I've been to a lot of places you've never seen," I said at last. It sounded petulant
and childish even to me.
"Oh, yes," said Siri and clapped her hands together. For a second, in her
enthusiasm, I glimpsed my other Siri—the young girl I had dreamed about during the
long nine months of turn-around. Then the image slid back to harsh reality and I was
all too aware of her short hair, the loosening neck muscles, and the cords appearing
on the backs of those once beloved hands. "You've been to places I'll never see,"
said Siri in a rush. Her voice was the same. Almost the same. "Merin, my love,
you've al-ready seen things I cannot even imagine. You probably know more facts
about the universe than I would guess ex-ist. But you know very little, my darling."
"What the hell are you talking about, Siri?" I sat down on a half-submerged log near
the strip of wet sand and drew my knees up like a fence between us.
Siri strode out of the tidepool and came to kneel in front of me. She took my hands
in hers and although mine were bigger, heavier, blunter of finger and bone, I could
feel the strength in hers. I imagined it as the strength of years I had not shared. "You
have to live to really know things, my love. Having Alon has helped me to
understand that. There is something about raising a child that helps to sharpen one's
sense of what is real."
"How do you mean?"
Siri squinted away from me for a few seconds and ab-sently brushed back a strand
of hair. Her left hand stayed firmly around both of mine. "I'm not sure," she said
softly. "I think one begins to feel when things aren't im-portant. I'm not sure how to
put it. When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel
less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience.
You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go
looking for it. If it's not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your
business. You just know more about what is, what isn't, and how little time there is
to learn the differ-ence. Do you understand, Merin? Do you follow me even a little
bit?"
"No," I said.
Siri nodded and bit her lower lip. But she did not speak again for a while. Instead,
she leaned over and kissed me. Her lips were dry and a little questioning. I held back
for a second, seeing the sky beyond her, wanting time to think. But then I felt the
warm intrusion of her tongue and closed my eyes. The tide was coming in be-hind
us. I felt a sympathetic warmth and rising as Siri un-buttoned my shirt and ran sharp
fingernails across my chest. There was a second of emptiness between us and I
opened my eyes in time to see her unfastening the last but-tons on the front of her
white dress. Her breasts were larger than I remembered, heavier, the nipples broader
and darker. The chill air nipped at both of us until I pulled the fabric down her
shoulders and brought our upper bodies together. We slid down along the log to the
warm sand. I pressed her closer, all the while wondering how I possibly could have
thought her the stronger one. Her skin tasted of salt.
Siri's hands helped me. Her short hair pressed back against bleached wood, white
cotton, and sand. My pulse outraced the surf. "Do you understand, Merin?" she
whispered to me seconds later as her warmth connected us.
"Yes," I whispered back. But I did not.


Mike brought the hawking mat in from the east toward Firstsite. The flight had taken
over an hour in the dark and I had spent most of the time huddling from the wind
and waiting for the carpet to fold up and tumble us both into the sea. We were still
half an hour out when we saw the first of the motile isles. Racing before the storm,
treesails billowing, the islands sailed up from their southern feeding grounds in
seemingly endless procession. Many were lit brilliantly, festooned with colored
lanterns and shifting veils of gossamer light.
"You sure this is the way?" I shouted.
"Yes," shouted Mike. He did not turn his head. The wind whipped his long, black
hair back against my face. From time to time he would check his compass and make
small corrections to our course. It might have been easier to follow the isles. We
passed one—a large one almost half a kilometer in length—and I strained to make
out de-tails, but the isle was dark except for the glow of its phos-phorescent wake.
Dark shapes cut through the milky waves. I tapped Mike on the shoulder and
pointed.
"Dolphins!" he shouted. "That's what this colony was all about, remember? A bunch
of do-gooders during the Hegira wanted to save all the mammals in Old Earth's
oceans. Didn't succeed."
I would have shouted another question but at that moment the headland and Firstsite
Harbor came into view.
I had thought the stars were bright above Maui-Covenant. I had thought the
migrating islands were mem-orable in their colorful display. But the city of Firstsite,
wrapped about with harbor and hills, was a blazing beacon in the night. Its brilliance
reminded me of a torchship I once had watched while it created its own plasma nova
against the dark limb of a sullen gas giant. The city was a five-tiered honeycomb of
white buildings, all illuminated by warmly glowing lanterns from within and by
countless torches from without. The white lavastone of the volcanic island itself
seemed to glow from the city light. Beyond the town were tents, pavilions,
campfires, cooking fires, and great flaming pyres, too large for function, too large
for anything except to serve as a welcome to the returning isles.
The harbor was filled with boats: bobbing catamarans with cowbells clanking from
their masts; large-hulled, flat-bottomed houseboats built for creeping from port to
port in the calm, equatorial shallows but proudly ablaze with strings of lights this
night; and then the occasional ocean-going yacht, sleek and functional as a shark. A
lighthouse set out on the pincer's end of the harbor reef threw its beam far out to
sea, illuminated wave and isle alike, and then swept its light back in to catch the
colorful bobbing of ships and men.
Even from two kilometers out we could hear the noise. Sounds of celebration were
clearly audible. Above the shouts and constant susurration of the surf rose the
unmis-takable notes of a Bach flute sonata. I learned later that this welcoming chorus
was transmitted through hydro-phones to the Passage Channels where dolphins leapt
and cavorted to the music.
"My God, Mike, how did you know all of this was go-ing on?"
"I asked the main ship computer," said Mike. The hawking mat banked right to keep
us far out from the ships and lighthouse beam. Then we curved back in north of
Firstsite toward a dark spit of land. I could hear the soft booming of waves on the
shallows ahead. "They have this festival every year," Mike went on, "but this is their
sesquicentennial. The party's been going on for three weeks now and is scheduled to
continue another two. There are only about 100,000 colonists on this whole world,
Merin, and I bet half of them are here partying."
We slowed, came in carefully, and touched down on a rocky outcropping not far
from the beach. The storm had missed us to the south but intermittent flashes of
lightning and the distant lights of advancing isles still marked the horizon. Overhead,
the stars were not dimmed by the glow from Firstsite just over the rise from us. The
air was warmer here and I caught the scent of orchards on the breeze. We folded up
the hawking mat and hurried to get into our harlequin costumes. Mike slipped his
laser pen and jewelry into loose pockets.
"What are those for?" I asked as we secured the back-pack and hawking mat under
a large boulder.
"These?" asked Mike as he dangled a Renaissance necklace from his fingers. "These
are currency in case we have to negotiate for favors."
"Favors?"
"Favors," repeated Mike. "A lady's largesse. Comfort to a weary space-farer.
Nooky to you, kid."
"Oh," I said and adjusted my mask and fool's cap. The bells made a soft sound in
the dark.
"Come on," said Mike. "We'll miss the party." I nodded and followed him, bells
jangling, as we picked our way over stone and scrub toward the waiting light.

I sit here in the sunlight and wait. I am not totally cer-tain what I am waiting for. I can
feel a growing warmth on my back as the morning sunlight is reflected from the white
stone of Siri's tomb.
Siri's tomb?
There are no clouds in the sky. I raise my head and squint skyward as if I might be
able to see the L.A. and the newly finished farcaster array through the glare of
at-mosphere. I cannot. Part of me knows that they have not risen yet. Part of me
knows to the second the time remain-ing before ship and farcaster complete their
transit to the zenith. Part of me does not want to think about it.
