A word of warning: There are brief sexual scenes in this story
that may be disquieting to some.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go?

It was, oh, I guess the middle of November 1966, that night, maybe seven p.m., dark out, of course, cold and quiet. The sky over Woodbridge, Virginia, was flooded with stars, so many stars the black night, clear and crisp, had a vaguely lit-up quality to it, as if ever so slightly green. Maybe just the lights from the gas stations and little shopping centers lining Route 1, not far away.

I was walking home alone from the Drug Fair in Fisher Shopping Center, up by the highway, where I’d read comic books and eaten two servings of ketchupy French fries, moping by myself. I’d stayed too long, reading all the way through the current Fantastic Four so I could put it back and not pay. I was supposed to have been home by six-thirty, so my mom could head out on her date.

Out with some fat construction worker or another, some guy with beery breath and dirty hair, the sort of guy she’d been "seeing" (and I knew what was meant by that), one after another, in the two years since she’d run off my dad, leaving me home alone to look after my two little sisters, ages three and seven.

I remember thinking how pissed off she was going to be.

I was standing on the east rim of Dorvo Valley, looking down into the shadows, thinking about how really dark it was down there, an empty bowl of land, looking mysterious as ever. Murray and I named it that when we’d discovered it three years ago, maybe a half-mile of empty land, cleared of underbrush, surrounded by trees, called it after a place in the book we’d been trying to write back then, The Venusians, our answer to Barsoom, though we’d kind of given it up after Pirates of Venus came out.

Murray. Prick. That was why I was at Drug Fair alone. There’d been a silence after I called his house, then his mother had said, "I’m sorry, Wally. Murray’s gone off with Larry again tonight. I don’t know when he’ll be home. I’ll tell him you called."

I felt hollow, remembering all the times we’d sat together at Drug Fair, reading comics for free, drinking cherry cokes and eating those ketchupy French fries. Remembered last summer, being here in Dorvo, the very last time we’d "played Venus" together, wielding our river-reed swords, lopping the sentient berry clusters from the Contac bushes we called Red Devils, laughing and pretending we’d fallen into a book. Our book.

Murray’s dad was the one named them Contac bushes, telling us they were really ephedra, and that’s where the stuff in allergy medicines came from.

But then school started, eleventh grade, and we’d met Larry. Larry, who was going steady with Susie. Pretty blonde Susie, who had a chunky girlfriend named Emily, who wore glasses.

Something like this had happened before, when we were maybe ten or eleven, and Murray had joined Little League, telling me it would help him find his way as an "all-around boy." This time, I think, the key word would be pussy, instead of baseball.

I stood silent, looking out across the dark valley, the black silhouette of the woods beyond, above them, the fat golden spire of Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church, floodlit from below, where I’d been forced to go before my parents split up. In the Dorvo Valley mythos, on our wonderfully complete Venus, lost Venus, we’d called it the Temple of Venusia, and the city at its feet, no mere shopping center, but the Dorvo capitol, Angor, portmanteau’d kiddy-French Angel of Gold.

I realized I’d better get going. Through the black woods, down the full length of Greenacre Drive, past Murray’s house, where his parents would be sitting, silent before the TV, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, across the creek, up Staggs Court to my furious, desperately horny Mom.

If I was lucky, she’d spend the night with whoever it was, and I wouldn’t have to lay in bed in the dark by myself, listening to their goings-on.

I blew out a long breath, a long wisp of warm condensation flickering like a ghost in the bit of light from the sky full of stars, and stopped, eyes caught by some faint gleam from deep in the valley of the shadow. I felt my heart quicken, caught in a mythopoeic moment. Look, Murray. A cloud skimmer. . . !

Yeah. Right. Where’s Murray now? In a dark movie theater somewhere, with his hand groping up a girl’s dress, like a real grown-up boy.

But the gleam was there, really there, and, after another moment, I started walking down through the long grass, stumbling over Red Devils and weeds, skirting around holes I could barely see, but remembered from long familiarity with the place, night vision growing keener as I went down in the dark.

Looking toward the phantom gleam, I thought to shade my eyes with one hand, occluding the Golden Angel, cutting off more light from the stars.

Stopped walking.

Thought, um, no.

I looked away, blinking like a moron. Looked back.

The flying saucer was a featureless disk, not quite sitting on the ground, maybe sixty feet across. The size of a house, anyway. Not shiny or it would’ve reflected more starlight. There were things in the deeper shadows underneath it, landing legs maybe, and other shadows, moving shadows, rustling in the brush nearby.

Near me. Something started to squeeze in my chest.

Something else started to tickle between my legs. A need to pee.

I slowly walked the rest of the way down the hill, until I was standing under its rim. The moving shadows in the underbrush were things roughly the size and shape of land crabs, a little bigger maybe, with no claws, though I couldn’t make out what was there in their place.

They seemed to be taking hold of the Red Devils, bending them down, pulling off the little berry clusters. What the hell would clawless land crabs want with Contac berries?

Robots. In a comic book, these would be robots.

Anyway, they seemed to be ignoring me.

I felt unreal, the way you feel when you’ve taken two or three Contac capsules, or maybe drank an entire bottle of Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup.

There was a long, narrow ramp projecting from the underside of the saucer, leading up to an opening in the hull, not dark inside, but lit up very dim indigo, perhaps the gleam I’d seen from the valley’s rim. I walked up to it, heart stuttering weirdly, walked up it and went inside.

In movies, flying saucers have ray cannons, and they burn down your city. And in my head, I could hear Murray, jealous Murray, girl on his fingers forgotten, wondering where I’d gotten the fucking nerve.

But I went inside anyway.

It turned out, the thing was like the saucer-starship from The Day the Earth Stood Still. There was a curved corridor, one wall solid, the other lattice, wall sloping slightly inward. A little vertical row of lights here, beside something that looked like a door. Around the curve. . . .

I caught my breath, holding stock-still, heart racing up my throat.

Held still and wondered again at finding myself here.

The thing didn’t look much like Gort from the movie. Not so featureless. Real joints at elbows, wrists, knees, hips, but there was nothing where i’s face should be either, just a silvery shield, a curved pentagonoid roughly the shape of an urban policeman’s badge, like the Boston metro badge my Uncle Al wore.

I stood in front of it, looking up. No taller than my dad, so only an inch or two taller than me. Looking up has to be an illusion. It looked a little bit like the robots I used to draw as part of the Starover stories I once tried to write, the ones that filled the background of all those drawings I did, of hero Zoltan Tharkie, policeman Dexteran Kaelenn, and all the odds-and-sods villains they faced together.

I remember Murray and I used to sit together at Drug Fair, tracing pictures from comic books and coloring books, filling in our own details, Tharkie and Kaelenn and the robots, Älendar and Raitearyón from Venus. I remember those two had had girlfriends, and . . .

Stopped myself, shivering.

I reached out and touched the thing.

Cold. Motionless.

My voice sounded rusty, as I whispered, "Klaatu, barada. . . ." Strangled off a fit of giggles with something like a sneeze. Patricia Neal, I remembered, couldn’t pronounce the words the same way as Michael Rennie, substituting Klattu, burodda in her quaint American drawl. Quit it! Jesus!

Nothing.

I turned away from the silvery phantasm, maybe nothing more than an empty suit of armor? Slid my fingers along the light panel. Just as in the movie, the door slipped open, and I went on through.

"Ohhhhh. . . !"

I could hardly recognize my own voice, shocky and faint.

There was another corridor beyond the door, and its far wall was transparent, like heavy glass, or maybe Lucite. There was smoky yellow light in the room beyond, lots of water, things like ferns. Something in the steamy mist. . . .

I put my nose to the warm glass, bug-eyed, remembering the scene from near the end of Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon, maybe my favorite book from the series, where they finally get aboard the robot saucer sent by the Space Friends.

Little dinosaurs. Little tyrannosaurs. Little brontosaurs. Little pteranodons winging through the mist.

"Not quite a brontosaurus," I told myself, voice quiet, but louder than a whisper. "Head’s too long and skinny. Not a diplodocus either. Nostrils in the wrong place." There were other things moving back in the mist. Babies, maybe? Hatchlings? Would that be the right word?

I walked on, slowly, going through another door, walking along another hallway. After a while, I began to wonder how they got all this space folded up into a flying saucer little enough to fit in Dorvo Valley.

Another robot, yet another door, and I found myself in a curved room with big windows on the outside. Ob Deck, the voice in my head called it, pulling another word from another book, as I pressed to the glass, cold glass this time, looking out on greenish night.

Dorvo Valley. Little land crab robots. Brilliant green light flooding up from the ground beyond the forest. Something odd. It isn’t that bright outside. Can’t be much more than eight p.m.

Little frozen image of my mother.

How long before she calls the police?

Thought dismissed.

What should I do?

Get out of here! Run home. Call the cops yourself.

I pictured that. Pictured them laughing at me as they hung up, as I turned to face my raging mother. You little bastard! she would say. Bob didn’t even wait for me.

Pictured that other scenario. The cops come, we go to Dorvo Valley. Nothing, not even a circle of crushed vegetation. And, either way, I go to school in the morning. Word would get out, one way or another.

The lights flickered suddenly, and a soft female voice said, "Rathan adun dahad, shai unkahan amaranalei." More flickers. Outside, I could see the little land crabs were making their way downhill, dragging their loads of harvested Red Devils.

Cold clamp in my bowels.

I turned and ran, through the door, down one corridor, through the next door, up another, around a curve, back through. . . . Ob Deck! Turned back, found myself facing a faceless robot. Still motionless. Started to whimper, "Please. . . ." There was a rumbling whine from somewhere down below, spaceship’s structure shivering. The lights flickered again, the lady’s voice murmuring, "Ameoglath orris temthuil ag lat eotaeo." More flicker. Something started to whine, far, far away, like the singsong moan of a Mannschenn drive.

