Lani blinked. “I… I guess I’ll have to choose one, won’t I? I’m still not used to thinking like that.”

Saul didn’t like it any better than she did. He had hoped that the factionalism of the last thirty years would break down, once more of those slotted in the early days were treated with his serum and released. As the active population of the comet burgeoned, a majority would be made up of those who remembered Earth most recently, whose memories were fresh with Captain Cruz’s stirring speech from the framework of the Sekanina, and the hopes they had all shared.

But it hadn’t worked out that way. The newly revived—disoriented, weak, and afraid—found themselves in a world as much different from the Halley Colony they remembered as that early settlement had been from placid Moon Base 1. They quickly gravitated to groups they might be comfortable with, adopted their ideologies, and became clansmen.

Saul did not mention to Lani that there were three people seemed exempt from this pattern. For different reasons, he, Virginia, and Carl Osborn were all isolated—respected, perhaps, but comfortable nowhere.

Lani shrugged. “Well, I sure won’t go down south and join Quiverian and his radical Orthos.”

“Arcists,” Keoki corrected, like a patient language teacher, instructing her in the right dialect.

“Yeah, Arcists,” she repeated. “And when I got a hall pass and tried to visit some of my Percell friends over in Uber territory, Sergeov told me to get my little Ortho ass the hell out of there! The Mars boys aren’t much nicer, even if Andy Carroll and I once were pals.

“So what choice do I have? That Plateau Three crowd up on B Level is mixed Ortho-Percell, but the PeeThrees have got this gleam in their eyes, you know what I mean, Saul? They aren’t so much spacers anymore as missionaries! They don’t seem to care if they live or die, so long as Halley’s trillion tons of ice gets delivered, according to Captain Cruz’s plan.”

Saul smiled. “It looks to me as if you’ve found a home right here, Lani.”

“That’s right,” Keoki affirmed. “Just let us know. We’ll paint you a new tabard and hold a ceremony.”

Lani nodded, but she briefly bit her lip. “I—I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve had a chance to talk to Carl.”

She lowered her eyes, knowing how transparent she must seem, but unashamed of it in front of her two friends. There was very little more that could be said.

“I’ll see about getting you some light duty topside soon,” Saul assured her. Lani nodded, gratitude in her eyes.

The little capuchin chirped. The black gibbons, Max and Sylvie, swiveled and looked back down the hallway, their hackles rising.

Keoki peered, his hand drifting toward his belt knife. “Somebody’s coming.”

Men and women started emerging from labs and sleeping caves, nervously gripping staves made from meteoric iron. A pair grabbed the heavy vacuum door and began shutting it. Then they heard a high-pitched whistle—two upsweeps and a trill, repeated twice.

Keoki relaxed only a little. “Treaty call,” he said. “E wehe i ka puka, he told the men, and they ceased pushing. The door stayed half-open. A light appeared down the tunnel, and two smallbrown figures tumbled to a halt just twenty feet short of the entrance, tongues lolling from narrow mouths rimmed with needle sharp teeth.

I should never have let Quiverian talk me into giving him otters, Saul thought, regarding the agile creatures. They’re just too dangerous.

But if he had disallowed the Arcist leader’s request, Saul might have lost his carefully maintained neutral status. It had been hard, serving as middleman, negotiating a treaty so that the emigrants to the south pole still cooperated with Carl Osborn’s crews. The otters had been just one more price.

To his surprise, though, the figure that emerged behind the grinning animals was not Joao Quiverian, or even one of the Arcist leader’s principal assistants. Wild white hair and beard floated like a halo around a face as dark brown as the rich carbonaceous veins lining the icy hall.

“…Kela ao,” Anuenue breathed in amazement. “It is Ould-Harrad.”

Those intense, brown eyes were now rimmed by deep creases. The former spacer officer was dressed in a flapping brown gown of salvaged fibercloth that made him look even more like an ancient patriarch. He gestured with one hand.

“Saul Lintz.”

Lani gripped Saul’s arm and Keoki Anuenue moved as if to stop him, but he shrugged them aside. “Keep Max and Sylvie back;” he said, and cast off down the hallway.

The otters clung to Ould-Harrad’s robe, eyeing Saul ferally. Saul did not feel particularly safe for having been their “creator,” in a sense. In near weightlessness, the creatures were fearsome beasts.

If Joao Quiverian was leader of the radical Arcists, Ould-Harrad was their spiritual guide, their priest. The flame of his guilt complex seemed to drive him hotter than anyone else here on this ancient star mote.

As he approached, Saul wasn’t entirely sure of his own safety. For although the Arcist faction seemed to accept his neutrality, this man was his own force.

“Colonel Ould-Harrad.” He nodded, stopping ten feet away. Saul let his feet slowly come to rest on the floor, toes clutching the soft, hybrid, green covering.

“Do not call me that,” the African intoned with an upraised hand. “I am not an officer, nor spacer, nor Earthman any longer.”

Saul blinked. He had last glimpsed Ould-Harrad during than Great Exodus—his white spacesuit tabard centered with a single, jet-black starburst—leading the Arcist exiles on their trek while Quiverian and his crew covered the rear. During Saul’s brief, subsequent visits to the antipodes, their paths had never crossed. Still, he remembered something the man had said, so long ago, in his lab aboard the Edmund.

“He whom Allah chooses to touch, bears the ridges of those fingerprints, ever afterward…”

“Very well, Suleiman.” Saul nodded. “I see the otters are doing well.”

Ould-Harrad glanced down at the creatures. His hand gently stroked their glossy fur, gene-adapted for life in icy halls instead of the salt spume of the sea.

“One more time, you have proven me wrong about you, Saul Lintz. For the role you have played in bringing these fine creatures forth cannot have been evil.”

Saul couldn’t t help it. He felt a wash of relief at Ould-Harrad’s words, as if he had been worried about that very thing, and the man had the power to absolve. He is very good at this prophet shtick, Saul observed.

“Did Joao lend them to you while you came up north?”

Ould-Harrad’s eyes seemed to flash.

“They are no longer his to lend. That is one reason why I have sought you out. To tell you that there are only three monkeys, down in the south antipodes, to watch for purples and guard the people as they sleep. You must replace these otters.”

“Oh? Where are you taking them?”

“You deserve to know.” Ould-Harrad paused with a faraway look in his eyes. “For years I have gone out onto the surface and meditated under the stars, as mystics have since time immemorial, praying and hoping for a sign. I found that they were hypnotic, those glittering lights in the blackness. After a long time I thought that I had, indeed, begun to hear God’s voice.

“But it could not have been.”

“Why not?” Saul was curious.

Ould-Harrad’s voice was filled with pain. “Because all that came to me was laughter!”

Saul knew that this was more than mere madness. He could almost feel the intensity of the man’s soul torment. “I think I understand,” he said quietly. He did not add that he saw nothing inconsistent in the man’s experience. Who ever said the Creator must be sober? The universe is for laughing, or we must weep.

Ould-Harrad nodded. For a long moment there were no words. Then he raised his eyes again.