The World At The End Of Time Part 21

And thus, without warning, they were gone. Only Jeren tarried to shake Viktor's hand sadly and to say good-bye. Viktor wasn't even allowed to follow them to their "bus."

Nrina was in the corridor, and she beckoned him to follow her. She was wearing a filmy rainbow-colored thing that might once have been called a negligee. It veiled, without hiding, the fact that under it she wore nothing at all, not even the cache-s.e.x. Viktor averted his eyes, because there was something he really wanted to ask the woman, and her scanty attire made it difficult.

"It is very interesting to me that you were born on Old Earth," she told him seriously as they walked. "Here, this is my home. You may come in."

He followed her uneasily through a doorway. When they were inside she clapped her hands, and it closed behind them. It was not a large room, but it was prettily festooned with growing things, and there was a scent of flowers in the air. There was one of those desk things, of course, and soft pillows thrown about. The only other large bit of furniture in the room was a soft, cup-shaped thing, like the cap of a mushroom turned upside down.

It looked very much like a bed.

Nrina sat on the edge of the cup-shaped thing, which was large enough for her to stretch out in easily. She looked at Viktor appraisingly before she spoke. "Have you any questions for me, Viktor?" she asked.

Indeed he had-many, and a number that he didn't quite want to ask. He fumbled. "I did-I did want to know something, Nrina. Is my, uh, my brain severely damaged?"

"Severely?" She thought for a moment. "No, I would not say 'severely,' " she said at last. "Much of your memory has come back, has it not? Perhaps more will. The damage may not be permanent."

"May not!" not!"

She shrugged-it was a graceful movement, but with the extreme slimness of her body it made Viktor think of a snake slowly writhing in its coils. "What difference does that make?"

"It make a great difference to me!"

She thought that over, looking at him carefully. Then she smiled. "But it makes none to me, Viktor," she pointed out. And she lay back on the bed, still smiling at him, but now with a wholly different expression.

He felt himself responding. Instinctively his hand went to the brand on his forehead.

"Oh," she said, reaching out with her own hand to take his, "that is all right, Viktor. I have fixed myself so that I cannot be fertilized. But I do want to know, I want very much to know, how you people from Old Earth made love."

CHAPTER 21.

By now the universe was getting pretty old, and Wan-To was very nearly the age of the universe. There was a redeeming feature to that, though, because the older Wan-To got, the longer it took for him to become older still.

That wasn't because of the relativistic effect of time dilation. It had nothing to do with the velocity of his motion. It was only a matter of energy supply. Wan-To was living on a starvation diet, and it had made him very slow slow.

When Wan-To was young or middle-aged-or even quite elderly, say when he had reached the age of a few hundred billion years-he aged quickly because he did everything everything quickly. Wan-To was a plasma person. It was the flashing pace of nuclear fusion that drove his metabolism; changes of state happened at the speed of the creation and destruction of virtual particles, winking in and out of existence as vacuum fluctuations. quickly. Wan-To was a plasma person. It was the flashing pace of nuclear fusion that drove his metabolism; changes of state happened at the speed of the creation and destruction of virtual particles, winking in and out of existence as vacuum fluctuations.

That was how it had been, once.

It wasn't that way anymore. Wan-To was almost blind now. He could not spare the energy for all those external eyes-but it didn't much matter, because what was there to see in this spa.r.s.e, dark, cold universe? He did keep a tiny "ear" open for the sounds of possible communication-though even "possible," he knew, was stretching it. Who was there to communicate?

Wan-To's physical condition in itself was awful. (How awful just to have a "physical" condition at all!) He was trapped. He was embedded in a nearly solid ma.s.s, like a man buried in sand up to his neck. It wasn't impossible for him to move. It was only very difficult, and painful, and agonizingly slow.

He could have left. He could have cut himself loose from this corpse of a star to seek another. But there weren't any others better than the one he was in.

The wonderful quick, bright phase of his existence was so far in the past that Wan-To hardly remembered it. (His memory, too, was a function of how much energy he had to spare for it. A lot of memory was, so to speak, shut down-"on standby," one might say, to h.o.a.rd what powers he had available.) The kind of energies to support that sort of life had disappeared. There wasn't any nuclear fusion anymore, not anywhere in the universe as far as Wan-To could see or imagine. Every fusible element had long since fused, every fissionable one had fissed.

And so the stars had gone out.

All of them. Every last one. Stars were history; and history, now, had run for so many endless eons that even Wan-To no longer kept count of the time. But time pa.s.sed anyway, and now the universe had lived for more than ten thousand million million million million million million years.