I felt my rectum turn watery on me, clenched hard to stop from shitting myself, and snarled, "That’s just a fucking story! Think! Do something, you friggin’ idiot!" As if my father’s words could help me now.

I turned and looked out the window, just in time to see the ground under the saucer drop away. Suddenly, surrounding the dark woods, the map of Marumsco Village was picked out in streetlights. There was Greenacre Drive, where Murray’s parents would be finishing up their beer. Beyond the dark strip of the creek, halfway up Staggs Court, had to be the porch light of my house, where, by now, my mom would be about ready to kill me.

It shrank to a splatter of light, surrounded by the rest of Woodbridge, little Occoquan off that way. I squashed my face to the glass, looking north, and was elated to see, from twenty-two miles away, you could still make out the lights of the Pentagon, could see the floodlit shape of the Capitol Dome, the yellowish spike of the Washington Monument.

City lights everywhere I looked. Speckles and sparks and rivers of light, brighter and more numerous than the stars in the sky. I’d never flown on a plane at night before. I’d never . . .

I felt my face grow cool.

Watched the landscape shrink.

Suddenly, light appeared in the west, like sunrise.

No! I’m high enough up the sun is shining from where it’s still daytime!

Turned toward the blue. On the horizon, the curved horizon, there was a band of blue, above it only black, sunlight washing away the stars.

Curved?

Bolt of realization.

I can see the curvature of the Earth. That means . . . I shivered again. And then I wondered, briefly, if Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell were somewhere nearby, peering out through the tiny rendezvous windows of Gemini XII, watching my flying saucer rise.

Whole Earth bulging up below now, looking for a moment like the pictures sent down from Gemini XI, which had gone all the way up to an 850 mile apogee. It turned to a gibbous blue world, getting smaller, then smaller still.

Something flashed by, huge and yellow-gray.

Moon! It’s the Moon!

How fast?

That was no more than a five minute trip.

I tried to do the calculation in my head; couldn’t quite manage. I’d never been any good at math. A lot slower than the speed of light, anyway.

I remembered the final scene from "Invaders from Mars," where the little boy wakes up from his dream, and felt a cold hand on my heart. If I wake up now and it’s time for school, why don’t I just kill myself and get it over with?

But the ship flew on into the black and starry sky, and I realized, after my moment of inattention, I could no longer find the Earth or Moon. Where am I going?

And why?

I awoke from a dreamless sleep, and opened my eyes slowly, lying on my side, cramped and cold, against the curved Ob Deck bulkhead, staring at the motionless gort by the door. Whispered, "Gort. Merenga." Nothing.

I always wake up like that, always knowing where I am, never confused. Maybe because there’s that little re-entry period, those few seconds between waking up and opening my eyes, when I remember where I was when I went to sleep, so I know where I’ll be when I awaken.

I pushed myself to a sitting position, back to the wall, something in the back of my neck making a little gurgle as I stretched, like my spine was knuckles wanting to crack.

Seemed more real, now that I’d been asleep, putting a bracket around the night before. I was here. Period. Unlike the hazy wonder of the dream where we flew past Jupiter, some time around midnight. It’d been a fat, slightly flattened orange ball, not at all the way I would’ve expected.

Three hours, I remember thinking. That’s fast. What, fifty thousand miles a second? More? We went by something that looked like a ball of pink twine, and that’s when I discovered if I put my finger against the window glass and circled something, it’d get bigger, that another tap would make it small.

I’d picked out five little crescents. Circled and tapped. Figured out the red potato must be Amalthea, the pink ball Europa. Maybe the scabby yellow one was Io? Those other two, two similar-looking gray cratered bodies, looking pretty much like the Moon, those would be Ganymede and Callisto, but I couldn’t figure out which was which.

Murray would know. Murray out at night in the summertime, pointing at this star and that one, naming names, mythological and scientific, every kid in the neighborhood but me impressed as all hell. Once, I’d caught him in a mistake.

And he’d said, "I don’t know if I want you for a friend anymore."

After that, I kept my mouth shut.

The lights flickered and the woman’s soft voice said, "La grineao druai lek aporra. . . ." Trailing off, like she had something else to say, but couldn’t quite get it out.

I stood, turned and looked out the window.

It was like a featureless yellow ball, hazy maybe, circled by a striated yellow-white ring, grooved like a 45rpm record. Colored like those records I’d had as a child, like the one with "Willie the Whistling Giraffe." I’d loved that song, and listened to it so much I could still sing all the words. I was startled to find out, years later, it was written by Rube Goldberg.

Saturn was growing in the window, growing slowly and . . . I realized it should already be going past, shrinking away. "We’re slowing down." I glanced at the robot, as if looking for confirmation.

Nothing.

When I looked back, a smoky red ball was in the window, starting to slide past. It stopped and stabilized when I circled it with a quick fingertip, movement transferring to the sky beyond, Saturn starting a slow slide across the fixed stars.

"Titan."

Nothing.

"God damn it, Titan!"

Like I wanted something from myself then. But all I could do was remember, remember Captain Norden from The Sands of Mars reminiscing about the cold, howling winds of Titan, remember Tuck and Davey from Trouble on Titan and their homebuilt oxygen-jet, flying the methane skies.

What would I remember about all this, years from now?

I had a glimpse of the man I might have become, some fat guy in a crumpled suit, selling who-knows-what. All the men on Staggs Court. All the men in America in 1966.

The woman’s voice said, ". . . kag at vrekanai seo ke egga." The lights flickered again, like punctuation. I tapped Titan to release the image and pressed my nose to the glass.

Ought to feel colder than this. Saturn’s pretty far from the sun.

There. A spark of pale yellow light.

It grew swiftly, filling the window without interference from me, gliding to a stop just outside. It was a cylinder of gray rock, things visible on its surface, structures, and I could see it was revolving slowly around its long axis.

Revolving so there’d be artificial gravity inside, centrifugal force. It’ll be hollow, I thought. Maybe this was what Isaac Asimov had termed a "spome," short for "space home," in some F&SF column or another? No, that’s not right. Where the hell . . . Asimov’s article was in that book my dad brought home, Kammermeyer something . . . "There’s No Place Like Spome"? Dad had gone to a meeting of the American Chemical Society a year or two earlier, had come home snickering about the little fat man with what he’d term "a thick New York Yid accent."

I remembered him saying, "Asimov? Now I see him in a different light!" When I was little, we’d lived in a neighborhood full of Russian Jews, somewhere in Boston, Brookline maybe, and he’d done a good job of picking up the accents, and those special cadences. It’d become the basis for some family in-jokes.

The thing rotated toward us, though it had to be my flying saucer flying around I guess, then a four-mandibled parrot’s beak opened, spilling bright yellow light, and we flew right in.

Flew right in, swooped over green landscape, found a flat white field, concrete I figured, and slotted in to a landing, one of the few vacant spaces in a parking lot full of flying saucers just like mine.

A flicker of lights.

A womanly voice, full of warmth and welcome, "Todos passageiros sai. . . ." Then the saucer groaned and shivered as the boarding ramp slid down. It only took me a minute to realize that if I could find a land crab, I could follow it down to the hatch; maybe fifteen minutes after that, I was standing outside.

There was a cool breeze blowing across the concrete apron, and it smelled sweet here, making my nose itch. Alien pollen? I’m allergic to a lot of stuff. I whispered, "What if I get sick?" My voice sounded funny, here in the silence. I shouted, "Hello-oh?"

Not even an echo, my voice carried away to nowhere by the breeze. "Anybody. . . ." Of course not. I started forward, walking between two other saucers, stopped suddenly, feeling a cold knot in my guts, looking back toward my saucer, realizing how easy it would be to get lost here.

Does it matter?

How would I know if my saucer is ever going back to Earth?

From where I stood, I could see beyond the last row of saucers. There was a tall chain link fence, topped by razor wire; beyond it, a dark green forest.

Nothing moving.

No dinosaurs, big or little, in the woods, no pteranodons in the sky.

Sky? Well, not exactly.

Overhead, the main thing was a long yellow stick of bright light. In a story, that’d be a fusion tube or something, an "inner sun" for this long, skinny ersatz Pellucidar. Beyond, to the left and right, were two green bands, the same color as the forest. Between them were three more bands of black.

In one of them, you could see Saturn, its brightly backlit rings looking like ears, or maybe jug handles. And that bright star? That’d be the sun I guess. Glass? So how come I didn’t notice any windows from the outside? How come it just looked like rock?

My memory started picking through stories, right then and there.

Something moved in the distance. I looked, and felt cold when I saw what it was. One of those brontosaurus-things, full size I think, but with a too-skinny head, snaky neck dipping so it could browse among the treetops. Glad for the razor wire. Cold but elated. As if. . . . As if !

The was a deep bass thrumming noise, almost like a long, low burp. The bronto looked up. The inner sun suddenly brightened, filling the landscape with a violet dazzle.

I blinked hard, eyes watering, looked up again and realized that Saturn was gone, that I felt something else in my guts, a pulling and twisting. Dizzy. I’m dizzy. Like the ship is maneuvering violently, and I just can’t see it because there’s nothing to see.

Then there was a great big ripping sound.

A white zigzag crack appeared in the windows, going from one to the other, as if it were a rip in the sky itself, though my mind served up an image of what it would be like as the glass blew out and the air roared away to space, carrying off forest and trees, brontos, flying saucers, Wally and all.

The crack opened like white lips, revealing a blue velvet throat beyond, into which, somehow, the ship seemed to plunge, then the fusion tube dimmed, back to yellow again, back to being a soft inner sun, all the odd twisting and pulling stopped, and there was only the soft breeze.

In a story, I thought, we’d be going faster than light now.

And then I said, "Damn! This is the coolest thing that ever happened to anyone! Murray would be so fucking jealous!"

Yeah, right. I could almost see his bemused, angry smirk, fading into the blue velvet hypersky as he turned away, forgetting about me, about Venus, about all the things we’d done together, all the dreams we’d had.

On Earth, in only a little while, people would stop wondering what’d become of me, and go on with their lives.

