Hitherby Dragons

When Maxine was three, things changed.

To her east, in the desert, there rose a white noise, and a judgment came, and in its wake the earth was cleansed. The grime faded from the streets and sky. Filth and horror left the world. Had it killed one man in ten, then it would have been a favor, for it is the worst of humanity that died. Had it killed two in ten, three in ten . . . had it been a lighter judgment, then it would have been a culling and a pruning, and thanked by those it left behind. But nine in ten it wiped from the face of the world. The worst of humanity died; and then the bad; and then the average; and more than most of the good besides; and finally, they died, who simply were not pure.

The cities died, for only the greatest and brightest of their towers stayed.

Civilization died. Seven hundred million people remained. They could have kept it, had they chosen; but they had no heart for it.

Maxine’s parents died: the one she loathed, and the one she loved, and of all her family, only she and a second cousin survived the judgment. She was a sweet child, but she grew up sad.

When Maxine was 17, she went to the city, or what of it remained: seventy buildings, scattered, proud, upon a plain of red and golden dust. She hunted through those ruins, and found tools and machines and books. Some had survived, for like Maxine they were pure. In a great sixteen-wheeled truck, one of seven left in all the world, she took them back to the farm on which she lived, and showed them to the woman, Chanya Bayo, who had taken her in.

“And what would you do with them, Maxine?”

“I will build a centipede,” she said. “I have never seen one.”

“It would be good to see a centipede again,” Chanya admitted. “So if you’d like, you may.”

For three years, Maxine worked; and in the end, the thing was built; and she called Chanya out to see.

Chanya’s right hand sheltered her eyes against the sun as she looked up at the centipede. “It’s a bit big,” she said. “And a bit robotic. But I think you have the heart of it.”

Maxine smiled.

“What will you do now?”

Maxine looked down, and her voice was sad. “I have to go,” she said. “There’s something calling me, to the east.”

“Ah,” said Chanya. “Must you, then?”

Maxine sighed. “I must.”

“I can’t argue with a young girl’s heart,” Chanya said. “But I’ll be here, if you need a home again.”

Maxine hugged her, and they cried. Then Maxine climbed into the head of the centipede, and its metal legs clicked, and its segmented body wiggled, and it slithered off to the east, leaving great holes in the earth behind it.

Miles and miles she traveled, and the world passed like a dream, and finally she came to the great hollow of the desert, and looked down, and saw the sleeping beast.

“What is it?” she said; and for a time, no answer came; and then a great snarl split the air.

The centipede’s head turned round, and its feet stamped upon the earth, and its segments skittered to adjust; and staring at her across the sand she saw a great steel tiger.

“Who are you?” she said; but the tiger’s shoulders bunched; and with a terrible sound like ripping steel, it leapt; and the battle of centipede and tiger joined. In the desert in the east there rose a great ringing of metal on metal, and snarls, and clicks, and scrapes, and clangs; and it did not end, save at night, when the wounded beast and the wounded bug would skitter apart and crouch low upon the sands, that the people who lived inside them could come out and, in the dark cold desert night, make such repairs as such as they could make.

For seven years, they fought, and this she came to know: that when the creature had stirred in its endless sleep, the white noise rose; and if it should wake, all things would pass; and so, to keep itself in dreams, it called to it the things it dreamt, and played a game of centipede and tiger.

For seven years, they fought; and she came to know the person who—she thought—must live inside the tiger’s head. Sometimes, she pictured a great strong man, fierce and noble; sometimes, a girl the mirror of herself. It did not matter; for in the night, they did not meet; and in the day, they fought; and she thought that their reasons for staying must be the same.

“I love you,” she said.

The tiger’s paw struck the centipede’s head, and she was flung against the metal walls; but her hands found the controls again, and struck, and the centipede cast back the tiger.

A butterfly, tired from a legendary ascent into the upper air, perches on the little rocket’s nose.

“You are a flattering whoosh,” it informs the rocket.

“I am a maker of storms,” says the little rocket. “I am a turmoil. I am a fire that consumes.”

“Not,” asks the butterfly, “a fashionable butterfly accessory?”

“No,” concedes the little rocket.

The butterfly heaves a sigh. “I must go higher.”

The little rocket flies through the air.

The little rocket passes over a nest. A mother bird is in the nest. She is crying because she thinks she might have lost one of her children. She is pretty sure that there used to be three chicks. Now there are two.

“If I’d only named her!” the mother bird mourns. “Then I’d know for sure.”

“That’s too bad,” thinks the little rocket.

The little rocket flies through the air.

The little rocket passes over a field. Two lovers are in that field: a woman with close-cut hair, and a man without a watch. They see one another for the first time in many years. They run slowly towards each other’s arms. They embrace.

“I must confess,” whispers Jim, into Della’s ear, “that they let me out of jail only so that I could find you, and turn you in.”

“And I,” says Della, “the same, regarding you.”

“Then let us return to the federal marshals,” declares Jim, impassioned, “together!”

The little rocket flies through the air.

There is a bird. It is flying. It is strong, and young, and very much lost.

“Are you my mother?” it asks the little rocket.

“No,” confesses the little rocket. “I am a terrible silence, and then a terrible light.”

“Oh,” says the bird.

“Fly east,” says the little rocket, “until the sun is lost behind the hills; and south, until the air has the scent of lavender. I think I saw your mother there.”

The little rocket flies through the air.

There is an angel beside it, and it asks, “What do you regret?”

“I have a thousand words for what will happen when I hit,” the rocket says, “but none for what will happen after.”

It is after the apocalypse. Gasoline is hard to come by. People wear funny clothes. Everyone is dangerous. Shrieking bandits jump onto the windshield of Max’s truck.

“Wait!” cries Max as they pound at his windshield.

The bandits pause. They listen to what Max has to say. An armed society is a polite society.

Max holds up a frog. “This is the jumpingest frog that you ever saw. I bet he could outjump any frog you have.”

“Gyaa!” screams a bandit. He pounds on the windshield with the butt of a rifle. “Your frog cannot compete with the celebrated frogs of the Thunder Bandits!”

“Then maybe we should settle our differences with a little wager,” says Max. He slows his truck. He stops his truck. The bandits hesitate. They’re suspicious, but eager to wager.

Max gets out. He sets his frog down on the ground.

“Just a little demonstration,” says Max. “To whet your appetite.”

He points at the frog. “Jump!” he says.

The frog looks at him. It croaks inquisitively.

“Well,” says Max, “about six feet, for now.”

The frog looks out across the blasted desert wasteland. It tilts its head to one side, then the next. A dandelion, blown from a distant child’s grave, floats by. The frog jumps over the dandelion. It’s a long, low jump, six feet in length. It lands.

