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InterText Vol. 4, No. 3 / May-June 1994
=======================================

  The Watcher   by Jason Snell
==============================

  The watcher had just passed middle age when it felt it for the 
  first time, a little breath of cold as it passed by just out of 
  reach. It was the first cold the watcher had felt in the 
  millions of years since its coalescence.

  Time moved along, balls of mud and gas spinning in their orbits, 
  the cold touch a long-forgotten memory. The small life-things 
  still clung to one of the balls of mud, taking hesitant steps 
  toward their brothers. The watcher continued its silent vigil.

  Then, again, the cold breath blew into its heart. Stronger this 
  time, and the watcher could feel its claws as it passed. A black 
  icy bird, with a sharp beak and razor-sharp talons. Moving 
  through the darkness like quicksilver.

  The watcher could only sit, as it had for eons. And that was 
  when it knew the cold would spell the end. It saw 
  everything--how far the tiny life-things could go. How slowly 
  they moved. They could never escape the watcher's eye, and that 
  would be their doom.

  The black bird-thing came more often, then, each blast of cold 
  air dampening the watcher's own brightness. And one day, it did 
  not turn away as it flew by. It dove into the heart of the 
  watcher.

  A screech of... thankfulness?

  The cold claws, scratching through the watcher's body. A pain in 
  the watcher's heart.

  The fire is dying...

  The little life-things, moving quickly now. Do they see the 
  black thing? Do they know the watcher's end is near?

  An icy claw reaches the heart. The claw tears it out and feeds 
  it to the beak.

  Inconceivable pain. The watcher makes one final effort, surging 
  toward the black thing in its heart.

  Light flares. The small life-things move faster, but there is 
  nothing they can do.

  In an instant, there are no more balls of mud and gas, and no 
  more life-things to cling to them. There is no more black 
  bird-thing.

  There is only the watcher, everywhere screaming in pain.

  And then, after a time, there is only silence--and the echo of 
  the watcher's death throes, spreading outward, to its brothers.


  Distant star's radiation bursts puzzle scientists
===================================================

  JANUARY 22, 1992: A group of scientists reported that for the 
  last several months, a star about 815 light years away in the 
  constellation Auriga has begun emitting unusual bursts of 
  electromagnetic radiation. The star, Yale #2143, is barely 
  visible to the naked eye or binoculars in the southern sky near 
  Capella, one of the brightest points in our night sky.

  Yale 2143 contains about twice the mass of our solar system and 
  astronomers have speculated in the past that it may be a 
  variable star or a member of a binary system. "Otherwise, not 
  much is known about it," said Robert Hartman of the Kitt Peak 
  National Observatory in a telephone interview. "But this isn't 
  normal behavior for a star at its point in its life-cycle so 
  we're very interested in it."

  Normally, a star like Yale 2143 burns white-hot at a temperature 
  from 7,000 to 10,000 Kelvin and has a life-cycle of several 
  billion years. "It's larger and hotter than our sun, but 
  otherwise it's really not that exceptional as stars go," said 
  Hartman.

  So why all the excitement in the astrophysics community about 
  this nearly invisible and apparently non-descript member of the 
  heavens?

  "Because, quite simply, nothing we've seen has done this 
  before." The star suddenly began emitting strong irregular 
  bursts of invisible radio and microwave radiation a few months 
  ago that are unusually focused around a small number of 
  wavelengths. Scientists first noticed the bursts when they 
  interfered with data collection from quasars and other deep-sky 
  objects. "At first we didn't know where it was coming from, and 
  then we weren't sure if it was coming from this particular star 
  or another phenomenon behind it," said Mailika Gibbons, the 
  graduate assistant credited with first observing the bursts. 
  "But it quickly became clear that this was a local event, 
  happening right in our stellar backyard."

  Scientists are still collecting data and analyzing the 
  phenomenon. When asked to speculate about its cause, Dr. Hartman 
  declined, but emphasized that this event might lead to 
  significant revision of our understanding of a star's 
  life-cycle. "The main sequence of a star is presently understood 
  to be a rather uneventful period. This could reveal it to be a 
  time when dynamic changes occur."


  Novalight   by Greg Knauss
============================

  May 1992
----------

  As soon as the equipment was turned on, it started to record the 
  message. Originating at a charted but uninteresting star near 
  the constellation Auriga was a steady, constant stream of 
  information across a wide swath of the electromagnetic 
  spectrum--rapidly alternating, millisecond-long blasts. When the 
  speakers were on, you could hear the rhythm.

  The group was quickly and quietly assembled, culled from 
  universities and government installations. There was a period of 
  secrecy; there were many variables, many scenarios to consider. 
  Nothing was released until it became clear there was some sort 
  of intelligence behind it.

  Then the story raced through the scientific community like 
  wildfire. Something was out there. Somebody was out there.

  There was a palpable euphoria within the group. This was the 
  thing that every one of them had been waiting for all their 
  lives but had been too realistic to expect, to even hope for. 
  Aliens--intelligent aliens--were making contact with our 
  species.

  Humanity was being greeted.


  June 1992
-----------

  The message was divided into three sections, each separated by a 
  brief silence. After a gap double that length, the entire cycle 
  would begin again. There were only three amplitudes used in the 
  entire message, and the group took to calling them on, off, and 
  none.

  The group was much larger now, researchers pulled from projects 
  around the world. The linguists and anthropologists were 
  prepared to spend a lot of time arguing about how universal the 
  concept of binary was, but the debates became academic when the 
  computers produced results within weeks.

  The message was actually a series of pictures, four-bit-deep 
  animation they rendered in gray, each part a different movie. 
  Image-recognition software turned the one-dimensional stream of 
  bits into two-dimensional pictures by running through all the 
  possibilities of width and height until something sensible 
  appeared.

  The public was fascinated. They released all three animations as 
  soon as they were decoded, before they had even attempted to 
  analyze them. Soon they were distributed via videotape, computer 
  networks, books, and even on postcards. The aliens' message 
  entered mass consciousness. Conspiracy theories abounded; the 
  Joint Chiefs of Staff were asked to assess the military threat; 
  UFO "experts" wrote books on the alien's society and connected 
  them with Stonehenge and the pyramids at Giza; televangelists 
  called the whole thing a hoax.

  The first series showed machines in orbit around a star, and 
  thin, spindly spikes of solar plasma rising toward them. The 
  scene faded to complex pictograms and cutaway views that the 
  physicists scrambled to decipher.

  The second was stranger. While it shared some pictograms with 
  the first, the concepts being displayed were harder to grasp. 
  There was no animated prelude and, at over a million frames, it 
  ran almost twice as long as the first.

  The third was pictures of the aliens themselves. Sleek and gray, 
  with wide, black eyes, a small group performed some ritual the 
  meaning of which no one in the group would even speculate upon. 
  Their movements were fluid and exaggerated and almost 
  indescribably eerie. Occasionally static would leap across a 
  frame as the computer displayed a damaged portion of the 
  message. After enough repetitions were collected, a composite 
  was assembled that removed all the static, but the sense of 
  dislocation remained.

  The anthropologists claimed anthropomorphization, but the aliens 
  looked distressed somehow.

  They looked ashamed.


  September 1993
----------------

  The first part of the message took over a year to fully 
  decipher. Though understanding it required intuition and massive 
  amounts of additional research, the message led the physicists 
  almost inexorably to what they called solar mining. The 
  pictograms described what the initial animation played out--a 
  technique for retrieving fusing material from the core of a 
  star. The conclusion was wildly hypothetical, resting on 
  unproven and perhaps untestable theory. But there seemed to be 
  no mistaking the message.

  Unlimited, inexhaustible energy. The first part of the message 
  was the key to unlimited, inexhaustible energy. The United 
  Nations and government panels began to research and assess the 
  possibility of a small mining operation, but even the most 
  optimistic warned that benefits were still decades, if not 
  centuries, off. Despite this, research continued. Limitless 
  energy would be an incredible boon to mankind. A solution to 
  innumerable problems.

  The message was a gift. Not just a greeting, but a tremendous 
  gift.


  Little Sun   by Patrick Hurh
==============================

  January 1, 1994 01:31:56
--------------------------

  Catherine,

  This New Year's eve was, except for the locale, rather 
  uneventful. I heard fireworks or gunfire in the distance, 
  muffled and faint, drifting from down river. I naively assumed 
  the noise to be from Leticia or Iquitos although both those 
  villages are over two hundred miles from here. I looked from my 
  small porch, but could see nothing. I thought about climbing to 
  the roof, but the canopy of trees was too thick to see through, 
  even this close to the river. It was most likely gunfire and 
  probably from Bolognesi just upstream. I thought about trying to 
  walk up to Bolognesi then to see if any celebrations were 
  underway, but I couldn't muster the courage needed to make that 
  trip in the dark. Of course I am sure that the FUNAI house was 
  probably just as dark and empty as it has been for the past five 
  days. Except for sleeping loggers and druggers, Bolognesi is 
  lifeless after the sun goes down.

  I sat out on the porch most of the remaining evening sipping 
  from a small bottle of whiskey I negotiated from one of the 
  river port hands in Leticia. I'll have to remember to try and 
  haggle a larger bottle next time I'm in Leticia, although that 
  could be awhile; that twenty-eight hours of bug-slapping, 
  sweat-reeking, and idle staring into swirling brown water was 
  more than I could take--at least more than I can take just for a 
  bottle of whiskey. Still, this bottle has almost run dry. 
  Perhaps without the booze I wouldn't become so melancholy (and 
  then angry) when I think of you... or perhaps I wouldn't even 
  think of you so much in the first place. No matter, tonight, 
  with the cheap whiskey trailing hot into my chest, I was caught 
  in the endless circle, thinking of you.

  Partly because of this night's drunken reveries, and partly 
  because I need to make writing this journal feel not so 
  conspicuously like talking to myself, I have decided to address 
  this journal in your name. At first I wasn't sure if this was a 
  good idea; I saw myself, months from now, stifling an emotional 
  hiccup every time I wrote in this book. But now, looking back at 
  the other sparse journal entries, I realize that this is what I 
  need to do to keep writing and documenting my thoughts while 
  here in the Amazon. No one has yet been assigned to replace you 
  or the other researchers called back to work on the SETI 
  project. Although I write and take notes everyday on my 
  experiences here on Rio Javari and, hopefully in the future, 
  with the neighboring Mayoruna villagers, I think this private 
  journal will be crucial to my understanding of those 
  experiences. This will be my scratch pad for my thoughts onto 
  until they take on enough shape to formalize and send upline to 
  UIC. I want to do more than be a glorified caretaker of the 
  equipment left here. Since the research station has been 
  entrusted to me for the time being, I want to ensure my time 
  here is put to some useful purpose.

  So, without knowing how I really feel about you anymore... or 
  without even just being able to know you ... I start this new 
  year by writing your name.


  January 13 1993 20:21:11
--------------------------

  Catherine,

  The first two weeks of the year have been extremely busy. My 
  delayed luggage containing several pieces of needed equipment, 
  including the radio antennae, arrived yesterday. I spent that 
  day assembling the equipment and trying to raise the FUNAI 
  contact in Leticia but didn't have any luck. I took a quick walk 
  over to Bolognesi, but the FUNAI house is still empty. At least 
  the doors are locked and the place hasn't been ransacked. It 
  would be encouraging, though, to use their radio to contact 
  Leticia and help troubleshoot my own. Ah well, I missed the 
  packet transmission last week so I guess if I miss tomorrow's it 
  won't matter too much. Still, I had such an experience this 
  morning that I feel I should immediately communicate it to my 
  peers (if only the damned radio would work!).

  I made contact with a Mayoruna Indian today! He was walking 
  through the main dirt road in Bolognesi as I was standing by the 
  lumber dock. I was waiting for a good opportunity to talk to the 
  loggers loading the boat and ask to borrow their radio for a 
  moment. I admit I was nervous, my Portuguese is not as good as 
  yours, you know, and I was put off by the loggers' brutal 
  handling of the ripe-smelling wood. I turned, giving up, when I 
  saw a bouncing head covered with straight shiny black hair 
  disappear behind a stack of the huge tires used by the logging 
  trucks. Instantly realizing that this could be exactly what you 
  and the research station were here to study, I ran around the 
  stack of tires and almost tripped over the young, naked man.

  He was crouched, with knees splayed wide, over a piece of a 
  truck's transmission. His dark elbows rested on the inside flesh 
  of his thighs while his hands forcefully fiddled with 
  grease-covered gears. As I began to fall over him, he sprang up 
  and turned to face me solemnly. He was not afraid... and I, 
  within the relatively familiar context of the lumber dock, 
  showed no fear either. Thinking back, I probably expressed 
  extreme pleasure and curiosity on the paleness of my face, much 
  like the naive white scientists we have both seen on late night 
  television as they approached some alien race.

  The Indian immediately strode by me, bouncing slightly as I had 
  witnessed before and, if I hadn't stopped him, would probably 
  have strode out of the town of shacks without a pause. I'm not 
  sure what I said; it might have been "Hey!" or "You!" or more 
  likely some grunt that in any language said, "Hold on there!" 
  But I must have said something, since he stopped and turned 
  toward me slowly on the balls of his feet. His face presented a 
  slight scowl and, when he spoke, his head moved sharply forward 
  like a dog's head barking.

  "What!" he coughed, pronouncing it as `wat.' His held his hands 
  out to the sides of his body. His fingers were poised stiffly 
  like the whisker-spikes that bobbed from the small bulbs of his 
  nostrils. "Wat you want?"

  I couldn't believe it. Did this Mayoruna actually speak English? 
  "You speak English?" I exclaimed, not being able to think of 
  anything else. "Where..." I pointed at him. "Where did you learn 
  English?"

  He seemed to smile at that and said something to the effect of 
  "I learn English at the fork of Javari." Besides the 
  characteristic needles jutting from his nostrils, his face also 
  wore the dark blue tattooed line that united his ears in a 
  toothy grin.

  "At Leticia? The town there?"

  "Yes, Letisha... I learn at that place and make much money." His 
  English was broken and heavily accented but wasn't too bad. 
  "Now, I go... this boat has no parts." He started to turn, again 
  quite slowly as if waiting for me to stop him.

  "What do you mean, `no parts'? What parts are you looking for? I 
  have some parts you might want." I spoke the last sentence 
  quickly, not knowing if I really wanted him to understand.

  He looked back at me and smiled widely this time. The blue stain 
  surrounding his lips accentuated the lines of his stained teeth. 
  "I find parts for our gun." He took a step toward me. "You have 
  gun parts?"

  I hesitated. I had a small pistol hidden under my hammock 
  cushion, but I knew I could not admit that.

  "No," I stuttered, hoping that this wouldn't be the end of the 
  conversation. "But I would like to talk with you anyway." My 
  hand, half folded, unconsciously slapped my chest as I referred 
  to myself, just as I'd seen him do earlier.

  "Now, I go," he repeated as he walked away with his bouncing 
  gait. "But I think you very smart," he called over his shoulder. 
  "I think you very holy man. I maybe see you on a new sun." He 
  broke into a quick trot and darted into the thick undergrowth of 
  the forest.

  I followed him to his point of departure from the road. I was 
  amazed that he was able to run so quickly and without fear among 
  the poison brush and dangerous wildlife that surrounded us. But 
  when I inspected more closely I realized that where he stepped 
  off the road was a path of trampled spine grass--prickly, but 
  tolerable with callused feet. I wanted to follow but where would 
  that have got me? Most likely, lost.

  I realize now, in talking to you as a person, Catherine, that I 
  have described this event much more vividly than my record in 
  the official log. I will have to go back and cut and paste this 
  more descriptive perspective into the log; this event deserves 
  no less. This is exactly what motivated you/us in the first 
  place. The nomadic Mayoruna tribe settling into a camp near a 
  logging port and interacting with the relatively technologically 
  advanced and "more civilized" community of industrialized 
  loggers. It is unheard of! As I watched that small brown man, 
  clothed only in a fibrous cloth wound about his waist, strings 
  dangling to his crotch in a mess of ritual knots about the 
  foreskin, nostril spikes shaking as he spoke in English--English 
  for God's sake!-- about `gun parts' and `much money,' I felt so 
  much like an outsider, a foreigner bearing the guilt of 
  corrupting his pure soul. Why has his tribe come to this small 
  spot of western industry to make their camp? Am I witnessing the 
  effects of civilization on his culture? Or am I, just by being 
  here and observing, really just studying my own effect on his 
  life?

  I now wish I hadn't drank the last of that whiskey three nights 
  ago.


  January 24, 1994 22:39:26
---------------------------

  Catherine,

  I reached Leticia today via my radio. The S/N was not too bad 
  and I talked to a fellow at the FUNAI house there. He said he 
  was sorry that the house at Bolognesi was shut and boarded, but 
  with the lack of money this year to fund what is now considered 
  highbrow cultural research, FUNAI and the surrounding countries 
  in general are having to scale back their support operations. I 
  protested this `scaling back' and wondered aloud how the 
  preservation of the indigenous cultures of the Basin could be 
  considered "highbrow." The speaker on the other end did not 
  offer much in reply, but only agreed with me and said something 
  to the effect of "But what are you gonna do?" Good question.

  The radio contact's name is Mohammed. Funny name for a FUNAI 
  worker in the middle of the Amazon. A convert? I wonder. It 
  seems strange that a native of this land so rich in tradition 
  and mystique would embrace another land's religion as his own. 
  Perhaps not--after all, I was brought up in the Midwest of 
  America and still, to this day, am heavily influenced by the 
  doctrine and catechism of the Roman Catholic church, whether I 
  want to be or not.

  Mohammed told me that he would arrange for a radio packet 
  transmission in a week. I will transmit the data I have so far 
  plus some e-mail messages that should be able to reach you at 
  the SETI Institute via the Internet in a few days. He will also 
  relay a digital packet to my workstation consisting of any 
  e-mail messages I might have received in the past three weeks 
  plus a download of the Usenet newsgroups I asked for. I'm not 
  sure if the UIC news-server has set up the sci.seti.anthro 
  newsgroup yet, but I requested it anyway. Mohammed seems to be a 
  nice guy. I hope he is reliable also.

  Not much news on the Indian front, I'm afraid. I waited daily by 
  the docks, expecting to meet Tantu there. I know his name is 
  Tantu because I finally was able to get the attention of the 
  dock loggers and I asked them about the strange Indian I had 
  met. They laughed and told me about Tantu. Apparently he lived 
  in Leticia for some time and had just recently returned to the 
  tribe's village. When I asked about the village, the loggers 
  just shrugged their shoulders and pointed to the east. They said 
  it had been there for almost two years. One small gnarled man 
  burst out laughing and whispered something in Portuguese to 
  another that I couldn't catch. When I asked the foreman what was 
  so funny, he replied that a lot of the men didn't mind having 
  the village so close and he turned back to smile at the small 
  laughing man. I pressed him for an explanation and he simply 
  said, "The women wear little clothes--the old ones are not so 
  good, but the young ones..." His face smiled with clenched teeth 
  and he snorted inwards through his thick, flat nose. The other 
  loggers began to chuckle and I turned away, trying to smile and 
  make light of the lewd noises I heard erupt behind me.