Some days later, I couldn’t tell you how many days, already a good bit skinnier than I was the night I’d decided to cut through Dorvo Valley on my way home from Drug Fair, I sat beside a little deadwood campfire on the concrete apron beside my trusty flying saucer, roasting up a few fresh breadfruit for supper.

Mangosteen! That, I’d remembered, was from a kiddie book I’d found in my grandfather’s attic, when we went up for the funeral, four, five years before, The Hurricane Kids in the Lost Islands. I’d been looking for the sequel ever since, where Lebeck and DuBois send their boys off to the Land of the Cave Dwellers.

Breadfruit? Probably not. Probably no breadfruit back in the Jurassic.

Sudden image of myself finding the little gate, sneaking out into the edge of the Big Woods, finding all sorts of stuff. Nuts mainly, and these things. Ferns. A tree I recognized had to be a gingko. Little lizards, maybe skinks, anoles, some kind of snake.

I fished one of the breadfruits out of the fire with a stick, held it down and cut it open with another stick I’d managed to break off at an angle and sharpen by rubbing on the pavement. It had mealy yellow-white flesh inside, like badly overcooked baked potato, steamy now, odorless, smelling just the way it would taste when it cooled enough to eat.

This is the last of them. Tomorrow I’ll have to go out again and . . . I felt a little sick. Last time, blundering around in the woods, picking nuts and berries and whatnot, there’d been that soft rumble, I’d looked up, and suddenly wet my pants.

The allosaurus didn’t even notice, didn’t look up as I’d crept away, back through the gate, closing it carefully behind me. I’d cooked and eaten, silent with myself, sitting bareass while my underpants and jeans dried by the fire, draped over my constant companion.

I looked at it now, little humanoid robot, two feet tall, looking just like a toy from Sears I’d had when I was eight or nine, electric igniter in one hand, fire extinguisher in the other. It’d come toddling up just as I’d burst into tears beside my pitiful pile of dry sticks, just as I’d screamed, "Fuck it!" and thrown my pathetic attempt at a fire drill as hard as I could at the nearest flying saucer hull.

I said, "What d’you think, Bud? Why’s this starship got a Jurassic biome inside?"

Silence.

"Yeah. Me too."

I picked up the now merely hot breadfruit and scooped out some tasteless muck with my upper front teeth. "Mmmmm . . ." blech. Even butter, pepper, and sour cream wouldn’t’ve helped. Not much, anyway.

"What d’you think, Buddy? Thanksgiving yet?" Probably not. It hasn’t even been a week. But I pictured my little sisters, Millie and Bonnie, sitting down to turkey dinner with Mom. Bonnie probably misses me. Millie was probably glad just to get my share.

Christmas. I wondered what Dad would get me? I’d asked for a copy of Russian in a Nutshell. Two years. Then what? No college for me. Bad grades and no money.

Vietnam?

Maybe. Some of my friends’ older brothers had gone. At least one boy who’d picked on me when I was little was dead now. I remembered reading an article in the Post a while back, about how so many good American boys were being corrupted by little brown Asian prostitutes, which made me think about Glory Road.

Murray and I had talked about that the next day, and he’d given me a funny look, kind of a sneer, before changing the subject. Remember when we debated Vietnam in eighth-grade Social Studies class? I’d said I wasn’t worried. It’ll be all over, long before I turn draft age, toward the end of 1969. Yep. All over.

And, just like that, there was a deep bass thrum, like a gong gone wrong. When I looked up, the blue velvet sky was broken by a long white crack, white lips opening, spitting us out into a sky full of stars.

I got up, throwing the half-eaten breadfruit aside, running for the flying saucer’s ramp. Behind me, I could hear the sharp, fizzy hiss of my little buddy’s fire extinguisher, as it sprayed away the flames.

Down on the yellow-gray world, I crouched in the shade of the flying saucer’s hull, looking out toward the horizon, across a flattish landscape floodlit from above under a pale, blue-white sky. I’d run off the bottom of the ramp when we landed, had run right out there, bounding high, realizing the surface gravity of this place was maybe no more than half that of Earth.

But then the light from the vivid spark of a tiny blue sun had turned to pins and needles in my November-white skin, forcing me back into the shade. My face, when I touched it, was already starting to peel.

Jesus. Stupid.

And what if ? What if a lot of things. What if the air here had been deadly poison? What if there’s some disease here a human being could catch? What if I’m already dead and merely waiting to fall down?

Yeah, yeah, I know. The guy in the story never dies. Except the one in that Faulkner story the teacher made fun of, when we studied it in tenth grade English Lit class. What’re we supposed to imagine? she’d said. He’s carrying paper and pen, taking notes as he jumps in the river and drowns?

From space, the planet had looked like a yellow-gray ball, almost featureless. Oh, there was a tiny white ice cap at the visible pole. A few pale clouds near what looked like some isolated mountain peaks. A canyon here, a dune-field there. Mars without the rust?

Arrakis, I thought. I’d enjoyed the five-part serial in Analog, though I was mighty pissed off about the stupid format changes Campbell was playing with, going from digest to some standard magazine size, then back again, fucking up my collection. I remember I wondered if the Dune world had started out as Mars, if maybe Herbert realized at some point that the solar system was too small for the story.

I thought about my bedroom. My bed. The little desk. Bookcases full of children’s hardcovers, the stuff from Grandpa’s attic, the paperbacks and magazines I was buying down at Drug Fair, Amazing and Fantastic, Worlds of If. . . .

Out in the sun, the land crabs had buckets and little self-propelled wheelbarrow things, were shoveling up patches of mauve sand. Melange? Whatever it was, it went no more than a few centimeters deep. I sniffed, but couldn’t smell anything like cinnamon. Whatever this place was, it mainly smelled like fireworks. Gunpowder. It smells like gunpowder.

From the Ob Deck, I’d been able to see something that looked like a city, way off on the horizon, low white buildings, dazzling in the sun. A circle of my fingertip had brought them close. Adobe? No sign of movement, some of the buildings looking weathered and worn, the ruins of Koraad perhaps.

Miles off, anyway. I could wait ’til nightfall, and it’d take maybe three or four hours to get there, tops. Yeah? And what if the starship leaves without you? What then? I thought about Galactic Derelict suddenly. No. I never wanted to be one of Andre Norton’s dickless boys. Let’s have a Heinlein adventure, at least.

Or maybe I can grow up to be John Grimes after all? Is there a beautiful spy somewhere waiting for me? Jesus. Grow up. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to last another week!

What if this was a Larry Niven story? What if we land on a planet that has a habitable point? I pictured myself running down the ramp, out onto the sand. Then the deadly winds of We Made It would come up and there I’d be, on my way to fucking Oz.

After a bit, I turned and went on up the ramp. Look out the window. Watch the baby dinosaurs or something. One thing you know: The saucer will leave, the starship will fly, and, sooner or later, we’ll be somewhere else. And another thing: Who owns all this shit? The robots? Not bloody likely, cobber. Maybe this thing is like some super-sophisticated Mariner probe. And, sooner or later, it’ll take its samples on home.

What happens when they find me in the collection bag?

Watching the land crabs gather up Spice, I suddenly wished for . . . something. Anything. Wished I’d see a sandworm in the distance. Wished for Paul Atreides to come riding up? No. Chani, maybe?

I’m guessing it was maybe three weeks before we made the next landfall–no, planetfall’s the right word–three weeks in which I got really sick of plain breadfruit. Somewhere along the way, I got up the nerve to cook and eat a few little lizards, which turned out to be mainly bones, and salty as kippered herring snacks, finally moving on to a two-foot brown snake I’d caught.

Didn’t taste like chicken, more like fish I guess, but the oily juice that cooked out of it made the breadfruit taste okay.

The next planet was . . . what’d we used to say in junior high? Cool as a moose. I crept down the ramp, uselessly cautious, and stood there with my mouth hanging open. What can I say? Earthlike but alien?

The spaceport, if that’s what it was, was just a plain concrete apron, not much bigger than the helicopter pad next to the Pentagon, sitting next to what looked like a walled city. Not a medieval city, not an ancient Roman city. The walls were plain and unadorned, no crenellations, no battlements, no towers. White concrete walls, pierced by a few open gates on the side I could see. Egyptian Memphis, I remembered, had been called something like Ineb-Hed by the natives. White Walls.

The buildings I could see over the wall were low and white and square.

Overhead, the sky was dark green, green as paint, with little brown clouds floating here and there. The sun, if sun it was, was a dim red ball, halfway up the sky, banded like Jupiter, with mottled splotches here and there. Sunspots? Starspots? Maybe it’s a planet, and that’s reflected light.

Away from the city, the land was all low forest, things not much like trees, grayish, bluish, a reddish-purple that I realized with a flush of pleasure might be the heliotrope of Amtor. Things moving in the shadows, inside the forest. Pod-shaped things. Plants with lips.

The land crab robots were coming out of the saucer now, forming up by rank and file, so when they set off, heading for the nearest city gate, I walked along beside. What the hell? If they start to leave, I’ll follow them back. Safe enough.

It was gloomy in the city, a city full of gray-green shadows. Gloomy and motionless, reminding me of the scene where Gahan of Gathol walks into a seemingly deserted Manator. Sure. And the land crabbots’d make pretty good Kaldanes?

That filled up my head with long-running images of Ghek, crawling through the Ulsio warrens of Manator.

I looked in an open doorway, yelped, tripped over my own feet, and wound up on my knees, staring, heart pounding. Jesus Christ! Well, at least it wasn’t moving.

The thing, when I got close to it, was about three feet tall, looking like it was made of black leather. There were staring black leather eyes. Black leather fangs. Black leather hands shaped like a three-fingered mechanical grab.

I touched it, wondering what the hell I’d do if it woke up and turned out to really be a thrint. Fuck. I’d do whatever it wanted, I guess, and that would be that. It didn’t budge, no matter how hard I pushed, nor did it have a bit of give to it. Cold black metal, glued to the ground.

