Ograqet He Reyoi
Vintricassii/Nen Fallar
1967

Shematur, My Father, My Father

        Shematur was annoyed when Blaxoi woke him up in what felt like the middle of the night by tugging at his big toe.

        "The radio's not working properly, Dad." his son's face peered in, grinning. "I can't get any stations from home. I can get a lot from Kletrac Jao, but only two from Blemerskat. There's lots of static. - Funny thing," he broke up into delighted chuckles, "they're all broadcasting Final War plays."

        Their counterparts on television were amongst his favorites.

        The first rays of the sun streaming into the Erkavesok's cabin couldn't prevent Shematur's blood running cold when he finally got up and tried the radio himself. Although he couldn't be absolutely sure since he didn't know much about how radios worked, there seemed no reason to believe it wasn't functioning perfectly. Blaxoi chuckled again as his father, careful not to betray his growing dread, turned on the plane's complex T.V. He called up the menu of satellite programs for the region, but only one was available, from Kletrac Jao's Broadcasting Service.

        It too was broadcasting a `Final War play', and that left no further doubts in Shematur's mind.

        Blaxoi watched enthralled, even though all that could be seen were urgently talking heads against what appeared to be a hastily hung backdrop. Obviously dated library pictures of people and places were occasionally inserted as they were referred to, but these only heightened the realism even more for the boy.

        Then to Shematur's horror, a breakout in which various people, some in uniform, urged people to be calm and to `follow instructions' sent Blaxoi into gales of laughter. Shematur's first instinct was to pull him up smartly, but then he felt the boy's childhood would end soon enough.

        Perhaps even his life, the thought only now entered his mind.

        The talking heads could all too obviously only guess at why the War had broken out. One insisted there must have been a computer failure somewhere, but another pointed out that the three superpowers had agreed to not install launch-on-warning systems precisely to minimize that risk. The first asked what that had to do with it. A third broke in with the suggestion that a meteorite swarm might have triggered it all off, but an expert-looking female dismissed that as unlikely since such swarms produced different radar traces from those a barrage of rockets would have. A white woman, who looked as if she had come straight out of the arctic wastes her kind originally roamed, suggested that since there had been no crises recently to keep everybody on their toes, somebody must have done something careless. Although this struck Shematur as no less plausible than any of the other reasons, she was ignored outright.

        The thought crossed his mind the Final War itself might well have begun with just such acrimony as this.

        Then the news came through that the tropical island of Paudrua, which Shematur had very reluctantly decided to overfly the day before because of storms in the area, had been obliterated. Its large military base must have made it a target.

        "Now we won't be able to go back one day like you promised," a mock-sad look passed across Blaxoi's face.

        "No, I guess we won't either," Shematur grinned carefully back at him.

        Shematur suddenly realized then that Paudrua's radio beacons were also out. If the Erkavesok couldn't triangulate from whatever beacons remained in the region, then sooner or later it would be unable to navigate its way to its destination. Even though the subtropical islands that made up Kletrac Jao were many, there were only three large ones, and Shematur had only a sketchy idea of how to navigate the hard way.

        He called up a map on screen showing the locations of all the beacons the craft was picking up. Only six were still operating in the entire region, four in Blemerskat, the major continent to the east of Kletrac Jao, and two in Kletrac Jao itself. So long as these kept working there would be no problem. He checked the navigation satellites on the off chance and found to his surprise that two of these were still operating. A quick systems check of the plane itself and a radar scan for potentially dangerous weather systems also showed the Erkavesok would have to be unlucky not to arrive at its destination unhindered.

        He also discovered that no incoming messages had been logged overnight.

        "What are you doing, Dad?" The first flicker of doubt began to cross Blaxoi's face.

        At this point Shemako, Shematur's wife, slid herself noisily out of her bunk. Even though Shematur was grateful for the diversion, his teeth set themselves on edge at the appallingly careless way she turned herself round and backed down its three steps. She then reached back in to lift out Reyoi, their little girl and Blaxoi's sister. For an instant it crossed his mind not to tell her what had happened immediately, but then his son, wanting to play a big joke on his mother, pointed to the television screen with glee and said, "Look, ma! The Final War's started! It's the end of the World!"

        When she looked quickly at her husband's face, she knew in an instant it was happening for real. She then glared at them both as if she didn't know who to hit first.

        Her ferocious obsession with The Fate of The World since Reyoi's birth was something Shematur hadn't been able to understand. All he knew was that it had come more and more to exclude the needs of her own family. Her once exquisite slenderness was now an emaciated angularity, her yellow eyes gleamed now rather than shone. Worst of all, she had dyed her hair, even if it was only a slightly darker shade than her natural bronze. That was the kind of thing those people did who hungered for media attention, and it just didn't fit the Shemako he had once known.

        He had searched his own soul ruthlessly, but could find no answer there. He had kept his physique and his mind as it had been when he met her - well, one had to make a few allowances for approaching middle age. But surely that had been more than made up for by his almost annual promotions.

        Reading the expressions on both his parents faces, it finally began to dawn on Blaxoi that the War was real His face was horrifying to watch. When he suddenly burst out bawling, Shematur felt it in the pit of his stomach.

        Then to his surprise the boy ran to put his arms around his mother's waist as if to comfort her in a way he himself had been totally unable to.

        And all that set Reyoi off even though she was far too little to possibly understand what was happening. She ran to her father for comfort and a cuddle which just melted his heart.
 
 

        Breakfast was a soggier mess than usual. Shematur had tried to get Shemako to talk about what they should do, but for all her concern about Ultimate Cataclysms, turning round and going back was as far as her thoughts seemed to be able to go. "Our part of the world might have survived", she insisted. She was completely incapable of accepting that it could not possibly have done so.

        Shematur realized then that she had never really thought the Final War war could ever actually happen.

        "What do you think we should do now?" she fixed him with her accusing eye.

        He discovered then to his horror that his own thoughts weren't all that much clearer.

        "I haven't come to a solid decision just yet," he tried to sound as decisive as he could.

        He tried to put together in his mind just what their options in fact were. They could either continue on for Kletrac Jao, or head instead for Blemerskat. At least there would be no language problems thank Thuk, both countries had once been colonies of the same long-faded world power as their own. Blemerskat, being much larger than Kletrac Jao in both size and population, would have more resources to draw upon. Recovery, if it was going to be possible at all, would be more likely there. Yet although Blemerskat had been hit by only a few bombs, mostly on its military installations, Kletrac Jao had not been bombed at all. They would also reach it somewhat sooner, probably in the latter part of the afternoon. Both factors made it seem just that much better to keep going as they were.

        North or south Kletrac Jao? The Erkavesok had enough charge left to remain aloft for three more days. They could if they wished carry on all the way to the tiny island marking Kletrac Jao's southernmost point. But it seemed wiser to stay north if possible. Although the risk of fallout was higher, at least temperatures wouldn't drop so low during the Nuclear Winter that, in spite of the denials of some experts, might well still come. At least it was midsummer in this hemisphere, that improved the odds a little.

        City or country? Should they land at Intiksua with its international airport as international aviation law demanded?. Or head straight for some remote country town? A small community certainly seemed to offer a better chance of survival. More land, fewer people, less chance of panic and crime. On the other hand he had seen small town politics in the town he had grown up in. Cut off from the stabilizing influences of larger cities, anything could happen and often had. Nevertheless, it did seem a better bet.

        He called up on screen a map of Kletrac Jao's north island. It took him only a very short time to see that its northernmost region was barely more than a peninsula connected to the rest of the island by a narrow isthmus. This would allow the inhabitants to cut themselves off from the rest of the country if things really got out of hand. It was the obvious place to go.

