Kio says, sea level is 14,307 cm above the planet’s deepest trench. Kio’s wrong. You know this when you’re pulling your arms and legs through canyons and mountains of swelling waves. They fill your view, they are your view: the horizon, the landscape, the challenge. The sea is not flat.

Kio only sees the ocean through a lens, or as numbers on his screen. The only moisture he feels is the lick of his fingers to turn a page of printouts for careful study. He never gets close enough to be blinded from a whitecap saltwash.

I ruminate on our situation as I rise and fall with the estranged beat of tides pulled by our heavy ship. Not the same size as Earth’s moon, but an equivalent mass down to a decimal point or two with our fuel cells and complex drives. The desired effect is these hills, valleys, cirques, and hornes of hydrogen-bonded polar power, which carry my body up and down like the figurehead of a Viking boat.

We also are orbiting a zealous sun, another pull with another chaotic force: heat radiation. Incredibly, complexly variable; creating Kio’s precious weather systems.

It is, of course, the wind that mainly makes these waves. The wind that comes from heat differentials and pressure cells laps at these blue-grey leagues and nautical miles. The splash of water vapor pulling heat from the air for its evaporation makes me cold as well. The ocean is at 301.8 K, the air at 306.4. This huge body of water has, I roll my eyes in Kio’s direction, only a small effect on temperature and weather patterns. You cannot pull these things apart.

I should save my sarcasm. Let the arguments go. Dive under and miss the next wave completely. Therefore Kio will not feel trampled from all sides, and I will remain dignified.

I reach the skipper, pull aboard and shake off. Pry off the cap and lower my body through and down into the cockpit. It is always a hassle to remove the tight plastic suit, the bubble-helmet, the undersuit and the gloves, but any contamination could compromise our study.

Before I power up the skipper and fly to a late lunch, I take in the full panorama of the serene ocean bay. The rocking of the ship and the real gravity are like affection.

* * *

Kio says, the IMSS is ego-driven and elitist, suffocating, intolerable. He is right. You know this after you are thrown out of the conference when you give your bibliography out because you’ve quoted the vice chair but not the head chair’s son, and when only the small mechanical copier/printer in the staff room will accept unsolicited papers. The IMSS is not friendly. But the science it inspires has no peer. Even he cannot deny that.

Kio sees our project as a deliberate nose-thumb to the entire Society, claiming a strange delight and dignity in our careful, original, free data.

Over grilled smoked raclette and potatoes he describes the latest complaint, gesturing for effect to our grad student. Olive frowns as she listens. Two full professors, IMSS members, were denied pre-registration conference passes yesterday. The reason? Their paper proposal included data from a former USOS member no longer affiliated with either organization. Kio frets, massaging one hand with the other, worrying that Society members using data from our previous papers will be similarly excluded. Olive says she doesn’t care if her name is going to be tainted by studying with us. Kio says, I am tempted to start my own organization. Edit my own journal.

The thing is, he says, the USOS—the only other academic organization—doesn’t have the resources, the prestige. It’s already gotten a stigma from a few bad papers. Such a fledgling association doesn’t have the grants and the history and the copyrights. The damn copyrights. The IMSS is a megalith with expensive names like Toulerette and Bradley, Sorensen and Taupra. McHayes.

I say, you can have McHayes, take him. I don’t want him, don’t ever want to see him, ever. Kio smiles, takes my hand now and starts massaging it. Olive leaves in a hurry, to catch some dating samples as they come out of the fission track recorder.

I still feel the sea pushing me up and down, though the orbit we run out here is smoother than any paved road. You’re sunburned, he says. How was the water? Did you download the data patches? I nod. I give him a summary of my info, and he pulls a screen over to look at the graphs.

The Earth’s systems data we recorded years ago are like a shadow of blue behind the yellow line of this morning’s readings. He smiles, tracing the growing line with a finger, and leaves a greasy streak.

Two months, he says, then we crash the party.

* * *

My planet is beautiful, fractals of swirling clouds in the stratosphere, rolling basaltic flows. An occasional tiny volcano from the very depths, that I can’t see from here, but think, ridiculously, just might provide enough energy for a primitive life to form. That would be the ultimate triumph, the ultimate paper.