That was a number without much meaning even to Wan-To. A human would have written it as the number 1 followed by forty zeroes-10,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. He wouldn't have understood it, either, but he could have juggled numbers around to give an idea of what it meant. He might, for instance, have said that if the entire age of the universe at the time when the human race first started thinking seriously about it-everything from the Big Bang to, say, the twentieth century on Earth-had been only one second, one second, then on the same scale its present age was coming right up on something like fifty thousand billion billion years . . . then on the same scale its present age was coming right up on something like fifty thousand billion billion years . . .

And, of course, that number wouldn't have meant much, either, except that anyone could see it was a very, very long time.

If Wan-To had been of a philosophical bent, he might have said to himself something consoling, like, At least I've had a good run for my money. Or, You only live once-but if you do it right, once is enough.

Wan-To was not that philosophical. He was not at all willing to go gladly into that long, dark night. He would have resisted it with all his force . . . if he had known a way to do it . . . and if he had had enough force to be worth talking about to resist it with.

Time was when Wan-To had hurled stars about in all the vigor of his mighty youth-had even made stars, out of clouds of dust-had even made himself a new galaxy or two, when all the ones in sight were beginning to dim toward extinction. He remembered that much, at least, because it gave him pleasure to mull over in his mind the wonderful, primordial, galaxy-sized clouds that he had caused to collapse and to begin to spin and to twinkle with billions of stars coming to life. Nothing in the universe was more powerful than Wan-To had been then, creator and destroyer of galaxies!

That had been a brave time!

But that time was long gone. In ten-to-the-fortieth-power years, most things are long gone.

What had happened in that long, long stretch of years?

The answer to that is simple.

Everything had happened. had happened.

The last of the galaxies had formed and evaporated and died. The last of the new stars had formed eternities before, as the last huge gas cloud shuddered into motion as a compressibility wave jolted it and caused it to crash together to form a new star. There couldn't be any new stars anymore. There might still be a vagrant wisp of dust here and there, but gravitational attraction wasn't strong enough to make it coalesce. That wasn't because anything had happened to gravity itself. It was just a matter of the law of inverse squares-after all, the universe was still expanding. It could not make more matter of energy, but it kept right on making more s.p.a.ce. As the universe expanded, it cooled-there was more and more of it every second, and so the remnant heat was diluted more and more. And so everything was farther and farther away from everything else, so far that the distances were quite meaningless.

The last of the big, bright stars had long since gone supernova; the last of the Sol types had gone supergiant and turned into a white dwarf; all of those profligate wastrels of energy had long since burned themselves out. The red dwarfs had a somewhat longer run for their money. They were the smallest and longest-lived of those furnaces of nuclear fusion that were called stars, but then they had gone, too. The last of them had long before burned itself to a lump of iron, warmed by the only energy source that was left, the terminally slow decay of the protons themselves.

Proton decay! It hurt Wan-To's pride to have to live by so feeble an energy source as proton decay.

The only good thing about it was that it lasted a long time. When a proton decays, two up quarks and one down quark turn into a positron (which goes off and annihilates the first electron it comes across) and a quark-antiquark pair (which is to say a meson). The meson doesn't matter to anyone after that. The positron-electron annihilation produces heat-a little little heat. heat.

And all this happened very slowly. If the average life span of a proton was-well, let's not play the big number game anymore; let's just say it's a kazillion years-that didn't mean every proton in the universe would expire on the tick of that moment. That was average. average. Mathematics showed that the "half-life" of the proton should then be about seven-tenths of a kazillion. Mathematics showed that the "half-life" of the proton should then be about seven-tenths of a kazillion.

By then Wan-To would be in even more straitened circ.u.mstances, with half the protons gone. In another such period half the remainder would be gone, and then half of that remainder.

The time was in sight, Wan-To saw with gloom, when there would just not be enough whole protons in any one cadaver of a star to keep him warm.

The word "warm" is an exaggeration. No human would have thought one of those hard, dead lumps very warm; the highest temperature proton decay could attain for it was less than a dozen degrees above absolute zero.

And that was when, after everything had happened, everything stopped stopped happening, because there wasn't enough energy anywhere to drive events. happening, because there wasn't enough energy anywhere to drive events.

A few degrees above absolute zero wasn't what Wan-To considered warm, either, but it was all there was left for him. The solid matter he had once despised-the iron corpse that was all that was left of his last star-was the only home he could find.