Siri, am I doing the right thing?
There is the sudden sound of pennants stirring on their staffs as the wind comes up.
I sense rather than see the restlessness of the waiting crowd. For the first time since
my planetfall for this, our Sixth Reunion, I am filled with sorrow. No, not sorrow,
not yet, but a sharptoothed sadness which soon will open into grief. For years I have
carried on silent conversations with Siri, framing questions to myself for future
discussion with her, and it suddenly strikes me with cold clarity that we will never
again sit together and talk. An emptiness begins to grow inside me.
Should I let it happen, Siri?
There is no response except for the growing murmurs of the crowd. In a few
minutes they will send Donel, my younger and surviving son, or his daughter Lira up
the hill to urge me on. I toss away the sprig of willowgrass I've been chewing on.
There is a hint of shadow on the hori-zon. It could be a cloud. Or it could be the
first of the isles, driven by instinct and the spring northerlies to mi-grate back to the
great band of the equatorial shallows from whence they came. It does not matter.
Siri, am I doing the right thing?
There is no answer and the time grows shorter.
Sometimes Siri seemed so ignorant it made me sick.
She knew nothing of my life away from her. She would ask questions but I
sometimes wondered if she was interested in the answers. I spent many hours
explaining the beautiful physics behind our C-plus spinships but she never did seem
to understand. Once, after I had taken great care to detail the differences between
their ancient seedship and the Los Angeles, Siri astounded me by ask-ing, "But why
did it take my ancestors 80 years of shiptime to reach Maui-Covenant when you can
make the trip in 130 days?" She had understood nothing.
Siri's sense of history was, at best, pitiful. She viewed the Hegemony and the
worldweb the way a child would view the fantasy world of a pleasant but rather silly
myth; there was an indifference there that almost drove me mad at times.
Siri knew all about the early days of the Hegira—at least insofar as they pertained to
the Maui-Covenant and the colonists—and she occasionally would come up with
delightful bits of archaic trivia or phraseology, but she knew nothing of post-Hegira
realities. Names like Garden and Ouster, Renaissance and Lusus meant little to her. I
could mention Salmen Brey or General Horace Glennon-Hight and she would have
no associations or reactions at all. None.
The last time I saw Siri she was 70 standard years old. She was 70 years old and
still she had never: traveled offworld, used a comlog, tasted any alcoholic drink
except wine; interfaced with an empathy surgeon, stepped through a farcaster door,
smoked a cannabis stick, received gene tailoring, plugged into a stimsim, received
any formal schooling, taken any RNA medication, heard of Zen Chris-tianity, or
flown any vehicle except an ancient Vikken skimmer belonging to her family.
Siri had never made love to anyone except me. Or so she said. And so I believed.

It was during our First Reunion, that time on the Ar-chipelago, when Siri took me to
talk with the dolphins. We had risen to watch the dawn. The highest levels of the
treehouse were a perfect place from which to watch the eastern sky pale and fade to
morning. Ripples of high cir-rus turned to rose and then the sea itself grew molten as
the sun lifted above the flat horizon.
"Let's go swimming," said Siri. The rich, horizontal light bathed her skin and threw
her shadow four meters across the boards of the platform.
"I'm too tired," I said. "Later." We had lain awake most of the night talking, making
love, talking, and mak-ing love again. In the glare of morning I felt empty and vaguely
nauseated. I sensed the slight movement of the isle under me as a tinge of vertigo, a
drunkard's discon-nection from gravity.
"No. Let's go now," said Siri and grasped my hand to pull me along. I was irritated
but did not argue. Siri was 26, seven years older than me during that First Reunion,
but her impulsive behavior often reminded me of the teen-aged Siri I had carried
away from the Festival only ten of my months earlier. Her deep, unselfconscious
laugh was the same. Her green eyes cut as sharply when she was im-patient. The
long mane of auburn hair had not changed. But her body had ripened, filled out with
a promise which had been only hinted at before. Her breasts were still high and full,
almost girlish, bordered above by freckles that gave way to a whiteness so
translucent that a gentle blue tracery of veins could be seen. But they were different
somehow. She was different.
"Are you going to join me or just sit there staring?" asked Siri. She had slipped off
her caftan as we came out onto the lowest deck. Our small ship was still tied to the
dock. Above us, the island's treesails were beginning to open to the morning breeze.
For the past several days, Siri had insisted on wearing swimstrips when we went into
the water. She wore none now. Her nipples rose in the cool air.
"Won't we be left behind?" I asked, squinting up at the flapping treesails. On
previous days we had waited for the doldrums in the middle of the day when the isle
was still in the water, the sea a glazed mirror. Now the jibvines were beginning to pull
taut as the thick leaves filled with wind.
"Don't be silly," said Siri. "We could always catch a keelroot and follow it back.
That or a feeding tendril. Come on." She tossed an osmosis mask at me and donned
her own. The transparent film made her face look slick with oil. From the pocket of
her caftan she lifted a thick medallion and set it in place around her neck. The metal
looked dark and ominous against her skin.
"What's that?" I asked.
Siri did not lift the osmosis mask to answer. She set the comthreads in place against
her neck and handed me the hearplugs. Her voice was tinny. "Translation disk," she
said. "Thought you knew all about gadgets, Merin. Last one in's a seaslug." She held
the disk in place between her breasts with one hand and stepped off the isle. I could
see the pale globes of her buttocks as she pirouetted and kicked for depth. In
seconds she was only a white blur deep in the water. I slipped my own mask on,
pressed the comthreads tight, and stepped into the sea.
The bottom of the isle was a dark stain on a ceiling of crystalline light. I was wary of
the thick feeding tendrils even though Siri had amply demonstrated that they were
interested in devouring nothing larger than the tiny zoo-plankton that even now
caught the sunlight like dust in an abandoned ballroom. Keelroots descended like
gnarled stalactites for hundreds of meters into the purple depths.
The isle was moving. I could see the faint fibrilation of the tendrils as they trailed
along. A wake caught the light ten meters above me. For a second I was choking, the
gel of the mask smothering me as surely as the surrounding water would, and then I
relaxed and the air flowed freely into my lungs.
"Deeper, Merin," came Siri's voice. I blinked—a slow motion blink as the mask
readjusted itself over my eyes—and caught sight of Siri twenty meters lower,
grasping a keelroot and trailing effortlessly above the colder, deeper currents where
the light did not reach. I thought of the thousands of meters of water under me, of
the things which might lurk there, unknown, unsought-out by the hu-man colonists. I
thought of the dark and the depths and my scrotum tightened involuntarily.
"Come on down." Siri's voice was an insect buzz in my ears. I rotated and kicked.
The buoyancy here was not so great as in Old Earth's seas, but it still took energy to
dive so deep. The mask compensated for depth and nitro-gen but I could feel the
pressure against my skin and ears. Finally I quit kicking, grabbed a keelroot, and
roughly hauled myself down to Siri's level.
We floated side by side in the dim light. Siri was a spectral figure here, her long hair
swirling in a wine-dark nimbus, the pale strips of her body glowing in the blue-green
light. The surface seemed impossibly distant. The widening V of the wake and the
drift of the scores of ten-drils showed that the isle was moving more quickly now,
moving mindlessly to other feeding grounds, distant wa-ters.
"Where are the..." I began to subvocalize.
