Pop tackled it systematically. "I recognize the second, third, and fourth names. You were once known by them?"

"Yes."

"Did you have the nickname 'Slipstick'?"

"Yes, and, before that, 'Pinky." She ran a hand through her curls and smiled. "Not pink but close enough."

"Now you are a woman. There is no point in guessing; you mentioned a story to tell."

"Yes. Dora, how about a round of drinks? Lazarus, how's your supply of those narcotic sticks?"

Pop said, "None of us smokes."

"These are neither tobacco nor bhang-nor addictive. They produce a mild euphoria. I am not urging you; I want one myself. Thanks, Lazarus, and pass them around. Now about me- "I was male nearly eight hundred years, then I was killed. I was dead fifteen hundred years, then I was revived. In renewing me it was found that my twenty-third gene pair was a triplet-XXY."

The Hillbilly said, "I see. With Y dominant."

I added: "Twin, Aunt Hilda is a biologist."

"Good! Aunt Hilda- May I call you that? As my twin does?-will you help me with the hard parts?" Lib smiled and it was my smile-a happy grin. "The Y was dominant but the double dose of X bothered me and I didn't know why. I did well enough as a male-thirty years in the Space Navy of Old Home Terra as a result of an officer taking an interest in me and getting me an appointment to its Academy. But I lacked command temperament and spent most of my service as a staff technical officer-I rarely commanded and never a large ship." She grinned again. "But today, as a self-aware female instead of a mixed-up male I do not hesitate to command.

"To go back- I was never easy with boys or men. Shy, solitary, and regarded as queer. Not the idiom meaning homosexual... I was too shy. Although it probably would have been good for me. I was a 'missing Howard' in those days-after the Interregnum-and it was years after I entered the Navy that the Families found me. I married then, into the Families. Most XXY people are infertile-I was not. In the next seventy years I had twenty-one children and enjoyed living with my wives, enjoyed sex with them, loved our children.

"Which brings us to the escape from Earth led by Lazarus. I was a bachelor, both my wives having remarried. Friends, Lazarus was the first man I ever loved."

"Lib, that has nothing to do with the story! I didn't know you were in love with me."

"It has everything to do with my story. Off and on, for eight centuries, we were partners in exploration. Then I was killed-my own carelessness. Eventually Lazarus and his sisters cremated me by tossing me into the atmosphere of Old Home Terra in a trajectory that would cause ashes to impact near where I was born. Lazarus, they don't seem surprised. Do they disbelieve me?"

"Certainly we believe you!" I interrupted. "But what you've told us isn't news to us. What we don't know is how you are now alive and female. Reincarnation?"

"Oh, no! Reincarnation is nonsense."

I found myself irritated. Reincarnation is something I have no opinion about, since a housecleaning I gave my mind after we lost Mama Jane. "You have data?" I demanded.

"Deety, did I step on your toes?"

"No, you didn't, Lib. I asked if you had data."

"Well... no. But if you assume the truth of the proposition, I think I can show that it leads to a contradiction."

"The negative-proof method. It's tricky, Lib. Ask Georg Cantor."

Lib laughed. "Okay, I will attempt to have no opinion until someone shows me verifiable data, one way or the other."

"I was hoping you had data, Lib, since you've been dead and I haven't. Or don't recall having been."

"But I don't recall being dead, either. Just a whale of a blow in the back... then dreams I can't remember... then someone asking me patiently, again and again, whether I preferred to be a man or a woman... and at last I tracked clearly enough to realize that the question was serious....nd .1 answered, 'Woman'-and they made me answer that question at least once a day for many days-and then I went to sleep one night and when I woke, I was a woman... which did not astonish me nearly as much as to learn that fifteen centuries had passed. Being a woman seemed completely natural. I've had five children now-borne five, I mean; I had sired twenty-one... and one was put into me by one of my own descendants. Lazarus, when are you going to knock me up?"

"When the Greeks count time by the Kalends."

"Libby honey, when you want to swing that-if you aren't joking-check with me."

"Thanks, Dora; I'll remember. Lazarus, you will have to explain the paradox; I was just a puppet."

"Isn't it bedtime? We're keeping our guests up."

"Captain Hilda?" Lib inquired.

"Deety is in charge of time."

"Lib, I don't know ship's time yet. I gave you our seconds; we have sixty seconds to a minute; sixty minutes to an hour; twenty-four hours in a day. Primitive, eh? Is your time metric?"

"Depends on what you mean, Deety. You work to base 'ten,' do you not?"

"Yes. I mean: No, I work to base 'two' because I'm a computer programmer. But I'm used to converting-don't have to think about it."

"I knew you used 'ten' when I made a guess as to what you meant by 'six to the sixth power' and you accepted my answer. We now work to base-onehundred-twenty for most purposes-binary one-one-one-one-zero-zero-zero."

"Five-factorial. Sensible. Fits almost any base."

"Yes. We use it for routine work. But in scientific work we use base-three, because our computers use trinary. I understand it took Gay and Dora several milliseconds to interface."

"We aren't that slow!"

"My apologies, Dora. For some work we use a time scale that fits trinary. But for daily living, our clock is just like yours-but three percent slower. Our planet's day is longer."

"By forty-two of your minutes."

"You're quick, Deety. Yes."

"Your computers must be three-phase A.C."

"You are quicker than I was two thousand years ago. And I was quicker then."

"No way to tell and any computer makes us look like Achilles' tortoise. We had dinner at eighteen. Gay entered Dora about an hour and a quarter later. So for us it's about half past twenty, and we usually go to bed between twentytwo and twenty-three if we get to bed on time which we never do. What time is it in the ship and what is ship's routine?"

The others had let me and my new twin chatter. Now Lazarus said, "If this madhouse has a routine, I've never found it."

"01' Buddy Boy, you don't have a routine. I run this joint on the bell. Deety, it's just-bong!-twenty-one... and Lazarus never went to bed that early in all his evil years. Buddy Boy, what are you dodging?"

"Manners, Dora."

"Yes, Pappy. Deety, he's dodging the chicanery with which he fooled even himself... because he must admit the triple chicanery he wants to rope you in on-and it takes Gay because I'm not built for it. Until today I never heard of 't,' Tau and Teh. I thought 't'-that you call Tau-was all there was. Aside from paratime in an encapsulation surrounded by irrelevancy such as I am taking us through.

"But back to the corpse caper- Lib got herself killed about eight hundred Post Diaspora. Lazarus slaps her-him-into a tank of LOX, and places himher-it in orbit, with a beacon. Comes back quick as he can-and can't find Libby's cadaver. Fourteen centuries later my sister Teena, then known as Minerva, sees what should have been obvious, that any irrelevant ship, such as yours truly, is a time machine as well as a starship. A great light dawns on Lazarus; the corpse pickled in LOX is missing because he picked it up

earlier. So he tries again, more than a thousand years later and five years earlier-and there it is! So Lazarqs and I and Laz-Lor go to 1916 Old-Style-orGregorian, Old Home Terra, and bury Lib from the sky into the Ozarks where she-he-was born-which was pretty silly because we chucked her into those Green Hills about a century before she was-he-he was born. A paradox.