“Gyaa!” exclaim various Thunder Bandits. They draw back in consternation. “That frog is not natural!”

“It’s mutated,” says Max. “By the apocalypse. It happens to a lot of frogs.”

The frog hangs its head. Brrrrp, it croaks sadly.

“I’m sorry,” says the Thunder Bandit chieftain to the frog.

The bandits gather together. They whisper among themselves. Then they say, “We will take your challenge. We will pit our frog against yours, with your life and the gasoline in your truck as the stakes. Also, we will offer a decorative cup. But you shall not prevail!”

“Come,” snaps Max. The frog jumps into his arms and cuddles there. He turns his attention to the bandits. “Lead on.”

The Thunder Bandits take him to their home. It is a dome. Their children live there. Also, their elderly and their frogs.

“We will hold this contest in the morning,” says the chieftain. “Please leave your frog in the holding pen.”

“Of course,” says Max. He puts his frog in the frog pens. He goes and has a good night’s sleep. In the middle of the night, the Thunder Bandits sneak to the frog pen. They feed Max’s frog pellets of depleted uranium. Soon Max’s frog is large and bulgy. It attempts to hop. It is sluggish. Its stomach clanks. It sits down uncomfortably and begins a furious process of digestion.

Dawn rises over the blasted cliffs. A butterfly, born from its cocoon on the day of the apocalypse, flutters down to rest on a nearby leaf. Max’s frog eats it. Thwip!

“The rules are simple,” says the bandit chieftain. He gestures to an arena hastily assembled from chicken wire. “Two frogs enter. One frog leaves!”

The other Thunder Bandits chant. “TWO FROGS ENTER. ONE FROG LEAPS!”

“The frog that leaves,” clarifies the bandit chieftain, “shall be the one that jumps farthest.”

“That’s fair,” says Max.

“TWO FROGS ENTER! ONE FROG LEAPS!”

Max picks up his frog. It takes him several tries. He frowns. “Hey, have you been gaining weight?”

Brrrrp, the frog answers. Its tone is apologetic.

Max puts his frog in the arena. The Thunder Bandits do the same with theirs. They snicker behind their hands, then go back to chanting.

“TWO FROGS ENTER! ONE FROG LEAPS!”

The Thunder Bandit’s frog jumps. It’s a pretty good jump.

“Jump,” says Max. “About . . . eighteen feet.”

The frog’s stomach pulses. It’s thinking about it. It’s considering the matter. Then it jumps.

There’s a terrible silence, and a terrible light.

There’s a croak, and then a pause.

The Thunder Bandit chieftain throws his hat onto the ground. He stomps on it. “A pox,” he cries, “on all uranium-powered frogs!”

“The radiation never comes out of the carpet,” Max agrees.

“Did you fetch the morning eggs, Danielle?”

Danielle holds her hands over the breakfast table. They are cupped together. She separates them. Rubies fall. Sapphires too, and emeralds. Seven gems, and an egg.

“I see.” Her wicked stepmother narrows her eyes. “The hens have not lain eggs properly in several days.”

“I feed them the normal feed, mother.”

Danielle’s wicked stepmother is named Glory. She clicks her sharp fingernails on the table.

“Danielle,” Glory says, “these gems are very fine, but what may I eat for breakfast?”

“Perhaps they are edible,” says Danielle. She taps a ruby. It rings, lightly, like a bell.

“I should have the wealthiest chamberpot in the world,” Glory says, “and not be full from it.”

“Mother?”

Glory shakes her head. “It is no matter. I shall have bread and cheese. Clean the cinders, Danielle. They are a disgrace.”

Danielle curtsies. She goes to the closet. She takes out a broom and a pan. She holds the broom at her left side like a sword. She leaves the room and goes to the fireplace. The room is full of cinders and ash. They are being fanned onto every surface and every wall by seven cinder pixies. In the center of the room stands the cinder troll.

“I’ve been sent to clean this up,” she says.

The troll looks her up and down. He snorts. “You’re not much,” he says.

Her right hand crosses her body and takes the broom’s hilt. In a long circular motion, she brings the broom up and around until its bristles face the troll. Her left hand joins her right at the broom’s base. The broom is heavy, held in this fashion, but her arms do not tremble. “I am whom my mother sent.”

The cinder pixies go still. The troll looks her up and down.

“It’s my right,” says the troll, “as a cinder troll, to push the cinders out into the room.”

“And mine, to sweep them back.”

The troll hesitates. “Perhaps,” he says, “one quarter of the room in soot, and three parts clean.”

Danielle closes her eyes. She thinks. Then she opens them. “They say that every one of us lives seven lives,” she says.

“Aye.”

“And that we should be kind to those we meet. For anyone may have been one’s mother, in another life, or one’s father, or one’s child. One’s lover, or one’s friend.”

“That’s wise,” says the cinder troll.

“In another life,” says Danielle, “I believe that we were friends. For there is a light in your eyes that my soul knows. But in this life, I have a duty, and I must drive you back.”

She steps forward. The troll steps back.

She steps forward. The troll is still. Then he reaches behind him to the fireplace and draws forth a poker, and takes it in his great strong hands.

They duel.

“I had not thought,” says the troll, “that Glory would have a loyal servant.” He is breathing lightly though Danielle’s lungs burn. Each clash of poker and broom makes her arms ache.

“She is my mother,” Danielle says.

“That,” says the troll, “cannot be so.”

Cinders in the air swirl into Danielle’s mouth, and she chokes. Her eyes water. The troll strikes, the poker winging her shoulder, and her left arm goes numb. She falls backwards. The troll does not advance. After a moment, he holds out his hand to help her up. She takes it. She backs away. She reassumes her stance.

“She has taken me in,” Danielle admits. “The mother of my birth is gone.”

“Ah, so.”

“My true mother went adventuring,” Danielle says. “To find a lost prince, they sent out seven maidens; to find each lost maiden, they sent out seven princes; and for seven princes lost, seven maidens each; and so in progression were all the heroes lost, and my mother among them. And I was left behind.”

The troll feints, then brings the poker around hard. The broom cracks, though it does not break. The poker lunges for Danielle’s face, and she steps back.

“And why have you not gone?” asks the troll.

She looks at him. She does not answer, for she does not know. Slowly, she brings the broom back to her side. She sets her feet. Her eyes burn.

“Are you surrendering?” the troll asks.

Danielle shakes her head.

“Then we will end this now,” says the troll.

“May we be friends again,” says Danielle, “when next we meet.”

The troll steps forward. There is tension in the great muscles of his arm.