"Shhh," said Siri. She fiddled with the medallion. I could hear them then; the shrieks
and trills and whistles and cat purrs and echoing cries. The depths were suddenly
filled with strange music.
"Jesus," I said and because Siri had tuned our comthreads to the translator, the word
was broadcast as a senseless whistle and toot.
"Hello!" she called and the translated greeting echoed from the transmitter; a
high-speed bird's call sliding into the ultrasonic. "Hello!" she called again.
Minutes passed before the dolphins came to investi-gate. They rolled past us,
surprisingly large, alarmingly large, their skin looking slick and muscled in the
uncertain light. A large one swam within a meter of us, turning at the last moment so
that the white of his belly curved past us like a wall. I could see the dark eye rotate to
follow me as he passed. One stroke of his wide fluke kicked up a tur-bulence strong
enough to convince me of the animal's power.
"Hello," called Siri but the swift form faded into dis-tant haze and there was a
sudden silence. Siri clicked off the translator. "Do you want to talk to them?" she
asked.
"Sure." I was dubious. More than three centuries of ef-fort had not raised much of a
dialogue between man and sea-mammal. Mike had once told me that the thought
structures of Old Earth's two groups of orphans were too different, the referents too
few. One pre-Hegira expert had written that speaking to a dolphin or porpoise was
about as rewarding as speaking to a one-year-old human infant. Both sides usually
enjoyed the exchange and there was a simulacrum of conversation, but neither party
would come away the more knowledgeable. Siri switched the translator disk back
on. "Hello," I said.
There was a final minute of silence and then our ear-phones were buzzing while the
sea echoed shrill ululations.
distance/no-fluke/hello-tone?/current pulse/circle me/ funny?
"What the hell?" I asked Siri and the translator trilled out my question. Siri was
grinning under her osmosis mask.
I tried again. "Hello! Greetings from ... uh ... the surface. How are you?"
The large male ... I assumed it to be a male ... curved in toward us like a torpedo. He
arch-kicked his way through the water ten times faster than I could have swum even
if I had remembered to don flippers that morn-ing. For a second I thought he was
going to ram us and I raised my knees and clung tightly to the keelroot. Then he was
past us, climbing for air, while Siri and I reeled from his turbulent wake and the high
tones of his shout.
no-fluke/no-feed/no-swim/no-play/no-fun.
Siri switched off the translator and floated closer. She lightly grasped my shoulders
while I held onto the keelroot with my right hand. Our legs touched as we drifted
through the warm water. A school of tiny, crimson warriorfish flickered above us
while the dark shapes of the dolphins circled further out.
"Had enough?" she asked. Her hand was flat on my chest.
"One more try," I said. Siri nodded and twisted the disk to life. The current pushed
us together again. She slid her arm around me.
"Why do you herd the islands?" I asked the bottle-nosed shapes circling in the
dappled light. "How does it benefit you to stay with the isles?"
sounding now/old songs/deep water/no-Great Voices/ no-Shark/old songs/new
songs.
Siri's body lay along the length of me now. Her left arm tightened around me. "Great
Voices were the whales," she whispered. Her hair fanned out in streamers. Her right
hand moved down and seemed surprised at what it found.
"Do you miss the Great Voices?" I asked the shad-ows. There was no response. Siri
slid her legs around my hips. The surface was a churning bowl of light forty me-ters
above us.
"What do you miss most of Old Earth's oceans?" I asked. With my left arm I pulled
Siri closer, slid my hand down along the curve of her back to where her buttocks
rose to meet my palm, and held her tight. To the circling dolphins we must have
appeared a single creature. Siri lifted herself against me and we became a single
creature.
The translator disk had twisted around so it trailed over Siri's shoulder. I reached to
shut it off but paused as the answer to my question buzzed urgently in our ears.
miss Shark/miss Shark/miss Shark/miss Shark/Sharks Shark/Shark
I turned off the disk and shook my head. I did not un-derstand. There was so much
I did not understand. I closed my eyes as Siri and I moved gently to the rhythms of
the current and ourselves while the dolphins swam nearby and the cadence of their
calls took on the sad, slow trilling of an old lament.


I sit here in the sunlight and wait. Now that I have made my decision, I wonder if it is
what Siri wanted all along.
The tomb is a white glare behind me. The sunlight touches my skin. I can hear a low
murmur from the rest-less crowd on the hillside. Several of the council members are
conferring with Donel. Soon he will climb the slope to urge me on. The farcaster
ceremonies cannot wait for me.
Is this what you wanted, Siri?
I desperately want to talk to her now. I want to ask her who it was who so deftly
crafted and shaped the legend that was our love.
Was it you, Siri? Could a not-quite sixteen-year-old have planned so far ahead?
Surf breaks against the lavastone seawall. I can hear the bells ringing as the small
boats bob at anchorage. I sit in the sunlight and wait.
Where were you when I awoke that first time, Siri?
Somewhere to the south a Thomas Hawk screams. There is no other answer.


Siri and I came down out of the hills and returned to the Festival just before sunrise
of the second day. For a night and a day we had roamed the hills, eaten with
strangers in pavilions of orange silk, bathed together in the icy waters of the Shree,
and danced to the music which never ceased going out to the endless file of passing
isles. We were hungry. I had awakened at sunset to find Siri gone. She returned
before the moon of Maui-Covenant rose. She told me that her parents had gone off
with friends for several days on a slow-moving houseboat. They had left the family
skimmer in Firstsite. Now we worked our way from dance to dance, bonfire to
bonfire, back to the center of the city. We planned to fly west to her family estate
near Fevarone.
It was very late but Firstsite Common still had its share of revelers. I was very
happy. I was nineteen and I was in love and the .93 gravity of Maui-Covenant
seemed much less to me. I could have flown had I wished. I could have done
anything.
We had stopped at a booth and bought fried dough and mugs of black coffee.
Suddenly a thought struck me. I asked, "How did you know I was a Shipman?"
"Hush, friend Merin. Eat your poor breakfast. When we get to the villa, I will fix a
true meal to break our fast."
"No, I'm serious," I said and wiped grease off my chin with the sleeve of my
less-than-clean harlequin's costume. "This morning you said that you knew right
away last night that I was from the ship. Why was that? Was it my accent? My
costume? Mike and I saw other fellows dressed like this."
Siri laughed and brushed back her hair. "Just be glad it was I who spied you out,
Merin my love. Had it been my Uncle Gresham or his friends it would have meant
trouble."
"Oh? Why is that?" I picked up one more fried ring and Siri paid for it. I followed
her through the thinning crowd. Despite the motion and the music all about, I felt
weariness beginning to work on me.
"They are Separatists," said Siri. "Uncle Gresham re-cently gave a speech before the
All Thing urging that we fight rather than agree to be swallowed into your
Hege-mony. He said that we should destroy your farcaster de-vice before it destroys
us."
"Oh?" I said. "Did he say how he was going to do that? The last I heard you folks
had no craft to get offworld in."
"Nay, nor for the past fifty years have we," said Siri. "But it shows how irrational the
Separatists can be."
I nodded. Shipmaster Singh and Councillor Halmyn had briefed us on the so-called
Separatists of Maui-Covenant. "The usual coalition of colonial jingoists and
throwbacks," Singh had said. "Another reason we go slowly and develop the
world's trade potential before fin-ishing the farcaster. The worldweb doesn't need
these ya-hoos coming in prematurely. And groups like the Separatists are another
reason to keep you crew and con-traction workers the hell away from the
groundlings."