  Tantu, obviously, never showed up--at least not during the 
  daylight hours. I amused myself by throwing rocks at the shut 
  FUNAI house. Somehow the activity seemed to cool me off from the 
  hot midday temperature. Eventually I came back to the cabin and 
  sat in the shade of its thick mosquito netting. I wondered about 
  Tantu and what he meant by "I maybe see you on a new sun." To me 
  that meant `tomorrow' or `in the morning,' but it obviously must 
  mean something else to him. Or perhaps his perception of time 
  and a day's passing is different than mine. I remember you 
  telling me that the Mayoruna tribe often defined the passage of 
  time by the coming and going of the days and nights, but also 
  that they seemed not to place these passings within the contexts 
  of a larger season or calendar... but I can't remember what else 
  you had said on the matter.

  I wish you were here now, not just because of what you meant to 
  me in a romantic sense, but also because of what you could tell 
  me about these people and how I should approach them. I still 
  don't understand the purpose of sending me here alone, even for 
  just an interim period. The entire research proposal hinged upon 
  the team of us--anthropologists, sociologists and research 
  staff--studying the changing relationships of this taciturn and 
  nomadic tribe of Indians with encroaching pockets of 
  industrialization. I was prepared to help project the 
  fundamentals of societal theory upon this interaction of Indian 
  village and logger town, the depth of the moral contract, the 
  absorption and adaptation of the indigenous culture. The culture 
  that your group were supposed to help make clear to me!

  I guess I am bitter about the choices you had to make. I 
  understand your motives: why wouldn't you choose to this 
  "mop-up" research study for the grand adventure of discovery 
  that the nova transmissions have to offer? I, too, felt pride 
  when I learned you had been chosen to help decipher the culture 
  of an alien race from the signals that spiked through the EM 
  universe, as reality for that distant intelligent species.... 
  But when I realized that it would mean not the end of our 
  Mayoruna project but the mutation of it into a one-eyed, blunted 
  stab into a deep and rich culture, I wilted. I think you sensed 
  that weakness in me. It drove you further from me. Even before 
  you had to leave for Colorado, I felt like slinking away from 
  your shining example. I did slink away... I holed myself with 
  self-pity and hid myself with anger.

  I didn't think the Foundation would fund the Amazon expedition 
  without you or the others, but still I asked. When my 
  workstation arrived at my office two weeks later, I still 
  couldn't believe they were so stupid as to let a Chicago-bred 
  sociology research assistant continue with this crippled agenda. 
  Don't get me wrong: I really think you're an asset to the team 
  studying the nova transmissions, but I find it odd that you 
  would embark on a mission to study such a distant society when 
  on this planet, less than a half-mile from where I lay my head 
  at night, lives and breathes a culture that we understand less 
  than we comprehend our own: one whose comparison to our own 
  "modern" society will yield more fruit than the fanciful 
  conjectures of how an alien race might have lived eight hundred 
  years earlier.

  I know this is a harsh accusation, and that is why I will make 
  no mention of it when I write to you via e-mail next week. Yet, 
  I realize when I go back and reread this entry I am no longer 
  filled with self-pity and the longing to be with you. I believe 
  I have inspired myself (how's that for a recovered ego?). While 
  you decipher the secrets of an alien race I will be here 
  attempting to understand a living, mysterious society and its 
  role in teaching the rest of us why we are here.


  February 19, 1994 08:14:48
----------------------------

  Catherine,

  Finally, after the boredom of the past weeks, Tantu visited 
  again. I was almost ready to have the loggers show me the way to 
  the Mayoruna village to seek him out, when he sauntered into 
  town again yesterday afternoon. After a brief talk near the 
  docks, I convinced him to follow me to the cabin where I could 
  show him some of the gifts that I had brought to ease my 
  acceptance into the hidden tribe. Tantu followed, again without 
  fear. I think his times in Leticia must have put him relatively 
  at ease with Western strangeness.

  I stepped on my small porch and was surprised not to hear his 
  hollow footstep directly behind me. I turned to find that he was 
  waiting below in front of the first step. I opened my arms in 
  acceptance and tried to urge him in. He balked and shook his 
  head slightly. "I have no gifts for you," he called out.

  I replied, "Yes, you do, Tantu. Just your presence here is a 
  gift to me."

  He looked at me perplexed and I spoke again, more slowly. 
  "Tantu, you can wait here and I will bring out my gifts--my 
  parts--for you to see."

  His face smiled and he replied in true Western fashion. "Okay."

  I ran inside and grabbed a few of the items I had set out 
  earlier in anticipation of just this circumstance. I picked up a 
  mirror, a small pen light and a sheathed machete, then returned 
  outside.

  Without stepping off the porch, I handed the items to Tantu. He 
  placed them on the ground at his feet and squatted to inspect 
  them one by one. He looked very much like he did when I almost 
  tripped over him a few weeks ago.

  I sat on a nylon chair at one end of the porch and watched him. 
  I occasionally offered advice to him, naively forgetting that he 
  had probably seen most of these items during his time in Leticia 
  and his exposure to the logging communities. His face was 
  expressionless, yet I felt as if he were seriously considering 
  his next words to me rather than investigating my bribes.

  After a few minutes, Tantu looked up at me and said, "Thank 
  you."

  "I think these gifts may be very useful to you in your village," 
  I said.

  He shook his head once, sharply. "I know these things. These 
  things are... nice." His eyes never left mine as he raised his 
  arm to point with all of his fingers at the small radio tower at 
  the side of my cabin. "That is... more nice."

  "Do you know what that is?" I asked glancing at the antennae.

  "Yes. That is radio tongue. You talk to many others with it." He 
  lowered his eyes to the items between his feet and then stood 
  upright.

  "Tantu," I said, "would you like to come inside and see the 
  radio?"

  Without a vocalized sound, Tantu nodded and stepped on the 
  porch. I stood and guided him into the small one room cabin.

  What followed inside is both logical and fantastic to me now. I 
  showed Tantu the radio transmitter equipment and demonstrated 
  its use, trying to raise Mohammed in Leticia. Mohammed didn't 
  answer, but another strange voice did. After a few moments of 
  trying to explain to the person on the other end of the radio 
  waves that he was talking to a genuine Mayoruna Indian, the 
  FUNAI operator asked us to change frequencies because we were 
  broadcasting on a reserved band for FUNAI official 
  communication. I was a bit irritated, but Tantu did not seem 
  disturbed. In fact he was more interested in the computer 
  equipment and jumble of cables that littered my work area. He 
  went to the table and began to finger some of the components 
  carefully. After a few moments he looked at me inquisitively, I 
  switched off the radio and proceeded to show my workstation to 
  the Indian with the flair of a magician.

  Tantu remained mesmerized by the computer's display and the 
  whirring, clicking hard drive for over an hour. I eventually had 
  to shut it down because the bank of batteries was almost 
  depleted. Tantu then stayed at the cabin for another hour, 
  following me as I went outside to start the generator up and 
  back inside as I checked on the charging batteries. The entire 
  time he asked strange questions about the computers and the 
  display--he even pointed to the cables that connected the 
  computer to the radio and questioned me about that. Most of his 
  questions were simple: What did I use the equipment for? What 
  did the clicking sounds mean? What language did the computer 
  speak? But after I gave him very rudimentary lectures on the 
  benefits of computers and how I used them to communicate and 
  record information, he also asked questions of a spiritual and 
  supernatural nature: What did I feed the computer? Which spirits 
  did I talk to? What tribe was I a shaman for? And others, which 
  confused me almost as much as my answers seemed to confuse him. 
  I tried to explain to him again the basic concepts of a computer 
  as a tool and stressed that humans had built--invented--this 
  machine.

  Tantu truly seemed to grasp the basic functions of some of the 
  components (keyboard, monitor, etc.), but he did so by 
  personifying them. For instance, at one point I let him press 
  some keys on the keyboard and watch the corresponding letters 
  appear on the screen. He was able to understand the cause and 
  effect relationship and even recognized that the picture of the 
  letter on a pressed key matched that which was displayed on the 
  monitor. However, when I unplugged the keyboard to demonstrate 
  the flow of information from the input device to the computer, 
  Tantu did not understand why the letters would not still appear 
  on screen. I tried to explain, and he nodded knowingly then and 
  said something to the effect of, "Yes, the voice of Keyboard is 
  very quiet and Keyboard must pull on the tail of Computer to 
  make Monitor listen." He pulled on the unplugged keyboard cable 
  to demonstrate. In spite of the metaphorical (and zoological) 
  overtones, I told him he was basically right. I was too tired of 
  explaining the operation of the computer and too amazed at the 
  general situation to try to convince him otherwise.

  Finally, he made his way towards the open cabin door as the day 
  turned to dusk. He looked back at me and told me that he would 
  come back tomorrow with gifts if I would let him talk to the 
  spirits. He pointed vaguely at the computer and the radio. I 
  reminded him that they were not spirits and that he would 
  probably have to learn to write and read English to use my 
  equipment. He asked me if I would teach him. I said yes without 
  thinking.

  I wish I would have taken a picture of Tantu while he was here 
  in the cabin. The sight was so odd. Tantu has shoulder-length 
  dark hair, trimmed to straight bangs at his eyebrows, but 
  otherwise unstyled. There is no sign of a beard on his brown 
  chin, but I know he is well past puberty from the thin growth of 
  pubic hair (it seems this may be trimmed periodically) and the 
  way he handles himself.

  I've grown used to his "cat whiskers" in one afternoon. They 
  consist of six- to seven-inch-long stalks or spines of some 
  dried plant similar to the spine grass that is so prevalent 
  around the river. The spines seem to cause Tantu little pain 
  although they look to me to be forcefully stuck into the soft 
  tissue of each nostril. They truly give his round face a catlike 
  appearance.

  The characteristic blue tattoo around Tantu's lips is actually 
  the easiest feature to overlook. Its lines flow naturally along 
  the contours of his lips and sport smaller perpendicular lines 
  about a quarter of an inch long which give the impression of a 
  large mouth lined with square teeth. I suppose a simple picture 
  couldn't capture these facial details, the awed and curious 
  expression on his face, plus his nearly naked body leaning over 
  the glowing computer monitor, but it certainly could convey the 
  entirely strange image of an Indian confronting a modern 
  computer in a darkened room. Incredible.

  I spent the rest of the evening writing the day's events in my 
  official journals and eating a cold supper. I was too tired to 
  write in this journal until this morning. Now, I sit here 
  sipping scalded coffee, listening to the generator, and 
  wondering if I should have agreed to teach Tantu about computers 
  or reading English. I'm not sure what impact this could have on 
  his culture. Would it be more than what Tantu's Leticia 
  experiences might have already brought to the tribe? I guess 
  that if Western culture and technology is going to be 
  assimilated by the Mayoruna, then my teachings would perhaps 
  accelerate that acculturation by a degree, not spark it 
  initially. The spark has already been created by Indians such as 
  Tantu. Besides, maybe it is better that Tantu learn from me than 
  from the disgusting, exploitative loggers in Bolognesi.

  So I guess I will attempt to teach Tantu. I'll have to remember 
  to tone down my showmanship as I teach, however, and try to 
  dispel the computer's mystique. Plus I'm going to have to teach 
  him to say my name correctly; he pronounces it "Kane" rather 
  than "Ken." Teaching him will be a long process but hopefully 
  one that will yield an open invitation to their village, which 
  will be useful when more researchers are assigned here. I would 
  much rather we were invited and welcomed in Tantu's community 
  than having to barge in on our own.

  In two days I'll receive a radio digital packet transmission 
  from the outside world. I'm eager to hear up-to-date news from a 
  perspective other than the Armed Forces network, and to find out 
  what is going on with the nova transmission studies. I'm also 
  suffering slight anxiety attacks thinking about receiving e-mail 
  from you. I'd like to hear from you, but afraid of what I might 
  read. I have composed an e-mail message to you and saved it with 
  the other materials I will transmit on Tuesday. When I read over 
  the message it strikes me as a bit cold and unfeeling. I do 
  still feel for you, but after what you said when we parted, it 
  may be best to try to carry on without that emotional baggage.


  February 24, 1994 21:48:01
----------------------------

  Catherine,

  Mohammed stood good to his word and relayed a digital package to 
  me a few days ago. However, nowhere in that package was a 
  message from you. I guess my anxieties will have another week to 
  fortify their ramparts in my ego. Their main battle plan seems 
  to revolve about my ignorance of the reason for your message's 
  absence. I'm sure that in all the excitement of the nova 
  transmissions you may have forgotten to send a note to me; 
  however, my darker half tells me that you have purposefully 
  ignored me. There could have been a technical error in the 
  communication process, of course, but my family's birthday 
  wishes came through unimpeded, and I gave them the same 
  information I gave you.

  I spent most of the day pouring over the package. My family is 
  well and sends their best. My father is incredibly proud of me 
  and my "gumption" to stick it out alone in the Amazon Basin. 
  Mother claims that he can't shut up about it, even in casual 
  conversation to mere acquaintances and fellow churchgoers. He's 
  even bought a subscription to National Geographic again. I hope 
  he reads them this time around. When I gave him a subscription 
  four years ago for his birthday, the inside pages never saw 
  anything but their facing neighbors as the issues accumulated in 
  a fanned stack on the low coffee table by the settee.

  I spent a good deal of time following arcane threads in the 
  newsgroups that I requested. Most were just flame wars elevated 
  to a seemingly intelligent level, but it was fun to read the 
  newsgroups in this isolated environment. It will be a while 
  before that novelty wears off.

  The sci.seti.anthro group was indeed included in the package. I 
  didn't see any posts or references about you however. What I did 
  see was a bunch of messages all complaining that the 
  anthropology and sociology couldn't start until the semiotics 
  and semanticists figured out the alien pictographs a little 
  better. I'm going to post a note there to you next week, just in 
  case there is a problem with your e-mail.

  Tantu came by again today, as usual. Today he brought me some 
  sort of dried gourd that rattles lightly. He said that it was a 
  "keyboard" from his village. I placed it next to the howler 
  monkey paw that he had brought the day before. When he saw the 
  dried and burnt paw, he asked me why I had not eaten it yet. I 
  told him the truth; that even had I known I was supposed to eat 
  the paw, I probably wouldn't have. Tantu looked at me oddly then 
  and crossed to the table on which I had laid out his gifts to 
  me. In a sudden darting motion he grabbed the paw and threw it 
  out an open window. When he turned to face me again I was afraid 
  he was angry, and I'm sure that fear showed on my face. However 
  he just walked by me and sat down at the computer for another 
  lesson.

  Tantu's three English lessons have followed a consistent 
  pattern. I begin with the alphabet and after about ten minutes 
  he becomes obviously confused and begins to ask questions about 
  the computer and the radio. I had planned to try to teach Tantu 
  how to read phonetically, but he doesn't seem to want to get 
  past the alphabet. He can recognize letters and pronounce them, 
  but he seems to lack the motivation to continue. It is as if he 
  doesn't understand that the letters are the building blocks, 
  even though I have shown him how I can assemble words from the 
  letters. I guess the greatest breakthrough is that he can now 
  recognize his name when typed on the computer and even type in 
  the password to the partition I have created for him on the hard 
  drive.

  The biggest surprise of Tantu's training is that he can actually 
  manipulate the computer quite easily, without being able to 
  read! He understands directories and folders and can steer 
  himself to picture files that he likes to view. He likes to zoom 
  in and out of images, watching how the image is made up of 
  individual pixels. I have not shown him games yet--I don't want 
  to be known as the sociologist who enslaved naive cultures with 
  the shackles of Tetris!

  I am very concerned, however, that Tantu will never surpass the 
  spiritual fraud that I seem to have perpetuated by 
  shock-treating him with the computer the first time. For 
  instance, I read aloud to him the mail messages I received from 
  my family and even some of the newsgroup messages. He was 
  completely enthused with the idea of mass communication and I 
  felt a sense of elation that perhaps here was a way I could 
  motivate Tantu to learn how to read and write English. However, 
  he immediately asked how the computer could talk to shamen so 
  far away, and how those shamen could know where we were. I 
  explained that the shamen were just people and that we 
  communicated via the radio (slight lie, but close to the truth). 
  He looked at the radio and smiled knowingly. He said, "The 
  spirit of the monkey is in your radio."

  I asked him what he meant but he would only reply that monkeys 
  talk the same way my computer does; therefore the monkey spirit 
  is in my radio. I began to explain that the radio worked on 
  principles of science, but I had to halt when he asked me to 
  talk about those principles. I must confess I don't know much 
  beyond the basics about those electromagnetic principles. Tantu 
  then smiled again, his whiskers pointing at the cabin's loose 
  rafters. I realized then how much like a religion my "science" 
  must sound to him.


  March 6, 1994 14:11:48
------------------------

  Catherine,

  Tantu just left the cabin suddenly and without warning. He was 
  sitting at the computer staring at the screen when his back 
  stiffened slightly. Then he simply got up and left. I called out 
  to him from the porch but he had disappeared. I wouldn't be 
  surprised except that, from the way he suddenly jumped to 
  attention, he seemed to have heard something or someone call his 
  name. I wonder if his hearing is more acute than mine; I 
  wouldn't doubt it.

  I am looking at the screen Tantu was staring at just moments 
  ago. It's just a jumble of characters... ah, perhaps they are a 
  jumble because they are meant to be a jumble--indecipherable. 
  Tantu must have been engaged in what seems to be one of his 
  favorite past times, composing a very crude sentence, or 
  sometimes just a word, and using a cipher to encrypt it. He 
  appears to derive some sort of meaning from the encrypted 
  letters and symbols; I have witnessed him pondering an encrypted 
  sentence for minutes or more, sometimes tracing his fingers over 
  the glass. Just the other day I saw him encrypt an entire Usenet 
  message and then scroll through it several times, as if looking 
  for something. I've asked him why he does it, but his answers 
  are vague and he seems surprised that I should ask. Luckily, I 
  have access to his partition and can run the cipher in reverse.

  The line of letters decrypts as, "It is mine."

  I wonder if I am teaching him about greed and envy as well as 
  English and computers.

