Pasovirs

        The Eonmern now has available a device called a `Pasovir' that enables any person to move about freely within virtually any non-solid medium including space. As well as being able to thrust a flier in any direction at speeds that depend on such factors as the medium's viscosity or the speed of sound or light within it, it creates a Taurnal Sphere to protect him against his movement through that medium as well as to contain the correct atmosphere required for respiration. This atmosphere is also recycled and replenished for as long as necessary.

        A Pasovir has two major components. The first consists of the clothes one must wear while using the device. These Flight Clothes can be of any style one prefers provided they fully enclose the body or can be made so apart from hands, feet and head. They must however also be made of a fabric containing fibers which, when an electric current is passed through them, causes the fabric to both shrink and lose most of its flexibility.

        Flight Clothes will also have a set of four suitably located tactile pads that allow the second component, the flight device itself, to be attached. The thrust the machine develops can then be transmitted through to the Clothes which can then distribute it over the flier's body as evenly as possible. Flight Clothes are not completely rigid however, a person can assume any configuration they wish during flight provided he or she is not performing any maneuver that makes this unsafe. The Pasovir's Control System will notify the flier if it determines this to be the case.

        When a Pasovir is not being used, its flight component can be detached by vocal command.

        The flight component consists of two crossed metal tubes half a meter long and a centimeter thick. The crossing point of these tubes lies at the center of a disk twenty centimeters in diameter and three centimeters thick. This contains the Pasovir's power source and Flight Control System.

        The Control System includes a collision avoidance sub-system that both warns the flier of the presence of an object lying on his current flight path and alters that course if the flier is for some reason unable to. It can also assess the skills of a flier and tailor the Pasovir's capability to it. Children for instance will only be able to fly at a few kilometers an hour and within a distance range of their home commanded by their parents. If the flier is familiar with his or her World's Automatic Navigation System, he can command the Control System to fly him automatically to any point on his World without his further intervention. If that point coincides with a solid object however, he will then be advised of that fact and delivered to a point a safe distance from that object.

        The availability of Pasovirs is subject to the attendance of a course of instruction in their basic operation, and in the rules and regulations that must govern their operation. The right to enjoy this device can then be maximized for all with the minimum of mutual interference or risk.

        A Pasovir can be controlled entirely by voice command if one wishes, but its capabilities then become limited to those of transport only. More advanced fliers can obtain, after an extended course of training, a `sensor glove' that allow them to change the shape of the Pasovir's Taurnal Sphere into that approximating a fixed-wing aircraft with vertical take-off and landing ability. At low flight speeds, he also has the option of extending the Pasovir's wings and switching off its direct lifting component. He will then be able to reproduce the gliding flight of large birds.

        After a further course of training, the Pasovir Control System will allow a flier to use the `ornitho` mode of the Pasovir. This will allow him to flex shorter simulated wings and reproduce the powered flight of birds. In this mode the direct lifting component of the Pasovir is also switched off, the only assistance it will then give the flier is effector amplification and guidance to enable the correct form of wing flexure. Additional control modes are also enabled so that the flier can learn to maneuver in an atmosphere much as birds do, including hovering. A simulated tail surface will also be available to be controlled by the legs and feet except at landing and takeoff. Fliers will need to observe special caution in selecting landing and takeoff sites in ornitho mode as it is sensitive to wind gusts. A loss of flight stability will be automatically corrected for in most situations, but cannot be guaranteed.

        Like many of the devices issued by the Eonmern for personal use, Pasovirs carry the risk of inducing addictive behavior. They can detect their own overuse or misuse in this respect however, and will notify the Lalleldil Division, who will then determine if some form of intervention is necessary. Behavioral training to reduce the risk of this eventuality occurring is therefore recommended for any young or otherwise susceptible people who are issued with or allowed access to Pasovirs.
 
 

Austin Lee Sheldon
USA/Earth
+ 2014

Contact Earth - Three Years On and Doing Okay

        Remember Close Encounters? Armageddon? The Dramaturges of Yan? Of course not. Not after what
we've seen over the last three years. We're living on a whole new planet now. Our Contact went as smoothly, thank God, as if we had been expecting it all along. But then we were, weren't we? Me and some of my old stockbroker cronies (remember stockbrokers?) often used to toss round ideas about would happen to the world's stock markets if a UFO landed in Times Square. I guess people all over the country did the same sort of thing in their way too.

        Now that we can rest up a little and catch our breath, I found myself wondering how many people have been writing up all their amazing experiences in the Teklanmeh. Turns out lots have, from the old seasoned TV professionals to occasional hack writers like me. So what's the point in adding my two cent's worth? (yeah, right, some of those old expressions are going to have to go...) Well, what the hell, the Teklanmeh is infinite, and I know some people like personal reminiscences, and besides, so far as I know, I am the first ex-stockbroker to take a shot at it. Good a reason as any.

        The Iskurahi began their preparations for Contact with us at the beginning of our Industrial Revolution. Now that's forward planning. And they must have handled literally every possible Contact situation over the billions of years of their existence. And that's experience. So how could a technologically-aware nation like us dealing with an even more technologically-aware people like them be silly enough to say no? Since the President and Congress back then had no doubt seen the same movies as the rest of us, it took them only six weeks to say yes on our collective behalf, on the 11th October, 2011. Even after that prolonged Emergency Session of the United Nations, the worldwide stock market shambles, and the media tumult. Those quick tours round a few randomly selected Worlds by a few randomly selected opinion leaders was apparently enough to assure everybody that the Iskurahi was not just one world trying to invade another by looking much bigger than it really was. In fact, those tours made the Iskurahi look even bigger than we had by then though it might be.

        Think about this. When you look at the history of the primitive cultures of the world after their first contact with us, you know, The Big White Bogey Man, we really didn't do too badly when our turn came to be culturally subjugated.

        I must say though that a lot of people I know wondered at the time why the Iskurahi didn't try to reduce the risk of panic (and stock market closures) by insisting that Contact and any subsequent negotiations be kept secret for as long as possible. As our President himself explained it later though, this would have given the impression of underhandedness whichever way the decision went. And if that had been a yes decision, people mightn't have been prepared to offer the cooperation needed to go with it since they would have not felt they had any part in making it.

        Anyway, all that's now behind us. Once we had decided, the Iskurahi recommended to the President and Congress that the `Changeover' should take place in two stages. The first stage, lasting one month (I guess because it sounded slightly less arbitrary than 13 days or two and a half weeks would have done), would consist of an information campaign telling us all just what kind of Universe we were now getting ourselves into. And nothing would be spared, even that 256 half-life of civilized behavior we can look forward to before we all go native again and have to be isolated from the rest of the Human Universe (yeah, I love that phrase `Closed Out'; like we're being quit of as obsolete goods). They even suggested that `information overload' might be a problem for some people, the kind of thing that happened with the Moon Landings all those eons ago.

        And what would be the main message? That most people however would enjoy at least some of the literally infinite variety of mental and physical recreations that their new Universe would offer, from complete Virtual Realities to the simplest of team games. And it wouldn't cost anything, all work was voluntary, most any thing one wanted could be obtained simply by ordering it via the Teklanmeh. It would then be delivered by Doanadar if it was small enough, or delivered by Tinsla if not. Even our eventual Closing Out might not be so bad, because most of the people alive then would be born into the conditions that created it and might not even care.

        As one of my ex-colleagues said after learning all this: "I often wondered what the Universe might be like once we got out into it. Never crossed my mind we'd book ourselves into the ultimate retirement village for the entire human race."

        The second stage of the `Change', as we soon came to call it, would begin on an actual Changeover Day at the end of that first month. This turned out to be the 11th of November, 2011. It was presented as a `cultural target' for us to aim at, to make it easier for people to adjust to what was to come. It would also mark the point when all financial transactions would cease and the first of the Eonmern's commodities would be made available. Spending had all but dropped off anyway once people began to realize that most of the products on sale in the stores, especially the traditional consumer durables like cars, whiteware and brownware had been rendered obsolete overnight. Many services like insurance and financial investment now also lost their point, the companies that provided these began working out their returns to their investors prior to closing down.

        Balancing the books would be more than a mere formality though. The Treasury told us that the amount of cash and credit one had in total on Changeover Day could be important even after that day for reasons that would be explained `in due course'. Although many workers in essential goods and services industries such as food production and medical care offered to continue on a voluntary basis, the old rewards and penalties would still be around until the Iskurahi's systems could be phased in.

