s  time.
It  was  a white elephant. It became a regular subject in comic
monologues.
     The ship still had some value as scrap. Eventually someone
bought it and strapped on some  big  boosters  and  lowered  it
bodily  to  the  edge  of  Delambre, where it sits, stripped of
anything of worth, to this day.
     #
     The first thing I noticed about  the  Heinlein  during  my
explorations was that it was broken. That is to say, snapped in
half.  Built strongly to withstand the shocks of its propulsion
system, it had never been meant to land on a planet,  even  one
with  so  weak a gravity field as Luna. The bottom had buckled,
and the hull had ruptured about halfway back from the stem.
     The second thing I noticed was that, from  time  to  time,
lights  could  be  seen from some of the windows high up on the
hull.
     There were places where one could get inside.  I  explored
several of them. Most led to solidly welded doors. A few seemed
to go further, but the labyrinthine nature of the place worried
me.  I  made a few sorties trailing a line behind me so I could
find my way out, but during one I felt the  line  go  slack.  I
followed  it  back and couldn't determine if I'd simply tied it
badly or if it had been deliberately loosened. I made  no  more
entries  into the ship. There was no reason to suppose the girl
and anyone she lived with would wish me well. In fact,  if  she
did,  she  certainly  would  have contacted me by then. I would
have to resort to other tactics.
     I tried magnetic grapplers and  scaled  the  side  of  the
hull,  trying to reach the lighted ports. When I reached them I
was seldom sure I had the right one, and in any  case,  by  the
time I got there no light could be seen.
     It began to seem I was chasing ghosts.
     I got discouraged enough that, one Friday night, I decided
to stay  home  for  the  weekend.  I was getting quite big, and
while one-sixth gee must make it easier to carry a baby,  we're
none  of us as strong as our Earth-born ancestors were, and I'd
become prone to backaches and sore feet.
     So I decided to rent a rig and take a trip  to  Whiz-Bang,
the  new  capitol of Texas. Harry the blacksmith had just got a
new Columbus Phaeton-$58.00  in  the  Sears  catalog!--and  was
happy  to let me try it out. (Mail-order was our polite fiction
for  Modern-Made.  There  would  never  be  enough  disneys  to
manufacture  all the items one needs for survival, there's just
too many of them. Most of the things I owned had arrived on the
Wells-Fargo wagon, fresh from the computer-run  factories.)  He
hitched a dappled mare he assured me was gentle, and I took off
down the road.
     Whiz-Bang  is  in  the  eastern  part  of  the disney. The
interior  compresses  about  two   hundred   miles   worth   of
environment  into  a  bubble only fifty miles wide, so before I
got there I was into a new kind of  terrain  and  climate,  one
where there was more rainfall and things grew better. Purely by
chance  I  was  passing through at the height of the wildflower
season. I saw larkspur, phlox, Mexican hat, Indian  paintbrush,
cornflower,   and   bluebonnets.   Millions   and  millions  of
bluebonnets. I stopped the horse and  let  her  graze  while  I
spread  my  blanket  among them and ate a picnic lunch. I can't
tell you what a relief it was to get away from  the  foreboding
hulk  of the Heinlein and the bitter white rock of the surface,
and hear the song of the mockingbird.
     I pulled into Whiz-Bang around noon. It's  a  bigger  town
than  New  Austin--which  means it has five saloons and we have
two. They get more of the tourist trade, which New Austin  does
not  work  to  attract,  which means they have more small shops
selling authentic souvenirs, still the main means of livelihood
for two out of five Texans. I strolled the streets, nodding  to
the gentlemen who tipped their hats, stopping to look into each
shop   window.  The  merchandise  fell  into  four  categories:
Mexican, Indian, "Primitive West,"  and  Victorian.  The  first
three  were  all  hand-made  in  the  disney, certified genuine
reproductions-with  a  little   fudging:   "Indian"   artifacts
included items from all southwest tribes, not just Comanche and
Apache. But there were no totem poles and no plastic papooses.
     Suddenly I realized I was looking at the answer, if answer
there was. I was standing at the window of a toy shop.
     #
     I  felt  like  Santa  Claus  as I drove once more down the
mining road and across the rising rim of  Delambre  early  that
Sunday  morning.  I  certainly  had  a  sleighful of toys, in a
vac-sack tossed on the passenger seat. It was  about  two  days
past full noon.
     "On  Dasher,  on Dancer, on Prancer," I cried. The ride in
the country and the new plan of attack had buoyed  my  spirits,
which  had  been  at a low ebb. I stopped the rover and quickly
deployed the tent. I spoke not a word but went straight  to  my
work, setting out all my presents . . . oh, stop that, Hildy. I
laughed, which no doubt caused my big round belly to shake like
a bowl full of jelly.