Statue, maybe? Or just another switched-off robot?

What the hell is going on here?

Where is everyone?

Back out on the street, the land crabs were gone. Okay. Look around a bit more, then get the hell on back to the saucer. I went on up the street to the end, where it came to some kind of octagonal plaza. There was something that looked like an empty fountain in the middle, beyond it a domed building made mostly of glass, lots of tempting shadows inside.

The glass doors, when I tried them, swung right open, so I went on in.

Inside it was all broad aisles, floor carpeted in a patterned nappy monochrome the same color as the sky, and lining the aisles were . . . I don’t know. Exhibits? Things like pictures anyway. Dioramas. Blocks of stuff like glass or Lucite, with motionless objects inside. Animals, I think. Some things that could only have been machines. Things that were clearly paintings of the "thrintun," looking like they were walking around the city, doing whatever.

So are those the aliens? Are they all in some kind of stasis? Suspended animation?

I suddenly found myself wishing there’d been more variability in the stories I’d been reading since I learned how to read. But the stories had been pretty much self-similar, as though the writers, without any source of new ideas, could only copy each other, over and over again.

In the middle of the building, taking up a big space under the dome, was a flat, tilted spiral shape, made of what looked like metallic dust, hanging motionless in the air. Like the Andromeda galaxy, blue and red and white and . . . my mouth went dry. Star map!

I walked round and round the thing, peering inside, trying to recognize something, anything, but it looked like every spiral galaxy illustration I’d ever seen. All of them. Or none. For all I knew, it could be NGC 7006 and here I was, beyond the farthest star.

On the other side of the spiral was an aisle lined with things that looked like model spaceships. Some of them looked pretty much like what humans were building, back on Earth. Look here. It’s a couple of thrintun sitting in a sort of Gemini capsule. Not quite, but close. And this? A thrint climbing down on the dusty surface of some moon or another?

The ships got more and more advanced, until I suddenly wondered where the flying saucers were. Ah. Right here. Right at the end. Here’s a flying saucer, surrounded by thrintun with things like guns, surrounded by thrintish tanks and cannons . . . surely, standing on the rim of the saucer, I’d see one of my familiar gorts?

On the ground under the rim of the saucer were models of about two dozen creatures, every one of them different.

Yep. That’d be the thrintun being welcomed to the Galactic Federation, right? Pleased at how clever I was, I started walking back toward the useless star map. Hey, if I’m lucky, it’s my galaxy, and I’m not so far from home after all. Right. What the fuck am I going to do, walk back to Earth?

I stopped by the model of the moon lander. Maybe that was their moon? It was a pretty primitive spaceship, looking a lot like the earliest designs of the Apollo lunar excursion module. Moon. I tipped my head back, trying to look out through the dome, wondering if I’d spot a crescent somewhere in the dark green sky.

Very dark green sky.

Felt my mouth go drier than I would’ve thought possible. No sun, though I could see a flush of red in the sky, off to one side. So how the fuck long have I been in here, anyway?

I walked back up the aisle, around the spiral galaxy, back down the other aisle and out the door. Despite the fact that it was starting to get a little cool out, I felt myself start to sweat, armpits suddenly growing spongy and damp. Well. Started to walk back the way I thought would lead to the spaceport. Just get outside the walls. You’ll find it.

I started to run, making little gagging sounds, throat suddenly sore, feeling like I was going to start crying, like a little kid lost in a supermarket.

And my little flying saucer popped up above the walls right in front of me, hung there for just a second, then dwindled away into the dark green sky and was gone.

I stood there, looking up, feeling the hot tears start down my cheeks, vision blurring, and whispered, "I always do something stupid, don’t I? Just like Daddy says." I rubbed the tears from my eyes, suddenly angry, and thought, There you go, champ. Murray’ll be so fucking jealous now, won’t he?

I awoke, opening my eyes on a flood of vermilion sunshine coming in through the window, falling on me like a spotlight, and wished, just this once, I could be one of those people who wake up confused, not knowing where they are. I couldn’t really remember the dream, something about school, I think, and had a nice hard-on, probably nothing to do with any images I’d seen in my sleep.

Christ. Mouth so fucking dry.

I rolled over on my side, feeling dizzy, headachy, hungry, looking around the room. The wall-to-wall carpet I’d slept on was pale gray, softer and fuzzier than the stuff in my parents’ house. Mom’s house, nowadays. Dark green walls, with brown trim. Stuff like furniture, odd-shaped couches and chairs and little tables I was kind of afraid to touch, for no reason I could put my finger on.

Stories. Too many stories. What if.

I’d wandered around for a while as it’d gotten darker, wondering what the fuck I was going to do, watching the sky fill up with unfamiliar stars. Finally knelt and drank some water from the gutter. Bitter metallic stuff, tasting way worse than the water in Marumsco Creek. And I’d gotten sick as a dog the last time I’d drunk from the creek, coming down with a high fever that resolved into tonsillitis, resulting in a shot and some pills and five days of missed school.

I remembered Murray looking at me with bemused contempt. How come you’re sick all the time, Wally?

I don’t know.

After a while, in the dark, it started to rain, hot stuff that scalded in my eyes, burned on my scalp, making me run for the nearest shelter, which happened to be something like a porch, on something like a house, in something like a suburban neighborhood. No, not suburban. Small town. Like the neighborhoods in 1930s movies. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. When I tried the door, it’d opened, and I’d gone in, sat down in the middle of the floor, just sat there in the dark, listening to the rain, wondering if they had thunder and lightning here.

I got up, feeling stiff and tired, rubbing my empty stomach. Almost flat now. At this rate, I’d soon be as skinny as when I was a little kid. I’d always wanted that. What had made me get fat anyway? Starting to hang around with Murray and eat whatever and whenever he ate? I remember Mom was glad when I stopped being so thin.

There was a little room off what I thought of as the parlor, small, windowless, airless, and in the light of day I could see there was something like a stone sink, beside a little hole in the floor. Maybe the thrintun couldn’t sit down and just squatted over the hole? No, wait. Thrintun regurgitate their waste, so they’d lean over the hole and . . .

I felt my intestines cramp. So now I’ve got to shit. Great.

One step forward and I stopped, sweat beading on my brow, asshole clenching. I was afraid to squat over the hole. What if I slipped and fell in and couldn’t get out? What if it flushed with a death ray? No, wait. Shit’s not alive enough to merit a death ray. Disintegrator? "Man, how did I get so goofy? No wonder nobody at school likes me."

I’ll go outside and do it on the sidewalk, I guessed.

Next to the toilet hole, there was an obvious bathtub, made of the same gray stone as the sink, with a little row of glassy "buttons" above one end. Light panel controls? I touched one. There was a hiss, and the tub started to fill up, though I couldn’t see anything like a faucet, smoky fluid welling up from nowhere, filling the room with a familiar sharp, ugly smell.

Sulfuric acid? I certainly recognized the smell from first-period Chemistry class. Wonder how that’s going? My lab partner had been a big beefy guy named Al, full of dumb jokes, who was a shot-putter and discus thrower on the track and field team.

There was another room that looked like a kitchen, by what had to be the back door, though it was on the side of the building, just like the back door to my parents’ house. Something like a little oven sitting on the counter, an oven with a door. When I opened it, no gas jets or electric resistance heating elements, only a skinny light bulb thingy.

Right. I remembered my sister Millie’s Easy Bake Oven cooked perfectly well with a hundred-watt light bulb. Scrambled eggs. Teeny-tiny biscuits. A birthday cake the size of a deck of cards. If I knew you were comin’ I’d’ve. . . .

Nothing like a refrigerator? There was a long, narrow trough under the one window, the kitchen sink maybe? A roll of plain white paper towels hanging from the wall next to it. Great. Murray’s mom had started using them, though at my house we still used cloth dish towels that would start to stink long before they went in the hamper. Dishrags, my mom said.

When I touched one of the glass buttons over the trough, it quickly filled up with a bubbly gray, acid-smelling sludge. I stood there, paralyzed, knowing not to touch it, and thought, Right. Destination: Universe! "The Enchanted Village."

Is that where I am now, in an A.E. Van Vogt story?

Angry at myself, I tore the paper towels from their holder and went back through the house to the living room, intending to go out the front door. Hell, at least I’ve got toilet paper now and . . .

"Yow!" I hit my head on the wall as I stepped back, turning, trying to run. Stopped, willing my heart to quiet down, making myself turn back and look.

It was a bipedal man-shape, not quite a gort but similar, no more than four feet tall, standing beside the open front door, staring at me with two glowing red glass eyes. No, not really like a gort. Feet like a bird. Three-fingered hands. No, two fingers and a thumb, just like a thrint, but far, far more gracile.

Is the damned thing humming? No. Silent.

I stammered, swallowed, then said, "Henry Stanley, I presume?"

Nothing.

"Hey, buddy. Sorry to have to tell you I’m not David Livingstone. Just a lost little dipshit has got himself in a pile of trouble."

The head turned just a bit, red lenses focusing on my face, seeming to look right into my eyes. Then it said, "Beeoop-click, zing?"

Really. I said, "Pleased to meetcha."

Oh, hell. My guts cramped hard, released from terror, and I quickly walked to the door, the robot turning to face me as I edged around it. I walked out onto the sidewalk, avoiding the stringy blue and yellow grass of the lawn, which had wriggled and tried to grab my shoes as I’d walked across it last night, got out into the street and started to pull down my pants. Thought better of it, kicked off my shoes and pulled my pants off entirely.

I squatted on the pavement, suddenly really glad I had the paper towels. The mossy stuff from the woods I’d used on the starship had been really scratchy. Jesus, I wish I could have a fucking bath!

When I looked up, the robot was standing on the porch, watching me.

