"Now just hold it there for a while, and it'll feel better."

"Thanks." He touched her hand, and she jumped back from him. He looked at her in the lamplight. His face looked like Jes'.

"Why are you afraid of me?" he said.

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are. Every time I come into a room, you look like you're about to faint."

"I do not!"

"Oh, come on. Everyone on this planet treats me like some kind of monster, and no one will even tell me why."

"You ought to know why well enough."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he said.

She tensed her thighs, ready to leap away from him, and licked her lips.

"You killed Laur," she said.

Hart just stared at her.

"You did. Just before you left, you looked at her and she fell down dead."

He closed his eyes. It didn't look as though he were faking it, and Meya frowned, puzzled.

"I loved Laur," he said. "I think I loved her more than anyone else.

She had a shock. She was an old woman, and her heart gave out. She was almost eighty, Meya. They didn't even tell me that she was dead, not until I'd been gone almost a year. I just thought she'd fainted in the heat. I was mad at her, and Jason was in a hurry, or I'd have gone to her. But they wouldn't let me. And they didn't let me know." He looked up at her. "I didn't kill her, Meya. I couldn't hurt someone I loved that much."

She stared at him. He pulled himself upright and picked up his boot.

"I suppose no one's ever going to believe me," he said.

"I believe you," she whispered. But he was already in the house, and she didn't know if he had heard.

Hart opened his father's door and stepped inside. It was almost v'al; both moons were down, and the darkness in the room was thick and quiet. He felt for the table by the door and put the lamp down, then lit it.

"Hello, Hart."

Quilla sitting in a chair beside Jason's bed. Ozchan near the window, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Jason sitting up in the bed, his eyes alert but his lips pale with pain. Hart took an involuntary step toward the door before forcing himself to remain still.

"Come on in," Quilla said. "There's a chair left."

He pulled the chair away from the wall and sat, putting his hands in his pockets. Quilla and Ozchan looked at each other, then looked at him again.

He kept silent.

"I told Quilla you had some plan," Jason said. "We want to know what it is."

"I don't think it's any business of hers," Hart said. "It's between you and me."

"Not if it's medical," Ozchan said. "I'm your father's physician."

"My father's keeper, you mean." Hart heard the anger in his voice and calmed himself. They'd have had to know one way or another, soon enough. Too bad they'd found out this early, but there was no help for it. He leaned back in the cushioned chair. "My father's keeper," he said again. "He needs a keeper now, without one he'd die. No offense, Doctor, but it's the truth, and you know it."

"You said you could give me a new body," Jason said.

"No. I said I could give you your body back again. Not a new one.

They're working on that at Kroeber, and they'll be successful, eventually. But they have to do it with clones, a transfer technique. It would take fifteen to seventeen years to grow a clone for you. It's too long, and you don't have the facilities here to do it."

Ozchan shook his head. "They can force clones faster than that."

"Not for a transfer, they can't. The donor body has to be identical to the original, or the transfer doesn't take. When you force a clone, too many things change. It won't work properly. Perhaps someday they'll keep clone banks, fresh and waiting for need, but not yet. Transfer isn't what I had in mind."

"Perhaps you'd best tell us exactly what you do plan," Quilla said.

He looked at her. Cold, distant, hating him. "You wouldn't understand it," he said. "And even if you did, even if I could prove to you that the technique was safe and guaranteed to work, you still wouldn't let me do it. Be honest, Quil."

Was that a flicker of discomfort on her face?

"We're talking about Jason," she said, "our father. I wouldn't let you do anything to hurt him, no. But if you could help, if you convinced me that you could help him..." She shrugged.

"I'll be back," Hart said, rising and leaving the room. Quilla said something indistinct behind him. He walked down the dark hallway to his room, locked the door behind him, and opened his clothes bag. He dumped the clothing on the floor and detached the lining, pulled it out, and reached inside.

Papers and reels, layered along the bottom of the bag. A cushioned box, which he held under his arm. He gathered the papers together and took them to his father's room, where he handed them across the bed to Ozchan.

"What are those?" Jason said.

"Basically, the background, theories, and results of the technique."

"Tell me about it."

"I can't. Not in detail. I'd have to talk in symbols. But I've discovered how to reprogram your DNA to rebuild your body. Not grafting, not transplants, nothing like that. A more elegant process, and quite a lot simpler. I inject a chemical into your bloodstream, and once it's been distributed to all parts of your body, I inject a potentiator. And your body starts to rebuild itself. It's that simple."

Ozchan put down the papers. "I can't make heads or tails of this. For all I know, this could be a chemical formula for turning water into wine."