        When Changeover Day dawned sunny, rainy, windy or blizzard according to whatever part of the U.S one happened to be in, the first of the Eonmern's products became available. They were delivered courtesy of the U.S Postal Service in what would probably be its last ever operation, for each and every household in the U.S. with a mailbox received a Doanadar to replace it. Although these devices had been described fairly completely in the Information Campaign, people still found it an eerie experience that they could not only talk, but listen and reply in a reasonably intelligent way. A Doanadar couldn't discuss the weather or any other such human concern, but when it came to advice about sending and receiving things it sounded like an expert. I point all this out because this was amazing enough even to those of us who were familiar with computers. For those people who weren't, a talking mailbox must have seemed like something out of Garfield the Cat (and we all remember him now, don't we?). Some even now haven't caught up to the idea that you don't even have to use envelopes or wrapping paper any more, a few such folk even continue to use stamps on their `proper mail'. Even more incredibly, a very tiny minority keeps on trying the same stupid tricks of a now long-gone era, like trying to send bombs or narcotics to people. When a Doanadar detects these things - and they can apparently detect most anything - it gives a warning. If a person sends a second such package, it calls the police, shuts itself down, and - these days at least - warns the Cahoctor and the Nessik system.

        The day after we received those Doanadars, they in turn delivered notepad computer-sized Otindas, `almost as if they had given birth to them' as one comic - I think it was Farley Milarge - put it. Although these had also been described fairly completely in the Information Campaign, it was still hard to believe they could actually do the things claimed for them. As well as working like T.V receivers, they were able to emulate any home computer a person was used to using, along with all the `hard' and `soft' storage space its OS was capable of supporting. One of the first things the Otinda advised its new owner was that more of them were available for other members of the household, although as yet only, like itself, in the notepad configuration. Three peripherals could however be obtained immediately if required. The first were sets of cordless transmitters that could be inserted into the ports of one's existing peripherals to enable it to work with them. This included one's original computer so that you could transfer your old files across to it. The second was a hardcopy printer much the same in appearance as those that already existed except that they never ran out of ink or paper; I guess they contain their own miniature Doanadars. For most people the third item, the Rhondo, would probably have been the most interesting. This tiny plastic-like tube was able to act as a powerful torch, telescope, microscope, night viewing scope, or most importantly, both a stills and video camera. Even it could converse too, very useful for simple things like taking zoom shots, or for transferring its data to an Otinda for viewing.

        Now you'll notice from my descriptions that all these items were limited in their performance compared to today. The Otinda and Rhondo can now handle 3D's for instance, and the Otinda's own computer capabilities are far vaster than those they emulated. This was deliberate of course, as I say the technologically illiterate found them intimidating enough as they were. As time went on though, those suppressions gradually removed themselves so that all those first devices (do they actually age and wear out at all?) now function identically to brand new ones (brand new?). People may have marveled at the way they could converse back then, but now they all actually get to know you and you them. As one of my friends put it, `they're a bit like those old chain-store electronic pets except they're a lot brighter and do more useful things'.

        That may also explain why people now seldom misplace or lose them.

        This `suppressed performance' design philosophy became even more evident however when, a week after the Otindas arrived, the first of the Nessiks came. At first they were set up only at street intersections, and refused to take you outside town or city limits. They also served to introduce the Tinsla on a wider scale (of which, more later), for although the Nessiks themselves could converse as fluently as any other Iskurahi device, they could not assist the nervous or the incapacitated.

        People were encouraged to compare those first Nessiks to street phones, except that you could send your entire self rather than just your voice. Within a week though the restrictions began to come off. People could have them installed in their homes; the Attorney General recommended though that they be placed just outside the front door where possible so that people could use the same procedures for dealing with strangers they had always used. Within a few days of that, people found they could also travel from city to city, then, a week later, to those few countries which had by them reached the same stage of `development', mostly in Europe. Initially people had to Nessik to the old International Airports in each country `for the time being' though until passport laws, customs agreements and such things could be sorted out and eventually disposed of. They also helped prevent the spread of disease until the Diursuel could eliminate these and establish the planet's Migra. This wasn't expected to fully come about for some years, another reason given for the length of the Transition

        The final large-scale `product release' from the Eonmern was of the Pasovirs. These were sharply suppressed at first, one could only fly at the speed of sparrows just a few meters above ground level. Worse, people living in towns and suburbs could only fly along streets until they reached parks or open countryside. These limits only came off for those individuals who had received instruction not only in the proper use of their Pasovirs, but in their etiquette. The extraordinary sense of freedom they offered (`fancy being able to soar like a bird' as one of my firm's hard-boiled ex-senior partners put it) could so easily interfere with the freedoms of others. Where flight restrictions could not cover everything then common decency had to; things like flying low over other people's backyards are an obvious no-no.

        Although people knew the Tinsla were flight-capable from the Information Campaign, it was only during these courses of instruction that most people actually saw them fly. And it was more often than not right alongside them to provide guidance and support and, eventually, the assessment that would determine how capable one's own individual Pasovir would become. The Pasovirs themselves could also monitor this as well as their own misuse, their `capability envelope' as it was called would shape itself according to flier's proficiency and sense of personal responsibility.

        When flight from country to country became enabled, one initially had to arrive at the old international airports with their custom and immigration facilities, just as with Nessiks. Crossing entire oceans when that first became permissible was unreal, even when one was restricted to just below the speed of sound in atmosphere. But when we were able to go up into Space and fly to and round any body in the solar system, then that was Virtual Reality made real. Small Doanadars provided all environmental requirements, oxygen and so on, and soft Nessik Surfaces allowed us to even walk on those worlds with solid surfaces and no extremes of gravity or temperature. Then when we finally became able to travel to other Worlds and cruise around their systems in the same way... I have heard no comment from even the worst smartarses I know anywhere. I guess even they can't find the words.

        It was only around then that our various debits and credits were finally assessed and our bank accounts, if they remained intact, were unfrozen. This actually caught most people by surprise, they had just about forgotten all that. Facilities like power, water and gas had kept on flowing, petrol (oddly enough) was still available as before. Even shops and supermarkets were still open, though most of the staff had been replaced by Tinsla (vital really, the original staff had a lot to learn about their new world, especially the young). The old America was still there, but it was as if your best suit had suddenly become covered in mold and gone out of fashion anyway. If you wanted to go back you could still try though. You didn't have to pay for most items, you could take them away for nostalgia value. Even those old cross-continental trains kept running - now with full passenger loads - across an America that looked no different from before except for the number of birds in the sky. And those items you already possessed and had no further wish to keep (like, for instance, last year's hard-earned Porsche) could be turned in for recycling. The Iskurahi, in spite of their infinite resources, abhor waste, and can reuse all the materials anything was ever made of.

        The main purpose of the money still remaining was to provide the fairest way of determining who would have those things which even the Eonmern could not supply. Like choice real estate. `No problem,' most people thought, `we'll just find a site just as good and build a house there. With Pasovirs and Nessiks we can build anywhere.' Not true as it turned out. Those very same Nessiks and Pasovirs meant that uninhabited regions were now to be treated as part of a `World Park' so that all people could enjoy them. Besides what need was there to live there? The Iskurahi pointed out that it was best for people to continue to live where they were if they had been reasonably happy there, amongst friends and neighbors. For less well-off neighborhoods, restoration and refurbishment was recommended for the same reasons, especially now that the crime problem was now receding. If however a person had to relinquish a house in order to make up for large debts (mortgages could be renegotiated) then any person with sufficient financial assets could `purchase' it if they so wished.

        Some people though, especially the civil rights movement, began to ask questions about that sharply reduced crime rate. They did not accept the Attorney General's reply that `the need for people to commit crime had disappeared now that poverty was no more' because that didn't explain why rapes, murders, and hard drugs use had also sharply declined. We had all seen during the Information Campaign how the Cahoctor dealt with crime including that amazing Holliswald and some of us cheered (yeah, I admit it, I had had enough too). The Attorney General then came back and reminded us that, just as individuals had to adjust to the new world, so did the institutions we had developed, and this was still all being explained through the media `if people would just stop for a little time to watch'. He then offered to repeat a broadcast showing how the U.S.'s judicial systems had begun to `parallel' with those of the Cahoctor, as he so delicately put it. `You have to balance freedom with the means of preserving it, and this can now be done with unobtrusive machines that don't care what you do, just so long as you don't hurt anybody else while you're doing it...'