        He made all these points one by one to his family round the narrow breakfast table. Shemako nodded vacantly as if it didn't really matter, but his son nodded back at him with an oddly older, wiser look in his eyes as if what his father had said merely agreed with his own thinking all along.

        Reyoi merely stared into her tiny lap.

        Shematur stared out over the gray ocean far below. Dotted with its little puffs of cloud, it looked like something out of dropflo art. Shemako had settled down with the kids to the board games they had brought with them for the long passages over the ocean. Their more usual electronic games had had to remain at home in case they interfered with the Erkavesok's avionics.

        It was just as well they were enjoying them, it wouldn't be long before they were all they could have. The technology that had produced their electronic counterparts was now effectively as dead as the intricate social and economic infrastructure from which it had arisen. He couldn't see any way the hand-me-down cultures of the two little countries which now survived - if they continued to survive - could become the seeds for its self-regeneration.

        Along with those games of course would go one of the very real highlights of that technology, aircraft like the Erkavesok itself. Conceived originally as a coastguard spotter for the near-superpower country of Phengue that had a coastline as indented and convoluted as its politics, it had become recognized as a genuine paradigm of aviation design. Essentially it was an enormous flying wing-shaped plastic battery, its top surface covered in solar cells, that allowed its electroconductive plastic engines to keep it aloft for a week or more. The price of this endurance however was a very slow speed, its two huge propellers pushed it along no faster than a motorized sailplane, though just as silently as one. Apart from a smoky darkening towards the roof, the cabin was transparent. Designed to allow its original crew of four to live in comfort, its wide elliptical cross-section meant it could be stood up and walked around in comfortably, indeed it was as roomy as the family rooms of many houses. In addition to that, the wing roots were thick enough to contain, on the left, two bunks plus a tiny galley, and on the right, two more bunks plus a cubby-hole bathroom containing a small bath with its own recirculated and filtered water supply.

        As usual the new piece of technology the plane represented fed back, albeit in a small way, into the infrastructure that created it. A hire company, originally in business to hire out blue-water cruising yachts, had purchased a fleet almost as big as Phengue's itself. It then laid out a number of recommended routes, some of them, like the one the Erkavesok was now following, girdling the world. Since its onboard charger could automatically adapt to the electrical supply voltage of any country it visited, the plane could land at even the smallest airport literally anywhere. Although this meant no network of agents had to be supported, its hireage still wasn't cheap. But then Shematur hadn't had to pay, his company had done that as a special bonus for leading its development of electroconductive and other plastics for use in Space environments.

        It only then jumped into Shematur's mind that, with all its advanced technology, it was just as well the Erkavesok had been far enough over the horizon not to be affected by the powerful electromagnetic pulses from the Paudrua bombs.
 
 

        Taking control from the autopilot at last, Shematur felt real joy motoring the Erkavesok in through the fine, sunny stillness over the sandhills of the beach that formed the western shore of Kletrac Jao's isthmus. Rivikin airport's single runway was visible just a few kilometers away. He was thus completely unprepared for the shock of seeing that another plane like their own had crashed and burned right in the middle of it. Pulling himself together, he could see there was still enough room to land. But when he saw the look in Blaxoi's eye he decided not to risk it.

        Banking the Erkavesok round, he instead headed back to that lovely beach over which they had crossed into the country.
 
 

        Even before the plane coasted to a stop, Blaxoi had undone his straps and was almost out of his seat before Shematur's sharp command brought him up short. The boy's breathing was heavy with impending defiance as Shematur followed the power-down checklist. For a moment he became a little impatient himself when he heard the surf through the layers of plastic that had cocooned them from the outside world.

        He glanced quickly across at Shemako, frightened as to what he might see. His fears were confirmed but in a different way from what he expected. She simply smiled serenely back at him, apparently perfectly willing just to let events take their course.

        Shematur slowly undid his own straps, got up, then got up to lower the ramp that formed the rear floor of the cabin. Blaxoi was down it like a shot. He spent several moments running flat out round in circles on the broad, white beach with his arms outstretched and making a zizzing noise like a fighter plane. Then he raced off down to the sea itself. His little sister joined him as soon as her father, much relieved that his children were children again, could get her released from her straps.

        Then all of a sudden Blaxoi stopped stock still and peered into the distance behind the aircraft. He began pointing vigorously.

        They're coming!" he called out in mock alarm, and ran back towards the Erkavesok as if a mob of wild imba was pounding up the beach.

        His sister, shrieking excitedly even though she couldn't possibly have seen anything, managed to run up the ramp before him and hid behind her seat.

        Shematur now saw what Blaxoi had seen though. They weren't imba, but freld, about ten or fifteen of them. And they had riders.

        As they drew closer, they looked like colorfully-dressed ogiark herdsmen straight out of the tourist ads Shematur had seen for this country. Somehow though these didn't look quite as friendly, and he couldn't be sure the two brown-uniformed men heading up the brigade were actually Police.

        Not wanting to take any chances, Shematur told his family to stay in the plane. The kids just laughed excitedly back at him. As if they needed to be told.

        "Welcome to Kletrac Jao," the more senior of the two uniformed men greeted him as they swung themselves down from their saddles. "My name is Erst Frollak, Rivikin Division Police, and this is Bistal Filten, my Deputy." He glanced inside the plane, then grinned. "I see you're all here in one piece."

        "Yes," Shematur touched his own left eyebrow. "Though if it hadn't been for a storm over Paudrua..."

        "I see," Frollak laughed. "Now, before we go any further," he nodded to his Deputy who, with a singularly off-putting smirk on his face, pulled out his notebook, "we want to establish an inventory of people's occupations as soon as possible so we know who we can call on quickly if specialist help is needed. There probably won't be much time before that Winter we've been told about arrives," he squinted up at the clear azure sky. "So then, sir, what is your name, and what do you do?"

        Shematur formally introduced himself and his family. "I'm an industrial chemist," he then answered the second part of the man's question. "Though I am - was - more in the management side of things. - But I'd still like to think I could be of help," he tried to sound cheerful.

        "I see. You're a scientist," the man replied as that look came into his eyes that Shematur would never forget.
 
 

        Shematur and the five other prisoners he had been roped to had no doubts about where they were being marched to. Even the pall of black smoke drifting over the town from the beach where Frollak's men had set fire to the Erkavesok could not drown the stench. His fellow prisoners were clearly finding it just as hard to shove the horrific images it evoked from their minds as he did. But there would be no attempt to break free. The man assigned to get them there, one of Frollack's less pleasant minions, only had to use his filloga bat once to put that idea out of their heads.

        It was now horribly clear what had happened to the other plane. What a shocking waste. The Erkavesok and its twin would have been useful for all sorts of things, from offshore transport to medical emergencies. Perhaps even the coastal surveillance they had been designed for - did these silly people really think their shores wouldn't be invaded by hordes of refugees from the North, a good many of whom wouldn't ask whether they could stay? There was no reason why the planes couldn't have been kept serviceable indefinitely. But Frollack had apparently cut the peninsula off from all reason, just as they had cut it off from the rest of the country.

        Shematur had not, unfortunately, been the first to see the peninsula's defensive advantages.

        The abattoir rose dark and perverse from the fields of gamboling, barely-weaned ogiark. Shematur saw to his relief that it was not working, but it was obvious when he and his companions were finally prodded in through a loading dock that it had only recently been vacated. Indeed, the evidence made their march along the route the giark followed to their slaughter nerve-wracking.

        When they finally mounted the knife floor, it was too much for the youth at the back end of the rope. He screamed and tried to break away, causing them all to lost their balance and fall into a heap. After a sickeningly cut-off scream, the thud of a body and a quick slashing through of the rope, they needed no encouragement to pick themselves up.

