"I'm sorry to call you at work, Tony," my brother said, "but Sam died about an hour ago."

Sweet Jesus, I thought.  I could never get time to go see him, and now there's no time left.  What have I done?

"Was it easy on him?  Did he go quick?"  I asked.

Steve shook his head.

"It wasn't good, Tony.  They think he fainted or something and fell while he was getting a shirt out of his closet.  Probably hit his head against the door frame on his way down.  His roommate was out walking with the nurses and nobody noticed Sam was missing.  They found him later.  He was unconscious and bleeding."

"Damn," I said softly.  "Did they take him to the hospital?"

Steve shook his head again.  "Doctor was there already at the home for someone else, so they put Sam back in his bed and sewed up his head.  Then he started to complain about pain in his gut."  He looked down and away from the camera.  I heard a high-pitched voice and laughter and the sound of little running feet.  Elizabeth, fresh from her second birthday party, crawled up in Steve's lap.

"Hi, hi, hi," she said in a sing-song voice.  The reached up and kissed her daddy, her face and fingers still sticky and speckled with pink icing.

"Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth's mother, Rose appeared briefly on-screen behind her.  She grabbed Elizabeth around the middle and swung her up to rest on one hip, then glanced at me and smiled.  She handed Steve a brightly colored paper napkin with "Happy Birthday" printed on it in fluorescent pink and blue with the other hand.

"Elizabeth, Daddy's trying to take with Uncle Tony," she said. She was a short woman, medium build, with strong arms and blonde hair cut in a shag.  She turned quickly to face me.  "Hello, Tony.  I'm sorry to hear about Sam," She turned back to Elizabeth.  "Let's go back to the party, honey.  It's time to open presents."

"Open presents!"  Elizabeth said with enthusiasm.  She wiggled off her mother's lap and headed for the kitchen, her mother dragging behind her. 

Steve brushed the crumbs off his clothes and icing off his face and looked up at me.  We both smiled.

"She gets worse after this," I warned.  "Two year olds are very busy people."

"Like she isn't already," Steve said ruefully.

"So, what happened?"  I asked.  "Was it his abdominal aorta again?"

"Probably, but there's no way to tell without an autopsy, and I don't think we need one of those."  Steve said.  He took a deep breath and looked away from me.  He did not look happy.  "Tony, he didn't want to go through the hospital routine again.  After his last attack he put himself on a DNR."

DNR. Do Not Resuscitate.  A big red flag written in dry medical language.  In ordinary English it meant the patient was ready to die, and wanted to go quickly and easily, without massive intervention.  I tried to imagine Sam hooked up to monitors and tubes and needles, a thin, frail figure lost among the machines.  Sam never lived like that, and it hurt to even imagine him dying that way.  DNR was one hell of a better way to go.  Especially for Sam.

"Dissected aorta hurts a little bit," I said with careful understatement.  Like a red-hot charcoal burning in your stomach, Same told me after his last stay in the hospital.  Like a cramp that never ends, and just gets tighter and tighter until it's a digging rat bite that never goes away.

"They gave him morphine like water," Steve said.  "As much as he wanted."

"Did it work?"

"They said it did," Steve said.  He sounded doubtful.  He was a respiratory therapist at the University of Nebraska Hospital.  He knew all about DNR's and aortas and how hard it was to die.  "There's always a first time for something to work."

"When's the funeral?"  I asked.

"Bob and I are going up to Dakota tomorrow.  We've got to deal with the bankers and the lawyers," Steve said with distaste.  "Funeral will be on Saturday."

I thought quickly about work and schedules and how fast I could rearrange my life.  Luckily, or unfortunately, I didn't have much of a life to re-arrange.  Just this once that was an advantage.

"How about you fly in to Omaha on Thursday and drive up with Rose on Friday morning?"  Steve said.  "Rose's sister will come to take care of Elizabeth but she can't get free until Thursday night.  That will also give us two cars up there."

"However you want to do it, little brother.  You're in charge on this one," I said.

"Thanks.  I feel so lucky."

"I'm sorry, Steve.  It doesn't seem fair . . ."

"But I'm a lot closer and I'm executor of the estate," Steve finished for me.  He hesitated.  "Are you sure you can get away?  I watch the news.  I've seen you in the background around the alien."

I thought about my orders to keep everything confidential, and mentally said screw it.  Steve wasn't in the media and he knew how to keep his mouth shut.

"Yeah, I'm on security detail for the ambassador."

"Can you get away?  I mean, we can handle this if you can't.  Everybody will understand."

I stiffened.  Something must have shown on my face because Steve winced slightly.

"This is family business, Steve.  I know what I've got to do.  I'll be there.  You don't have to worry about me."

"We'll see you at the house on Friday, then," Steve said.  "Visitation starts at three in Milbank."

I killed the call and leaned back in my chair.  The holster around my shoulders tugged at me and I absently took it off and laid it on the desk.  I rubbed my shoulders and looked out the window.  Spring was well advanced in the District, and the trees were heavy with buds and a few leaves.  The cherry trees were in full bloom.

I checked the weather forecast for Dakota.  Sleet, mixed with snow.  Just about what I expected.  It could be a full greenhouse summer everywhere else in the country, and Dakota would get a blizzard.

Enough delay.  I took a deep breath and made the call.

"Carole?  Tony.  I need to take a few personal days . . . "

"No," She said.

Five minutes after I called her, and got my first "No" I was in her office.


"Not a chance.  No way.  You're in charge of the security detail for the ambassador.  You can take time off later, when the negotiations are all over, but not now.  I'm sorry."  Carole said.

I stared at the wall behind and above her.  Everything in her office, from the standard-issue metal desk to her green, plastic-covered swivel chair to the lead-lined anti-surveillance curtains that tightly covered the windows, was standard government issue.  The same government that helped get me the hell out of Dakota, that gave me a career, that told me I was important and gave me a job that was important.  I took a deep breath.

"Then I quit.  You'll have my resignation letter in an hour."

"You can't resign!"

"I just did."

Carole stood behind her desk and glared up at me.  She was trim and athletic, but she couldn't have weighed more than 130 pounds.  She was medium height for a woman, which meant the top of her head came to just below my sternum.  In other words, I could have picked her up, tucked her under my arm and carried her around without any trouble.

She scared the hell out of me.