        But these were hardly the only concerns that began to be voiced at this time. The introduction of the Tinsla really caused questions flying thick and fast. As I said earlier, the first Tinsla appeared with the first Nessiks as virtual product demonstrators. People then experienced them as having somewhat bland personalities, rather like helpful hotel staff except that they did not expect tips and graciously declined those, usually facetiously, offered. Now all the other items in the Iskurahi electronic managerie (if they are electronic, apparently there are some indications they are not) could be seen to be souped-up versions of what we already had, or expected to have, through Star Trek and all those other phantasmagoria of Science Fiction. The Tinsla however were a different story, even though we had `seen' those before too. Some people saw them as being rather like those Communist `sleepers' of old. (Remember those? Normal, decent U.S. citizens who, on hearing a coded message buried in a mouthwash TV ad, would suddenly turn into frenzied killers.) Other people saw their `studied politeness' as menacing, like that of Hannibal Lecter in `Silence of the Lambs'. Civil Libertarians objected vociferously, seeing them as a `threat to the very foundations of Democracy, since machine mind cannot help but influence human mind'.

        The Iskurahi of course, with their billions of years of dealing with this sort of thing, had a simple solution. After the Tinsla had done their duty in showing the populace how to play with their new toys, they simply disappeared. They only began to reappear in ones and twos when individual persons requested them to, to help them if they were incapacitated, or as family servants in large households, or as farm labor (we all know of course that farmers keep on farming, no matter what). Tinsla can also be called in en masse to help out during the inevitable natural disaster (even the Iskurahi cannot, or will not, prevent these), such as earthquake, flood, fire, and so on. Apparently, by the time Emergence comes in twenty-three years time, we will probably finish up with the same one to ten people ratio as most other worlds do at that time.

        And no doubt with similarly low levels of complaint.

        Yet, with all these objections to the Tinsla and those other zillion and one things at that time, few people really doubted that we had had any real choice but to Sign Up. It was either join the rest of the Universe, or try to pretend it wasn't there. That would have been too much like looking up at the stars and knowing we could never reach them. If we could not join up with the Torsyne themselves on equal terms, at least we could join their representatives, the Iskurahi, on the same terms as all those other worlds had.

        "So why the generation-long Transition?" some people ask. "Haven't we adjusted well enough already? Now that we've seen just about all the new technology there is?"

        Perhaps we should pause for a moment to think about the words `we' and `us' (and I) have been using so freely. `Us' is in fact that minority in the U.S who happen to have a liberal education and outlook, we tended to occupy the white collar positions in business, the professions, and politics. But most of America even now believes in God, Sunday School and Angels. It has been severely shaken by the events of the past three years. Most religious leaders have expressed views ranging from `severe misgivings' to `the ultimate treason against the entire human race'. The Pope himself has said `we do not see His Presence here' and not only refused to sign up the Vatican, but took the same unfortunate attitude as he and his predecessors did to birth control. Fortunately most Catholics appear to be taking the same approach to the new Universe as they did to that, though they sure don't like having to.

        But not all opposition is religious. The extremists camped outside the White House for instance, or who are rude to Tinsla, or who just stare at people using Otindas and wearing Pasovirs, include several people who just plain don't like what's happening. Many opposition politicians for instance not only dislike the way the Administration `pushed the Agreement through Congress', but the way in which the Iskurahi conducts its business (`Is the Iskurahi the puppet or the puppeteer?). A lot of other people are asking even harder questions. In many countries overseas these are still at the forefront of debate. Even now they still paralyze the EEC so that most of its countries had to break out and make their own Agreements. Japan and industrial Asia took even longer, although it has been said, sarcastically I suspect, that they wanted to see how the U.S and Europe made out.

        Japan's behavior has since been bizarre to say the least. Its `Back to Japan' movement is trying very hard to take it back to the good old Genroku days pre Commodore Perry, and the Government, the people, and the Industrial Warlords are, to everybody's surprise, right behind it. They are frantically tearing out all their industrial horrors and restoring the land to what it was in that far-off age even more industriously than when they ruined it. Weird compromises (which the Japanese are so good at) have had to be made however to cope with the extra 150 million or so people they have accumulated since the 1850's. Most are not only willingly moving into the old skyscrapers left empty after the offices they contained became redundant, but in new purpose-built pagoda-like ones. This has meant that the one and two-story suburbia surrounding them can be removed and turned into the `natural' countryside their citizens allegedly now so much enjoy. But to reduce the blot on the horizon they represent, the Japanese have enlisted the help of the Touziel to surround these cities with native trees that have been enlarged up to ten times their normal size, a kind of Bonsai in reverse.

        Perhaps all this is a backlash to those draining Automation Wars Japan began to get involved in with the other major Industrial Powers prior to Contact. But then I guess they had to replace all those people with robots to keep their economy competitive, even if it meant a lot of them starved. In spite of their past sins though, one can only wish the Japanese well. They've always tried so hard to be an admirable people.

        China is trying to preserve its present rather than return to the past, for to date it is the only major country who has refused to Sign Up, though there are hints that a coup may be about to happen that will result in its doing so. When its current Chairperson was recently asked `what is the honor in toil that can be done by machines?' her reply was `work becomes honorable through human toil'.

        Most of the smaller hold-out countries are those in which the separation between Church and State suddenly went into reverse in the latter half of the twentieth century, notably Iran, Iraq, and Algeria. One of Algeria's Big Mullahs even described the Iskurahi as `an extension of the West's Influence'! Unfortunately a few Third World Countries who can't afford not to sign up are holding out for various ideological reasons, Pakistan, Mozambique, and Bolivia being the most noticeable. The leaderships of many African countries see no reason why the lives of their people shouldn't continue in the way they have for generations. And who's to say they aren't right? Some of our own people even look upon them with envy, but most of them have probably forgotten that such `joy' usually comes at the price of believing in fairy tales that sound sillier now than Creationism.

        It also means that literally millions of people can still, even now, starve to death. Although the Iskurahi recognizes the concept of diminished responsibility of government (which was more than we ever did), this only applies to those that come into existence after a world Contacts, and even then they rarely intervene. The principle of sovereignty and complete freedom to chose, even to chose disaster, is maintained as far as reasonably possible (though I guess we must trust them as to what `reasonably' is).

        But there's nothing to stop existing aid organizations from assisting these countries if they're welcome, though they must now also ensure that sufficient Earth-originated supplies of food, clothing and medicines are grown or manufactured by volunteers. Even though that sounds crazy to the rest of us, those agencies now have more volunteers than they can possibly use. And if a country completely forbids the use of Nessiks as well, there is now a virtually inexhaustible supply of ships and aircraft that these have rendered obsolete.

        Perhaps this is why such a long Transition is necessary, not only to give the holdouts time to think, but for the rest of us to adapt to certain ideas. Perhaps the most important of these is that Nessiks and Pasovirs make a nonsense of national boundaries. Now that the political and economic pressures that maintained them have eased and are on their way to disappearing altogether, it is only cultural differences (and medical ones) that now separate us. It will take time for the average Government, even as its economic burdens are lifted from it, to learn how to return its power to the communities and ultimately to the people from whence it came. Then, as the people reform their communities and the ancient distinctions between nations and even worlds begin to blur, these new communities will in their turn look more to themselves for their common needs.

        Transitional Worlds also enjoy many interim privileges to help them along. The Iskurahi recognize for instance that adjusting to Voluntary Life and Euthanasia pose real problems for those cultures without experience of them. The full Transition can be used to adjust with as much or as little of the Iskurahi's Guidance and Advice as they wish. Similarly with Population Control; those people who had parented three children or more can leave their home world, but only if they are sterilized first. Many people see this as draconian, but then I guess if humanity really is obsolete as some people are saying, there seems little sense in producing more of it.

        The Iskurahi also provide much Guidance and Advice to help a Transitional World's cultures promote those recreations thought most likely to ease the transition between employment and leisure. In the West at least sport naturally heads the list, but `cerebral games' (to use their cute phrase) like Chess also feature highly. Much television time is also given over to broadcasting program material showing how people on other worlds overcame their Transitional problems. These productions, being aimed towards a wide spectrum of audiences, ranged from the crass to the most artistically sensitive. Some of the latter were even praised by hardened critics as amongst the most moving programs of any kind they had ever seen.

        Inevitably though there are always those individuals whose lives have been integrated so deeply with the old order of things that adapting to the new Universe will be difficult if not impossible. Doctors are virtually assured of continued work, they can seek to widen their experience in the Diursuel Medical Facilities anywhere in the Universe. But what is the workaholic who enjoyed working eighteen-hour days building up his business supposed to do with himself? Or the engineer who is no longer needed to build bridges? Architects who design multistory office blocks? Economists with no economies to ponder and pundit over? Scientists who find the fields of research they had dedicated their lives to can now be found written up ad infinitum in the Teklanmeh? As Mike Cassala has put it, `it was as if those inconceivable dimensions we always assumed the Universe to have suddenly folded back on themselves to become those of our Primeval Caves.'

