Wim has worked out an interesting defense. As our Sedai whaps the ball and green Dane begins his run down the field, we fan into a semicircle pointing toward our own pouch and run like hell, kasirene in the middle and humans to the sides. Dane sees the kasirene coming and begins evasive running, and our line whips around him to cut him off. I rush him from the left and Pixie rushes him from the right, and when he spins to run back, Puti leaps right over him and appears as if by magic directly in front of him. Dane leaps to one side, Puti scoops the ball from him and whaps it far down the field, toward the green pouch, where the rest of our team is waiting for it. There is thorough confusion in the green team. They rush down the field toward Wim. Wim scoops the ball and flings it down the baseline to Pixie, who fronts it to me, I fake it to Taloret and we both run, each of us pursued by green players.

Taloret reverses direction, and I pass the ball to Mertika, who dunks the ball through our pouch and yodels with glee. The green players realize that while they were busy trying to figure out where the ball was, Drel has stolen their Talisman and popped her into his pouch. Decca giggles and waves, and the cried of foul are deafening. They can only cite Teloret for running with the ball and she's taken out of the play, which cripples us but not too badly. The score: green, six; purple, twelve. It's time for a recess.

Quilla claims that the favorite sport of all Aerans is argument. When it comes to the game, the kasirene repudiate their usual gravity and argue just as fiercely, and the recess is spent howling and waving arms in the air and pointing at the playing field and cursing. We all take a drink of water.

Quilla rebuttons Decca's shirt. Tabor decides that enough volume of noise has been reached, and blows the whistle for the fifth play. Everyone quiets now and is intent and serious. Dane passes me on the field and pats my ass, and I determine to land him a good one during the next play. Green up.

They whap and catch their own ball, and do a flying wedge offensive.

With our Teloret on the sidelines, it's very effective, and they manage to steal Decca back, too. No points, but a lot of glory. Green, eight; purple, twelve.

Sixth play. Teloret is back in the game. Purple up. Kabit steals the ball from Pixie, who is easily confused, but green botches when Josha climbs the green kaedo and dunks the ball from there. Everyone cries foul, including some of the green supporters, and Josha is sidelined. Green, ten; purple, twelve. We're beginning to feel nervous.

Seventh play, green up. I confer with Sedai. Drel whaps, Dane catches and runs, and Sedai grabs Dane and rushes him toward our pouch. Dane, his dignity much offended, kicks and howls and drops the ball. Wim recovers it and dunks once, I grab it and dunk twice, Pixie takes it, evades green Malin, tosses downfield to Teloret, Teloret whaps it right into our pouch, I recover it and dunk it a fourth time, and Tabor whistles. Dane and Sedai are both sidelined, but now the score is: green, ten; purple, twenty.

Final play, purple up. We position ourselves around the entire perimeter of the field. Wim steals the ball from Josha and tosses it to me, and we round-robin the ball around the field, while the green players rush about in the center trying to catch us. Every once in a while we get the ball to Mertika, who dunks it and starts it around the field again, until the end whistle is blown. The green team is furious, green supporters are homicidal, Dane tells me that he wouldn't court me if I were the last woman on Aerie, and I'm so pleased I kiss him.

Serves them right Last game they beat us twenty-four to six.

Both teams retire from the field and go pollute the stream with sweat and dirt and strategies and accusations of cheating. Puti opens the beer. Then Kabit and Puti go off to snuggle in the bushes, Wim follows me around with damp eyes, Dane puts his hand in Pixie's shirt, which she likes, and we're all friends again and as drunk as Mertika's father's beer can get us. But I go home alone.

Silly? Yes, I suppose so. But it filled the time, gave us something to do, gave Haven something to shout about. It kept Hoku busy dispensing bandages and dire predictions, and Mim busy sewing up the holes in my shirts. Kasirene used to be fairly rare in Haven, but the next summer Ped Kohl opened a beer hall, and every summer thereafter it was bursting with kasirene and humans, pounding on tables and arguing the excellence of their teams. So it changed that, too.

And it kept me from feeling too lonely. Quilla was home, of course.

Tabor. The twins. But Jason had been gone for seven months, helping Hetch expand our spaceways. Mish was dealing with bureaucracies on Althing Green.

And Jes was gone. He came and went as the ships permitted, appearing with presents for everyone and tall tales of grabs and tau space and exotic ports on distant worlds; going again and leaving a vacuum behind him. I thought I'd grown used to it. But he'd come home in late spring that year, with three weeks to spend and nothing to do at home. We walked alone to Cault Tereth, and we talked of many things and saw many wonders and did much of interest. Things changed.

Then he went away, and I had to get used to his absence all over again.

I filled my days and my mind with bats and balls and scoops and running down the field, and they helped, they undoubtedly helped.

But nothing helped at night.

*Part Five*

*1233*

*New Time*

*Missing*

*Aerie*

'"For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement."'

'-Aldous Huxley'

WITHIN THE MEMORIES OF FALLING JASON thought he could hear the voice of the universe, saying: Think of your planet, Kennerin. Think of your plantations, your shipping company, your children, your people, your growth.