It had not been easy for Wan-To to adapt to such a horrid environment. It had only been possible at all by resigning himself to the loss of most of his functions, and the slowing down of all there were left. Now the milliseconds of Wan-To's life dragged for thousands of years.

That was quite fast enough, in one way, for there wasn't much left for Wan-To to do-except to contemplate the fact that his future had no future except eternity. He wasn't even good at contemplating anymore, for his mind was fuzzy from deprivation. (Fuzzier even than that of the person who was almost as old as he was, Viktor Sorricaine.) That was just as well, because in his moments of clarity Wan-To realized that nothing was ever going to get better for him. All that would happen would be that the clinker he lived in would slowly, slowly cool even further, until there was no energy at all left to keep him alive.

And the horrible part of that was that it would go on for ever . ever . . . or close enough . . . for so long that even his present age would seem only a moment, before the last proton expired and he was finally dead. . . or close enough . . . for so long that even his present age would seem only a moment, before the last proton expired and he was finally dead.

Nothing but a miracle could change his hopeless certain destiny.

Wan-To didn't believe in miracles.

A miracle had to come from somewhere, somewhere, and Wan-To could see no place in the doddering, dying universe where a miracle might still be born. Of course, he had long since forgotten the dozen stars he had hurled out of that ancient galaxy at so vast a speed that time, for that little system, had almost stopped. and Wan-To could see no place in the doddering, dying universe where a miracle might still be born. Of course, he had long since forgotten the dozen stars he had hurled out of that ancient galaxy at so vast a speed that time, for that little system, had almost stopped.

CHAPTER 22.

If it were not for the odd, bleak flashes of memory that sometimes cut through the fog in Viktor's brain-memories of Reesa that came and went, painful while they were there; memories of the children long dust, which left a dismal sense of hopeless loss-if it weren't for those things, Viktor might easily have thought this third act of his life close to the best.

To be sure, it was just a touch touch humiliating. Never once had Viktor imagined that his main career would be in s.e.xually servicing a skinny, seven-foot woman with huge eyes. Yet it had its compensations. As the recognized lover of Nrina, Viktor became a privileged person. humiliating. Never once had Viktor imagined that his main career would be in s.e.xually servicing a skinny, seven-foot woman with huge eyes. Yet it had its compensations. As the recognized lover of Nrina, Viktor became a privileged person.

He wasn't a "husband," of course. The only "rights" he had over Nrina were to share her bed-sometimes, her company-when she wasn't working; when she wasn't doing something else that she didn't wish to share with him. The basic job he had been thawed out for in the first place, as donator of sperm for her collection of useful genetic materials, no longer existed for him. Nrina explained that she had all the samples she needed for future genetic engineering. She now had better employment for that particular function. His only present responsibility was to give her pleasure. All of which added up to the fact that he was- He didn't like to say it explicitly, but there was an old and unflattering expression for what he was. He was kept. kept.

When Manett told him, with all that surly resentment, that Nrina had decreed Viktor was to take over his job, Viktor had thought it meant supervising the next batch of thawed-out sperm donors. But when, tentatively, Viktor asked Nrina when they were going to do the thawing she looked at him in surprise. "Oh, not now, now, Viktor," she said, stroking his shoulder affectionately. "First Dekkaduk and I must run the DNA a.s.says on them, to see which are worth the trouble of thawing, don't you see? And we have much other work to do. Important work. Orders to fill, with deadlines which we must meet. No, it will be weeks at least, perhaps a whole season, before we are ready to acquire more material. But now-are you hungry? No? Then why don't we go to my bed again?" And he understood that what had once been Manett's main job was indeed now his. Viktor," she said, stroking his shoulder affectionately. "First Dekkaduk and I must run the DNA a.s.says on them, to see which are worth the trouble of thawing, don't you see? And we have much other work to do. Important work. Orders to fill, with deadlines which we must meet. No, it will be weeks at least, perhaps a whole season, before we are ready to acquire more material. But now-are you hungry? No? Then why don't we go to my bed again?" And he understood that what had once been Manett's main job was indeed now his.