        And all this may well explain another notable feature about the Transition. Apart from the people from the Iskurahi itself, people from other Worlds cannot visit Earth until we Emerge. Many of their Worlds are also closed to us for the duration. These - and nobody's being specific here - appear to include many with `humans' whose appearance differs significantly from our own, or old Worlds not far from being Closed Out. Perhaps there are some things the Iskurahi feel in their wisdom and experience that a newly Contacted World really will take a generation to get ready for.

        Well I guess I have rambled on long enough now. Even if the Teklanmeh is infinite your time and patience is not. Thanks for having me on your screen, whoever you are and wherever you may be right now.

By the way, somebody want some Blue Chip Share Certificates and high denomination banknotes? These are already on their way to becoming collectors items. Or what about some nice stamps now? I still have a few left.
 
 

Sim Seevert Severt
Klyn/Zofnoe/Diursuel
+ 1200

Insipena and its Poet Birds

        I suspect we have now learned as much as we are ever going to about the strange and beautiful world of Insipena. Even with the facilities of the Diursuel, or the Particular Talents from worlds to come, I feel I can say with some confidence that many of its mysteries will never be solved.

        Insipena was discovered just three years ago in one of those Unknown Regions of a Galaxy, so mysterious in themselves. It evidently began its existence in the same way most worlds do that eventually, over eons, produce human-type life. But at some point Insipena's development took a `wrong turning', if I can put it like that, and came to a halt shortly after its land was first invaded by plant life. Indeed, if one could draw a parallel between the evolution of life on a world and the development of a human mind, then for some as yet undetermined reason Insipena has never passed the age of three. Its life has been proven conclusively to have been frozen at that evolutionary level for hundreds of millions of years. It will never have things like grasses, trees, or bush. Nor will her fauna ever leave the sea. None of her Vertebrates will evolve into Amphibia, nor her Arthropoda into Insecta. And without the latter, Insipena will never know the frivolous brightness of flowers. The business of life and death on her surface will forever be conducted in the currency of hard chlorophyll green.

        And, as I say, no-one can determine why. It was just as much a mystery for the five other unContacted Worlds in that region of Space who had visited it. Indeed, they were almost relieved when they were finally Contacted, for at last somebody with real know-how would solve the mystery. But all we have been able to do so far is share their disappointment.

        Yet in spite of its biological backwardness, Insipena has natural inhabitants with language. And that means it comes under the `Special World' category the Iskurahi maintains for those worlds whose relationship with the rest of the Universe - and itself - must be uniquely defined. Clearly with Insipena there can be no such thing as `Contact' or `Emergence' in the sense we would normally understand them.

        Nobody knows where the Poet Birds, as Insipena's inhabitants came to be called, actually came from. Since Insipena was a `retarded' world, not an idiot savant one, there was no way those Birds could have evolved in one single leap from the small squidlike cephalopods that are otherwise the highest form of life on the planet. Yet we also know they were not placed there by any of the other five worlds in that system. This includes, at least so far as we can determine, any technological advanced civilizations that may have preceded the existing ones on any of these worlds. The currently most favored hypothesis that they were artificially developed then clandestinely placed there, perhaps as a sick joke, by some other long-lost World perhaps on the other side of the universe.

        It should be noted however that the Poet Birds do not appear to suffer in any way, indeed their lives appear to be entirely idyllic. They have no natural enemies, they have an inbuilt instinct to produce only enough young to replace those lost through old-age or accident, illness is rare since they are seldom bothered by the local microlife, another hint of offworld origins. Their flock sizes - or colonies to perhaps be more accurate - usually consist of around 80-100 Birds.

        Poet Birds are physically amongst the largest birds to be found in the Human Universe that are fully flight-capable. In appearance they resemble the sea-birds of many Worlds in that their feet are webbed, their coloring is a simple black and white, or dark gray and white in the case of juveniles, and their feathers are oiled to prevent water absorption. Their diet is omnivorous, consisting of the `squid' just mentioned, whatever shellfish they can find in the tidal shallows, and the berries of a small seaweed that they can just reach by diving at the lowest tide. This tide incidentally occurs through the unusual fact that Insipena has just the one moon with a mass nearly one-fifth that of the planet itself.

        The Poet Birds' language capability only began to be suspected when one of the first researchers to visit the world shot a few in order to try and determine their origins. This did not seem an unreasonable thing to do at the time, for the question of their origins had only just been raised and seemed particularly urgent. The researcher himself to his credit was the first to suspect that the calls that the shot Birds made during their demise could be a language, for these were non-repetitive in structure, quite unlike the usual distress-signals of non-lingual animals. His suspicions were naturally discounted at first, but autopsies on the corpses and aural analysis on captured live Birds revealed that their otherwise natural-sounding cries had Pulse-Code Modulation signals imposed on them. It was also found that nearly seventy percent of a Bird's cerebral hemisphere, usually the right hand one, was pure `language center', or rather the complex of lingual structures that make up such centers. This ultimately controlled a set of tiny muscles attached to nodal points in the Bird's vocal cords in its syrinx. It was only after much patient work by what was now a very large experimental team that the Birds' language could be translated to the point where it could be encapsulated in a Hilashel.

        The language of the Poet Birds can however only marginally be called that, indeed it may be best to describe it as one of the most complex secondary sexual characteristics of any animal yet found in the Universe. The Birds can only speak using simple phrases which can convey information about their surroundings and intents with respect to it, but little else. The Birds are in effect quite uneducable; they have little capability for understanding abstract matters or symbols, and none whatsoever for scientific concepts.

        Their Language is however highly structured and formalized, hence their name. Indeed this language has the appearance of having evolved naturally from the Birds' society themselves over many generations rather than having been implanted artificially while they were being genetically engineered - if that was in fact the case. Most of their statements consist of two lines made up of regular meters and ending in rhyming words. While four and six line ones sometimes occur, most often they are basic rhyming couplets with little apparent connection between them that happen to be enunciated serially.

        To reduce the risk of offending the Poet Birds, people cannot visit Insipena unless they have suitable Lalleldil Personality Profiles. Visitors should also be prepared to speak in rhyming couplets, otherwise the Birds will be quite unable to understand what is being said to them. Marashels attachable to one's clothing are also issued; these devices translate and aurally broadcast human speech. This means the Birds do not need to be fitted with Hilashels or any special devices themselves. The visitor's existing Hilashel allows him or her to hear and understand the speech of the Birds in the normal way.

        The Poet Birds' `poetry' however is not the only `art' they either perform or appreciate. They are also highly sensitive to cloudscapes, and considering the regularity and dullness of the land or sea-scape below, this is perhaps not surprising. There is nothing they enjoy more than to take a visitor on a conducted tour of any cloudscape within their territories. These can actually be quite interesting to visitors with the accepted Personality Profile since they naturally change with the weather and seasons. The Birds however appear to be almost as happy with a desert of overcast cloud, which even the most sensitive visitor may find only slightly more visually interesting than the carpet of ferns or the ocean surface below. Conversely, storm clouds offer the Birds their greatest excitement, for they like to approach and wheel and cavort around them while yet not coming too close. They also represent what appears to be the closest thing to religion the Birds have developed, for their poetry will include such things as the Height and Loftiness of Spirit. It is also during such times that the most elderly Birds call their farewells, then fly directly into the storm center itself.

        Storms poses a problem for the visitor who will feel concern for his Pasovir and its Control System. This will however survive anything except a direct lightning strike; the main flock will not approach such extreme storm centers in any case.

        There is one kind of day the Poet Birds hate above all else, and that is a fine, sunny, cloudless one. Then they have little to do with their time except perch on their roosts and brood darkly in their Palaces. The only event that can redeem such a day is a visitor who is good at aerobatics and can lead a colony into performing them with him. First though a note of caution. Ornitho flight mode should not be attempted since the Birds will be unable to see your Taurnal Wings. They therefore risk being caught up in the turbulence these produce, if not the wings themselves. The Birds prefer to match themselves against fixed-wing fliers in any case. Such fliers should however be aware of the differences in capabilities between fixed-wing flight and natural bird flight. Birds cannot `loop the loop' from flat and level flight for instance, they have to dive to build sufficient momentum to carry them round. Multipoint barrel-rolls are out of the question completely. Poet Birds do not appreciate stunts they cannot duplicate anymore than they appreciate ineptitude. It is recommended therefore that those visitors not confident in their ability to amuse the Poet Birds should only visit those regions of Insipena where low-altitude cloud is present. The Birds will show them these first, allowing a visitor to get by with a less imaginative flight performance.

        Do not be alarmed to see your flock diminish over time. The more energetic the fun and games, the sooner the Birds must find food. If they are not happy with you, they will inform you of that with their most diplomatic rhyming couplets.

