Lincoln dismissed it with a wave of his hand. Then he poured some of the hot water on Lashonde's 'zeke's hand. A moment pa.s.sed before it jerked away. "What-"

"Been a while since you felt pain, eh?" He poured the rest in Quasi's lap, who barely moved in reaction.

"Really, Lincoln, this is childish. The Sphere can simulate this just as well."

"Do you ever sensate pain, though? Things that hurt? A cut from a sharp edge? Heat blistering your skin? Freezing until you shiver so much you lose control? Real physical pain, the kind you'd do anything to get relief from?"

"We can avoid pain-"

"Then you ain't human."

"I'm beginning to be sorry I came-"

Lincoln stood up. pocketed the penny, put his hands on the table, and leaned toward Quasi. "Try to remember that random sensation, Quasi. Codify it, put it into memory. When you go back Across, try to remember it, duplicate it, line by line, nanosecond by nanosecond. I don't think you can." He straightened, stepped away from the table. "And I don't think you ever will.

Waitron, these people are paying for my lunch."Sensual stimulation: Diving in what was left of the Great Barrier Reef, the medi-ship responding to a real emergency after a shark attack nearly tore an arm off. Hiking through the Amazon River System International Protected Rain Forest with a tribe of aborigines, living as they did, eating what they did, but they stood back staring as he let an army ant corps lacerate his feet and legs. Orgies in j.a.pan. Riding an elephant-clone in India and being mauled by a tiger- clone (by design). Driving a copy-car of ancient design and wip jug out in the third lap, forcing robo-rescuers to struggle for twenty minutes to extricate his 'zeke.

"Pet.i.tion to Sunder Lincoln Jones from Cradle NA-210 accepted, with the proviso said action and all inferences therefrom apply only to the Defendant and not to any parental/donors or foredonors. Responsibility is the Defendant's, and he alone must bear that burden."

Lincoln's first action after that was to volunteer for a full-scale reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. With live fire from musket and cannon.

"I told you you'd be back."

Slaben grinned at Lincoln. The teen looked almost natty in dark trousers, white shirt, and vivid yellow vest.

"Just in the neighborhood, thought I'd drop in.

"Sure," Slaben said. "Goingta jump?"

"No." Lincoln watched a woman encased in a rubber suit sail off the bridge. "After what I've been through, this is nothing."

"Nearly getting blowed apart at Gettysburg, you mean."

"And how do you know that?"

The teen leaned against the railing, waited until the rubber-woman's medi-ship reported.

"You're famous, you have a big following, among the Sphericals. We watch you just to see what you do next."

"I wasn't aware of this."

He shrugged. "Didn't want you getting wired about it.""Well, 1"m glad I provided amus.e.m.e.nt for somebody."

"Amus.e.m.e.nt, yabba, that's it. You get Sundered, then you almost crash."

"Point-blank grapeshot can do that."

"You're the champion sensator, know that? Little Round Top with the Maine volunteers not enough, hadda do Pickett's Charge, too. On the wrong side-"

"Scariest thing I ever did, believe me. Still, during those moments of utter tenor, I was as kin to the original soldiers as anyone could get." He looked down the canyon. "Chaos, fear, smoke, noise, bullets whining overhead. And you know something, I felt an exhilaration that raced up my spine. Every sense sharp as the bayonets, flashing information to my hyper- operating brain, mind alive like it's never been before. Makes me wonder.., can I actually love war?"

"Buncha people died."

"Believe me, that added reality to the fear. Didn't matter it was a reenactment. It was a battle-and it was real." He turned his gaze to Slaben. "Four hundred fifty-four of them didn't get help in time. Some were cla.s.s-A criminals, but all were volunteers. Highest death toll in any reenactment for the last hundred years." He took a breath, let it out slowly. "Some of the men died screaming."

"'Member the last time you were here? The girl in the Greek outfit?"

"Yeah."

"She Crossed Over. Almost everyone who was here that day has. I Cross Over in three weeks. I'm preparing myself for a whole new experience. Not you, though. You're still looking for physical thrills."