Danielle’s shout splits the air and makes the cinder pixies flutter. She strikes. There is a crack like the breaking of the world. She is past the troll in a single motion, stumbling to a stop, kneeling in the ashes, and her broom is nothing but splinters.

The troll falls, and the room is clean.

Jane is sad. She looks down at her homework. She sniffles. Then she looks suspicious. Her hand snaps out. She grabs the air.

“Martin!” she shouts. “I’ve caught a blue!”

He shouts back something incomprehensible from his room.

Jane thinks about this. “‘I’m working!’” she says, imitating Martin’s intonation. “‘Put on your blues goggles and don’t bug me.’”

She nods to herself. “Yeah, that!”

Something squirms in her hand. She reaches around with her other hand and finds her blues goggles. (They’re like ordinary goggles, but bluesier.) She puts them on.

“Aha!” she says.

The blue in her hand is little and globular. It has five limbs, like a starfish or a giraffe. It is wearing camo that makes it look like a blue-green, but Jane isn’t fooled.

“You’re a blue! And blues cause all sorts of trouble.”

The blue hangs its head.

“Do you know how many people have written bad poetry because of you? Or killed themselves? Or stayed alive, but not really living any more, just some kind of shambling shell that doesn’t even know how to hope or care?”

The blue’s eyes shimmer with what looks like repentance—but it isn’t! It’s actually sullen resentment that it’s been caught.

“I’m sorry,” says Jane, and she smiles. There is a moment of terrible light.

Jane stands up. She dusts off her hand. She goes to the door. She takes her coat off the door. She calls, “I’m going out, okay?”

Martin shouts something incomprehensible.

Jane hypothesizes, “‘Discard leftover broccoli—for great justice!’”

Martin issues a short, sharp rejoinder, followed by an interrogative.

“I’m going to chase away the blues,” Jane explains.

There is a mumble. Jane nods firmly, goes to the foyer, puts on her boots, and goes outside. She smiles.

They are everywhere. The blues are in the sky. In the air. In the trees. Caught in the light of that smile, they burn. They are flushed from their foxholes, from their nests, from the earth and the sky.

They die screaming.

It is a terrible sound, but not a sound that the ear can hear.

She walks around the house, and the yard, and comes back in.

“You missed a tragedy,” she calls, hanging her coat back up.

Martin emerges from his room. He dusts off his hands.

“Wait, what?” he asks.

Kestrel enters Atmosphere Station. It sits atop the planet’s atmosphere. The air is thick enough that its atoms brush against her now and again. Atmosphere Station is shockingly enclosed, with material in every direction. Great struts of matter stretch from one side to another. The technicians cling to the struts, save for one who gibbers in the corner, and one, named Billy, who glides towards her.

“Ah,” says Billy. “You must be the savant.”

She smiles to him. She eddies towards him. She shines across her identification.

“Honored,” he says.

“It’s overwhelming,” she says, looking around.

He grins at her. “Wait’ll you see the planet.”

She gulps. She can’t help it. “It’s real? I mean, people really . . . live . . . down there?”

“I’ve been down there myself,” he says, smugly.

She stares at him.

“You’re wondering,” he says, “how anyone could survive at the bottom of an atmosphere, right?”

“It’s got to be at least ten pounds per square inch,” she says. “You’d pop like a balloon!”

“Fifteen,” he says. “And that’s the least of the problems we’ve had to solve, here at the Planet Project.”

He leads her over to an enclosure. He gestures inwards. She hesitates.

“It’s all right,” he says. “You won’t be in there that long.”

So she floats in, and he seals the exits all around her.

“Strange,” she says. She taps on one wall.

“What we do,” he says, “is make a kind of . . . second skin . . . for you. Like clothing. Out of a thick layer of organic material.”

Small bits of matter begin to mist into the enclosure. Kestrel looks horrified.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like you’re surrounded. It feels . . . it feels like you’ve grown another epidermis. Does that make sense? Like a new layer made out of meat.”

She closes her eyes. She waits.

“I feel so heavy,” she says.

“It’s just beginning,” he says.

“I’m not going to fill out this whole enclosure, am I?” she says.

“‘Space suit,’” he says. He makes quote marks around the words. “It’s so your new skin can survive in the vacuum of space.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she says.

“Not at all.”

She gingerly opens one eye. She looks down. She stifles an outcry. “I’m huge.”

“Not really,” he says, judiciously. “Just thick.”

“So,” she says hesitantly. “Is it always this . . . this bad?”

“No,” says Billy. “Most people go nuts with fear the first few times through. You’re holding up admirably.”

“It’s not skin,” she says.

“It has to be,” he says. “Just think of it as an outer skin. Otherwise you’ll get sick.”

“Right,” she says. She braces herself. She thinks. “Um, . . .”

“Billy,” he says.

“Billy,” she says. “Am I going to have to wear this the whole time?”

“Sorry.”

“I see.” Her voice is faint. She looks down again. Counting the suit, she concludes, she’s at least six inches from front to back. She wiggles an arm. It moves sluggishly, like a tiny meteor. Thick bunches of organic material twitch and provide its motive force.

“And everyone does this,” she says, “down there?”

“Everyone,” he says. “Even Dr. Karpov.”

She takes a deep breath. She can feel her great matter-coated chest moving in and out. “It’s not so strange,” she tells herself. “It’s not so unusual.”

“Wow,” Billy says. “You really are a savant.”

“What?” she asks.

“Nevermind,” he says. “I’ll send you down.”

Descending through the atmosphere is a complicated process. Her new body is strong against pressure but still vulnerable to friction during the descent into the atmosphere. Billy escorts her, ’space suit’ and all, to a large enclosed vehicle.

“It’s like I’m wearing layers,” she laughs. He looks a bit perturbed, then shrugs.

“Yes,” he says. Then the station lowers the vehicle slowly into the atmosphere.

She watches. It’s insanity-making, the watching. Outside the vehicle, she can see layers of air getting thicker and thicker as she falls.

“Surrounded,” she mumbles. “Everywhere, surrounded.”

She looks up at the sun.

“Hey,” she says, tuning in to Billy’s signal. “Hey. I can’t eat. I can’t eat.”

There’s an amused noise. “Everyone says that,” he answers. “It’s normal. Your body’s actually equipped to eat organic material and turn it into energy.”

“. . . Organic material?”

“Yup,” he says.

“Like my new skin?”

Horrific visions of a world of cannibals play through her head. She imagines Dr. Karpov leaping on her as she lands and somehow devouring her skin, leaving her naked against the monstrous pressure of the planet below.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “That’d be way too gross. We make special ‘hate food’.”

“Hate food?”

“It’s like your skin,” he says, “but it’s made out of icky evil things. Arthropods and grass and such. So it’s not like you!”

“Hm,” she says.