        Shematur couldn't prevent himself from looking back at the youth. The cut in his throat was widening with each kicking convulsion. His murderer, the gleam of his smile matching the red-stained one of his heavy flat-bladed knife, stepped back to prevent the final bursting spurts of blood from reaching his incongruously tiny bright blue shoes.
 

        Marched round a corner into a mustier part of the abattoir, the five remaining prisoners were shoved in stunned silence through a tiny side-door into a vast, ancient wooden storehouse lit only by two rows of skylights in the roof. To Shematur's horror, something like two hundred men sat or lay round on the cobblestone floor. Behind them, in the right-hand corner against the stacks of old, neatly-folded tarpaulins lining the back wall, was a huge, less tidy pile of shrink-wrapped ogiark carcasses.

        Before the ropes were fully untied ("Plastic. Like all the other antiscience people I've ever met they're worse than ignorant, they're inconsistent," one of their helpers who introduced himself as Walty quipped grimly), Shematur anxiously asked what was likely to have happened to his family. He was quickly told that they were almost certainly being held hostage, like other visitors to the region, in exchange for scientists from the south. Frollack apparently intended to `clean the mass-murderering scientists out of our country'. Even worse, he was apparently attracting a lot of popular support, especially from the antiscience and antiwar people. If Shematur had landed somewhere else in Kletrac Jao, chances were he would eventually have finished up here anyway.

        Nobody knew what had happened to the female scientists though. Nor did anybody particularly want to guess.

        Shematur soon discovered that most of his fellow prisoners were not in fact scientists, but technicians. There was even one poor old man who merely had a passion for science fiction. And this more than anything else made the ghastliness of what was happening really begin to sink in. Kletrac Jao was probably the only country on the entire planet apart from Blemerskat with any chance of survival. But if Frollack and his followers were going to destroy what remained of everything that had been learned and built up over the millennia, was it going to be worth surviving in?

        And just how would Frollack go about disposing of his `mass-murderers'? Few doubted he was busy readying some form of `trial'. And, doubtless, execution.
 
 

        By the end of the fourth day however, when their numbers had swelled to over three hundred, they knew Frollack had had a far simpler Justice in mind.

        At first the temperature in the storehouse had climbed rapidly. The water from the two wash-basins in the toilet cubicles half way along the left wall had become almost too hot to drink. The sides of ogiark which, by the second day, they realized was all the food they were going to get, had also begun to thaw, some had even started to smell. But then, in that mid-afternoon, the vast chamber became noticeably darker. And as the hours passed, the temperature began to fall.

        It might have been an unseasonable cold front. But few really doubted that the Nuclear Winter had arrived except for most of the meteorologists, who considered it had come far too soon. Only one claimed it would never arrive at all.
 
 

        On the fifth day, there was as noticeable a hole in morale as there was in the pile of carcasses. The old man who had loved his science fiction had died in the night. His body had been laid out on the other side of the toilet block from the corner everybody had huddled into, trying to keep warm under the near-useless jinko-riddled tarpaulins.

        Then miraculously, `just in time for lunch' as Walty quipped with relief, the Military arrived from what had now become called the `mainland'.
 
 

        It was also upon that day, in the late afternoon, that the Iskurahi made Contact with the charred world of Nen Fallar.
 
 

        The last place Shematur had expected to find himself just hours after Rescue was back in his old suburb in his home city. Or rather the black, pulverized remains of it. It must have taken a number of bombs. Although Vintricassii had covered several hills, none had sheltered any part of it.

        But of course he wasn't really there at all, the radiation in most parts of the city was far too strong for people to survive more than an hour or so without irreversible damage. `He' was seeing and acting via an android to which his own sensor and effector systems were directly linked, while he was safely ensconced in a Touziel Facility hovering several kilometers overhead. `Remote Reality', the Iskurahi called it, and while in one sense it did feel real, in another it felt completely unreal.

        Equally stunning was the army of Tinsla that had been assigned to him to hunt for any survivors. These Tinsla had all been modified and dressed to look as if they could have mingled with Vintricassii's original citizens without drawing attention. Even the sniffers and sound detection units they used resembled locally manufactured ones. About the only thing that looked out of place was the Taurnal Field-protected flying platform `Shematur' was flown round on. But that was deliberate, in its case it was designed to draw the attention of possible survivors.

        At first he couldn't help wondering what the point of trying to find survivors was at all. Surely only people in the countryside would have had any chance. The Touziel, the Iskurahi's Dead World aid Division, had reassured him however that, even in cities as devastated as Vintricassii, there were always a few. And indeed they had turned out to be right. Most were found shivering in basements deep under multistory buildings, even those that had been driven into the ground under ground zero. There were also the miracles. A pair of convicts hiding deep in the caves on the city's outskirts gratefully turned themselves in. A boy of Blaxoi's age, forced by his grandfather to clean the flues of his underground house, was found stuck in them, barely alive.

        As Shematur learned however when it was all over, Rescue did not necessarily mean survival. Even though unguessable numbers of worlds went Dead somewhere in the Universe every second of every day, the mechanics of such operations as these was the easy part. Even the Tinsla were replaced every few days as the radiation they absorbed accumulated. The problem was that in all the 10 billion years of the Iskurahi's existence, no cure had ever been found for radiation sickness except in its low-dose forms. He heard that some people even in the Touziel believed a single, simple cure did exist, but that the Torsyne had deliberately suppressed it. Most however believed that, like advanced forms of cancer, such a thing was inherently impossible and even the Torsyne couldn't know of any. Even in its medium-dose forms the symptoms could usually only be controlled, beyond that little could be done. A Diursuel Medical Facility could basically only prolong the process of dying.

        Or shorten it.

        Shematur was told officially in response to his question that the four-to-sixteen day delay in the Iskurahi's Contacting a Dead World was to give itself time to work out how it would make its approach to such a world without the risk of triggering yet another exchange of missiles. Unofficial views however - and he was somehow surprised there were any considering the grip the Torsyne ultimately held on human affairs - differed. The most common was that it was a form of triage, those people who were most likely to die would, those who survived would have a reasonable chance of continuing to do so in `recoverable' health. The rest, in fringe or remote zones with the best chance of survival, would sort themselves out into groups that could then be easily approached and Rescued.

        The worst divergences of opinion however apparently occurred when Contact with a Dead World was not made at all. If the damage was assessed as `manageable', the `Dead' classification would be removed and the world would be left to try and rebuild on its own.

        Nen Fallar did not come into that category however. After its survivors were gated to a Holding World consisting solely of what resembled holiday resorts, the second, grislier, phase of the Touziel compromise of `aid' commenced. Semi-intelligent flying platforms with spray units were Nessiked in in their millions to bring the only humane conclusion to whatever life still remained. After they had performed their task, the Touziel's PlanetBurner bombs then rained down...
 
 

        The Renewed world of Nen Fallar on which Shematur rejoined his fellow survivors two years later was as much a replica of the original in its raw nature as Iskurahi technology could make it. The Iskurahi extracted truly colossal quantities of information and samples from it from its very birth and made these available to us through a special section in the Teklanmeh, our `Rolodont'. It was then up to us to use this to decide how much of what we had built should be replaced, from ancient ruins to our most modern cities, and how much of each should actually be replaced. All assistance would of course be given, but from now on we were back on our own. And we wanted to get it right.

        But of course some things could never be duplicated. Individual houses, yes, but not complete towns, cities, the hustle and bustle that had once moved them, the transport systems that had once connected them, the art galleries, restaurants that had made them worth living in.

        Or the people who had once filled them.

        A lot of Shemako's `Clean Nen Fallar' friends would doubtless have been pleased with such a new start if they could have had it without paying such a horrendous price. The new clean Nen Fallar would have no industrial estates, no polluted oceans, no depleted marine life, no acid rain. Too bad all those people had died with their dirty old world.