"You're here."

"I came 'cause I knew you were. I wanted to see the famous Incorrigible 'zeke with my own eyes once more before I go."

Lincoln kept his eyes averted, aware the teen's gaze still was pinned on him. Finally, Slaben blurted, "What are you after, anyway, Lincoln Jones?"

Lincoln looked over at him. Behind, someone else jumped off the bridge.

"I haven't the faintest idea.""f.u.c.k him." The ancient curse satisfied him for some reason, the words nice and short, to the point and final. The fact that Slaben wouldn't hear it was beside the point. He crossed his arms, stood stoically against the ocean's power. 'Course, not being very far into the water, he could turn and run back to the beach, Waikiki again. Instead, he just stood there, daring a riptide to come and s.n.a.t.c.h him.

The solitude didn't last long, though. He heard a measured splashing coming up behind him, someone taking careful steps in the surf. The splashing stopped. Seconds pa.s.sed, nothing.

Lincoln rolled his eyes, turned.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Jones." The man stood in full-blown gray suit, water above his knees.

"Oh, Fortuna, why do you plague me?"

"I still want to talk to you. Time is running short. A meeting of flesh, so to speak, seems the only way. Is something wrong?"

"I'm trying to erase you from my field. Hard to do, though, when we're Out-World."

"Mm, yes, I can understand your difficulty." The zeke of the man matched exactly, as far as Lincoln could tell, the Sphere wraith. Now, a fficker of a smile played across its lips. "Unless you drown me."

"I cut my medi-shop contract."

"And I don't have one. Well. You just might get away with it."

"I don't think you need to worry. You're just a pest, not a threat. What can I do for you?

Asked, you understand, only to speed up the process of being rid of you.

"Understood. Your PADDs asked that I speak to you.

'Them again!"

'They have been with the Orion Project a long time. Based upon the DNA combos they donated, they a.s.sume you might have a hankering to join."

"All their combos have done is make me a crazy sensualist, seeking excitement, providing amus.e.m.e.nt for the ma.s.ses while getting me Sundered."

'The mistake you're making, Mr. Jones," said For-tuna, pulling a foot up, then steppingdown again carefully, in the process showing Lincoln he still wore his shoes, "is confusing physical stimuli with intellectual fulfillment. You are not entirely to blame, it is what you have been taught Cradle education is biased toward the nonreality of the Sphere where nothing is out of reach. And what is in reach often isn't satisfying. You are aware of this without knowing why. So this leads you to sensory pursuits which you have found hollow because there's no informational underpinnings. The Great Barrier Reef, even what's left today, is a treasure of fascinating things, but you were not taught to seek those. So you were stuck with the merely physical."

Lincoln put his hands on his hips and regarded the dapper little man. "h.e.l.l of a speech to give someone standing up to his knees in water."

"We take what we can get."

"Isn't the Orion Foundation that bunch that wants to send a rocket into deep s.p.a.ce or something?"

Instead of answering, Fortuna pulled out a flat, clear disk. "What I'd like you to do now, Mr. Jones, is play this. Would you mind attaching?"

"Ah, the sales pitch at last."

"In a manner of speaking. However, I'm not going to say much more. I will let the images speak."

"What are they from?"

'The Smoot Deep s.p.a.ce Telescope."

'The three-thousand-meter monster mirror that got taken out by a meteor?"

Fortuna lifted one shoulder in sort of a half-shrug. "The Smoot Scope was destroyed by a rocket nose cone full of concrete sent on a deliberate collision course. The flexible mirror essentially wrapped around the object and was carried off. It's all still in a very eccentric elliptical orbit. No chance of saving it."

"Who would launch a rocket like that?"

"Some group or other during the Five Hundred Five Days' War. Many First World technical installations were targeted."

"Too bad."

"Yes, especially so soon after capturing these images. You're looking about eight hundred light-years away, a relatively isolated star toward Arcturus. We call the star Helios Prime."Fortuna held out the disk and link connectors. He looked at Lincoln, waited patiently.