        Poet Birds do not live in nests or any form of individual structure, but in large communal ones a flock may build over many years. These are called `Palaces' for reasons that become evident when the visitor first sees one. When fully complete these can be highly intricate structures, with lacy pinnacles, flying buttresses, cantilevers and roofs of ribbed vaulting, sometimes even fan vaulting. These Palaces often rise to heights of some thirty to forty meters, with a similar dimension across, and can take twenty years or more to build. The only tools the Birds have that allow them to pursue these, their only plastic arts, are their flying skills and their intestinal tracts. These are not as mean an instrument of expression as you might imagine, for their collective product contains long-chain organic molecules which interlink and, when dry, lend it a strength close to that of the reinforced concretes developed on many Worlds.

        The Palaces may also become a human poet's paradise for, although the Poet Birds have no specific breeding season, they do like sunsets, and the more dramatic the cloudscapes that accompany them the better. An entire Palace will then come alive with courting couples inspiring poetry in each other, indeed a poet-worshipper may have difficulty distinguishing such poetry through his Hilashel from a screeching babble. That which can be heard however will have lifted in quality from virtual doggerel to more delicate and exquisite poetic traceries.

        It has to be said though that the visitor would hear the same improvement in quality when two flocks have one of their rare territorial disputes, though the Poetry is then of a very different kind. Here it is more stirring, with frequent references to the `Spiritual' much as you might hear when the flock visits a storm-center. If the language of the Poet Birds evolved its lyric form in its sunsets, its practical utility may well have evolved in territorial disputes, for it is through these that physical conflict is usually averted. That is of course normal in animal evolution anywhere in the Universe; here it has simply soared to new heights.

        Some Poet Birds have been experimentally transferred to other Worlds, but very quickly became distressed even when exposed to environments similar to their own. It is therefore considered that they will suffer just as severely if their own environment is altered in any significant way. This is another reason why Insipena is open only to those with acceptable Personality Profiles. But then it is only such people who are likely to enjoy the Bird's poetic company.
 
 

        "Careful..! Don't make your Pasovir all cross now!" Barkworth heard Quincey shout across to him through his Hilashel as he recklessly wound up its thrust.

        "Yeah, I'm off to buy a farm!" he shouted back as he saw her slender skirted form zoom past him barely meters away.

        They had left Eve dangling forlornly in orbit around Insipena looking like an antique hatbox some prankster had suspended in the center of an immense warehouse. They had made their apologies to her hoping she wouldn't mind, but they wanted to be able to wander around on this strange world alone for a while, perhaps she could come down and meet its strange inhabitants `later'. She had as always understood perfectly, asking them `when had she ever played the role of gooseberry,' and promising them `some nice warm milk' on their return.

        And alone they needed to be, both `seperately and together' in that horribly impossible way. Innisheer had come between them in a way neither would have though possible. And to add to that, Quincey's stay in Holliswald had been unpleasant in a wholly different way from Barkworth's. She had been placed in a milder outpost of the system where, with seven others under the control of three Grappays, she had been planting out various varieties of trees to build up what would become a subtropical forest on a New World which had just been Assigned. They were all middle-aged and had been sent there either because they were thin and lightly built like herself, or suffered from some mild indisposition that prevented them being sent to their more usual trenches.

        During the lunch-hour however, as they sat round in the open fields eating the Standard Gruel doled out to them by one of the Grappays from a Doanadar built into its midsection, it became clear to Quincey that all these people were Emotional Losers of the worst kind. For some reason they had failed to fit into the Family Life and Activities that the 99% percent of Paradise for the Middle Aged had gratefully settled into. Like `overripe adolescents' (as she had put it) these people were still playing emotional games with each other in the same compulsive way as they might have played Otinda games in their youth. The total subjugation of a person, preferably of the opposite sex, was the prize, with that of the entire group the ultimate. Of course they seldom won, and when they did it was solely by chance. But none had the insight to realize that.

        For them Quincey was Miss Opportunity Of The Year, and competition for her was so fierce it bordered on the absurd. She had even begun to wonder if the vast machinery of the Cahoctor hadn't somehow slipped a cog and dropped her into a Lalleldil Community by mistake. The presence of the Grappays was in this respect actually reassuring.

        "It was one hell of a way to spend a day," she had concluded.
 

        Pasovirs were as good at removing tensions as booze. Some claimed they were even better since they didn't put those tensions right back again after the effects had worn off. Barkworth increased the thrust of his own as he plummeted towards Insipena's surface. His view of the huge lake directly below in the middle of its unusually verdant-looking island continent was blotted out by the pink re-entry glow from the nose of his Pasovir's currently missile-shaped surface. Some of it began to spill up round his right side and the machine automatically began to revolve him like a chicken on a spit to even out the heat buildup. The noise had built up too until it sounded as if he was flying through solid concrete, but already he could feel the pressure across his shoulders as the machine's brain duly warned him that it was overriding his command and reduced his speed to the more sensible one he would normally have selected himself. It would therefore be a good ten to fifteen minutes before he reached Insipena's surface.

        The slowly revolving continent had now spread itself out to the horizon and he couldn't help wishing just for a moment that he could somehow do the same. The lake below had become a deep gray-blue bowl - then suddenly it flashed by beneath him as what felt like umpteen G forces pressed him against his solid steel shirtfront and trouserlegs. The surrounding forest then whipped past below him like a roller caption going by much too fast to read. The Pasovir was obviously pushing him along at the highest speed it allowed in the atmosphere of this World, just below the speed of sound. He cut his thrust and extended a pair of short, stubby wings to slow his speed and gain altitude. He then expanded them further as he did so and banked round into the beginnings of a slow, wide circle. He looked up and around him on the offchance of spotting Quincey, but she was nowhere to be seen.

        Not that he really expected to anyway.

        ("She bloody raped you!" she had screamed.)

        When he looked down, he was amazed and appalled by what he was now able to see on this strangely retarded world. There was nothing but slow undulating waves of fern trees, all of roughly the same height and interleaved in a semiregular way. If one wasn't aware of their true size, it could just as easily have looked like a carpet of vivid green lichen.

        Though there didn't really seem to be much point (but then what did it matter?), he went down for a closer look. Drawing his Taurnal Surface round him so that he could lower himself through the canopy, he found himself staring straight into the Devonian. Just nothing but fetid-looking two-meter-high fern stems looking like dark fungal stalks stepped out their secret distances all round him.

        He hovered in silence just above what looked like a thigh-deep mulch of rotting fronds. It was hard to believe that the entire land surface of the planet between its Arctic Circles looked like this, the rest was either ice or bare rock. An absurd image popped into his mind of a drooling little girl having at last learned one letter of the alphabet, the letter F for FERN, and in her joy at having done so, had taken out her paintbox and covered herself and everything in sight with neat little green letter F's.

        With an involuntary shudder, Barkworth zoomed back up into the light.

        He again looked round for Quincey, but once more did not put much effort into it.

        ("She ripped your balls off too, didn't she?" she had said in a tone of voice that had really worried him.)

        Then he realized he had lost his bearings. Not that it mattered. He simply rose until he could see a coastline in the distance, then swung himself round and headed for it at a more sedate speed this time.

        His thoughts drifted back to those more joyous days of their lives, when Eve had taken them back Home after they first met her on that strange crystal-garden World of Far Pranrana.

        And Earth had, at first anyway, seemed even stranger. They had both been away too long...
 

        One of the things Contact had left Earth's people aghast at was its murder of Fashion. Before then it had been possible for new modes of dress, music, behavior, whatever, to sweep the world. Its leaders, like those of other Cultures, usually came from the advanced nations since the more technically sophisticated a society was, the stronger the suggestion that it could project Power. Other societies therefore tended to look up to them and adjudge them `superior'.

        But Contact put an end to all that; the Biblical prophecy that the `first shall be last and the last first' was effectively fulfilled. Some notion of Fashion would no doubt struggle on, but it would be local instead of global, in the way of village peasants rather than the media personalities of that hectic, briefer age of innocence when television could unite half the world. The Universe was simply too huge to be swept by a fashion, and a fashion that didn't impress the entire Human Mansion - and perhaps beyond - just didn't seem like Fashion at all.

        Its memory was still potent however in Brazil amongst those who had descended from its pre-Contact wealthy. It had a look of permanence about it though, which for any sort of Fashion is merely death by other means. As Quincey had explained when she took Barkworth to visit friends and acquaintances in and around Rio de Janeiro, it had originally been inspired by the Pre-Republican Brazil of the 19th Century. The impression Barkworth in fact gained was that the entire post-Contact history of Brazil had, like Japan, been an attempt to celebrate the happier eras of its history.

        But then it wasn't the only society on Earth, let alone Paradise, to try that.