“They’re really icky,” he says. “I promise. We looked hard for the things that most deserved to be turned into energy.”

“Okay,” she says, relaxing.

The vehicle thumps into the ground. She is shocked to discover that she does not bounce from the floor—her new body, she concludes, must have a weight measurable in dozens of pounds.

The enclosure opens. She walks out onto the planet.

“You must be Kestrel,” says a man. She thinks he’s a man. It’s hard to tell, with his meat body and all.

“Kestrel!” shouts another. He leaps on her. She shrinks back, but he is only touching her hand, her head, her leg. There is a shock of recognition.

“Ember?” she says.

“Ha!” says Ember. He holds out his hand to the other man. “I told you she’d guess.”

The other man, like someone grumpily paying off a wager, hands over an object.

“Ember?”

“It’s me, Kestrel.” He grins. “I heard they were sending you. I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t think I’d get to see you again for years.”

She touches his hand. She touches his head. “I . . .” She frowns. “There’s no way to kiss in these things, is there.”

“Nope,” he says. “Not in an atmosphere.”

“Or . . .”

He laughs. “You get used to it,” he says. “Kestrel, Kestrel, Kestrel, this is Dr. Karpov. He’s leading the project.”

She looks Dr. Karpov over. He is thick and meaty, like herself and Ember. He has some kind of black growth on his face, and strange spots all over his skin.

“Dr. Karpov,” she says.

He smiles at her. She can tell. It’s a smile.

“Yes,” he says. “You are indeed a savant. To adjust so quickly.”

She laughs. Then she frowns.

“Your skin has dots,” she says. “Mine and Ember don’t.”

“It’s the invisible killer,” he says. “Come. I will take you to my sunbathing spot. We will speak of it.”

“Sunbathing?” she says.

He does not answer. He simply leads her towards the settlement. She reaches its edge and looks down and gasps.

“It goes down,” she says. “Forever!”

“Psychologically,” says Dr. Karpov, “we depend on the sun and on its radiation. That’s why we need a deep city like this.”

The city of the Planet Project was a great deeps like a crater carved into the planet’s crust. Its edges were smooth and gentle, but Kestrel judges that its center is at least three hundred feet down. Line walkways and bubble buildings spread across the crater in a giant web, carefully positioned to ensure that no place in the entire deeps is entirely hidden from the sun.

“But,” she says. “The planet’s rotation . . .”

“It is slow,” says Dr. Karpov. “We must move between different deeps as the planet turns, ensuring that we are always in the sun. Incidentally, you may remove the space suit.”

“Ah!” she cries, in relief. She begins trying to escape the enclosure. Then she frowns.

“Wait,” she says. “How?”

Ember steps close. He pushes two indentations at the side of her suit, simultaneously. The enclosure falls apart. He touches her arm again.

“Welcome to the planet,” he says.

“So,” says Kestrel. “Tell me about this invisible killer.”

“It’s why you’re here,” says Dr. Karpov. He points at one hand, using the other. “Something in this world is poisoning us. Our biological bodies develop these strange spots, sicken, and die.”

“Just the bodies?” laughs Kestrel. “Just these second skins? That’s not much of a killer!”

Ember frowns at her. Dr. Karpov makes a wry face. He reclines back on the rock, looking up at the sun.

“One of our interns,” he says, “failed to recognize the body’s degeneration in time. He abandoned it too late, and could not reach Atmosphere Station in time.”

“Oh,” she says.

“We had Peskin studying the matter,” Dr. Karpov says. “Regrettably, he went mad.”

“Mad?”

“He threw his research to the bottom of the deeps,” says Dr. Karpov. “Then he retreated to Atmosphere Station, where he sits in the corner and gibbers. It is not productive.”

“Ah,” she says.

“That is why we need a savant,” says Dr. Karpov. “None of us can retrieve his research. It is simply . . . too deep.”

“Wait,” she says. “You want me to go to the . . . to the bottom of the deeps? The pressure must be . . .”

“Scarcely greater than the surface,” says Dr. Karpov, dismissively.

“That’s insane,” she says flatly.

“You are adaptable,” says Dr. Karpov. “Are you not? You are skilled at handling unusual situations and stressors. Are you not?”

Kestrel sighs. “So my psychological evaluation says.”

“Then,” says Dr. Karpov, “I recommend that you lay beside me on this rock, and gather in the light of the sun the strength you need to face the darkness.”

“Oh,” she says.

“That is sunbathing,” says Dr. Karpov.

“It’s too hot for me,” says Ember. “My biobody complains!”

“Ember,” laughs Kestrel. “You can’t possibly dislike the . . .”

“Too hot,” he says, stuffily. “I’ll just go get your deeps ropes ready.”

She rests there for a while, staring up at the sun. “It’s so far away.”

“We’re working on fixing that,” says Dr. Karpov. “Taking away the ozone in the atmosphere that keeps the best of the radiation at bay.”

“But I still wouldn’t be able to eat it,” she says.

“No,” he admits. “Just hate food. But you could leave it out to absorb the sun’s power.”

“Hm!” says Kestrel. “That sounds yummy.”

Dr. Karpov snorts.

A dreamy time passes. Then she rises to her body’s feet. “All right,” she says. “I’m ready.”

“Already?” he says.

Kestrel bangs her chest with one fist. “It’s my job, sir!”

He laughs. “Then go find Ember. He’ll connect you to a rope to lower you all the way.”

This is what it is like to descend into the deeps.

The first thing Kestrel notices are shadows. They are small. They are not like the shadows planets and moons cast through space. They are little shadows, cast by the struts and the bubbles of the deeps. They are strangely warm—not much colder than the air around her. But they make her shiver.

The second thing Kestrel notices as she descends is how much is around her. There are the walkways of the deeps on every side, but beyond that, walls of rock. There are no gaps. They loom great in every direction but up.

“They’re . . . a planet,” she says, to Ember far above.

“What?”

“I’m inside a planet. There’s a planet on every side.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “This is just a deeps.”

“But . . .”

“Please, Kestrel.” Ember sounds nauseated. “It’s just a deeps. The walls are just enclosure. The planet is . . . up. Out. Not really here.”

“I guess,” she says.

She goes deeper. The crisscrossing shadows grow deeper.

Suddenly, she is enclosed on every side. She screams.

“What is it?” Ember asks.

“Ember!” she says. “There’s no . . . there’s no sky, just . . . just . . . stone!”

“There’s a sky,” he says. “See? You can talk to me. That means there’s a path for radiation to travel.”

“There’s no sky.”

“Can you see?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Can you see?”

“I guess,” she says.

“Then there’s sunlight.”

“But it’s so dark,” she says. “And there’s so much matter. I’m in matter.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “You’re my Kestrel.”