        Except for Shemako.

        However, although she had lived, she had not survived. Frollack as it turned out, had been as fanatically kind to women and children as he had been hard on scientists, he saw them and `their' children as the `true path to the future'. But although Shemako had not liked the world that was past, she clearly liked its future even less. Her face was a mask. Shematur found she no longer even recognized him, or worse, even tried to. It was as if she had had a massive stroke, he found it hard to believe it was a case of severe mental withdrawal as he had been told. Had the condition been acquired solely as a trauma, a cure might have taken mere days.

        "I am afraid," the Lalleldil doctor added quietly, "that it has its roots in something far more deep-seated than that. Whatever place we find for her, I suspect it will take a long time for her to find her cure."

        When he went on to explain how Shematur could choose euthanasia for her on her behalf, Shematur really knew he had almost certainly lost for ever the woman he had loved so much since she was a little girl. It was only that `almost certainly' that prevented him from agreeing to that course of action just yet. He said to the doctor that he wanted to give it time.

        "We'll all see how things progress," the doctor said gently to him.

        Shematur's children though were just fine. They had adapted well to something that was so fundamentally unreal he wondered how anybody could possibly `adapt' at all. Blaxoi had actually enjoyed himself in the Ghelfina's near military-style Orientation Camp in which he had been placed. Those few weeks had given him skills that enabled him to see the Universe as a gigantic playgarden. Shematur doubted if the boy would stay too long in his new/old home long in spite of his still tender age. For with everything being manufactured in the vast automated factories of deep interstellar Space and available merely for the asking, there was no money, no economic system, no need to learn a trade or skill. You could leave home when you wanted to.

        And there was no need even for an education. Shematur wondered if that wasn't too high a price for perpetual freedom from want.

        For Reyoi, he suspected, things would probably be even simpler. It would be as if the `real' Nen Fallar had never existed. Although she would doubtless stay with him longer, Shematur felt it unlikely she would even be Blaxoi's age when she took wing and flew.

        And how was he himself going to adjust? In his `old' life he had often speculated on what other worlds might be like should some form of interstellar travel ever be developed. But he had never imagined that he himself would be able to visit an entire Universe full merely by walking through a Magic Window like the one in the stories his parents had read to him so long, long ago...

        Nor could he have even remotely dreamt up an organization like the Iskurahi. That made him think of those recently discovered fractal figures with finite areas but infinitely long perimeters. He suspected that no matter how huge a piece of it one might see, it would still be just one infinitesimal detail within filigrees upon filigrees of inexhaustible detail. It wasn't so surprising now that even its own people could think up ulterior motives behind everything it did, guided by the Teklanmeh as it apparently was. Why for instance weren't worlds Contacted before they went Terminal? Was it really necessary for uncountable billions of innocent people to incinerate themselves every day to demonstrate to the rest of the Universe that it did have Free Will? Or was that really just another form of population control, like the easy access to euthanasia?

        And what of the Torsyne themselves? Those invisible machines with their infinitely superior capabilities who were behind everything? Had they turned the Universe into an idyll for their organic progenitors at the price of making inmates of them? Were The Big Questions ultimately unanswerable not because of the limitations of organic perception, but because Something really did Exist now that could Ultimately say No?

        Shematur suspected this new Order of Things was for him going to be no less full of pluses and minuses than the one it had replaced. Perhaps Walty had really said it all when Shematur met him again in the new Kletrac Jao during the Cahoctor Trial of Quiobraad and his cohorts:

        "Welcome to Paradise, old man."

Toa Jospaia Saiaroquu
Daenneu/Teweileg/Touziel
- 6.6E9

Renewed Worlds

        Statistically the average world has once chance in ten of destroying itself in a nuclear or some other form of all-consuming war before it Contacts, and one in one hundred of doing so before it Emerges.

        Even when a world does immolate itself so completely that the Touziel can declare it a `Dead World', a few of its human populations often survive, usually through a lucky combination of geographical and political remoteness. They are rigorously examined by specially trained teams from the Diursuel and, if passed as being in `recoverable' health, offered the opportunity to be transferred temporarily to a Holding World with extensive entertainment facilities. Samples from all the plants and animal species of their world are also stored on other worlds in environments that resemble their originals as closely as possible. If enough usable DNA from extinct species is available, this is also taken for their possible later reconstruction if requested.

        The Touziel always considers any life then remaining on a Dead World to be effectively as poisoned as if megatonnes of biological warfare agents had been dumped all over it. The vast majority of the human inhabitants who cannot be Rescued eventually die prolonged and horrifying deaths, if not directly from the radiation poisoning, then from starvation as their food crops perish or mutate, or from the plagues that inevitably follow. Even if some do survive all these, their children or their children's children suffer one or another of such fates in their place. And on their way to them, their disfigured bodies inevitably produce disfigured minds and disfigured societies.

        The process of recycling a Dead World into a New one begins as soon as any Rescue is complete. Myriads of flying platforms criss-cross the world pouring euthanasia gases into the atmosphere to relieve the larger faunal species at least of their lives. Then wave after wave of PlanetBurner Bombs are sent in, each wave detonating simultaneously all over the planet's surface, both land and sea. The fusion reactions that power these bombs however are designed to produce far more heat than blast. They fuse every single atom of the world's atmosphere and its oceans with every loose particle they can scour from its crust, yet preserve its topography as far as possible. All that is left is a hard dark clinker going down to an average depth of a meter or two, overlain with the very fine dust falling back onto it from high altitudes. From space all you can see are the ghostly outlines of the old continents, webbed with mountain chains and ex-oceanic ridges betwixt and between. And all are embalmed in ochre shades that appear as if airbrushed on.

        When they can be released from other such worlds, multitudes upon multitudes of Land `PlanetEaters' are now moved onto the surface like giant mechanical enzymes. These quickly spread out across the surface in staggered rows, bite into the clinker down to the crust below, then scoop it up and pass it through pulverizes that release much of the loosely-bound oxygen it contains. Other processes remove any radioactive components created by the War and Nessik them to other parts of the Universe if they are useful, or directly into very old stars that already contain them if they are not. Most of the clinker that is left is diverted into Recyclers which then transmute it into extra oxygen, nitrogen, and carefully rebacterialized soil that rolls out from the rear of the machines like rich brown carpets.

        After a sufficiently high atmospheric pressure has been recreated, Ocean PlanetEaters are then moved into the old ocean floors to recreate the oceans. These also seed the new waters with a single lifeform to begin with, a special strain of Blue-Green algae that oxygenates the water and contributes much to the air.

        Being semi-intelligent, all these PlanetEaters can be organized into competing teams within their respective kinds to ensure no patch of clinker remains unprocessed. Often, as their work approaches completion, they can actually become locked into disputes over `who' is to process a particular territory. Such excess machines are then automatically Nessiked back into Touziel reserves, or straight onto the next Dead World awaiting their services.

        This phase of the Rejuvenation usually only takes four to six months. By the time it concludes, the planet's weather systems have begun to resume their old patterns. Once more streams grow into mighty rivers, ponds into giant inland seas, oceans into continent-embracing currents. But the world is still far from being ready to draw its first breath of real life. There are no plants to hold the new soil in place to ensure that it isn't washed back into the pure ocean, or to prevent huge cyclones from building up, impeding the planet's further rejuvenation.

        Artificial trees and bushes are now inserted along the river banks and across the plains. These perform all the environmental functions of real ones and even look like them to some extent, at least above the ground. Their roots however are more like multipodal tendrils. Once a Planter machine positions a tree so that these roots can make contact with the ground, they burrow into it and pull the trunk of the tree after them so that it settles into place. Then, when the natural flora of the world is finally regenerated, which with the Touziel's techniques take no more than 13 months, each tree withdraws its roots on the Planter's command so that it can simply lift it back into its hold and, after sterilization, Nessik it on to the next World to do its duty. The Planter then Nessiks in the appropriate natural tree, complete with its bolus of soil, and inserts it into its place.