Kio says I shouldn’t be so possessive; the whole philosophy behind this is free data. No copyrights. No charge to cite or use sources of sources, unless desired. No need to publish the bibliography and receipts on the front page. No having to scrape together pennies to quote something extra out of the IMSS journal. No selling souls for protocols. Letting other people play with this paper, and this planet, while we’re here and when we’re done. For free.

Besides, Kio likes to remind me, any of my own parasites and cells dropped accidentally during my swims would be a far more likely scenario for biogenesis.

And that, of course, would ruin the entire purpose of this experiment. He is right. We have skewed conditions on that blue-black marble above me in a direction able to sustain such organisms. Life is sticky. You can’t perform numerous studies on the effects of life on geothermal/atmospheric systems and resulting weather patterns if your baseline control for these effects is not parasite-free. And that baseline control, this pristine planet, is our first priority.

Kio comes up behind me, puts his hands around my middle, pulls me into him. Look at that, he says, meaning the sunrise at the edge of our huge geoidal ship. The window dims slightly in response, and he chuckles. Not long ago, he was too tense with IMSS bullshit to come watch the sunrise with me. Now he even laughs. I lean into his embrace, smiling too.

Do you think the horde will accept the data? I ask, meaning the mass of smaller names in the Society. I feel his shrug. If they don’t, he says, they can come and check it out themselves. I wonder if he is more excited about rocking the IMSS’s boat than the implications of the data patterns we’re seeing.

* * *

Sorensen, in her thousand-credit-Name glory, leaves a message on my page, asking what I’m doing next Monday. She wants someone to sub for her at a junior marine science convention aimed at getting farming children on Calliope interested in oceanic sciences. She says, I still have a high enough credit-per to impress them. She’s wrong. She’s completely disregarding people’s political views, let alone recent developments. She’s so willing to cut corners. So infuriatingly IMSS.

I tap out a message on her board, saying that this project will not let me go. I don’t notice she’s online. She sends me a message, quick, asking what I’m working on—just for curiosity’s sake. I cringe.

Sorensen is mostly sympathetic. She told me lately she was sick of the IMSS politics, just as sick as Kio and I, though without as obvious a reason. But she believes that reform has to come from within. She wants to put a committee in charge of McHayes’ chair position—a committee on which she will undoubtedly serve. I have a memory of our shouted conversation at a crowded wine and cheese reception an hour before I was removed from the last convention.

Kio and I agreed, and Olive too, that we should keep this underground until we get some more data. Until we get enough data that no one, not even McHayes, can deny the integrity of our study.

I write back a note, hinting at aeroforming and mass surveys. Vague enough.

I am feeling a little lonely, though. And Sorensen has been looking for a major project, now that her textbook is finished. She wants to do real work, not just summarizing everyone else, in the fashion of most IMSS major players. Back to the grunt, the grad level, the ocean. I grab the cursor and ask what she’s up to.

She writes back a complex reply that boils down to: still looking for something for herself and two post-docs. I think, Sorensen is a name with power, as well as a nice person, mostly, despite being entrenched in the IMSS mindset.

I call Kio over to look at my screen. I ask him what he thinks.

He shakes his head, but does not answer. His breath goes up, down, up, down, like the waves. I have no idea what he will say. It is a mystery, to know someone so well and not know him. He puts his arm on my shoulder, scrolls through the message a few more times.

Well, he says finally. It is hard, monitoring everything ourselves. What do you think? I tell him my thoughts. Of all the people in the IMSS, she’s the one with the biggest name that would not try to steal the project out from under our careful fingers. The one who would appreciate the planet not just as a scientific marvel. She doesn’t need more money after the Yeates grant last year. She has students to train, to keep her honest. Her presence would validate the study in the IMSS’s eyes. But, I say, there’s always the chance.

Why don’t you invite them, Kio says. The three days it will take for them to get here, if they get a taxi out, will be enough to solidify data for publication at the minimum. If anything happens, we can save and freeze.