"You'll give up everything to go to a damn funeral?"

"Carole, he raised my Dad.  He was the closest thing to a grandfather I had," I pleaded.

"I understand," she said softly.  "I really do.  I wish you could go.  I want you to go.  But not now.  Not after last Monday."

Monday I became a hero, and the memory still hurt, I remembered the sudden feeling I had as I stood next to the ambassador, that it might be better if I moved just a half step to the left.  Then the sudden flare of pain, and the way I spun and flailed as the bullet meant for the alien slammed into my impact vest.

The ambassador looked down at me, everything seeming to move in slow motion, his face a mask.  Then he was buried under a pile of agents as they pushed him to the ground and covered him with their own bodies.  The reaction team grabbed the shooter, and interrogation tracked him back to a reactionary group.

It was a simple solution.  A crazy with a gun was something everyone could understand.  And nobody got hurt except for me, and the vest protected me so that all I got was a huge burise on my chest.  The whole incident flashed on the news for maybe a day, and then was quickly forgotten.  Everything was tied up nice and neat.

Too neat.

Where did he get the gun?  Where did he get the ID?  How did he get so close?

What else was going on here?

The answers were logical and reasonable and too damned easy.  Carole and I both supsected something more was involved, but there was no proof.  Maybe we were too suspicious, but part of our job was to look for a conspiracy in everything.

Now I just didn't have the time.

"Carole, I've got to bury Sam."

"Your brothers are there, right?  They can bury him.  You can pay your respects later," she said.  She looked away, shook her head, then looked up at me and her face softened.  "Tony, He's not going to know you're not there.  Life is for the living, and I'm sure he'd want you to do your work first.  I'm sure he'd understand."

I thought about Sam.

"First thing you've got to understand is that flatlanders might look like us, might sound like us, might even be related to us, but they don't think like us," Sam said in his cigarette rasp voice.  I stood next to him in my footed pajamas, my favorite blanket in one hand, my other hand in his, and remembered how tall he looked as I stared up a him, and his whisker-studded face.  ‘Flatlanders measure themselves as individuals, and they use work as the measuring stick.  We're different.  To us, family is more important than kin.  Kin are more important than line.  Line is more important than any outsider.  And everything is more important than work. "

No, I did not think Sam would understand.

"Damn it, Carole, I'm the oldest," I said, frustrated.  How to explain this to someone from the flats?  I tried to make myself calm.  "I'm the eldest in the line now.  I've got to be there at the funeral."

She looked up at my stubborn face, and tried another tack.

"What if our side needs you in the negotiations?  Ambassador Foremost says he owes you a favor.  What if we need to use that?"

I remembered Foremost, when he and Carole came to visit me in the examination room after the attack.  I remember his voice, dry as sandpaper and correct as a computer, his head cocked to the side with a nervous manner that always reminded me of the jerky movements of my pet parakeet.  The rest of him, however, looked nothing like a bird.  He was stockily built, just a few inches taller than Carole, and broad.  Underneath the robes and harness I know he was all muscle and bone, with a protective exoskeleton over his most vulnerable points.  He was an ominvore, and the exobiologists claimed he was descended from cursorial hunters, much like early man.   He looked more like a wolverine than an ape, but I liked the way he thought.

And that was part of the problem, when the Trader ship found us.  Our races were different enough that communication was difficult, and similar enough that we were potential competitors.  Potential for war or peace, trade or conflict.  We seemed to be more advanced in some technologies that they wanted, but they never let us forget that they found us, not the other way around.  And with a starship in orbit that could reach any place on Earth, they held the high ground.

Our weapons might be better, but we had no way to get them up and on target.  Our boosters were too weak, and the Traders routinely destroyed anything that came near their ship and might even remotely be considered a threat to it.

The Traders, on the other hand, could drop asteroids on us from space.  But asteroid strikes were not going to help them understand our genetic engineering technology.  Or get the  humans rumor said they wanted to bring on board to join their crew.

So we exchanged ambassadors and started to negotiate.

And negotiate.   

And negotiate.

"Where you suffer, I suffer."  Foremost told me in the hospital.  He held my hand and looked closely into my eyes.  "In my line, your name is now written."

Carole looked puzzled, but what the ambassador said made perfect sense to me.  It did not make me happy, but I understood it.  I wondered what obligations went with his line.  I thought briefly of rejecting him, but I did not know how he would react.  Safer to say yes.

Really? a small voice inside me said.  Are you sure about this?

I thought carefully.

"I accept," I said.  "What I have to tell you, though, is that in my line, your name is not written."

He hesitated, then bowed his head.

"I understand and accept this.  Perhaps one day I will earn the right to write my name in your line."

I relaxed, just a little.  One part down.  And no threats of war.

"But I'll make sure you're associated with my line as long as you're here, and my guest." I said.

He looked up, his eyes black and hard and dead as a shark's.  I tried to read his expression in his face, but he was too unfamiliar, too different.

"I accept," he said.  He stood and left the hospital room.

I watched him as he left, his robe tight around his body.  Now I was part of his line, and he was associated with mine.  As long as he was on Earth he could claim protection and assistance from me and mine.

I hoped to hell he did not understand what I had just done for him.  And I hoped I never had to find out what he had done for me.

That conversation was a week old, and that week seemed like a century ago.  A week ago Sam was still alive, and I was free to live any way I wanted, without responsibility.  Now I had a different set of problems, and Foremost was not in them.  Now my problem was Sam, and all the changes Sam's death made to my life.

I shook my head to clear it of memories and looked up at Carole.

"It's not that kind of a favor," I said.  "Any personal business Foremost and I have is just that, personal business.  Nothing I can say or do will have any effect on the negotiations."

"But – "
   
"No," I said and cut her off.  I stood.

"I'm going to the funeral, Carole.  You'll have my resignation letter in an hour."


I flew into Omaha the next day.   

Rose, with Elizabeth propped on one hip, met me at the airport.  When Rose saw me she put Elizabeth down and waved to me.  I hurried to them and got a quick hug from Rose and a big, sloppy kiss on the cheek from Elizabeth.

"Would you like to fly, Elizabeth?"  I asked.

"No," she said firmly.  She hid her face in her mother's skirt, then peeked and eye out at me and smiled.

"Just, a little bit?"  I coaxed.