  Earlier today I upgraded the memory in the computer with chips 
  that arrived by boat yesterday from Leticia. Tantu watched my 
  every move as if I were performing a ritual. He seemed 
  particularly intrigued by the grounding wrist strap. I took the 
  opportunity to try to show him that the computer was really a 
  machine and not a spirit manifestation, but I think I failed. 
  I'm beginning to think it doesn't matter if he believes that 
  spirits of nature drive the machine rather than human-guided 
  electrons; in a way, I guess they are the same sort of force. At 
  least he seemed to understand that, by replacing the chips, the 
  computer now could hold more "thoughts" in its "fast brain" 
  without having to resort to the "slow brain." I demonstrated by 
  showing him how much faster the computer could switch back and 
  forth between two full-color images of the Chicago skyline. He 
  seemed elated.

  Still no word from you, Catherine. My mail message didn't bounce 
  back, nor did you respond to my post on sci.seti.anthro. I don't 
  know what to think. I know you are still with SETI because I 
  have seen your name mentioned many times in the newsgroup now, 
  although I have yet to see a message there from you. I am 
  pleased at the success your team has had deciphering the 
  transmissions, but why are you ignoring me?

  I think I'm better off just not thinking of you. But without any 
  friends in this place except for Tantu, I have a hard time of 
  thinking of anything but you. I am going to have to push Tantu 
  to introduce me to his village. I have hesitated so far--I'm 
  actually afraid of following Tantu into the forest--but I need 
  to see a family again, I need to see humans interacting with 
  each other. A once-a-week feed of flame wars from Usenet is not 
  enough.

  I just noticed that the static wrist band and my old memory 
  chips are missing. Maybe that is what Tantu meant by, "It is 
  mine."


  Scientists puzzled by alien home star emissions
=================================================

  UNITED NATIONS (AP)--Scientists studying Gibbons' Star, the home 
  star of the aliens who broadcast the message to Earth that was 
  received two years ago, are puzzled about a stream of subatomic 
  particles coming from the star.

  A representative of the United Nations Committee on 
  Extraterrestrials said yesterday that researchers around the 
  world have detected an increase in the levels of neutrinos, 
  massless subatomic particles, coming from the aliens' star.

  "We're not quite sure what to make of the [neutrino] hits," said 
  Janice Yan, an astronomer coordinating alien research efforts 
  for the U.N. "They may be coming from the star as a side effect 
  of the aliens' solar mining operation, or they may some alien 
  technology that we don't understand yet."

  But Mark Hirsch, an astronomy professor at the University of 
  Hawaii, said that the neutrino emissions may be much more 
  sinister in nature.

  "Traditionally, we see neutrinos right before a star goes nova," 
  Hirsch said. "If this were any other star, I'd probably say we 
  should watch it carefully. But considering this is the aliens' 
  star, we'll be watching it carefully in any case."

  Anton Zallian, an astronomer at the University of California, 
  raised a stir last week when he told users of the Internet that 
  he expects the star to go nova in the next few months.

  "The neutrino levels continue to go up, and the U.N. doesn't 
  want to admit the truth," Zallian said. "The aliens' star is 
  going to go, and it's probably because of their solar mining."

  Zallian predicted on the Internet that the star would go nova in 
  early May, based on calculations he refused to reveal. "I will 
  explain my methods when I pin down an exact date," he said. "It 
  will take a few more weeks."


  Bright Time, Dark Time   by Eric Skjei
========================================

  9:29:17 EST, April 20, 1994

  Honey is driving down the road. Cole is in the seat beside her. 
  Outlaw Willie's on the radio. Honey and Cole have their 
  swimsuits on. Cole has outgrown his car seat, but he's still too 
  small for the seat belt. Even when he's sitting on his heels, 
  like he is now, it hangs around him like an oversized coat. 
  Honey wonders what would happen if they got into a wreck. A 
  picture of him crashing through the windshield comes to mind and 
  she shakes her head to get rid of it.

  The day is warm but clouds are starting to roll in. When he woke 
  up this morning Cole had a cough, one with that awful cracking 
  sound in it. The doctor said he was fine, but she took the day 
  off anyway. She thought she'd take him to the reservoir for a 
  little sun. What the hey.

  The car's engine misses and smooths out again. Probably needs a 
  tune-up. Joe's old yellow Camaro, not in such bad shape on the 
  outside except for the ding in the fender. She had to buy new 
  tires but couldn't afford the big wide ones, so now it looks 
  like a fat old lady on toothpick legs. Inside, the floor is full 
  of candy wrappers and toys that Cole doesn't want to play with 
  anymore. It still has the California plates on it. She hasn't 
  gotten around to doing anything about that, even though they're 
  in Ohio now. Maybe they'll wind up in a place with white plates 
  or yellow plates. Not Arizona with those ugly red plates. She 
  thinks about when she was a kid, driving down the road in the 
  back seat, with her folks, going on vacation, searching for 
  plates from different states.

  She looks down at Cole again. He doesn't look anything like Joe 
  at all. He's got her blond hair and blue eyes, not Joe's fuzzy 
  red hair and thick neck. Not yet, anyway.

  A beeping sound comes from the floor. It beeps again, then 
  again, then again. "Huh," she says out loud. "It can't be." She 
  hauls up the purse, fishes around in it, finds the beeper. Yup, 
  it's her graduate assistant. She checks the readout. Eleven 
  events in ten seconds.

  Her hands start to shake and she grabs the wheel just as the car 
  drifts over the yellow line. She pulls to the side of the road, 
  stops. If this is real, she's one of the first to know about it. 
  Maybe _the_ first. If it's real. She wonders whether they know 
  in Japan yet. She needs to get back. She's got a lot to do.

  She turns to look at Cole. For a second, she'd completely 
  forgotten he was there. He'll have to wait, as usual. She sighs, 
  then laughs, feeling like she's going 11,000 miles a second. 
  Cole laughs too, grinning up at her, happy to play along. She 
  looks out the windshield. "We're going to take a bath, sweetie," 
  she says, wondering if it might have been nothing but background 
  noise. "An invisible bath, in hundreds of billions of neutrinos. 
  Good thing we have our bathing suits on." She wonders if it'll 
  be bright enough to be visible with the naked eye.

  She sighs again. Then she twists in her seat to look over her 
  shoulder and pulls back out onto the road, heading back the way 
  she came. She reaches for the radio and turns it up real loud. 
  "Nothing I can do about it now," whines Willie.

  Tell me about it, she thinks.


  Little Sun   Part Two
=======================

  March 17, 1994 08:31:22
-------------------------

  Catherine,

  I've just returned from my first trip to the Mayoruna village! 
  It happened suddenly after one of Tantu's lessons yesterday 
  afternoon. The experience remains dreamlike in my mind, perhaps 
  because I actually slept there, in the village! Not until I 
  began the return trip through the steaming morning did I even 
  think about how I would record the experience. It would probably 
  make more sense to start recording my thoughts in the official 
  journals, but it seems easier and will probably be a more vivid 
  account if I write it here first, as if I'm talking to you.

  I met Tantu in Bolognesi early in the afternoon, he was by the 
  boat dock as usual, looking for "parts." I was there to give the 
  boat hands a stack of letters and packages that I wanted mailed 
  from Leticia. (Yes, one of them is for you, maybe that 
  handwritten note will be too hard for you to ignore....) The 
  crew took the mail and I stepped back and looked for Tantu. 
  Instead of squatting over discarded, broken log clasps and tabs 
  of rusted iron, he was standing among a small group of loggers 
  near where the heavy-timbered dock met the river shore. His head 
  was bobbing swiftly so I could tell he was talking to them and, 
  when a logger produced a long package from an orange duffel bag, 
  Tantu's form bent to the ground to study it.

  By the time I had walked over, the group was dispersing. I 
  shouldered my way through the loggers who were headed back along 
  the dock to the boat behind me. Tantu was standing with his back 
  to me, the long package now in his hands. He grasped it near the 
  center and, when the edge of the rough cloth that bound the 
  package flipped off one of the protruding ends, I saw the dull 
  gleam of a rifle barrel.

  "Tantu!"

  He turned to face me. He pushed the gun at me and said, "See? 
  Here is our gun." I took the rifle from him. It was heavier than 
  I thought it would be and I almost dropped it as the weight 
  shifted inside the scratchy cloth. Tantu grabbed it back and, 
  holding the gun in one hand, waggled a finger at me. "Careful," 
  he said seriously.

  "You be careful, Tantu. That is a dangerous weapon. What will 
  you use it for? Hunting?" I wanted to hear him say yes, but 
  instead he turned and headed quickly down the path that led to 
  my cabin. I followed.

  When we arrived Tantu placed the gun on the porch and went 
  inside. I started to follow, but then hesitated and unwrapped 
  the rifle. It looked in good condition--no missing "parts" that 
  I could discern. I wanted to check if the rifle was loaded, but 
  I know almost nothing about rifles, so I put it away.

  Tantu was already at the computer, watching it start up. I asked 
  him if he wanted a lesson and he replied that he did.

  We started the lesson as usual but after about ten minutes of 
  phonetically pronouncing words, Tantu looked up at me and 
  smiled. "I think I can read now!" He said this with such joy 
  that I had to agree with him.

  "Yes, I think you can. But you still have a lot of work to do."

  "No," he said, grabbing my forearm. "Now, you do not know! I can 
  read the letters and see... pictures! The words do not look like 
  the pictures, but I see the pictures."

  Looking back now, I understand what he meant. But at the time, I 
  wasn't sure what he was so overjoyed about, only that some 
  breakthrough had occurred. The written Mayoruna language 
  consists of crude pictograms, generally outlining some event or 
  fable. Its "letters" are direct representations of their 
  meanings and are only roughly standardized into a small handful 
  of characters. I believe now that Tantu didn't understand the 
  written English language because it consists of collections of 
  letter-characters that have no reference to meaning except when 
  grouped together and mentally pronounced. It must have finally 
  dawned on him the true phonetic nature of the written word. This 
  must be why he said what he said next.

  "Come, Kane. You must enjoy with us tonight!"

  I didn't understand what he meant at first, but moments later, 
  when we were rapidly trotting over the spine grass path that led 
  to his village, I realized that this was it, the invitation I'd 
  been waiting for. And I wasn't prepared at all. No camera, no 
  paper to take notes, nothing but myself and Tantu. I didn't even 
  bring the last of my cache of gifts for the village.

  "Tantu," I said to the naked back in front of me. "Tantu, I have 
  no gifts for your village.... Come back with me to the cabin so 
  I can get some."

  "Kane," he said after a moment and without breaking his stride, 
  "this will be your gift." He raised the rifle with one hand over 
  his head. The burlap covering fell to the ground. I bent down 
  and picked it up. When I had straightened, Tantu was well ahead 
  of me.

  "Tantu! Wait! I didn't give you the rifle. That rifle... that 
  gun is yours." For some reason I was desperate to cleanse myself 
  of the weapon. "Tantu, that gun is yours!"

  He turned his head and barked, "Yes, I know! Thank you!" Before 
  I had a chance to respond he lifted the rifle and placed the end 
  of the stock directly in the center of his chest and bent 
  backward at the waist. His body recoiled slightly with the gun 
  as it fired a round into the tree branches overhead. I jumped at 
  the cracking sound.

  Immediately rustling appeared in the thick plant life around us 
  and I caught the color of brown skin as it disappeared behind 
  the foliage. A loud crashing noise erupted to my right. I spun 
  my head and just caught sight of an Indian man scrambling away 
  from where he had landed after dropping from a huge low-branched 
  tree. The Indians must have been all around us for minutes as we 
  had walked the path. I would have never known had it not been 
  for Tantu's surprise shot in the air.

  "Are they from your village?" I turned to ask. But Tantu was 
  gone. I just caught sight of him taking a turn in the path 
  ahead. I ran after him, my panic building quickly.

  I turned the corner and just managed to avoid running into 
  Tantu's back. He was walking slowly forward into a large 
  clearing; the rifle raised over his head casually, supported by 
  one small arm. A few indigenous men were gathered in the 
  clearing in front of a small fire. They too were waving their 
  arms as if each of them carried a rifle aloft. Their cheeks were 
  painted red and their faces were somber, yet they still wore a 
  joyful countenance.

  Other men stood near a circle of thatched huts that ringed the 
  periphery of the clearing. They did not look as cheerful as the 
  others and, as we strode slowly toward the men at the fire, 
  several more appeared from the doorways of the surrounding huts. 
  I glanced between the two sets of men and sensed a distinct 
  tension. I reached out to touch Tantu's back; he turned quickly 
  and caught my wrist with his free hand and raised the two 
  together over his head. Because of my height, the feeling was 
  odd--I could feel his arm strain, outstretched as it was, while 
  my arm hung limply by the side of my head. I tried to jerk my 
  arm back, but Tantu held it there with surprising strength. I 
  felt like comically waving at the staring men to alleviate the 
  tension.

  As Tantu led me in this manner about the fire and talked in 
  indecipherable bursts to the gathered men, I looked more deeply 
  into the dark fringes of the clearing. Despite the growing 
  twilight, I spied young children crouched there and, clumped 
  about the opening of the largest hut, a group of four women 
  spitting into the open mouths of dried gourds. Tantu swung me 
  around again and released my hand. I held my breath for a 
  response from the seemingly disturbed men that had formed a 
  loose circle around us at the fire.

  If there was one, however, I didn't notice it, for at that 
  moment a cry like a bird of prey thwarted sliced through the 
  clearing. I turned my head with the others and saw a party of 
  Mayoruna hunters emerge from the dense brush. Two of them 
  carried the fur-covered forms of inert howler monkeys on their 
  backs. An answering cry from the spitting women filled the air 
  and suddenly a flurry of activity erupted. From the edges of the 
  small village children and adolescents convened on the hunters, 
  their joy evident through the bounce in their steps and the 
  chatter of their voices. After a moment, the men surrounding us 
  went forward to greet them also.

  Tantu started forward and I called to him so he would not forget 
  me. He turned and gestured for me to follow. He was heading for 
  the open doorway of the large hut rather than attempting to 
  approach the successful hunters. I followed him into the hut, 
  noticing that the women sitting in front of it were chewing on 
  some type of root and spitting a white juice into numerous dried 
  gourds set about the ground around them. One of the gourds 
  looked curiously like the top of a human skull.

  The hut was dark but, as my eyes adjusted, enough twilight was 
  able to penetrate the double filter of the trees outside and the 
  loose thatched roof above to recognize the shapes of several 
  Indians sitting on the ground and a dark central mass ahead of 
  us. Tantu approached the dark form and held the gun horizontally 
  in front of him. He spoke a few words and then sat down on the 
  ground. I felt his hand around my calf as he motioned for me to 
  join him. I did, surprised to feel the soft toughness of grass 
  mats beneath me rather than the hard dirt I had anticipated.

  "This is our head man... our chief," Tantu whispered to me. I 
  actually looked about me for an instant until I realized he was 
  referring to the dark shape in front of us. The form spoke in a 
  deep voice and the noise from outside the hut seemed to fade 
  away. My eyes started to pick out details of the chief's form 
  and my mind attempted to fill in the dark spots.

  The head man was a withered man sitting in a grass hammock that 
  hung low to the ground. I remember thinking that the hammock 
  must have been hung so low so that the chief could easily climb 
  in and out of it. The chief was as naked as all the Indians 
  around me; his gnarled legs draped over the edge of the hammock 
  and his feet were folded against the floor so that the outsides 
  of his ankles scraped the grass matting. I saw, or imagined I 
  saw, numerous warts protruding from the loose skin of his legs, 
  some as large as the end of my thumb. His face was hidden in 
  shadow, but I could make out the characteristic wide shape of 
  his head and the long white glow of his spine whiskers.

  In a pause of his speech to us--and it was a speech lasting 
  almost half an hour--I asked Tantu in a whisper to translate the 
  chief's message. Tantu whispered back that the chief was telling 
  them of the great sorrow that he felt he had brought to the 
  tribe. "What sorrow?" I asked.

  "The sorrow of being both head man and shaman for the village. 
  Now that he is dead, we have no one to lead."

  After the chief's voice subsided, Tantu and the others stood up. 
  I stood up with them and followed them out of the hut. By now 
  night had fallen. In the clearing, the fire had been built up 
  and I could see that a meal had been in preparation.

  "Tantu," I said. "If what the chief said was true, shouldn't the 
  rest of the villagers been there to listen?"

  Tantu turned to me and said, "The chief... he tells this story 
  many times a day."

  "You mean it is just a story? He's not really dying?"

  Tantu looked at me puzzled. "No, it is true. He is dead. We must 
  find a new shaman." He moved away from me and toward two young 
  women who were stripping the monkeys of their fur.

  I looked down at my feet then and found myself staring into the 
  gourds of white juices that I had seen the women spit. I picked 
  one up and swirled the contents around in the base of the gourd. 
  In the firelight I could see that the juice consisted of a very 
  fluid liquid, which I assumed to be the women's saliva, and a 
  mash of plant fibers. I took it over to Tantu and asked him what 
  it was.

  "Beer!" he barked at me. Then he smiled and said, "Do you like 
  beer? This will not be good for a few days, but you can try it 
  now."

  "No thanks," I said quickly, recalling the sound the women made 
  when they spit. "I'll wait." I gave the gourd to him. He smiled 
  and took a drink of it.

  When he was finished he produced one of the white roots that the 
  women had been chewing on. It looked like a manioc root, the 
  kind the Indians also make a sort of pancake out of. "Here," he 
  said, offering it to me. "The beer... masato... is made of 
  this." I took the root. "Chew on it," he said and then knelt 
  back down to watch the young women work.

  I put the root in my mouth and began to chew on it lightly. It 
  was a bit pungent but not a bad taste. I returned to the area 
  around the fire and watched the various activities around me. It 
  was then that I noticed the children looking at me.

  Several children, male and female, would walk up behind my back 
  and watch me. When I would turn to greet them they would giggle 
  and run away. This occurred several times before I sat down 
  about ten yards from the hot fire. Four of the children then sat 
  down around me. They stared at me with smooth skinned faces and 
  glinting eyes. None of them wore the spine whiskers or the blue 
  mouth tattoo. I smiled at them and tried to think of something 
  to give them or do for them. The children simply stared at me. 
  Finally I settled on a trick my uncle used to play on me. I 
  doubled the thumb of my left hand within a fist and positioned 
  my right hand so that it looked like my right thumb was actually 
  the continuation of my left. Then with the same sneaky 
  expression of a thousand goofy uncles I performed the 
  time-honored trick of removing my left thumb. The children 
  screamed and ran away.

  I laughed then and leaned back so that I lay on the ground and 
  could look up into the thin canopy of tree branches overhead. 
  The flickering light from the fire reflected on the broad leaves 
  and shone hypnotically back down at me. I must have lain there 
  for some time because the next thing I remember is Tantu 
  prodding me with his foot to rouse me for the meal.