     What  I'd  done  was first to make a Whiz-Bang toymonger a
very happy and much wealthier woman. She'd followed me  out  of
the  store, carrying my boxes of trifles, not quite kow-towing,
stowing them in the buggy for me. Then I'd driven back  to  New
Austin,  pausing  only  to pick a bunch of bluebonnets, which I
mailed to Cricket. No, I hadn't given up yet.
     I'd exercised little selection in the  toy  store,  ruling
out  only  the  ranks  of  lead soldiers and most of the dolls.
Somehow they just didn't feel right; maybe it was just personal
prejudice. But now I sweated the choice of  each  of  the  four
items I wanted to lure her with.
     First  was  a  tin-and-pewter wind-up of a horse pulling a
cart, brightly painted in reds and yellows.  All  little  girls
like horses, don't they?
     Next  was  a  half-meter  Mexican puppet in the shape of a
skeleton, made of clay and papiermbche' and corn husks. I liked
the way it clattered when I picked it  up,  dangling  from  its
five strings. It was old and wise.
     Then  a  Kachina doll, even older and wiser, though carved
and painted only months ago. I chose it over the sweeter, safer
white man's dolls, all porcelain and pouty lips  and  flounces,
because  it spoke to me of ancient secrets, unknown ceremonies.
It was as brashly pagan as my elusive sprite, she of the  funny
face.  Reading  up  on  it,  I found it was even better, as the
Kachinas were said to exist among the tribe, but invisible.
     And last, my most fortuitous find: a butterfly  net,  made
of  bent cane and gauze, with a glass Mason jar, wad of cotton,
and bottle of alcohol for the humane euthanizing of  specimens.
Just  the  sort of toy parents could put together for a pioneer
child, if the child had a biological bent.
     None of the toys would be much harmed by vacuum,  but  the
sunshine  on  the  surface  is  brutal,  so I placed them where
they'd stay in the shade, near the hull of  the  Heinlein,  and
arranged  little  lights  over  them so they'd be easy to find.
Then I went back to the tent.
     I didn't have much time to stay if I was to  be  back  for
Monday  classes, and I spent that time unprofitably. I couldn't
eat anything, and I couldn't read the book I'd brought along. I
was excited, worried, and a  little  depressed.  What  made  me
think this would work?
     So  in the end I struck the tent and took one last tour of
my little toy tableau, which once more was undisturbed.
     The next week was hell. Many times I  thought  of  looking
for  a substitute and getting the hell back. You want a measure
of my distraction? Elise caught me dealing  seconds,  and  it's
been seventy years since that had happened.
     But the week did crawl by, faster than any ordinary garden
slug,  and  Friday afternoon I turned the editorial chores over
to Charity with instructions to keep the libel  suits  down  to
three or four, and broke all records getting out to Delambre.
     #
     The  Kachina was gone. In its place was something I didn't
recognize at first, but quickly  realized  was  a  Navajo  sand
painting.  These  are made by dribbling different colored sands
onto the ground and they can be amazingly detailed and precise.
This one wasn't, but I appreciated the effort. It  was  just  a
stick  figure  Indian,  with  war  bonnet and a bow held in one
hand, a tipi in the background.
     She'd taken the  horse  and  carriage,  too,  and  left  a
vac-cage about the right size for taking your pet hamster for a
stroll  on the surface. But inside was a horse. A living horse,
ten centimeters high at the shoulder.
     I hadn't seen a horselet in years. Callie had given me one
for my fifth birthday, not as small as this one. Not long after
that people like David Earth had succeeded in getting that sort
of gene tinkering outlawed. You could still buy minis on Pluto,
but the most that was allowed on Luna these days were perpetual
puppies and kittens. When I was young you could still get  real
exotics, like winged dogs and eight-legged cats.
     Somehow  I  didn't  think this beast had been purchased on
Pluto. I held the cage up and tapped  on  the  glass,  and  the
horselet  looked back at me calmly. I wondered what I was going
to do with the damn thing.
     The butterfly equipment  didn't  seem  disturbed  until  I
looked at it more closely. Then I saw the monarch at the bottom
of  the jar, still, apparently dead. I put the jar in my pocket
for later examination, left the net where it was,  and  hurried
on  to  find that my last offering had been taken. The skeleton
puppet was gone, and where it had been was a scrap of paper.  I
picked it up and read the word "thanks," written in pencil.
     #
     I  pondered  all  this  on  the drive back to King City. I
didn't know whether to be encouraged or crestfallen.  Three  of
my  toys  had  been  taken,  and three other toys left in their
place. I had never expected this. My hope had been to gradually
lure her out with gifts; the idea of trading had never  entered
my mind.