"Oh, h.e.l.l, all right. Anything to be rid of you."

What he saw, though, raised the hackles on the back of his neck.

"You did what?" Quasi dropped all pretenses to accents or culture in the outraged shout "I volunteered the Cradle for a star migration."

"You-y-you had no right to do that! Not without coming with us first-"

"How could I do that? I've been Sundered, remember?"

"Even more reason this is an outrage! You have no-d.a.m.n!"

"Quasi, you're going to get us into trouble." Lashonde, the ID window said.

"He called me! To tell me about this brainless thing he did!"

"Interesting term, brainless."

Lashonde ignored the remark. "What did he do?"

"I volunteered the entire Cradle for a migration."

"A migration? Where?"

"To the stars. Or at least one-"

"Why?" Quasi again.

"Adventure. Challenge. A purpose beyond existence.

'That is the biggest load of zekecrement I've heard in a long time." Quasi's wraith exhibited every ounce of his disgust.

"No one in the Cradle is being forced to do anything. All I want you to do is look, discuss, then decide. Here's the basis for my action. Look at these images.

"From where?"

'The Orion Foundation-"

"Even worse. They've been talking about this for years. You can't expect us to fall in with them-"

Lashonde cut in. "What are we seeing?""A planetary system about eight hundred light-years away. Sun, six planets. Fourth one is Eartblike. Look in the s.p.a.ce surrounding it."

Even though she was a wraith inside an artificial neuron network, Lincoln still heard the intake of breath.

"Are those-"

"Artificial constructions of some sort, s.p.a.ce stations, perhaps. The resolution isn't enough to tell us exactly what they are or do, but they are there. And they are huge. Meaning a s.p.a.cefaring intelligent race built them. That's the impetus of the Orion Project now, to send someone out there to meet them. Of course, what we're seeing is eight hundred years old, so there's no guarantee they're still there, or any of this still exists. But the stakes are too high not to go"

"Lincoln, they've been planning this for years," Quasi said in a calmer tone. "First they planned ten thousand ships, then five thousand, then a thousand, and now they're down to what?"

"One hundred thirty-six, a mere speck in s.p.a.ce-time. The budget cuts parallel our fading visions and dreams. At first, they were going to send the thousands of ships in random directions, but the Smoot Scope discoveries have changed the destination of the remaining few. The entire fleet will go toward this system in the hope that one or two actually make it. We leave in another three standard months. We'll go as wraiths in offshoots of the TermSphere because mind-wraiths are much easier to transport than flesh bodies. Each ship's Sphere will be just like the Mother Sphere until, if, we need corporeal bodies. We can drop into 'zekes grown in tanks and do what has to be done."

"Why?"

"Why? Why? You pinned it yourself, Quasi: It's the mind. Always the mind. The Sphere is a nursely, but now it's time to leave it. Lotus-Eaters: that's us, that's humanity now, comfortable in its electronic coc.o.o.n, existing for no other reason than to exist. Well, here's something new, something really challenging. Don't you see? Another civilization is out there.

Someone else in the universe to say h.e.l.lo to, an answer to all the dreams mankind's had over the millennia. And we can go there! I want to go there. And I want all of my Cradlemates to go with me and share the adventure."In the end, eveiy one of them turned him down.

Benafar even called him crazy, a foreign concept for eighty-four years (he looked it up).

The decision devastated Lincoln. He sat on the hotel balcony, watching the Sun sink slowly into the Pacific, and although he tried to reject it, his mind wouldn't let go of the image that his hopes, his dreams, were going with it, drowning in a growing darkness. He was alone, now, too, like he'd never been before.

He took out the penny again, staring at it as it rested in the palm of his hand. Then he placed it on his thumb.

"Heads, I drown myself, tails I go to the stars."

The spinning coin buzzed as it shot up. It reached the top of the curve and began its downward trek. He caught it in his hand but didn't look at it. With his other hand, instead, he touched the linkvest controls.