Source: Going Market

"I'm not gonna do it any more," Velasco complains, sullen in the last light of the sun through the window behind Lan.

Lan signs and looks down at his hands where they rest on his knees; his eyes are worried as they come back up over the desk to his stocky antagonist.

"Vel, you're our best hunter."

"Winter's coming, Lan. I have my family to think of. I can eat it if we preserve it, or I can barter it now for something I need."

Taskov, sitting in the shade at the far corner of the room, speaks up. "Everyone's been starting to barter lately. Not so much food or clothes for the pool, though."

"Can't deal with the pool. Not enough people are putting in. I don't see why I should have to, anyway. I make my kills. I ought to get the benefit, not some sit around."

Taskov stirs. "The rules are the rules. Everybody has to produce and put in."

"Maybe that's the way it's been, but I'm not the only one."

Lan is slightly afraid of where this is going. Something prompts him to stay silent. Then, finally, "OK, Vel. I'm going to think about it."

Velasco nods sharply, then steps back and leaves. Lan watches him go, abruptly saddened.

Oloron finds Lan walking in the cold morning mist by the dock side, staring toward, but not seeing, the trimly painted small ships. A faint cold breeze pushes the shards of the mist past them and into the trees. Lan, not hearing the long pace of his friend, barely hearing the sound of the waves against the hulls and the concrete, seems oblivious.

"Hey, what are you doing out here?" Oloron asks. "Taking a trip?" His voice is awkward as it breaks the spell.

Lan shivers and looks back. "Just thinking."

"Laurence said to come look for you. To talk. Said that Velasco was getting to you."

Lan looks askance. "Odd he'd send you out here. He has his point of view. Doesn't really care for me hearing anything else."

"Everyone's opinionated."

Lan shrugs. "Doesn't bother me. It's just how he is."

Oloron waits.

"We're doing something wrong here. Vel saw it. We're trying to run this place the way the Council runs Cocteau - top down, command and control. It's not what we should be doing. And I don't have the time. I can't find the time. I don't sleep, I don't eat, I'm exhausted, and I'm making bad decisions."

"But look, they like you, they respect you. You're the one who knows what we should be doing. I... I'd be lost if you hadn't helped me, after..."

Lan lays a hand on Oloron's bulky forearm. "We're friends. You don't know how much alike we are. "

With a startled, choked laugh, Oloron shakes his head. "One thing I know is how different we are. Come on, I've seen what you've done. I couldn't have done this."

"What, this? Everything we have was already here. And the authorities are going to find out eventually. The peace is an illusion. I know it. I haven't been preparing. And then Vel wants a free market for food!" He laughs, but it is too dangerous, and he cuts it back. "Winter's coming. The food store is going to run out in another two months with everyone we've got. Then people are going to get sick, maybe die. What's going to happen if the hunters stop work?"

"No one's going to stop working."

"They will if its a choice between their families and us. And I can't blame them."

They start to walk slowly along, away from the complex.

"Look, if we're not going to make it anyway, what's to lose by trying what you think is right? "

"I don't know. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. And I don't know what's right."

"Don't be afraid to try, then. Isn't that what you're teaching me?"

The complex is dark, but a single light on the third floor of the dome is still lit. And in the pool of light on his desk, Lan writes again, and pauses, writes and pauses. He thinks and waits, and scratches something out. Finally he crumples the paper and starts again.

The dining room is silent and stunned.

An older woman stands and stares at him. "But I don't understand, if you've given the reactor to Elise, what are the rest of us who work there going to do?"

"Elise is going to have to pay you from her earnings."

Her companion holds up a copper disc. "But this money, this stuff, it's just crap. It isn't worth anything."

Lan frowns. "It is, here. I know it could be better. But the copper in and of itself is worth something, for wire, to jacket the bullets, for jewelery. It's better than bartering, because it means that you won't have to warehouse all the different things you might need to barter."

The light in the room is cold against the white walls, and the voices and muttering echo in a confusing way. "Listen, it's just like ration coupons, except you can exchange them. OK? Everyone right now has more or less of them. If you have a property because you were the volunteer who's been running it, you have less of them. If you've been working for someone you have more. There's going to be a little confusion for a while as people figure out what to charge for things."

The voices rise and fill the hall, but some of them are angry. Lan raises his voice and cries out. "Listen to me, listen!" And then beside him, unexpected, Oloron rises to his feet and shouts. "Stop it, all of you. Hey!" There is a sudden hush in response to that stentorian bellow. Oloron continues, "You've damned well been living off the ideas this man has brought for the last few months. Do you really think we can make something new without changing things? That we're going to live here like we were living under the Council? Maybe we should all just march out of here and surrender."

There is total silence, people are looking away and ducking their heads in shame.

Taskov clears his throat and stands. "I think this idea is going to work. But we have to pay attention. It's been decades since anyone had money. We're all afraid of what this means. I know -"

The woman who had first spoken glares at him, "It's all right for you, you have the money to live. But what if Elise doesn't want to pay me enough? What if I can't get food for the money I make? What if Dirolio decides to only sell food to the owners? My family will starve."