"Oh, Tony," Rose siad. "Here?"

"Here," I said firmly.

I picked Elizabeth up under her arms and swung her through the air, feet flying wildly, oblivious to the stares of other passengers, just because I missed her.  She laughed and giggled and threw her head back.  Rose just smiled and shook her head while Elizabeth's hair swirled and flowed behind her.

"If you're done now," Rose said, when I put Elizabeth back on the ground.  Elizabeth tried to walk in a straight line and instead staggered from side to side, like a drunken sailor, dizzy from her flight.  She laughed and laughed until I scooped her up and put her on my shoulders.  She grabbed my ears to use as steering handles.

"I'm ready now," I told Rose.

I liked Omaha and I liked Steve's house.  It was a ranch style, built into the side of a hill so the basement was more like a first floor.  He lived in a neighbourhood on the far side of Omaha, out where new subdivisions sprouted like wildflowers and cornfields fought a losing battle against construction bulldozers

Elizabeth took me by the hand and walked me around inside and outside the house to show me her flowers and her toys.  Rose walked next to me and worried.

"I saw you get shot on the news," she said, and everything about her changed with those few words.  Rose my sister-in-law vanished and suddenly she was Rose the nurse and I was a patient.  She subtly moved back a step to look at all of me, then stepped in closer to focus on my chest, where the bullet struck.  I wondered how she did the transition so quickly. "Are you all right?"

"They checked me out at Walter Reed," I reassured her.  "I'm fine."

"And the ambassador?"

"Not a scratch on him."

"You're not there with him now, Tony."

I checked out the tulips that Elizabeth pointed out to me.  There were red flowers and white flowers and buds that had not yet opened.

"Security is with him all the time," I said.  "I was just one more agent."

Rose walked away from us a few steps.  Elizabeth saw a monarch butterfly and raced off to chase it. I saw the butterfly was in no danger, so I went after Rose.

We stood for a moment in the backyard and looked accross the fence toward the fields.  Next year they might sprout houses, but this year they still followed older rhythms.  Furrows, newly plowed and rich with the stubble left over from last year's harvesting, waited for corn planting.  The soil was black and ready, thick with the morning dew and last weekend's rain.

"Do you think things always get better, Tony?" she asked.

I did not think she was talking about the cornfield.

"No," I said, after a moment.  "Things don't always get better.  They may get better or they may get worse, but it's not an always kind of thing.  The only thing that is always is change.  Sometimes things change on a regular cycle, like the planting and the growing and the harvesting and the fallowing.  Sometimes they change on a bigger cycle, and the smaller cycles change with them or are destroyed.  Whether it's good or bad depends on where you stand and what you care about."

"I don't like change, Tony," she said.  "Everything I love is in those smaller cycles, the regular ones.  I don't know anything about the bigger cycles except that they might crush what I love."

"I know," I said awkwardly.

She turned away from the fields to face me, her arms folded across her chest.  She looked down at the ground, then turned her head and looked out across the fields.

"We got rid of the bombs down here.  Things finally looked safe for little girls to grow up.  Then the Traders arrive," she said bitterly.  "I couldn't stand it if anything happened to her."

I hugged her, gently.  I wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right, but I kept my mouth shut and watched Elizabeth chase butterflies.  Finally, Rose reached up and patted my hand.

"Let's get inside.  We've got a long ride tomorrow."


Rose never went to the north with Steve when he went up to Dakota to fish and hunt and visit Sam.  Instead she stayed down south, in Nebraska and Iowa, and worked or visited her folks.  This time she had to go north.

Margaret, Rose's unmarried sister, came to stay with Elizabeth while we were gone.  As far as Elizabeth was concerned, she had two mamas.  Margaret loved the idea, and Rose was alwyas more relaxed when Margaret was in charge instead of a daycare center.  We settled Elizabeth with Margaret, said all our good-byes, left all the emergency numbers, and drove north.

The interstate highway was on the Iowa side of the Missouri.  I drove and Rose navigated as we followed the flat ribbon of gray concrete, two lanes wide in each direction, a man-made river of traffic.  The river itself was out of sight on our left most of the time, and the loess hills, huge mounds of windblown dirt, rose up like miniature Rocky Mountains on our right.  Gradually the hills arched away to the east and out of sight.

The Missouri curled back into view just as the smell hit us.  Rose quickly rolled up the windows as we passed the mountain of manure from the Sioux City stockyards, and the giant billboard that declared: "This golden mountain represents millions to the Siouxland economy – "

North of downtown we passed over massive housing developments that rolled far to the east and west, like grass over a prairie.  Neatly edged lawns and streets laid out in geometrically perfect curves and loops and cul-de-scas spread out around us like some enormous geometrical poster child.

We crossed into South Dakota, over the Big Sioux river, and past the computer factories that hugged the Dakota side of the river.  The factories were there because the corporate taxes were lower in Dakota, but the schools and the services and everything else were better in Iowa. So the houses and the people lived south of the Sioux, and the work stayed in Dakota.

Somehow, I was not surprised.

As we headed north, as the trees got fewer and fewer and smaller and smaller and more twisted and gnarled by the wind, Rose got quieter and quieter.  She was an Iowa farm girl at heart, even if she was an expert transplant nurse, and she knew how a farm out to be run.  Nice and tidy. When she saw the fields had no fences, that the animals basically had nothing to stop them from coming across the roads, she had nothing to say.

The exit off the main road was marked by a stop sign and a small truck stop that had seen better days.  It looked lost and forlorn in the icy drizzle and there was no sign of life except for a neon sign that sporadically blinked and advertisement for a cheap, local beer.

We turned right down a small two-lane blacktop road.  I pointed across the brown cattails of a marsh to a copse of trees on the horizon.

"Summit," I said.

Summit had a population sign – a small, metal rectangle with the town name and the population – at the turn off the main road.  The sign read: 277.  Now it was 276.  We turned down Main Street, the only paved road in town, turned left at the pool hall, slid down gravel and clay roads for two blocks, then turned left again.

Sam's house was a tiny white two-story A-frame.  The green roof was speckled with black rectangles where shingles had blown free.  The exterior was leafed metal siding, smeared with rust marks where the builder used cheap, ungalvanized nails.  My brothers were inside.  We saw their cars parked outside on the lawn, next to the smoking, burning barrels where they were burning trash from Sam's house. The air was thick and humid with freezing rain and smoke.

