We stood near the edge of a space two hundred meters in circumference, covered with a hemispherical dome. The dome was either jet-black itself or transparent to the light-less water of the lake. Underneath the dome stood two dozen buildings, all glass: high Moorish towers where the dome offered enough headroom, and squat rectangular blockhouses out on the periphery. Boulevards separated each structure from its neighbors; and looking to the middle of town, I saw a plaza where two glass fountains sprayed water high into the air.

Clear water. Clear glass. I found myself searching for any hint of color, a tint to the glass or a prism-effect that broke light into spectra; but the glass was as pristine as crystal, and the sky too muted for rainbows. I couldn't even tell where the lighting came from — it was simply there, so pervasive it didn't allow my eye the relief of shadows.

"Is my home not beautiful?" Oar asked.

"Austere," I replied.

"What does that word mean?"

"Pure," I said. "Clean."

"Yes." She sounded pleased. "Very very clean."

Clean of everything — the streets were empty. Oar and I were the only people in sight.

A Tour

"Do you live here alone?" I asked.

"Do not be foolish," Oar answered. "I have many many ancestors."

"And they're here?"

"Yes."

I looked around. Certain Fringe Worlders believed their ancestors remained participants in their lives — ghosts who walked beside them unseen. The living would leave an empty seat at dinner so great-great-grandma could sit among them; and on Sitz, they took water spritzers with them into the bath, to squirt phantom uncles who might sneak in for a peek. Did Oar believe the same thing? I could think of no tactful way to ask. Oar was easy enough to offend without opening the topic of religion.

"Why don't you give me a tour?" I suggested. "Show me the things I should see."

"You should see everything, Festina. And I will show you everything."

I nodded and put on a smile. Mentally, I reviewed my repertoire of facile compliments for all occasions — enthusing about architecture and other curios did not come naturally to me. Entertainment bubbles may portray Explorers as zealous to investigate alien cultures, but that wasn't our job; we only established a secure foothold, after which the Fleet unloaded an army of xeno-ethnologists to do the true fieldwork. Right now, Oar's tour was a chore, one more job between me and thinking about…

I had killed Yarrun.

I had watched Chee die.

"Lead on," I told Oar. "I'm sure I'll enjoy this."

Food

"This makes food," Oar said.

We stood in a one-storey blockhouse, not far from the access port where I had entered the city. The blockhouse consisted of a single room, with no furniture, no decorations… just a single glass pillar in the center of the floor, as thick as the trunk of a redwood. The surface was smooth, but dusty — all except a spotlessly clean niche half a meter deep, cut into the pillar at waist height.

"How does it work?" I asked.

"You say what you want, and the machine makes that for you." She didn't call me stupid this time, but her tone implied it.

"I doubt if your food synthesizer understands my language," I said. "Unless the machine learned from Jelca and Ullis the same way you did."

"The woman taught it some of your dishes," Oar answered. "She said it was not hard to…" Oar paused, straining to remember an unfamiliar word. After a moment, it came to her: "Not hard to pro-gram."

Good old blinky Ullis, I thought. Like many Explorers, she had been a superb programmer — the result of feeling more comfortable with machines than humans. I sympathized; I too had been a teenage hermit. As a farm girl, however, I had passed the solitary hours working with our livestock, not tinkering with circuit boards. At the Academy, Ullis tutored me in computing, and I helped her with exobiology.

"So," I asked Oar, "what did Ullis program this machine to make?" I hadn't eaten since leaving the Jacaranda that morning; my pack contained emergency rations, but their taste was so cloying no one would eat the stuff except in an emergency.

"I did not learn the names for Explorer dishes," Oar answered. "I did not want to learn. When the fucking Explorers ate, I went away so I would not be sick. Explorer food is very very ugly."

"What do you mean by ugly?" I wondered if Jelca and Ullis followed strange Fringe World diets — I couldn't remember what either of them ate at the Academy.

"They ate sauces the color of animal blood. Grains as white as maggots. Vegetation that looked as if it was pulled straight from the ground!"

"Oh." Marinara sauce, white rice, and salad… apparently not Oar's kind of food. "Maybe I'll come back later," I said. "It'll take time to experiment with what Ullis programmed." I was not ravenous yet; and if worst came to worst, I could nibble on rations when Oar wasn't looking.

"Then let us go," Oar replied, starting toward the door, "and I will introduce you to my ancestors."

Oar's Ancestors

She led me into one of the central towers. It was twenty storeys tall. Each storey was filled with bodies.

The bodies were all clear glass, lying placidly in rows on the floor. Some were male; some were female. The women looked like Oar — perfect copies as far as I could tell, though my eyes may have missed tiny distinguishing characteristics. The transparent glass made it hard to see the faces at all, let alone make out subtle differences from one woman to another. The same went for the men: they were clean-shaven, with hair and facial structures similar to the women. If not for their breastless chests and demure genitalia, I could scarcely have told male from female.

Not that it mattered in a functional way: male or female, all of these people were dormant. Breathing and warm to the touch, but comatose.

Oar stood in the midst of those unmoving bodies, waiting for me to say something. I botched it. "Are they… what happened… is this some… so, Oar, these are your ancestors."

"Yes," she said. "Not all are direct ancestors; but they have lived in my home from the beginning."

"And, uhh… what do they do here?"

"They lie on the floor, Festina. They do not want to do anything else."

"But they could get up if they wanted to?"

"When the other Explorers came," she said, "my mother and sister got up. They were curious to meet strangers, even though the Explorers were so ugly. After a day, my mother grew bored and came back here — that is her, lying over there." She gestured in the direction of a glass wall. At least five women lay in that neighborhood, all of them twins to Oar. If one was truly Oar's mother, she showed no sign of being older than Oar herself… nor did any of the women show evidence of motherhood. Glass stomachs must not get stretch marks; glass breasts must be immune to the demands of nursing. And gravity.

"What about your sister?" I asked. "Did she eventually get bored too?"

"I am sure she is very bored now," Oar answered haughtily. "She is bored and sad and stupid."

"Oh?"

"She went away with the fucking Explorers. They took her and not me."

Oar loosed a furious kick at the body closest to her — a man who skidded across the floor with the force of the impact. He opened his eyes to glare at Oar, said a few unknown words in a grumbling voice, then shifted back to his former location.

Oar immediately kicked him again. "Do not call me names, old man!" she snapped.

He glared at her once more, but said nothing. He didn't try to move this time, but settled where he was, folding his hands across his chest and closing his eyes. I wondered if he would shift back to his original place after Oar left.