Nrina's life wasn't his, though. Even her home wasn't really his; Viktor was surprised (and, on reflection, not very pleased) to find that the private chamber she had first taken him to was only a sort of guest room. Nrina's own home was far larger, and very much more complex and beautiful. It had one big room with a "transparent" ceiling-well, it wasn't always transparent, because Nrina could turn it off when she chose, and then it was only a sort of pattern of shifting, nebulous, luminous, multicolored pastel clouds. (And it wasn't really really transparent, being only a sort of huge TV screen that showed the outside universe.) In the center of the room a cloudy sphere, as tall as Viktor's head, showed shapes in milky pastel light, though most of the room's illumination came from the gently glowing walls. (Nrina's people didn't seem to like harsh lighting.) transparent, being only a sort of huge TV screen that showed the outside universe.) In the center of the room a cloudy sphere, as tall as Viktor's head, showed shapes in milky pastel light, though most of the room's illumination came from the gently glowing walls. (Nrina's people didn't seem to like harsh lighting.) Then there was another room, quite small, but large enough for their needs. It held her own bed. That one looked terribly flimsy to Viktor; it was cantilevered out from the wall, and it did not look to Viktor as though it was built to stand very vigorous activity in it. (He was wrong about that, he discovered. The habitat's low gravity helped.) There wasn't any kitchen, exactly. There was a room with a cupboard that was a sort of a freezer and fridge, and another that was a sort of a microwave oven. (That was all they needed. These people, Viktor found, didn't ever fry or broil anything-especially not hunks of dead animal flesh.) That was where Viktor ate most of the time-Nrina sometimes, too, though often enough she was off somewhere else, with whom Viktor never knew. That was not a problem in any practical way. There was always plenty to eat. Once Viktor learned how to handle the heating apparatus he always found stews and porridges and soups and hashes ready in the fridge, and sherberts in the freezer, and any number of different kinds of fresh fruits-always fresh, always perfect, too; though some of them were wholly unfamiliar to Viktor, and a few were perfectly foul to his taste. He wondered who replenished them. Certainly not Nrina!

Nor was Viktor idle. Not really really idle, he told himself, he was in fact very busy learning about this new life he had been given. He had the freedom to roam where he would on the habitat. He used that freedom, too, except when his leg was hurting too badly. That wasn't often anymore, but there were days when the pain was acute all day long. Then it hurt all the time, when it wasn't itching; sometimes it both itched, like a bad sunburn, and hurt, like a new scald. idle, he told himself, he was in fact very busy learning about this new life he had been given. He had the freedom to roam where he would on the habitat. He used that freedom, too, except when his leg was hurting too badly. That wasn't often anymore, but there were days when the pain was acute all day long. Then it hurt all the time, when it wasn't itching; sometimes it both itched, like a bad sunburn, and hurt, like a new scald.

Those days weren't a total waste, because he could spend them hunched over the communicator desk, learning all he could. But when the leg was no more than mildly annoying, he preferred to walk around.

You couldn't see much of the habitat at any one time, because everything was inside. inside. There weren't many large open s.p.a.ces. There certainly wasn't ever any sky, for a ceiling was never very far overhead. Strangely, much of the place was There weren't many large open s.p.a.ces. There certainly wasn't ever any sky, for a ceiling was never very far overhead. Strangely, much of the place was bent. bent. The longest corridors were straight as laser beams, but the ones at right angles to them had perceptible upward curves. The longest corridors were straight as laser beams, but the ones at right angles to them had perceptible upward curves.

The place was like a rolled-up version of-well, of Homeport, say. Of any city spread out on its land, except that this one had been rolled around and joined in a kind of tube. Everything Viktor saw was in the outer skin of that tube. That was why those transverse hallways were always curved. Viktor discovered that if he went all the way around one-it wasn't really far, a twenty-minute walk at most when his leg wasn't bothering him-he would come right back to his starting point.

What was in the middle? Machinery, Nrina told him when he asked her. They were lying together in her cantilevered bed, nibbling on sweet little plums, both quite relaxed. The machinery, she said, was all different kinds. The core of the habitat was where they kept the air cleaners (to filter out the wastes and replenish the oxygen), and the temperature regulators, and the generators for electrical energy, and the communications equipment, and the data machine files-and, in short, everything that was needed to make the habitat comfortably habitable. All tidily out of sight. She yawned, pitching a plum pit on the floor and nestling cozily close to him.

But Viktor was wide awake. It was all a wonder to him. Technologically wonderful, of course, but also wonderful to think of starved, poverty-stricken refugees from old Newmanhome building all these things-enough of them to hold three hundred million people!

"Well, they didn't build them all at once, Viktor," Nrina pointed out reasonably, stretching her long, slim legs ("slim" now to Viktor's mind-no longer "skinny") and yawning again. "Once they got a good start it was easy enough. There were plenty of asteroids to mine for materials, and Nergal gave off a lot of heat, as long as you got close enough to it. Of course, now that the sun's back in business we wouldn't need to stay around Nergal anymore-but why would we bother to move?"