I pushed open the door to Sam's house and we entered through the mudroom.  We opened the door to the kitchen and a wave of heat and dust slapped us in the face.  We went inside and the dust started us both coughing.  My brother Bob sat in a big, overstuffed chair under a window.  The curtain was drawn tight across the window.  He looked up at us and smiled through his big, black beard as Rose sneezed.

"Just think of all them skin cells from Sam and Laverne.  Thousands and millions and billions of them," Bob said.  We coughed and he smiled again.  "Wish we could open a window for you, but it's too cold outside."

In DC, in Nebraska, hell, even in the rest of South Dakota, it was spring.  Here, 2000 feet above sea level, on the highest spot between the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers, it was still winter.

Outside, we heard a noise.

Whirrrrr       

"Oh, no," Steve siad.  He stood next to the kitchen counter with a bottle of beer in his hand.  "Not him again."

Bob grinned.  I closed my eyes and prayed.  Around me I felt Dakota settle lightly, the first layer, and grasp me firmly.

Rose stepped next to her husband, a little speck next to a giant.  Steve, just as tall as me and even bigger, just shook his head and put on a long suffering expression.  Rose watched all three of us and looked puzzled.

Roaaarrr 

"Again," Steve said, resignation thick in his voice.

Bob grinned again, but this time it was strained.  I looked around and tried to figure out how I could get out of the house quickly, without my brothers taking vengeance later for leaving them like a coward.

There was only one door out, and it was too late.

Silence.

"What's going on?"  Rose asked in a whisper.  She looked nervous and pulled a little closer to Steve.  I shook my head and Steve squeezed his eyes shut, made a face, and opened them again.  Bob slumped deeper in his overstuffed chair.

A perfunctory knock at the door and we heard it swing open and Indian stepped inside.  He was medium height, with long, greasy black hair pulled into a tail.  His skin was coppery-brown, and his eyes were black and glassy.  He wore a green combat jacket, torn and stained with grease and a pair of jeans.

"How ya doin'?"

"Fine, Indian," Bob said.  He gestured vaguely toward the outside, glanced at Rose, and grinned.  "Got your town car outside?"

"Yep, yeah, I do," he said, his voice deep and hoarse, chopped off, as if each syllable came from the edge of an axe.

"Not the country car?"

"No, no, that one I'm still workin' on.  Yep, yeah, got that by the house up on some blocks," he said.  He laughed, a deep, throaty noise.

"Ya know, Sam was a good friend of mine, my buddy.  He leave me anything in the will?"

"We don't know," Steve said.  He knew.  He was executor of the will.  But he did not want to talk with Indian.  Particularly when Indian was drunk.  "You'll have to ask the lawyer."

"Yep, yeah, Sam was my buddy," he said.  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a ciagarette. He carefully straightened it out, but it still flopped down, almost broken halfway down the white paper.  He looked around vaguely, saw me, and looked up.

"You are one big bastard, aren't you?"

"Hello, Indian," I said resignedly.  He smiled and coughed.

"Mind if I make some fire, mind if I smoke?"  he asked.  He ignored us, the question just a formality, and lit up.  Bob stopped smiling.

"We don't have any ashtrays, Indian," he said sharply.  Indian waved his hand through the smoke, and waved off Bob's irritation the same way.

"No problem," he said.  He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a green cotten work glove, stained black and hard with oil and grease.  He put it on his left hand and dropped the ash into it.  "Yep, yeah, Sam was my buddy.  He leave me anything in his will?"

Steve looked irritated.  Bob closed his eyes.  Rose pulled on my sleeve and l leaned down next to her.

"He's wearing nail polish on his fingernails.  Pink nail polish.  And he's got live .22 shells sewn on the outside of his jacket.  Why is he doing that?"

I shrugged and stood straight.

Indian finished his cigarette and put the still-glowing butt into the back pocket of his jeans.  He carefully gathered all the ash in his hand into a neat pile, then brushed his hands together and scattered the ash all over the floor.

Bob stood.  He was well over six feet and two hundred pounds, and all of it muscle.  Steve and I made Bob look short.  The three of us formed up next to Indian and made a living wall.  Rose huddled behind us.

Indian looked up, his eyes bleary.

"Yep, yeah, Sam was my friend."

"We know, Indian.  We know."

He stepped back.  We stepped forward.  Without any contact we did a slow dance to move him toward the door and out of the house.

"So, you and Teddy Wahford been running any races lately with your town cars?"  Bob asked.  He tried to keep Indian's mind occupied while we got him out of the house.

"Hell, no.  Teddy's golf cart can't keep up with me," Indian said.  He laughed.  Two more steps closer to the door.  "He's too damn slow."

"You take the blade off your town car, Indian?"  I asked.  Two more steps.

"Yep, yeah, I had to," Indian said.  He laughed again, his voice deep and thick with mucus.  "Too much rock goin' into windows.  Had to take it off."

"You go faster with the blade off?"

"Slower.  Don't know why.  Maybe I'll put it back if Teddy gets a fresh charge in his cart."

Finally, the door.

"Yep, yeah, Sam was my buddy," Indian said.  He looked up at us again.  "You think he left me anything in his will?"

"Good-bye, Indian."

He pushed through the door and went outside, back into what was now a mix of freezing rain and snow.  Rose watched through the window as Indian got on his town car and pulled the starter cord.

Roaarrr         

He drove off down the gravel road.

"That's a riding lawn mower," Rose said flatly.  Bob grinned.

"Oh, no.  That's Indian's town car."

Indian slid out of sight around a corner and past a stand of trees.  The engine sound dwindled.

The phone rang.

I picked it up, and it was Indian.

"Hey, big bastard, I forgot to tell you something," he said, his voice barely audible above the roar of his engine and the crackle of cellular phone static.  "There's something asking for you in the pool hall."

"Something.  What's something?"

"Damned if I know what it is.  But it's not part of any Summit line and the boys and girls got a little liquor in 'em.  Whatever that thing is, if you want it to stay in one piece, you might want to get down there."

"Jesus, Indian, thanks for telling me right away," I said sarcastically.  Now I was angry.  "We don't need any trouble with someone from the flats who got up here by accident.  You get yourself in there and tell everyone to calm down.  I'm coming straight down."