* * *

There are a few odd readings on the mass survey. Olive is a bit concerned, and goes over some data she had to enter by hand one more time. The data are just outside a trend the curves have been demonstrating for the last month or so. Kio says, they’re not odd; this is the golden spun straw—the statistical data that will prove our months of stress worth the while. Our meteorological data are not yet significantly different from the Earth mass survey points, but now the atmospheric composition, core temperatures, and volcanic tendencies are spot on. Kio works by the numbers, not the concepts, and as long as the percents match, he’s happy. And because we’re measuring their differences for the paper, we can’t rely on this geophysical, geothermal, atmospheric: wet data. A few days more.

It is an hour until the taxi will get here, according to the frequency of radio signals hitting our geoid. Kio is in the shower. I want to go swimming because I am tired of running tests, entering careful numbers into spreadsheet after spreadsheet. And because I want to see the planet once more while it’s still all mine. But there is no time. So I decide to do some homework and check out the bios of the post-docs.

They are not hard to find.

Allen Mayes. Grad thesis on the effects of wide-angle sunlight on pigmentation levels of red-tide bacteria in the eastern Pacific. Record indicates a name change, and casually I wonder why. Application to the IMSS accepted—pending initiation at the next conference in September! A little less than two months. I am impressed—it must have been an incredible paper. He must also be independently wealthy, to get the sources that paper would need. His picture stares out of the screen, black and white, attentive and challenging. I don’t know for sure if I catch something familiar in that gaze.

Christine Sevres. Grad thesis on the life cycle of a small plasmodium that makes up 15 percent of the zooplankton diet of Antarctic krill. IMSS application denied for last year. Her picture shows a wild-haired girl on an ice floe, notebook in hand.

I wonder if they know each other, if they have been parleying back and forth, challenging every detail like Kio and I did when we were post-docs together. If Sorensen is a good advisor, she will encourage that. I will encourage that, when they get here. I think, this will be good for Olive.

Kio comes from the shower, still steaming from its heat. The smell of soap fills the air around me. He looks over my shoulder at the pictures of the post-docs. I am about to let him have the chair when he grips my forearm with clean-soft fingers. No one, he says, makes it into the IMSS as a post-doc. He blows up the picture a little, then accesses some back files. There is one paper from Mayes’ high school days on his record. A tiny study of a pollutant’s effect on a small section of a stream’s snail population. The name on the paper, carefully copyrighted with a credit number entry-form, is: Allen McHayes.

Son? I ask, thinking I cannot possibly let a junior McHayes onto my planet. Nephew, Kio says, Gerald’s son. Oh, Gods of Science.

* * *

Our reception is cold. I don’t like Kio’s prejudice, and the young man looks around nervously as though he were aware of our knowledge. Olive is a little reserved—she tends to be the shy type when meeting Big Names. Sorensen fills her view; she doesn’t even see Mayes. I try to welcome him, but it’s hard, knowing he has advantages and opportunities I never will. Just for a name.

At the same time, he did change it. And worked for what he has so far—I was careful to check this. It is good to see Sorensen again, and Sevres is handsome and cheerful. All three exclaim at the sight of my planet, rising large in the eastern ceiling. We show them around our-ship-the-moon, give them dinner and wine, promise work the next day. Mayes asks for readings to take to bed with him. I am careful to leave present data and protocol out of the printouts. I give the same to Sorensen and Sevres.

Kio is still up at one o’clock making a freeze of our current data load, just in case. I wish he would come to bed.

In two months, he says, I will relax. After we get our paper up to the review, I will relax. After the whole McHayes clan chokes to death on their egos, I will relax. There is a fierceness in him tonight that I have not seen in all the time we have been here. Almost ten months. It is at once frightening and invigorating. I prop up on my elbow, and watch him move around the console in his pajama bottoms.

Suddenly he turns, meets my gaze. Let’s pretend we don’t know, he says, and see how he does. But keep a close eye. Keep an eye so close, so close that no parasite dies in his bowels without our knowing. And if he dares sabotage, contaminate, do anything to our data . . . Kio lets the sentence trail. I smile despite myself. The gossip channel will suddenly have something very interesting to talk about. Our names—but even more importantly, our study— will be in the spotlight.

I think, it will be better if nothing happens, as far as the continuation of this project is concerned. But I do not tell this to Kio. He puts in a last command, and scans his program. Finally, he stretches his dark arms and commands the light out. Stars fill our ceiling, my planet about to set behind the wall. He rocks the waterbed, climbing in, and I pull him to me, hoping for some of that fierceness.