  The meal was quick and I actually ate very little. For the 
  number of villagers present there really wasn't that much food. 
  I limited myself to the manioc pancakes and didn't drink 
  anything. I spent most of the time trying to watch how the 
  Indians interacted with each other, trying to identify 
  influences of western society on their interaction. About all I 
  noticed was Tantu taking his new rifle with him wherever he 
  went. I was relieved to see him reprimanding the young children 
  when they attempted to touch it.

  It was then that I noticed the first RAM necklace. One of the 
  children, a young boy, was fingering the beads of one of the 
  necklaces which Tantu wore about his neck. Whenever the child 
  would tug on the beads Tantu would let out a sharp bark. Finally 
  Tantu pushed the boy away and scolded him. When Tantu removed 
  his hand from his neck I looked closely to see what had so 
  attracted the child. I expected to see a jaguar tooth or a worn 
  stone. Instead I saw a silicon chip still attached into a broken 
  piece of epoxy circuit board. Tantu must have taken my discarded 
  computer memory, broken them into pieces and woven them into his 
  necklace. The sight made a chill run down my spine. I looked at 
  the necklaces of some of the other villagers. To my surprise I 
  found that at least four other men had similar necklaces. All of 
  them were seated in an area between myself and Tantu.

  I stood up and asked to speak with Tantu. He basically ignored 
  me until I pulled on his necklace. Then he turned and smiled at 
  me. I noticed that several of the other necklaced men turned 
  their heads to look at me.

  "You like it?" Tantu asked. "I made you one also... It is my 
  gift to you."

  My first reaction was to refuse the gift. But as he produced the 
  necklace and held it up to me in front of the other men, I 
  realized I was obligated to accept the necklace. I couldn't 
  embarrass Tantu in front of his tribe. I reached for the limp 
  ring of fiber and silicon but suddenly Tantu jerked it back, 
  yelling something in Mayoruna and then in English, "Careful!"

  I took my hand back. Tantu dug around in the folds of his waist 
  belt and pulled out the grounding wrist strap that I had used 
  when installing the memory in my cabin. He wound it carefully 
  around his right wrist with great deliberation, then clipped the 
  end to one of the chips on his necklace. He stood up, said a few 
  words in Mayorunan, and draped the necklace over my head.

  Sensing the ceremony of the event, I bowed my head and attempted 
  to say thank you in Mayorunan. I only heard a few chuckles at my 
  mispronunciation and I sat back down, this time next to Tantu.

  Throughout the next hour Tantu told a story in Mayorunan, 
  occasionally gesturing at me, at the chips hung around his neck, 
  and himself. I caught the words for "shaman," "spirits," and 
  "monkey," I attempted to speak to him during his numerous pauses 
  but whenever I would begin, he cut me off with another loud 
  sentence.

  By the time he was done, more men had joined our small circle. 
  Some of them did not wear chip necklaces, but seemed eager to 
  hear Tantu's story. I became drowsy with the heat of the fire 
  and the drone of Tantu's voice. I hoped my drowsiness wouldn't 
  be noticed, but Tantu had to shake my shoulder to gain my 
  attention when he was ready to leave the fire.

  He pulled me to one of the huts and told me that I could sleep 
  in the hammock. He made a big fuss over assuring me it was safe. 
  I was not up to the walk through the jungle to Bolognesi and 
  from there back to my cabin, so I agreed to sleep there. I 
  attempted once more to talk to Tantu about the necklaces, but he 
  left me in the hut, ignoring my attempts at discussion.

  I slept fitfully--as did the rest of the village. It seemed the 
  site was never quiet. Some villagers slept while others tended 
  the fire and moved about the huts. When the active ones would 
  retire it seemed that others roused themselves to take their 
  place. It was as if the night was respected as a time to rest, 
  but that resting did not necessarily entail uninterrupted sleep. 
  My dreams were filled with the sounds and sights of the Mayoruna 
  village. I often woke thinking it to be dawn, only to find 
  darkness outside the door of the hut.

  Sometime during the very early morning I dreamt that the 
  Mayoruna chief was talking to me. Not in Mayoruna, but in clear, 
  unaccented English. I was standing before his hammock in the 
  large, dark hut. I could feel rough grass beneath my bare feet 
  and I realized that I was no longer wearing my Vibram-soled 
  boots. Now the chief was lying in his hammock and I assumed he 
  was asleep; however, moments later I heard a voice address me. I 
  was convinced it was his voice, though I'm not sure because the 
  figure did not even seem to breathe.

  "Do you follow our path?" he questioned slowly.

  In my dream I was not afraid and did not find it odd to reply 
  aloud. "What path is that?"

  "The path of the Little Sun."

  I thought a moment before answering.

  "I do not know that path," I said finally.

  "Then you do not follow the path."

  "Where does the path lead?" I hurriedly questioned, trying to 
  prolong the unearthly dialogue.

  "To the beginning, to the Nascente... It is a long journey and 
  we must move quickly."

  "If you must move quickly, why have you stopped here for so 
  long? Why do you not move on?"

  "We have not stopped moving. I lead always to the Source, the 
  Nascente. I have not halted; perhaps you have begun moving... 
  perhaps you follow the path..."

  The next words I spoke woke me with a start. I said, "I am not 
  moving at all!" I looked about me and realized I was in the 
  chief's hut. His dark, prone form lay before me in the low slung 
  hammock, apparently still asleep.

  I backed out of the hut then, fright crawling up my neck, and 
  walked quickly to the dying fire. I looked about me, but for 
  once in the night, no one seemed to be awake. I stared at the 
  fire for a long while. Perhaps the root I had chewed earlier was 
  some sort of psychoactive and it had triggered my 
  already-troubled mind into a state of wakeful dreaming.

  Whatever had caused my dream, I felt drained and exhausted. I 
  left the fire and peered into the hut that I thought I had first 
  slept in. It was hard to remember exactly which hut that was. 
  But the center hammock was empty and I climbed into its rough 
  fibers. I fell asleep quickly and dreamlessly until light, when 
  the sound of the waking Mayoruna village roused me.

  I forgot about the dream until I stepped on a patch of spine 
  grass near the dead fire. The bristles scraped at my feet and I 
  realized I had lost not only my boots but also my socks. The 
  memory of the dream rushed upon me then and my mind reeled with 
  its flood. Even now, as I recount this to you, Catherine, I am 
  overcome with the tingling feeling that I really did converse 
  with the Mayoruna chief.

  After attempting to find Tantu, I came back to the ashes of the 
  central fire. There, charred and half melted, were my boots. I 
  poked at them with a twig and finally lifted them with my hands. 
  They were completely ruined. Who would do such a thing? Why they 
  would burn them, I have no idea. Perhaps it was one of the 
  village's men who seemed at odds with Tantu and his rifle when 
  we first entered the village?

  I finally left the village after again trying unsuccessfully to 
  find Tantu. I also stopped at the chief's hut, but his hammock 
  was empty. In his place were a few dried gourds. I could see the 
  milky residue of the masato beer from the night before.

  The walk back here was slow and almost painful without my boots. 
  I hadn't realized before how pampered my feet are. At least I 
  have a pair of Reeboks in one of my trunks. Still, without the 
  boots I feel more exposed to the dangerous environment around 
  me.

  The fantastic events of the last day are still with me. I feel 
  charged, yet reluctant to record every detail in the journals. I 
  wish you were here so I could talk the events over with you. I 
  need someone to converse with, someone who can talk back to me 
  and offer an opinion besides my own on what my experience--my 
  dream--really could mean. I cannot believe that after this much 
  time, UIC has not assigned other researchers to this station. On 
  the other hand I'm almost afraid to relate these events to my 
  peers. I failed to make any scientific observations, notes, or 
  photos. And what is probably my own personal highlight of the 
  trip, the dream, will probably be scoffed at as pure 
  fabrication! I will have to go back to the village soon and make 
  better record of the social fabric and indications of western 
  influence. But how do I explain (or even mention) the necklaces?


  April 19, 1994 21:05:23
-------------------------

  Catherine,

  It looks like this journal is the closest I will come to 
  actually talking to you. Today's radio packet once again 
  contained plenty of news about the aliens, the Hebron massacre, 
  the price of grain, my uncle Greg, the family dog and even the 
  weather--but nothing from you. Maybe it's because Tantu hasn't 
  been by in two days, but it suddenly hit me. You're gone from my 
  life completely. I can see your life continue on in the 
  sci.seti.anthro posts and in the news about solar mining and the 
  undeciphered parts of the alien message. Yet my life is 
  invisible to you. I don't even feel like you're ignoring me. I 
  feel like I'm dead to you.

  During one of Tantu's lessons, I read on Usenet that someone 
  from the University of California announced that he thinks the 
  alien star is going to explode on May 14. I'm sure the Christian 
  fundamentalists are having fun with that one. I can't believe 
  the stance some of them have taken over this whole alien race 
  thing. It seems like after the lenient sentencing of the 
  abortion protest shootings, these people have decided to take an 
  even more inane "literal" translation of the Bible. If there is 
  only room for one intelligent species in their universe, perhaps 
  they should question if humans are that one intelligent species! 
  "God created one true people!" they yell. I wonder if they 
  realize that only they created their one true God.

  Tantu seemed to fixate on the announcement, asking me to explain 
  it to him repeatedly. He wanted to know "how many cycles" until 
  May 14, so I took the opportunity to introduce him to the 
  calendar program and how we measure time. It confused him until 
  I displayed two months and counted out the "cycles" for him one 
  by one. He then smiled and counted them himself. "What happens 
  when computer has no more days?" Tantu asked, pointing at the 
  end of the month.

  I put that off for another lesson, and I'm almost glad that 
  Tantu hasn't been by lately. He's progressing quickly and his 
  patience with the computer is increasing, but he scares me with 
  his ritualistic approach and the way he treats me if other 
  villagers are around. I'm sure the tension I experience when I 
  am with him is contributing to my bad dreams also.

  I had the dream again last night. I was speaking to the chief of 
  the Mayoruna and, once again, I can't remember what we talked 
  about except that it involved "walking the path to Nascente." At 
  least this time I woke up in my cabin and not in the chief's 
  hut. I don't know what it means and when I talk about it with 
  Tantu I receive no other response than a disquieting look that 
  seems to say, "Why shouldn't you be talking to the chief in your 
  dreams?"

  I've made eight trips to the village so far. I've tried to be 
  diligent and record as much of the social interaction as I can. 
  The village is run like an open commune with a shallow 
  hierarchy. In fact, the hierarchy seems to consist of just the 
  chief and two Indian men beneath him. One of the two men is 
  Tantu and that is where the real tension seems to lie. He and 
  the other "second" seem to be in a low-key power struggle. 
  Low-key, but pervasive. Tantu's competitor is taller and the 
  blue tattoo that surrounds his mouth is exceptionally thick and 
  bright. I have come to think of him as Blue Mouth because I 
  don't know his name. Both men have a small group of followers 
  who interact normally with each other when Tantu and Blue Mouth 
  aren't around, but who become antagonistic when forced to take 
  sides by a leader's presence. All of Tantu's followers wear some 
  piece of western technology around their necks--usually a 
  fragment of my computer--and they respectfully ask for more 
  `parts' when ever I visit.

  I have rarely seen the chief. He keeps inside the large hut most 
  of the time and I hesitate to enter again. When I ask Tantu 
  about the chief he always replies that the chief is dead and 
  should not be angered.

  I have learned a little about Tantu's background. I know that he 
  learned English while living with missionaries in Leticia. I've 
  tried to ask him about the mission, with hopes of locating his 
  previous teacher via radio, but he refuses to talk about his 
  time there. Once he glared at me with barely muted hatred. I 
  have tried not to talk about it since then.

  I know that Tantu has purchased more rifles from the loggers. 
  The other men in his group sometimes carry them in the village 
  and I once saw a young woman inspecting one while Tantu looked 
  on. I have not heard a shot from the village though, at least 
  not yet.

  Most of these things--the necklaces, the power struggle between 
  Blue Mouth and Tantu's techno-Indians, the rifles--I have barely 
  mentioned in the technical journals I send upline. I feel like 
  I'm responsible for this fast influx of dangerous change. I 
  cannot bring myself to confess my involvement to my peers and 
  mentors, so I write down only the mundane and send it upline. I 
  can tell by the feedback that they aren't impressed. I haven't 
  been telling them anything new, and with all the attention the 
  SETI groups have been receiving, my filtered work here must seem 
  like an ant farm.


  May 2, 1994 11:14:21
----------------------

  Catherine,

  Tantu came by earlier this morning to tell me that the Mayoruna 
  chief has left. He wanted me to come with him to the village to 
  "enjoy the return." I took this to mean that the ailing chief 
  had finally died during the night. When I asked Tantu if this 
  was the case he didn't seem to understand. He carefully repeated 
  that the chief has "gone over" and that he wanted me to "enjoy 
  the return." I agreed, but told him I wanted to prepare myself 
  first. Tantu went back to the village agitated that I didn't 
  drop everything and return with him.

  It's odd... Tantu did not seem disturbed at all by the chief's 
  death. He actually looked excited, almost eager. I wonder if, 
  now that the chief has gone on, if Tantu believes he will become 
  the next chief. Surely it will either be him or Blue Mouth. They 
  are the only ones who seem ready for the task, although they are 
  both very young. I almost hope Blue Mouth wins. It would help 
  relieve my sense of guilt. Especially after Tantu's reaction 
  yesterday to my explanation of the possibility of a nova. He 
  obviously saw the nova as an omen of his ascent to power in the 
  village. I wonder if he has told any others in the village about 
  it.

  I am concerned about going to the village for the chief's 
  funeral celebration. I have done a little more research and also 
  witnessed firsthand evidence of the Mayoruna death rituals. They 
  recycle almost the entire body, putting the last of the spirit's 
  earthly remains to work for them. Several parts of the body are 
  eaten, including some of the bones which are ground up and used 
  to make a type of hot broth. Often the skull is cleaned out and 
  used as a container for liquids, and I have seen necklaces made 
  of what look like human vertebrae. I'm not sure I am up to this 
  type of ritual. I remember my glimpses of the chief's 
  wart-covered legs and my stomach turns. I hope I will not be 
  made to feel obliged to eat anything I do not readily recognize 
  or find repulsive.

  I will take my new digital camera along and also a small pouch 
  of crackers and dried beef. I cannot think of anything else that 
  will be of use. I may have to spend the night in the village 
  again tonight. Hopefully with the chief "gone over" I will not 
  dream myself into his hut again.


  May 3, 1994 13:48:42
----------------------

  Catherine,

  Just got back from the village and I am exhausted. I do not 
  think I slept more than three hours last night. Like the first 
  overnight trip to the Mayoruna village, this last trip is 
  clouded in my memory. The smoky heat of fires, strange tastes of 
  unidentifiable foods, and hours of dizzy observation of the 
  villagers have combined to reduce my recollection to quick 
  flashes of images, smells and sounds.

  When I arrived in the village it was nearly empty. Only a 
  handful of women were there preparing food and caring for 
  children. Even with the children, it was strangely quiet. I 
  looked in several of the huts but only found empty hammocks and 
  the natural litter of habitation.

  Returning to the women, who sat away from the smoldering central 
  fire on this hot day, I tried to communicate as best I could my 
  wonder at where all the men of the village had gone. One of the 
  woman pointed further to the east and I looked in that 
  direction. I spotted a trampled path jutting from the main 
  clearing. As I stepped upon it I noticed that the machete wounds 
  on the surrounding vegetation were fresh and new.

  I followed the trail for about twenty minutes. I was glad that 
  it was still mid-afternoon and that I could see easily in front 
  of me. Soon I became aware of human voices ahead, some speaking, 
  others sounding as if they were singing or barking. I increased 
  my pace and made sure my camera was handy and powered on.

  Soon I broke into a small natural clearing filled with about 
  more than a dozen Indian men. Some seemed to be sleeping, curled 
  into balls on the jungle floor while others talked to themselves 
  loudly, occasionally calling out in crude imitations of animal 
  noises. Only three men were standing: one of them was Tantu. 
  When he spotted me he stepped around the others' bodies and 
  approached me quickly. He looked angry.

  "I wait for you. You not come for many cycles, Kane," he said 
  seriously. Then he smiled. "But now you are here. Now you can 
  see how we talk to the spirits. You can see our radio." He 
  grabbed me by the forearm and pulled me towards the other two 
  standing men. One was holding a small box made from 
  loosely-bound twigs. I asked Tantu about the other men in their 
  trancelike states. He told me that some were talking to their 
  animal ancestors and others were preparing for their great 
  hunts.

  I panicked then for a moment, picturing some sort of mass 
  suicide. I asked Tantu if these men were "going over." He said, 
  "No. They are just looking over. Some of us need help from our 
  fathers. Some of us talk to the animals we will hunt on a new 
  sun."

  "Why?" I asked with apprehension.

  "To make good peace with the animals so their spirits do not 
  hunt us after we kill them."

  His answer did not completely allay my fears, but for some 
  reason I felt confident that any danger these men might face was 
  not a new one.

  We reached the two men in the center of the clearing and I saw 
  that the small box contained a slick, wet-looking animal--a 
  frog. "What is this?" I asked, but Tantu did not reply. Instead 
  he took the box while one of the other men bent over and pulled 
  a twig from the ground. Carefully he reached into the box with 
  the twig and stroked the animal's back. A thick, clear syrup 
  clung to the twig.

  Quickly, Tantu handed the box to the third Indian and pulled out 
  a small sharp knife. Before I could stop him he cut into his own 
  forearm, dangerously near the arteries and veins on the inside 
  of his wrist. The man with the twig grabbed Tantu's wrist and 
  pulled open the wound with his free hand. With the other he 
  dripped the frog syrup off the end of the twig and into the 
  bleeding gash.

  I think I was shocked into silence because I don't remember 
  making any other protestations as the two Indians continued to 
  scrape fluid from the frog's back and place it directly into 
  Tantu's bloodstream. I knew some tribes used poisonous mucous 
  from a particular frog for their darts or arrows, but I suddenly 
  realized I didn't know if the Mayoruna had such a practice, or 
  if this was one of those frogs. I continued to watch in a kind 
  of paralyzing horror: maybe this was some sort of suicide 
  ritual. When they were finished they wrapped a thick green leaf 
  around the cut and tied it off with a piece of fibrous twine.

  Tantu turned to look at me. There was a thin trail of saliva 
  oozing from one corner of his mouth and his eyes started to 
  glaze over. He asked me to join them then, but I balked as the 
  other two Indians approached me. "No," I protested. "I am not 
  one of you."

  The Indians hesitated and Tantu spoke again, obviously angered 
  again with me. "You only taste it, Kane. Only I do this..." He 
  shook his bound wrist at me and then fell to the ground slowly, 
  as if through water.