        At the same time as the natural flora is reintroduced, all those minor faunal forms such as insects that depend on it and which it in turn depends on is carefully returned. Then progressively higher levels of the foodchain follow one by one as their predecessor's populations burgeon. As much of this work as possible is carried out by volunteers from the world's original human inhabitants, since the work can be very pleasant for them. The larger species and most of the aquatic ones however have to be returned by Tinsla.

        Then the time finally arrives, just 18 to 20 months after their Rescue, for the rest of the human population to move back in and take possession. Teams of Tinsla then help them rebuild their towns and cities to any required degree of detail if they want that, otherwise they can begin entirely anew.
 

        Not all Dead Worlds can be resettled by their human populations though. Sometimes no populations survive the devastation at all or, if they do, cannot be salvaged. Some of the Rescued populations, especially if they are few in number, prefer to let go of old memories or feel guilty about them; they choose to share another world with other survivors if they are welcome, or be shifted to a whole New World altogether. Some even prefer to remain on their Holding World, which then becomes their World. Their old worlds can then be turned into new Holding Worlds, or transferred to the Lalleldil for their communities.

        A few of these `empty' worlds are renewed in a very different way from that which I have described. They become part of the Holliswald System at the atmosphere regeneration stage. The harshest of these worlds are reserved for Holliswald's worst criminals, those who face execution at the end of their sentences. Here the inmates dig trenches into the clinker and break it up to release oxygen while wearing radiation-protection suits. No matter how light and pliable the Eonmern might make these suits, there is no way they can be as easy to work in as the nakedness in which inmates of the less harsh Holliswalds perform their otherwise identical work. These prisoners are usually serving first or second sentences of various lengths, from a day or two for minor crimes and up to eighteen weeks for serious crimes. Second sentences for serious crime almost always end in Termination.

        Holliswalds naturally take somewhat longer to become New Worlds. But then that is part of the punishment. Humans who commit crimes against other humans are made to do work that can be done far more quickly and efficiently by machines.

        The Holliswald system itself is certainly interesting, even if only from an outsider's point of view. Each of its worlds is called `Holliswald' so that one cannot be distinguished from any other; prisoners literally cannot know where they are in the Universe. They will never be able therefore to return to a particular world and seek some form of retribution from its new owners when it is finally allocated. As well as that, each day they are moved to a different `Holliswald', and that day begins on whatever Outubaba, or entry point, its sun happens to be dawning. Since no work is done at night, successive daily prisoner intakes therefore follow the sun round its surface as each prisoner works out each day of his or her sentence. At night they are Nessiked back to their cells in a Holliswald Turow, which are believed to be in buildings of indefinite size in unknown locations, perhaps even in deep space.

        The appearance of a Holliswald is interesting when observed from the right altitude. As the trenches progress they form a set of interlocking whorls and spirals; the collective effect is to make the planet look as though it has been covered in gigantic fingerprints.

        The Cahoctor assures us that less than one percent of the population of the average Emerged World engages in any form of criminal activity in their lives. Looking at (and having experienced) the `average' Holliswald, I am surprised it is even as high as that.
 

Thanabculhesed
Panial/Jovlixnia
- 5.3E9

Sarcosc Worlds

        When a preContact Industrial World dies, it is usually through thermonuclear or biochemical warfare, though in the latter case such worlds usually maim themselves rather than die outright. Even worse than either of these horrors however is when a world perishes through both. This is what happened on my own world.

        We didn't think this could happen to us because we had suffered a natural worldwide plague shortly before our Industrial Era began. When our subsequent Scientific Era eventually allowed us to develop our nuclear weapons we thought that they would never `really' be used because that Plague and its horrors was still a potent image in our culture. Even the notion of Biochemical warfare was dismissed as an obscene fantasy in the worst kind of fiction.

        But that was our mistake.

        I belonged to a minority culture on our planet that was physically remote from all the others. This did not however prevent us from rapidly catching up to the major ones in our power and influence. We did this through our exceptional ability to develop technologies quickly and efficiently from the latest scientific findings. Unfortunately however this caused our political leaders to adopt extreme moral stances with respect to politics of the `old world'. I myself recall them stating, `we don't see why we should have to risk being blown back into a radioactive Dirt Age along with everybody else because of the moral decline in this world's leading cultures. If that decline progresses, some form of nuclear `accident' is inevitable now that so many of this world's nations possess nuclear bombs.'

        In such great secrecy that our own people didn't learn of it until our Rescue by the Diursuel, my country's politicians forced our leading biochemical research laboratories to insert the active components of a particularly deadly virus into the genetic structures of a normally harmless but highly infectious bacterium. They made sure however that the laboratories also developed an antidote so that our entire population could be inoculated with it; they then arranged for that under the guise of inoculating us against one of the relatively minor contagious illnesses we suffered from time to time. They then created massive quantities of the `bioweapon' so that agents could spread it along the windward coastal regions of the `corrupt' cultures using light aircraft actually hired from their victims. The politicians recognized that many innocent people visiting those countries from our own would die, but they felt that at least the numbers would be far, far less than if a nuclear war broke out.

        However, when people in the target cultures began to die in their thousands, then in their millions, each of those cultures thought one or more of the others had started it. Their horror was so immense that it probably did not cross their minds to compare notes, let alone even try to identify, decode then neutralize the bacterium or its contents. The nuclear buttons were pushed instead.

        The consequences were far worse even than if the exchanges were purely nuclear. The radiation and the immense amount of dust it created provided ideal conditions for the bugs to reproduce and spread as far and wide as our planet's now altered weather patterns could carry them. They also quickly mutated into a variety of different forms. No Migra nor medical facility, even those of the Diursuel as we were later to learn, could be absolutely sure of keeping up with them.

        As you can imagine, if a virulent bug escapes into the Universe with its instant travel anywhere and everywhere and gets through the Migras, it might prove literally impossible to eradicate. Although I suspect it makes little difference to Torsyne reality whether cultures like ours die (as some of our own people believe we deserve to), they still seem prepared to give us a chance.

        It comes at a price though. Iskurahi Policy with Sarcosc Cultures is to transfer them onto a wholly new World rather than Renew their old one for them. The Tinsla that help settle us in even remain with us permanently after the transfer is complete. Our New World is then quarantined. Research into our diseases then have to be carried out by our own qualified experts, although all the resources of the Iskurahi and the Teklanmeh are available to them remotely. No persons or material of any kind are allowed to leave a Sarcosc World until no new case of illness have been reported for at least seven generations.

        Our New World reached that point over thirty years ago, and I have now learned that that is not the end of the matter. Even when a Sarcosc World is allowed to Emerge, there is still considerable prejudice shown towards us by many of the people of other Worlds. Some even request their Nessiks to prevent our entry to them. We find this hard to understand since it seems to me that the risk of our carrying infectious organisms by that time is no greater than a citizen from any other world - perhaps even less since we are so rigorously monitored. Since the Ghelfina does its best through the Standard Curriculum to minimize that prejudice, we can only assume it persists in the same way as that for more conventional maladies acquired by unsavory means.

        Is it also possible that `normal' people feel there is something basically wrong with our psychological makeup to have let something like that happen to us? I have to say that, looking at the history of my old world and especially that of my own culture, the suggestion doesn't seem entirely unjustified.
 
 

        ...Pick...Chunk..! ...Pick...Chunk..!...Pick...Chunk..!

        "I wonder just whose silly perverted notion of nobility this was...