Think of your pride. I can end it as easily as this. In less than a flash of a nod of a moment. Now.

It seemed too quick a thing to have changed his life. The event was out of proportion to the change, as though gnats, in the passing millisecond, had built a wall separating city from city, or world from world. He remembered standing on the hatch shelf, holding a bill of lading, while Captain Hetch's voice from the hold echoed Jason's shouted items of inventory. The moment was clear in his memory: the murky overhang of the domed port, the acridity of the air, shimmers of heat, boredom. He remembered remembering Aerie, listing the ports and stops between his home and this distant, grubby world. Hetch appeared in the hold and said something tired and grumpy. Jason turned and put his hand on the railing, letting the sheaf of papers flap closed. The railing fell. He fell. The hatch shelf fell. In a flash of a nod of a moment.

There were spaces of darkness and spaces of light. They seemed to flicker by him, glimpses of reality that comprised months, then days, then seconds as time slowed within him, leaving him stranded 'lento' in a 'prestissimo' world. He woke in a hospital near the port. Tests. Pain. His body clasped in a coffin of webbing, then in the coffin of his own unresponsive skin. Bare and antiseptic rooms. He slept, and woke on Solon, the medical planet. They slid him into the Physical Reconstruction Unit and knitted new joints for him, which froze two days later. They grafted and implanted and maneuvered and changed. They filled him full of drugs, then, to his relief, took the drugs away again. Time changed again.

During those slow months in the hospital, Jason considered Aerie. He blocked the smell of the ward, the scurrying of android attendants and the tug of life supports in his guts, and built his world in his mind.

Aerie, as the ship spins from the grab. A world of blue ocean clasped by huge white poles, swathed in clouds, motionless against a backdrop of stars. Two fat moons, slightly absurd in their perfect roundness. Islands solidify around the equator as the ship swings into close orbit. Jason shapes their names with his lips, tasting the syllables. To'an Elt. To'an Ako. To'an Eriant sprawled at the edge of the Antarctic mass. To'an ba Eiret. To'an Betes. And To'an Cault, home. The shuttle slides over the brown plains and green mountains of Betes, over the green-blue-white of the strait, over To'an Cault's massive, sea-ridged shore. White-topped cliffs festooned with small, succulent gray plants and cascades of blue-green vines, alive with the flights of birds. The ridge crest slopes inland to the small valley of the port, up to the Tor and the ramshackle, comforting house, down to the barn and fields, flat to Haven, and beyond crops and orchards to distant woods. Kaedos thick-leaved against the sky, the delicate, beautiful lace of halaeas, magenta fourbirds above fields of airflowers, the clean, sweet smells of home. Jason stands at the shuttle hatch, unable to break the ecstasy of the moment, until an orderly speaks or his guts twinge, and he opens his eyes to the machines and monitors that keep him alive. Pain and thickness, then the ship moves again from the grab, and Aerie appears gemlike in a velvet sky.

But he was unconscious when they brought the shuttle in to To'an Cault, in accordance with the doctor's program. He woke to his bedroom in Tor Kennerin, and he stared at the wooden walls, the dark ceiling, and the shafts of afternoon sunlight that crossed the room. A smell of antiseptics and medication overpowered the scent of airflowers and the sea. The support systems buzzed and hummed to themselves. For a moment he did not understand where he was.

"Jason?"

He shaped his mind away from the slow, medicated time of his private universe, turned his head, interpreted his vision. The young doctor stood by the bed, looking vulnerable without the protection of his hospital whites. He smiled, a lightning shift of face, and Jason prodded himself toward speech.

"Home?"

"Yes. Your wife thought it would be best."

Jason thought about that.

"You can't fix me?"

"Not completely, no. We talked about that. But you can get around, you know. You won't have to spend all your time lying in bed. Your wife was surprised that we had done as well as this."

"Her name is Mish."

The doctor smiled again.

Jason looked away. After a pause, he said, "Ozchan. I want to look out the window."

The doctor moved the bed. Jason stared through the delicate tracery of the bare halaea. The foliage of the 'Zimania' in the distant fields was rust-colored with autumn. Closer, the brown fields lay tilled and waiting for winter.

Jason looked at his body. His legs made long, thin ridges under the sheet, and his arms seemed yellow under the darkness. His stomach ached where his flesh met the tubes of the life-support systems.

"Look," Ozchan said. "I knew you wanted to see the landing, so I made a video." He held a small cylinder, silver against his chocolate skin. "I shot it from the port beside you. It's what you would have seen."

Jason raised his one good arm and knocked the cylinder from Ozchan's hand. "It's not enough," he said, "never enough. You can't change this, can you? I'm home because you can't change this."

Ozchan said nothing.

"Bring me some wine," Jason said. The door opened and closed again. He rubbed his cheek against the fresh linen of his bed and sank into slow time.

He wanted Mish.

When Quilla came, and Meya, and Mim, he closed his eyes, feigning sleep. They buzzed about his room like dancing flies and left him alone again.