"Well, to a planet," Viktor began. "Newmanhome, for instance. They say it's warmed up now-"

"Planets!" she scoffed. "Planets are nasty. nasty. Certainly, now that Newmanhome is pretty well thawed out people can Certainly, now that Newmanhome is pretty well thawed out people can survive survive there, but who would want to?" there, but who would want to?"

I would, Viktor thought, but he wasn't sure he meant it, so all he said was, "Some people might."

"Some silly people do," she admitted. "There are a few odd ones who seem to enjoy poking through the old records, and of course we need someone to pick over the freezers to find whatever organisms are left that might supply useful DNA. I don't call that living, Viktor." And she went on to explain why it certainly wasn't any kind of life she could stand for herself. The gravity! gravity! Why, on Newmanhome they had to move around in wheelchairs most of the time, even if they'd taken the muscle-building and calcium-binding treatments that would let them stand it at all. (As, it turned out, Dekkaduk had-thus those incongruous knots of muscle.) That much gravity certainly wasn't good for anybody. Not to mention the Why, on Newmanhome they had to move around in wheelchairs most of the time, even if they'd taken the muscle-building and calcium-binding treatments that would let them stand it at all. (As, it turned out, Dekkaduk had-thus those incongruous knots of muscle.) That much gravity certainly wasn't good for anybody. Not to mention the discomfort. discomfort. No, it wasn't at all the kind of life she personally could tolerate. No, it wasn't at all the kind of life she personally could tolerate.

And then, stroking his thigh, she interrupted herself. "Hold still a minute, Viktor," she ordered, leaning over to poke at his leg. "Does that feel all right?"

He craned his neck to peer at the pink sausage casing. "I guess so. I almost forget it's there." But reminded, he was aware of the smell. The wrapping was porous, to let the wound breathe as it healed, and odors did leak out.

Nrina didn't seem to mind them. "I'd better take another look," she decided. And then, "Oh, no, I'm meeting Kotlenny; well, Dekkaduk can do it. Go over and tell him to give you an examination."

Dekkaduk was waiting for him when Viktor got to the examining room. His expression was hostile.

It was no worse than Viktor had expected. Dekkaduk did not seem to be a friendly man. Their first meeting had been when Dekkaduk had tattooed the fertility warning on Viktor's forehead; all right, that was just a duty, and if it had been painful probably that couldn't be helped. But ever since the time they had taken DNA samples from Nrina's corpsicles, along with the departed Manett, Dekkaduk had given every sign of despising the man from Old Earth.

"Ouch!" Viktor exclaimed, as Dekkaduk peeled the dressing off his leg. (That might not have been on purpose. Still, removing the dressing didn't hurt when Nrina did it.) Then as the full aroma of the healing wound floated to his nostrils, Dekkaduk muttered furiously to himself and ostentatiously turned the room's ventilation higher. (Well, it did stink. But that much? Nrina didn't appear to find the smell intolerable, after all.) Dekkaduk hurt him (Viktor kept count) eight different times in the course of a two-minute examination. Even the healing, cleaning spray he used to cover the pink new flesh stung bitterly (Nrina's hadn't), and when he was through and the leg was rebandaged Dekkaduk simply said, "You're healing. Go away now."

Viktor went. Once away from Dekkaduk's touch the leg hardly hurt at all anymore. As he strolled along the corridor he was thinking of possible explanations for the man's hostility. It could, of course, be just his nature. Dekkaduk might simply have interests of his own and regard this rude survivor from prehistoric ages, Viktor Sorricaine, as an irritating irrelevance.

But there was another possibility that Viktor thought likely. What if Dekkaduk were not only Nrina's a.s.sistant, but her lover? More likely ex-lover-and jealous. It was a quite plausible theory, Viktor thought. It was even one that gave him a certain amount of satisfaction, because there was enough rude, prehistoric carnality in Viktor's genetic predispositions to allow him to enjoy beating out another male for a mate.

He had been walking without paying much attention to where he was going. He pa.s.sed other people from time to time. Some he had met before, even spoken to; he was beginning to be on nodding terms, at least, with some of Nrina's neighbors, and as he got used to the stretched-out, willowy shapes of these people he began to notice individual differences.