By the time dusk came round again, dark green sky flushed red in what I thought of as the west as the fat red planet-star sank through the horizon, I was exhausted, dragging my ass out one of the deserted city’s radial roads, away from downtown, back out into the burbs. We’d been out to the spaceport, with its little patch of empty, unmarked concrete, then back to the museum, where we’d looked at every fucking exhibit, looking for a clue. Any clue.

We. Me and my little robot pal, which followed me all around, like a quiet puppy, plodding along in my wake, little metal bird feet clicking discretely on pavement and bare floor, soundless on the carpet that pretty much lined every building we’d visited so far.

"Pipe dream," I whispered, voice rasping like a cartoon character, mouth dry as dust.

The robot made some little oot-boop sound or another, as if a sympathetic noise. There were always plenty of puddles around in the morning, but by noon they’d mostly dried up. I found one now, kind of oily and sludgy looking, knelt beside it, and leaned down.

"Foooo?" Slim metal fingers on my shoulder.

I looked up. "Man, if you know where there’s any real water, this is the time."

Its head cocked to one side, not so much like it understood, as the way a dog looks at you when you talk to it. They want to understand, but they don’t. I turned away, leaned down again and took a sip. Gagged. Spat. "Jesus."

Rubbing my hand back and forth across tingling lips, I picked a house, went up on the porch, robot clicking along behind me, opened the door and went inside, where it was already gloomy, only light coming from the windows. Finally, I sat down on the carpet, wondering what next.

"What did I think I was going to find in the fucking museum?"

The robot was standing there, looking down at me, red eyes bright, as if concentrating. Does it really want to understand? How the hell would I know? Just a robot. A robot made by aliens, rather than some little guy from the Bronx.

I had a vision of me and the robot, finding some way to mark down Earth in the big star map, then mark it out again on the dome of night. Of the robot leading me to some ancient apparatus in some old thrintun exhibit.

"Wally to Earth! Wally to Earth! Hey, can you hear me guys?"

The robot just stood there, continuing to stare. "Right. Only in stories. . . ."

But this . . . but this. . . !

I whispered, "So what the hell should I call you? Friday? Nah, too obvious."

It made some random fluty sounds, like the ones Millie made on the recorder she’d gotten last Christmas.

"Tootle?" Like the train in the story. "I think I can, I . . ."

It suddenly reached out and tried to stick a metal finger in my mouth.

"Hey!"

It froze in position, then said, "Whee-oo. Dot-dot."

Mournful and sad. I lay back on the rug, curled up in a little ball, put my hands over my face and made some stupid little sobbing sounds. No tears though. Probably too dried out to cry. Rolled onto my back, stretching out, looking up at meaningless black shadows, my throat making a little clucking noise as I tried to swallow.

Well. There would be water in the morning. Hot, bitter water, but it hadn’t killed me so far. I looked up at the robot. "You know how to turn on the lights, buddy? Is there a fucking TV here anywhere?"

Shit. I missed TV. When was I going to see Gilligan’s Island again? What the hell would the Professor do in my shoes? Or Mr. Wizard? No, not that one. The owl one. Drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome, time for zis vun to come home. . . ?

Jesus, I miss a lot of things. Things I thought I hated. Mom and Dad. My sisters. My so-called friends. Murray. Even school. Maybe. Some time or another, still bullshitting myself as the room grew darker and darker, ’til all I could see were the robot’s staring red eyes, I must have fallen asleep.

Woke up suddenly, opening my eyes on grainy darkness, pain roaring in my arm, sitting up, struggling to figure out . . . to find . . . my voice, yelling, echoing, something like a scream that’d started in my sleep.

The robot’s bright red eyes were near me, making enough light so that I could see the gleam of its body, arms and legs and featureless face, could see the reddish-black outlines of things in the room, thrintun furniture.

I tried to stand, stumbling, twisting to look at my upper arm, pain radiating away from a black smear. Black and wet. Blood! I’m bleeding! I made some weird gargling sound, looking back at the robot, which seemed to be holding something in one hand, pinched daintily by its few fingers.

The clenched hand went to its featureless face, briefly, as if eating the whatever-it-was, though it had no mouth, then reached out and grabbed me by the arm, just below the bloody spot.

"No! No! Lemme go!" Shrieking, voice breaking.

Its other hand reached out and touched the wound.

Flare of white light.

Sear of pain.

Just like that, I blacked out.

And awoke again, clear-headed, salmon-pink sunshine flooding the room. The robot was standing over me, motionless, red eyes staring. No eyelids. Right. I sat up, no stiffer than usual, mouth still dry, dull ache like a bruise in my left upper arm.

Memory.

"Kee-rist . . ." still whispered.

Dream?

No. The sore spot on my arm was marked by a skinny white scar, like a really bad cut from a long time ago. Right. Fresh scars are red, then pink for a while. One that big would take months to fade. I touched it. Tender, but not too bad.

"What the hell. . . ."

When I stood up, licking my lips, the robot backed off a few paces, staring right into my eyes. Then it lifted a hand and seemed to beckon. This way. This way. Come on. Turned and walked slowly to the bathroom door. Turned to face me. That hand motion again. Come on. What the fuck are you waiting for?

I followed it into the bathroom. "Well?"

When it reached out and tapped a glass button, the little room filled with pale pastel pink light, making my skin seem to flush with health and well being. I thought, If there’s light at night, I’m going to wish for a book. It tapped a button on the wall over the hole in the floor. There was a flicker of dim blue light somewhere down the hole, a faint sizzle, a faint electric smell.

Yah. Disintegrator.

Why the hell didn’t I just tap all the buttons in the house myself ? Was I afraid? Jeez, I’d filled the tub, and the kitchen sink thingy. . . .

It tapped the button over the tub, the same one I’d tried, the one that’d gotten me a tub full of battery acid. This time, some clear, smokeless stuff began welling up. All I could do was stare, watching it fill up, rubbing the scar on my arm, feeling my heart pound.

"All right," I said. I glanced at the robot, no expression possible, red eyes on me. "Something’s going on. What? Ah, fuck." I reached out and stuck my finger in the stuff. No sizzle. No burn. Warm, though. Cupped a handful, brought it dripping to my face. Sniffed. Odorless. Put it in my mouth. Tasteless. Swallowed.

"Water."

Some little parrot-voice repeated, "Waw. Tur."

There was a prickling in the back of my neck, as if something were crawling in my dirty hair. I turned and looked at the robot. "You say something, buddy?"

"Beeee-oooo."

"Oh." Turned back to the tub, swallowing hard. Then I pulled off my filthy clothes, stepped over the rim and sat down. Sat down in warm water, leaned forward and plunged my face, rubbing my cheeks, where scruffy, patchy, half-silky, half-rough beard had grown out maybe a quarter-inch or so, opened my mouth and tried to swallow, came up gasping, choking, laughing.

I looked up at the robot, and shouted, "Jesus! This is wonderful!"

It said, "Waw. Tur. Wun. Dur. Full." Turned suddenly and walked away, leaving me alone in the tub.

I leaned back against the rim and sank down, feeling the water prickle all over, lifting scales of dead skin, old sweat, grime and dirt and who-knows-what, suddenly wishing for shampoo, for soap, toothpaste and toothbrush.

How the hell did it know I needed water? Sudden memory, me, screaming, trying to get away, blood on my arm, robot touching whatever to its face, the sizzle of the fleshwelder that made this scar on my arm.

I touched the scar, and thought, Sample. It took a sample for analysis. What was it they said in science class? We’re seventy percent water? Something like that.

I wished for the bottle of nasty blue Micrin mouthwash sitting by the bathroom sink at home. I’d asked Mom to buy Scope, like Murray’s parents, but it was green, you see, and Mom always liked blue stuff best.

I guessed if I washed my clothes in plain water, it’ll help a little bit. Wouldn’t it?

Better than nothing, anyway.

The robot came back, carrying a stone plate heaped with some smoky, steamy brown stuff, filling the bathroom with a smell like pork chops. Plain pork chops, no Shake ’n’ Bake or anything . . . my mouth suddenly watered so hard I started to drool.

The plate, when I balanced it on the rim of the tub, was full of something that looked like very coarsely ground hamburger, closer to shredded than anything else, a lighter shade of brown than you see in cooked ground beef. I touched it with my fingertip, getting a little juice on my skin. Sniffed. Licked.

Yah. Pretty much like pork chop grease and . . . jerked. Looked up at my staring robot. "Synthesized from. . . ?" Nothing.

Smart. Smart as hell. Smarter than me. What else should I have expected from a star-faring civilization? A little thrill from somewhere inside. Better than Arsenal of Miracles. ’Cept, of course, for the parts about Peganna of the Silver Hair.

I picked up a chunk of crumbly meat and popped it in my mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. Took another. Not really much like pork. Kind of gamey, but not venison either. Suddenly, the plate was half empty, and my stomach wasn’t growling anymore.

I said, "So. Ground Wally tastes pretty good. You got any Worcestershire sauce? I like Lea & Perrins best."

It said, "Ground. Wally. Good. No. Sauce."

"Oh, that’s okay, I . . ." Stopped. Stared at those red eyes, realizing my nameless little robot pal had just said an original sentence.

Some time in the night I awoke, swimming up from a dream, knowing it was a dream, hating it, but knowing. Face wet, cooling, fingers gentle in my hair. I jerked the rest of the way awake, eyes opening on dim pink light, light coming from nowhere, everywhere, certainly not the square black windows.

There was a soft sizzling outside as the hot acid rain came down, tonight as every night.

The robot stroked its two skinny fingers and long thin thumb through my hair, animate, but hardly alive. "Wally. Wake. Up. Now."

I whispered, "Yeah." Started shivering, wishing for . . . something. Anything.

"Wally. Crying. In. Sleep." Still that jerky delivery, though it’d improved sharply as the day wore on. Saying words as words now, rather than crude, isolated syllables.

What the hell had I been dreaming about? It was already getting away, the way dreams so often do. Something about my parents, some fight they’d had only a few weeks before Dad had moved out. I remember Mom said "scumbag" and Dad countered with "whore." I remember their arguments were always like that, like they were playing some stupid game of one-upmanship.