Lan leans forward. "There may be some disorder. But here's where we are. Winter is coming. I can't direct resources to the right places - I don't know enough, and the community is too big. We need a way for people to be able to make sure that resources are going to the right places, and from all of the mathematics I've done, it's clear that only this kind of decentralized control will make sure we're spending time and material on the best things. If someone can't find a market for what they offer, they'll have to offer something else or go to work for someone else. If someone is successful, she'll need and be able to find more people to help make what she produces. And now everyone knows that they have to produce in order to live." He eyes a couple of well-known slackers.

His heart is beating. Change might drive these people over the edge. And if someone ran, then the word of this place would inevitably reach the authorities. And the dream would be ended.

"You didn't want to be prisoners. You wanted your freedom. Did you think your freedom was just going to be the freedom to stand at the trough so you could scoop out the slop that was handed down to you? The revolution," his voice breaks with the lie - this is all there is of the revolution, a rag tag bunch of ex-prisoners... "demands more. We have to pioneer a new way of living. With the excitement, risk, and success of freedom. Stop looking at this like it's the end of your chances. This is the beginning. When we make this work, then the whole world will be with us, and the Council will be where they belong, marching behind the truck, on their way to the compound."

The muttering starts, and then everyone is talking at once, and then everyone is on their feet, cheering and clapping their hands.

The sun is as high as it gets in the winter, and the shadows of the spike fence are long. Lan is walking along it with a purposeful stride, checking the binding to the posts. The strands had been looted from the old depot, and became the basis of this new line of defense for the complex. Now, he is about to pay Oloron for the work his people had done, which meant it was time to check and insist on quality. That was triply true in this case, since the money was coming from the "war chest", and the resources he had available were strictly limited.

He is into the low fronds past the gate, and walking past the dining hall. The vents of the windows are slightly open for air and he can hear Taskov instructing his students in the principles of accounting. Where he had learned the discipline, Lan did not know. But to listen to the man at the front of a classroom was both painful and exciting. It was painful, because Lan had hated school, and his teachers, but it was exciting because the dour Taskov was a different person in that place, striding, gesturing, cadencing his voice to meet the topic. It is exciting to think about this class in particular, even as the sounds receed against the slough of fronds on his pants, because the people in there are the new leaders, learning something they have never had to worry about before - something that is about to become the foundation of their new world.

Money, he thinks, is paying off. And I brought it back. There is a certain pride in that. Enjoy it while you can, he thinks.

He had carefully selected the most trustworthy people he could find for the patrols. He had started daily counts of the population...discreetly. And so far, everyone had stayed. Though there had been a variety of complaints. For now, the complaints were being brought to him, and he tasted a different kind of satisfaction from that.

I'm testing my new philosophy.

He notes a place where the spikes have not been properly bound and jots down the post number. "No money till that gets fixed," he mutters. Thank goodness all the delegation didn't seem to have caused stress with Oloron or with Taskov. Oloron now controlled half of the manufacturing in the complex, though Elise had found Hernon to head a small manufacturing group she had created in a large empty space at the power plant, and she wasn't charging him for power. Lan wonders how Oloron will react to that. Still, he knows what Oloron wants. The conduct of the war.

Tonight, he thinks, I will have to start planning what kind of judgement I will bring to the problem if Oloron complains about Elise favoring Hernon. What will I do? It will be a difficult decision, because they are friends, and he cannot let that influence his judgement. It must be pure philosophy.

I need rules. Written rules that everyone can know and trust. He worries about that frequently. It is the best way to avoid favoritism, and to keep his relations with his friends good even as he is forced to make judgements. But the things he has been writing are not yet ready. They need to be polished. They don't cover enough.

The path crosses what they have started to call Hunter's Gate. One of Velasco's hunters is outside the meat house, carving at the haunch of a vidier, and wrapping the meat in plastic before dropping it into a wheeled box. The meat smokes with latent heat, like the hunter's breath, quenched only by the plastic, and then by a scoop of ice from a larger box at his side. The ice is from the river. Dirolio has a side business organizing the day laborers to cut ice from the oxbow a mile up the river and sledge the results to the complex. Lan wonders what he will do in the summer. But at least Velasco has found a way to make his hunters more profitable, and the food supply more steady.

He is now approaching the Bridge Gate, and he looks up at the office dome, thinking - Well, that's my money maker. Rent, mostly. What an idea... but an idea almost everyone is familiar with. Unfortunately, now he can be called away from philosophy at any moment to fix a leaky pipe. He toys with the idea of hiring someone, and thinks that he will need to check his funds and income to see if it can support it. Maybe Taskov can help him with the projections. You'd think with all the math I have I would have no problems with this. He smiles. Maybe I just want to see him part of it.

But he is cold now, and, breath trailing in a white wisp behind him, he passes through the gate, crosses the long paving to the dome, pushes through to the inside. Then he pauses and looks back at the doors. They are not quite sealed. He pulls harder and they click into place, saving some heat.