“Right,” she says. “Right.”

She goes deeper.

At the bottom of the deeps, she sees it. It is a data disk. It is wedged in a crack in the ground that, Kestrel thinks, must lead all the way to the center of the planet. She reaches for it.

“I’m hungry,” she says.

“Your body can’t be hungry yet.”

“Not it. Me,” she says. “I’m hungry.”

There is something burning in her, something yearning, something crying out for the sun. “I have to eat,” she whimpers.

“Do you see the disk?”

“I see it,” she says.

“Can you take it?” says Ember. “If you take it, then I can pull you back up.”

“I . . .”

She reaches for it. And in that moment, she understands.

“No,” she says. “No. I won’t.”

“What?”

“I won’t bring it back up,” she says. “You have to pull me up without it.”

“Don’t go nuts on me now, Kestrel,” Ember says. “Come on. You’ve made it this far.”

“I can’t,” Kestrel says. “I know what it says. I know what it has to say. I know why he went mad. Pull me up. I have to speak to him.”

So he reels her in. He bids her farewell with a touch. He sends her up to the station. She strips off her flesh until she is bare. Then she floats to Peskin.

“Peskin,” she says gently. “I have been to the deeps.”

Peskin gibbers.

“I know what you found out,” she says. “I know what it must have been.”

Peskin does not look up.

“It is not right,” she says. “But I think it must be this. That these second skins of ours. These organic bodies. They long for that deeps. They hunger for it like we hunger for the sun.”

Now there is silence.

“The sun is killing them, isn’t it?” she asks.

“No,” Peskin says. He shakes his head vigorously. “It’s impossible. It’s not a possible thing.”

“Radiation,” she says. “It’s somehow . . . getting into the biology. Messing it up.”

“Not possible,” says Peskin. “It’s like every angel in the stars was a devil now.”

“It’s all right,” she says. She touches him. “I won’t tell them.”

He looks up. He’s haunted.

“I’ll tell them to make something inorganic to keep around them,” she says. “To absorb the sun. And they’ll never need to know why.”

“You can’t keep this secret,” says Peskin. “It’s too big.”

“Just for a little while,” she says. “Just until . . . people get more used to the bodies. Until they can accept it.”

“Sunlight kills,” Peskin whimpers.

“We’ll figure something out,” Kestrel says. “We will!”

But Peskin is silent. He does not believe!

The joy thing is shaped like a fuzzy barrel: white, fluffy, and stout. A cowboy hat is canted on its head. A trenchcoat flutters about it. Its deelyboppers wobble.

“. . . it is an embarrassment to Washington,” seethes Cabinet Member Steve, “that such a thing should represent us. In the minds of the world, it is an American symbol, an American thing, because it chooses to fight for us. We are disgraced.”

“Perhaps,” says the President, folding his hands, “we can shoot it into the sun.”

“If we only could!” cries Cabinet Member Steve.

This is the hoary, dusty temple of the crocodile god. Susannah sprawls on its altar. Seventy worshippers in robes surround her, chanting profound and foul spells. The doors are great stone slabs, marred by weather. The walls are rimed with vines. The leader of the cultists lifts his knife and catches the light with it, his eyes growing sterner as he readies himself to bring it down.

BANG.

The doors slam open wide. Beyond them is the evening sky, the forest ground, the fading sun. In them, wrapped in a numinous limning of gossamer light, the joy thing stands.

“It’s not nice to stab people without permission,” says the joy thing.

Its trenchcoat flutters in a strange and sudden wind.

The head cultist looks up. He snarls behind his hood. He says, “It is godly and sacred, however. If you happen to worship the crocodile god. Which I do.”

The joy thing unlimbers its hat. The head cultist’s hands clench around the knife. The joy thing hurls the hat. It spins through the air and raps the knife from the head cultist’s hand.

Then cries the joy thing, “Alasta pampilenen!”

The heat of joy and brightness fills the room, and the chaunts that were chaunted to the crocodile god are chaunted no more.

The Embassy for Things stands beside the Canadian Embassy. Reporters seethe outside its door. The necessity thing comes out.

“Ambassador,” cries one reporter, “do you have a statement on the joy thing affair?”

The necessity thing’s voice has the sound of scratching chalk. “We do not consider the allegations against the joy thing substantive, but we are cooperating fully with Washington’s investigation. We have taken America’s request for a withdrawal of the joy thing’s diplomatic immunity under consideration.”

The great Nazi airship drifts ponderously across the sky. Its sides are blazoned with the symbols of the Reich. Its belly is swollen great with bombs.

The pilots are kicked back in their seats. One is halfway through a joke. “The second says, ‘The queen, she is impenetrable!’ And the third shakes his head vigorously. ‘No, no! That’s not it! She is impregnable!’”

This is translated from the German for your benefit, as the pilots laugh.

There is a thump. The joy thing has fallen from a biplane onto the window in front of them. It is hanging on to its hat with one hand and to a hook imbedded firmly in the glass with another. It smiles to them.

“When people ask you to be a Nazi,” it says, “just say no!”

There is a long frozen moment. Then, suddenly, both pilots are on their feet.

“Emergency! Emergency!” they shout in translated German. “It’s the joy thing!”

Joy and brightness wash over them.

The explosion of the zeppelin can be seen for more than one hundred and fifty miles. The pilots and the passengers drift down on their parachutes like so much tiny soot.

“What will happen to it?” asks the necessity thing.

Agent Pullet shrugs. “Its adventuring will be . . . curtailed.”

One thuggee is strangling Mr. Jenkins. The other is strangling his omelette. Thuggees like strangling things.

“Please,” whispers Mr. Jenkins. “Please, I have a family.”

“Ha ha,” laughs the thuggee. “We will send them your head!”

“And these hashed browns,” says the other thuggee. “I don’t like Denny’s hashed browns at all.”

“Please,” says Mr. Jenkins. Then his eyes close and he sags back.

A waitress approaches. She is carrying a silver tray. On the tray is the joy thing.

“Kali save us!” cry the thuggees, strangling cords falling from their hands.

“You shouldn’t play with your food,” declares the joy thing. “Alasta pampilenen!”

The food at that Denny’s is surprisingly good, even today.

“I don’t understand,” says the joy thing.

“You are requested,” the lawyer thing says, “to appear before the secret tribunal in seven days. If you don’t, you will be hunted down, locked in a box, and thrown in a volcano, in accordance with the terms of the Compassion and Conscience Legislation.”

“Helltrousers,” the joy thing slowly blasphemes.

The kitten is drowning. It is sinking beneath the quicksand and drowning.