"What if the stranger isn't from our line?"

"Then tell everyone that as far as I'm concerned, that stranger is associated until I get down there.  And if the stranger gets hurt before I get there, then someone else is going to get hurt after I get there.  Got it?"

"Done," he said.  "Don't take long."

The phone went dead.


Sam's Pool Hall faced on Main Street, directly across from the bank, in what I always thought of as some kind of weird commentary on the divine and profane of commerce.  A blue and red Hamm's sign flashed in the window.  I stepped onto the landing, gave my boots a quick pass on the metal edge of the mudscraper to knock off the worst of the mud, and opened the door.

Memories hit me like a sledgehammer.

Along the right wall were a dozen heavy oak chairs with high backs and broad armrests, like a king's throne.  The wood was dark, almost black, and worn to fit by fifty years of use.  The chairs were chained firmly together and then bolted to the wall so no one could take them down and use them in a fight.  They smelled of stale beer and moonshine and furniture polish.

Pink sawdust was scattered across the floor and piled up a couple of inches deep against the feet of the two pool tables that dominated the center of the room.  There they squatted, the leather cups worn and cracked, the green felt tight and shiny, one in line behind the other down the middle of the room.  A single lamp with cheap imitation Tiffany glass and a huge light bulb hung over each table.  Wire, with scoring disks strung along it like beads on a necklace, stretched taut high in the air above and across each table.  The only way to move the disks was to reach up and push them with a pool cue.

The rack with the pool cues and the stretcher and the spare set of balls was tucked behind the bar, out of reach of anyone in search of a quick weapon to settle an argument.  The bar was Sam's pride and joy.

It was thirty straight feet of dark wood that looked like it was carved out of a single tree trunk.  A brass step rod, always polished until it shone, ran along the bottom of the bar.  A wall-length mirror, the bottom obscured by rows of half-full liquor bottles, covered the wall itself.

Chuck stood behind the bar.  He'd worked for Sam as bartender as far back as I could remember, and he never seemed to get any older.  Now he held a skullknocker club as shiny and polished as his bald head, and faced the rear of the pool hall with a bored look on his face. When the door opened and I came in he glanced at me briefly, and then pointed with his chin toward the rear of the pool hall.

Indian was in the back at a table, a long-neck beer in his hand and a smile on his face.  When he saw me he wiped the smile off and tried to look serious.

Foremost faced three drunks, two men and a woman.  He was in a low crouch, his cowl pushed back, his snout forward, his hands relaxed and up.  As I watched him I saw his claws flicker in and out.

The drunk woman held a knife, some kind of slip blade, in her right hand.  As I watched she pulled a feint, flipped the knife into her left hand, and slashed.  Foremost caught the blade in his robe, whipped it away almost contemptuously, and struck her quickly on the shoulder.

She spun around, staggered, and kept her footing.  She got a stubborn look on her face, glanced around quickly, and started for Indian's bottle. He got a protective look on his face and began to push his chair back, away from her.

"No way, Dove," he said.  He held the bottle away from her.  "No breaking bottles in the pool hall.  You know Sam's rules.  You can't use this anyway.  I'm not done with it.  No way –"

"What the hell is going on here?"  I shouted in my best parade sergeant voice.

Everyone froze.

I reached over the bar, took Chuck's club, and tapped it lightly in my hand as I walked to the end of the bar.  Indian quickly stood and arranged himself behind me.

Dove and the two other drunks looked up at me and said nothing.  Foremost straightened out of his crouch and stood silently.

"Chuck!"  I shouted, my eyes locked on Dove's.  "Give my friends here a beer."

Three beers later I had Dove and her friends sitting down at a table.  Another round later, including one for Indian and one for me, and a crème de menthe for Foremost, and we were all best friends.     

"Hell, we never knew he was with you, Tony," Dove siad.  She spilled half the beer down her throat and half down her chin.  She wiped her lips with her sleeve.  I motioned Chuck to bring her another beer.  "We just thought he didn't look like he was part of a line.  We thought we'd have a little fun with him."

"Well, you were right," I told Dove soothingly.  "It's important to watch for things like that, just in case flatlanders show up.  And he's not part of my line.  But he's associated."

"If he's associated, that's all right," Dove said, her head bobbing.  "If he's good enough for you, he's good enough for us."

"Now, I appreciate that, Dove.  I'm touched.  Really touched.  So I'm going to tell Chuck to keep bringing you beer," I said.  I stood, and motioned Indian and Foremost to stand also.  "Just for tonight, mind you.  But all you can drink tonight."

We moved to the little office in the back of the bar to the accompaniment of cheers from Dove and her friends.  Once inside I dropped into the green, fake leather chair behind the desk.  Foremost took the guest chair, a high-backed wood job with a dirty white padded seat, and Indian stood.

"Indian, get the word out that Foremost here," I motioned to the alien, "is associated.  I don't want any more accidents with people like Dove.  Once is an accident and I can understand that.  Twice is deliberate and I'll consider that an attack on the line.  Understand?"

"Got it, Tony.  I'll get the word out.  He's associated and you want him left alone," Indian said.  I nodded.

"And I want him protected while he's here," I said.  "I want you to do that job yourself."

Indian looked down at his half-empty beer bottle.  Something almost like shame seemed to flicker across his face.

"Maybe I'm not the best one for that, Tony.  I'm not sure I'm everything I used to be," he said slowly.

"I'm not asking you, Indian.  I'm telling you.  You need some food and some sleep.  Get a Polish and some decaf from Chuck to take home.  You look like hell."

He opened the door to leave.

I hesitated.

"You did good tonight, Indian.  Just like the old days."

"Yeah?"  he asked, and his face brightened.

"Yeah."

He shut the door behind him, and carried his new smile with him.  I turned back to Foremost.

"Jesus, you're one hell of a lot of trouble."

"It's good to see you again also," Foremost said, his voice deep and ragged.

I sighed and shook my head.

"What are you doing here, Ambassador?"

I've come here for protection.  Someone has tried to kill me."

I almost laughed at that, thinking about Dove, then realized he was serious.

"Ambassador –"

"Foremost," he said.  "Call me Foremost."

"Foremost," I continued, after a pause.  "We caught the shooter from the capital and rolled up his network.  Right now that's probably the safest –"

"You don't understand," he interrupted.  "I'm not talking about the attempt on Earth.  Someone tried to kill me on the ship." 