Lan and Oloron eat breakfast together, sun slanting through the green-tinted windows across the table. Lan smiles at him for a moment, pausing. "What's amazing is that no one has left. Things were so hard, I was sure people would run."

Oloron laughs and throws back his head, then looks around, but there is no one else in the room. He leans forward, and Lan suddenly notices how unshaven he has become - almost a wildman, except that he seems happy. But Oloron's voice is pitched low and he smiles crookedly. "Ah, but you see, I spread a bit of a rumor."

"A rumor?"

"Yes, that anyone who left would be captured and... interrogated, by the Securitat. And when they found out someone knew about this place, they'd suck him dry and kill everyone he knew." He gestures menacingly with a rounded spreading knife. Then he grins widely. "I guess it worked."

"What!" Lan is aghast, pushing from the table into the back of the chair.

Oloron shakes his head. "It's the truth. People know the truth when they hear it. My friend, you have started something here that will either be a wonder that changes the world, or will get us all killed. There's no halfway this time. Lyra... Lyra would be proud of me, I think." However, his smile is strained.

Oloron stands at the edge of the field and looks on. "Don't get in the habit, but we have to practice this."

The young men and women heft their weapons, perhaps awkwardly.

Oloron clears his throat. He has spent a good deal of time thinking this out, and this will be his first attempt. It is also somewhat dangerous. Or it will be, in the next round.

"Right. Get yourselves out onto the field. We've just taken the truck, and we're lined down the road here." His breath wisps out into the cold clear dawn air.

The fighters jog down the dirt strip, feet crunching the cold soil, spreading out.

"The attack comes from the opposite end. You're to fire in order. The front line fires and runs back through the second. The second fires and runs back through the third. Spread out as you run. Remember, you won't do this until I call 'Retreat'. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," they respond loudly.

"The next time will be with real ammunition. This is your chance to get used to things so you don't shoot each other, all right? You understand, if you have to do this, it will be dangerous. Get it right. Point, make sure no one is in the way, and shoot."

"Yes, sir!"

"All right. Here we go. Retreat!"

"But will it start?" Lan asks, leaning over the housing.

"This one is rotted, but it's in better shape than the other one. And the nice thing about fuel cells is supposed to be the resistance of the matrix to age. So, let's find out..." Elise eyes the controls gloomily for a moment and then tugs at various actuators in a tentative and desultory fashion. Suddenly there is a vague hissing sound, and she peers over her glasses at the housing, her greying, fluffy ponytail swirling across her shoulder. Then she smiles a little and her eyes lock with his. "Apparently, it will start."

Velasco grins at Lan. "And apparently, there may be colgers for dinner."

The displays and controls flicker and stabilize into life. Lan runs his eyes over them. "Some of this... these I think, have to do with the motors. Navigation... navigation's bad. They're using some other system and there seem to be be... maybe a few beacons left. I'm not sure how to interpret this... Is that the bay?"

Velasco leans over his shoulder. "I'm... not sure. If it is, the complex should be here, but it isn't."

"Maybe they hadn't updated the maps," Elise comments. "This is all at least ten years old. But look there, that must be the boat, right?"

Lan looks around the glassed control cabin at the world beyond. "The best way to find out is to move the boat. Anyone care to cast off?"

Though the sounds are occasionally alarming, the boat rolls on the waves slowly away from the shore. The engine is very quiet, but slams the boat through a crest and down the slope beyond. Velasco is grinning wide and asymmetrical as a wave splashes a sudden spray across the glass and the wipers react. "This beats a steam engine any day!" he exclaims.

Lan is frowning in the control chair, manipulating the throttle and steering levers. "I think it's self stabilizing. The ride is too good."

Exulting, Velasco pushes out the metal door onto the deck and a blast of salt smell slaps past him. Lan grins, but Elise is too busy peering over his shoulder at the worn displays trying to puzzle out the symbology. Outside, Velasco is dancing on the deck, and, finally, Elise spots him and starts laughing uncontrollably.

When Velasco finally barges back in, he cries, "I want to catch blimfers and catlets... we need nets and people. How about it?"

"Sounds good. How about a steering lesson? I think I understand it now..."

Velasco loves the feel of the boat under him. The windows are broad but stained, and the droplets are flung from the bow against them. Perhaps that was how the clouds had managed, unnoticed, to slowly choke away the sky and the sun.

At first, it seems like a cathedral closing around him, and then the wall of rain strikes with a suddenness that drives the crew inside, door slapping until one of them reaches back and secures it. Then his attention is yanked back to the ocean as the whitecaps slam up across the boat and starts to turn it side on to wallow down the far side of the wave.

Haptic servos in the control arms whine as they push back against his hands. The sound of the crew starts to distract, and he shouts over them to shut them up.

Now he is starting to feel the surge of panic and his hands are trembling. Then the beacons begin to wink out and shift past the edges of detection. He tries to turn back the way he had come, but the wind shoves against the cabin and the boat starts to heel giddily.

They are too far out, he thinks.