  I went over to him, concerned for his life, when one of the last 
  two Indians caught me by the shoulder. He held out the twig to 
  me and smiled. I reached out and took hold of his wrist lightly 
  and pulled it to my mouth. I placed my tongue as lightly as I 
  could on the twig and then pushed the twig back away. The 
  Indian, apparently satisfied, turned away from me. I bent back 
  down to examine Tantu and, as I did so, spit out as much of the 
  saliva in my mouth as I could. The other two Indians didn't seem 
  to notice.

  Tantu was curled in a loose fetal position and seemed to be sick 
  to his stomach. He eyes were closed tightly and when I tried to 
  pull on his arm he did not respond. His arm snapped back to his 
  chest when I released it. His breathing was deep and regular.

  The two Indians that had administered the frog potion to Tantu 
  were inhaling some sort of powder out of a small pouch. I 
  immediately thought of cocaine, but after inhaling the 
  substance, both men wandered quietly to the outskirts of the 
  clearing and sat on the ground. One of them leaned against a 
  tree and seemed to immediately go to sleep.

  After a time, I began to wander around the clearing, taking 
  pictures and trying to listen to the soft ramblings of the 
  hallucinating Indians. This is the last cognizant thing I 
  remember. My vision through the camera's viewfinder was 
  extremely clear and I think I probably stared through it for 
  quite some time. I remember at one point the batteries drained.

  I became sick and had to lay down. My vision had now begun to 
  blur and I think some of the other Indians were actually moving 
  around then. At least I heard the crashing of bodies through the 
  dense foliage. I remember seeing close up images of howler 
  monkeys playing in the trees overhead. One fell to the ground 
  and when I went over to it, I saw that its hands and feet were 
  burnt and charred.

  I recall being nudged and prodded along the trail to the main 
  village and sitting in front of the fire where men and women 
  seemed to address me in foreign tongues--not Mayoruna, but 
  French, German, Chinese and others.

  At some point, I ate. If I ate some of the chief's body last 
  night, it did not seem to upset me. For some reason, I accepted 
  all these odd sights and tastes. I felt secure in the midst of 
  the villagers for the first time. Even the heat and he rain did 
  not seem to bother me, although today it is so oppressively hot 
  and I cannot seem to drink enough water to satiate my thirst.

  One image stands out in my mind clearly: it is Tantu and Blue 
  Mouth standing on opposite sides of the fire yelling at each 
  other. Tantu is pointing at me with three outstretched fingers; 
  his other arm is pointed to the sky overhead. Blue Mouth is 
  grasping something long and snakelike in one hand and shaking it 
  madly.

  Whatever happened that night between the two did not resolve 
  their differences because, when I woke late in the morning, I 
  saw two very tired-looking men standing outside of the hut Tantu 
  was sleeping in. They wore silicon about their necks and held 
  rifles in their crossed arms.

  After checking my clothes and body for insects (I had slept on 
  the ground like a fool), I went to Tantu's hut to check on him. 
  The guards there would not let me enter although they seemed to 
  respect my approach. I could just see Tantu's form lying in a 
  hammock from the doorway.

  I hobbled back to the cabin and--after splashing some water on 
  my face--began to write this. Straining to remember what 
  happened last night has tired me even further. I must sleep.


  Novalight   Part Two
======================

  May 1994
----------

  The message stopped, suddenly and completely. The computers were 
  recording the 488th repetition when things went silent, in the 
  middle of the third part.

  Speculation appeared in the papers and newscasts and none of it 
  meant anything. The group suffered through a myriad of useless, 
  unanswerable questions until it convinced the reporters that the 
  best thing--the only thing--everyone could do was to wait.


  Novalight
-----------

  The nova lit the evening sky almost like a full moon. And it was 
  documented all the way because, after the message had stopped, 
  every radio astronomer on the planet had been watching that 
  piece of sky.

  What they ended up with was the most complete record of any 
  celestial event in the history of man--a near perfect picture of 
  a supernova, from initial appearance to slow fade three months 
  later. It was beautiful and terrifying and almost infinitely 
  sad.

  The aliens were dead, every one of them. Their technology and 
  their culture and their art and their ideas, all totally gone. 
  An entire species had been wiped out in a single moment, 
  hundreds of years before we had even begun to record their 
  message. The nova pictures were startlingly beautiful if one 
  didn't imagine the billions of intelligent beings that had been 
  consumed, broken down into atoms.

  The message, only a third translated, was the only record we had 
  of them, strange gray shapes moving across a computer screen, 
  tracing out an engineering project we couldn't yet begin to 
  undertake. A gift for our future.

  Linguists, anthropologists and physicists worked feverishly with 
  the new information they had from the nova. Within months, they 
  had deciphered the second part of the message. With the nova 
  still bright in the sky, the conclusion was obvious.

  The nova was an _accident_, an industrial accident, almost 
  certainly caused by solar mining. The second part of the message 
  depicted the sudden and total breakdown of a star from its 
  normal life-cycle to complete collapse in the space of a few 
  years. The message was stylized and iconic, much less intuitive 
  than the first part, but its physics were exactingly precise.

  The core of the star lost stability--the computer simulation 
  showed a number of processes, any or all of which may have been 
  finally responsible--and the star collapsed in on itself, 
  compressing to an infinitely hot ball before exploding, shedding 
  layers in sequence and boiling off its planets.

  It was over. Mankind's first contact with extraterrestrial life 
  began and ended with a single message--a greeting that 
  translation turned into a gift, a gift that disaster turned into 
  a warning.


  Stellar explosion continues to be heard around the world
==========================================================

  MAY 16, 1994: Tensions continue to mount worldwide as the 
  effects of yesterday's supernova explosion of Gibbons' Star are 
  felt. Many nations' militaries have been placed on alert due to 
  the nova's impact on many types of radio communications, and 
  airports, shipping and other transportations systems are 
  struggling to cope with the phenomenon. Delays are frequent, and 
  some transport and communication systems aren't functioning at 
  all.

  Last night, the nova had an apparent brightness of a half- or 
  three-quarter moon. It roughly follows the path of the sun 
  across the sky and is highly visible during daytime hours. While 
  experts say the nova should present no immediate health danger 
  from radiation or other effects, they are advising the public to 
  be cautious until more information is available.

  Public reaction has been enormous. On the west coast of the 
  United States where the nova appeared in the late evening, 
  streets were crowded with people even before the news officially 
  broke. In Tokyo, Japan, nearly everything ground to halt when 
  the nova appeared high overhead. There have been reports of 
  large religious gatherings in Delhi, India, and street parties 
  in Washington, D.C.

  Most experts have refused to comment on the accuracy of 
  University of California astronomer Anton Zallian's prediction 
  of the explosion, but preliminary observations seem to indicate 
  that this nova is much larger than it should be. "Stars that 
  size can explode, but theoretically they can't supernova," said 
  one researcher. "This is much brighter and more powerful than it 
  ought to be." At this time, there have been no estimates 
  released regarding how long the nova may be visible in the sky.


  Tracks   by Daniel K. Appelquist
==================================

  The day that star exploded, I was out back killing my dog. I 
  looked up and there it was, outshining everything in the sky, 
  exposing me and my crime to the world, lighting me harsher than 
  sunlight could have. When I looked back down the dog was dead, 
  its head having been held under the water too long. I looked 
  down and it looked back up at me with those sad eyes, eyes 
  brightened by that exploding star. Eyes that said "I wasn't such 
  a bad dog--you didn't give me a chance. Now you've killed me. 
  Let that be on your head, on your neck like a flea that you'll 
  never gonna be able to scratch off."

  And I said "Fuck you," because I knew that he was right. Though 
  the truth is that he was a bad dog. At night, he yelped and 
  yelped and you never heard the end of it. Putting a pillow over 
  your head was no help, because this mongrel made the most 
  piercing, tortured sound you ever heard. It traveled through 
  walls, doors, pillows, blankets, ear plugs--any substance known 
  to man. It could be heard for blocks.

  And this dog was mean, too. He had mauled a kid once; he 
  endlessly jumped our neighbors, frightened small children and 
  elderly women, ate like a horse, and refused to admit that the 
  kitchen was not his personal shit-hole. He was a dumb, mean 
  son-of-a-bitch, and I wasn't sorry to see him go, even if I was 
  a bit surprised at myself for having the balls to do it.

  Over the fence next door I heard a clang, the sound of metal 
  against metal. For a second I thought I'd been caught, but I 
  realized it was just old man Davis building his damned track. 
  Davis was a hoot. This guy had been building a track--a real, 
  regulation railroad track--through his back yard ever since I'd 
  been living there. Strangest shit you ever saw.

  "Where does he get the supplies?" I asked my friend Harvey once 
  at the Brass Knuckles, this little bar down on H Street. I 
  remember the air was smoky and old Harvey was working on a 
  cigar.

  "He steals 'em! That's the kicker," Harvey replied, taking 
  another giant puff, leaning back and behaving like a rich 
  landowner instead of the shit insurance salesman he was. "He 
  steals every last bit of it. Most of it's scrap, of course, 
  stuff that's lying around. I've heard he steals from the Metro 
  tunnels. He goes down there with a flashlight when the trains 
  aren't running, cuts himself a length of track or whatever, then 
  comes back up."

  "You're crazy," I remarked, taking Harvey as seriously as I ever 
  did. "How could that guy carry all that track, or any track at 
  all? Track's heavy stuff. He's gotta have it delivered."

  "Suit yourself," Harvey retorted blandly while sucking another 
  gout of smoke. "But my source is _reliable_."

  So anyway, here was this guy out in his yard at night, 
  installing another length of the mysterious track. Was it art? 
  Certainly he couldn't be expecting them to build a Metro line 
  through here and he was just preparing. Or perhaps he thought 
  they would pay a premium for his plot of land, which already had 
  a regulation track on it, ready for use. Peering over the fence, 
  I could see that the track did indeed look good. No third rail, 
  though, but I wasn't about to tell Davis that. Davis, being my 
  neighbor, hated me because of my damned dog.

  So this particular night, after drowning my hound, I walked back 
  into the low porch of my one bedroom row-house, where I would 
  never have to put up with the smell of fresh dog shit again, and 
  gave my friend Harvey a call.

  "Hey Harvey! Do you... Yes... Uh huh... Just so, it was... 
  Yeah... Right... And then I... Uh huh? Okay." _Click_. Harvey 
  never was one to let a guy get a word in edgewise. Not when he 
  could be spouting the shit he spouts instead. Harvey had said 
  that a friend had told him that they'd seen on the news that the 
  new light was a supernova, that a star was exploding somewhere 
  in space, that all those aliens were dead. I was going to ask 
  Harvey if he thought there was any danger being outside, what 
  with the radiation and all, but Harvey cut me off to tell me 
  that it was perfectly safe, or at least that's what this guy at 
  the deli counter had said. Some shit. Imagine a star exploding 
  like that, taking all the light it was gonna give out over the 
  next billion or whatever years, and spending it all at once, 
  like it was at Vegas or Atlantic City or something.

  Still, the star brought with it something strange, a thrill that 
  crept into the street, infiltrated even the low-life scum that 
  populated some of the tenements down by the old post office, 
  where the sneakers were slung over the telephone wire. I 
  couldn't remember seeing much of those kids--they were usually 
  in and out in a flash, with their oversized pants and hats, 
  crazy-looking kids. But who am I to judge? This crazy star 
  business brought them out onto the street. Goddamn if they 
  weren't all out there, gawking and laughing. I hadn't imagined 
  that there were this many of them, hanging out in that old 
  building with half the windows boarded up. Thought I'd heard a 
  gunshot once from inside when I was walking past, but I stopped 
  and listened and I didn't hear anything more, so I kept walking.

  That night, though, they were all outside. It would have made me 
  nervous, except that for some reason, I knew it was safe. I knew 
  they weren't gonna hassle anybody. I knew they weren't gonna 
  bother an old man as he walking toward the bus stop, past the 
  abandoned cars, out to the street to catch a bus over to meet 
  his friend Harvey at a bar down on H Street. They were too busy 
  talking, like they never really knew nothing about each other. 
  Talking, and looking up at that bright star, gawking, wondering.

  Waiting for the bus, an old man caught my eye, hooks where his 
  hands might have been. He swaggered over to me, a big burly 
  fellow, about twice my size. I froze, unsure whether I was being 
  attacked--should I stand my ground? Run? The man asked me for 
  directions to the train station. "Going to visit my mother," he 
  said. "Haven't seen her in fifteen years, but I just got the 
  urge." His eyes had the look of a man who hadn't seen much joy. 
  "We might die any time, you know." He looked up, knowingly. 
  "Gotta take our joy where we can." He took the next bus, my bus, 
  following my hasty directions. "There's nothing in this world 
  but pain," the man said. I told him about the kids in front of 
  the crack house, laughing, looking up at the sky. "I used to 
  think that way too," he said. "Look where it got me." He lifted 
  up his hooks as if they were the final answer, as if they were 
  supposed to signify something, as if there were nothing else in 
  the world. "I lost these on a railroad track in '67. Train cut 
  'em right off."

  "I'm... I'm sorry," was all I could say.

  I got off at H Street and Harvey was waiting for me there. I 
  told him about the kids in front of the crack house, and the man 
  with the hooks, and old man Davis making his tracks. He was 
  silent through all this, which is strange for Harvey. He's 
  always talking, always got something on his mind, something to 
  say, something to tell you. All he said through this whole thing 
  was "Yeah--that crazy old man'll be building his tracks 'til 
  Doomsday," which was an awful strange thing for Harvey to say, 
  because he never talks about Doomsday or anything else like 
  that. Harvey's real cheerful.

  "Something bothering you, Harvey?"

  The crowd in the bar at H street was different that night, 
  different from the way it had been the million and one times I'd 
  been there before. A bit younger, more lively. Some guys in the 
  corner, over by the piano, were trying to sing. That was no real 
  surprise, but after the song, they started up with a new one. 
  Soon some other voices joined them.

  Harvey wouldn't tell me why he wasn't being himself, so I told 
  him what I'd done before, how I finally killed my damned dog. 
  That brightened his face a bit.

  "Well, damned good for you!" he said. "I'll buy you a drink for 
  that." And he did. Always stuck to his word, Harvey did. "I saw 
  a woman die yesterday," Harvey blurted out. "I can't get it out 
  of my fucking head. She was just standing there, just standing 
  there."

  "Whoa, Harvey! What the hell are you talking about? Who? Where?" 
  Harvey had given me no warning.

  "I can't keep it in any more. I can't keep it in any more." He 
  kept repeating this phrase. "She was standing there," he sobbed. 
  "On the tracks. And the train just come by and took her right 
  along with her. It looked like she didn't even notice, like she 
  didn't even care."

  "Harvey, calm down. Where was this? I didn't hear nothing about 
  it."

  Harvey just rested his head in his hands on the bar. "It doesn't 
  matter," he sighed. "It doesn't matter. She's gone now. Gone." 
  He downed another shot. "Did you ever notice, when you're riding 
  in a train, and you're looking out the window at the other set 
  of tracks out there...?" His voice turned all dreamy, like he 
  wasn't really talking to me at all. "Did you ever notice how 
  everything rushes by so quickly, but that track just stays 
  there, like it ain't moving at all? That track just keeps going 
  and going, while everything changes around it so quick."

  I took Harvey out of the bar, out onto the street. "Easy, 
  Harvey. Easy."

  Harvey quickly turned on me. "What do _you_ know about tracks? 
  Fuck you!" He tore away from me and ran off raggedly down the 
  street, weaving in and out of light poles and fireplugs like 
  some kind of slalom skier.

  What was up with him? All I could think of was his story, about 
  the woman on the tracks. What possesses a person to do something 
  like that, to make such a final decision?

  On the corner of the street, there was a man with no arm, with a 
  sign around his neck: "Homeless please help." He looked hungry 
  and afraid. He wasn't wearing anything more than a T-shirt and 
  some ripped up jeans, and he was shivering. His eyes caught the 
  light from the star and it seemed to me that he turned into a 
  monster, some kind of sci-fi nightmare creature, with eyes that 
  were gonna burn a hole straight through me. I just walked on by, 
  to the gentle sound of jingling change.

  I kept walking, damning myself and everyone else I could think 
  of, trying to keep those eyes and those thoughts out of my mind. 
  Finally, I broke into a run. I didn't know where I was going 
  until I found myself back on my street, struggling to open the 
  front door like there was something after me, something evil. 
  I'd never been so afraid, and I can't think of _what_ I was 
  afraid of.

  It was when I closed the door that I heard it. My mind still 
  wasn't working right. The noise was building, grinding, metal 
  against metal. It was coming from out back, so I crept out there 
  real slow. I peered over the fence and there was old man Davis, 
  standing by his tracks. As I watched, the tracks shook back and 
  forth before him and I swore I heard the sound of an engine 
  getting nearer. With a crash, this train was coming through old 
  man Davis's yard, gunning through there like a bat out of hell. 
  Car after car appeared on one side of the yard and disappeared 
  on the other. That train kept on coming and making that awful 
  noise, and I didn't know whether it was a dream. I don't know 
  when it stopped--I don't remember anything more from that night, 
  but we never saw old man Davis again.

  A few weeks later, the building manager came around asking 
  questions about him, but I didn't know any more than anyone else 
  and I didn't tell no one about what I saw. I guess he didn't 
  have any family, because they threw his stuff out into the 
  street. The star was still in the sky, but those crackhead kids 
  were back to their old tricks and Harvey was back to being as 
  much of an asshole as ever.

  "They just tore out those tracks old man Davis spent so much 
  time putting down," I remember telling him. "Then they paved it 
  all over for the new tenants. It's a shame. A damned shame."

  Harvey just laughed. "What a nut!" he said, his face all screwed 
  up, like it was the funniest thing he ever heard. "What a 
  fucking nut."

  "Yeah," I said. Yeah.


  Little Sun   Part Three
=========================

  May 14, 1994 22:39:13
-----------------------

  Catherine,

  The nova didn't appear today as predicted by your fellow 
  researcher. I waited outside on my porch for about two hours in 
  anticipation. According to the radio it should have been visible 
  overhead at midday, but... nothing. Perhaps the sun blocked it 
  out, but the radio has not reported its appearance anyplace 
  else.

  I am of course concerned for what this means to your research, 
  although I have seen the widespread debate and skepticism about 
  this scientist's prediction. However, my first thoughts are 
  consumed with how this nonevent will affect Tantu and his 
  village.

  Tantu stopped by during late afternoon. He was very upset. It 
  seems he told--announced, really--the entire village of the 
  coming of the "Little Sun." He claimed that this would be a 
  message from the spirits to show the villagers he was the chosen 
  one to lead the Mayoruna to the Nascente. When the nova did not 
  appear, Blue Mouth and his followers pronounced Tantu a fake and 
  a liar.