“Take my hand!” shouts Angus. But the kitten can’t hear him, doesn’t understand, or possibly just doesn’t have the strength.

Angus lets out a little more line. He inches closer to the kitten. His line snaps. Angus and the kitten go down.

There is a silence.

Then they are rising, the three of them, Angus, kitten, and joy thing alike, rising through the quicksand and muck. The joy thing has puffed into a giant fuzzy ball, increasing its buoyancy. They cling to its fur.

“Sure is a good thing you were swimming around in that quicksand,” Angus says. “This kitten and I might have been goners!”

“Don’t play in quicksand,” the joy thing says.

Then it turns. It walks away.

“Hey!” says Angus. “Hey! Are you okay? You didn’t do that, um, that alasta thing.”

The joy thing is gone.

“I have done only good,” says the joy thing. “I have sought only justice. It is not my fault that my public image is not suitable for your cause.”

“In these days,” says Agent Pullet, gently and heavily, “a thing is not a thing, but what others see in it. You will be fired from a cannon into the heart of the sun, in accordance with provision 81 of the CCL.”

“Fudgeweasels,” swears the joy thing, unable to find the words to convey the immensity of its feelings, scatology and blasphemy alike deserting it in this moment of its greatest need.

They load the joy thing into the cannon.

They swivel the cannon to face the sun.

“The sun isn’t a toy,” says the joy thing. “Don’t shoot things into it!”

The cannon fires, and that is the end.

Sometimes, when the sun is shining, remember the joy thing. It is still up there. Its deelyboppers are aflame. Its fur is burning. It is not alive and so it cannot die, and it loves you.

It would wish you well.

The S. S. Oublient rocks and weaves in space.

Candace’s fingers dance over the controls. “It’s the comet, Captain,” she says. “It’s spamming our navigation servers with a denial of service attack!”

“Damn it!” snaps Captain Bart. “Throw up a firewall and take course alpha!”

Candace hesitates, then slams her fist down on the red glowing FIREWALL button. There is a clunk and a clank deep in the ship.

“It’s jammed! We’re losing web presence!”

“Roll!”

Candace spins the ship. It rolls in a great arc through space. Bart and Candace are slammed back and forth. Sparks jump from the control panels.

“We’re almost out of its gravitational well,” Candace says.

Bart grips the arms of his chair.

“Pull!”

The ship wobbles away from the comet and towards a great blue-and-orange world.

Slowly, Bart and Candace relax.

“Damage report,” Bart says.

“It’s bad, Captain. We’re going to need to put down on the planet for repairs.”

“Impossible,” says Bart. “The Prime Directive—”

Candace looks wry. “Captain, I use the word ‘need’ advisedly.”

“Ah,” Bart says. “Landing inevitable?”

“Landing inevitable,” Candace agrees. “Power cells are rapidly approaching deprecation.”

“Right,” Bart says.

He straightens.

“Dress uniforms, then. Let’s look sharp for the natives.”

Time passes.

“I’ve got the planet on the line, sir.”

Bart stands. His shiny blue carapace-like uniform gleams.

“Citizens of Cebulai,” he says. “I am Captain Bart of the starship Oublient. Requesting permission to land.”

There is static.

“Working on visual,” Candace mutters.

A mellifluous female voice answers. “Oublient, Oublient, permission denied. This is a class-A restricted planet. Unbelievers are forbidden diplomatic and other contact.”

“This is an emergency situation,” says Bart.

“Permission denied, Oublient.”

“If you will not grant us permission to land,” says Bart, “we will be forced into landing without it. If diplomatic contact is forbidden, surely diplomatic incidents are even less desirable?”

The static on the viewscreen momentarily resolves into the image of a breathtaking woman in one of the demure, modest outfits prevalent in the distant future. Raven hair hangs down her back, and her eyes are green.

“Captain Bart, we cannot comply.”

Bart gives her his best Captain’s smile. “Surely—”

The woman bites her lip. He can hear her indecision in the static as the image flickers out.

In a soft, low whisper, she says, “Coordinates beta-alpha-78-odango. Tell no one of this.” Then, louder, she says, “Oublient, Oublient, permission denied.”

“Well,” says Bart, smoothing his uniform. “Let’s go—landing!”

The ship plummets through the sky onto a landing pad. It burns red, then white, then red, then ceases to burn; and its landing is almost gentle, though the whole ship shudders.

“What’s the web like out there?”

“Primitive, Captain,” Candace says. “Spam subintelligent, micropayments inactive, and an extremely high signal to noise ratio. It is not yet September.”

“Local adware contained?”

“We’re not going to leak, Captain. No worries.”

“Then let’s go—diplomacy!”

The e-ramp descends from the ship. The lights of the landing field flick on. Captain Bart descends, with Lieutenant Candace behind him.

There are military and diplomatic personnel gathered in the launch area to greet them. Bart scans the group. The woman he saw earlier stands among them, but has shrunk back in silence.

One man steps forward. He is clothed in formal black.

“I am Spaceport Reverend Price,” he says.

“Captain Bart,” says Bart. “I apologize for this intrusion upon your world. If you give us an opportunity to make repairs and download updates to our power cells—”

S.R. Price holds up his hand.

“It is of no matter,” he says. “I see that you are unenlightened folk. Be welcome to our world. Perhaps you shall be the vehicle by which the Good News spreads to your people.”

“Pardon?” Bart asks.

“In our Utopian society,” S.R. Price explains, “we long ago realized that accepting the basic premises of fundamentalist evangelical religion was best for believer, nonbeliever, and agnostic alike. We are a futuristic planet in this regard.”

“Oh!” says Bart, surprised. “I see.”

“It is our highest mission to bring all peoples into alignment with the love and mercy of God.”

There is a burst of static from S.R. Price’s lapel. There is a silver button there. Price presses the button and listens.

The button is a transceiver. Someone on the far end says, “I believe that God has spoken to me. I believe that He knows, as I know, as you know, that it is time for the wickedness of New Babel to end. Please, if you are a good and just man, you know that you must launch the spaceport missiles at once.”

“Of course,” S.R. Price says.

He gestures to one of the waiting crowd, who scurries off.

“It has led to a creation of an enlightened moral culture where all people come together under the blessed love of the Almighty,” S.R. Price says.

“We are eager to know more of this culture,” says Bart. “On Earth, there have been many attempts to realize a practical fundamentalist evangelical government, but they have so far proven unsuccessful.”

“Excellent,” says S.R. Price.

Bart looks at him. He looks at Bart. There is a silence.

S.R. Price says, “One of the principal moral tenets of our religion is the understanding that first contact is only acceptable for purposes of reproduction.”

“Ah,” says Bart.

Music begins to play.