* * *

Olive says Mayes turned into a he-devil when she mentioned crashing the IMSS conference. She is partly right. The gleam in his eye, I tell Kio, was more evil delight than delight in evil. I don’t think we have to worry about Mayes sabotaging the project.

We have been through exhaustive contamination procedures with Sorensen, Sevres, and Mayes now, although a part of me thinks they will never appreciate the importance. Sorensen looks at my planet with a greed I know I echo, then surprises me when she suggests we open up the vacant peripheral rooms of our ship to Harvard, Cambridge, and Tokyo universities’ scholars. She says she can get Yamashiro and Welles and their harem out here in two seconds. Not first-class, thousand-credit names, I think, but up there. Yamashiro’s 875-credits-per now, she says, anticipating my thoughts. I cringe, guiltily, and shake my head.

Yes, Sorensen agrees, we really shouldn’t value the work—or the person—by the cost of a quote. Kio shakes his head too. Too many cooks . . . he starts, but trails off again. Olive is staring at us, a little wide-eyed. It’s the Big Name effect again. It took us a week to convince her we were real people too, when we first accepted her application to study with us.

It will be the International Geologic Year again—the "Intergalactic Marine Sciences Year," Sorensen says, with your planet as our playground. This is what the IMSS needs! This will be the carpet that gets pulled out from McHayes’ feet, and finally gets a committee in charge!

Kio turns to Olive, who still has not breathed since we mentioned Yamashiro’s credit-per. Why don’t you take Mayes out to the southern ocean in the skipper, he says. We need some more tests run on the thermal vent down there. Our last instruments were placed too close and got vaporized.

Olive pales for a second, then nods and rushes out of the room just as Sevres is coming in.

We’ve got stat significance on everything now, the post-doc says, I’ve looked at the r-squares, paired t’s, done multiple-variable Anovas on every weather cell in the last week compared to similar types of Earth storms. These data are amazing, she says, shaking her head.

There’s a lot of room in the moon here, Kio says. A lot of work to do, data to collect; my vote is to open the doors. I look at the empty planet above, my planet, faded swirls of clouds drifting over the cerulean oceans. For some reason, my heart is beating rapidly. Kio’s dark eyes are begging me to agree. So I do.

* * *

I know something is wrong the minute I cut and paste the thermal vent data into the grid. CO2 concentration has increased fourfold in the last twenty-four hours. Not SO2, as would indicate an imminent eruption. No basaltic components, or any of the other volcanic gases that should accompany the carbon. I turn to shout for Olive, but she has disappeared.

Mayes is in the room though, and I call him over. His eyebrows lower over those sharp eyes he shares with his oh-so-venerable-uncle. He knows where to look right away, and brings up a percent composition of seawater around the vents in Earth’s oceans, generously charging it to his own account. The data are not exactly similar, but there is no question. Something is living down there.

Kio curses, and says I must be wrong. I give him the console, and an hour to work through the data. Sorensen is in her room, working on IMSS policy language and trying to convince three other Names to come out here, for free. We decide not to tell her yet. We have four taxis arriving in ten hours.

Calling over the intercom, I ask Sevres and Olive to start rigging the skipper and the "Rock" to scrape up some samples. On a whim, I decide to accompany them. Girls’ night out. Sevres grins, when I suggest this. It helps relieve the tension. Mayes puts on a posture, and asks if he can be included. This gets Olive to giggle nervously, and I know at least we will not kill each other on the way down.

I am the most experienced skipper pilot, though Olive has flown almost as much. She offers to fly back, content to listen to the post-docs chat as we float down through the ozone, then the nitrogen, oxygen, and argon mixture. I halt our fall when we reach ten thousand meters, and float down onto the choppy surface. Storm brewing, as usual for this latitude, this season.

Olive is explaining softly how the Rock works to keep us upright and pressure inside low. Her undergraduate advisor helped design its machinery some thirty years ago, and made sure his students knew every detail. Sevres looks a little green when Olive describes how deep under the water we will be falling. Mayes notices this too, and suggests gently that someone should wait up in the skipper in case something goes wrong with the Rock. Olive almost offers, but I make a motion with my head to suit up. She shuts her mouth and complies. Sevres quietly sighs with relief, and takes a comfortable position in front of the skipper’s compact console.