"Where is your skimmer?" I asked. The Common was emptying quickly. Most of
the bands had packed up their instruments for the night. Gaily costumed heaps lay
snor-ing on the grass or cobblestones amid the litter and unlit lanterns. Only a few
enclaves of merriment remained, groups dancing slowly to a lone guitar or singing
drunk-enly to themselves. I saw Mike Osho at once, a patchworked fool, his mask
long gone, a girl on either arm. He was trying to teach the hora to a rapt but inept
circle of ad-mirers. One of the troupe would stumble and they would all fall down.
Mike would flog them to their feet among general laughter and they would start again,
hopping clum-sily to his basso-profundo chant.
"There it is," said Siri and pointed to a short line of skimmers parked behind the
Common Hall. I nodded and waved to Mike but he was too busy hanging on to his
two ladies to notice me. Siri and I had crossed the square and were in the shadows
of the old building when the shout went up.
"Shipman! Turn around, you Hegemony son-of-a-bitch."
I froze and then wheeled around with fists clenched but no one was near me. Six
young men had descended the steps from the grandstand and were standing in a
semi-circle behind Mike. The man in front was tall, slim, and strikingly handsome.
He was twenty-five or twenty-six years old and his long blonde curls spilled down
on a crimson silk suit that emphasized his physique. In his right hand he carried a
meter-long sword that looked to be of tempered steel.
Mike turned slowly. Even from a distance I could see his eyes sobering as he
surveyed the situation. The women at his side and a couple of the young men in his
group tit-tered as if something humorous had been said. Mike al-lowed the inebriated
grin to stay on his face. "You address me, sir?" he asked.
"I address you, you Hegemony whore's son," hissed the leader of the group. His
handsome face was twisted into a sneer.
"Bertol," whispered Siri. "My cousin. Gresham's younger son." I nodded and
stepped out of the shadows. Siri caught my arm.
"That is twice you have referred unkindly to my mother, sir," slurred Mike. "Have
she or I offended you in some way? If so, a thousand pardons." Mike bowed so
deeply that the bells on his cap almost brushed the ground. Members of his group
applauded.
"Your presence offends me, you Hegemony bastard. You stink up our air with your
fat carcass."
Mike's eyebrows rose comically. A young man near him in a fish costume waved his
hand. "Oh, come on, Bertol. He's just..."
"Shut up, Ferick. It is this fat shithead I am speaking to."
"Shithead?" repeated Mike, eyebrows still raised. "I've traveled two hundred light
years to be called a fat shithead? It hardly seems worth it." He pivoted gracefully,
untangling himself from the women as he did so. I would have joined Mike then but
Siri clung tightly to my arm, whispering unheard entreaties. When I was free I saw
that Mike was still smiling, still playing the fool. But his left hand was in his baggy
shirt pocket.
"Give him your blade, Creg," snapped Bertol. One of the younger men tossed a
sword hilt-first to Mike. Mike watched it arc by and clang loudly on the
cobblestones.
"You can't be serious," said Mike in a soft voice that was suddenly quite sober.
"You cretinous cowturd. Do you really think I'm going to play duel with you just
because you get a hard-on acting the hero for these yokels?"
"Pick up the sword," screamed Bertol, "or by God I'll carve you where you stand."
He took a quick step forward. The youth's face contorted with fury as he advanced.
"Fuck off," said Mike. In his left hand was the laser pen.
"No!" I yelled and ran into the light. That pen was used by construction workers to
scrawl marks on girders of whiskered alloy.
Things happened very quickly then. Bertol took an-other step and Mike flicked the
green beam across him al-most casually. The colonist let out a cry and leaped back;
a smoking line of black was slashed diagonally across his silk shirtfront. I hesitated.
Mike had the setting as low as it could go. Two of Bertol's friends started forward
and Mike swung the light across their shins. One dropped to his knees cursing and
the other hopped away holding his leg and hooting.
A crowd had gathered. They laughed as Mike swept off his fool's cap in another
bow. "I thank you," said Mike. "My mother thanks you."
Siri's cousin strained against his rage. Froths of spittle spilled on his lips and chin. I
pushed through the crowd and stepped between Mike and the tall colonist.
"Hey, it's all right," I said. "We're leaving. We're go-ing now."
"Goddamn it, Merin, get out of the way," said Mike.
"It's all right," I said as I turned to him. "I'm with a girl named Siri who has a..."
Bertol stepped forward and lunged past me with his blade. I wrapped my left arm
around his shoulder and flung him back. He tumbled heav-ily onto the grass.
"Oh, shit," said Mike as he backed up several paces. He looked tired and a little
disgusted as he sat down on a stone step. "Aw, damn!" he said softly. There was a
short line of crimson in one of the black patches on the left side of his harlequin
costume. As I watched, the narrow slit spilled over and blood ran down across Mike
Osho's broad belly.
"Oh, Jesus, Mike." I tore a strip of fabric from my shirt and tried to staunch the
flow. I could remember none of the first-aid we'd been taught as midshipmen. I
pawed at my wrist but my comlog was not there. We had left them on the Los
Angeles.
"It's not so bad, Mike," I gasped. "It's just a little cut." The blood flowed down over
my hand and wrist.
"It will serve," said Mike. His voice was held taut by a cord of pain. "Damn. A
fucking sword. Do you believe it, Merin? Cut down in the prime of my prime by a
piece of fucking cutlery out of a fucking one-penny opera. Oh, damn that smarts."
"Three-penny opera," I said and changed hands. The rag was soaked.
"You know what your fucking problem is, Merin? You're always sticking your
fucking two cents in. Awwwww." Mike's face went white and then gray. He lowered
his chin to his chest and breathed deeply. "To hell with this, kid. Let's go home,
huh?"
I looked over my shoulder. Bertol was slowly moving away with his friends. The rest
of the crowd milled around in shock. "Call a doctor!" I screamed. "Get some
medics up here!" Two men ran down the street. There was no sign of Siri.
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" said Mike in a strong-er voice, as if he had forgotten
something important. "Just a minute," he said and died.
Died. A real death. Brain death. His mouth opened ob-scenely, his eyes rolled back
so only the whites showed, and a minute later the blood ceased pumping from the
wound.
For a few mad seconds I cursed the sky. I could see the L.A. moving across the
fading starfield and I knew that I could bring Mike back if I could get him there in a
few minutes. The crowd backed away as I screamed and ranted at the stars.
Eventually I turned to Bertol. "You," I said.
The young man had stopped at the far end of the Com-mon. His face was ashen. He
stared wordlessly.
"You," I said again. I picked up the laser pen from where it had rolled, clicked the
power to maximum, and walked to where Bertol and his friends stood waiting.
Later, through the haze of screams and scorched flesh. I was dimly aware of Siri's
skimmer setting down in the crowded square, of dust flying up all around, and of her
voice commanding me to join her. We lifted away from the light and madness. The
cool wind blew my sweat-soaked hair away from my neck.
"We will go to Fevarone," said Siri. "Bertol was drunk. The Separatists are a small,
violent group. There will be no reprisals. You will stay with me until the All Thing
holds the inquest."
"No," I said. "There. Land there." I pointed to a spit of land not far from the city.