I said, "Can you make me something to eat?"

"What. To. Eat." No intonation, but it’d picked up on infinitives now.

What, then? So far, it’d been able to make ground meat and cups of some sweet, fatty yellow milk. Wally milk? This count as cannibalism? I had a sudden pang of longing, realizing I missed Brussels sprouts, of all things. "Ice cream?"

"What. Ice. Cream."

What indeed. "Uhhhh . . . Milk. Sugar. Ummm . . ." Why the fuck don’t I know this stuff? I could picture it in my head. Taste it. Desperately taste it. Vanilla. I love vanilla ice cream. I could even call up an image of a vanilla bean. But I don’t think you could manufacture a vanilla bean out of the contents of Wally Munsen’s carcass.

The robot reached out and slowly stroked my hair one more time.

I said, "It’s cold. Frozen. Not hard like ice. . . ." realizing it wasn’t cold here, that the robot might not know what ice was. "Soft. Mushy." I shrugged helplessly. "Maybe it’s the fat that gives it that texture?"

I followed the robot out to the kitchen, curious about what it planned to do. Hell, maybe I could learn to run the synthesizer myself ? All it did was put its fingers over four nodes, two on one side of the panel, two on the other. They lit up blue, and it stood there, motionless, for maybe a minute.

There was a soft gurgle, and a blob of white ice cream suddenly extruded from the bottom of the trough. Maybe a quart. The robot got a plate from the cupboard, reached in, scooped the ice cream onto it, and handed it to me.

"Ice. Cream."

I took the plate, sniffing at the blob. "Maybe." But it didn’t smell like ice cream. Not quite. "You got a spoon?"

"No. Spoon."

I sighed. Might as well ask it to get me a MacDonald’s. I stuck out my tongue and licked the surface of the stuff. No. Not ice cream. More like heavy cream. Maybe the way ice cream would taste if you left out all the flavoring. "Good enough. Thanks." I took a bite, getting it all over my face, and thought, Anyway, the texture’s perfect.

Afterward, I washed my face in the bathroom sink, went back to the living room and curled up again, wanting to sleep. Some time before I drifted off, the robot came back and squatted by my side, reaching out and slowly stroking my hair. Cold metal fingers, but nice enough for all that.

There were days now, when I awoke with a sensation of intense well being. Fed. Rested. Someone to talk to. Sort of. The light flooding in the window slanted sharply downward, as if I’d overslept, looking almost orange on the gray carpet.

I got up, stretching, listening to the gristle in my back make its little sounds, realizing I felt better sleeping on the floor than I ever had on any of the too soft mattresses my parents had bought me over the years. Mom likes soft mattresses, so that’s what everyone must like, hm?

I remembered my dad stretching in the morning, frowning as he arched his back. Not a clue.

I went to the door and out onto the porch. It was warm, soft breeze gentle on my bare skin. I walked over to where my clothes were draped over the railing and felt them. Dry, but stiff. I’d tried washing them in plain water, which turned out to be useless. Tried to get the robot to make soap, but it could only come up with something like Crisco, something that smelled and tasted good enough that I finally just ate it.

I’d put them outside to dry and forgotten them, acid rain leaching some of the color out of my pants, leaving little white streaks here and there.

Jesus. Mom will kill me.

I’d kept my shoes inside, and it was warm enough to go naked here. For now, anyway. I stretched again, peed over the railing into the grass, which wriggled and squirmed like it was trying to get away, then went back in the house.

"Robot?"

Nothing.

Awful damn quiet in here.

Went into the kitchen.

There was a plate of cold, pale brown meatloaf and a stone mug of yellowish wallymilk beside the trough.

"Robot?"

Felt my heart maybe pounding a little bit. No robot in the backyard. No robot in the bathroom. No robot in any of the other rooms, mysterious rooms, of the house I was making my home base. No robot in the street outside, or much of anything else moving. Grassy stuff stirring. Clouds in the sky drifting slowly, that was it.

No birds here.

No rats. No bugs.

I went back to the kitchen and slowly ate my cold breakfast. Thoughtful of robot to leave something. Thoughtful of it to let me sleep.

God damn it.

After breakfast I went to the bathroom and filled up the tub, trying not to feel scared.

Noontime. No lunch. No robot.

Finally, I put on my shoes and socks, went naked on out to the street and began to make my usual rounds, keeping my mouth shut, unwilling to make speech sounds that would go unanswered. Went out through the nearest city gate and walked to the empty spaceport, stood looking up at the grass-green sky, shading my eyes from the reddish-orange light of the brilliant noonday sun. No saucers. And no robot. Went back to the house and checked in.

No robot.

Very slowly walked downtown, walked to the museum, wondering what the fuck I was going to do if it was gone for good. Sure, I had a sink, a toilet, and a bathtub. I’d got water to drink, I could stay clean, I could take a crap indoors.

On the other hand, I never had figured out how to run the synthesizer. I’d stood there with my fingers on the right nodes, stood there feeling silly, wishing it to work, muttering "Abracadabra, open sesame, you fucking piece of shit. . . ."

The robot had stood watching, red eyes on me, and finally said, "Wally no can do." Getting good now, it was, though still with nothing like inflection.

"Go ahead you little bastard. Laugh!"

It said, "No can do, Wally."

No can laugh. What means word laugh, Wally?

And every night, it would sit beside me and stroke my hair while I fell asleep. I was going to miss that, even if I didn’t starve to death. I went into the museum, willing myself not to cry. Anyway, what if it does come back? What if the ships never come again? What if I have to stay here forever? All by myself? Me and, maybe, if I’m lucky, the damn robot?

No, not forever.

I was barely sixteen years old, though.

What if I had to stay here for fifty years?

Fifty years eating my own synthetic flesh.

I got goosebumps, standing under the museum dome, standing in front of the useless God-damned star map. "Where the fuck am I?" My voice echoed under the dome, silencing me.

I walked over to the history section, to where I’d left off on the first day, to the aisles that dealt with what’d happened after the thrintun had made first contact, had been welcomed into the Galactic Federation, if that’s what it was. There was a whole section of cool little dioramas there, each one showing a single thrint surrounded by another sort of being, behind them all, a deep image of another world, pink suns and green, yellow skies, blue, purple, gold, you name it. Usually, there was stuff like vegetation in a color complementing the sky, as with Earth, with its blue sky and green trees.

Like God had a plan of some kind.

My favorite diorama was a world with a pale, pale yellow sky, just a hint of yellow, a world that seemed to be all tall buildings and not much else, the aliens’ version of Trantor, maybe? There were lots of different beings here, scattered among them a lot of land crab robots, which helped to give it scale. In the sky over the buildings was a flying saucer, and when you looked closely, very deep in the sky, shadowed by its color, there was a spome, obviously hanging in space, so big you could see it in orbit from the ground.

Are they all still out there? I wondered.

Or are they all gone?

What if all these worlds are as empty as this one, as the others I’d seen so far? I’d started thinking of it as the Lost Empire sometimes, wondering what could possibly have happened. Did the robot know? I’d asked, more than once, but had so far gotten no answer.

Either it didn’t know, or didn’t know how to tell.

Then a piping voice said, "Wally?"

My heart seized in my chest, then I spun around, "You’re . . . uh."

I’d been going to say, You’re back!, but the thing before me . . . was not a robot at all. Certainly not my robot. About the same size, but . . . pale gray skin. Big black eyes, slightly slanted. Noseless face. Lipless mouth. Two fingers and a thumb on each hand. Fleshy bird-feet.

More or less, I thought, like the beings they put on those Saucer books, paperbacks at Drug Fair competing for rack space with the science fiction I read. Who was it read that stuff? Kenny. Kenny, who would get something by Charles Fort, when Murray and I would be buying Prince of Peril or whatever Andre Norton title was out. What’d that book been called? Lo!? Something like that.

The being stepped toward me, lifting one of those peculiarly familiar hands. "I’m sorry I startled you."

"Who. . . ." What?

It said, "It’s me, Wally."

Uhhh. . . . "Robot?"

The gash of a mouth seemed to smile. "Well, you can still call me that if you want, but I went for an upgrade. I’m really more of an artificial man now."

Artificial . . . an inane voice yammered in my head: What, then? Tor-Dur-Bar? Pinocchio? I remembered the joke about "my only begotten son" and sort of snickered.

The robot said, "Come on, Wally. Let’s go home. You must be starving." Its intonation, I noticed, had suddenly gotten much better.

So. Nighttime. I lay on the floor, wrapped up in a blanket Robot’d produced from who knows where or God knows what, listening to the hiss of the evening rain, alien room suffused with a soft orange light. Even if I had a book, I wouldn’t have been able to read it in this.

But I wanted a book anyway.

I kept my head down, chin tucked in, trying to lose myself somehow. Think about all the books you’ve read. Jesus. I’d read thousands of books, it was practically all I did! Why couldn’t I remember them better?

I started again, imagining myself to be Ghek, slinking alone through the darkness below the pits of Manator, drinking the Ulsios’ blood, finding myself on the cliff over the subterranean river, the one he assumed might wind up flowing toward. . . . Omean? The Lost Sea of Korus? Hell. Started to drift back. . . .

But I was Tars Tarkas, struggling to get my fat ass through the hole in the base of the tree, while John Carter defended me from the Plant Men, no wait, Carthoris . . . the pimalia blossoms, the garden in Ptarth, Thuvia. . . .

No use, me again, though now wondering about the reproductive systems of the Red Martians. Monotremes, obviously. I remembered we’d seen this film in science class one time, the biologist in the film flipping over a platypus, everyone in the class giggling nervously at the hairy slit on its belly. He’d pried open the slit, to more giggles, then . . . damn! There’s an egg in there!

So, what then? When John Carter fucks Dejah Thoris, does he find himself bumping into an egg? What’ll we call it, my incomparable princess of Helium? In my imagination, while they talked, old Johnny kept on humping her and . . .