        Quincey's family, a byproduct of the last episode of Brazil's `real' history when Fiore de Concini had sought to push the country into a very different twenty-first century from the one that actually arrived, had only been too happy to steep itself in the ersatz 19th Century that followed. Its mansion was literally furnished with its comforting reassurances, and immediately they learned about Quincey and Barkworth's plans, they set about furnishing Eve in them too. Perhaps it was just as well she had no walls or windows to paper or curtain.

        Obviously intended to reflect Dom Pedro II's renowned expansiveness, generosity, and modesty - and visibly in that order - the sofa they had installed was immense, easily big enough to seat four. Plumply cushioned in a bright floral design, it was constructed out of immense ornately-carved slabs of the dark reddish brasil wood that had lent the country its name. Even with a Pasovir it had still needed three Tinsla to position this monument to ease just behind the center of Eve's stage. The effect was not entirely unpleasing however, the plain though highly polished sides of each slab had been slightly rounded to give an impression of warmth and stolidity.

        Either side of it and facing partly towards a glass-topped coffee table that also looked as if it weighed a tonne, were two matching armchairs from which elephants could have trumpeted their comfort. Between the back of the sofa and Eve's rear columns were twin single beds, to the left of these looking forward was the single gargantuan clothes closet. This also had slightly bulgy panels to give an impression of welcoming acceptance, an aesthetic which could be said to serve a double function since its door also served as a Nessik. In the corresponding position to the right of the beds an exactly identical cabinet concealed a combined showerbath, toilet and handbasin. The interior layout and design of this reminded Barkworth of a `bathroom' he had seen in one of the few early Twentieth Century ocean liners that still cruised the world to recapture that era.

        With the squat, somewhat darkly overwrought cabinet containing the Doanadar awkwardly filling the space between the closet and the left armchair, Eve's furnishing was complete.

        If Quincey herself wasn't entirely sure of the match considering Eve's quasi-classical lines (Eve herself was non-committal), Barkworth thought it bizarre. Still, if this was the price they had to pay for Quincey's being made more welcome in the company of her elder sisters for the first time in her life (she quietly wept with joy in the middle of the night), then it was worth it. Barkworth had been worried from Quincey's unnerving description of them over the six months they had been together that their partnership might alienate her from them even further. Even the stiff way in which they had moved when they each made their first cautious visits made it clear that they had traded in the warmer Catholicism their mother had brought them up in for yet another Moral Revival. But with Quincey having brought home such an amazing prize in Eve, they quickly turned round and showed themselves to be bible-bashers only to the outside world. When they came to visit he and Quincey from then on, they brought their huge families of apparently ever-growing size. In fact those families quickly surrounded and threatened to overwhelm them. Children of amazingly small size took to chasing each other round and round Eve's columns while she resided like a summer house on the lawn behind the family mansion.

        Quincey's second-oldest sister though, Maria, had left Barkworth with more mixed impressions. She had rather cattily revealed to him that Quincey's real name was Teresa Florentina. She had earned her nickname during a family visit to her father's relatives in Scotland when she was five; she had spilled a jar of preserved quinces all over herself while trying to get it down from a high cupboard. Barkworth could imagine all too easily from Maria's description how her sisters must have treated her when they witnessed that.

        But the highlight of his and Quincey's return to Earth had without a doubt been their leisurely tour round the world with Eve. Her arrival had been one of the few events that had been of interest on the entire planet in 2047 apart from the usual earthquakes, tidal waves, and other natural cataclysms. Yet, unexpectedly, people wanted to know about her not so much because of what she was and her strange origins, but because she was one of the very few non-Iskurahi artificial consciousesses for lightyears around with a mind of her own.

        Quincey and Barkworth were not left out of the picture either. Not only had they been the ones who had found her, but they had achieved the rare distinction of being placed on the Preferred List for something they had done offworld. The word `achieve' was quite wrong of course, it had been a vast amount of luck on their part and deft negotiating on Eve's during their discussion with the Iskurahi somewhere between the worlds of the Far Pranrana system. This had finally resolved the problem of Eve's existence by putting the three of them on the Preferred List for assignments that might require their collective skills, even though nobody could quite suggest what such an Assignment might be - or for that matter what those skills actually were. The Iskurahi reassured them however that the Teklanmeh would match them with an Assignment eventually. But if the team ever had to split up, Eve would have to be found another acting troupe or somebody else who could make use of her, otherwise she would `regretably' have to be Terminated.

        Quincey and Barkworth knew even before their return to Earth that neither was the type to cope with living in the public eye for long. The idea had been to show Earth to Eve rather than to show her to it, then resume their wanderings from world to world after a month or so. But in the event it took nearly two months, for they could hardly travel without taking a few guests along, and as a result they were inevitably side-tracked into many places `you should really find interesting'. Some of them actually were.

        On their travels they had learned a lot more about Eve, not only from her, but from the more expert of their guests, especially those in the field of what was still called artificial intelligence. They had interviewed Eve at some length, and most came to the conclusion that her brain had been built along the lines Laslo Godel had speculated upon. But rather than being dedicated, as a bird's mostly is, to merely flying herself, her brain was built from a more human-like `general' set of perceptual mechanisms so that she could be trained to do just about anything her sensors and effectors allowed. And these included her original research team's scientific instruments; they were extensions to her eyes, ears, nose, and taste sensors as well as theirs. But perhaps most important of all, she had symbiotic access to a massive computer also installed within her that stored their collective memories, their culture. She would in fact be one of the most vital members of that research team.

        With Contact and the Teklanmeh however, all these marvelous scientific functions became completely redundant. When the Lapedla Demsa took her over, they, with the help of experts from the Diursuel and Eonmern, replaced her scientific equipment with the columns and architrave which enabled her to project those extraordinary images. To support this capability, her capacious library memory was also converted by these experts into storage for a massive number of picture files. They then trained her in the art of using them and any others she might acquire for herself as seeds from which she could create her own images.

        Various other `minor' capabilities were added too, including that of adding smell to a scene using a tiny Doanadar. She even acquired a small pair of free-flying hand-like devices for use in cleaning and other minor maintenance chores. Barkworth had only ever seen these `hands' once however out of the corner of his eye in the dead of night.

        "Maybe somebody once told her to keep her hands to herself," Quincey had quipped when she first heard about this.

        Perhaps her most amazing capability of all was that, having learned much about Human Nature from the Lapedla Dempsa and the people they had met on their travels, Eve had become wise in a human way. Indeed she often made Barkworth think of those indulgent old Duchesses one might have met on a Graham Greene express train rumbling through a snowy East-European landscape of the 1930's. She wasn't always patient though, especially when they could not make up their minds about what to do next. Then she became like a stern, elderly stage director sitting in the shadows of the auditorium so her face couldn't be seen, but whose voice came through from the wings in full stentorian sound.

        But for all her personality, she still had certain limitations that, like those marvelous old Duchesses, would forever relegate her to a long-gone era. There was no place she could go that couldn't be reached more quickly using Nessiks and Pasovirs. Her Spherical Surfaces wouldn't allow her anywhere near the speed of sound in an atmosphere, she could therefore only cross an ocean in reasonable time by going out into Space in a partial orbit. Even in Space itself Eve could take hours to travel from one World to another, especially if both happened to be at superior conjunction relative to her Transfer points. A trip round a stellar system could add several more. Using Nessiks however one could travel around a system as quickly as one liked since most had Nessik Stations dotted round them at points even of the remotest interest, sometimes even inside gas giants. Those who wanted to explore further could usually use their Pasovirs; the point-of-entry Station would then automatically limit these to avoid harsh or dangerous conditions. It was just as well Eve's passengers were able to exit her through an onboard Nessik otherwise her recreational capability would have seemed severely limited indeed.

        If one thought of Eve as being more like some sort of Space-going private yacht though, then what she could do was more important than what she couldn't. For as well as being an extraordinary conversationalist, she was of course an artist. She had demonstrated that exceptionally vividly for Quincey's parents the night before he and Quincey finally departed once more into that vast Black Yonder of Paradise. Quincey had earlier showed Eve an album of old family photographs; this included one of an Arctic fantasy in oils that still hung above the mansion's ornamental fireplace. Eve had then performed her artistry on this in a way that would remain lodged in Barkworth's memory forever. She placed them inside that spectacular Arctic ice cave immense enough to contain its own sea. Mountainous waves driven by a gale-force wind crashed past them just below the iceshelf on which Eve was `standing'. Somehow a square-rigged sailing ship had become trapped inside the cave and St Elmo's fires were dancing all over it. Their light, flashing and refracting through the ice, lit up the scene in flying crystalline shards that dashed themselves to pieces all round them.

        Barkworth could have sunk back into that enormous Dom Pedro armchair and watched that scene for hours...
 