Suddenly, some dark shape on the edge of sight looms up from the waves. It is huge and rectilinear, latticed with beams, glittering with hundreds of lights like windows, obscured by rain and surf - and then it is gone, so quickly he wonders if it was an illusion. But the crew is shouting and pointing. The structure is dimly visible again, and then it is masked again behind the mist. Velasco feels cold in a way that the waves and wind can't account for. He can see those lights floating off in the mist and they are frightening because whatever supports them could surge back and crush them like a falling building.

But what is it? He strains to see it in more detail. If it is a ship, it is the largest he has ever seen. If not, what could it be?

Somehow it all seems to be lowering toward the sea, lights winking out one by one. Could it be sinking?

The waves are getting worse, and his vessel is rising and falling thirty or more feet each cycle. Water smashes grey and blinding white over the bows and the sides, and the crew on deck are struggling back to the control cabin. His stomach lurches into his throat.

If they open the doors, and enough water rushes in. it may overwhelm the underdeck pumps.

If they don't open the doors, they may be swept away.

And if whatever is transpiring a mere half mile distant continues, they may founder anyway.

He turns the boat to the left, trying to overcome the wallow of the huge waves from the thing lowering into the spray and fog on the right. But, of course, the bow begins to rise steeply. He watches helplessly as the crew members are staggered by the shift. He cannot release the control arms to help them. A wave breaks over the stern, and slams down across the deck. Saurain slips, falls, and is swept forward past the door. Velasco can see his face as clearly as if the glass were unclouded: distorted with terror, struggling with the cloak of water pushing over his face.

If Velasco lets go, they may all die. If he holds on, Saurain may die.

It is a decision of a moment, as he slams the throttle to full, hurls himself from behind the handles, slams open the door against the force of the thrust of blasting water; he pushes a shoulder against the glass and grabs at Saurain's legs, pulling hard, hand over hand on the icy wet fabric, knurling the wrinkles for a grip. He can feel the boat hesitating, starting to turn back. Saurain slews in his hands. Two more of the crew are pushing through the door and someone's fists are in his coat. Suddenly, the spray is off his face.

"I've got him, get the controls, we're falling," someone cries. Velasco can feel the boat poised bow high, on the edge of gravity, ready to listen. The view through the window is vertical water and a slit of sky. The boat begins to roll to the right as he reaches for the handles, thinking I'm too late. The boat is tipping harder and further, with a momentum he can't stop. Jets are out of the water, he thinks. But he struggles anyway, hoping that any purchase he can get will translate into survival.

Out the right side, he is looking fifty feet down at a pit in the water that seems to boil with the confluence of waves.

Now the boat is starting to roll, and he has a moment to think about his decision. He can hear Saurain coughing behind. Won't be worth much if you get them all killed now... He shoves the handles hard right. From somewhere, a jet gets purchase, and the fall is directly in front of his windows. He has a moment of speed, and tries to carry the motion through into a right turn that will culminate at the bottom. There isn't much time.

There isn't enough time. The bow plunges into the water, flinging Velasco over the panel and into the window. The slam is like falling from a building; a sudden soundless explosion of what would be pain if it weren't preceeded by such a deafening shockwave. The cabin seems to push completely through into a dark world of subocean obscurity. For a moment, he thinks I wonder why we haven't drowned yet.

The windows are a wall onto the violent grey ocean that stretches into the mist. Waves that would be vast uplifts of tens of thousands of tons of water are merely mild hills, crinkled with steel. Pyran, angular like metal, tanned face set off by harshly cropped white hair, shoulders back, hands clasped behind, watches carefully, allowed, for a moment, to resist the compelling images of progress that crowd his lenses with numbers and graphs.

He allows his mind to rove idly across the twenty years of work that has led him to this. Engineering, pragmatics, authorities, rewarded finally with this phase of the project. At the end of this moment, he will need every increment of focus to complete the alignment.

But then he sees something on the wave. His lenses zoom through the mist, augmented with several additional ranges of energy, and three viewpoints from the suspensors.

It is a ship. Turned over, keel to the wind. His heart lurches at the thought of what he has accidentally done.

"Micha'Sta!" he calls. "There's someone out there!"

The alarm hisses in his ear. Suddenly he is reactive. "Lauerel... You need to redeploy three and seven; we have to be still!"

The woman across the room looks over her shoulder and nods. Her lenses are nearly opaque on broad eyes, and her mouth is pursed with concentration. She begins to gesture, almost frantically.

He brings up a model in his cupped hands and pins the boat with eye position and pupil dilation.

How could I have missed this?, he rages.

Micha'Sta is suddenly beside him, tentacles waving. "What is it, what is it? Why are we stopping? We can't stay here, the defenses will see us!" Its five yellow eyes are wandering, their lenses slipping in and out of the reflective state.

"I don't have time to explain. Lauerel! Hand off any three you can spare!" He grasps the resources and charges toward the door. Unplanned, unplanned, he thinks, not ready, no schema.