Oh, great. Now I had a hard on. One of those real tingly ones meaning I’d probably come even if I kept my hands off it. On the other hand . . . right.

I flipped back the blanket, rolling onto my back, wrapping my fingers around the damned thing and . . . stopped, stock still. Robot was standing impassively over by the bathroom door, arms folded across its pale gray chest, featureless black eyes glinting in the orange light.

After a minute, it said, "Is something wrong, Wally?"

I could feel the nice hard on start to go spongy on me.

Then it said, "Would you like me to help?"

To my horror, my dick hardened right back up, Dejah Thoris’s weird monotreme crotch displaced by an image of two-fingers-and-thumb reaching for me, as I remembered doing myself in the tub only a few days before, bright steel robot watching impassively from the door, red eyes motionless, expressionless, merely light bulbs, stolen from a Christmas tree.

It said, "Your facial skin is changing color, Wally. Turning pink. That never happened before."

My dick shrank out of my hand, suddenly soft and little again. Littler than usual. Kind of puckered. I said, "Uh. Sorry. It’s . . . kind of different now. I. . . ."

What did I want? Did I want it to help? A sudden vision of a difficult reality. The one where I live here, along with this thing, until I was old and dead. No pussy for you, dude.

Robot seemed to smile, making me think of all those jokes I’d been hearing at school for years. It. It. Not he for gosh sakes. It’d be like jerking off in a sock. A very friendly and helpful sock. It said, "I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. Call out when you’re done. I’ll bring some warm milk to help you sleep."

Then it was gone.

I wrapped the blanket around myself, suddenly feeling very cold indeed.

Did you ever wake up directly from a dream? No, that’s not right. Did you ever wake up in a dream? The dream is running along, telling its tale, real as life, and suddenly you’re there as you, knowing it’s a dream, thinking about it as a dream, while the story continues to run.

In my dream, it was summer, June I think, and I was maybe ten or eleven years old. Fifth or sixth grade, so maybe it was 1961 or 1962? Maybe school just about to end, or just over, which’d put it no later than maybe June 8th or thereabouts.

We were down by the big clearing, big patch of bare dirt down by the end of Carter Lane, across from Kenny’s house, where, sometimes, we could get together enough boys to play a real sandlot baseball game, back where the creek came in sight of the road, where they’d build that big private pool, the one where my parents refused to buy a family membership, in time for the summer of 1963. Right now, it was just scraggly woods and swampy ground, bare dirt ending suddenly where the ground sloped off down to the creek.

The little blonde girl and I were sitting on the horizontal trunk of a not-quite-fallen tree, looking at each other. What was her name? Of course I remember. It was Tracy, my age, in my grade and school, though not in my class. I only saw her out on the playground, at recess, and here on weekends.

Blonde, blue eyes, pale face, searching look. Thin, no sign of the adult she might one day become. Not yet. Her hair was done up in long braids that were wrapped round and round and pinned at the crown. Once, I’d asked her how come she always wore it that way.

"You’d be so pretty with your hair worn long and brushed out."

That searching look, blue eyes reaching for my childish soul. "My mom thinks it makes me look too grown up."

"Would you take it down for me now?"

I don’t remember that I ever saw her smile. Not a sad little girl, just so serious. More like me than anyone else I’d ever met. She said, "I can’t get it back like this by myself. Mom would kill me." For once, the frown faded away. "I wish I could though. I’d do it for you, Wally."

I could smile, and I did.

In dreams, you can see a future that didn’t happen.

A couple of eleven-year-olds fall in love, despite the fact that her mom didn’t want her "too grown up," despite the fact she never said a word about her dad, or just why she was so . . . not sad. Just so serious. Whatever it was, it made her see right into me. Maybe those two eleven-year-olds could’ve waited out the decade it would take, and, free at last, live happily ever after?

In real life, that was the day she told me her dad had been transferred, that she’d be moving away to Texas. When? Tomorrow. In the morning.

Then she’d looked up at the sun, shading her eyes, and said, "I better get on home. Mom doesn’t know I’m out here." To my astonishment, when we stood up, she gave me a hug, fierce and strong, then turned and ran.

I’d walked home in the noonday sun, feeling that burn in my throat that means you want to cry, but can’t. Mom was making lunch when I got there, tuna salad sandwiches with too much chopped celery. She’d looked at me, and said, "What’s wrong?" Felt my head, looking for a fever.

I opened my eyes on the pink light of a Lost Empire morning, and Robot was sitting cross-legged by my side, slowly stroking my hair, which was getting pretty long, and rather greasy from the lack of shampoo. How do primitives clean their hair? I. . . .

Rolled away hard, heart pounding.

It said, "I’m sorry, Wally. I won’t do that anymore, if it bothers you."

I swallowed, wishing I’d stop waking up with an erection. Futile hope. "No. No. You just startled me. I can’t get used to you like that."

"I’m sorry. It’s not reversible."

I felt my face flush. "Never mind. It’s okay."

"You want breakfast now?"

"Sure." Tuna fish sandwiches? Surely we can figure this out? As it stood up, I found myself looking at its featureless crotch. Not quite featureless. Kind of a faint divided bump, like you see on some of the neighborhood moms in their tight, white summer shorts.

Unbidden, as Robot turned away, heading for the kitchen, I wondered about "upgrades." Even from the back, you could see the shape was there, if not the details. Like a girl in gray coveralls.

The image of Tracy came up, briefly, from the dream. Not the shape of her, which, at that age, hadn’t been much different from mine. Just the face, the eyes, the hair.

So. Robot can give me a hand job. It’s already volunteered. And you’ve already managed to think of a blow job on your own, you sick bastard. What kind of upgrades are available? Just stuff thrintun would know about? What good is that? Other races of the Lost Empire?

Maybe the Saucer People from those paperbacks were real, and this was the closest thing to a human Robot could get for itself, from its stash of upgrades? So it tried hard for me when I describe food and stuff I’d like it to make. Remember the ice cream? Not to mention the "soap."

Heh.

That tasty soap. I’d had it again already, for dessert.

So what if I asked it to grow a pussy for me, as an upgrade?

What would I ask for?

I’d seen my sisters in the bathtub from time to time. Not much to work with there. An accidental glimpse of my mom one summer, changing her clothes in a room with the door open, her not knowing she was reflected in a mirror. Hell, I was maybe five years old back then. She probably didn’t care if I saw her. Not yet.

I remembered I’d been startled by the black hair.

What else?

Well, there was a diagram in one of our encyclopedias. A line drawing labeled "vulva" that didn’t make much sense.

Those magazines, the ones Murray’s dad kept down in the basement? Nothing. I knew enough about human anatomy and the mechanics of commercial art to know those women’s pussies had been swept away by something called an air brush.

I snickered, and thought, Jesus. Maybe I’d better just stick with soap? Maybe when I can get it to make me a cake of Lifebuoy, we’ll try something more complicated?

Out in the kitchen, it was just finishing up making me some sliced meat, solid this time, rare and juicy, to go with my mug of milk. We’d tried for bread a few times, and wound up with something like grayish Play-Doh that tasted more like soap than the soap had.

I put my hand gingerly on its shoulder, realizing that I was really tired of this bland diet of sweet milk and venison-pork. "Robot?"

"Yes, Wally."

"Can you help me get back home?"

It turned toward me, giving me a long, long look out of those empty black eyes. "Are you so lonely, Wally?"

I swallowed past a tight spot in my throat and nodded, unable to speak. Yes, damn you. I miss everything about my nasty little life. Even the bad stuff. That hurt too. I wouldn’t have imagined I would, just like I didn’t imagine I’d miss my dad ’til he was gone.

It said, "How much do you know about accelerated frames of reference, and probabilistic space-time attractors?"

"Well. . . ."

That same long look continued. "Eat your breakfast, Wally. Take your bath, then we’ll see what we can do."

By midmorning, it’d led me back through the town and out to the so-called spaceport once more. Led me out onto the empty concrete apron, off to one side, reddish-yellow sunshine warm and smarmy on my bare skin. I almost skipped my shoes this time, but Robot told me not to.

"No sense getting a stubbed toe, is there?"

Which made me remember when I was a little kid, pre-school, going to the beach with my mother’s family. We’d lived in Massachusetts then, some little town outside Boston, and the beaches of New England are rocky indeed. Where did we used to go? Not Nantucket. That’s an island where rich bastards live. Nantasket? That’s it. I remember Grandpa took me to see a beached freighter one time.

Anyway, stubbed toes. Lots of them.

Robot said, "Stand over here, Wally. Right by me."

Then it raised its hands, making a slow sort of Gandalfish gesture.

My stomach lurched as we suddenly rose in the air, taking a patch of concrete with us. "Hey!"

"Stand still, Wally."

As the thing on which we stood went up and up, things like antennae, like giant radiotelescopes, like Jodrell Bank, like stuff on TV, began unfolding down below, swinging up into sight.

I whispered, " ‘Open, sez me.’ " What’s that from? A Popeye cartoon?

The upward movement stopped, and suddenly a hatchway opened in the concrete between us. Robot gestured toward it, "Shall we, Wally?"

"What is this?"

"The spaceport information nexus and interstellar communications center."

"Oh." Muted.

Down inside was a room just like the main room of an airport control tower, complete with outward leaning windows and things like radar screens. Lots and lots of twinkly little lights, too. Red, green, blue, yellow, you name it.

It started waving its fingers at the lights and, outside, various antennae started groaning around, aiming this way and that, nodding upward to the great green sky.

"What’re you going to do? Are you calling Earth?"

The empty black eyes fixed on me again. "No, Wally. I can only call installations with the same sort of subspace communication systems as these."

"Oh. Then. . . ."

It said, "I need to find out what’s happened, Wally, before I can know what’s to be done, if anything." If anything? I felt sick. Then it said, "This will take a while. I assume you can find your way to the museum from here?"