The ship was a huge cylinder, bigger the Ceres, and massed less than if it was made out of water.  This told us it was hollow.  How many billions lived inside?  No one knew.  No human had ever been aboard.

All I knew was that it covered too many stars in the night sky and scared the hell out of me.

"After the last negotiation session in New York I went back to the ship," Foremost said.  He drank from a fresh crème de menthe I got him at the bar while I nursed a Scotch.  "The life-support system on my skimmer failed as I came out of the atomosphere into space.  I tried to call for help, but my communications system was also broken.  The temperature in the skimmer began to rise rapidly, and without life support, I had no way to get rid of the heat," he said.  He sipped his drink.

"Neither of these accidents has ever happened in my memory.  And I am old enough to remember the last time the ship found an intelligent race that lived on a planet.  Now, suddenly, both of these systems fail?  At the same time?  Against my particular skimmer?  At just the worst possible moment?  I believe the universe is perverse and all luck is bad.  But in this case, even I doubt chaos and suspect causality."

"You're still alive," I pointed out.

"I ejected.  A secret precaution I put in place before the negotiations began."

"Just in case we weren't friendly," I said grimly.

"I am old," Foremost said.  "Much, much older than you.  I didn't get that way by accident."

The windows in the office rattled in the wind and I glanced outside.  The rain and ice had stopped falling, and the temperature seemed to be at least a few degrees above freezing.  The clouds were still there, low and gray, but they were lighter now, thinner.

Somewhere above them, the sun waited.

"Why are you here?"

"Before I left for the ship I asked about you, and was told about your resignation.  Agent Carole also told me where the funeral would occur so I could send an appropriate memorial.  I had the location with me and I coded it into my lifeboat.  The computer did the rest."       

I shook my head.

"No, Foremost.  I don't want to know how you got here.  I want to know why you got here," I said.  "Carole would throw a security blanket over you like you never dreamed of, if you just ask her.  Me?  I can't even keep you out of a knife fight in a bar."

He finished his drink and put it aside.

"After the shooting I declared you part of my line.  You accepted that, and carefully told me I was not part of your line, but that as long as I was here, I was associated with your line and under your protection," he said.  He spread his arms wide.  "Where else would I be safer than with you?"

Damn all lines, I thought.  Damn all governments.     

And damn my big mouth.

"Why would someone from the ship want to kill you?"  I asked.

Foremost stood and walked to the window.  The building next door to the pool hall was a feed store, and Claire bred bulldogs in a run behind her place.

When we were kids we played with the animals and helped clean them and their run.  The were big, stupid, friendly dogs, with oversized paws and ears and the ugliest faces we ever saw.  They climbed on us and pulled our clothes for attention and generally proved out the stereotype of the bulldog puppy.

Claire paid us in quarters, but we loved the dogs and we worked for candy when she was low on cash.  Once, Steve and a runt got to be special friends.  The two of them were constantly with each other, even to the point where he sneaked the dog out of the run when Claire was not looking.

Then one day Steve came to see his friend and he was gone.  Sold.  Claire tried to explain that she was sorry, it was a business to her, but he never understood.  Finally she gave him extra candy and quarters and he ran all the way home, his face streaked with tears.

He gave everything to Bob and me, and never went back to Claire's again.

"Mine is not the only race on the ship," Foremost said.  "And mine is not the only line in my race.

"Every time we find a new planet with something we want, some groups on board the ship prosper, and others lose.  Overall, the ship gains.  But that doesn't make it any easier for the groups that lose."

"This time the potential gains are bigger than usual," I guessed.  "So the losses will also be bigger than usual."

"You understand," Foremost said.

"So what are you going to do?"

He stood back from the window, which made the bodyguard part of me relax, and went back to his chair.

"I have a new proposal from your people," he said.  "And I have a funeral to go to.  I will think about one, and attend the other."

"I'll call Carole," I said automatically.  Then I stopped.

"Who knows you're here?"  I asked.

"I don't know," he said, "No one, yet.  By now my people will have found the empty skimmer and the message with my suspicions I left behind.  The search will be on for me or my body."

I finished my Scotch.

"I have to bury Sam," I said, stubbornly.  "If I call Carole we'll have flatlanders on us like a blanket."

"Ship people as well," Foremost added.  "Both my friends, and those who tried to kill me."

The windows rattled to a fresh gust of wind and I heard the scattered pebble sound of freezing rain against the glass.

"Did you bring any funeral clothes?"


When we were young, before Steve was born, my family lived in Sam's house.  Downstairs was the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room, and Sam and Laverne's bedroom.  Upstairs were two tiny bedrooms.

I remembered the stairs as tall and hard to climb and for once a childhood memory was accurate.  The stairs were steep, almost like a ladder, but Foremost scrambled up them quickly.  I moved more slowly, my head down so I did not hit it on the doorways or the ceiling.

Foremost used the bedroom on the right.  The bedroom on the left was completely filled with a huge, silvery, outdoor antenna.  Foremost paused to look at it.

"Communications?"

"Entertainment," I said.  "Reception only."

"Wouldn't it work better on top of the house?"  Foremost asked.

"Sam liked it right here where he could touch it," I said.

Steve and Rose slept in the downstairs bedroom.  Bob camped out in the kitchen.  Foremost used the upstairs and I was down on the couch in the living room.

The next morning we were up and moving at dawn.  Steve made everyone a breakfast of scrambled eggs with American cheese, thick bacon, and bagels.  Foremost discreetly tested everything for allergens, then took a dry bagel to eat with his field rations.

Bob finished his plate, pushed it back, and glanced at Foremost.

"So what do we do today?" he asked.

I finished my orange juice and put my plate by the sink.  Steve got himself seconds from the skillet while Rose nursed a cup of coffee.

"Today we bury Sam," I said

"We know that," Bob said impatiently.  "Are you going to get the Estep token?"

"I don't have much choice, do I?"  I asked.  Bob shrugged and looked at Foremost again.

"Always got choices.  Might not like them, but always got choices," Bob said.  "Token should be at the burial.  Token always watches the Eldest get buried before it gets passed on the new Eldest."

"We'll go to Oly's house and pick it up," I decided.  "If someone does come looking for the Ambassador, they'll come here first.  We might as well be somewhere else."