  Tantu yelled all this at me, clearly blaming me for his own 
  haste and greed. I tried to be as honest as I could and explain 
  that sometimes this was the way things happened with science... 
  that he shouldn't place so much faith in it. This did not seem 
  to help. He looked at me incredulously like I was uttering 
  blasphemy. The only thing I could say that seemed to calm him 
  was that the date and time may have simply been calculated 
  incorrectly, that the nova--the "Little Sun"--may yet appear.

  I felt almost evil telling him this--the prediction could have 
  been off by months, or even years. Since I could not make Tantu 
  realize that he had deliberately led his village to think of 
  science as a faith, I simply encourage him further in his plot 
  for power? Still, what was I to do? Tell him the truth? Tell him 
  that I secretly hoped the nova would never appear?

  Yes, I think that is the truth. Without the physical nova, 
  Catherine, there's a chance your research would become suspect 
  and mocked. And without the "Little Sun," Tantu's techno-fetish 
  leadership doesn't have a prayer. These things would satisfy my 
  vengeful thoughts of your betrayal and cleanse my conscience of 
  the guilt of inadvertently corrupting Tantu's tribe. Admitting 
  this is not easy, but perhaps it is the first step towards 
  understanding myself.


  May 16, 1994 16:08:57
-----------------------

  Catherine,

  The nova appeared today! It appeared early this morning, rising 
  maybe an hour and a half after the sun. It was incredibly bright 
  for an object so far away. Later in the day, the moon was 
  visible through the foliage, and I think the nova is brighter 
  than its crescent, even during daylight! Despite my misgivings 
  about what the nova could mean, it has filled me with awe and 
  excitement.

  Of course I immediately turned on the radio to see if there was 
  coverage of the event but the radio was useless. Nothing but 
  static with rare snatches of signal. Perhaps it is the nova 
  itself that is creating the interference. If that's true, maybe 
  I can raise Leticia when the nova has set.

  Later, with the star high overhead, I picked my way through the 
  forest to the Mayoruna village. I was very anxious about what I 
  would find, but I was immensely curious also.

  The village was a beehive of activity. Blue Mouth and a few of 
  his followers were huddled together on one side of the village, 
  surrounded by angry men who held spears and blow-gun reeds. But 
  the vast majority of villagers were not paying them much 
  heed--women were hurriedly rushing between huts carrying the 
  cups of dried gourds. Shouts and sounds of laughter could be 
  heard from the nearest huts.

  I crossed the compound to the old chief's hut where there was a 
  large crowd of men talking loudly. As I passed by Blue Mouth's 
  group a few of his men shouted and stared at me defiantly. Their 
  faces and shoulders looked bruised and swollen, as if they'd 
  been beaten.

  Tantu was in the large hut. As I approached, the talking men 
  clustered about the doorway parted and I entered. Tantu was 
  sitting in the hammock. A man I recognized him as the one who 
  had administered the frog potion to Tantu days earlier, rubbed 
  white paste into Tantu's shoulders gingerly. I could see gashes 
  in his skin and dried blood in his hair. Tantu's face was 
  bruised and one eye was almost swollen shut.

  Tantu smiled when he recognized me and stood to greet me.

  "Kane! It has happened! The Little Sun is here..."

  "Yes," I replied. "It has happened... but it has brought a lot 
  of pain also." I pointed to his face and the white paste drying 
  on his shoulders.

  "This is good, Kane. This is because we were bad to not believe 
  it would happen." He looked at me as if I should have known 
  that.

  "What? This is... your punishment?" I tried not to raise my 
  voice too loud. Suddenly, I thought of Blue Mouth and his men 
  outside. "Did those others do this to you when the nova--the 
  Little Sun--didn't appear?" I looked around at the faces of 
  other Indians in the hut: many of them displayed cuts and 
  bruises. "Did they do this to all of you?"

  "We were bad to not believe the Little Sun would come," Tantu 
  explained again, smiling. I leaned forward and examined Tantu's 
  eye; it looked very painful, but in the dim light it was 
  difficult to tell if any permanent damage had been done. "When 
  Little Sun leaves the sky, we will be forgiven."

  "And what happens when the Little Sun comes tomorrow?" I said 
  without thinking.

  Tantu's smile disappeared. "The Little Sun will come here 
  again?"

  I looked around the hut. All eyes were on me. "Yes," I said. "It 
  could come every day for the next few months...." I paused, not 
  knowing what to say. "They really don't know how long the nova 
  will be active or visible."

  "Who is they?" Tantu asked.

  I tried to think of a way to explain it, but I was starting to 
  get sick of the whole situation. I felt guilty and responsible, 
  not for the beatings, but for Tantu and the village's perception 
  of the nova. I had made the supernova into a false god.

  "I don't know, Tantu. Just some scientists...." In the hut, all 
  the faces were watching me expectantly, as if I were supposed to 
  perform some ritual or feat of magic. "I have to go," I said, 
  and started to leave.

  "Kane." Tantu stopped me with a hand on my back. "I am chief now 
  of the tribe. I want you to be our shaman."

  I froze then. It had all come down to this... I didn't know what 
  to say. I knew I couldn't refuse, but I don't think there was 
  anything I could say. Tantu began to speak again, but all I 
  heard was the blood rushing through my head. I brushed his hand 
  off and left the hut.

  I heard a muffled yell from the hut and then nothing more as I 
  marched away from that crowd and out of the village. I wanted to 
  get away from Tantu and the hysterical religion I had helped 
  instigate. I walked faster, swatting at the leaves and branches 
  along the trail as I went. I felt sick to my stomach.

  Behind me, I heard a gunshot.


  May 18, 1994 04:21:37
-----------------------

  Catherine,

  I am kept awake now by my dreams and thoughts of what I have 
  done. In the afternoons I become drowsy with the heat and 
  humidity, and it is during these times that I try and rest. My 
  dreams are filled with visions of the lacerated flesh of the 
  Mayoruna and Tantu's swollen eye. Each morning, when the nova 
  appears in the strip of sky over the river, I see Blue Mouth 
  punishing the Mayoruna again because the Little Sun has not yet 
  forgiven them.

  I have stayed inside almost the entire time since I returned 
  from the village. Yesterday evening I went to Bolognesi, hoping 
  to find some diesel fuel for the generator and perhaps a way to 
  contact Mohammed in Leticia. I haven't been able to raise anyone 
  on the radio, even though the static isn't as bad at night.

  Bolognesi was virtually empty when I arrived, making the trip 
  almost useless. I found a dock foreman and asked where everyone 
  had gone. He was sitting atop a stack of crates with a rifle 
  over his shoulder and a pistol beside him, smoking cigarettes 
  and watching the nova. He said they heard no boats or planes 
  would be coming while the radios weren't working, so the boat 
  men had left for Leticia when they learned they wouldn't be 
  paid. He and a few men were staying to guard the shipments and 
  lumber that were still here and earn a reward, or take what they 
  could if it turned out to be a long wait. He said they had heard 
  shots from the east, in the direction of the Mayoruna village, 
  and had seen Indians peering at them from the jungle. He didn't 
  have any diesel, so I returned to the cabin, increasingly 
  agitated.

  I am afraid to go back to the village. I am afraid to go 
  outside. Soon I will run out of fuel, then batteries.


  May 20, 1994
--------------

  Catherine,

  Tantu and his followers came to my cabin today. They ransacked 
  the place and took almost everything--that is why I am writing 
  this by hand--I think I am just lucky to be alive.

  I heard gunshots from the east last night. So I knew something 
  was happening. Then at about noon today Tantu appeared at my 
  door with five other men. All of them carried guns, and Tantu's 
  eye looked infected.

  Tantu approached me and asked me again to be his tribe's shaman. 
  I think I must have chuckled at the absurdity of the situation 
  because he stepped forward and grabbed me by the shoulders and 
  demanded that I use the radio to tell the Little Sun to leave. 
  He stared at me and yelled something incomprehensible.

  I removed myself from his grip slowly, assured him that I would 
  help with his eye and I went over to one of my small trunks. I 
  pulled out a first aid kit and walked back toward him.

  Tantu looked at the box, clearly dismayed. He pointed his rifle 
  at my chest and demanded I use the radio. I tried to explain 
  that I couldn't, that there wasn't enough electricity and that 
  the nova prevented it from working anyway, but he wouldn't 
  listen. He pushed me across the room and started to search the 
  cabin. I moved to stop him, but I suddenly realized that other 
  guns were pointed in my direction. I backed off to a corner.

  Tantu tore through my belongings, moving from shelf to box to 
  trunk with increasing frustration. Just when I thought he would 
  give up, his body froze. Slowly he stood up from the trunk where 
  I had stored the first aid kit. In his hand was a beaded rosary 
  that my mother had given me. Tantu stared at it and then glared 
  at me. His hand began to shake then and he suddenly erupted, 
  tearing the rosary apart. Black plastic beads flew across the 
  room. Tantu threw what was left at my face.

  He then went through a fit of rage and yelling. Most of it was 
  in Mayoruna and incomprehensible to me, but several times he 
  broke into English and called me a liar and a shit. He yelled 
  out the words "Jesus Christ" with fierce hatred. He shook his 
  gun and then pointed it at me. I thought he was going to kill me 
  and I shut my eyes.

  Instead, Tantu barked out commands to the other men and they 
  began to dismantle my computer and radio equipment. They roughly 
  carried it outside in loads. When I protested, Tantu struck me 
  across the jaw with the butt of his rifle. I collapsed to the 
  floor.

  When they left Tantu said nothing to me. He just walked outside, 
  off the porch, and back towards Bolognesi. I peeked out the 
  doorway and saw his small group of followers pulling and pushing 
  the small generator trailer behind him. It was piled with my 
  computer, radio, and a rough jumble of cables.

  Now I am here writing on the blank pages of computer manuals 
  like a pathetic idiot. But I can't go to the village, and I fear 
  to follow Tantu toward Bolognesi.


  May 22, 1994
--------------

  Catherine,

  I learned of your death today in a hissing report over the AM 
  transistor radio. You've been dead for a week and I didn't know 
  until now. I feel so empty. I was dead to your life and now... 
  now you are dead to mine.

  I didn't feel empty when I heard the report this morning, 
  though. I was full of screaming rage and hatred of the zealots 
  and murderers that drove that bombed the SETI research center. 
  But now the red has faded from my eyes. I look around me at the 
  remnants of the cabin interior. I finished destroying what Tantu 
  and his men hadn't destroyed in their rampage earlier. There is 
  almost nothing of any value left... at least nothing that I can 
  make myself care about.

  I threw the broken rosary and the transistor radio out into the 
  river as far as I could. The radio bobbed for a moment before 
  being pulled under by the Javari's strong current. I then went 
  to the Mayoruna village. I wasn't sure what would happen there. 
  I was a mixture of rage and loneliness, and beyond caring

  It didn't matter, because the village was gone. Empty huts and 
  discarded gourds were all that were left. And the bodies... the 
  gunshot bodies of Blue Mouth and his followers.

  Blue Mouth was draped over the body of another in a makeshift 
  funeral pyre. The fire had never really caught and the bodies 
  has smoldered for some time before cooling. Now they were 
  half-burnt, bloated and crawling with insects.

  I returned here. After seeing that, your death somehow fits in 
  neatly.... It's as if there is nothing left for me now.

  When I listened to the radio's news report this morning after 
  the anchor recited your name in a list of the dead, I heard who 
  claimed responsibility for the bombing. My parents give money to 
  that group.

  If I leave quickly I may be able to catch Tantu and the Mayoruna 
  before they become completely immersed in the rain forest. 
  They'll be traveling slow, dragging that generator with them. It 
  should make them easy to track. I may not last long in the 
  forest, but if I return to the world I used to know, I won't 
  last even that long.

  Goodbye, Catherine.

  Maybe I will see you on a new sun.

  _Kenneth James Mayhew_


  This Lighted Dark   by Chris Kmotorka
=======================================

  Mama Tippet calls all this a sign, another thing coming as sure 
  as the Lord has risen. All I know is it's a thing that's driving 
  the world crazy. Animals round here don't seem to know day from 
  night no more and things as never seen another since God done 
  put 'em on the planet is passing each other and scaring each and 
  each alike. Two moons, two daytimes, and ain't nothin knowing 
  what to make of it.

  The hounds is having a hell of a good time with it all. Running 
  possum and coon half blind with the light, not a shadow of 
  darkness unexplained. Their path both clear and free. Seems me 
  and these dogs is the only things not drove crazy by all this 
  strange going on. But I'll be damned of the rest of 'em ain't 
  just about tossed it all in the creek.


  I went to see Mama Tippett to ask if she could help me locate 
  something of mine that done run off. Blame it all on this here 
  astronomical aberration is what I do. But Mama Tippett is looped 
  these days, too. Giving me the hellfire and brimstone rap afore 
  I even get a chance to explain it all to her. Telling me the 
  meek shall inherit the Earth, but they have to escape that 
  what's holding 'em back first. Telling me this here is the time 
  when all that will happen. When all the meek and mild'ns will be 
  seeking their vengeance. The hand of the Lord comes quietly she 
  says. I simply thanked her and backed on out and got the dogs 
  running again. Somewhere on this mountain I'm going to find what 
  it is I'm looking for. And when I do.... Let's just say it had 
  better be alone. And it better smell alone, too.

  I hear Blue. She's not on a scent. Not yet. But I can hear her, 
  keeping tabs on the others, rounding them up, keeping things in 
  order. A real-take charge gal, that bitch. Finest dog I ever 
  had. Probably never find another like her. Keenest nose on this 
  mountain. I could probably make a decent price on her if I ever 
  decided to sell her off. Should probably get a litter out of her 
  before long. Just hate to have her down for any length of time. 
  Hell of a lead dog. Absolute music to the ears to hear her work.


  Every year it's harder to think why I want to keep things the 
  way they are. And now, waiting for a sign from the dogs that 
  they've found she's out here, I wonder how long I'll be able to 
  keep my life steady and sure.

  I know she's been thinking on this for a long time now. Known it 
  a long, long time. Could see it in her eyes. Hear it in her 
  voice, in the way she moans at night. Taste it in the things she 
  cooks. I don't know what it is she expected. Maybe if I knew 
  what she was thinking when I brought her up here I'd have some 
  idea of why she was so dissatisfied with it all. Maybe I'd be 
  able to see it from her view. But as it is, all I know is what I 
  am, the way I always been, and that's just what she got, just 
  what she should have expected to get. No more, no less. I never 
  once presented myself in any way but the truth. The essence of 
  my being. The straight perfume. If that ain't what she was 
  looking to be smelling till death do us part, then she shouldn't 
  have latched on to the bottle, so to speak.

  I suppose I can't help but think of her as a liar, now what with 
  all that's happening. Said "I do," and here she is operating on 
  a definite "I don't" basis. Took off for who knows what. 
  Straight through the woods as if she'd have a chance out there 
  alone, as if I wouldn't find her just as easy as if she had 
  headed off down the road with her hip cocked, her thumb 
  strutting, and her suitcase by her side. Me, I almost prefer it 
  this way. Give the dogs a chance to get a run. Work 'em up. Like 
  to keep an edge on 'em. Nothing worse than a dog that lost its 
  edge.

  She couldn't have picked a more foolish time to be running. I 
  guess she was figuring she'd have time while I was out, take 
  advantage of this lighted dark. No sense being alone in the 
  woods in the real dark. She'd never get nowhere then. Simply 
  find her huddled up, staving off the creeping crawlies. Course, 
  she had no way of knowing hunting would be a bust. Everything 
  run crazy, no challenge, not knowing whether the dogs is running 
  coon or deer. Ain't no sense in taking deer now, not with it so 
  light out. No way of sneaking something that big around in the 
  broad night light.

  Come home and she's gone. Not in the smokehouse. Not in the 
  outhouse. Sure as hell not in the main house. Drawers pulled 
  out, clothes hanging down. And of all things, the cloth missing 
  right off the kitchen table. Who knows what that's all about.

  The dogs was all razzed up, just itching. Had to run 'em on 
  something. No way of knowin' how long she was gone. Day or two. 
  Probably one. Would have taken her a while to get her nerve up. 
  I can see her now, nails all chewed up on those red and 
  roughed-up hands of hers. Sitting there all flustered, leaning 
  forward, rocking back and forth, knocking her knees together, 
  weighing it all out best she can. Finally getting up the nerve 
  and rushing around like a wounded pig, knocking into every which 
  thing. Pulling out underwear, stuffing it all on the table, 
  finally wrapping it all up in the oilcloth, not knowing how else 
  to carry it all.


  It ain't gonna be a problem. It's just taking longer than I 
  expected. Expected her to have lit out on the road. Lost a bit 
  of time on that one. Brung the dogs back and they finally picked 
  her up back by the spring. Probably shouldn't have taken so much 
  time before heading out. Eating and all. Just never expected her 
  to get so far. Never would've guessed she moved like this.

  Don't know where she's headed. Doubt she does. Only thing this 
  way is mountain and forest and Kincaid's place. Damn well better 
  not be heading for Kincaid's. Ain't no reason for her to be 
  'round that son of a bitch.

  Kincaid's been eyeing her for a long time. Ain't no secret in 
  that. Seen her looking at him one time in the grocery. All I 
  could do to keep from taking her out right there and then. As it 
  was, I slapped the dope from her hands, watched it spill all 
  over, puddle up at her shoes while she just stood there 
  wide-eyed and about to wet herself. Kincaid stiffened, started 
  to step forward. I just turned around and faced him and smiled 
  pretty as could be. He backed right off. Just dropped his eyes 
  to the floor and walked out. Left his groceries right on the 
  counter. Ended up doing most of my shopping right from his stuff 
  there. Said to her, you like looking at that? Some little 
  polecat too scared to say a thing when he sees something he 
  don't like? She didn't say nothing either. Kindred spirits, I 
  said. Drug her on out to the pickup and back home.


  Through the woods I trail the dogs. Faint thrill of 
  anticipation. Of finding what I never wish to find. Night has 
  fallen. Two moons in the sky, east and west, replace the sun. 
  There is no darkness to speak of. I have not slept in two days, 
  but I feel no exhaustion. So many hours in the day. Time enough 
  to sleep when darkness finally comes.

  Into a clearing. I halt. There in the midst of the field a buck 
  stands alert. Listening to the hounds. Glad for their increasing 
  distance. I take the rifle up from the crook of my arm and hold 
  the deer in my sights. The tawny coat bristles in the slight 
  chill of the evening breeze. A muscle twitch runs from shoulder 
  to knee and nostrils flare. A snort like horse's coughing breaks 
  the silence and he lowers his head to graze once more. I slide 
  the safety catch into place and I lower the rifle. A slight 
  smile and I half yell hup-deer and in one sleek moment he breaks 
  to his left, nearly dropping himself to the ground, and 
  disappears into the wood in a blur of white tail flash and 
  crashing vegetation. I laugh and walk on. There is no hurry. 
  There is no secret where the dogs will lead now.