Siri landed despite her protests. I glanced at the boul-der to make sure the backpack
was still there and then climbed out of the skimmer. Siri slid across the seat and
pulled my head down to hers. "Merin, my love." Her lips were warm and open but I
felt nothing. My body felt an-aesthetized. I stepped back and waved her away. She
brushed her hair back and stared at me from green eyes filled with tears. Then the
skimmer lifted, turned, and sped to the south in the early morning light.
Just a minute, I felt like calling. I sat on a rock and gripped my knees as several
ragged sobs were torn up out of me. Then I stood and threw the laser pen into the
surf below. I tugged out the backpack and dumped the contents on the ground.
The hawking mat was gone.
I sat back down, too drained to laugh or cry or walk away. The sun rose as I sat
there. I was still sitting there three hours later when the large, black skimmer from
Ship Security set down silently beside me.


"Father? Father, it is getting late."
I turn to see my son Donel standing behind me. He is wearing the blue and gold robe
of the Hegemony Council. His bald scalp is flushed and beaded with sweat. Donel is
only 43 but he seems much older to me.
"Please, Father," he says. I nod and rise, brushing off the grass and dirt. We walk
together to the front of the tomb. The crowd has pressed closer now. Gravel
crunches under their feet as they shift restlessly. "Shall I enter with you, Father?"
Donel asks.
I pause to look at this aging stranger who is my child. There is a little of Siri or me
reflected in him. His face is friendly, florid, and tense with the excitement of the day.
I can sense in him the open honesty which often takes the place of intelligence in
some people. I cannot help but compare this balding puppy of a man to Alon—Alon
of the dark curls and silences and sardonic smile. But Alon is 33 years dead, cut
down in a stupid battle which had noth-ing to do with him.
"No," I say. "I'll go in by myself. Thank you, Donel."
He nods and steps back. The pennants snap above the heads of the straining crowd.
I turn my attention to the tomb.
The entrance is sealed with a palmlock. I have only to touch it.
During the past few minutes I have developed a fan-tasy which will save me from
both the growing sadness within and the external series of events which I have
ini-tiated. Siri is not dead. In the last stages of her illness she had called together the
doctors and the few technicians left in the colony and they rebuilt for her one of the
ancient hi-bernation chambers used in their seedship two centuries earlier. Siri is only
sleeping. What is more, the year-long sleep has somehow restored her youth. When
I wake her she will be the Siri I remember from our early days. We will walk out into
the sunlight together and when the farcaster doors open we shall be the first
through.
"Father?"
"Yes." I step forward and set my hand to the door of the crypt. There is a whisper
of electric motors and the white slab of stone slides back. I bow my head and enter
Siri's tomb.

"Damn it, Merin, secure that line before it knocks you overboard. Hurry!" I hurried.
The wet rope was hard to coil, harder to tie off. Siri shook her head in disgust and
leaned over to tie a bowline knot with one hand.
It was our Fifth Reunion. I had been three months too late for her birthday but more
than five thousand other people had made it to the celebration. The President of the
All Thing had wished her well in a forty-minute speech. A poet read his most recent
verses to the Love Cycle Son-nets. The Hegemony Ambassador had presented her
with a scroll and a new ship, a small submersible powered by the first fusion-cells to
be allowed on Maui-Covenant.
Siri had eighteen other ships. Twelve belonged to her fleet of swift catamarans that
plied their trade between the wandering Archipelago and the Home Islands. Two
were beautiful racing yachts that were used only twice a year to win the Founder's
Regatta and the Covenant Criterium. The other four craft were ancient fishing boats,
homely and awkward, well-maintained but little more than scows.
Siri had nineteen ships but we were on a fishing boat—the Ginnie Paul. For the past
eight days we had fished the shelf of the Equatorial Shallows; a crew of two casting
and pulling nets, wading knee-deep through stink-ing fish and crunching trilobites,
wallowing over every wave, casting and pulling nets, keeping watch, and sleep-ing
like exhausted children during our brief rest periods. I was not quite 23. I thought I
was used to heavy labor aboard the L.A. and it was my custom to put in an hour of
exercise in the 1.3-gee pod every second shift, but now my arms and back ached
from the strain and my hands were blistered between the callouses. Siri had just
turned 70.
"Merin, go forward and reef the foresail. Do the same for the jib and then go below
to see to the sandwiches. Plenty of mustard."
I nodded and went forward. For a day and a half we had been playing hide and seek
with a storm; sailing before it when we could, turning about and accepting its
punishment when we had to. At first it had been exciting, a welcome respite from the
endless casting and pulling and mending. But after the first few hours the adrenaline
rush faded to be replaced by constant nausea, fatigue, and a ter-rible tiredness. The
seas did not relent. The waves grew to six meters and higher. The Ginnie Paul
wallowed like the broad-beamed matron she was. Everything was wet. My skin was
soaked under three layers of rain gear. For Siri it was a long-awaited vacation.
"This is nothing," she had said during the darkest hour of the night as waves washed
over the deck and smashed against the scarred plastic of the cockpit. "You should
see it during simoon season."
The clouds still hung low and blended into gray waves in the distance but the sea
was down to a gentle five-foot chop. I spread mustard across the roast beef
sandwiches and poured steaming coffee into thick, white mugs. It would have been
easier to transport the coffee in zero-gee without spilling it than to get it up the
pitching shaft of the companion way. Siri accepted her depleted cup without
commenting. We sat in silence for a bit, appreciating the food and the
tongue-scalding warmth of the coffee. I took the wheel when Siri went below to refill
our mugs. The gray day was dimming almost imperceptibly into night.
"Merin," she said after handing me my mug and taking a seat on the long, cushioned
bench which encircled the cockpit, "what will happen after they open the farcaster?"
I was surprised by the question. We rarely talked about the time when
Maui-Covenant would join the Hegemony. I glanced over at Siri and was shocked by
the countenance re-vealed by the harsh, upward glare of the instrument lights. Siri's
face showed a hidden mosaic of seams and shadows which would soon replace the
pale, translucent complexion of the woman I had known. Her beautiful, green eyes
were hidden in wells of darkness and the cruel light turned her cheekbones into
knife-edges against brittle parchment. Siri's gray hair was cut short and now it stuck
out in damp spikes. I could see the tendoned cords under the loose skin of her neck
and wrists. Age was laying claim to Siri.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"What will happen after they open the farcaster?"
"You know what the Council says." I spoke loudly, as if she were hard of hearing.
"It will open a new era of trade and technology for Maui-Covenant. You won't be
re-stricted to one little world any longer. When you become citizens, everyone will
be entitled to use the farcaster doors."
"Yes," said Siri. Her voice was weary. "I have heard all of that, Merin. But what will
happen? Who will be the first through to us?"
I shrugged. "More diplomats, I suppose. Cultural con-tact specialists.
Anthropologists. Ethnologists. Marine biol-ogists."
"And then?"
I paused. It was dark out. The sea was almost gentle. Our running lights glowed red
and green against the night. I felt the same anxiety I had known two days earlier when
the wall of storm appeared on the horizon. I said, "And then will come the
missionaries. The petroleum ge-ologists. The sea farmers. The developers."
Siri sipped at her coffee. "I would have thought your Hegemony was far beyond a
petroleum economy."
I laughed and locked the wheel in. "Nobody gets be-yond a petroleum economy.