     So it was good that I had finally made contact, of a sort.
At least, I hoped it was she who had left the horse, butterfly,
and painting.  It  was still possible another sort of prankster
entirely was at work here, but I didn't  think  so.  Each  gift
told  me something, though it was hard to know just how much to
read into each one.
     The horselet was illegal, so she was telling me she didn't
give a damn about the law. The painting, when  I  examined  the
photo  I  took of it, proved to be of a Lipan Apache brave, not
just a generic "Indian." That meant to me  that  she  knew  the
gift  came  from  Texas . . . and that I lived there? Might she
come to me? You're getting too far-fetched, Hildy.
     The butterfly was the most interesting of  all,  and  that
was  why  I had not erected the tent but was on my way to Liz's
apartment in King City. Of the people I knew, she'd be the most
likely to be able  to  give  me  the  help  I  needed  with  no
questions asked.
     #
     Before  I got there I stopped and bought another computer.
I used  this  one  to  doctor  the  images  from  my  recorder,
completely wiping out the background from those crucial seconds
until  I  had  nothing  but  the  nude figure of a girl running
against a black background. The impulse to protect the story is
a deep one; I had no reason to mistrust Liz, but no reason  why
she should know everything I knew, either.
     I  showed  her  the  film and explained what I wanted from
her, managing  to  befuddle  her  considerably,  but  when  she
understood I was answering no questions she said sure, it would
be no problem, then stood watching me.
     "Now, Liz," I said.
     "Sure,"  she  said,  and  did a double-take. "Oh, you mean
right now."
     So she called a friend at one of  the  studios  who  said,
sure,  he  could  do  it, no problem, and was about to wire the
pictures to him when I said I'd prefer to use the mail. Looking
at me curiously, Liz addressed the tape and popped it into  the
chute, then waited for my next trick.
     "What  the  hell,"  I  said, and got out the butterfly. We
both looked at it with the naked eye,  handling  it  carefully,
and  she wanted to let her computer have a go at it, but I said
no, and instead ordered an  ordinary  magnifying  glass,  which
arrived  in  ten  minutes.  We both examined it and found I had
been right about the propulsion system.  There  were  hair-fine
tubes  under  the  wings,  which  were  somehow attached to the
insect's musculature in such a way that flexing the wing caused
air to squirt out.
     "Looks kind of squirrely to me," Liz pronounced. "I  think
it'd just fall down and lie there."
     "I saw it fly," I said.
     "If  that'll  fly, I'll kiss your ass and give you an hour
to draw a crowd." She waited expectantly for my response, but I
didn't give her one. It was obvious she was  being  eaten  with
curiosity.  She  tried  wheedling a little, then gave it up and
turned to the horse. "I might be willing to take this off  your
hands,"  she said. "I know somebody who wants one." She tickled
it under the chin, and it trotted to  the  edge  of  the  table
where I'd released it, then jumped down. A scale model horse in
one-sixth gee is quite spry.
     Liz  named  a  price, and I said she was taking bread from
the mouths of my children and named another,  and  she  said  I
must  think  she just fell off the turnip wagon, and eventually
we settled on a price that seemed to please her. I didn't  tell
her that if she'd asked, I'd have given it to her.
     The pictures arrived. I looked at them and told her they'd
do nicely, and thanked her for her time and trouble. I left her
still trying to find out more about the butterfly.
     #
     What  I'd obtained from her was a strip of images suitable
for installing inside a zoetrope. If you don't know  what  that
is,  it's  a little like a phenakistoscope, but fancier, though
not quite so nice as a praxinoscope. Still at  sea?  Picture  a
small  drum,  open at the top, with slits around the sides. You
put the drum on top of a spindle,  paste  pictures  inside  it,
rotate it, and look through the slits as they move past you. If
you've  chosen  the  right  pictures, they will appear to move.
It's an early version of the motion picture.
     I put the strip inside the  zoetrope  I'd  bought  at  the
Whiz-Bang  toy  store,  twirled  it,  and  saw the girl running
jerkily. And I'd done it all  without  the  aid  of  the  Lunar
computer net known as the CC. With any luck, these images still
existed only in my recorder.
     I  went right back out to Delambre and put the zoetrope in
a location where it couldn't be missed.  I  set  up  the  tent,
fixed and ate a light supper, and fell asleep.
     I  checked  it several times during the weekend and always
found it still where I'd left it. Sunday night--still  daylight
in  Delambre--I  packed the rover and decided to look once more
before leaving. I was feeling discouraged.
     At first I thought it hadn't been touched, then I realized
the pictures had been changed. I knelt and spun the  drum,  and
through  the  slits  I saw the flickering image of myself in my
pressure suit, with Winston in his, capering around my legs.