"Come now, 'Doctor'. Surely you remember medical school chemistry better than that."

"I'm not a stink-mixer, Quia Kennerin," Ozchan said.

"No, and that's the trouble with all of you." Hart rose and paced around the room. "You're all diddlers. Learn how to plug this into that, put in this drug, take away the other. What do you really know? Do any of you bother to find out why things work, what makes them what they are? Why some people heal and others don't, and what that healing actually is? No, you come up with magical names for it, as if mere noises could explain it. Witch doctors, all of you. Remove part A and substitute part B. Chop it up, and if that doesn't work, chop it up some more. And if you're still up a tree, take the patient -- never the person, you understand, never the man or woman, just the 'patient' -- and stick it in some magical machine. Twist some knobs. Say secret words. Put on your feathers and beads and shake your rattles around the hospital. And you've done everything modern medicine can be expected to do. If the patient doesn't recover, if the patient dies, it's never your fault, is it? You've done your very best, after all. And never, not for one single moment, have you understood what the fuck you've done."

Hart leaned across Jason's bed, staring at Ozchan.

"Go back to your textbooks, Doctor. Find a text on ontogeny. If it's a good one, you'll find the chemical explanation of growth. Don't expect it to be too thorough; it's for physicians, after all. Not stink-mixers. But what I've isolated is the key mixture, the fertilizer for growth. And I've adapted it for use on the postnatal."

He turned to look at his father. "It's not pleasant, Jason. It won't hurt, but you'll be out of it, you won't know what's going on. Your flesh and bones will grow very flexible, very soft. You'll be kept alive by machine, but that's true now. You'll start redeveloping from the spine, just as a fetus would. The genes know the pattern, know the stopping points, the limits. Once you've achieved full new growth, I can stop it at any physical body age that you want. Would you like to be eighteen again, Jason? Twenty-five? Thirty-two?

I can do it, and when you awaken, you'll be whole. Weak, of course; all those new muscles will need toughening. You'll have to learn to walk again. It will be slow and somewhat painful for a while. But within a year you'll be whole, and well, and strong. A week for preparation, maybe six for restructuring. The rest in physical therapy. That's what I'm offering. It's that simple, Jason.

And it's your choice."

"But how do we know it works?" Quilla demanded.

"It works," Hart said. He went back to his chair and sat. "At the back of those papers is a description of previous experiments. The vidchips are time-light studies of those same experiments. It works."

Ozchan glanced through the end papers, then turned to Jason.

"I don't recommend it, Jason. It's new, it's unknown. These experiments may not prove anything at all. I don't like the entire idea."

"Go away," Jason said. "You're arguing over me as though I were dead, or close to it. Get out, all of you. I want to think."

"Father..." Quilla said.

"Get out! And don't touch the monitors, Ozchan. I can reach them myself. Out!"

Quilla stalked out. Ozchan followed. Hart paused at the door but Jason's brusque gesture sent him, too, on his way. Quilla and Ozchan had already left the hallway. Hart stopped and leaned against the wall, sucking air into his lungs. He hadn't realized how tense he'd been.

He tapped on Drake's door, in search of brandy.

"Who is it?" Drake whispered.

"Hart. Let me in. I need something to drink."

There was a noise of bolts and chains, and of something being dragged.

Then the door opened.

"Why all the fortifications, Drake? This isn't Shipwright, you know. No thieves or vandals. Do you have any brandy left? I think I've finally made some progress tonight, we may not have to wait much longer." Hart picked the decanter from the table and poured a large shot into a glass. "Better," he said, and turned around.

Drake leaned against the wall, staring at him. He held his gray robe clenched tight. As Hart watched, Drake let the robe fall open. An ugly scarlet rash spread over Drake's chest and into his groin.

"It's starting," Drake whispered. "First the rash, then the skin rejects, then the organs stop. The glands, Hart. I'm falling apart."

Hart walked to him and prodded at the rash with his finger, then took a sip of the brandy.

"You've got a month at least, Drake. There's plenty of time."

"Plenty of time for what?" Drake shouted.

Hart hushed him and listened. The house remained quiet.

"Plenty of time before anything serious starts. I'll give you some ointments for the rash. Patience, Drake. God rewards patience."

"With what?"

Hart smiled and opened the door. "Eternal life," he said pleasantly, and raised the glass of brandy in a toast.

Jason dreamed that he ran in the meadows south of Haven, ran through the tall, thick grasses of the central plain. Dreamed that he swung through the ledges of the barn, rope clenched in his hand; he could feel small pieces of hay tickling his back under the pleasant roughness of his shirt. He opened his hand and fell, turning and twisting, through barn and sky and sea, flying; spread his arms to catch the wind and swooped down the length of his island, touched the southern mountains and scooped snow from their glaciered tops.