Bob grinned.

"What will Oly think about your friend?"

Steve snorted.

"Oly probably won't notice anything different from normal when you two show up," he said, disgusted.

"Oly's not so bad," I said, defensively.

Bob and Steve both stared at me, then smiled.  Bob pushed away from the table and stood.

"We'll get everything ready at this end.  Be at the cemetery a few minutes early," Bob said. I nodded and motioned for Foremost to follow me.  As we got to the mudroom Bob tapped me on the shoulder.

"Steve and I'll talk to the boys and girls," he saId in a low voice.  "We'll have eyes out to see if any strangers are in town."

"The cemetery is an awfully lonely place.  Lots of open country, except on the side with the woods."  I said.

"Easy to hide in them woods," Bob agreed.  "Or on a hilltop in the corn stubble."

"You'll take care of it?"

"Done."

Foremost and I took the car that Rose and I used to drive up to Summit.  It was another dark, rainy day, perfect for a funeral, and I still dialed down the tint on the windows to make it even harder for someone outside to see inside.

We turned right on the road, then left.  We drove silently in the barren hills south of town, past fields used only as pasture, that grew only a bumper crop of rock.

The rock reminded me of Washington.  I remembered a party in Georgetown, at one of the ever-so-discreet townhouses near the university.  In the back, behind all the security doors and the antique furniture and more pretentious people than I could suddenly stand, was a tiny courtyard.  I fled there with my Scotch to escape a too-aggressive bureaucrat's daughter.   

There I found the rock.

Nothing special, just a small gray boulder about twice the size of a basketball, flecked with black and silver.  It was tucked next to a dwarf willow beside a pool.  Spray from a small waterfall moistened the rock, already tumbled smooth by the glacier that created it.  I ran my hands over it and suddenly realized I was homesick.

Now we drove past uncounted fortunes of that kind of decorative rock, poking out of the fields, plowed into piles, pushed into heaps to get them out of the way.  I glanced at everything around me, at the rain and the wetlands and the bare hills and the rock and smiled.  This was where that rock belonged, not in some little decorative garden, and maybe it was not the only thing that belonged here.

We crossed a ridgeline and stopped on top.  I put the car in park, and started to get out of it.  Foremost began to get out also.  I reached over and touched him.

"You stay inside," I said.  "This will only take a minute."

I stood on the ridge, silhouetted against the gray sky, for several minutes.  Summit Lake used to be a field like any thousand fields in the old tribal lands.  One day, as Sam told me, some fool woke up and thought he was in Iowa, not Dakota, and decided to try to plow good buffalo land.  Instead of a neat, clean furrow through dirt he hit a rock.  When he pulled the boulder off he found it was a caprock, over a spring.

Now Summit Lake filled the entire bowl, probably three or four square miles in area, with only a few scraggly trees to break the rolling, grass covered hills.  And it show on no maps, not county or state or federal.  You knew where it was, and you found it, or you were a flatlander and then what the hell were you doing here anyway?

Satisfied that Oly had plenty of time to see who it was, I got back in the car and headed off down the track to his shack next to the concrete boat landing.

Oly was outside on a bench tucked next to his house.  He looked up when the car stopped, a knife and a piece of wood in his hands.

"He is a sculptor?'  Foremost asked.  I shook my head and pointed to the pile of wood shavings on the ground around Oly.

"He just likes to cut wood.  He takes a big piece and makes it into a lot of little pieces.  Then he starts over again with another big piece."

"Why?'  Foremost asked.

I took a deep breath.  I was impatient to get this over, and unhappy about any time we spent out in the open where most people could see Foremost.

"Oly used to be the best carver in this part of the state," I said.  "I swear, magic used to flow out of his knife.  Now he's got some bad arthritis and his fingers don't work so well.  The magic still flows in him, but only in his mind.  So he cuts wood to remember, and he still sees the final carvings in his mind."

"And the rest of us only see the shavings," Foremost said.

"That's our problem, not his," I said briskly.  "Maybe we just don't know how to look right.  Anyway, let's go.  We don't have that much time."

We got out of the car and walked over to Oly.  He looked at me, then Foremost, then back to me.  Then back to his wood.

The bench was an old driftwood tree trunk, gray and worn and twisted, roughly knocked with an axe into a flat surface.  Oly propped the wood up on two old black plastic bait buckets to get it off the ground.

I sat on one side of Oly, and motioned to Foremost to sit on the other side.  We sat silently for a moment and stared out at the dark water.

Summit Lake was like a map if you knew how to read it.  Small sloped waves, deceptively soft, in the middle where the water was deepest. Taller, thinner waves, with white froth tops and green water, almost as transparent as glass, near the shore and the underwater slope.

The fish that lived in the lake preferred different kinds of water and cover.  A good fisherman could look at the lake, at the waves and color, and draw a mental map of what the bottom looked like.  A good fisherman knew that walleye liked this kind of water; northern pike liked that kind.  Bullhead swarmed over the points, and bass liked the sections where the branches of dead trees, flooded out years ago, poked through the surface.

Sam claimed the world was like a lake, and the people in it like fish.  Most people went through their lives without so much understanding of what was really going on.  Only a few people could stand outside the world and actually see it and make sense out of it.  He claimed Oly was one of the best of these.

Tradition said I had to talk first when I met Oly.

"So how's the fishing been, Oly?"

He took a cut with his knife, and a curl of wood peeled onto the ground.

"Been worse.  Been Better," he said.

"Yeah," I said.  "I can see that."

"You came for Sam," Oly said.  Another curl of wood joined the pile on the ground.  "Some people said you wouldn't come back.  Some people said you were gone from the line, said you didn't even want to be associated anymore."

"They can say it, " I said.  "People can say anything they want.  But I'm back."

Oly was older than Sam, so old that even his grandchildren were older than the brothers and I.  His teeth were blackened and mostly missing, his hair thin and the leathery scalp covered with brown age spots.

But his eyes were sharp and it was said that nothing happened in Summit he did not know.

"You brought a flatlander to the funeral," Oly said.

"Steve's wife, Rose," I said.  "He's got a little girl now."

"Steve's got a baby," Oly said.  He shook his head.  "He was such a funny looking little guy.  Looked just like a duck.  And now he's got a baby of his own.  Funny."