I love the fall of the Rock into the deep. Through the clear plastic I can see the movement of the waves against the dark sky receding above me, and all around, shafts of light from the lamps cut into the pure sea water. Falling into my planet’s darkest heart. Mayes is silent through the drop, Olive very intent on the Rock’s controls. Now and then a deep ocean current pushes out at us, and Olive has to correct our fall. Bumpier than usual.

If these data tell what I expect, if our samples show what I expect . . . but my mind stops down that path. Life on Earth evolved first as anaerobic, producing O2 as its waste. Only millions of years later did aerobic organisms evolve to use that waste product, and produce CO2 during respiration. Or so we theorize. This cannot be the answer to that question.

We hit bottom, rocking a little, but our seats remain upright, weighted and set softly with the liquid membrane between inner and outer hulls.

There is no evidence of anything visible on the surface of the small vents, puffing strange colored currents into the illuminated water. Slowly we extend the data patches, and record the gas flows.

* * *

I have my head in my hands when Kio pads in. There are seventeen grad students—and three undergrads that sneaked in—now assigned to rooms in the periphery. All are reading the same papers we showed Sorensen, Sevres, and Mayes on their first day here. Yamashiro and Welles and their six female grad/post-docs are stowed away somewhere around us as well. None of them know.

There is no way I could have contaminated it, I say. I was so careful. Kio nods, and sits next to me. I never went swimming by the vents—never once in the southern ocean! It was too cold!

Mayes and Olive were down there the day before yesterday, he says. And earlier today.

I know what he means. And I think of Mayes’s reaction to the IMSS subterfuge plan. Is it possible that he could be so clever, at such a deception? I am not good at reading people; I prefer graphs and cells and currents.

This isn’t biogenesis, Kio says. Or if it is, it is not completely from nothing. Aerobic, he says, those little buggers are aerobic. Bacteria.

So it must be contamination. Or sabotage, I say. The word is hurtful, coming from my mouth, and I realize that I have grown to like Mayes. I do not want it to have been him. Was it Sorensen? Would she do this? And what do we tell everyone else? I ask.

Kio reaches out, hand on my shoulder. Squeezes it. Moves to my back and starts massaging. The windows are dark, stars shining, and my planet has set for the night. I sigh as his strong fingers try to untie some of the knots. If he did it, he did it without Olive seeing, Kio says, but he had the chance. I don’t know why he would, I say. Unless he is really a spy for his uncle. I don’t know. I don’t think so.

There is a noise from the doorway, and Kio turns my chair, and me, to face the door. Mayes is standing there.

I appreciate your doubt, he says casually. I guessed you would have figured out who I am, the kind of researchers you are. Kio’s hands remain protectively on my shoulders. Mayes does not appear threatening, though. I never had the chance to tell you, he says. I’m sorry. But that wasn’t what I came to talk to you about.

We wait silently for him to go on.

There are ways that I don’t like to consider, he says, but there are ways of fixing this problem. I’ve got an anonymous bacteriophage diagram that could wipe these buggers dead before there’s any metastasis. If you want to, he says. I left the data up on the screen in the lab with my credit number filled in. All you need to do is press enter. Drop it by the vent. And no one else need ever know.

Mayes leaves the room.

* * *

Kio and I are still up at three, arguing. He doesn’t want to take the option, and I am not sure if I do either. But I feel I have to play devil’s advocate, and as usually happens when I do, I end up convincing myself. I see what I am doing—see the frustration in his stance as he paces the carpet in front of our bed, wringing one hand with the other. But I can’t stop.

We still don’t know who is responsible for this, Kio says.

This is the ruin of our entire project, I say for the fourth time. The chance to rock the IMSS’s boat is slipping from our fingers. Who wants a planet empty but for non-indigenous bacteria? It’s like the planet has a yeast infection! If it was your body, Kio, you would attack them!

Kio is silent, and wearily stops pacing. He stares out the dark window.

There is a soft knock on the door.

Do take your time getting it, I say, finally failing to keep the sarcasm under control. He turns and presses the auto-open on with a deliberate, angry motion.