The door opens on the balcony with an intense blast of steaming mist and droplets smashing into his face with the sheer wind dissipated by the suspensors. The hood sweeps up from his shoulders, buffeted, but wraps a clear shield across his face. He turns to look upward and maps the resources to their actual positions. Suddenly Lauerel is beside him, her spiky reddish hair nested harshly under clear plastic. "You can't do this yourself!" she insists.

"It's over there," he gestures at the wallowing boat. "What about stability?"

"Guyran's got it. But we have to hurry. See, taking those three will restart the descent. We have five minutes to get it into the sealock before the door's underwater."

Pyran is relieved, and his sharp sallow features relax slightly. "Let's start.You take that side, I'll take this one. We need a team down in the sealock."

"Dispatched. Twenty walkers and seven three-forty-threes. I'm reading the boat as about six hundred tons, that should be plenty."

"OK, let's go."

Velasco feels the icy wet glass against his cheek like a slap. He sees the water rushing along the ceiling toward him, and wonders at that for a moment. But he does not feel the wetness as it surges across his feet. Perhaps it is hidden by the pain. From his other eye, he sees the water greenish grey beyond the glass, and he feels the glass shifting with its weight. He tries to drag himself by arm strength toward the door.

The structure is a building sinking into the sea with violence, but it stretches out part of its pressure field, and cables snap from the side of the structure to lash whistling across the turbulent air.

Their adapters are brilliant, and they reform themselves as they crawl across the bottom of the boat, autonomously testing, seeking points of strength, exchanging information with the two controllers on the balcony high above, collaborating to determine balance.

Then they lock to fairings, railings and slots and there is a slight change in sound as the engines of the suspensors take on the extra load.

Water laps at the edge of the sealock, where the walkers stand clinging to handles and doorframes. The massive Three-Forty-Three exoskeletons stride past. The metal reverbrates with the authority of their movement. Beyond them, the cold light is wracked with mist and the distant hills of the receeding waves are barely visible.

Suddenly, the light is obscured with the bulk of the boat, hanging upside-down from cables meant for the structure - hawsers as thick as an arm hang from above, attached to every possible projection at the edge of the boat. The 343's raise their arms, rebracing their feet on the deck, the motion surprisingly animated for such huge metallic frames.

A wave sends spray over the edge of the sealock as the suspensors change balance for the final movement of the boat into the opening, losing a bit of the stability that sustains the slowly sinking structure.

"Look!" someone cries, pointing. A human figure can be seen, hanging on for life from the railing at the edge of the deck of the boat, legs swaying and kicking slightly; if anyone could have heard a sound, the sound would have been screaming..

Water from the boat rains down on the sealock deck, and the walkers feet grow more tacky in response. An enormous clang sounds as the boat sways to strike the arms of one of the 343's. Then the exoskeletons are around the boat, their arms reaching for quickly calculated support points. Now the top of the boat is within twenty feet of the deck, and the figure hanging from the rail looks down and lets go, crumpling and sliding on the water coated metal. Three walkers race out toward him, eyes glancing quickly and warily at the huge mass of the boat hanging above them. Their shiny arms, yellow plastic like sunlight against the cold sea, reach out and specialized gloves of several different types grasp the survivior by arms and legs.

"Backplate!" someone yells, and a red clad walker runs down the suddenly canted deck toward them, pushing a low wheeled plate. Water surges over the sealock end.

Pyran's voice sounds in their ears. "Let's go, everyone, I need those suspensors back."

The small team lift the injured man quickly but carefully onto the backplate and then run, pushing him ahead, into the brightly lit maw of the open sealock.

In the 343's, the controllers feel the stability and shift their quad footed stances to take up the load. The supervisor, standing just inside the door, calls Pyran. "Let us have the lock left side, but keep the second side - we have to turn it over or we'll crush the pilot house."

Cables all along one side of the boat release, and the motors of the 343's respond. The brilliant attach points ping across the metal of the 343's as they swing away. "Lift your side, Pyran," the supervisor orders. "Higher."

Water sluices up the sealock deck.

"Higher!"

Now in unison, two of the 343's walk underneath the mass of the boat, pulling the railing with them as they back away. Slowly the boat rotates toward a normal attitude. The supervisor waves two more 343's forward, though there is barely room. They stand under the keel like Atlas preparing to recieve the world. "Everyone, Pyran too, down slowly. Slowly!" The weight of the keel descends on the exoskeletons, whose apparatus compresses under the load. "Left side shift grip. Walkers, clear the deck! Pyran, you can have the rest back, now, thanks!"

Like tentacles from a secret source, the remaining cables whisk back into the stormy skies.

"Blue 3, Red 24, a little down, ok, let's get into the lock."

The huge machines, the boat suspended between them and on their shoulders, march slowly into the brightly lit sealock.

The water races up over the ramp and slams into the sealed doors. The final descent is beginning.

Velasco is rising through darkness and then he sees a face close below him, and he screams - or he would, but he is too weak and only a moan surfaces.

"Kesi illori, imalu?"

He wants to reach up and rub his ear, but he can't - but he had heard, at the same time...

