Well, Don and I discussed the book, but Don said it was science fiction, not a philosophy text, and I needed a better title. So he came up with Port Eternity, and so it is.

And where did this particular idea come from? Well, I’ve loved the Arthurian legends since I played at castles and knights, and I think they’ll have immediacy so long as the English culture survives in any of its farflung children.

That’s the other thing stories teach us: that we extend farther than our own lifespan, and that there’s unsuspected greatness in the least of us.

When we believe that for a starting fact, everything we do, we do in a different light.

I

... Fairy Queens have built the city, son;

... And as thou sayest it is enchanted, son,

For there is nothing in it as it seems

Saving the King; tho’ some there be that hold

The King a shadow, and the city real. ...

She was a beautiful ship, the Maid of Astolat, beautiful in the way ships can be when cost means nothing, and money certainly meant nothing except the comfort and the pleasure of my lady Dela Kirn. I had seen the Maidfrom the outside, but her crew had not, at least not since the day they boarded her. She was beautiful outside and in, sleek, with raking lines to her vanes which meant nothing at all in space, but pleased the eye and let everyone know that this was no merchanter, no; and inside, inside she was luxury and comfort, which I appreciated too, more than I appreciated the engineering. Where lady Dela went, I went, along with the other servants lady Dela had for her personal comfort; but the Maidwas the best of the places Dela Kirn lived, and I was happiest when she gave the order that packed up the household for the winter season and took us up to station, for whatever destination pleased her.

Usually this move coincided with some new lover, and some of these were good and some were not—more disagreeable than pleasant, truth be told; but we managed, usually, to enjoy ourselves by avoiding them at their worst. Often enough the Maidhad no really binding course, more duration than destination. She just set out and toured this station and another, and because Dela loved to travel, and grew bored with this and that climate, we were a great deal on the move. Dela Kirn, be it understood, was one of the Founders of Brahman, not that she herself had founded a world, but her predecessors had, so Dela Kirn inherited money and power and in short, whatever she had ever fancied to have or do.

My name is Elaine, which amused my lady Dela, who gave the name to me. I have a number on my right hand, very tiny and tasteful, in blue; and the same number on my shoulder, 68767-876-998, which I am, if anyone asked, and not Elaine. Elainewas Dela Kirn’s amusement. I was made68767-876-998. Bornisn’t the right word, being what I am, which is a distinction I don’t fully understand, only that my beginning was in a way different than birth, and that I was planned. I’ve never had any other name than Elaine, I think, because before Dela I have no clear memory where I was, except that it was nowhere—one of the farms. On the farms they lock you up and you spend a lot of time doing repeat work and a lot of time exercising and a lot of time under deepteach or just blanked, and none of it is pleasant to think back on. When I have nightmares they tend to be of that, of being locked up alone, with just my own mind for company.

They worked over my genes in planning me, me, 68767-876-998, so that I’m beautiful and intelligent, which isn’t vanity to say, because I had nothing at all to do with it. And probably there are hundreds of me, because I was a successful combination, and a lot aren’t. I cost my lady a lot of money, like the Maid, but then, she wouldn’t have wanted me if I hadn’t.

And Lancelot and Vivien were beautiful too, which they were made to be ... Dela gave them their names from the same source she got mine, having this fancy for an old poem-tape. I knew. I had heard it. The story made me sad, especially since that Elaine, the lily maid, died very young. I knew of course that I would too, which happens to our type ... they take us when we get a little beyond forty and put us down, unless we have learned by then to be very clever or unless we have somehow become very important, which few of us do.—But they made us on tape, feeding knowledge into our heads by that means, while they grew our bodies, so I suppose they have the right to do that, like throwing out tape when it gets worn—or when we wear out, beyond use.

Lance—for him I felt sorriest of all when I first heard the tape, because of what he was and because of the story too, that it came out just as badly for him. It was a terrible story, and a grand one at the same time. I heard it over and over again, whenever I had the chance, loving it, because in a way it was me, a me I would never be, except in my dreams. Only I never wanted to give it to Lance to hear, or even to Viv, because their part in it was crueler than mine; and somehow I was afraid it might come true, even if we have no love the way born-men do.

Dying—that, of course, we do, all of us. But what it was to love ... I only dreamed.

I was still young, having served my lady Dela just five years. Vivien was older; and so was Lance, who was trained for other things than keeping the household in order, I may add, and very handsome, more than any of Dela’s other lovers that she had for other reasons. Dela was good to Lance when she was between lovers, and as far as we could love, I think Lance loved her very much. He had to. That was what histaped psych-set made him good for, and mostly it was what he thought about, besides being beautiful. He was older than any of us, being thirty-six—and forty frightened him.

I was, precisely, twenty-one, after five years’ service; because really my mind was better than the training they put into it—and I was sold out at sixteen, finished two years younger than most leave the farms. I read; I wrote; I sang; I knew how to dress and how to do my lady’s hair and how to make love and do simplest math, all of which recommended me, I suppose. But mostly I was innocent, which pleased my lady Dela. She liked the look of me, she would say, holding my face in her two hands and smiling. I have chestnut hair and greenish eyes, and I blush quickly, which would make her laugh; besides that I have, she would say, a face like in the old romance, my eyes being very large for my face and my skin decidedly pale. I have a romantical sad look—not that I am sad a great deal of the time, but I have the look. So I was Elaine, the lily maid, like the ship. Elaine loved Lancelot and died for love, Elaine my namesake in the poem, but love was very far from me.

Actually, if I had something to make me melancholy, it was that I had that name which meant dying young, and I had been out of the farms so short a time that death, however romantical, hardly appealed to me. I had never thought much about death before that tape—but I did think of it afterward.

Vivien—Vivien now: she was different, all sharpness and wit, and that was herfunction, not being beautiful, although she was, in a dark and elegant fashion. The Vivien of the story was a cold and intelligent woman; and so was ours, who managed the accounts and all the things that Dela found too tedious, the really complicated things. Age had no terror for Vivien—she was sure to go on past forty: without her, my lady Dela would hardly have known what to do about her taxes.

Mostly Viv kept to herself. She was of course older, but she looked down not just on me, but on Lance—which she had a right to do, being the most likely of us all to be given rejuv and to live as long as Dela herself. Viv did sleep with us in the servants’ quarters, and she talked to us without spite, but she was not like us. I bored her; and Lance did, entirely, because Viv had no sex drive at all and made no sense of Lance. Attractive and elegant as she was, she got all her pleasure from her account-keeping and from organizing things and telling us what to do, which is as good a way to get pleasure as any other, I suppose, if it works, which it seemed to do for Vivien.