"Well, of course." Robot thought I was stupid, did it? Maybe so. How many people accidentally stow away on an automated space probe and wound up stranded on a deserted planet?

"I’ll meet you there in time for supper. That elevator cage over there will take you down to ground level." Then it turned away and resumed playing with all the little lights, while the big antennae creaked and moaned.

I stood and watched for a while, at a loss. What do I want? Do I really want to go home again, back to a pathetic little life that showed no promise of ever getting better? What if the Empire’s not Lost? What if the saucers come again, this time full of light and life, full of things ever so much better than people?

What if there’s real adventure to be had?

Eventually, I got in the elevator cage and went on my way, wondering if I could find something to do.

Take a while turned out to be an understatement. Two, three, four days and I gave up going out to the spaceport, gave up watching the antennae wig-wag around, gave up watching the little lights twinkle, reflected in Robot’s slanty goggle eyes.

Eyes like fucking sunglasses.

What’s under them, ole buddy, ole pal?

It’d make me breakfast, make me something I could save for lunch, and would head on out, leaving me alone for the day, like a man going off to work, leaving his wife alone to fend for herself.

I remember my mom used to scream about that, back before the breakup. Dad’d come home from work, wanting nothing more than his supper and a quiet evening in front of the TV, and Mom would snipe and snipe, "I sit here all day long, looking at these same four God-damned walls. I want to get out once in a while!"

He’d look at her, lying on the couch in his boxer shorts, bleary eyed. "I’m tired."

You could see a kind of red light behind her eyes then. "Tired? Well, you won’t be quite so tired later on tonight, I know that."

"Bitch."

Now he was gone, and Mom had a job of her own from which to come home tired. We were eating a lot of macaroni and cheese then. Macaroni and cheese, and meatloaf. I wondered if she thought about him sometimes, about how tired he’d been, and how she felt now?

On day five, it got dark before Robot came home. I was getting hungry, starting to worry, just the way Mom seemed to worry when Dad would be late getting home from work on nights when the traffic on US 1 clogged to a standstill. Should I go on out to the spaceport and see what was up? What if it wasn’t there? What if it started to rain while I was out?

Then the door opened and Robot came in, moving rather slowly, it seemed. "Sorry I’m late. I’ll get your supper now."

I followed it out to the kitchen, and, as it touched the blue lights over the trough, beginning the process that would extrude my meat, would fill my mug with milk, it seemed to move as though exhausted.

"Are you all right?" Scooping hot meatloaf onto a plate, it said, "This organic form is difficult to master. It seems I required another minor physiological upgrade." Then it pulled a second steaming plate from the trough, more meatloaf just like the first, and two cups of cool yellow milk. "Come on, we’ll eat together."

We settled on the living room floor and I started in. Robot picked up a chunk of meat in its hand, turning it over and over, as if nonplused.

That’s me, I thought. "What’s wrong?"

It looked at me. "I have some inhibitions about eating what seems like it must come from a living being."

"Synthetic."

"When I was really a robot, I knew that. The organic processor seems to have a little difficulty with the concept."

"Hey, if I don’t mind eating myself, why should you?"

"True." It popped the glob of ground wally in its mouth and started to chew. And I felt myself grow goosebumps.

Afterward, we had ice cream, sweeter now than before, with something very much like the vanilla flavor I’d been wanting. Robot took a taste, and said, "This is good. Maybe next time I can make it better, now that I’m getting some idea of what it’s supposed to be like."

But it put the plate down, hardly touched.

I put out my hand, not quite touching its arm. "Tell me what’s really wrong."

Something very like a sigh. "Oh, many things, Wally."

I felt chillier inside than the ice cream would account for. "Such as?"

"I can’t figure out how to get you home."

"Oh."

"And I can’t figure out what’s happened to my civilization, either. I don’t know where they’ve gone. Or why they’re gone." It pushed the other plate of ice cream toward me. "You have this, please."

"Sure."

After a while, I said, "Do you even know where we are?"

"Yes. My galaxy. My world."

"In the same galaxy as Earth?"

"I don’t think so, Wally."

"Oh."

I finished the ice cream and Robot took the dishes away, walking slowly. By the time it got back, I was shaking out my blanket, starting to settle down to sleep, wishing again I had a book, any book. Christ, I’d settle for Green Mansions or Lord Jim now. Even The Red Badge of Courage.

Robot stood there, looking down on me, arms hanging loosely by its sides, looser than I’d ever seen, more than just exhausted. I threw back the blanket and patted a spot on the floor by my side. "Come on. If you need to eat now, maybe you need to sleep too."

It curled up with me under the blanket. After a minute, it grew warm, than another minute and I guess I went to sleep.

I awoke, eyes shut, not quite knowing what I’d been dreaming. Some real-life thing, I suppose, nothing bad, or the dream would still be a vivid shape in my heart. Something warm on my chest, not quite like hugging my extra pillow. And, of course, the usual hard on, but somehow compressed and tight, pushed against the base of my belly.

Oh, God. I’m hugging Robot!

I started to let go, trying not to panic, wondering what the hell was tickling the end of my nose.

Forced my eyes open. There was a neck right in front of my face. A skinny neck with Caucasian-white skin, rising into wisps of pale blonde hair. Long blonde hair drawn up into tight braids, braids wrapped round and round. . . .

I think every muscle in my body went into some tetanus-like spasm. I took a deep breath, so fast and tight my voice made this weird, high-pitched whoop, recoiled, rolling away, up onto my hands and knees, taking the blanket with me, crouching there, bug-eyed again, heart pounding like mad.

Pulling the blanket away like that spilled the naked girl over onto her face. She lifted her head and looked at me, out of bleary blue eyes, and whispered, "Wally. . . ?" her voice sounding tired and confused.

And I made that exact same sound Jackie Gleason used to make, dumbfounded in almost every "Honeymooners" episode, humminahummina . . .

She sat up slowly, turning to face me, sitting cross-legged, eyes brightening as she woke up, just the way a human wakes up. Pale skin, smooth all over, little pink nipples on a smooth, flat chest, snub nose with a little pale spray of freckles, big, big blue eyes, naked as a jaybird, but for the brass-colored bobby-pins holding up her braids.

"Good morning, Wally!"

I sat down hard. Swallowed. Or tried to, anyway. "Tracy?"

She cocked her head to one side and smiled, filling the room with sunshine. "I think so, Wally. Anyway, this is the girl you’ve been dreaming about."

"My . . . dreams."

Funny thing. Usually when your mouth goes dry, it just is dry, all at once, or maybe before you notice it. This time, I felt my spit absorbed by my tongue, like water sucked into a dry sponge.

She said, "Yes, Wally."

What was the name of that story? Silverberg, was it? In the Seventh Galaxy Reader or maybe Best From F&SF, Seventh Series. The one where the telepath sees people’s thoughts as run-on sentences connected by ampersand characters.

"You can . . . read my mind." Flat. Nervous. Sick.

She stood slowly, stretching like a real human, as though stiff from sleep, hips slim, just the littlest bit of fine blonde pubic hair in a patch above that little pink slit.

Eleven years old, I thought. I remembered most of the girls in junior high started to grow tits when they were in seventh grade.

She saw where I was looking and smiled, then said, "Sort of. Not as well as I’d like to." Then gave me a funny look. "How do you think I learned to speak English? From listening to you chatter?"

I snatched my eyes away, feeling my face heat up. Yes. That’s exactly what I’d thought.

"Uh. Does that bother you? My talking all the time?" It bothered a lot of people, including my parents. I think it even bothered Murray, though most of the time he was willing to listen.

She said, "Oh, no, Wally! I love talking to you!" Eyes brightening. I suddenly remembered Tracy’d said that to my eleven-year-old self, once upon a time. Then this Tracy–Robot, a hard voice in my head snarled–said, "This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me!"

Ever happened to Tracy? Or to Robot? I said, "Yeah, me too." I curled myself into a seated ball, knees against my chest, heels pressed together, wishing the God-damned hard-on would go away. Bathroom. You just need to take a piss, that’s all.

Tracy . . . No! For Christ’s sake. Robot! Robot’s bright blue eyes were on my face, filled with something that could pass for empathy. The empathy in a story, anyway. She came over to where I sat, kneeling down, put a warm gentle hand on one of my knees, leaning so she could look right into my eyes.

It. It, not her.

I don’t think there’s a word for how scared I was, right then.

She said, "Would you like to try the thing you’ve been dreaming about, Wally? There’s not enough detail in your dreams for me to work with, but your genetic matrix may have contributed enough X-chromosome-based hardware and instinctual behaviors to get us started."

I flinched, aghast, at Robot, at myself. Stuttered hard, finally got out, "But . . . you’re still a child!" The real Tracy, my Tracy, would be sixteen right now, more or less grown. This . . . thing . . .

She sank back on her heels, looking sad, just the way the real Tracy had looked sad, sad and serious. "I’m sorry, Wally. I didn’t know that would matter."

For breakfast, Robot managed something a lot like bland French toast, with a lemon-yellow glob of something I suppose you could call wallybutter, though nothing like maple syrup, not even the imitation nasty Mrs. Butterworth’s crap my sisters demanded, just so they could see the bottle and repeat the "when you bow down this way!" line from the commercial.

Every time they did that, I’d remember my own infatuation with the Log Cabin tin less than a decade earlier. It seemed different, somehow.

Robot brought the plate to me as I soaked in the tub, chirping, "See, Wally? I’ll figure out a way to make you real bread yet!" Then she stepped over the rim of the tub and sank down at the opposite end with a cozy little grin, chin barely clearing the surface of the water.

"Uh." I looked at the pile of sticky squares, steam rising, yellow butter-stuff slumping as it melted. "Is some of this yours?"

She took a square, dipped one corner in the butter, and took a bite. "Mmmmm. . . ."

Afterward, clean and dry after a fashion, Robot’s hair clean anyway, since it was brand new, we set out, I in my grubby shoes and socks beca