Quilla came back that evening, pushing a complicated chair. It balanced on three large wheels in the rear and two small ones in front, and a series of trays clung to its sides. It clattered and banged, and Jason focused on it while he pushed himself toward quickness.

"What is it?" he said to Quilla's silence.

"A chair for you. Look, it has a motor here, and the controls are along the right armrest, so you can run it by yourself. The equipment goes on the trays, and we've put in the best shock absorbers we could make." Her words came faster and faster, seeming to blur together. Jason waited for silence.

"Don't want it," he said.

"Nonsense. The carpenter's working on the stairs to make a ramp for you. It should be ready in a day or two, and in the meantime you can practice on it up here."

"No."

"Are you planning to spend the rest of your life in that bed?" Her tone was one of simple curiosity. Jason turned his head away from her. She buzzed a while longer, then left. Through the halaea branches he could see the barn glowing. Two crescent moons rode the sky. He wept, not bothering to wipe away the tears. Ozchan came into the room, fussed about for a moment, and turned him off for the night.

Where's Mish?

On Althing Green, appearing before the Council, trying to secure our full license from the Transportation Board. There're a lot of petty legalisms she must get through. It will take some time before she's done. Then she'll come home.

Things will be better then.

How long will it be?

There is no way of telling. In real time, a few weeks, another month.

Maybe two months, three at the most. In your own time, who knows how long? Be patient. She will come.

Has she come before?

Oh yes. She came three times to the hospital and sat by my bed, telling me stories and gossip that she made up. We talked quite a lot. We thought I was going to recover. We talked about the accident. The ship needed to be repaired. Hetch was very angry about the accident. He wants to sue the repair docks. I would like to sue them, too, but it would take three or four years to reach the Council.

Jes is fine. He's in sub-four now. Hetch has let him command his own ship. Yes, I know. He's doing very well.

Where's Mish?

Coming soon. Be patient.

My stomach hurts. A jolt of electric surcease to the brain. A jab of chemical relief in the arm. Slowing down time, until Mish gets home.

Things will be better then.

Where's Mish?

Meya and the twins brought him breakfast in the morning and stayed with him until he had finished. They bounced around the room, shattering the stillness, throwing open the widow to let in the clear light of morning and the scent of dew. Meya's thick, swinging black hair reminded him of Mish, and it snaked around her face as she tossed her head, laughing at one of Jared's terrible jokes. Such pretty people, these three. Decca sat by his bed and stared at the blinking monitors.

"What are they?" she asked.

Jason explained, feeling the words forming far back in his throat and coming through his mouth like large, uncomfortable bubbles. Decca listened and put her hand on his shoulder.

"It hurts," she said.

"Of course it hurts," Jared said. "Don't be such a lizard."

"I am not!"

Meya calmed them and poured hot tea into Jason's cup. Jared buttered a muffin for him. They seemed like swift, tiny birds, invading his room, singing an alien song. Even in stillness they flickered. Meya talked about that season's games, illustrating with broad sweeps of her arms.

He felt tired when they left, drained and saddened. In the fields the kasirene called to each other, and downstairs Mim scolded the cooks.

Ozchan and Quilla came in together. Ozchan made small adjustments on the monitors while Quilla stood at the foot of his bed, looking at him. He stared at the wall.

"Jes is coming home in two months," she said. "Mish says she'll be here a few days after that." She paused. "Ved Hirem wants to see you, but he says he can't climb the stairs. His arthritis."

When he still didn't speak, she made an exasperated noise and left the room. Ozchan tried to talk him into sitting in the chair. Jason ignored him, and after a while the doctor went away.

His body felt dull, unresponsive. Dead. He twitched the fingers on his bad arm, but could do no more than that. His legs were flaccid; he couldn't feel them at all, although sometimes they sent him fraudulent messages which he always believed, then felt shamed for believing. They had grafted over the worst of the burns, but he knew the skin on his left side looked ugly, serrated, and lumpy. It felt unpleasant to his fingertips.

Mim brought him lunch and complained about household matters. He ignored her.

How would Mish ever want something like him? This collection of scars and uselessness. Ugly. The shadows in the room changed. He refused dinner and asked Ozchan to turn him off early. At least in sleep there were no scars.

Yet.

The next morning Tabor came in and played on his flute. Jes had come to the hospital and played his own flute, substituting comfortable music for uncomfortable words. Jason told Tabor to go away.

In the afternoon, Hoku came.

"What are you doing here?" Quilla said.

Ozchan touched a 'Zimania' leaf and smiled at her. "Just walking. Since I'm going to be here a while, I thought I'd explore a bit."

Quilla let the bough drop into place and moved toward the next bush.

Ozchan trailed after her. She pushed a branch aside, reached toward the trunk, and checked the sap collectors which clung to the scaly bark.

"I left your father with Hoku," Ozchan said. "She was rather fierce with him."

"She's a fierce woman," Quilla said without looking up.

"She was lecturing him about self-pity. She was rather rough."

"He'll survive." She moved through the bushes to a neighboring row.