"Why do you say that?"

"All those reporters. What happened, somebody in my office put out a press release?"

"Oh, no," Johnson said. "My source speaks only to me. I'm the one who told that bunch. I made the call after I got here so they'd be in a hurry and really frantic. Don't you think they looked frantic?"

Sparky stared at her, then laughed.

"To get on my good side, right?"

"Exactly."

"Must have been a lot of calling."

"Sparky, I try to do as little work as possible. I called D. Mentua Precox and made her promise not to tell a soul."

Sparky was still laughing well after they made their escape.

It's been many years now since I've had to dodge crowds of reporters. You say you hate it, and you do, and yet of course a part of you likes it very much. Who could resist? All those people, with absolutely nothing to do but chase you. It goes to your head, and when it's gone, it leaves you off balance, like you'd been climbing stairs for years and now you're at the top and your foot keeps reaching for one more.

Even in my heyday I never lived in a place like the Halley.

I could have. I could have afforded it. But I was never very good at spending my money. I left that up to my father. There was nothing much I really wanted except to do good work. I'm not saying I shopped at thrift stores. I just never bought the kind of baubles many rich folks buy.

But I could get used to the Halley.

I spent many days doing little more than lolling in the hammock stretched between the wood struts supporting my porch roof, dangling a line in the still water. To call me an angler would have been an insult to fishermen since the beginning of time. A bite on the hook was a minor annoyance; I'd pull in the little perch or bass or catfish, cut off the barb, and set the fish free. Catch and release, a phrase I recall from Old Earth. Then I'd get settled in the hammock again. It got where I was sure I recognized some of the finny critters. They'd look at me accusingly with their wall eyes just before I dumped them in the drink, but I didn't care. I was ruthless. It's your own fault for being so trusting, I'd tell them. Didn't you learn anything when you hit the bait yesterday?

Nothing happened, as I said. But while I idled, things were going on.

Each day was an improvement for Poly. She spent six, seven hours a day practicing. At first she was sure it was annoying me. She offered to move to one of the rim staterooms. I begged her not to. Usually it was scales, arpeggios; finger exercises. Studies for the student. But notes flew into the air and I drank them in, even the simplest, most monotonous run. I seldom saw her when she practiced. The sound came through the open window of her tree house, and each sweet tone soothed me.

At the end of a session, when we would usually share a sumptuous picnic prepared by the ship's gourmet-chef program, she would come alive describing her day's progress. Her skills were returning faster than she had been led to believe, faster than she had dared hope. She was starting to think she might even be ready to play professionally by the time we got to Luna. Most of the time I had no idea what she was talking about. To tell the truth, she had sounded just fine to me on the first day of practice. I have what I consider a good ear. I can carry a tune; Lord knows, I've sung in enough musical theater. But you don't need a perfect voice to sing what have become known as "Broadway" musicals. In fact, you don't even have to have a "good" voice, as long as you can belt it out and not hit sour notes. The genre is famous for its scratchy altos and "singers" who do more speaking than singing. But I know the difference between the sort of music I can make and that made by a real professional musician. I know most ears are not tuned to the fineness needed to distinguish a good performance from a work of genius. Poly has that sort of ear. You have to have it if you expect to move in the circles she aspires to, which, for now, would be concertmaster with a middling philharmonic orchestra. First chair with the King City Symphony, solo work... that would have to await more experience and maturity.

So things are well with Poly. A little sex would brighten my day, but so far she hasn't responded to my hints. I don't intend to push her.

The other thing going on involves Toby, and I blush to bring it up. Toby has lost his mind.

From the moment the two tigers, Shere Khan and Hobbes, padded into the galley Toby had been absolutely gaga over Shere Khan. It was love at first sight.

When humans have sex with animals they call it bestiality. What is it when one species have sex with another species? Hybridization, I think. Didn't I hear that a donkey and a mule can have sex and produce... a horse? Somehow I don't think I got that right. Maybe it's a donkey and an ass. Maybe I don't know what the heck I'm talking about.

Not that sex was involved here. You could call it puppy love, I guess. Toby began following Shere (which is what we called her, though Kipling's Shere Khan was a male tiger, I believe) with his tongue hanging out. When she would sit down somewhere, take a nap—which tigers can do up to about twenty hours a day—Toby would be there, climbing up on her striped flank, licking her behind the ears, on the muzzle, around the jaw; anywhere he could reach. For a few days Shere kept casting dubious glances at him. When she looked at me I swear she seemed embarrassed. But eventually she settled into it. Soon she began to purr, and to drift off to sleep with an extremely satisfied look on her savage face. Then Toby would walk in a tight circle for a while, like dogs do, and nestle himself into the curve of her neck, tuck his head down around his belly, and doze. If she stirred he was instantly up, ready to follow her anywhere.

Hobbes was a different story. There's no other way to describe him than a great big pussycat. Shere Khan bullied him mercilessly, and he didn't seem to mind. She stole his food; he just went to get more for himself. If he tried a romantic approach she would roar a warning, and he would put his ears back and slink away while Toby yapped at him, as indecently pleased as any dog in the history of the world, I think. The big sissy would never assert himself. It's true she outweighed him by about a hundred pounds, but really!

"Pussy-whipped," Poly would observe, then go over and scratch him behind the ears. What that said about the human condition, or about our situation in particular, I don't even want to guess.

So the days pass, Poly fiddles, Toby moons, I fish, and we're coming up on Jupiter. Why we have to go by way of Jupiter I don't know, but it promises to be quite an event.

LAST STAND IN NEVERLAND

Part One of a Series

by Hildy Johnson

It's the biggest party I've ever been to, and I've been to some big ones.

The guest of honor arrives on the back of a live brontosaurus.

What shall we call him now? For years we've all called him Sparky. Just Sparky, and that was enough. Like Elvis. All that time his real name has been Kenneth Valentine, but who knew? The fact was seldom mentioned in the billions of pages written about him, in the thousands of hours of tape, of paparazzi shots stolen through very long lenses. Little Kenny Valentine has been as thoroughly immersed in the part of good ol' wire-haired, zigzag-headed Sparky as any actor in history. There were times when, if you'd asked him his real name, he would have stared blankly at you, and then thought it over for a moment, like somebody trying to recall someone met many years ago, and only briefly. And Sparky was always a child of action, not reflection. He would give you his wonderful grin, then move along.