     #
     I had a week to think it over. Was she saying  she  wanted
to  see  the  dog?  Any dog, or just Winston? Or was she saying
anything at all except I see you?
     What I had to remember was there was no real hurry to this
project, my feelings of impatience notwithstanding. If  Winston
had  to  be involved, it would require bringing Liz deeper into
my confidence, something I was reluctant to  do.  So  the  next
weekend  I  went out armed with four dogs, one from each of the
cultures in Texas. There was a brightly  painted  Mexican  one,
carved  from  wood,  another  simpler  wooden  pioneer  dog,  a
Comanche camp scene, with dogs, painted on rawhide--the best  I
could  do--and  my prize, a brass automaton of a dog that would
shuffle up to a fire hydrant and lift its leg.
     I set them out on my next visit. As I  was  crawling  into
the tent afterwards my phone rang.
     "Hello? I said, suspiciously.
     "I still say it can't fly."
     "Liz? How'd you get this number?"
     "You  ask  me that? Don't start me lying this early in the
morning. I got my methods."
     I thought about telling her what the  CC  thought  of  her
methods,  and  I  thought about chewing her out for invading my
privacy--since my retirement I'd  restricted  my  telephone  to
incoming calls from a very short list--but thinking about those
things  was as far as I got, because as I was talking I'd stood
up and turned around, and all four of my new gifts  were  lined
up  just  outside the tent, looking in at me. I turned quickly,
scanning the landscape in every direction, but it was  useless.
In  that  mirror  skin  of hers she might be lying flat no more
than thirty meters away and I wouldn't have a prayer.
     So what I said was "Never mind that, I was  just  thinking
of you, and that lovely dog of yours."
     "Then  this  is  your lucky day. I'm calling from the car,
and I'm no more than twenty minutes from Delambre, and  Winston
is  having a wet dream that may concern your left leg, so throw
some of that chili on the stove."
     #
     "I think you gained two kay since  last  week,"  she  said
when  she came into the tent. "When it comes time to whelp that
thing, you're gonna have to do it  in  shifts."  I  appreciated
those  remarks  so  much that I added three peppers to her bowl
and miked it hard. Pregnancy is maybe the most  mixed  blessing
I'd  ever  experienced.  On  the  one hand, there's a feeling I
couldn't  begin  to  describe,  something  that  must  approach
holiness. There's a life growing in your body. When all is said
and  done,  reproducing  the  species  is the only demonstrable
reason for existence. Doing so satisfies a lot of  the  brain's
most  primitive wiring. On the other hand, you feel like such a
sow.
     I told her as little as I could get away with, mostly that
I'd seen someone out here and that I wanted to get  in  contact
with her. She saw my box of toys: the zoetrope, and the dogs.
     "If  it's  that  girl you had the pictures of, and you saw
her out here, I'd like to meet her, too."
     I had to admit it was. How else was I  going  to  convince
her to leave Winston in my care for the rest of the weekend?
     We  tossed  around a few ideas, none of them very good. As
she was getting ready to leave she thought of something, pulled
a deck of cards from her pocket, and handed them to me.
     "I brought these along when I found out where  you'd  been
coming  all these weekends." She'd previously told me the story
of her detective work, nosing around Texas,  finding  out  from
Huck  that  I always left Friday evening when the paper went to
bed--lately even earlier. Rover rental records available to the
public, or to people who knew how to get into  them,  told  her
where  I'd  been renting. A bribe to the right mechanic got her
access to the odometer of my vehicle, and simple division  told
her  how  long  a  trip  I'd been taking each time, but by then
she'd been pretty sure it was to Delambre.
     "I  knew  you'd  seen  something  out  here   during   the
Bicentennial,"  she  went on. "I didn't know what, but you came
back from that last walk looking wilder than an acre of snakes,
and you wouldn't tell anybody what it was. Then you show up  at
my  place with those pictures of a girl running through nothing
and you won't let me wire 'em or digitize 'em. I expect you got
secrets to keep, but I could figure out you  were  looking  for
somebody.  So  if you want to find somebody, what you do is you
start playing solitaire, and pretty soon they'll  come  up  and
tell you--"
     "--to  play the black ten on the red Jack," I finished for
her.
     "You heard it. Well, at least it'll give you something  to
do."  She  left, casting a worried eye over her pet, who didn't
seem at  all  disturbed  to  see  her  go,  and  with  a  final
admonition that Winston got his walkies three times a day or he
was apt to get mean enough to make a train take a dirt road.
     #
     I'd  already  brought  a deck of cards. I usually have one
with me, as manipulating them is something to do with my  hands
at  idle  moments, better than needlepoint and potentially much
more profitable. If you don't practice the moves you find  your
hands freeze up on you at a critical moment.