I tried to imagine Steve, closer to seven foot than six, strong enough to break ribs as part of his job as a respiratory therapist, as a baby who looked like a duck.  I smiled to myself.

"This is Foremost," I said.  "He's from upstairs."

Oly nodded.

"Word came around," he said. "He's associated?"

"I gave him my word."

"With Sam gone, you can do that," Oly said.  He looked up at me.  "I heard how you handled Dove last night."

"Dove and the boys were just having some fun," I said, uneasily.

"You did it right," Oly reassured me.

He took a final cut at the wood, looked at it critically, then folded the clasp knife and put it in his pocket.  He stood and turned to Foremost.

"You come with a good recommendation," he said, and jerked his head back over his shoulder toward me.

"I try to do my best," Foremost said.

"He's good people," Oly said. He stared hard at Foremost.  "Don't mess him up."

Oly turned and walked with a firm, clean step to his shack.  Foremost and I stood and waited.

Oly was back in a minute.  In one hand he carried a bundle about a foot long, wrapped in oilcloth and tied with a piece of rawhide.  In the other hand he carried a mason jar.  He handed the package to me, and unscrewed the jar with the other.

"Limbo came by this morning," Oly told me.  "Said he found some tracks that he'd never seen before around his place.  They looked like boot tracks, but not any kind of boot he's ever seen."

We all looked down at Foremost's feet.  His boots were wide as they were long, with three large bulges where a human has toes.  There was no way to ever confuse his feet with one of ours.

"He found the tracks all around some kind of metal torpedo that someone had hidden in the brush."  Oly said. "Limbo said there was writing on the outside of the metal, but he couldn't read any of it."

"I hid my escape pod after I landed.  I hope I did not hurt anything on his farm," Foremost said.

"And then you went west into town?" I asked.

"South," he corrected me.  "My garment has some camouflage capabilities, and my people are quite good at moving without being seen."

Oly looked at me and smiled, a thin slash across his face.  Limbo's farm was east of town.  So either Foremost lied when he said he walked south into Summit, or someone else was now prowling around town.  The lie was too easy to check, if we looked in the brush north of town for another ship, so I had to assume we had another visitor.

"Sounds like we need a drink," Oly said.  He reached in the jar, fished around with his fingers, and pulled out the complete skeleton of a fish, head and all.  He tossed this on the ground, then tipped the jar to his lips and took a deep drink, so that his Adam's apple moved up and down like a piston.  He wiped his lips and handed the jar to me.

The jar was old, tired glass, heavily decorated with curlicues and fancy writing.  Inside I saw clear liquid on the top, and on the bottom, a white sludge of particles that danced and flickered with oily, reflected light.  The smell, a mixture of fish, spices, pickle juice, and pure alcohol, was enough to make my eyes water.

I took a small sip.

The sludge was smooth and silky, with a hint of cinnamon and bay on the top of the full, fish taste.  Northern pike, I guessed.  Then the vinegar cut through and seemed to slice my mouth open.  Finally, the alcohol seemed to lift off the top of my head and let the cool breeze swirl around inside.

I handed the jar to Oly.  He handed it to Foremost.  He looked at the jar, puzzled, and touched it with this allergen analyzer.  He stared hard at the display, as if he couldn't believe the results, then tucked the analyzer away.  He held the jar in his long, leathery fingers and took a hesitant slip.  He closed his eyes while Oly smiled at him.  He opened his eyes and handed the jar to Oly.

"Good," he said, his voice raspy and hoarse.  "Very good indeed.  This is how you preserve the fish you catch?"

"Oly doesn't fish," I corrected.  "People bring him fish they catch and don't want."  I turned to Oly.  "Who's got the still now?  I don't recognize the taste of the moonshine."

"You asking as a government man, or as one of us?"  Oly said.

"I'm asking as me," I answered.  "Government man resigned his job to come to the funeral."

Oly nodded and looked approving.  Not many people around Summit had much love for the government.  I lost a lot of respect when I went to Washington.  The first time I got shot I gained most of it back, but it was an expensive way to put credit in that account.

"That batch of 'shine is from Flipper's new still," Oly said.  He looked at the jar critically.  "I canned that jar a couple of years ago.  Just took it out to see how it's aging."

"Not bad," I said.

"But not quite ripe yet, either," Oly grumbled..  "That boy keeps doing fancy things to the old recipe for grain.  He just can't leave well enough alone.  Makes it hard to can a decent fish when you don't know what the 'shine is going to taste like.  These things have to match up just right."

"Sometimes change is good," I said.

"Don't you start up on me," Oly warned.  "Change happens fast enough without rushing it."

"What about Sam?"  Foremost asked.  "Did he fish?"

"Sam?  Oh, he put his lines out for all sorts of things.  Yes, he was a great fisherman.  He caught fish all the time, but he never wanted to eat them.  He just liked catching them, and making them do what he wanted," Oly said, and grinned.  "Kind of like what he did with people.  He had his lines out for them, just like he did for fish.  Never sure what he was going to catch, but always interested.  Me, I'm different.  I don't like catching the fish, but I like to take care of them afterward.  Same with people.  Sam and me, we were like both sides of a mirror, the face that looks in and the face that looks back."

The world is like the lake, and Sam and Oly sit on the shore, and talk and laugh and watch the water . . .   

"I put a fish in a jar, add 'shine, spices, and just a little pickle juice.  Then I let it rest for a few years.  Makes it easier for me to eat with my gums," Oly said, and smiled to expose his lack of teeth again.

"There are people on the ship who would pay you much for that single jar," Foremost said.

"I'm always willing to talk about money," Oly said.  He handed the jar back to Foremost.  "Have another sip and let's talk."

I left them alone for the moment and took the oilcloth package back to the car.  Once there, I gently untied the rawhide and unfolded the material.

The Estep token was two pieces of bone, speckled black with age.  They looked like the thighbones of some animal, bigger than a rabbit, smaller than a deer, but nothing I immediately recognized.  I touched the bones, ran my finger up and down them, felt the smooth surface with its little pits and whorls, then tied the bundle together again and placed it carefully in the back seat.

Sam never talked much about the token of our line, just enough to let me know it was important.  Once a year, at Orville Knob's Nut Fest, the big party just before New Year's Eve, the token was carefully laid out on a table set with a brilliant white