"Are you all right?"

Finally, he whispers: "No. Can't move."

The face is a woman, angular, dark against the light patterned wall behind her.

"That's all right, you'll be better in a little while. We've been able to repair the spinal nerves. They'll be retracked in about an hour, if you'll just rest."

He remembers lying against the cold glass, feeling nothing in his legs.

"Nerves?" he rasps.

"Your back was broken in three places. You're lucky you lived long enough for us to pick you up."

"I don't... understand."

A boisterous voice breaks into his slow thoughts.

"Hey, there, so he's awake."

Velasco is unable to raise his head, but he is able to move his eyes. He sees a figure suited in angular metal plates of an iridescent sheen, standing in the doorway.

The woman turns angrily. "How did you get in here?"

Velasco slips mentally, and there is darkness.

Velasco feels faintly euphoric, and for some reason, has no pain. He is standing, leaning slightly, while the woman touches him at various points on neck, shoulders and back with a stylus.

A tall white-haired man watches from the corner with quick eyes that follow her movements, but give away little. Finally, he speaks up in a pleasant, tenor that comes through the translator with what seems to be an accent. "So how does it look?"

"So far, so good. Now keep shut until I finish."

So Pyran settles back against the wall and continues to watch.

The hallway is narrow and its walls, like the sickroom, are patterned with a sourceless light. Velasco feels unsteady and disoriented, but he follows Pyran, hoping to find out more. Then the walls widen into space, with vast stretches of window curving into a dome above. A spindly bracing rises from the floor like branches, but seems a sparse support, given the volume of water that wrinkles beyond the glass above.

"Where is this?" he mutters. Pyran turns and Velasco pulls back a little from his height, but Pyran smiles and replies "We're at about a hundred feet but by morning we'll be down almost a thousand." His eyes turn black for a second, and Velasco is stunned but thinks perhaps he has been confused by the medication and the injury. Pyran continues... "ten hours, looks like."

"Is that right?" Velasco mutters. He realizes he knows very little so far. But Pyran had stepped out of the corner, introduced himself, and had offered to help him find a room. The doctor had shrugged as if the whole affair was too much for her, and had gone to sit in a darkened corner staring at the wall, occasionally looking at her hands and gesturing. He had quickly decided that following the angular man might be a little safer than staying there.

"Did anyone else make it?" he asks, not sure he has.

Pyran frowns. "No, I looked."

Not "we looked", but "I looked".

Somehow, his voice breaks. "Nobody."

Pyran rests a friendly hand on his shoulder, and the painful smile seems to receed. "You made it. The ship made it. And, while it might not seem that way, that's something."

Perhaps if some of it hadn't been Velasco's fault, he might have been able to agree.

The door opens gently onto a darkened room, that in a moment brightens with a quick rush of light from the corners. Velasco has never seen anything like that before, and he pauses on the threshold with Pyran in the hallway behind him.

A window on the far side of the room reveals a stunning and impossible mountain landscape, with clouds slowly expanding across a hazy mountainside, and sun behind the mountains casting a light from the window onto the floor. A couch and chairs, fluid like waterdrops caught at the moment of release, are cast of richly figured wood, but seem unpadded. There are no books, no paper, and only a small table amidst the seats. To the right, an alcove seems to contain a dimly lit bed.

Velasco looks back, startled. "I don't understand."

"I've set this up for you to rent, for a while. It's secured by your boat, so you'll need to find some source of income or you'll lose the boat eventually. But for now, this will get you started."

"Rent? How do you know about rent? I thought..." he had been about to continue with I thought only we knew about rent. But he knows what this means. All this time, he had been afraid that the colony was a lie, that Phillippe was lying, that there was no revolution. But in this instant, he knows it is real, and it is greater than he imagined. It is about skyscrapers from the sky sinking into the ocean, about those who could casually save him from a broken death.

The realization runs hot in him, like a blush in his cheeks, because it also means something else.

There has never been this level of technology on Cocteau.

It has to mean offworld support.

His thought is interrupted by a child's voice behind him. "Daddy, I brought my lenses."

Velasco turns sharply, and a pain strikes hot up his side. He staggers slightly, but catches himself as he sees a little girl standing in the doorway.

She looks shyly at him, but with an inner confidence.

Pyran reaches thin fingers down and takes something from the child's hand. "Eilie, this is Vel."

She smiles. "Hi, Vel."

Children, he thinks, they have children here.

"Hello, " Velasco says. He is unnerved by her easy confidence. His eyes flick to Pyran. The tall man is holding something in his hand, extending it toward Velasco.A second glance reveals it to be an assembly of glass and wire. For a moment he wonders what they could be, then realizes they remind him of Taskov's glasses.

"I'm sorry, " he says, perplexed. " What's that for?