     But  I  never  play  solitaire, and the reason is a little
embarrassing. I cheat. Which is all very well for blackjack  or
five-card stud, but what's the point in solitaire?
     Point or not, I eventually found myself laying out a hand.
     Pretty soon I got into it. Not the game itself, than which
there are few purer wasters of time, but the cards. You have to
be able  to  visualize  the  order,  make  them your friends so
they'll tell you things. Do it long enough  and  you'll  always
know what the next card will be, and you'll know what the cards
are  that  you can't see, as sure as if they were marked on the
back.
     I did it for a long time, until Winston got up  and  began
to  scratch  at  the  wall of the tent. Better get him into his
suit before he got frantic, I thought, and looked up  into  the
face  of  the  girl.  She was standing there, outside the tent,
grinning down at Winston, and she had a telescope tucked  under
her arm. She looked at me and shook a finger: naughty, naughty.
     "Wait!" I shouted. "I want to talk to you."
     She  smiled  again,  shrugged  her shoulders, and became a
perfect mirror. All I  could  see  of  her  was  the  distorted
reflection  of  the  tent  and  the  ground  she  stood on. The
distortions twisted and flowed and began to  dwindle.  Pressing
my face against the tent wall I could follow her progress for a
little  while  since  she was the only moving object out there.
She wasn't in any hurry and I thought she looked back over  her
shoulder, but there was no way to be sure.
     I  got  into  my suit quickly, thought it over, and suited
Winston, too. I let him out, knowing  his  ears  and  sense  of
smell were totally useless out here but hoping some other doggy
sense  would  give  me a lead. He shuffled off, trying to press
his nose to the ground as he usually did,  succeeding  only  in
getting  moondust  on  the bottom of his helmet. I followed him
with my flashlight.
     Soon he stopped and tried to press his face to the surface
with more than his usual doggedness. I knelt and looked at what
he was trying to pick up. It was a bit of spongy material  that
crumbled in my glove when I lifted it. I laughed aloud; Winston
looked up, and I patted the top of his helmet.
     "I  might  have  know  you wouldn't miss food, even if you
can't smell it," I told him. And we set off together, following
the trail of breadcrumbs.

        =*= =*= =*= =*=

        CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE








     Feeling  not  unlike  the  hood  ornament  on   a   luxury
rover--and  showing  a lot more chrome-plated belly than either
Mr. Rolls or Mr. Royce would have approved of--I stepped boldly
forth into the sunlight, almost as naked as the day I was born.
Boldly, if you don't  dwell  on  the  thirty  minutes  I  spent
getting  up my nerve to do it in the first place. Naked, if you
don't count the mysterious force field that kept me wrapped  in
a warming blanket of air at least five millimeters thick.
     Even  the  warming part was illusory. It certainly felt as
if the air was keeping me warm, and without that  psychological
reassurance  I doubt if I'd have made it. Actually, the air was
cooling me, which is  always  the  problem  in  a  space  suit,
whether  bought  off  the  shelf at Hamilton's or hocus-pocused
into existence by the Genius of the Robert  A.  Heinlein.  See,
the human body generates heat, and a spacesuit has to be a good
insulator,  that's its main purpose; the heat will build up and
choke you without an outlet. See?
     Oh, brother. If you had a chuckle at  my  explanations  of
nanoengineering  and  cybernetics,  wait  till you hear Hildy's
Field Suits Made Simple.
     "You're doing fine, Hildy," Gretel  (not  her  real  name)
coaxed. "I know it takes some getting used to."
     "How  would you know that?" I countered. "You grew up in a
field suit."
     "Yeah, but I've taken tenderfeet out before."
     Tenderfeet,  indeed.  I  bent  over  to  see  those  pedal
extremities,  thinking  I'd  have to get reacquainted with them
post-partum. I wiggled  my  toes  and  light  wiggled  off  the
reflections.  Like  wearing thick mylar socks, only all I could
feel was what appeared to be the rough surface of  Luna.  There
was  some  feedback principle at work there, I'd been told; the
field kept me floating five millimeters high no matter how hard
I pressed down. And a good thing, too. Those rock were hot.
     "How's the breathing?" Gretel asked, in a funny voice  I'd
get  used  to  eventually. Part of the field suit package was a
modification of my implanted telephone so that sub-vocalization
could  be  heard  over  the  channel   the   Heinleiners   used
suit-to-suit.
     "I still want to gasp," I said.
     "Say again?"
     I repeated it, saying each word carefully.
     "That's just psychotic."
     I  think  she meant psychosomatic, or maybe psychological.