Boom-shaka-boom-shaka-shaka-boom-alleluia.

Boom-shaka-boom-boom-shaka-shaka-boom-shaka-gloria excelsis!

“May we, um, I mean, do we, um, who?” Bart ventures.

But two of the crowd are already advancing towards them. One is the raven-haired woman, smiling softly, and even now taking Bart’s hand. The other is a rugged square-jawed military hero. He smiles at Candace.

Candace, fiddling with her iCorder, does not notice the advancing man. She mumbles, “I’m not picking up any missile launch, Captain—”

Then she looks up.

“Oh!”

Candace’s eyes are round, and not displeased.

“Let’s go—smoochies,” suaves Captain Bart.

Boom-shaka-shaka-boom-all-e-e-luuuu-ia.

The woman leads Bart into the spaceport seraglio. She closes the door behind them, in a room filled with sparkly silver pillows and gossamer curtains.

“Do you need me to introduce you to the Earth-concept called love?” Bart asks. “Or is your culture . . . advanced?”

“Shh,” the woman says, flatly.

She takes out a small device. It has antennae. It beeps twice.

“All right,” she says. “We’re safe here.”

“No smoochies?”

Bart’s voice is profoundly disappointed.

“My name is Jasmine,” the woman says. “I am part of the space rebellion. I stood up for you. I guided you in. I will be punished for it in due course, no doubt—but what is done is done. You are here. Therefore, I must beg your help.”

“You’re . . . not a fundamentalist evangelical?”

There is the edge of a growl in her voice. “I’m Baptist,” she says. “I’m one of the real fundamentalist evangelicals. I believe in the real Bible that our civilization has so totally abandoned. The so-called Christians running this planet have begun reading their own beliefs into the Bible, completely forgetting its true meaning. That’s why they think Satan lives in the heart of this planet, when in fact he lives in the hearts of those who have forsaken God!”

“Oh,” says Bart.

“There are not many of us,” Jasmine says. “We are oppressed and must practice the art of Baptist ninjutsu to survive. For our holy war against evil, they curse us as enemies of the state. We need you, Bart. We need your technology. We need your space empire. Let us be frank. We need your nuclear robots.”

Bart looks sad.

Bart sits down amidst the shiny silver cushions.

“I knew this civilization was too utopian to be true,” he says. “But . . . I can’t help you. The Prime Directive insists on a strict separation of Church and Fleet.”

“Nothing?”

“No robots. No technology. I can only give you smoochies,” Bart says.

Jasmine looks down.

“I do not smooch those who are so mired in secular ways that they will not fight for Christ,” she says. “Though I wish . . .”

Jasmine shakes it off. “We must pray that this first contact miraculously results in a child without our actually having sex,” she decides. Then she walks out into the dark.

“But I like sex with alien women,” sulks Bart. He sighs. He waits a while, then stands up, and goes back to the ship.

“Hi, Bart!” carols Candace.

“Don’t rub it in,” he says.

“These are the sexiest fundamentalists ever,” Candace purrs. “So . . . confident of the will of . . . God.”

“Fine.”

She looks at him. “Aww,” she says. “No blessed event?”

“We totally sexed up the first contact for reproductive purposes and without sensual pleasure,” says Bart. “She’ll probably have octuplets. Babies everywhere. They’ll call me Great Father Bart. What’s the patch status?”

“72% complete—hey.”

“What?”

Candace points. Bart turns.

Jasmine is out on the landing field. There are other ninjas with her, most likely ninjas that accepted baptism as an adult and joined the priesthood of believers in accordance with Biblical law. And striding towards them is a man clad in the robes of the federal judiciary.

“It’s always this way,” sighs Candace. “We’re a flashpoint for cultural tension.”

“I am Judge Simeon!” declares the judge. “For your erroneous teachings God has delivered you into my hands!”

“We have never deviated from the law of God!” shouts Jasmine defiantly.

The judge falls into stance. He channels his Chi through his lifetime tenure—an impeccable defensive power! “I will show you my judicial activism fist!”

“Status?” Bart snaps.

“92% complete,” says Candace. “And frozen.”

“Hurry it up,” Bart says. “Hit the side of the ship or something.”

Candace thumps the console. “Download accelerating! 93%! 94%! 95%!”

Three ninjas circle the judge. (They are not here referred to as Baptist ninjas, because, while they consider themselves Baptists, Jasmine’s ninjas are hardened assassins who do not believe in justification by faith. That disqualifies them!) The ninjas employ their ninja magic without success. They attempt a united attack; Simeon, contemptuously, casts them stumbling back.

“She’s going to die,” Bart says.

A cold wind blows.

One ninja leaps. Judge Simeon puts his fist through the ninja’s brain.

“Damn it,” Bart swears. “The federal judiciary is completely out of control!”

“96%. 97% . . . 96%. 97 . . . 96%.”

“Damn it.”

Another ninja dies. Bart has a look of agony. Then he steps forward. He takes the blaster from his side. He concentrates. He takes aim.

“Captain,” Candace says. “The Prime Directive . . .”

Sweating and trembling, Bart fires. The weapon disrupts Judge Simeon’s Chi aura, stunning him for almost a second.

“Run, Jasmine!” Bart shouts. “Run!”

Judge Simeon’s war cry shakes the spaceport. Several ninja freeze in fear.

“97%. 98% . . . There!”

“It just skipped over the last two percent?”

“Come on! Let’s go!”

The S.S. Oublient lurches upwards into the air. Judge Simeon leaps after it, jumping onto a wall, then a girder, then the roof of a building, and finally leaping with one fist extended before him towards the ship itself.

“Engage hyperdrive!” snaps Bart.

Candace presses a button. The ship zooms away.

“What the hell kind of name is Oublient?” shouts Judge Simeon, as he falls back towards the planet.

Bart sits, limply.

They fly in space.

“It tested well against focus groups,” Bart says, after a while.

They fly in space.

“Was it worth it?” Candace asks. “To violate our most sacred oath, just to save a woman?”

“I don’t know,” Bart says. “She . . . made me wonder, you know. For a while, I thought . . . maybe there is a God, and maybe he does call people to fight against a Satan who lives not in the center of a planet but in people’s hearts.”

“Maybe,” says Candace.

There’s a space phenomenon ahead. Comets are flying from all over the sector to smash together into an ever-larger and ever-hotter mass.

“It’s the birth of a sun,” Candace says quietly.

“Wow,” says Bart.

“Google page rank, totally off the scale. Network activity, practically at sigop levels. Cold fusion is go,” Candace says. “I’m kicking the readings into a log file for the Fleet.”

Machines click. The iCorder whirrs. Something, somewhere, beeps.

Whoosh! The new sun ignites.