The door slides to reveal Mayes again, this time with Olive. She has been crying, but looks newly composed.

Go on, Mayes says, and they enter far enough for the door to close behind them.

Olive looks me in the eye. I stuck the bacteria out there, she says. I got a message and credit-slip from Toulerette. He gave me twenty thou and offered a secondary name on his current paper if I just put his little pill out the side of the Rock, the next time I was at the vents. I’ll give you the money, and then I’ll go.

It hurts, to hear this from her. But I suddenly understand—it is the Big Name and the copyright. And impressionable Olive was a weak link. Damn, why didn’t I see it? Kio is fuming softly next to me. I put my hand on his arm lest he lose his mind and try to hurt her.

Now tell them why you changed your mind, Mayes says, and sits in a console chair.

Olive nods, more coherent, more stable. The stillness in her gives her a power I have never noticed. She is holding about three thousand-credits worth of IMSS microecology protocols and guideline printouts. She says, I know of a way to catch them, based on their respiration. Here’s the specs for a quick-mech that follows the source of CO2 trails and then absorbs anything that’s got a lipid-bilayer for a membrane. It’s nanotech so we could make it in the lab. If we release about a hundred thou of these right now, we can catch all the bacteria, according to our calculations.

Can we catch the quick-mechs once we’re done? Kio asks, or do we have to make a larger quick-mech to catch those? And what about the ones that have died? Their tiny little bio-processed bodies are lying right in the perfect place for something to evolve from them! This is turning into that damn lady and her fly!

It’s worth a try, Mayes says softly, looking at me.

The quick-mechs have a homing mechanism that will draw them back to their release point and stimulate a colonizing impulse, Olive says steadily, then we can scoop them up with nets. Very low tolerance for mutation and very high results reported in the last IMSS protocol. They even pick up dead bacteria, recognizing them through a learning conjugation system.

I am nodding, before I realize it. Kio throws his hands into the air. It’s better than giving up, I say, or buying a random virus. This is IMSS sanctioned, IMSS approved. And now that we know it was us, we can destroy it in good conscience. Kio glares at me.

What are we going to put in our report? he asks. I don’t answer. Olive heads off to the lab, and Mayes stares after her.

But why confess? I ask.

Mayes smiles, rising. She didn’t want you to blame anyone else, he says. Especially me. Kio throws his hands into the air a second time, muttering something about being surrounded by credit-obsessed idiots. I give him an hour to calm down, and follow Mayes into the lab.

* * *

The morning dawned on our moon without a herald. In an hour we will have the results. I have written up a brief memo to the entire community living here now, revealing the situation. In it, I invite all the scientists and students to share their views on the subject. A forum, deciding whether we should still use the planet for its intended purpose, or confine ourselves to other experiments that could not be affected at all by this problem. I accompany this with graphs and outputs on relevant statistics in the surrounding area on planet, as well as general trends, demonstrating the very minimal effect the contamination had.

I think Olive is packing. Kio is sleeping. Mayes is still here, basking in a square of sunlight from the ceiling. I read what I have, quietly, to catch any misspelled words and bent phrases.

It’s good to publicize this to its full extent, Mayes says suddenly. It’s consistent with the whole free data idea. But maybe you could let Olive stay.

Why? I ask him. She wants to go, doesn’t she?

She wanted you to ask her to stay anyway, he says. Did you ever think that maybe the IMSS wanted her to have to leave—to get at you?

He is right, of course. Olive is a great researcher: accurate, creative, willing, bright. A little childish at times, but of more reliable temperament than Kio. Plots within plots unfolding—is this to sabotage our research team? If a person appearing on past paper author lists is now proven to be a Bad Scientist, our hits will suffer. Our pocketbooks will suffer. Our science will suffer. Toulerette is a smart man. Mayes is a smarter man—I hadn’t seen that.

Yes, I say. You’re right. Let her stay. Have her use her spoils for the protocol cost, and funnel the rest into anti-contam measures. We’re a research team—above and beyond IMSS corruptibility—for better or worse. Everything visible, including her procedure for fixing the problem she caused. Everything free. Everything open, the good, the bad, with full view of the IMSS.

IMSS view? He raises his eyebrows. We have no secrets, I say. We’re not playing their game. Mayes nods, smiling, and leaves the room.