Or possibly psychotic was  the  perfect  word.  How  would  you
describe  someone  who  trusted  her delicate hide to a spatial
effect that, as near as I could understand it, had no existence
in the real world?
     The desire to breathe  was  real  enough,  even  though  a
suppressor  of  some  kind  was at work in my brain cutting off
that part of the autonomic nervous system. My body was  getting
all  the  oxygen  it  needed,  but  when  your  lungs have been
inhaling and exhaling for over a hundred years,  some  part  of
you gets a little alarmed when asked to shut it off for an hour
or  so.  I'd  been  holding my breath for almost ten minutes so
far. I felt about ready to go back inside and gulp.
     "You want to go back inside?"
     I wondered if I'd been muttering to  myself.  Gotta  watch
that. I shook my head, remembered how hard that was to see, and
mouthed "No."
     "Then  take  my  hand,"  she said. I did, and our two suit
fields melted together and I felt her  bare  hand  in  mine.  I
could  see  that, if these things ever got on the market, there
was going to be a big fad in lovemaking under the stars.
     #
     Don't go shopping for a field suit just yet, though.
     They'll surely be available in  a  few  years,  what  with
current   conditions.   A  lot  of  people  are  angry  at  the
Heinleiners for not just bestowing the patents  gratis  to  the
general public. I've heard mutterings. A lot of good it will do
the  mutterers; they simply don't understand Heinleiners. There
goddam sure ain't no such thing as a free  lunch,  and  they're
out to prove it.
     As  I  write this, the Heinleiners are still pretty pissed
off, and who could blame them? All charges have naturally  been
dropped,  the statutes of limitations have expired, as it were.
Nobody's out hunting them. Yet I swore a  solemn  oath  not  to
reveal  the  names  of  any of them until given permission, and
that permission has not been granted, and who's to say  they're
wrong?  Say  what  you will about me as a reporter, but I never
revealed a source, and I never will. Hence,  the  girl  I  will
call  "Gretel."  Hence  all  the  aliases  I will bestow on the
people I met after I followed Gretel's trail into  the  perfect
mirror.
     And  I  promised  not to lie to you, but from here on in I
will not always tell  you  the  whole  truth.  Events  have  of
necessity  been  edited,  to  protect  people with no reason to
trust authority but who trusted me and then found . . . but I'm
getting ahead of myself.
     #
     The trail of breadcrumbs led into the rubble  that  washed
at  the  base  of  the  Heinlein. At first it seemed as if they
vanished into a blank wall, but I found  that  if  I  ducked  a
little there was a way through.
     Luckily,  I  had  Winston  on  a  leash,  because  he  was
straining to head right into the pile, and  god  knows  if  I'd
ever  have  found  him  again. I shined my flashlight under the
overhang--which  seemed  to  be  the  back  end  of  a  vintage
rover--and  saw  it  would  be  possible  to  squirm my way in.
Without the crumbs I never would have  tried  it,  as  I  could
already see four ways to go. But I did go in, wondering all the
time  just  how stable this whole pile was, if I dared brush up
against anything.
     Not too far in it became clear I  was  on  a  pathway.  At
first  it  was  just  bare rock. Soon there was a flooring laid
down, made of discarded plastic wall panels. I tested each step
cautiously, but it seemed firm. I found  each  panel  had  been
spot  welded  to some of the more massive pieces of debris that
made up the jackstraw jumble. I further saw, looking around the
edge of the roadway, that the ground was no longer down  there.
My  flashlight  picked  up an endless array of junk. If there'd
been any air I might have tried dropping a coin or something; I
had a feeling I'd hear it clatter for a long time.
     For a while I kept testing each new panel cautiously,  but
each  was as firmly in place as the last. I decided I was being
silly. People obviously used this path with some frequency, and
despite its impromptu nature it seemed sturdy enough.  Flashing
my light around above me I could soon see the tunnel itself had
been  made  by some kind of boring machine. It was cylindrical,
and a lot of rubbish had been blasted  or  cut  away;  I  found
sliced  edges  of metal beams on each side of the tunnel, as if
the center sections had been cut out. I hadn't  seen  it  as  a
cylinder  at  first  because  its  walls  were  so relentlessly
baroque, not covered with anything as they  would  be  in  King
City.
     Before  long  I  came  to  a  string of lights hung rather
haphazardly along the left-hand side of  the  tunnel.  And  not
long  after  that  I  saw  somebody  approaching me from a good
distance. I shined the light at the person, and she shined  her
light  at  me,  and  I saw she was also pregnant and also had a
bulldog on a leash, which seemed too much for coincidence.