Bart and Candace stare out the window of their space ship for a while, and wonder.

Jinga the Sea Monster is wobbly and fierce. He is hideous and horrid. He sits in the Council beyond the Edge of the World and he judges.

“Woo-wobble-wobble,” he says, shaking himself. “Humanity is terrible and full of sin.”

His tendrils and his body shiver like jelly. If you could taste them, they’d taste more like offal than jelly, but there would be a bit of a sweet huckleberry sugary taste to them.

“Woo-wobble-wobble-wobble,” says Jinga the Sea Monster.

Then he gestures, with a slimy tentacle, at the Mirror of Sight!

The image in the mirror skims across the world of human life. It pauses briefly on Shelley, who is making brownies.

“DEE generate,” declares Jinga.

The mirror skims past Emily, who is in school, listening to her teacher and sometimes picking her nose.

“Sinful!” snaps Jinga.

The mirror finally settles in on Diane, who is sitting at a table, at a restaurant, out on her first date with John.

Lester the Adorable Earwig is a giant squiggly earwig. His nametag designates him adorable. He sits in the Council beyond the Edge of the World and he judges.

“How perfidious a creature is woman,” says Jinga.

“Ah-ah,” smiles Lester. “But is she more or less perfidious a creature than man?”

Jinga shivers. His body woo-wobble-wobbles softly. “That is a difficult one, Lester. Very difficult!”

Lester chitters smugly.

“I would say,” says Jinga, “that because a woman can become pregnant, she has more capacity for perfidy; and because humans in general exercise such capacities fully, that she is more perfidious—on the whole.”

Lester scowls. He had wanted to stump Jinga.

Pecuny is a silky ooze. There are bits of many colors in Pecuny. They are not admirably arranged.

Pecuny sits in the Council beyond the Edge of the World and he judges.

“These two,” Pecuny says. “Their minds are full of unworthy thoughts. Let us punish them.”

“Punish! Punish! Woo-wobble-wobble-wobble!” says Jinga.

“No!” says Lester. He is still sulking. “We have an arrangement. We cannot punish them until they are dead.”

“But look at how she is eating that breadstick,” says Pecuny. “And he! He is using the dinner fork for his salad!”

“Not until they are dead,” Lester says. He squiggles about in mild agitation. “We have rules. They may still redeem themselves while they’re alive, you know.”

“Pfah,” pfahs Pecuny.

“Lester is right,” says Jinga, sadly. “Look. She is muttering something. Can anyone read lips?”

Diane is leaning in towards John. She mutters, “Hey, I think we’re being watched by the Council beyond the Edge of the World.”

“Bugger,” says John.

“I think they’re talking about sex,” Lester says. He squints. His eyes are not very good, even though they’re faceted.

John eats another bite of salad. He uses the dinner fork again.

“Want to play a trick on them?” Diane says.

John suddenly grins. “Really? You have a radiator?”

“I do,” says Diane.

Lester leans back. “Well, that’s that. Judged and found unworthy. Let’s move on.”

Diane reaches into her purse. She subtly sets her radiator to evil.

“Wait,” says Jinga. He wobbles.

Diane picks up her salad fork, malevolently. She takes a bite of her salad. She chews. She chews her salad like each bite is a genocide.

“Woo-wobble-wobble!” says Jinga, in distress.

Diane licks her lips with filthy, horrid intent. She reaches for her water glass. She picks it up. She drinks it.

“Scum!” shouts Lester. “Scum! Scum! Scum!”

Lester does the earwig dance of absolute horror. It is not adorable at all.

Diane adjusts the radiator to encompass John.

“What’s it set to?” John asks. His voice is ripe with evil; there is good probability, Pecuny assesses, that he is even at that moment indwelt by the Devil.

“Evil,” Diane says. It is suddenly obvious to everyone who looks at her that she has never been baptized.

“Um, is that a good idea?” John frets, eyes bulging with selfish shortsightedness.

“Wait,” says Diane. She stretches out the torture. “Wait—”

“We must punish them now!” shrieks Pecuny. “Now! Now! N—erk.”

Diane has flipped the radiator to perfect good.

“Huh,” says Jinga.

There is a dead silence in the Council beyond the Edge of the World as Diane finishes her salad and pushes the plate back.

“Huh,” agrees Pecuny.

“Woo-wobble-wobble-wobble,” whispers Jinga, uncertainly.

“It is a miracle,” concludes Lester.

“Grace,” Jinga agrees.

“We are privileged to witness a miracle,” says Lester. “Because we ourselves are good.”

“Woo-wobble-wobble.”

“Yet—”

Diane grins. Her water glass in front of her lips, she says, “Now I’ll take the radiator out and dump it in the trash, and they’ll probably spend the rest of the day thinking about how wonderful trash is.”

“W00t,” says John, in the blessed fashion of the saints.

Diane walks out of the restaurant. She looks around. There is a public trash can on the other side of the street. She begins to cross.

“Woo-wobble-wobble!” cries Jinga. “That car! It will hit her!”

“It will end her perfect grace!” shouts Pecuny.

“This must not be!”

Jinga dives through the mirror and into the human world. The sound of the car as it strikes the sea monster is the sound of death come to huckleberry. There is Jinga splashed on the windshield and on Diane’s new suit and on Diane’s face.

Diane sprains her ankle as she falls.

In the modern day, people are very unrighteous. This was not true of the Ancient Kings. The Ancient Kings brought all things into accord with Heaven using their Ancient King Stare.

Now, the Ancient King Stare is the root of all virtue, and it stems from the root chakra. It is modulated through the symbol on the Ancient King’s chest and projects outwards to civilize society. The first Ancient King is the Duke of Zhou and his symbol denotes filial piety.

When the Duke of Zhou takes off his shirt and enacts the righteousness of his symbol, then the Ancient King Stare brings filial piety to all men. The feeling of affection develops in all offspring and they learn reverential awe for their father. The teachings of this sage, without being severe, are successful.

Upon the chest of the second Ancient King is the symbol for benevolence, or “ren.” This is in the shape of a very benevolent thing. Like a clam, but even more benevolent. Possibly some sort of large-hearted purple dinosaur. When men have no benevolence, they are discontent. Struck by the Ancient King Stare of the second Ancient King, a sense of benevolence towards all living things arises. This makes them content.

Upon the chest of the third Ancient King is the symbol for war. This is the symbol of King Wu. When King Wu takes off his shirt and enacts the righteousness of his symbol, then his Ancient King Stare brings war and trouble. Parents bury their children and all manner of calamities occur. In this fashion the Ancient King Stare of King Wu the Martial King renders all unfortunate things transitory.

These are the ways of the Ancient Kings. We do not have their like today.