He rocked back and laughed out loud. “Me, neither! And it’s time to start, especially . . .”

Rain had started to fall, big fat drops that felt like fingers tapping on Rachel’s back and shoulders.

As she and Pav turned, they saw Yahvi in the doorway, looking up, fear on her face.

“Honey,” Rachel said, “what’s wrong?”

“What is this?”

Rachel realized that her Keanu-born daughter had never experienced rain. The regular habitat mist, yes, but nothing like this tropical pelting.

“It’s rain, darling. It won’t hurt you.”

Then Yahvi sneezed. Rachel and Pav looked at each other. “Come on,” Pav said, “inside now!”

Rachel took the lead in putting Yahvi to bed. Thank God for the gift of the Beta!

She and Pav agreed that Rachel would go in search of soup while Pav would locate Xavier and make arrangements for the cargo. “This is suspiciously traditional,” Pav said, before departing. “This division of labor.”

“These are special circumstances,” Rachel said. She hoped, however, that Pav heeded the warning tone: She would rather have been seeing to their cargo than filling this domestic role.

But sometimes a girl needed a mother. As one who had lost hers at exactly this age, Rachel understood.

Leaving Yahvi with her soup, Rachel was met by Taj, who announced, “I just saw Pav. And I am happy to tell you that we have found three potential agents for you!”

That simple phrase infuriated her. “We”? “For you”? Rachel knew she was, as Harley Drake would say, spring-loaded. Poor sleep, general tension, Yahvi’s condition, Pav’s eager escape from domesticity, her father-in-law—in itself an unfamiliar concept—going paternal on her, and talking to Pav first! It all combined to cause Rachel to snap.

“Why don’t we roll that back a few pages, and let me see all of the applicants and interested parties so I can pick three. Maybe they’ll be the same. But maybe they won’t.”

She could see Taj’s head drop a perceptible quarter of an inch, a gesture clearly indicating a sense of persecution, and one he shared with his son, which was why Rachel recognized it—and grew even more furious.

“There are no applicants,” he said, with what Rachel was sure he considered extreme patience, “only three agents that we approached. The landing is still officially classified.”

“Perhaps we should move up the announcement.”

“It is scheduled for two hours from now. How much earlier can we make it? And still give your agent a head start?”

His answers were logical and correct, which did nothing to make Rachel happier. “You’re not empowered to make decisions for us.”

Taj stiffened. “I didn’t realize I was making decisions. I will resume searching—”

Rachel realized that she had become unpleasant. One of the benefits of reaching her middle thirties was that she eventually recognized that she was losing her temper . . . in time to salvage the moment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The three candidates will be fine. Where was Pav?”

“Enduring a conversation with Mrs. Remilla and her senior staff.” The deadpan use of a word like enduring was just the thing Pav would have done to soothe Rachel, and it almost worked. “They have him trapped.”

“Why?” Aside from general sympathy for her husband and lover, Rachel was concerned for his primary mission, which was the cargo.

“There are questions about your immigration status. A Foreigners Regional Registration Counselor is still not willing to consider issuing temporary visas for your crew.” Now Taj smiled, and Rachel saw her husband’s face—older, but handsome and engaging. Her anger drained away. “The Sentry’s status is a particular challenge, given that he is an extraterrestrial alien.”

“Earth is full of such aliens already, you said.”

“India is not. The Reivers aren’t welcome here. To my knowledge, none have ever tried to enter the country.”

“You’d better hope so.”

She followed Taj to the conference room, where Pav was indeed sequestered with Remilla and several male bureaucrats. Pav jumped to his feet eagerly, confirming his father’s description of a torturous meeting.

He told Rachel what was going on with the visas. “We’re cleared to remain in India for thirty days. We’re being treated as though we were on a work visa and our cargo as personal possessions not subject to duties.”

“Thank you, darling.” She put arms around him and kissed him, something she still enjoyed after so many years. (And didn’t mind doing in front of others.)

Her gratitude was genuine. She and Pav had spent a great deal of time planning the return to Earth, but concentrated on the technical challenges: trajectories, fuel, targets, communications. They had no real way of knowing what it would be like to be here—and then move forward. Would India be under some kind of martial law?

The meeting was breaking up, thank goodness. Remilla and Taj herded the immigration men out of the room, leaving Rachel and Pav alone. “Tough, huh?”

He smiled. “Among the many things we don’t have at home . . . bureaucracies and paperwork.”

“Give us time.”

“Well, here on Earth, it’s only going to get more difficult,” Pav said. “We’ll be in the news, we’ll have this media agent, then . . .”

He yawned.

“Are you as tired as I am?” Rachel said. Pav didn’t need to answer; it was on his face. “Let’s be old folks at home for the moment,” she said, using a phrase her father loved, describing family nights. “Soup for Yahvi, then bed.”

“Tomorrow, the world,” Pav murmured.

QUESTION: Rachel, you have spoken about the challenges of simply surviving for twenty years in a habitat created by aliens using their technology—

RACHEL: First of all, the habitat was designed and built to accommodate humans.

QUESTION: How?

RACHEL: Ask the Architects.

QUESTION: Then back to my—

RACHEL: The same Architects equipped us with two things . . . one was the proteus, which is a 3-D printer evolved by a few thousand years. It’s a device that can replicate or fabricate just about anything, from food to tools to electronic equipment and even chemicals.

QUESTION: Sounds like magic.

RACHEL: Or just technology that’s far more advanced than ours. What would Ben Franklin have thought of a computer? We also needed one other thing to make the proteus work, and that was Substance K, which is essentially nanotech goo. Almost everything in Keanu was made of it. After living there for twenty years and eating food derived from it, I’m probably made of Substance K.

INTERVIEW AT YELAHANKA,

APRIL 14, 2040

XAVIER

Xavier Toutant was not part of the big negotiations. It was not his thing, though during the prelaunch preparations he had been quite amused to hear Rachel and Pav and Harley Drake and the others talking about rights deals and money, since not one of the HBs had dealt with the subject since the day they were scooped off Earth in 2019.

Maybe that showed how shortsighted they all were, or possibly they had evolved past such mundane concerns.

At the moment, however, Xavier Toutant was consumed by his job, his mission, which was cargo.

The crew had only taken basic travel gear off Adventure—clothes, a little food, toiletries. Everything else that might have been interesting or useful remained aboard the spacecraft, including their own Keanu-built Slates and 3-D printing gear, but most important of all . . . a ton of goo.