     Winston didn't put it together. Instead, he plowed forward
in his usual way, either to greet a new friend or  to  rend  an
enemy  into  bloody  gobbets,  who could tell? I could hear the
clang over my suit radio when he hit. He sat down hard,  having
had no visible effect upon the perfect mirror.
     Neither  did  I,  though I scrupulously did all the futile
things people do in stories  about  humans  encountering  alien
objects: chunking rocks, swinging a makeshift club, kicking it.
I  left  no  scratches  on  it.  ("Mister  President,  it is my
scientific opinion the saucer is made of an alloy never seen on
Earth!") I'd have tried fire, electricity, lasers,  and  atomic
weapons,  but  I  didn't  have any handy. Maybe lasers wouldn't
have been the best idea.
     So I waited, wondering if she'd been watching  me,  hoping
she'd  had  a good laugh at my expense, feeling sure she hadn't
led me this far just to strand me, and in a moment the  surface
of  the mirror bulged and became a human face. The face smiled,
and then the rest of the body appeared. At first I thought  she
was  moving  forward,  but  it turned out the mirror was moving
back and the field was forming around her body  as  she  simply
stood there.
     It  moved back about three meters, and she beckoned to me.
I went to her, and  she  made  some  gestures  which  I  didn't
understand.  Finally  I got the idea that I was to hold on to a
bar fastened to the wall. I did, and the girl crouched and held
on to Winston, who seemed happy to see her.
     There was a loud bang and something slammed into me.  Bits
of  trash  and  dust  swirled,  maybe  a  little mist, too. The
perfect mirror was no longer where it had been and the corridor
had changed. I looked around and saw the walls were now  coated
with the same mirror, and the flat surface had re-formed behind
me, where it had been originally. A rather dramatic airlock.
     For  a  few  more  seconds  Gretel  was  still  wrapped in
distortion, then her suit field vanished  and  she  became  the
nude ten-year-old who had run through my dreams for such a long
time.  She was saying something. I shook my head and glanced at
the readouts  for  exterior  temperature  and  pressure--  pure
habit,  I could see and hear the air was okay-- then I took off
my helmet.
     "First thing," Gretel said, "you've got to promise not  to
tell my father."
     "Not to tell him what?"
     "That  you  saw  me  on  the  surface  without my suit. He
doesn't like it when I do that."
     "I wouldn't, either. Why do you do it?"
     "You gotta promise, or you can just go home."
     I did. I would have promised one hell of a lot  of  things
to get farther down that tunnel I could see stretching ahead of
me.  I  even  would have kept most of them. Personally, I don't
view a promise made to a ten-year-old  to  be  binding,  if  it
involves a matter of safety, but I'd keep that one if I could.
     I  had  a  thousand  questions, but wasn't sure how to ask
them. I'm a good interviewer, but  getting  answers  out  of  a
child  takes a different technique. It would be no problem--the
problem with Gretel was getting her to shut  up--but  I  didn't
know  it  at  the  time.  Right then she was squatting, getting
Winston out of his helmet, so I watched  and  waited.  Liz  had
promised  me  Winston never bit people unless ordered to do so,
and I sure hoped that was true.
     Once again Winston came through for  me.  He  greeted  her
like  a  long-lost  friend, bowling her over in his attempts to
lick her face, reducing her to giggles. I helped  her  get  him
out of the rest of his suit.
     "You  could get out of yours, too, if you want to," Gretel
said.
     "It's safe?"
     "You might have asked that before I  took  off  the  dog's
helmet."
     She had a point. I started peeling out of it.
     "You've led me a merry chase," I said.
     "It  took me a while to convince my father we ought to let
you in at all. But I'm never in  a  hurry  about  such  things,
anyway. Do you good to wait."
     "What changed his mind?"
     "Me,"  she said, simply. "I always do. But it wasn't easy,
you being a reporter and all."
     A year ago that would have surprised  me.  Working  for  a
newspad  you  don't  get  your  face  as well-known as straight
television reporters do. But recent events had changed that. No
more undercover work for me.
     "Your father doesn't like reporters?"
     "He doesn't like publicity. When you talk to  him,  you'll
have to promise not to use any of it in a story."
     "I don't know if I can promise that."
     "Sure, you can. Anyway, that's between you and him."
     We were walking down the round, mirrored corridor by then.
When we  came  to  another mirrored wall like the one I'd first
encountered, she didn't slow down but headed right for it. When
she was a meter away it vanished to reveal another long section
of walkway. I looked behind us and there  it  was.  Simple  and
effective.  The  bored-out tubes were lined with the field, and
these safety barriers were spaced out along the way.  This  new
technology   would  revolutionize  Lunar  building  techniques,
whatever it was.