  I brought her to the mountain a bride of sixteen. A blush still 
  on her. Skin still soft with baby fat. For three years she has 
  sullenly gone about her duties as I see them. Not once a whisper 
  of thanks for providing for her. For saving her from spending 
  her life with a crazy mama and a drunked-up daddy. Three years 
  and nary a child to show for it. A woman can't be too much good 
  to a man if she can't do what she's called to do, whether it be 
  tending a house or bringing up a son or two. I barely get one, 
  and damn near nothing of the other. One malformed bloody mess of 
  a miscarriage nearly two years ago and not a hint of nothing 
  since. Meanwhile, she's just going about her business and biding 
  her time for God knows what to come. For a sign, I suppose. Two 
  moons to light the way. As good a sign as any.


  The baying of the hounds rises to a fever pitch. They strangle 
  on their voices. The hunt is on and they have their prey. What 
  the hell holds them back, I wonder. But I know: years of 
  training, generations of dogs bred to withstand the temptation 
  to tear it all apart. To seek and find, but not destroy. To 
  stand at the ready, their whole bodies, their entire beings 
  aquiver with it all. The stench of bloodlust driving them mad, 
  waiting for the master to come along and dispatch it all with a 
  bullet. The sudden explosion of the report the climax of a 
  heated onslaught. Over. An instant.

  I walk over the rise and look down over the black geometry that 
  is Kincaid's field and feel that rush in my belly again. That 
  wicked half sense of fear and anticipation. Blue leads. She 
  swings the dogs in a wide, perfect arc down the slope of the 
  hill around to the house. Seven shapes, black against the 
  grasses, moldy green in the odd night light. The rising pitch of 
  baying hounds. The intensity increases. I see her come running 
  from around the back of the house, hand holding up the hem of 
  her dress. Blue is nearly on her as I walk down slow, easing my 
  way down to claim what's rightfully mine.

  About a hundred yards out, she makes it to the door and slips 
  in. Blue nearly knocking herself senseless crashing into it. A 
  half scream above the rising howl of dogs. I yell up to the 
  house, "You'd best come out here Sher-lynn," and the front 
  window slides up about six inches. Kincaid.

  "What you want, Harris?" he yells out. Too much of a 
  chicken-shit to come out and face what he's got coming.

  "I want what's mine, Kincaid, and I aim to have it. Now send her 
  on out here so as we can talk."

  I'm trying to yell over the hounds all this time and it's making 
  things edgy. Too much tension. More than we could want anyhow. 
  All I want is to have her come out. Talk some sense to her and 
  get on with it all. The damn gun's getting heavy and my hands is 
  getting nervous. All this waiting.

  "Send her out, Kincaid. So as we can talk. We need to talk this 
  over."

  "Ain't no harm gonna come to her, is there, Harris?" I'm 
  surprised how sure of himself he sounds.

  "Harm's already been done, Kincaid. All we can do now is hope to 
  make less of it. You hear me?"

  "You get them dogs offa there and she'll come out to the porch. 
  You can talk from where you stand."

  I called up the dogs as best I could. But they was running at 
  fever. The whole thing was anticlimactic for them. You just 
  don't run a dog to its prey and then not do something to satisfy 
  'em. It just don't work that way. But I got Blue to come down 
  off the porch and the rest followed her. They was trotting back 
  and forth the length of the porch. An occasional whine. A low 
  growl. Finally, I yelled back up at the house.

  "Okay, Sher-lynn. The dogs is off the porch. Now get your ass 
  out here."

  Kincaid again. "Don't try nothing, Harris. I'm watching from 
  right here."

  The door began to open slowly and Sher-lynn's hand come out 
  first. Way slow. She slipped out, half her body showing, a wary 
  eye shifting between me and the dogs. Finally she come right out 
  and stood there in front of the door, not quite letting it close 
  behind her.

  "What you think you doing, girl?" I asked.

  "I's leaving you, Tilton Harris. Sure as shine is clear." She 
  wasn't anywhere near as confident as she wanted to sound.

  "What makes you think you can up and leave, girl? We's married, 
  if you ain't forgot."

  "Ain't not forgetting that, Tilton. I remember that every minute 
  of every day. I'd sure like to start forgetting it, though."

  "That ain't goin to be so easy, child. Cause you're coming back 
  with me. Sure as shine is clear. Sure as blood is red."

  I started walking toward the door and I heard a rifle click in 
  the house. Sher-lynn heard it, too, because I saw her turn her 
  head toward the window and her eyes get real big. I hupped up 
  the dogs and they rushed up the porch and were on her in no 
  time. Pinned her back up against the door. No way for her to 
  open it. All she could do was stand there, hands fluttering up 
  about her face, and scream like it was the end of the world. 
  Next thing I know there's a gunshot. I hit the ground, thinking 
  Kincaid was shooting at me, but as soon as I looked back up 
  toward the house I seen Blue laid out on the dirt patch afront 
  the porch. Blown off the porch by the shot. The other dogs were 
  yelping and hollering, swarming all over Blue. Crazy with the 
  smell of blood.

  I leaped up, stumbled and caught myself and lifted up my rifle. 
  I levered off a round through the window and heard something 
  heavy hit the floor and Kincaid's rifle discharged. But no 
  bullet came out of the cabin. Hit a wall or the ceiling. 
  Sher-lynn's just screaming and the dogs are yapping and I'm 
  standing there unable to move. Somehow I know Kincaid ain't 
  going to be firing back out that window.

  After a few seconds, I move toward the door. Sher-lynn's 
  screaming out a name--Nathan. Must be Kincaid, I'm thinking, 
  cause it sure as hell ain't me. I push her out of the way and 
  swing open the door and enter rifle first and ready, but there 
  lay Kincaid, tumbled back in a chair and a hole ripped right 
  through his throat. Blood was pooling everywhere. And then 
  Sher-lynn's there at my elbow and her screaming gets even 
  louder. She ain't screaming nothing that makes sense now. It's 
  just noises. Terror and grief and who knows what. The dogs are 
  going crazy over Blue, and Sher-lynn's screaming, and Kincaid's 
  laying there dead--just as well dead--and I'm standing there not 
  knowing what to do, just knowing I need some quiet. Everything 
  was moving too loud and too fast and I couldn't much take it any 
  longer.

  I backed out of the cabin, pushing Sher-lynn along with me and 
  she won't stop screaming. She's yelling "You kilt him, you kilt 
  him!" Like I don't already know that. Calling me up for murder. 
  Calling down God and the law, calling them down from wherever to 
  take me off. Finally I turned and held the rifle out 
  straightarmed away from me and pulled the trigger. Her head 
  jerked back and her eyes rolled up as if she was looking for the 
  top of her skull and she fell back slow and straight, like a 
  felled tree. When the report from the rifle stopped echoing in 
  my ears all that was left was the baying of the damned dogs. I 
  pointed the gun to the sky and fired, yelling at the dogs, hup 
  dogs, get, get, and fired again and they scattered and took off 
  up the hill toward the wood. I walked over to where Blue lay and 
  she was still breathing, but it wasn't a gentle breath. There 
  was a death rattle in her breath and every lowering of her chest 
  was followed by a coughing up of bubbling blood. I lowered the 
  rifle just behind her ear, cocked the lever, and put out of her 
  misery.


  No sound but my labored breathing, nothing around but me and the 
  death that surrounds me. And I stood in the silence of this 
  lighted dark. And I walked off into it, not knowing where I was 
  going, or for how long. Only knowing I could not stay here. 
  Maybe Mama Tippet is right. Maybe it is a time of judgment. 
  Maybe there is a second coming, some kind of judgment come down 
  for us all. I don't know. I only know I will walk until I find 
  darkness and a time for sleep has come.


  Wine and Cheese   by Robert Hurvitz
=====================================

  Harold was running late. He had seen a matinee with his 
  housemate, done a large pile of laundry, and finally gone down 
  to the burrito place for some dinner. By the time he was home 
  and ready to go to his boss' six o'clock wine and cheese party, 
  it was past seven. He hurried to his car and drove off, sweating 
  slightly.

  Parking was worse than he thought it would be--he ended up 
  blocking a fire hydrant three blocks from his destination. He 
  walked briskly, casting nervous glances from side to side. His 
  boss had mentioned that he had heard gunfire in this 
  neighborhood. Harold clenched his jaw and quickened his pace. 
  Almost at the front door, he realized that he'd forgotten to set 
  the Club on his steering wheel. After a few moments' hesitation, 
  he decided that he was too late already, so he trudged up the 
  front steps and rang the bell.

  "Hi!" His boss' wife, Paula, opened the door. Her eyes were red 
  and she held a long-stemmed glass in her hand. "You must be one 
  of Freddy's friends from work," she said, laughing a little.

  "Uh, yes. My name is Harold. Sorry I'm late." He motioned 
  vaguely with his hands.

  "Oh!" She clapped her free hand on his shoulder and pulled him 
  into the house. "So you're Harry! Freddy's told me about you. 
  Please come in and have some wine." She pushed him toward the 
  living room and shut the front door with her foot. Harold 
  guessed she was drunk.

  He walked into the living room and looked around. There were a 
  handful of people he didn't recognize, but all the rest were 
  from work. His boss, Fred Wasserman, ambled out of the kitchen. 
  "Harry! So you decided to show up?" Harold had never seen Fred 
  in anything but a suit and tie: jeans and a Grateful Dead 
  T-shirt made him look like a regular guy. "Here, let me take 
  your coat."

  Harold shrugged out of his leather jacket, which he had 
  anxiously bought with his Christmas bonus. Fred took it and 
  said, "The wine's in the kitchen," then disappeared into the 
  hallway.


  Fred and Paula
----------------

  At least it hadn't rained. It had been overcast and cold for the 
  three days that Fred and Paula had been hiking, but, as they 
  kept telling each other, at least it hadn't rained. They'd been 
  looking forward to this vacation for a month and they were 
  determined to have a good time. They marched on through the 
  forest.

  Around the time they were beginning to think seriously about 
  dinner, they found a pleasant clearing and decided to regard it 
  as a sign from God to set up camp. They pitched their tent and 
  had dinner; by the time they were done it was very dark, very 
  cold, and the clouds were starting to disperse overhead. The 
  wind was methodically seeping its way through their layers of 
  clothing. They huddled together next to their small, faithful 
  campfire.

  "Well, we might freeze to death, but at least we'll be able to 
  see the stars," Fred said.

  Paula smiled slightly, leaned a little more into him, and looked 
  up at the sky. The clouds had thinned out enough to let a few 
  stars peek through.

  They weren't sure how long it took them to notice how bright the 
  ambient light was, especially with only a crescent moon. For a 
  while they were enjoying the beauty of nature, trying to ignore 
  the cold. Then suddenly they realized they were staring at a 
  bright point of light in the sky, just above the trees. They 
  watched in silence for several moments; the light didn't move or 
  change intensity. They looked at each other, confused, then they 
  both laughed because they knew they were going to ask each other 
  the same question.

  Paula looked back up, and Fred became enraptured by her face. 
  The intense starlight illuminated her skin, her eyes and her 
  lips in a way he had never seen before. Her face seemed 
  amazingly soft and natural, as if the whole time he'd known her 
  she'd been covered with a coat of makeup and only now had taken 
  it off.

  "You know what?" she said. "I think it's that nova."

  He stared at her. "What?"

  "That nova." She motioned to the light overhead. "It must be 
  that supernova."

  "Oh. Yeah. Hey, Paula, will you marry me?"

  It was her turn to stare. "What?"

  "Will you marry me?"

  "Fred..." She started to smile.

  "Hmm?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, I will."


  Nodding to his co-workers, who politely nodded back, Harold 
  crossed the living room to the kitchen. Plenty of wine still 
  available: although half a dozen empty bottles lay in the 
  recycling bin, several reds and whites were lined up on the 
  counter, waiting to be uncorked.

  "Hello, Harold. Want some wine?"

  Harold lifted his eyes from a particularly delicious-looking 
  Merlot and tried to be social. There were four people in the 
  kitchen, only one of whom he knew.

  "Hi, John." John was the Accounts Payable manager. They didn't 
  talk much in the office, partly because their cubicles were on 
  different floors, but also because of their twenty-year age 
  difference and the disparaging comments John made when they'd 
  both tried to get a date with an attractive temp. Harold looked 
  away. "That Merlot looks pretty interesting. Do we just help 
  ourselves?"

  "Glasses and corkscrew are on the counter." John looked around 
  at the three others: a good-looking, dark-haired woman in her 
  mid-twenties standing next to him and an older couple. "Anyone 
  else want some?" asked John. "This'll be your best chance to 
  meet Harry, tech support extraordinaire."

  Harold frowned and picked up the corkscrew.

  The man in the older couple cleared his throat. "I think I could 
  use a refill." He placed his empty glass on the counter. "My 
  name's Vic, and this lovely lady is my wife, Abby. We live next 
  door."

  Abby nodded. "How do you do?"

  The cork came out with a wet, resonant pop and Harold said, "I'm 
  doing all right." He poured himself a glass, then one for Vic. 
  He held up the opened bottle for the dark-haired woman at John's 
  side. "How about you?"

  She shook her head, holding up a glass of white. "No, thanks. 
  I'm still working on this. But I do think it's time I got some 
  more cheese. If you'll excuse me..." She smiled and walked out 
  of the kitchen. Both John and Harold watched her leave.

  Harold tilted his head toward the door and asked, "Who's your 
  friend, John?"

  "Her name's Jennifer. She's a friend of Paula's." John smiled. 
  "It's always nice to meet Paula's friends." He raised his 
  eyebrows and nodded.

  Harold nodded back and took a sip of Merlot. He looked 
  appraisingly at the glass. "Good wine."

  "Yes," said Abby. "Fred and Paula have such good taste. Such 
  nice friends. I'm so glad they moved in here. Some of the others 
  who came by..." Her smile faded away as she shook her in 
  disapproval.

  "How long have they been living here?" Harold asked.

  "Oh," Vic said, "At least four months now."

  "Closer to five," Abby added. "I'm so glad they moved in. This 
  neighborhood needs more people like them. These last few 
  years..." She shook her head again. "It's gone downhill, 
  really."

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, then Abby laughed. 
  "Gee, I didn't mean to get so melancholy!" She put her hand to 
  her forehead. "Whew! Too much wine for me." She laughed again.

  "A regular lush, eh?" John said. He picked up his wine glass. "I 
  think I'll get a few finger foods." He bowed slightly and 
  gestured with the glass before heading out of the kitchen.

  Abby sighed. "Such nice people," she said, nodding and smiling.


  John
------

  John entered through the front door of the corporate office, 
  briefcase in hand, and smiled up at the clock that read 11:00. 
  He felt excited, happy. His feet barely moved; he floated across 
  the empty reception area toward the long line of cubicles. The 
  handle of his briefcase throbbed in his hand.

  Halfway to the end of the hall, to the bright, glowing windows 
  of his manager's private office, he looked into a cube and saw a 
  ten-year-old boy sitting in front of a monitor, tapping 
  deliberately at a keyboard. It didn't seem the least bit odd 
  that it was his old friend from fifth grade, Michael Buckler, 
  aged not a day.

  "Hi, Michael!" John said.

  Michael glanced at John. "You're late. Fred wants to see you."

  John's heart started beating faster. "Good. I want to see him."

  The ten-year-old nodded. "Lunch afterward?"

  John looked at his watch: 12:00. "Sure." He turned and continued 
  down the hall, which now stretched out to infinity before him. 
  The more he walked the further away Fred's office seemed to be.

  He stopped, hunkered down, and opened his throbbing briefcase. 
  In it was a life-like rubber mask of his face. He gingerly 
  picked it up and fitted it completely over his head. Smoothing 
  out the wrinkles, he stood up and, after taking a few steps, 
  reached the door to Fred's office.

  Fred sat behind his desk, arms folded severely across his chest, 
  crushing his tie. The light from his black, halogen lamp cast 
  sharp shadows against his face.

  John tossed his briefcase onto Fred's credenza. Fred's mouth 
  dropped and his arms began unfolding.

  "Fred," John said intently, "I quit."

  Fred's hands fiercely gripped the edge of the desk. "You--you--" 
  The sound of splintering wood filled the office. "You--"

  The sudden buzzing of the alarm clock cut through the quiet 
  bedroom, jarring John awake. He lay motionless on the bed for a 
  moment, breathing quickly, then shut off the alarm.

  He felt different somehow. He turned his head and saw a note on 
  his wife's pillow. His entire body seemed to sink down into the 
  bed, break through the bottom, crash through floor, and bury 
  itself somewhere deep in the cold dirt below their house.

  He stared at the note, licked his lips, blinked. Then he 
  struggled out of bed and took a shower. The note was still there 
  when he trudged back into the room. Sighing, he picked it up: 
  his eyes danced over the words, glanced away, came back again, 
  until he finished reading.

  John stood in the bedroom for a long time, not aware he was 
  crying, and then dressed for work.

  He wandered into the backyard and sat on a stone bench. 
  Everything outside appeared sharper, harsher, as if the sun were 
  more intense that morning. He looked up and saw a of light 
  shining away, right above the horizon, a little behind the 
  morning sun. He stared at it, transfixed, as it climbed into the 
  sky. His mind stalled and hours passed until it kicked back into 
  gear.

  As he left his house, he blinked at the afterimage of the light 
  that had seared itself into his eyes. When he arrived at work 
  the accounting supervisor shook his head and glanced at the 
  clock in the reception area that read 11:00. "Isn't it nuts, 
  John? One little supernova and traffic's screwed up completely. 
  I didn't get here until 10:30 myself. Absolutely nuts."

  John nodded and headed off to his cubicle.


  Five minutes of anecdotes about the neighborhood from Vic and 
  Abby were more than Harold could handle. Fortunately, Fred, 
  leading an entourage of three Human Resources people and their 
  significant others, came into the kitchen to get some wine. When 
  the HR group asked Harold if he was having a wonderful time, 
  Harold assured them that he was. As they refilled their glasses, 
  he excused himself and exited the kitchen.

  The kitchen's earlier escapees, Jennifer and John, were standing 
  by the snack table with Paula, Grace, Michelle, and Tony. Grace 
  was the company's system administrator. Michelle was the 
  receptionist and Tony was her fiancé. Harold took a sip 
  of wine and walked toward them.

  "You were born in '68?" John was saying to Jennifer. "Let's 
  see... in 1968 I was living in L.A. and, yeah, that's when I saw 
  the Doors in concert. Amazing show. I think I can safely say it 
  was the best concert I've ever seen."

  "The Doors?" Harold said. "Isn't that the band with the dead 
  singer?"