Pyran smiles, oddly. " I'm sure it'll seem strange. But this is all we have in the house. Eilie wore these before she was able to sit for contacts. Of course, now she doesn't really need them. So if you don't mind wearing them, maybe they'll help. "

Velasco takes them and they feel small in his hand. " I don't understand. "

Eilie steps up to him, barely coming to mid thigh in height. She looks up at him, her wide face smiling. "Vel, these are so you can see the augments. "

" I hear what you're saying, but I don't really understand. "

Pyran mimes putting the glasses on his face. " Put them on. "

Velasco fumbles a bit, but manages to unfold the glasses. With a single shuddering gesture, he puts them over his face. And suddenly his entire field of view is filled with symbols and colors. As he turns his head they seem to move is if they are attached physically to the objects in his environment.

He gasps.

Pyran puts a hand on his shoulder. Somehow, that seems to stabilize him.

Pyran voice is soothing and gentle. " I know, you don't have these. But they're important if you're going to get along here. They work both ways. You can see through them and see the symbols are attached to things and they can see your hands and the things you're doing and the things you're looking at. You've already got the translation attachment. So with this you're fully functional. " Suddenly he laughs. " It's hard to imagine someone not having access. "

He turns to Eilie. " Remember this, honey. Not everybody knows what we take for granted. You'll see more as we bring more of their people downstairs. "

Then he looks to Velasco. " This is my first time on Cocteau. I read about it, but I've always lived in Prometheus, so I've never actually seen someone who didn't have contacts. "

" I have, " Eilie says. " I met someone in the hallway. He was big and his hair was really gray. He's old, isn't he? And he couldn't find his way around. He must be from Cocteau, right? "

Pyran lays a hand on her shoulder. " Probably. " He pauses. " You'd better get home now. "

Her eyes measure Velasco. Then she grins, waves, and scampers out the door, disappearing down the hallway.

They have children here, he thinks.

Pyran is beside Velasco's, a hand on his shoulder. "I have to go home. Just relax. Try to get some sleep. I'll stop by on my way to the link-up." Then, like a ghost, he slips out the door, and it slides closed behind him. Velasco is at a loss. He selects a chair. And stumbles toward it navigating among all of the strange luminous signs that seem to be identifying objects in the room. He pulls the glasses off, suddenly relaxing in the emptiness. He rubs his temples.

How am I ever going to sleep? He wonders. He stares at the false window. It looks absolutely real. Gingerly he puts the glasses back on. Labels seem to rush toward objects, and one lands on the screen. It seems to be a name, and he assumes is the name of the place the screen shows. He pulls the glasses off and slumps down in the chair. The smells are strange, the sounds are absent, and the furniture is uncomfortable. Or perhaps not. It seems to be softening underneath him. And then he is completely comfortable.

This place must be dangerous, he thinks. I just can't figure out how. Why are they welcoming me? For the first moment he has the opportunity to realize that he is the only one who survived. He tries not to think about it. But that moment lying against the glass, with the water cold against his cheek, unable to feel, returns to him. He forces himself to stare at the false window. Somehow, gradually, his eyes seep shut, even though he is afraid.

Pyran usually enjoys going home. Today is not one of those days.

For a moment, as usual, he enjoys his spacious anteroom. Smoothly curved walls dappled with virtual paintings posted across it bring together a sense of small luxuries.

But in a moment, the emotion is gone even from memory. Shalli emerges into the hallway, smiling, long orange hair swinging with her motion. Then she notices, and hesitates, hands tensing briefly at her side. "What's the matter?"

"Problems, love."

"What happened? I heard everything went fine."

"I missed an outsider boat. It was out in the shock wave. It turned over, and we nearly lost it. I didn't see it. We were coming down right on top. I barely had time to spool the gravs to up. We pulled it in. But almost everybody was dead."

She reaches out to him and links hands behind his back. "I'm sorry."

"That'd be bad enough, but you know there's going to be a force audit. I might lose my job."

She smiles up into his face, but her eyes flinch as if unwilling to light long enough to be read. "You shouldn't worry about it."

He tries to smile, perhaps is successful. "I'll try. I found him a place. Got him some lenses."

"So that's why Eilie went out. "

"I had her bring the lenses. "

"It's not your fault. They'll see that."

He releases her and walks slowly across the apartment. His fingers move up and down down beside his eyes with nervousness. "I'd like to think so. I really wish I thought that. But was my fault. I should been looking. "

She steps to his side and runs a hand up and down his arm in comfort. "You shouldn't think that way. You're not that kind of person. You're so careful."

But Pyran merely shakes his head.

Velasco starts up in the near darkness. The pictures on all of the walls have altered to mountains under twin moonlight, a place he has never seen, casting shadows across the furniture.

Somehow, he again falls asleep, maybe for only a moment. Then...

Beside him on the chair, the lenses glitter. And he wonders what they will show in the dark. So, almost of their own accord, his hand reaches to the metal frames. Why not give it a look?, he wonders.

He puts them on, and suddenly his field of view becomes filled with labels in a language he finds difficult to even see. The characters are strange, combining blocky shapes and smooth curves.

"I can't understand that, " he mutters.

And then, as he watches, the shapes of the letters seem to reform, into the language of Cocteau. He gasps, realizing that somehow the glasses had understood his language, and altered their presentation to his speech.