        "What's that, mister?"

        "Sorry, just thinking aloud..." Barkworth replied to Spartil.

        As Barkworth's pick rose, Spartil's fell. They had their two meter deep by three wide trench all to themselves. Women were always paired with men wherever possible, presumably because there would be less inclination to rebel against the unrebellable. The only concession made to women were that their picks were smaller and lighter, but as he had learned from Spartil - about the only thing he had learned from Spartil - was that some women found that this actually made their work harder and were prepared to swap in return for certain favors.

        Barkworth took the hint, but not the offer. Even if he felt able to, he doubt that he would have. Spartil was not unattractive in spite of her being late middle aged. She was however covered from her lower hips down to her upper thighs with enough hair to make him suspect that her race was on the outer fringes of the human spectrum. The unkind thought crossed his mind that her people might figure more highly in the crime statistics of Paradise than most.

        ....Blaaaarpp..!

        The Grappay's signal meant that the oxygen in their trench had become too low. They immediately threw down their picks, picked up their mauls of the same dubious size concessions, and began to break up the dark clinker they had piled up around them into smaller lumps and shards. This would release enough vital oxygen for themselves for another round of picking, plus a minimum quota for the future World of Paradise that Holliswald would one day, perhaps in a thousand years or so, be.

        ...Thud...Thud...Bash...Bash...Thud...

        ....Beeeeep..! The Grappay announced that they were now to fill the trench in behind them properly. This was the phase Barkworth hated the most, since to toss ones tailings high enough you really needed a little more room than your Pair could allow even if you threw while she dug. It was also usually the longest phase, since he still hadn't quite learned how to do it properly.

        Barkworth had of course seen Grappays in the Teklanmeh, but it still didn't quite prepare him for the shock of actually seeing one, let alone being placed under the control of one. Always keeping a pace or two ahead of the working face of the trench, it looked like the skeleton of an Angel. Its white plastic-like bones were not moved by natural-looking artificial musculature however, but by pneumatic actuators, one could hear the soft punta... punta... punta... of the air-compressor attached to its back like a metal haversack. The black ovoid casing in its chest cavity appeared to contain its brain as well as its power source, for a profusion of cable harnesses and pressure hoses led from this to all its external sensors, its actuator valves, and the kinesthetic sensors in its various joints. The whole thing looked and sounded like a robot that had been built in some maniacal Age of Steam in which microelectronics had arrived a hundred years too soon.

        But if its body seemed even vaguely human, its head certainly was not. It consisted of a black tube about a meter long and perhaps ten centimeters wide. Eyes complete with nictating lids were mounted on short stalks at both ends of this so that the machine could see backwards as well as forwards as it moved along and guided the progress of a trench. The tube was largely hollow, and was in fact a so-called `sound laser', a sound telescope with a powerful emitter mounted where the microphone would normally be. If one ignored or failed to hear its low-oxygen warning signal, it didn't give you much time before it aimed its tube at you and you heard the sound of a million fingernails being scratched down a million backboards.

        Barkworth had only heard that sound once.

        If Angels were designed to be reassuring in appearance, Grappays had clearly been designed to have the opposite effect.

        ...Blip..! Blip..! Blip..!

        At last they could return to the Pick...Clunk! phase and attack the immovable trench face of the Cahoctor once again.
 

        Barkworth wondered as he picked and pulled how many people came into Holliswald through good deeds that had gone wrong. Those Bethian contraceptives had worked all right, there weren't even any physical side effects apart from a little discomfort some of their people had reported. The social side effects however were a different story. It was considered by many in the Iskurahi that the renowned quality of the Bethian's work had begun to deteriorate. Somebody half-jokingly suggested that sending them a few thousand old soft-core pornographic 2Ds to rework might help them readjust to their new situation. The idea was accepted seriously however as being the most plausible of the very few others that had been put forward.

        The quality returned, but only after unguessably huge numbers of exquisitely well-crafted pornographic 3Ds and Virtual Realities had been distributed throughout Paradise. In order that honor be satisfied, the suggestion was made - perhaps by the same half-serious person - that all those people connected with the project spend one day in Holliswald. Again the suggestion was taken seriously and adopted.

        Eve's Nessik had opened at the appointed moment directly into a cell in a Turow, the Holliswald jail where prisoners spent the night. He was given breakfast by the Angel assigned to him and shown a training 3D that showed him all he needed to know about Holliswald and what was expected of him. He then surrendered all his clothes and personal items apart from his Hilashel, showered, then used the special toilet which also extracted the appropriate body samples and checked his vital functions.

        The door to this cubicle turned out to contain a Nessik which discharged him into an Outubaba Assembly Yard a hectare or so in size, surrounded by cubicles similar to the one he had just left. He had just noticed that they were in pairs when Spartil stepped out of hers to the left of his own, he knew from the training 3D that she was to be his `Pair' for the day. It was while they removed their necessary items of equipment from the racks on the walls of the cubicles that she had introduced herself and made her offer.

        The Assembly Yard would etch itself on Barkworth's mind for ever. He had of course been to many worlds and seen many variations in the Human Spectrum, but after all the new inmates had streamed out of their cubicles into the Yard, he realized that he had never seen such a large number of different races all together in the one place. It was a physiological Babel of Polynesian Torso connecting Filipino limbs and Pygmy heads, African Bushman faces atop Red Indian bodies and Eskimo limbs, or, in one spectacular case, Elgin Marble cheekbones with two pairs of Botticelli breasts and Reubens thighs. It was also a Babel of languages which his Hilashel could only attempt to translate snatches of. He heard fragments of political philosophies, indignations about Civil Rights, complaints about the breakfast and the medical examination, and all too often expressions of hopelessness from those who would be Executed at the end of their Sentences.

        They were not given long to mingle however, already the Grappays assigned to each Pair were entering the throng and seeking them out. Barkworth remembered being approached from behind, tapped on the shoulder, and that low but ghastly fingers-down-the-blackboard warning sound it made before it issued its simple prerecorded-sounding `You Pair follow me.'
 

        ...Braaaka..!...Braaaka..!...Braaaka..!

        They dropped their picks as if they were on double 3D and scrambled up the tailings. Barkworth was nearly knocked over by a huge pink girl as he and Spartil began to run, avoiding open trenches along with the hordes of other naked figures running in front of them, behind them, all round them as what looked like a cast of thousands converged on the pentagonal lunch-house close by the Outubaba. One had to be careful to avoid dense patches of people, already one bunch had run into an open trench and found themselves piled up into it in screams of agony. Two ambulances rose up from behind the lunch-house, one moving quickly to the scene of this accident, the other apparently moving off towards another.

        It was elbow to elbow though over the last fifty meters of open ground surrounding the sprawling open-sided building with its algae-stained timbers. A second deafening ...Braaaka..! ...Braaaka..! ...Braaaka..! from its own klaxons then warned any stragglers that the Dome Taurnal Field was about to be switched on. Barkworth looked round to see if Spartil was still with him, but she was nowhere to be seen.

        He had just made it inside the chalk-like ring that marked the Dome's boundary before he heard the slight pop of its coming on. He could almost smell the oxygen that now hissed from the shower head-like diffusers mounted in the ceiling rafters.

        He was bumped first towards one of the aisles that separated the waist-high booths, then into another. He moved down it as quickly as he could and sidestepped into the first vacant booth he could find. A Force-Field door then apparently came on to prevent anybody else entering the booth unless they were of the opposite sex, for several men attempted to enter but could not. It appeared that, unlike Old Earth, crime in Paradise was an Equal Opportunity employer.