Banked west over forest and shore, over a chain of pale beaches and a froth of tides. Danced on the grim northern cliffs, welcoming the blowing winter and launched himself over the clean northern sea. Clouds and the shadows of clouds, mist and coolness on his taut skin, and a whisper of singing around him increasing to the shrieks of storm. He rode the rain, tumbled into the churning ocean and climbed again, up beyond the clouds, into a sphere of thin air and clarity, and south again, to warm Haven. Mish spilled from a cloudbank, laughing, grabbed his hand and tumbled him with her into the warmth of the meadow. Spread her hair around them, smiling, and slid onto him, around him; put her hands on his shoulders and he put his hands on her hips, feeling them moving, a triangle of sensation from palm to cock to palm again. Her eyes. Her breasts. Her knees. He arched beneath her, shouting, and the cries of joy became sounds of agony, the pulsing of his cock became spiders in his belly. He woke shaking, damp, into a world of pain.

He reached for the knobs on the monitor, feeling for the right one.

Turned it one click, two. Three. The pain slid into fog. He dropped his hand to his crotch and held his genitals.

Yes, he thought before the programmed sleep took him, yes.

For three days the Tor bustled. Jason took the first injection and they waited for it to permeate his body, while pieces of equipment were brought from the hospital in Haven and set up in Jason's room. A softbed, which Hart fiddled with until it pleased him. A respirator. Hookups to the monitors and cleansors already present. Thermostatic controls. The room began to look like the bridge of a starship. Ozchan watched the change with suspicion and unease, but Jason had been firm in his decision, and Hart did seem to be cautious and thorough in his work.

The evening of the third day, Hart ran some tests and decreed that Jason was ready for the second injection. They moved Jason into the softbed.

He looked small and quiet amid the humming machinery.

"If this doesn't work," Quilla said under her breath, but Jason heard her and put his hand on hers.

"If this doesn't work, it won't be any worse than before," he said.

"But it might kill you!"

"How long would I have lived otherwise?" he said. "Frozen and drugged -- I might as well have been dead."

"You were never a gambler," she said.

"Perhaps I've changed." Jason smiled and nodded to Hart, who slid the needle into his arm. Within a moment, he had slipped into unconsciousness.

Hart hooked up the equipment, double- and then triple-checked it, and allowed the bed to fill with liquid. Jason floated, attached by an umbilicus of plastic to an electronic womb. Quilla stared at it, then shivered and moved next to Tabor. He put his arms around her.

"Did you have to do it that way?" she whispered.

Hart looked at the transparent vat, expressionless, and shrugged.

Winter moved in, perpetual clouds and a constant rain. Ozchan had spent his childhood on a dome-world, where the climate never varied from one month to the next; had spent his school years in a place where winter brought clear days and days of snow, a place with emphatic seasons. The unchanging rain depressed him; Meya's news that it would rain almost without letup until spring made him wonder if his sanity would survive. But the Kennerins moved smoothly into their winter routines, as busy now as they had been during the autumn, although at different tasks. Quilla and Tabor spent most of their days in the barn, mending equipment and talking with Aerans and kasirene about next spring's planting. Mim and the cooks took the kitchen apart and put it back together again, scrubbing every millimeter of the room and its furnishings.

Each morning the twins, complaining, slogged down the muddy hill to the school in Haven, and each evening slogged back up, filling the house with the smell of damp clothing, and with shouts. Hart spent most of his time in Jason's room. Drake, succumbing perhaps to boredom, was less and less in evidence as the days passed.

Meya worked around the house, mending things, making things. Ozchan followed her, begging for something to do. She made clothing, set new panes into a broken window at the back of the house, repaired a pipe near the hot tub. Let him hold tools or pound nails, and they talked to the sound of rain and wood. Told each other stories about their families, their friends. The lives they led, the lives they hoped to lead. Moved closer, until one evening they moved into each other's arms and didn't part until morning. He woke to the curve of her body against his, remembered, looked at her with surprise, with apprehension. She smiled and pulled him close to her again. Into her again. Things became easier.

Yet a tension remained, apart from himself or Meya, centered in the room by the halaea branches upstairs, in the transparent vat with its slowly changing occupant. The feeling lay stretched and taut in the hours of their lives, never relaxing and never snapping. Ozchan would find it in the expressions of Quilla's face as she gazed into the vat, in the sound of Tabor's flute, the shouting of Mim in the kitchen, and he would stand silent, testing it, before moving toward Meya again. It seemed that time had stopped.