Not while the petroleum's there. We don't burn it, if that's what you mean. But it's
still essential for the production of plastics, synthetics, food base, and keroids. Two
hundred billion people use a lot of plastic."
"And Maui-Covenant has oil?"
"Oh, yes," I said. There was no more laughter in me. "There are billions of barrels
reservoired under the Equa-torial Shallows alone."
"How will they get it, Merin? Platforms?"
"Yeah. Platforms. Submersibles. Sub-sea colonies with tailored workers brought in
from Ouster or the Tau Ceti Cities."
"And the motile isles?" asked Siri. "They must return each year to the shallows to
feed on the bluekelp there and to reproduce. What will become of the isles?"
I shrugged again. I had drunk too much coffee and il left a bitter taste in my mouth,
"I don't know," I said. "They haven't told the crew much. But back on our first trip
out, Mike heard that they planned to develop as many of the isles as they can, so
some will be protected."
"Developed?" Siri's voice showed surprise for the first time. "How can they develop
the isles? Even the Found-er's Families must ask permission of the Sea Folk to build
our treehouse retreats there."
I smiled at Siri's use of the local term for the dolphins. The Maui-Covenant colonists
were such children when it came to their damned dolphins. "The plans are all set," I
said. "There are 128,573 motile isles big enough to build a dwelling on. Leases to
those have long since been sold. The smaller isles will be broken up, I suppose. The
Home Islands will be developed for recreation purposes."
"Recreation purposes," echoed Siri. "How many peo-ple from the Hegemony will
use the farcaster to come here ... for recreation purposes?"
"At first, you mean?" I asked. "Just a few thousand the first year. As long as the
only door is on Island 241 ... the Trade Center ... it will be limited. Perhaps 50,000
the second year when Firstsite gets its door. It'll be quite the luxury tour. Always is
after a seed colony is first opened to the web."
"And later?"
"After the five-year probation? There will be thou-sands of doors, of course. I
would imagine that there will be twenty or thirty million new residents coming
through during the first year of full citizenship."
"Twenty or thirty million," said Siri. The light from the compass stand illuminated
her lined face from below. There was still a beauty there. But there was no anger or
shock. I had expected both.
"But you'll be citizens then yourself," I said. "Free to step anywhere in the
worldweb. There will be sixteen new worlds to choose from. Probably more by
then."
"Yes," said Siri and set aside her empty mug. A fine rain streaked the glass around
us. The crude radar screen set in its hand-carved frame showed the seas empty, the
storm past. "Is it true, Merin, that people in the Hegemony have their homes on a
dozen worlds? One house, I mean, with windows facing out on a dozen skies?"
"Sure," I said. "But not many people. Only the rich can afford multi-world
residences like that."
Siri smiled and set her hand on my knee. The back of her hand was mottled and
blue-veined. "But you are very rich, are you not, Shipman?"
I looked away. "Not yet I'm not."
"Ah, but soon, Merin, soon. How long for you, my love? Less than two weeks here
and then the voyage back to your Hegemony. Five months more of your time to
bring the last components back, a few weeks to finish, and then you step home a
rich man. Step two hundred empty light years home. What a strange thought ... but
where was I? That is how long? Less than a standard year."
"Ten months," I said. "Three hundred and six standard days. Three hundred
fourteen of yours. Nine hundred eigh-teen shifts."
"And then your exile will be over."
"Yes."
"And you will be twenty-four years old and very rich."
"Yes."
"I'm tired, Merin. I want to sleep now."
We programmed the tiller, set the collision alarm, and went below. The wind had
risen some and the old vessel wallowed from wavecrest to trough with every swell.
We undressed in the dim light of the swinging lamp. I was first in the bunk and under
the covers. It was the first time Siri and I had shared a sleep period. Remembering
our last Reunion and her shyness at the villa, I expected her to douse the light.
Instead she stood a minute, nude in the chill air, thin arms calmly at her sides.
Time had claimed Siri but had not ravaged her. Gravity had done its inevitable work
on her breasts and buttocks and she was much thinner. I stared at the gaunt outlines
of ribs and breastbone and remembered the sixteen-year-old girl with baby fat and
skin like warm velvet. In the cold light of the swinging lamp I stared at Siri's sagging
flesh and remembered moonlight on budding breasts. Yet some-how, strangely,
inexplicably, it was the same Siri who stood before me now.
"Move over, Merin." She slipped into the bunk beside me. The sheets were cool
against our skin, the rough blanket welcome. I turned off the light. The little ship
swayed to the regular rhythm of the sea's breathing. I could hear the sympathetic
creak of masts and rigging. In the morning we would be casting and pulling and
mending but now there was time to sleep. I began to doze to the sound of waves
against wood. "Merin?"
"Yes?"
"What would happen if the Separatists attacked the Hegemony tourists or the new
residents?"
"I thought the Separatists had all been carted off to the isles."
"They have been. But what if they resisted?" "The Hegemony would send in troops
who could kick the shit out of the Separatists."
"What if the farcaster itself were attacked ... de-stroyed before it was operational?"
"Impossible."
"Yes, I know, but what if it were?"
"Then the Los Angeles would return nine months later with Hegemony troops who
would proceed to kick the shit out of the Separatists ... and anyone else on
Maui-Covenant who got in their way."
"Nine months shiptime," said Siri. "Eleven years of our time."
"But inevitable either way," I said. "Let's talk about something else."
"All right," said Siri but we did not speak. I listened to the creak and sigh of the ship.
Siri had nestled in the hollow of my arm. Her head was on my shoulder and her
breathing was so deep and regular that I thought her to be asleep. I was almost
asleep myself when her warm hand slid up my leg and lightly cupped me. I startled
even as I began to stir and stiffen. Siri whispered an answer to my unasked question.
"No, Merin, one is never really too old. At least not too old to want the warmth and
closeness. You decide, my love. I will be content either way." I decided. Towards
the dawn we slept.

The tomb is empty.
"Donel, come in here!"
He bustled in, robes rustling in the hollow emptiness. The tomb is empty. There is
no hibernation chamber—I did not truly expect there to be one—but neither is there
sarcophagus nor coffin. A bright bulb illuminates the white interior. "What the hell is
this, Donel? I thought this was Siri's tomb."
"It is, Father."
"Where is she interred? Under the floor for Chrissake?"
Donel mops at his brow. I remember that it is his mother I am speaking of. I also
remember that he has had almost two years to accustom himself to the idea of her
death.
"No one told you?" he asks.
"Told me what?" The anger and confusion is already ebbing. "I was rushed here
from the dropship station and told that I was to visit Siri's tomb before the farcaster
opening. What?"
"Mother was cremated as per her instructions. Her ashes were spread on the Great
South Sea from the highest platform of the family isle."
"Then why this ... crypt?" I watch what I say. Donel is sensitive.
He mops his brow again and glances toward the door. We are shielded from the
view of the crowd but we are far behind schedule. Already the other members of the
Coun-cil have had to hurry down the hill to join the other dig-nitaries on the
bandstand. My slow grief this day has been worse than bad timing—it has turned
into bad theater.
"Mother left instructions. They were carried out." He touches a panel on the inner
wall and it slides up to reveal a small niche containing a metal box. My name is on it.
"What is that?"
Donel shakes his head. "Personal items Mother left for you. Only Magritte knew the
details and she died last win-ter without telling anyone."