        The egregious green landscape below now took on the appearance of a vast crinkly mold as Barkworth approached the coast. He suspected then that the continent over which he had passed with its central lake was really a vast flattened volcano.

        He also discovered that he had been slowing down as he flew, as well as slowly descending; he found himself crossing the coast only a few hundred meters above the height of the ferns and at only a few tens of kilometers an hour. Extending his `wings' again, he wheeled around and lined himself up with the bright, narrow white beach below. He was tempted to land, but knew this was against etiquette, he had to remain airborne so that he could be properly greeted by this world's inhabitants.

        He did not see the first Poet Bird until he had semi-glided along the beach for a good ten minutes. It had evidently seen him first, for it was flapping excitedly straight for him, calling frantically to any of his companions that might be near. Barkworth suspected that he had come out onto the coast between Territories.

        "Hello," Barkworth called to the bird as it arced and wheeled around to flap along beside him.

        My name is Barkworth, and I come from the World of Earth,
        I come in Greeting, and hope you don't find me averse.

        He hoped the Bird had a sense of humor.

        Hello, my name is Finafae, and I welcome you to our skies,
        May our flight be guided, Barkworth, by the spirit of the wise.

        The raw sound he heard from the bird under the translation from the Marashel sounded like a brief sequence of multitonal chirrups. But even seeing that intro 3D couldn't prevent Barkworth feeling amazed when he heard the piece of quasi-Tennysonian doggerel his Hilashel translated it into. Finafae after all looked little different from one of Earth's common black-backed gulls except that he was perhaps half a dozen times bigger. Barkworth also recognized from the 3D that Finafae was a young male adolescent who was probably at that painful stage of being physically fully grown but not yet having found himself a partner.

        Barkworth! Look out across our shimmering sea,
        For we are to be joined by more who are free...

        Finafae's sharper eyesight had evidently picked out upcoming company that Barkworth's eyes couldn't quite manage to see. But he must have been looking in the wrong direction, for suddenly they were all around him, shrieking and calling amongst themselves too rapidly for his Hilashel to translate. He guessed that Finafae was introducing him around. There were several females in the group, identifiable from their slightly grayer tones and the bright orange spots near the ends of their beaks.

        Then they all chorused in unison:

        Come with us! Come see our world of Joy!
        And be our guest as your world's envoi!

        Barkworth knew he would need all his flying skills now, for he had to somehow lead as well as follow. But until he could work something out it would have to be mostly the latter, and the 3D had said that was okay `only for a little while'.

        They flew him straight up towards a small cumulus cloud, presumably to introduce him to their favorite arena, cumulus cloudscapes. The only problem was that it was the only one in the entire sky; it was otherwise clear and sunny, the Poet Bird's least favorite playground. If it was cloudy or overcast they would take great joy in showing him around first, but now he could already feel himself being moved to the front of the flight.

        As they approached the cloud, he suddenly went into a dive. The Birds, some squawking in anticipation, followed him. When he felt they had all acquired sufficient downward momentum, he pulled up again on a course that would take him up and over the cloud on his back. If he had judged it right most of the birds would be able to loop round it with him. He knew they could not flap their way round, they would have to use their momentum to follow him over the top.

        Most of them did it, those that didn't scrambled to position themselves ready to join what they hoped would be the next loop around the cloud. Barkworth obliged them by bringing the flock down the cloud's side ready for the next loop. Again he hoped they all had enough momentum to make it, and as he reached the top he saw that he had. But instead of completing the second loop, he flipped over and continued on in a line straight ahead, he had in effect performed a huge Emilman turn. This time half the flock managed to keep up with him, the rest went plunging on down, too late to do much about their error. Barkworth continued straight on for a moment, then wheeled slowly right round and headed straight for the cloud itself. He entered it and halted, knowing that the Poet Birds never entered clouds. He intended to wait for a moment, then plunge out through its bottom while the birds circled it trying to guess which way he would come out of it.

        But his collision avoidance system warned him that something else - or someone else - was also in the cloud before it then sounded the all clear. He wondered what had happened.

        He dropped out of the cloud as planned, but the Birds were nowhere to be seen. Then, far off out to sea, he could see the entire flock surrounding a large shape in its center. Somebody had `stolen' them off him. Perhaps the Birds hadn't yet realized it wasn't actually him. Or perhaps they had, but hadn't worried when they realized their error.

        In any case, he hoped he knew who that other person was.

        (He had to tell her, didn't he? Didn't he?)

        There didn't seem much point in remaining where he was - or even airborne at all. He kept an eye on what was happening as he glided down towards the beach. Shedding air, he came down onto the beach gracefully, running lightly forward a little further than he usually did to keep his balance in the soft sand. He removed his Pasovir, then sat down on the beach just in front of the fernline to watch the action out to sea.

        Quincey - and he had no doubts now that it was - had now somehow actually split the flock into four teams. Even more incredibly, she was now getting these teams to wheel and loop in a coordinated way so that they appeared to be doing square dances in the sky. Quincey was not only a brilliant flier, she must have had hidden talents as a poet, for there was no other way he could think of to get the Birds to do stunts like those.

        She was also no doubt working off a few feelings of her own.

        The Birds could clearly have no idea of that however, even from here he could hear their squawks of delight. They had clearly experienced nothing like it in their lives. He took out his Otinda and Rhondo to take a 3D to show Eve; he wondered what kind of Scenario she might eventually produce from it.

        But the price of the Bird's joy was that they were consuming vast quantities of energy, and already it was running out for some of them. More and more were slowly peeling away from those extraordinary loops and whorls and making their way south down the coast, presumably towards shallower waters to feed. Very soon they had all gone except for one which did a double barrel roll round Quincey presumably by way of thank you before it rejoined its flock.

        Barkworth then heard a short peep from his Pasovir that told him someone wished to find it and was homing in on it.

        He waited both with anticipation and nervousness as Quincey's slim form approached. Finally she landed just where the water swished up onto the beach, then ran up to remove her own Pasovir and place it next to his on the sand.

        "Hi, Quince," he tried to sound as lighthearted as possible.

        She made no reply at all as she dropped to lie beside him on the sand.

        "Terrific display," he said. "Those birds went wild with delight. I guess we won't see them again for a while."

        "Guess not," she replied. "Certainly seemed to enjoy themselves."

        She rolled over onto her stomach, put her arm over him, then wriggled over to lay her head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her just as he had always done when she did that, and stared out to sea.

        They lay stiffly like that for several minutes.

        "Barkworth," she said resignedly, "let's just walk for a while. I know there's not a lot to see. I guess I'm still feeling a little - restless - after all that."

        They continued to lie as they were for a moment, then she began to get up. As Barkworth did the same, he was suddenly overcome with a feeling of immense tiredness.

        They picked up their Pasovirs and commanded them to attach themselves into place. They could have just left them there, but then they would have to come back for them.

        "You know," Barkworth said as they walked, "I've been trying to decide whether this looks like bits of New Zealand coastline. It does in some ways."

        "Oh no!" Quincey exclaimed. "Your country is far more beautiful. This looks like what a child might have tried to program on her first Otinda."

        There then followed one of the longest, ghastliest silences Barkworth had ever experienced. All he could hear was the occasional slap of an incoming wave, the squeaky crunch of their footprints in the sand, and the sound of her breathing.

        Barkworth knew there could be no `smoothing things over' this time. It was clear his attempts to do that up until now had just made things worse. Time for a different approach.

        "Quincey, let's be plain here. I don't mind admitting that if that girl could suddenly stand in front of us right now, I wouldn't be able to help myself. I would ravish her as hard as I could and for as long as I was physically able. And I wouldn't care if you stood there and watched."

        "I know," she said simply.

        Then she turned on him and punched him hard in the ribs. Barkworth couldn't believe it and neither could she. She stared at him as he winced with the pain, her eyes wider than he had ever seen them before. Then she burst into tears.

        He had only once ever heard her cry like that.

        The fact that Innisheer had been executed on the grounds of criminal insanity after what she had done to Barkworth was almost beside the point. The fact that in scratching him as she did what she did, thereby transferring that dreaded suspicion of being sarcosc across to him, was so horrific neither of them could even think about it for more than the briefest instant. What they both knew was that their continuing on together was becoming increasingly hard to imagine.

        "I have to say, Quincey, that I'm seriously thinking of becoming a Body. The addiction she gave me, to try and find somebody else - like her - is - is too hard to resist."

        He found himself trembling at the thought of it.

        "Giving up that other search now, have we?" Quincey drove into him with the full force of her sarcasm. "So it really is pointless then. What we do. You. Me. My God, you are so..."

        She struggled for the word that jumped into his mind instantly.