     I was bursting with questions about it, but my feeling for
her was that it wasn't the right time to ask them. I was  there
as the result of a child's whim, and it would be a good idea to
see  where  I  stood  with her, get on her good side as much as
possible.
     "So . . ." I said. "Did you like the toys?"
     "Oh, please," she said. Not a promising beginning. "I'm  a
little grown up for that."
     "How  old  are  you?" There was always the chance I'd read
her wrong from the beginning; she could be older than me.
     "I'm eleven, but I'm precocious. Everyone says so."
     "Especially Daddy?"
     She grinned at me. "Never Daddy. He  says  I'm  a  walking
argument  for retroactive birth control. Okay, sure I liked the
toys, only I'd prefer to think of them  as  charming  antiques.
Mostly, I liked the dog. What's his name?"
     "Winston.  So  that's  why  you  talked  your  father into
letting me in?"
     "No. I could get a dog easily enough."
     "Then I don't get it. I worked so hard to interest you."
     "You did? That's neat. Hell, Hildy, I'd have asked you  in
if you'd just sat out there on your butt."
     "Why?"
     She  stopped  and  turned  to me, and the look on her face
told me what was coming. I'd seen that look before.
     "Because you work for the Nipple. It's  my  favorite  pad.
Tell me, what was Silvio really like?"
     #
     Most  of my conversations with Gretel got around to Silvio
sooner or later, usually after long and adoring detours through
the celebrity underbrush of the current pre-pubescent idols  of
television  and  music. I'd interviewed Silvio a total of three
times, been at social occasions  where  he  was  present  maybe
twenty  times,  exchanged perhaps a dozen sentences with him at
those functions. It didn't matter. It was all gold  to  Gretel,
who  was easily twice as star-struck as most girls her age. She
hung on my every word.
     Naturally, I made up a lot. If I could do it in print, why
not to her? And it was good practice for telling  her  all  the
intimate details of the teeny stars, few of whom I'd even heard
of, much less met.
     Is  that  awful?  I suppose it is, lying to a little girl,
but I'd done worse in my life, and how badly did it  hurt  her?
The  whole  gossip  industry, flagshipped by the Nipple and the
Shit, is of questionable moral worth to begin with, but it's  a
very  old  industry, and as such, must fill a basic human need.
I've apologized for it enough here. The biggest  difference  in
my  stories  to  her  was  that,  when I was writing it, it was
usually nasty gossip. My stories to her were usually nice ones.
I viewed it as paying my keep. If Scheherazade could do it, why
not Hildy Johnson?
     #
     I was grateful that she held my hand on that first  stroll
on  the  surface.  Breathing  is  perhaps  the  most underrated
pleasure in life. You notice it  when  something  smells  good,
curse  it  when  something stinks, but the rest of the time you
don't even think of it. It's as natural as . . . well, see?  To
really  appreciate  it,  try holding your mouth and nose closed
for three minutes, or however long it takes to reach  the  edge
of  blackout.  That  first breath that brings you back from the
edge of death will be the sweetest thing  you  ever  tasted,  I
guarantee it.
     Now try it for thirty minutes.
     The oxygen in my new lung was supposed to be good for that
long,  with  a  five  to  seven  minute margin. "Think of it as
thirty," Aladdin had said, when he installed it. "That'll  keep
you safe."
     "I'll  think  of it as fifteen," I retorted. "Maybe five."
I'd been sitting in his clinic at the time, the left side of my
chest laid open, the ugly gray mass of what had  recently  been
my  left  lung  lying  in  a  pan  on  a  table  like  so  much
butcher-shop special of the day.
     "Don't   talk,"   he   warned.   "Not   when   I'm   doing
respiratory-system  work."  He  wiped  a drop of blood from the
corner of my mouth.
     "Maybe one," I said. He picked up the new lung, a thing of
shiny metal with some trailing tubes, shaped very much  like  a
lung, and started shoving it into the chest cavity. It made wet
sucking sounds going in. I hate surgery.
     I'd  have  thought  it  was something brand-new but for my
recent researches into vacuum technology. One part  of  it  was
revolutionary,  but  the  rest  had  been cobbled together from
things developed and set aside a long time ago.
     The Heinleiners weren't the first to work on  the  problem
of adapting the human body to the Lunar surface. They were just
the first ones to find a more or less practical answer. Most of
the  lung  Aladdin put inside me was just an air bottle, filled
with compressed oxygen. The rest was an interface  device  that
allowed  the oxygen to be released directly into my bloodstream
while at the same time cleansing  the  carbon  dioxide.  A  few
other  implants  allowed some of the gas to be released through
new openings in my skin, carrying off heat. None of it was new;
most of it had been experimented with as early as the year 50.
     But the year 50 wasn't railro