"All right," I say. "Thank you. I'll be out in a mo-ment."
Donel glances at his chronometer. "The ceremony begins in eight minutes. They will
activate the farcaster in twenty minutes."
"I know," I say. I do know. Part of me knows precisely how much time is left. "I'll
be out in a moment."
Donel hesitates and then departs. I close the door be-hind him with a touch of my
palm. The metal box is sur-prisingly heavy. I set it on the stone floor and crouch
beside it. A smaller palmlock gives me access. The lid clicks open and I peer into
the container.
"Well, I'll be damned," I say softly. I do not know what I expected—artifacts
perhaps, nostalgic mementos of our hundred and three days together—perhaps a
pressed flower from some forgotten offering or the frenchhorn conch we dove for
off Fevarone. But there are no mementos—not as such.
The box holds a small Steiner-Ginn handlaser, one of the most powerful projection
weapons ever made. The ac-cumulator is attached by a powerlead to a small
fusion-cell that Siri must have cannibalized from her new submers-ible. Also attached
to the fusion-cell is an ancient comlog, an antique with a solid state interior and a
liquid crystal diskey. The charge indicator glows green.
There are two other objects in the box. One is the translator medallion we had used
so long ago. The final object makes me smile ruefully.
"Why you little bitch," I say softly. I know now where Siri had been when I awoke
alone that first time in the hills above Firstsite. I shake my head and smile again.
"You dear, conniving, little bitch." There, rolled carefully, powerleads correctly
attached, lies the hawking mat which Mike Osho had purchased for thirty marks in
Carvnal Market.
I leave the hawking mat there, disconnect the comlog, and lift it out. The device is
ancient, possibly dating back to pre-Hegira times. I can imagine it being handed
down in Siri's family from the seedship generation. I sit cross-legged on the cold
stone and thumb the diskey. The light in the crypt fades and suddenly Siri is there
before me.


They did not throw me off the ship when Mike died. They could have but they did
not. They did not leave me to the mercy of provincial justice on Maui-Covenant.
They could have but they chose not to. For two days I was held in Security and
questioned, once by Shipmaster Singh himself. Then they let me return to duty. For
the four months of the long leap back I tortured myself with the memory of Mike's
murder. I knew that in my clumsy way I had helped to murder him. I put in my
shifts, dreamed my sweaty nightmares, and wondered if they would dis-miss me
when we reached the web. They could have told me but they chose not to.
They did not dismiss me. I was to have my normal leave in the web but could take
no off-Ship R-and-R while in the Maui-Covenant system. In addition, there was a
written reprimand and temporary reduction in rank. That was what Mike's life had
been worth—a reprimand and re-duction in rank.
I took my three-week leave with the rest of the crew but unlike the others I did not
plan to return. I farcast to Esperance and made the classic Shipman's mistake of
try-ing to visit family. Two days in the crowded residential hive was enough and I
stepped to Lusus and took my plea-sure in three days of whoring on the Rue des
Chats. When my mood turned darker I 'cast to Ouster and lost most of my ready
marks betting on the bloody Shrike fights there.
Finally I found myself farcasting to Homesystem Sta-tion and taking the two-day
pilgrim shuttle down to Hellas Basin. I had never been to Homesystem or Mars
before and I never plan to return, but the ten days I spent there, alone and wandering
the dusty, haunted corridors of the Monastery, served to send me back to the Ship.
Back to Siri.
Occasionally I would leave the red-stoned maze of the megalith and, clad only in
skinsuit and mask, stand on one of the uncounted thousands of stone balconies and
stare skyward at the pale gray star which had once been Old Earth. Sometimes then I
thought of the brave and stupid idealists heading out into the great dark in their slow
and leaking ships, carrying embryos and ideologies with equal faith and care. But
most times I did not try to think. Most times I simply stood in the purple night and
let Siri come to me. There in the Master's Rock, where perfect satori had eluded so
many much more worthy pilgrims, I achieved it through the memory of a not-quite
sixteen-year-old womanchild's body lying next to mine while moonlight spilled from
a Thomas Hawk's wings.
When the Los Angeles spun back up to a quantum state, I went with her. Four
months later I was content to pull my shift with the construction crew, plug into my
usual stims, and sleep my R-and-R away. Then Singh came to me. "You're going
down," he said. I did not un-derstand. "In the past eleven years the groundlings have
turned your screw-up with Osho into a goddamned leg-end," said Singh. "There's an
entire cultural mythos built around your little roll in the hay with that colonial girl."
"What are you talking about?" I asked. I was irritated and frightened. "Are you
throwing me off the Ship?"
Singh grunted and brushed idly at his right eyebrow. The gold bracelet on his wrist
caught the light. "Did you know that your groundside girlfriend was a member of
their original Shipmaster's family?" he asked. "Sort of the local equivalent of
royalty."
"Siri?" I said stupidly.
"She told the story of your ... what shall we call it... your love affair to everyone she
could. Poems have been written about it. There was a play performed every year on
one of those floating islands of theirs. Evidently there's an entire cult that's sprung
up. You seem to be at the center of a romantic legend that's caught the imagination
of most of the yokels on the planet."
"Are you throwing me off the Ship?"
"Don't be stupid, Aspic," growled Singh. "You'll spend your three weeks of leave
groundside. The Hege-mony needs this planet. The Ambassador says that we need
the cooperation of the groundlings until the farcaster's operational and we get some
occupation troops through. If this half-assed, star-crossed-lovers myth can smooth
things for us during the next few trips, fine. The experts say you'll do the Hegemony
more good down there than up here. We'll see."
"Siri?" I said again.
"Get your gear," ordered Singh. "You're going down."
The world was waiting. Crowds were cheering. Siri was waving. We left the harbor
in a yellow catamaran and sailed south-southeast, bound for the Archipelago and her
family isle.

"Hello, Merin." Siri floats in the darkness of her tomb. The holo is not perfect; a
haziness mars the edges. But it is Siri—Siri as I last saw her, gray hair shorn rather
than cut, head high, face sharpened with shadows. "Hello, Merin my love."
"Hello, Siri," I say. The tomb door is closed.
"I am sorry I cannot share our Sixth Reunion, Merin. I looked forward to it." Siri
pauses and looks down at her hands. The image flickers slightly as dust motes float
through her form. "I had carefully planned what to say here," she goes on. "How to
say it. Arguments to be pled. Instructions to be given. But I know now how useless
that would have been. Either I have said it already and you have heard or there is
nothing left to say and silence would best suit the moment."
Siri's voice had grown even more beautiful with age. There is a fullness and calmness
there which can come only from knowing pain. Siri moves her hands and they
disappear beyond the border of the projection. "Merin my love, how strange our
days apart and together have been. How beautifully absurd the myth that bound us.
My days were but heartbeats to you. I hated you for that. You were the mirror that
would not lie. If you could have seen your face at the beginning of each Reunion!
The least you could have done was to hide your shock ... that, at least, you could
have done for me.
"But through your clumsy naivete there has always been ... what? ... something,
Merin. There is something there that belies the callowness and thoughtless egotism
which you wear so well. A caring, perhaps. A respect for caring, if nothing else.
"Therein lay the slim basis for so much hope through these long years, Merin. Even
through your Hive-born and Ship-bred shallowness there was that sense of caring. I
believe ... no, I know that you sometimes cared for me. If you could care for me,
you could care for our world. In our brief hours of sharing, you might find an
understand-ing. Therein lay our hope. Therein lay the only possible source of our
salvation.