At first they had all looked alike, like members of some famine-stricken basketball team. Then he began to distinguish among them. Some were darker than others. Hair color varied from so pale and fine that it seemed almost transparent to coa.r.s.e strands like charcoal-colored knitting wool. Both men and women might have facial hair, though women's was usually only a pair of narrow sideburns. Quite a few of the people struck Viktor as downright ugly-noses that were splayed, hooked or reduced to the size of a shirt b.u.t.ton; teeth that seemed too big for their mouths, or, in one particular case, a woman with vampire incisors that lay against her lower lip. (She had seemed more willing to be friendly than most. Viktor had not encouraged her.) On Newmanhome, at least on the fat, rich Newmanhome of his youth, Viktor would have wondered why these people hadn't had orthodontia or plastic surgery. Here he wondered even more, because those traits had to be on purpose. on purpose. Some parents had gone to some genetic engineer like Nrina and Some parents had gone to some genetic engineer like Nrina and chosen chosen that receding chin, those pendulous ears for their child. that receding chin, those pendulous ears for their child.

As Viktor strolled, idle and aimless, he saw the vampire-toothed woman coming toward him.

She was even taller than Nrina and-in the same ethereal way as Nrina, of course-quite as pretty. (Not counting those disconcerting teeth, of course.) The woman had let Viktor clearly know that strange, big-muscled primitives out of the freezatorium were in some ways quite interesting-though she had looked regretfully at the tattoo on his forehead. But Viktor only nodded to her now. It wasn't that his fertility was a serious problem. If Nrina had some kind of contraception, this other woman could probably manage it, too, but that meant a different kind of problem.

Kept men, Viktor was nearly sure, were expected to be faithful to their keepers.

He was quite a bit farther away from Nrina's area than he remembered going before. Ahead of him the corridor suddenly widened to an open s.p.a.ce. There was a little pond, and around it were patches of growing things.

It was a farm.

Nrina had told him there was a farm on the habitat, though he'd never seen it before. It was really very pleasant. It wasn't at all like any farm on ancient Newmanhome, because of the funny way it bent, pond and all, and the fact that the "sky" was almost within touching distance over his head. But there were growing things there. He recognized some of them as having been in Nrina's locker, and was pleased to bend down and pick a-tomato? Something that tasted like a tomato, anyway, although it was a deep purple in color.

It occurred to him that it was possible these plants belonged to someone.

He looked around. There was no one in sight. He ate the tomato, nibbling around the stem, and tossed the little green remnant to the ground as he strolled. That was curious, too, he observed, for the ground wasn't really ground. This was no plowed half acre of somebody's produce garden; the tomato vines grew out of long, bulkheaded rows of something that was paler and spongier than any earth Viktor had ever seen, and between the rows were immaculately swept footpaths.

Someone kept this farm extraordinarily neat.

Then Viktor caught a glimpse of one of the "someones."

He was at the far end of the open s.p.a.ce, and as he turned to go back he saw some dark-skinned person at the edge of the pond. He didn't actually see the whole person. The pond, and the land around it, had curved up until they were almost hidden by the bulge of the ceiling between. (So strange to look at! One wondered why the pond didn't spill out.) What Viktor saw was someone's feet, seemingly wearing dark, furry boots, and someone's hands tipping a sort of bucket into the lake.

Immediately the surface of the pond at that point began to erupt into little spouts and fountains. Fish were feeding there. Pleased with the discovery, Viktor started back in that direction.

The fish feeder was faster than he. By the time he got to where he could see the whole other end of the farm enclosure there was no one there. But the splashes he had seen were definitely fish feeding. They were still swirling around, just under the surface of the water, rising to snap at little bits of something edible floating where the fish attendant had left them.

It would be nice, Viktor thought, to feed the fish himself some time. Feeling at ease after his stroll, he went back to Nrina's home and busied himself with the teacher desk, awaiting her return from her laboratory.

She was later than Viktor expected, but he didn't mind. His unreal mentor of the desk hardly ever had to correct his grammar anymore, but remained ready to help whenever Viktor got stuck. That wasn't often. As Viktor gained skills he gained confidence. Apart from the fact that it taught him things he wanted to learn, just playing with the desk was fun; it was like an immensely complicated video game with real rewards for winning.

It was beyond his competence, or his mentor's aid, to access the kind of cosmological data he really wanted. Simple astronomy was easy enough, though. With the mentor a.s.sisting, Viktor got a look at each of the stars that had accompanied their own sun through s.p.a.ce; they had all been given names, but the names rolled off his mind. Then he looked at their own planets, one by one . . . and then he struck oil.