        The woman who did succeed was more woman than any Barkworth had seen - and smelt, that husky perfume hit him instantly - in many, many years. Her body was a sexual superstimulus even though he could not figure out why. If her body fat had been distributed even slightly differently... He wondered if it was a characteristic of all women from her Home World. Her face was more conventionally beautiful in an Indian way with fine brows, her lips though were cupids-bow English. Although her hair was Negroid in the way it tightly curled against her scalp, it was of a lustrous shade of light blonde. Her hands and arms were pure Balinese; even the way she was moving them was hypnotically fluid.

        But if anything could be more compelling than that extraordinary body, it was her huge dark eyes. Perhaps it was because they were not perfectly clear and deep, but contained the hint of a blue haze that made him think of the smoke he had seen issuing from one of his father's electronic circuit boards as a child.

        "Grab it before it turns green," she pointed at his bowl as she sat down opposite him. Their legs unavoidably intertwined, causing him to freeze up as he stared at the clear polycarb bowl full of some porridge-like substance with a big red plastic spoon sticking out of it.

        "Hurry. What do you think that green stuff is they keep cleaning off the woodwork round here?"

        She had already started ladling huge quantities of the stuff into that extraordinary rosebud-shaped mouth of hers in a way that seemed crazily impossible.

        Barkworth made himself do as she urged. He tasted a small quantity first, then shoveled it in almost as quickly as the girl was doing. It had a surprisingly pleasant taste, somewhere between roast potato and peanut with a hint of roast-beef-and three-veg. Indeed, almost the only sound he could hear round him was the click of plastic against plastic. Holliswald's food engineering was apparently as clever as its psychological.

        He glanced up at the four moss-covered poles which defined the corners of their booth. He had seen that blue-green moss in the 3Ds of the Renewing of Dead Worlds that had been a part of his childhood education. Like most members of that all but universal species, it had first evolved in worlds whose oxygen levels were around ten percent or so. Once it did appear, it was a considerable help in pushing those levels up to the normal twenty to thirty percent so that the rest of Life could more easily and quickly evolve. The strain that was used on Holliswald was clearly engineered for high production through high reproduction.

        Sitting in the booth thigh to thigh with her would have been entirely pleasant were it not for the decapitated heads of Grappays slung under the rafters every half-dozen booths or so.

        When the woman looked up from her now nearly-empty bowl, Barkworth was once again stuck by her addictive gorgeousness.

        "Well," she said, "you look as if you badly want to know my name, so it's Innisheer. What are you on Holliswald for?"

        Compelling as she was, Barkworth felt uneasy about having let her put him on the back foot so quickly.

        "My name is Barkworth," he said to her as politely and as levelly as he could. "And I come from the World of Earth. As for what I have done..."

        He then told her about Bethia as briefly and as simply as he could, and was relieved to see what appeared to be interest force its way through the barricade of Innisheer's exquisite but immovable countenance.

        "...The contraceptives worked all right," he said finishing his story, "there was no problem with those. But unfortunately it seems that with social work, curing one problem merely creates whole new ones. How were we going to get the Bethians back to their old work, not just for their benefit but for everybody's? And even if we did, would it be of the same high quality it had always been?"

        What Barkworth hoped was a smile began to play around Innisheer's lips.

        "Then somebody half-jokingly suggested that if we sent them a few thousand soft-core pornographic 3D's for them to rework - "

        She burst into unmistakable laughter.

        "And that's exactly what happened." he couldn't laughing himself. "The Iskurahi thought it was the best possible solution under the circumstances, but in turn they had the bright idea that all of us who were even grazingly involved with the project should voluntarily spend a day on Holliswald as a demonstration of good faith."

        Innisheer was now laughing so hard she was beginning to draw attention, and not just from assorted faces peering over the booths. The Grappay that controlled their area emitted a loud warning buzz and swung round on them. They both held their breath as it lined itself up on her, but after a few seconds it swung away to point in a neutral direction. Barkworth had struggled to keep his face immobile, but he was at last able to grin back at her with relief when she finally looked back at him.

        "So now then, what's your story..?" he asked her.

        What Barkworth suspected was an element of uncertainty crept into her eyes.

        "Theft", she finally replied.

        "Theft? Of what?" was all he could say in return. After all, in a Universe of Interminable Plenty, what could one possibly steal?

        "There's actually a lot of things one can steal," Innisheer replied. "Most people grow quite attached to the things they own, even those that can be quickly replaced on demand. Then there are those things which cannot be replaced so easily; pets, rare antiques, art works, family heirlooms and so on."

        "But aren't such things readily traceable?" Barkworth replied. "They all have embedded coded retransmitters of some sort, and pretty soon you'd be traced by the Adjoahsno."

        "There are other reasons for stealing things than to just acquire them. Indeed, they are the only worthwhile reasons left. Perhaps you will understand me better when I tell you that I'm from a sarcosc world."

        Barkworth was barely able to suppress an involuntary shudder.

        "Yes, I can see you've been brought up very well." If there was any trace of sarcasm in Innisheer's voice, Barkworth's Hilashel failed to pick it up. "But that was ten generations ago on my world. We have to be risk-free by now. But people still react."

        "Some people will always find a way to make themselves feel superior, even in this Paradise of Level Playing-Fields," Barkworth replied. "But coming from a Sarcosc World doesn't make you a thief, does it? People from such Worlds are no more likely to be represented here than those from any other, are they?" he glanced around.

        "I wouldn't be surprised if they were," Innisheer said. "I know I stole because I had had enough of being an instant outsider. I didn't have to tell anyone I was from a Sarcosc World, and of course we have no body markings to distinguish us as such. But when you get close to someone, you have to tell them because you know they'll find out sooner or later, especially when they ask to visit your world. And as soon as they know, the attitude of all your friends soon changes, though very subtly of course. Half of them support you, half turn against you, and suddenly you've gone from being a person to being an issue."

        "And stealing people's stuff is a time-honored way of getting at people who steal your soul."

        Barkworth couldn't really tell, but he suspected Innisheer was looking at him as if he had been sarcastic.

        "Look, there has to be at least some faint glimmer of hope," he said, "After all, we found a solution to the Bethian's problem after others had tried for millennia."

        "I don't really think so. Not after billions of years, I really don't. Meanwhile I've got nearly four more weeks to serve of my eighteen-week second sentence. With, by the way."

        Barkworth stared at her in horror. She would die soon. And the Cahoctor allowed no appeals, even on Terminal Sentences.

        In a small corner of his mind though he also began to wonder just what she had done to deserve that.

        It crossed his mind then that there was simply no way of telling from her facial expressions and body language how straight she was being; Hilashels weren't designed to be lie detectors. And he certainly had no way of telling whether she was trying to elicit sympathy or playing him along in some other way.

        She appeared to shift uneasily in her chair as if being able to read these thoughts from his face, even though Barkworth couldn't see how; she was after all at the same translational disadvantage as he was. Perhaps she was just good at appearing to be. Perhaps...

        But it was useless. There was no way he could ever know anything about Innisheer.

        "Did you work alone or with friends?" Barkworth asked her, pulling the question out of the air; he hoped it was suitably innocuous. "I hope you don't mind me asking you that."

        "No, I was a loner. I didn't actually want any of the stuff I stole. I simply moved it to another location. I should imagine the various owners would have been able to have it found again quickly enough. It was the shock value I was after - and having things stolen is quite a shock for most people. It's pretty rare."

        Innisheer then gave him a look he could not interpret.

        "You're not one of those people who think criminals are really mentally ill or something like that, are you? I met too many of those at my trial."
 

        "Good heavens, no," Barkworth replied, he knew she certainly wasn't that. "Look, it's the old `do we jump or are we pushed?' question. You don't deny that you were a thief, yet you also claim that you mightn't have been if you hadn't been born on a Sarcosc World. It's hardly surprising that people raised the question of whether you were really responsible at your trial."