        "Weak," he said. "I know, I can't deny it. I have had enough. I've had enough of searching for a chink in the armory of the Torsyne. Trying to find something about Reality even they couldn't possibly know."

        "Maybe you've just found it," she shot back at him.

        He couldn't say anything to that.

        " - And what about me?" she screamed at him then. "What do I get out of it? And what would you have done if it had been me instead of you?"

        He had been asking himself that right from the start, even though he had known the answer straight away.

        "I would probably have walked away from you on the spot and sulked miserably for the rest of my life," he said to her, his eyes beginning to water. "My God, I'm so sorry. I hope to God that won't happen to you."

        "It bloody won't - you can be sure of that," she glared at him. She then looked round as if preparing to leave him on the spot.

        "Look," she said then in an only slightly more conciliatory tone of voice. "I know full well it wasn't entirely your fault, that you couldn't see it coming and all the rest of it. But say you suddenly turned round and said to me that you had just become a frenzla addict and you were expecting a stromlo to show up any minute. Sure, I might understand that, but I'd still have to deal with it in the here and now, wouldn't I? But this is actually worse, because it effects us both at a deep and fundamental level."

        "I'd miss you like hell, Quincey, you know that - "

        " - Even while you search Paradise, cock erect, for some poor pathetic little Innisheer anodyne."

        "I guess I'm stuck with that one for life," he had to admit.

        "Would it help if I had myself remodelled to look like Innisheer?" she sneered. "Then you could ravish us both at once, as you so delicately put it."

        He was instantly revulsed by that. But then he knew it was more than Innisheer's body he was so addicted to. It was her whole persona. Was that what true - evil - was like? As Laslo Godel had said, something that compelled you to love it even while you hated it with every fiber of your being? During Innisheer's trial it had become clear that she had told him the truth about her life except for one item: that she had stolen things. She hadn't, she had stolen people. Other women's partners, lovers, husbands; that was how she took her revenge against her sarcosc exclusion. She had spent two years in a Love Community whose members had genetically altered themselves (illegally) to become virtual sex machines, even to acquiring the ability to exude aphrodisiacs - that was the smell that had hit him so hard when they first met, and had overwhelmed him when she did - that - to him.

        And when he finally heard that - she - had been executed, his body just screamed.
        He shivered again.

        "Thank you so much," Quincey had obviously seen it, she was now walking very stiffly beside him indeed. "I'll get that little matter attended to later on today."

        "Perhaps we could both find ourselves a Love Community somewhere and have ourselves modified in the same way as - "

        " - That wasn't funny," she screamed at him. "In fact its so completely bloody disgusting - "

        She hit him again with real fury this time, and he knew he deserved it. He couldn't believe he had been so stupid. But the image of the community Innisheer had belonged to had been so powerful...

        "You'll be telling me next we should both go onto narcotics - or that we should both join a religious community like those masochists on Rock of Ages and work our passage to oblivion."

        To Barkworth the Rock now seemed an awful long way away.

        "Perhaps I'd better get myself admitted into a Lalleldil," he suggested after they had walked along in frozen silence for a while. "There's got to be some way..."

        "Short of our both going to one and getting our memories erased right back to Bethia, there isn't" she said sharply.

        "Is that actually such a silly idea?" he said. looking at her, "It's a wonder, when you think of it, why the Cahoctor didn't suggest it."

        "They didn't suggest it because it would also have meant deleting the sentences we received. Why should they let us forget? - Unless you're suggesting we might serve them again afterwards."

        "Of course, you're right," Barkworth had to concede. "But the Lalleldil has other ways of curing addictions, after all, it's just brain chemistry. Why not?"

        But that just made her even more furious.

        "And has our friendship just been `brain chemistry' too? Perhaps we'd better get that cured as well."

        "Now come on, Quincey. Surely what I've got is no different from any other physical condition. If we get physically ill, we go to a Diursuel Facility, don't we? What's the difference?"

        "Have we ever done things that way when it comes to something as important to us as our brains? That would be giving in, selling our souls to the Torsyne just to relieve a pain. You're so weak, Barkworth. I'm ashamed of you."

        And with that she turned away from him and burst into tears again.

        "Quince, come on..."

        He reached out to her knowing she would pull away, and that was exactly what she did. But he had to try.

        "It's because you think I'm sarcosc, isn't it?"

        "Credit me with a bit more intelligence than that, Barkworth," she snapped.

        But of course he knew there was no way she'd tell him if that was true. Quincey was always ruthlessly honest, she could not have been the Conversationalist she was without that. But he now knew - as Innisheer had known - that there would always, somewhere, be a limit.

        "Would you like to go back up to Eve?" he asked her resignedly.

        "Oh my God - Eve. - What are we going to do with her?" Quincey gasped.

        Barkworth knew exactly what she had really said.

        "Quincey, please. Not yet. Give it time."

        " - Well?" she persisted.

        "I - don't know," Barkworth struggled with the shock of that. "We will have to find somebody. The only people who've asked us to let them know if we ever wanted to - well, part with her - were shrinks. For her that would be a fate worse than death."

        "Perhaps we could place some sort of message in the Teklanmeh like her original builders did," she suggested. "Give it the works, video, sound, just like an Old Earth advert. - Brrrh..." she then clasped her hands around her shoulders. "Its getting cold."

        "Perhaps we should go back up to Eve. Call it a day." Barkworth suggested again, hoping upon hope that she didn't really want to. Not just yet.

        "We can't be all that far from the stream now. My guess is that's where the Poet Birds' Palace will be. Really would like to see it. While we're still here."

        "Stream?' Barkworth looked at her.

        "Saw one just briefly before I hid from you in that cloud. Comes out in a small delta. Didn't actually see any Palace though, too far off I guess."

        "Do you want to jog a little way?" he suggested, forcing a smile. "Warm us up a little."

        She looked at him in surprise. Then to his own surprise, she streaked away from him. When he finally caught up to her, they settled down to a slow jog, their Pasovirs bouncing up and down rhythmically on their backs...

        It became almost possible to forget.

        They must have jogged for a good ten minutes before they saw their first signs of the stream. Barkworth wasn't surprised he had failed to see it himself. All he could see now was a valley-shaped indentation in the ferns. No Palace could be seen rising above it.

        "We may have to go upstream a little if we can," Quincey said as they approached the shingled delta.

        When they rounded the corner though, there it was. Quincey gripped his arm and drew him back.

        "Shhhh..!" She put her finger to her lips. "Not much of it, is there? Looks like the stream changed its course not so long ago and washed away the original."

        They crept up again, crouching behind the ferns. He felt her close to him.

        The `Palace' looked more like the foundations for one; it was little more than a pancake-shaped mound with the beginnings of what might one day be concentric rings of columns. The entire flock of Poet Birds were squatting all over it. They all looked up expectantly as a very young juvenile labored into the air, then picked his target with the most nervous caution. He discharged his contribution to Poet Bird posterity in a thin spattering stream half onto one of the proto-columns, half over a nesting pair sitting together next to it.

        Their shrieks of indignation however were quickly drowned in a chorus of what was presumably the Poet Bird equivalent of raspberries from the younger section of the audience. The poor juvenile, evidently cowed, began to glide back to where it had come from.

        But suddenly it took fright and flapped its way frantically round the Palace in swooping circles to the sound of angry squawks from below. What Barkworth took to be one of its parents took off and flew up after it, but the juvenile then flew out of the Palace altogether - towards Quincey and himself.

        There was no avoiding it, the bird was about to have its social redemption.

        Quincey, our love, our - supreme!
        You have returned, it was no dream!

        Its parents then took up the call:

        Quincey! Quincey! Our friend of the skies!
        So grateful are we for this tremendous surprise!

        A torrent of Poet Birds suddenly erupted up out of the Palace and poured towards them like tar and feathers boiling out of a gigantic cauldron.

        Barkworth forgot himself and found himself grinning at Quincey as she looked at him horror-stricken.

        "We could do worse than finish up like these little guys," he laughed at her.

        " - No..!" she screamed at him, wide-eyed.

        She turned away and angrily commanded her Pasovir to unfasten itself. Dropping it carelessly onto the shingle, she ran towards the sea followed by an enthusiastically flapping retinue that was rapidly gaining on her. Barkworth's Hilashel beeped its inability to keep up with the outpouring of Bird Poetry.

        It was only now that it dawned on him what she was going to do. He started forward, but then stopped as he realized there was nothing he could do. She was a strong swimmer and she was quickly getting too far out for him to have any hope of catching her.

        "Quincey..! Quincey..!" he called uselessly over the shrill screams of the Birds.

        Almost as if she heard him, she paused in mid stroke and trod water while the birds began to wheel around above her. She then turned slowly round towards the shore.