I sit for a while longer, barely thinking. I can’t cope as well with the lack of sleep as I could at Olive’s age, or with the lack of food. I wander into our bedroom, leaving the lab empty. The screen in our room is still active, so I wake Sorensen and Sevres via the intercom, briefing them on the situation and my new policy. Then I set the dispenser to coincide a breakfast with my alarm clock, and slip under the covers next to Kio. Our ceiling window is not completely shaded against the sun, but I am too exhausted to care.

* * *

Kio says, there are 235 people living in our-ship-the-moon. He is wrong. The coming and going of personal cars and taxis in their uncertainty fields, pushing the envelope of time, deposit and absorb lives as if the waves do sand grains on a beach. More flit back and forth in skippers and gliders, down to the planet’s surfaces. It is not a constant number.

I have taken the copyright credit lock off of all of my solo papers. Now I will never know if I have been plagiarized, or even quoted. No more revenue from that source, but if others follow suit—as Mayes, Sevres, and Olive have—that will no longer be a problem. The structurelessness of this ideal carries with it a floating feeling, like cutting the anchor’s chain.

To go from actual outcasts of the IMSS, to virtual excommunicants of the general scientific society, to turning a mistake into a political example of un-IMSS reaction to a very IMSS plot—it tastes of the ebb and flow. Waves to ride over, or dive through, or be buffeted by.

We cannot tell if we will push the IMSS from their steady berth. There is the chance that they will not even let us into the conference, after last year. My name, and Kio’s name, are not on the official lists any more. And if we don’t get in, if we don’t get heard, no one will ever know. It is one thing to say to someone you will do something. It is another to find out if they will let you.

I stare at these charts and graphs, still holding an ever-steady climb over the light blue of Earth data behind. Not even a wobble from the time of the contamination. Do we make as small a difference?

* * *

It is the first time Kio has left our ship since we first pulled into orbit, adjusting for the planet’s gravity and our ship’s as a moon, our first coordination of forces. Now the ship falls in its own orbit, steady, stable, and alone. Dressed in our finest silks, blue-grey like the sea, we make our way down the corridors and hallways connecting the convention center to our hotel. San Francisco hums outside in the 304 K weather. Cold for this time of year.

Olive is in rank, still that strange maturity hanging on her. Mayes is on her left, unshined shoes and a deliberate lack of tie. Sevres and Sorensen are inside already. A few people with flashy red nametags are wandering around, having entered and exited again.

I spot tuxedo-clad McHayes and his groupies in the growing crowd out near the swimming pool’s veranda. Kio’s hand on the small of my back jolts; he has seen them too. Toulerette is with the chairman, amply filling out the red jacket signifying Guest of Honor. I feel a little of Olive’s adolescent insecurity in myself. I want to hide—I want to strut.

But I do neither. Because a nice young man comes up to the four of us, and says we must leave, immediately, or else cause a scene.

The scene is already caused, by that request. Those behind us in line are quick to our defense before we even say a word. Mayes grins, as though he had been anticipating this. Kio puts a hand on Olive’s shoulder, and she offers him half a smile. The young man withstands the fury around him for a minute, before he is backed up by a few other men and women with the official red and gold "security" nametags. Some of those around us know our names and explain our story to the others. We have a magnetic pull now. The veranda crowd starts drifting this way.

Sorensen and Sevres see the commotion, and start pulling people’s arms to get through. There is a moment when McHayes and Sorensen exchange glances, from opposite sides of the crowd. Kio tenses.

I think: this is where she washes out in the face of the power of IMSS bureaucracy. This is where we lose.

She turns, head low, and defers to the bouncers. But from my hand, before she leaves, she takes the data-cube with our paper and poster slides. Winks at Kio. And I can’t help but smile. My planet’s data will be presented. In full, because that is the IMSS way.

We still have not said a word. Finally, I nod to Kio, and the four of us turn and walk back through the crowded queue, trailing a few camera flashes and certainly a few stares. Cutting through the crowd like a catamaran through the calmest sea.

A Name, Olive says soberly. Do you expect I’ve got one now? Mayes laughs, as we step into the waiting taxi. You had one all along, he says. They just didn’t know it.