And so they know Cocteau, he thinks.

But of course they had to have known Cocteau, he realizes. This industrial effort they were making could only be hidden by deep knowledge of Cocteau. And, he wonders, when do they plan to make their move?

This might be really dangerous. And yet, as he looks around the room seeing the view through an unreal window and labels attached to the various objects for the purpose of identifying them, he realizes it could be the greatest opportunity. The question remains: where are they from? Can the casual mention of Prometheus mean what he thinks it means? What do they want?

He sits forward, and looks into the room. The labels seem to make sense, but the words don't. The system is making up words for things he has never seen. Chair, and table, those are right. But the images on the walls have nonsense labels, and there are things on the table with equally strange names.

His eyes light on the door, closed now. He wonders if it is locked. But the glasses show him the door handle, and he is tempted enough to stand and push in the indicated direction.

The door swings open on a bright corridor. But somehow his vision stays clear enough, not reacting to the brilliance. He steps into the corridor, which is bare, but colorful with realistic mosaics, and looks both ways. No one is in sight. The corridor slopes and curves in both directions, but gravity takes him, so he chooses the downward way.

As he walks, the strangeness seems to slowly dissolve. And as his surroundings become less strange, his mind can flick back to the Refuge, and to lovely Taleau, and his urgent teenage sons, Choe and Kitar. He can imagine their fear and worry. It hits him and he stumbles.

So he pushes it back out of his mind and tries to regain his balance. The corridor curves past a shining dark wall like glass, which he can't see when he peeks above the glasses. There are millions of tons of water beyond, but he is safe. He can see the ocean floor and things that rest on it whose names make no sense. He tries to walk confidently past it.

And then he starts to hear sounds and some of them may be voices.

" So, I heard quite an adventure getting here. " It is an odd distracted sensation that sweeps over Velasco, as there are several unexpected portions of his neighbor's face that seemed to be moving. None of them are synchronized with the sound he is hearing. Still, all he can do is to try to adapt.

"It might seem like an adventure in a year, " he replies, and coughs with a cold sweep of emotion. " Right now... " His mind shies away from the idea. His hand taps on the edge of the conformed chair. It feels as if the chair has changed while he's been sitting in it, adapting slowly to his shape, but it is as if his comfort is somewhat out of range.

" Well, there's more to be trouble from it. Mark my words, the construction supervisor's got a force hearing, and I suspect he's got some trouble forming. Released, that's what everybody says. " The creature twitches, as if excited, or uncomfortable .

Velasco shakes his head. " I'm hearing your words, but I don't have the slightest idea of what you're talking about. "

But it is as if his companion's mind has wandered away on a completely different tangent. " I'm getting the event that we're only a few moments away from hooking up. Want to come? " It stands, with what looks like a incredibly awkward motion.

" I could just go? "

The creature shakes like gelatin. " Yes. " It hisses, in a tone slightly different from its voice.

It's a chance to see how free he really is.

The corridors meander through several basins. It's hard for him to be oriented when some in the objects in the areas are incomprehensible to him. As he moves, a feeling of unease begins to build and he realizes that he may not be able to find his way back. He also begins to realize he is at the mercy of this strange creature.

When they stop, it is in a semi-cylindrical room, walled in glass, looking out over a city of water-blurred lights. His companion looks over, "You know where we are now. As I might say, we're pretty deep. And sinking fast." Velasco has no context and cannot interpret this. " So what's going to happen? "

"Here, tune to this..." One of its appendages gestures at the floor. He flinches, but steadies himself. And suddenly, it is if he can see through the floor, to a schematic of the city below. There are pillars rising from a distant base, and lines connecting something far below in the structure to each pillar. And, intuitively, he senses those pillars moving closer to a goal, and the lines are getting shorter.

"Connecting. " His companion says. " I think we are the third module. Might be the last one for a while, everything I've seen indicates significant overcapacity. But the connection is going well. "

Velasco suddenly staggers, as if all the events of the past day have swept his mind past clear to empty. He lurches against the window which is suddenly cold under his hand, and triggers a memory that courses up his arm to his shoulder like ice.

"I'm not feeling well. " His voice is weak, as if he can hardly breathe.

--

It seems to take forever. People arrive, pure him oddly, looking closely at his eyes. There are mumbled questions about how he feels. Then suddenly he is lifted up and can only see the varying shapes of the ceiling moving past.

Somewhere along the way, he falls asleep.

Velasco wakens, startled. He thrashes for a moment in the bed, and sits up suddenly. "What?"

Pyran looks over him from a neighboring chair. His eyes suddenly change from reflective metal to a normal appearance. "It's all right. You're safe."

"What does that mean?" Velasco cries. "I'm not all right. What happened to me?"

Pyran smiles in a way that almost seems cruel. "Remember, you had an accident. Then you decided to wander around. Even our physioresolution can't put you back together in a day. You're still human."

Velasco tries to be gruff. "So it seems. But what about you?" Then he is gone once again.