"I confess that I did not plan this when I stole your silly flying carpet. I don't know
now what I was thinking and planning when I let you lead me from the Festival that
first time. Of kidnapping you, perhaps. Of delaying and seducing you until Uncle
Gresham could use any informa-tion you might have. Perhaps I dreamed even then
of your joining us, of both of us swimming free with the Sea Folk and protecting the
Covenant together. Then Bertol ruined everything...
"I miss you, Merin. Tonight I will go down to the har-bor and watch the stars awhile
and think of you. It will not be the first time I have done that.
"I'm sorry that I will not be waiting for you this time, Merin. But our world will be
waiting. The seas that I listen to tonight will greet you with the same song. Preserving
that song is not such an impossible idea, my love. They can't have this world without
controlling the isles and the Sea Folk control the isles.
"I've kept this diary since I was thirteen. It has hun-dreds of entries. By the time you
see this, they will all have been erased except the few that follow. Our love was not
all myth and machination. We were good friends and some of our times together
were sweet, were they not?
"Stay well, Merin. Stay well."


Donel was ten and we were trying to convince him to slide on the snowfield with us.
He was crying. Siri turned away from us even before the skimmer settled. When
Magritte stepped out we knew from Siri's face that something had happened.
The same face stares at me now. She brushes absently at the unruly strand of hair.
Her eyes are red but her voice is controlled. "Merin, they killed our son today. Alon
was twenty-one and they killed him. You were so confused to-day, Merin. 'How
could such a mistake have happened?' you kept repeating. You did not really know
our son but I could see the loss in your face when we heard. Merin, it was not an
accident. If nothing else survives, no other rec-ord, if you never understand why I
allowed a sentimental myth to rule my life, let this be known—it was not an
ac-cident that killed Alon. He was with the Separatists when the Council police
arrived. Even then he could have es-caped. We had prepared an alibi together. The
police would have believed his story. He chose to stay.
"Today, Merin, you were impressed with what I said to the crowd ... the mob ... at
the embassy. Know this, Shipman—when I said, 'Now is not the time to show your
anger and your hatred,' that is precisely what I meant. No more, no less. Today is
not the time. But the day will come. It will surely come. The Covenant was not taken
lightly in those final days, Merin. It is not taken lightly now. Those who have
forgotten will be surprised when the day comes but it will surely come.

I shut off the comlog and sit in silence for a minute. The crowd sounds are barely
audible through the thick walls of the tomb. I take a breath and thumb the diskey.
Siri appears. She is in her late forties. I know immedi-ately the day and place she
recorded this image. I remem-ber the cloak she wears, the eelstone pendant at her
neck, and the strand of hair which has escaped her barrette and even now falls
across her cheek. I remember everything about that day. It was the last day of our
Third Reunion and we were with friends on the heights above South Tern.
The image fades to another and in the split second ol overlap the face of a
26-year-old Siri appears superim-posed on the older woman's features. "Merin, I am
preg-nant. I'm so glad. You've been gone five weeks now and I miss you. Ten years
you'll be gone. More than that. Merin, why didn't you think to invite me to go with
you? I could not have gone, but I would have loved it if you had just invited me. But
I'm pregnant, Merin. The doctors say that it will be a boy. I will tell him about you,
my love. Perhaps someday you and he will sail in the Archi-pelago and listen to the
songs of the Sea Folk as you and I have done these past few weeks. Perhaps you'll
under-stand them by then. Merin, I miss you. Please hurry back."
The holographic image shimmers and shifts. The 16-year-old girl is red-faced. Her
long hair cascades over bare shoulders and a white nightgown. She speaks in a rush,
racing tears. "Shipman Merin Aspic, I'm sorry about your friend—I really am—but
you left without even say-ing good-bye. I had such plans about how you would help
us ... how you and I ... you didn't even say good-bye. I don't care what happens to
you. I hope you go back to your stinking, crowded Hegemony hives and rot for all I
care. In fact, Merin Aspic, I wouldn't want to see you again even if they paid me.
Good-bye."
She turns her back before the projection fades. It is dark in the tomb now but the
audio continues for a second. There is a soft chuckle and Siri's voice—I cannot tell
the age—comes one last time. "Adieu, Merin, Adieu."
"Adieu," I say and thumb the diskey off.

The crowd parts as I emerge blinking from the tomb. My poor timing has ruined the
drama of the event and now the smile on my face incites angry whispers.
Loud-speakers carry the rhetoric of the official ceremony even to our hilltop.
"...beginning a new era of cooperation," echoes the rich voice of the Ambassador.
I set the box on the grass and remove the hawking mat. The crowd presses forward
to see as I unroll the carpet. The tapestry is faded but the flight threads gleam like
new copper. I sit in the center of the mat and slide the heavy box on behind me.
"...and more will follow until space and time will cease to be obstacles."
The crowd moves back as I tap the flight design and the hawking mat rises four
meters into the air. Now I can see beyond the roof of the tomb. The islands are
returning to form the Equatorial Archipelago. I can see them, hun-dreds of them,
borne up out of the hungry south by gentle winds.
"So it is with great pleasure that I close this circuit and welcome you, the colony of
Maui-Covenant, into the com-munity of the Hegemony of Man."
The thin thread of the ceremonial corn-laser pulses to the zenith. There is a spattering
of applause and the band begins playing. I squint skyward just in time to see a new
star being born. Part of me knows to the microsecond what has just occurred.
For a few microseconds the farcaster had been func-tional. For a few microseconds
time and space had ceased to be obstacles. Then the massive tidal pull of the
artificial singularity triggered the thermite charge I had placed on the outer
containment sphere. That tiny explosion had not been visible but a second later the
expanding Schwarzschild radius is eating its shell, swallowing thirty-six thousand
tons of fragile dodecahedron, and growing quickly to gobble several thousand
kilometers of space around it. And that is visible—magnificently visible—as a
miniature nova flares whitely in the clear blue sky.
The band stops playing. People scream and run for cover. There is no reason to.
There is a burst of X-rays tunneling out as the farcaster continues to collapse into
it-self, but not enough to cause harm through Maui-Covenant's generous
atmosphere. A second streak of plasma becomes visible as the Los Angeles puts
more dis-tance between itself and the rapidly decaying little black hole. The winds
rise and the seas are choppier. There will be strange tides tonight.
I want to say something profound but I can think of nothing. Besides, the crowd is
in no mood to listen. I tell myself that I can hear some cheers mixed in with the
screams and shouts. I tap at the flight designs and the hawking mat speeds out over
the cliff and above the harbor. A Thomas Hawk lazing on midday thermals flaps in
panic at my approach.
"Let them come!" I shout at the fleeing hawk. "Let them come! I'll be thirty-five and
not alone and let them come if they dare!" I drop my fist and laugh. The wind is
blowing my hair and cooling the sweat on my chest and arms.
Cooler now, I take a sighting and set my course for the most distant of the isles. I
look forward to meeting the others. Even more, I look forward to talking to the Sea
Folk and telling them that it is time for the Shark to come at last to the seas of
Maui-Covenant.
Later, when the battles are won and the world is theirs, I will tell them about her. I
will sing to them of Siri.
                                      -=*@*=-