“You’d have to be able to create and sustain a high temperature. I could teach you, but it’d take time. I must discuss these problems with my time‑travel proj.” Luciente marched over to her television set, fiddled with some dials and spoke into her kenner. In a short while she was meeting with several people. Most of them appeared on the screen as they spoke, but a couple were apparently too far from a set and spoke only through the kenner. Connie strained her ears to hear, but most of the argument was in a weird jargon, about gliding, and fast and slow marcon, flebbing, achieving nevel.

“I’m sorry I bothered the two of you. I guess you were planning to be alone,” Connie said to Jackrabbit, his long body curled up.

“It’s like my naming. Every time I take a step, I start jagging. I want to go back where I was. Not really. But I need Luci today, I need a clear interseeing of who I am and what I was wanting. I feel lost, a little bottomed.”

“You don’t want to go on defense?”

“Fasure I do. I put in for it. Only, after I make a decision, I feel thinned. As if I just lost eight other selves.” He sighed, writhing restlessly on the bed and casting a baleful glance at Luciente in tense discussion at the TV set.

When Luciente turned to them, she was frowning lightly. “Everybody agrees your pass is urgent. But no one is confident you can learn to control body temperature in a week. Marat recommends acute appendicitis, a common health problem in your time. It wasn’t always accompanied by fever and could be easily faked.”

“No good!” Connie said. “They wouldn’t think it was such a big emergency. Why take me off ward? They’d wait till the doctor came in. Weekend is the time to get out, because they’re understaffed. And, Luciente, appendicitis, it’s not contagious. They never believe us anyhow when we say we’re in pain.”

“Zo, what about a head injury? Faking unconsciousness is easy. I could teach you to go into delta in a few lessons.”

“Let me think.” Connie turned and almost tripped over an object leaning on the wall. “What’s that?”

“Careful! It’s a weapon. I didn’t get a chance to turn it in today. We had practice at noon.”

Connie detoured it carefully. “I’m trying to think. Maybe.”

Luciente’s kenner spoke in a loud, demanding voice. “Corydora here. Thought you were planning to test those results from Tennessee.”

“Tonight. I’ll do it tonight after supper.”

“Thought we were having a town meeting about the Shaping controversy.”

“Fasure. Will do it between supper and the meeting. I set everything up.” Luciente spoke calmly. Connie could sense she was feeling great pressure. As she spoke into her kenner she stood there flatfooted, with her legs as if braced, and looked from Jackrabbit to her with level measuring gaze. Immediately she flicked her kenner and spoke. “Morningstar, can you take Dawn to have her teeth checked? I’m caught to my neck.” Then she spoke to Dawn. “My appleblossom, Morningstar is taking you to Goat Hill. I will see you at supper and tomorrow we’ll work together in the upper fields.”

Suddenly Connie saw her mother’s mother: a peasant woman dressed in black with her hair pulled back tight as if to punish it. With eight children, with close to forty grandchildren, with cows and pigs and chickens, she stood with that calm weighing expression as crisis after crisis broke over her. Everyone would be fed, everybody would be comforted, everyone would be healed, to each would be given a piece of herself. Luciente had some of that in her, Connie thought, but with more control and less ultimate despair.

“I think I want to learn how to play dead … or knocked out anyhow. I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow.”

“I’ll ask Magdalena how best to teach you,” Luciente said, and smiled at Jackrabbit. “In about an hour I’ll ask her. Tomorrow morning, Connie sweetness, graze me and we’ll start.”

Embarrassed, Connie immediately broke contact.

“Tina, please. Watch for us. I want to talk to Sybil for a minute only. Momentito?”

Tina nodded, looking them over curiously. Perhaps she thought they were lovers. Anyhow, she stood near the door watching for attendants, while Connie whispered to Sybil, “Would you stage a fight with me?”

Sybil touched Connie’s cheek lightly. “Why not?”

“They’ll give it to you afterward. They’ll come down on you.”

“Maybe they’ll send me off this ward. Outside I know the rules. I’m an old hand.”

“Maybe they’ll just do you sooner.”

“Maybe the saddest person will be the last to be ‘done.’ Like death row.”

She began spending all the time she could safely steal with Luciente, studying control of her own nervous system. In the morning Luciente was walking with Bee and White Oak, pausing at the big board in the square in front of the meetinghouse to read the newest notices, poems, proposals, and complaints.

With you

Well coupled: I could wade

in warm water

and melt like a sugar cube.

ANYONE WHO DOESN’T CLEAN DIVING GEAR DESERVES TO DROWN!

Do you value yourself lower than zucchini? Vote the SHAPERS!

Class starting in bacterial fertilizers, Tuesday 8 P.M., Amilcar Cabral greenhouse.

Cellist wanted, antique music quartet. See Puccini, Goat Hill.

WANDERING PLAYERS: Goose Creek players visiting this week. Thursday: THE ROBBER BARONS (historical satire); Friday: WHO KNOWS HOW IT GROWS (Shaping drama); Saturday: WHEN TIME FRAYED (drama of battle at Space Station Beta).

“What’s all this business about Shaping?” Connie asked as they read the notices.

“The Shapers want to intervene genetically,” Bee rumbled. “Now we only spot problems, watch for birth defects, genes linked with disease susceptibility.”

“The Shapers want to breed for selected traits,” Luciente said. “It’s a grandcil‑level fight.”

“What do you think?” she asked curiously.

White Oak said, “Oh, we three are all Mixers. That’s the other side. We don’t think people can know objectively how people should become. We think it’s a power surge.”

Luciente pointed. “Look, there’s my notice. Two people signed up last night. But we need at least five.”

Connie read the notice. “Why do you want to learn Chinese?”

“They do interesting work in my field. On my next sabbatical, I’m going to travel there.”

“Bee, will you go too?”

“Not so. I traveled too much when I was involved in reparations to former colonies. I never want to move my body again! I got so weary. No, on sabbatical I want to follow a line of research our base decided against–foolishly.”

She turned to Luciente. “Will you really go off to China without him?”

“How not? For half a year. Person won’t run away.”

“Ah, but without you to argue with day and night, my brain will turn into a jellyfish. You’ll come back and find me a Shaper. Who’ll keep me politically correct, who’ll chew me over?”

White Oak had begun to warble a song that Connie had heard people singing lately all over the village:

“Someday the past will die,

the last scar heal,

the last rubbish crumble to good dirt,

the last radioactive waste decay

to silence

and no more in the crevices of the earth

will poisons roll.

Sweet earth, I lie in your lap,

I borrow your strength,

I win you every day.”

Bee sang in his deep bass voice and Luciente sang fancy alto harmony until they were up to the door of the base where they all worked.

“Someday water will run clear,

salmon will thunder upstream,

whales will spout just offshore,

and no more in the depths of the sea

will the dark bombs roll.

Sweet earth, I lie in your lap …”

Bee and White Oak went inside, still singing, while Luciente squatted down on the patch of grass outside to give her a lesson.

Later White Oak came out to join them and they all went to work in the upper fields where the experimental gardens of zucchini and short‑season lima beans were growing. They stopped by the children’s house to invite Dawn along, and White Oak took a baby for the ride and the sunshine. As they checked the plants and made measurements and notes, Luciente continued her lessons to Connie. Dawn had become curious about the past and kept interrupting with questions until Luciente said firmly, “Keep quiet now or leave, Dawn. Connie must fix on escaping from the bad place that holds per against per will. Next week, if Connie escapes, person will answer all the questions you can ask.”