        "So nobody knows, not even the Torsyne?" she sneered. "Why do we have the Cahoctor and Holliswald at all? Why not just euthanase everybody who commits a crime on the spot? Since we don't know what we're doing."

        "Why don't the Torsyne just save themselves the trouble and snuff out any new species as soon as it evolves?," Barkworth replied. "That question's almost as ancient. But they haven't, and nobody can say why."

        "In other words, Holliswald is the Torsyne gift to us as the ultimate symbol of human freedom."

        Barkworth had dug the hole, he could hardly blame her for burying him in it.

        "Look, the Torsyne appear to have taken the same approach to that free-will versus chance thing most preContact Worlds do: every person is considered to act of his own free will unless he has an unidentifiable psychiatric disorder. It's not perfect, but it's a bit better than the alternative: that we are driven solely by influences outside our control. That would mean we were no better than talking animals."

        "But we are just talking animals, with the illusion of freedom."

        And with that she made assorted grunts, mooings, and bird-like trills; Barkworth guessed she was mimicking the animals of her Home World.

        "Have you noticed how simple the Cahoctor is, compared to the judicial systems of most preContact Worlds?" Innisheer asked him then. "That's because most people get caught red-handed, complete with a 3D record of their crime. The only thing that a trial does is try to find out why they did it - just as you said. From there it's either Holliswald or a Lalleldil Community, only very rarely complete freedom. For a first crime it's a five-month stay in Holliswald, then release. For a second crime we die," she looked fixedly at him. "But of course it's not straight away. We still have to serve the five months first. Because if we were executed immediately after our second crime, people might have the fun of carrying it out without really paying for it. And that's not all. Do you know how executions are actually carried out here?"

        Barkworth did know, but couldn't answer her.

        "We get Nessiked into a stark, bare Terminal Cell. No door, no way out. And we might have to wait for up to half an hour."

        Barkworth's throat went dry. They sat staring at each other in deadlocked silence.

        "Look," he said after a moment, "You've told me a bit about yourself, perhaps if you told me something about your World - "

        " - All I know about my World is that it became Sarcosc. I don't think it matters too much what it's like."

        Barkworth again could not interpret her grimace nor his Hilashel her tone of voice. He suspected though that at some stage in her life she had thrown away her entire World.

        Only now, for some unguessable reason, did it jump into his mind just what Innisheer - if that was her real name at all - might be. The impression that she had been giving him that she was a 'loner' was also probably untrue.

        "As you've probably guessed by now, I'm a `Head'. You're a `Body' now, aren't you?"

        He tried to sound as good-humoredly wry as he could, hoping his Hilashel would translate it as such.

        "Rubbish..!" Innisheer said so vehemently that a Grappay swung round on her and its warning light flashed. A few heads from nearby booths also turned. "What gave you that bright idea?"

        "I don't really know. Your tough-minded attitude to things I guess. Also, what you said about your friends turning all coy when they discovered you were sarcosc. I admit that's a puzzle - none of the Bodies I've run into would care about anything like that - or about anything at all. They just like to live hard, play hard, with everything and everybody, and have as good a time with their young lives as they can before they head off to their Terminal Worlds."

        "And of course being a big smart Head you object to all that - and I'm not saying I'm a Body. There's more to life than that."

        Barkworth couldn't tell whether the gleam that came into her eye as she said that wasn't an accident of body language.

        "No, I - we - don't object to it - hardly," he replied. "Because us Heads do pretty much the same thing when it all boils down. My partner and I - and yes, I do have a partner - wander the Universe same as Bodies do. But we look for conversations while you guys look for fun, vivid characters, parties, adventure, even danger when you think the Tinsla aren't looking. We are just not interested in that stuff any more than you are interested in ours, though a few do both. Our paths seldom cross and when they do we just pass each other by. We do have some things in common though - none of us are interested in kids, family life, joining communities, accepting our fate."

        "Just as I'm sure you both know it's all ultimately pointless," she stared at him. "Except Bodies don't delude themselves about that - that's their whole point. But you Heads - what do you call yourselves? Even you name is a pretense, as if you can do something with your puny little brains. Ha Ha."

        Barkworth's Hilashel translated the venom in those two little words exactly. It looked once again as if he'd got it wrong. But if she wasn't a Body, what was she?

        "We call ourselves Conversationalists," he replied. "And sure, some of us do feel that, if anybody's going to make some sort of difference in this Torsyne-ridden universe, it's more likely to be a Head than a Body. But for a lot of Conversationalists, talk is just another form of sport - and can be just as dangerous. More than a few finish up in a Lalleldil, with many of those going on to die."

        It crossed his mind that, whatever it was she had done, she had done it so she could come here, that going to a Terminal World to die was too easy, too pointless. But that didn't seem to fit either, he believed her when she all but said she didn't want to die.

        Then he had another idea.

        "There's one other thing Heads and Bodies have in common, and it isn't very nice. Just like any other group, there's always a few bloody-minded nasties - in fact I think my partner might have been involved with one of those at some stage. These people use their brains to try and twist people around for their own amusement, kind of psychological torture. Bodies just bombard their victims with sound and light, walk roughshod over people, you know. Though at least the Cahoctor can catch up to them a bit more easily."

        "I hate people like that too," Innisheer said virulently. "They're just fools, idiots, who don't know what they're doing."

        Barkworth found that alarming in a way he couldn't put his finger on.

        "I get the impression from that that you do know exactly what you are doing, that you have found a good reason for living like no-one else I know. But somehow it's put you in here."

        Innisheer stare at him as coldly as he had ever been stared at in his life, and he had no doubt he was interpreting it correctly.

        "You said you have a partner, didn't you?"

        "Yes, I did," Barkworth replied, reluctant to add anything more.

        "Do you love her? Have you had children together? Are you committed to each other for life?"

        Barkworth again felt distinctly uneasy. He had the feeling she had finally lost patience with him, and that he was now about to find out exactly what she was.

        "No to all of those," he replied, he thought it wiser somehow to tell the truth. "We are just very close friends, and I'd like to think we'll stay that way for a very long time."

        "So you've never known love, a love that's so deep, so helpless, that it consumes every waking moment, that life is nothing without it. A love so terrible that, when it is taken away from you, you just want to scream, and scream, and scream."

        "I have never been near anything like that," he replied nervously. " - Women just don't go for us Heads I guess, and female Heads are very rare. You're just not programmed that way. Hard fact of life."

        "Oh, I am so sorry, You have missed so much...

        He noticed now that the blue smokiness had gone from her eyes, they were now perfectly lustrous and clear. She really was so extraordinarily beautiful... and that perfume... Then suddenly, jarringly, he found himself aching for her with the most extreme intensity.

        She rose from her seat a little and leaned forward so that her enormous breasts bulged out and squirmed all over the table. Barkworth's eyes riveted themselves on them. Her plump thighs gripped his tightly, then those hands of hers reached out under the table and touched him here, then there, and with the lightest of scratches ... and he found himself pumping with a helpless ferocity he had never known before. He looked up into her eyes as the rictus of her face swam into the center of a spreading pink misty haze...

        ...Braaaka..! ...Braaaka..! ...Braaaka..!

        To the accompaniment of a flurry of bangs all over the lunchhouse, Innisheer quickly rose and flipped her seat up hard so that it too banged against the wall. What this meant only dawned on him with his first sniff of the fetid odors that now wafted through the air. But he could only sit and stare at Innisheer transfixed.

        "That was the three-minute warning. You'd better get going, little boy," she pointed towards his seat.

        He numbly stood up and opened it. He stared down into what looked like a Black Hole. To the side of it was a toilet paper holder, to the rear a spray nozzle pointing as rigidly upwards as he was.