  John looked at him and paused. "Why, yes, Harold. I'm surprised 
  you've heard of them, considering you hadn't even been born when 
  Jim Morrison was alive." There were a few chuckles.

  "Yeah, well, I saw the movie, by Oliver Stone. Wasn't very 
  good."

  Jennifer laughed.

  Paula reached out and touched Jennifer's arm. "Hey, I want to 
  talk to you." She turned to John and said, "Excuse us." She 
  smiled at Harold, and the two of them walked away.

  "Shucks," said Grace. "Just when it was starting to get 
  interesting."

  John frowned and picked up his empty wine glass. Clearing his 
  throat, he retreated to the kitchen.

  Grace took a bite of cheese-topped cracker and looked over at 
  Harold. "I didn't know you and John were such good friends. The 
  two of you've been talking up a storm since you came in."

  "Yeah," Harold said. "It's a very well-kept secret. In fact, not 
  even John or I know about it." Harold surveyed the food. There 
  were several varieties of cheese as well as an assortment of 
  crackers, breads, and pita wedges. He noticed that Grace was not 
  holding a glass. "You're not drinking?" he asked.

  She shrugged. "Never on Sundays."

  Michelle laughed and said, "Don't worry. That means more for 
  us." She lifted up her glass and took a sip.

  Tony smiled sheepishly.

  "There you go," Grace said. "Anyway, why'd it take you so long 
  to get here? I was the first one to show up, you know. I had to 
  hang out with Fred and Paula all alone for half an hour before 
  anyone else showed up." She ate the rest of her cracker. "So 
  where were you?"

  "I had some errands to run. Nothing too exciting."

  "Errands never are."

  The doorbell rang and Paula got up to answer. Jennifer stayed in 
  her chair and stared out the window. John re-emerged from the 
  kitchen, looked around, and seated himself on a couch near 
  Jennifer. Harold sighed and sipped at his wine.

  Grace looked back and forth between Harold and John, then smiled 
  innocently. "Is round three about to begin?" she asked.

  Harold squinted. "I'm glad someone's enjoying this. I guess." He 
  drank some more wine.


  Jennifer
----------

  The phone rang, but Jennifer was in no mood to answer it. She'd 
  been out with a few friends earlier, but she couldn't stop 
  thinking about her father. It had became too much of an effort 
  to keep up her facade, so she'd excused herself and gone home.

  The phone let out a second ring.

  It's amazing my friends still put up with me, she thought. 
  This happens every time I go out. They must be sick of it.

  There was a third ring and the answering machine took the call. 
  "Hi. Can't answer the phone just now, so leave a message. 
  Thanks." Beep.

  "Hi, Jen. It's your brother, David. It's about nine right now. 
  Just calling to see how you're doing. Hope you're out having 
  fun." A pause. "Well, guess I'll call--"

  Jennifer picked up the phone. "Hi--"

  Feedback burst from the answering machine speaker. Growling, she 
  slapped the machine's buttons. It beeped a few times and stopped 
  howling. "Sorry about that."

  "Sorry about what? The noise, or that you're screening your 
  calls?"

  "Hey, at least I answered, okay?"

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," David said. "You're in a bad mood, aren't 
  you?" He paused. "About Dad?"

  Jennifer sighed. "I don't know how you do it. I can't get over 
  it."

  Four months before, their father had checked into Kaiser for an 
  appendectomy. The operation went well, but the next day while he 
  was asleep he developed an aneurysm, which burst. There was a 
  half hour of confusion until a doctor arrived--by then, their 
  father had died.

  Lawyers were still gathering information for a malpractice suit. 
  Their father had been a partner in a Los Angeles law firm and 
  lived in Beverly Hills, and while neither of them would have to 
  worry about money for a long while, settling the estate was 
  immensely complicated. David inherited all of the house because 
  Jennifer felt she couldn't set foot in it again.

  "Jesus, Jen," David said. "It's not something I got over. 
  It's--I don't know--it's just something I accepted, I guess. I 
  don't think I'll ever get over it, but I have to keep living my 
  own life, you know? Otherwise I'll just go nuts."

  Jennifer realized she was winding the phone cord around her 
  finger, and she shook it loose. "David, I feel like everything's 
  changed. The whole world's changed--my world has changed. 
  Nothing seems real anymore. There's nothing... solid. 
  Everything's hollow, just trying to hide the... the pain of 
  reality."

  "Wow," David said. "Heavy."

  Jennifer smiled a little. "See?"

  "Jen, I hope you don't get offended when I say this, but you 
  have to get out more, be around people. Sitting in your 
  apartment alone all the time, not answering the phone, isn't 
  good for you. I've been worried about you."

  "Please, David, don't. You don't have to worry. I'll be okay. 
  It's just taking a while."

  "What about going back to school? You mentioned a college up 
  there with a masters program--what happened to that?"

  "Oh, it's still there. I haven't gotten around to filling out 
  the forms." Jennifer sighed. "I don't know."

  Through the open window, she suddenly heard car horns and 
  shouts, the indecipherable noise of many people talking at once.

  "Hey, Dave, something's going on outside. I'll call you back in 
  ten, fifteen minutes, okay?"

  "Huh? Well, okay."

  "Bye." She hung up the phone, went to the window, and looked 
  out. Cars were stopped, some with their doors open and the 
  drivers and passengers standing in the street, others honking 
  and flashing their high beams. People were staring at the sky, 
  pointing west toward the ocean, and shouting.

  She left the window and went downstairs, out onto the sidewalk. 
  A brilliant point of light shone in the sky, not far from the 
  moon. It was painful to look at directly. People kept glancing 
  at it, then back at everyone else, at completely baffled but 
  happy faces.

  People talked excitedly, asked each other questions, laughed. 
  Traffic was stopped--there were groups wandering in the street, 
  half the cars were parked. Eventually, those who were honking 
  gave up and got out of their cars to look up at what was causing 
  the commotion.

  Jennifer realized she was smiling, maybe because everyone else 
  was smiling. A warm feeling slowly started to grow inside her.

  The word "nova" began to be heard as soon as everyone realized 
  it wasn't a plane or a UFO, and soon everyone was saying it, 
  laughing, pointing at the sky, smiling. There was a shout and 
  someone began to spray champagne over part of the crowd.

  The warm glow spread all the way through her, and Jennifer felt 
  her whole body tingling with something she hadn't felt in a long 
  time. She stayed outside on the sidewalk well past midnight, 
  talking to passers-by. even after the star disappeared below the 
  horizon.


  As Harold sauntered over to join Jennifer and John, Fred came 
  out of the kitchen and headed over to the hallway to meet the 
  new arrivals.

  "Tim! Sarah! Glad you could make it. Here, let me take your 
  coats. The wine's in the kitchen," he said as he disappeared 
  into the hallway.

  Harold sat down on the hardwood floor and put his back against 
  the couch. Tim and Sarah nodded at Harold, who politely nodded 
  back, and exchanged greetings with John. "So," Tim said to John, 
  "I hope all this wine won't give you a hangover, make you late 
  for our meeting tomorrow morning."

  John laughed. "I thought that was the general idea here. 
  Hangover excuses for everybody."

  Harold leaned forward and said to Jennifer, "So, hey, how do you 
  know Paula?"

  Jennifer turned, surprised. "Through school. We're in the same 
  program."

  "And that is...?"

  "Anthropology."

  John joined in with, "Which university?"

  "Oh, it's a small private college. You probably haven't heard of 
  it. They have a very progressive curriculum."

  Paula came back over and sat in a chair next to Jennifer.

  "What does that mean?" John asked, smiling. "You don't have to 
  study?"

  "No." Jennifer didn't smile back. "They take a more holistic 
  approach to education. They look at interactions between what we 
  study and the real world, to make sure nothing we do screws up 
  the community, unlike most of academia, which stomps around 
  studying things and then leaves them in a shambles."

  "Yeah!" Paula said. "That's telling him, Jen."

  Jennifer grinned. "Hey," she said, glancing at Paula, "I'm on a 
  roll."

  Paula reached over and patted her on the knee, then said to John 
  and Harold, "Enough about us. Hey, Harry, say something about 
  yourself. What did you major in?"

  Harold scratched his head. "Okay. I was a bio major, graduated 
  last June."

  "So, naturally," John said, "you pursued a career in tech 
  support."

  "Well, I took some computer classes, and biology wasn't 
  something I saw myself doing for the rest of my life, you know? 
  Besides, I'd just graduated and needed to pay rent." He 
  shrugged. "Either that or get evicted."

  "Ah," John said. He looked at Jennifer. "Is it safe for me to 
  assume, then, that you're a part-time student? You have a 
  regular job, to keep from, ah... "--he glanced at 
  Harold--"getting evicted?"

  "No, I'm full-time. I take on temp jobs and get financial aid."

  "From the school?" John asked with a wry smile. "Or from the 
  parents?"

  "A little from both." She pursed her lips and looked at Paula. 
  "Have you been talking about me?"

  "No," said Paula, and hiccuped. "No, of course not."

  Grace walked up and sat on the couch between John and Harold. 
  "Hi, guys," Grace said. "What have I missed?"

  Jennifer grabbed her glass and said, "Maybe I should get some 
  more wine."

  "Nonsense," Paula said. "You and I have been drinking the house 
  dry, and, look, Grace hasn't even had any yet. What's wrong, 
  Grace? Don't you like our wine selection?"

  "Oh, sure," Grace said quickly. "Sure I do. It's fine--I just 
  don't feel like drinking, is all."

  "No?" said Paula, giggling a little. "Why? Is the memory of your 
  last hangover still too recent?"

  Grace smiled, nodded. "You could say that." She tilted her head 
  to the side. "It was about a year ago, When the supernova first 
  appeared. Almost a month before had I started working with these 
  two bozos." She stuck her thumbs out to her sides, pointing at 
  John and Harold. "It was at a silly supernova party, and, yeah, 
  I drank a little bit too much."

  "That long ago, huh? Wow. Must have been some hangover."

  "Yeah," Grace said, nodding. "It was."


  Grace
-------

  Noise. So many loud things going on at once it overwhelmed her.

  Grace stood in the doorway of the system administrator's house 
  in the heart of Silicon Valley. A banner reading "Welcome To The 
  End Of The World!" hung on the opposite wall. People stumbled in 
  one door and out another, laughing and spilling drinks.

  She walked into the living room, sorting through the noise. They 
  Might Be Giants blasted from the stereo, on top of which five of 
  their compact disks were propped in front of a "Now Playing..." 
  sign. Four televisions, their volumes up to compete with the 
  stereo, played taped episodes of Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star 
  Trek: The Next Generation, and Blake's 7. Groups were 
  clustered around the sets, quoting lines and cheering each other 
  on. A blender in the kitchen grated away at full force. More 
  people gathered around the pool table and amused themselves by 
  making fun of drunk players, the billiard balls snapping as they 
  hit each other, ricocheting.

  The blender stopped and Greg--the owner of the house and the 
  party's host--walked into the living room holding a pitcher in 
  one had and a stack of plastic cups in the other. "Hey!" he 
  shouted, spotting her. "Grace!" He held out the stack of cups: 
  she took the top one and he filled it from the pitcher. "Drink 
  up, for tomorrow we die!"

  "What am I drinking?"

  "Margarita!" In the kitchen, the blender started up again. "Oh, 
  hey, you can put your coat on my bed. It's down the hall, last 
  door on the right. The door on the left's the bathroom." He 
  strode away, topping off other peoples' cups.

  Sipping her drink, she found his room right where he said it 
  was. There was already a huge pile of jackets on the bed, so she 
  draped her coat over a chair. She gulped some more or her 
  margarita and went back to the party.

  In the kitchen, some guy dressed in black with a ponytail 
  reigned over the blender, filling it with ice, mix, and tequila, 
  whipping it all up, then pouring the result into the emptied 
  pitchers which were constantly returned and picked up by 
  peripatetic party guests. It struck her as an alcoholic ballet, 
  and she felt it was only proper when one of the pitcher-carriers 
  refilled her cup.

  "Hello!"

  Grace turned around and saw an overweight man with a bushy beard 
  standing next to the snack table. He wore a plaid flannel shirt 
  and seemed to be in his late twenties. He held a over-flowing 
  plastic cup and was swaying a little on his feet.

  "My name's Phil. Whaddya think of the party?" Phil's eyes were 
  caught in a cycle of staring at the snacks, her breasts, then 
  finally glancing up at her face before starting over again. 
  Grace decided to consider it amusing.

  "Pretty good." Grace washed down some salsa with her margarita. 
  She could feel a slight buzz coming on. "It certainly is loud, 
  isn't it?"

  "Yeah!" Phil said with a quick laugh. More of his drink sloshed 
  out of his cup.

  Shouts rang out from the living room. "Outside! A toast! To the 
  supernova!" Hordes of people streamed in from the living room 
  and out the back door, sweeping Grace and Phil along with them. 
  "A toast!"

  Grace lost Phil in the crowd. There must have been fifty or 
  sixty people outside, milling around in the back yard. About a 
  dozen carried pitchers, and they made sure everyone's cup was 
  full.

  "Okay, listen up!" It was Greg making the toast. He climbed up 
  on a picnic table and lifted up his cup towards the supernova, 
  just visible between the clouds, beneath the gibbous moon. 
  Everyone followed suit. "Praised are you, O supernova, tireless 
  bringer of light! We raise our glasses in honor of the alien 
  civilizations you have wiped out and the _wonderful_ excuse for 
  a party you give us. To the end of the world!" People shouted, 
  cheered, howled. Greg lowered the cup to his lips, drained it, 
  and everyone else followed suit.

  Grace smiled and stared into her empty cup. The buzz was going 
  pretty strong.

  The man standing next to her, she noticed, was the margarita 
  master himself, ponytail and all. He had pale skin, thin lips, 
  and a pitcher in his left hand. He swished it around, said, "Not 
  much left," and poured the last of its contents into her cup and 
  his own.

  "I had an interesting thought," he said. "The earth and the sun 
  have been around for five billion years, give or take a few, 
  right? So, if there's an apocalyptic nuclear disaster or 
  something similar that completely wipes out everything on the 
  planet, then whatever sort of life evolves after that--say, 
  giant sentient cockroaches--it'll probably take about the same 
  amount of time for them to get to our current level of 
  technology as it has for us."

  "Yeah," said Grace, blinking. "So?"

  "So, about five billion years from now, they'd be doing what 
  we're doing. They'd know that the sun was ten billion years old 
  and that at any moment it would be going giant, thereby wiping 
  them out. There'd be no way around it." He drained his cup. 
  "Pretty wild, huh?"

  "Yeah. That's funny," she said. "I wonder what their worldview 
  would be like."

  Ponytail shrugged. "Hey, wanna go play pool? Looks like the 
  table's open."

  Over the next couple of hours, Grace played eight ball and hung 
  out by the pool table, drinking constantly--her cup was never 
  empty for long. She kept trying to put it someplace out of the 
  way and lose it, but it invariably made its way back to her 
  hand, full.

  She suddenly realized that her eyes were closed, and she opened 
  them to find herself leaning against a wall in the dining room. 
  How long she'd been like that, she didn't know. She laughed and 
  looked around. It seemed like even more people had arrived at 
  the party, but she may have only been seeing double. She didn't 
  know. She didn't care. She thought it was funny.

  Greg was in the living room, talking to someone holding a 
  pitcher. She clumsily grabbed a cup that she hoped was hers and 
  deliberately made her way towards Greg, step by step.

  Greg and the pitcher-bearer watched her as she staggered over to 
  them, then as she raised her hand and wiped the sweat off her 
  forehead. When she came nearer, Greg said, "Hey, Grace, you 
  doing okay?"

  "Oh yeah," she mumbled. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just fine. Who's your 
  friend with the pitcher?"

  "This is Bill." Greg grinned at him. "Bill, this is Grace."

  She draped her arm on his shoulder, letting him support her 
  weight, and held out her cup. "Hiya, Bill," she said. "Fill 'er 
  up, please."

  Bill obliged as Greg said, "Uh, Grace, maybe you've had 
  enough..."

  "Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, I haven't even started, yet." 
  She took a healthy swallow and smiled.

  Bill cleared his throat. "Well, I was just telling Greg how 
  ironic it would be if the Big One hit tomorrow, what with this 
  end-of-the-world party going on tonight."

  "Oh, yeah," Grace said. "What's-his-name, he was talking about 
  that. Something about cockroaches."

  Bill frowned. "Uh, cockroaches?"

  "No, Grace," said Greg. "No cockroaches here. We're talking 
  earthquakes."

  "Yeah," said Bill. He looked at Grace, who was still hanging 
  onto his shoulder. "Were you here back in '89, for the Loma 
  Prieta quake?"

  "No. East Coast. Missed all the fun." She drank some more of her 
  margarita.

  A couple of other guys joined the conversation. "I was here 
  during the earthquake," said one. "I'd just moved here a month 
  before to start a job at Amdahl. Great way to be introduced to 
  California, huh? Funny thing was everybody else in my apartment 
  complex had stuff break or pipes burst or something, but nothing 
  happened to me--a few CDs fell over on the shelf, that was it."

  Grace stopped smiling. Her stomach didn't feel well at all. She 
  stood up straight, taking her arm off Bill, and inhaled deeply, 
  trying to get everything to settle down.

  "I was in a little conference room," said another guy, "up on 
  the ninth floor of our building. I was in a meeting with this 
  woman, see, and everything starting shaking. We looked at each 
  other as if to say `Oh, God, this is it!' and I thought, `This 
  is who they'll find me with, when they dig my body out of the 
  rubble.' I wondered what my wife would think." He laughed. 
  "Crazy, what can go through your mind during a disaster, huh?"

  Grace closed her eyes and continued drawing deep breaths. She 
  could sense she was fighting a losing battle, so she opened her 
  eyes, mumbled something and headed off to the bathroom as 
  quickly and carefully as she could. She thought, down the hall, 
  last door on the... right? Or the left?

  She stumbled along the hallway, one hand on the wall to keep 
  herself from falling, the other on her mouth. The door on the 
  right was open, and she staggered through it and saw she was in 
  the bedroom. She tried to turn around, but the room was 
  spinning, the ceiling falling forward and down, the floor 
  slipping behind her. The best she could do was stand still and 
  run her hands through her hair.

  "Grace..."

  Her nausea overcame the last of her resolve. She tipped forward, 
  onto the bed, onto the hundreds of jackets, and lost the battle.

  She then rolled off and landed on the floor. The last thing she 
  saw before passing out was Greg standing in the doorway, looking 
  on in horror.

  The next morning, she barely managed to get to her car and drive 
  home. On Monday, she showed up to work just long enough to turn 
  in her letter of resignation.


  Their host Fred joined the growing group on the couch and 
  chairs. "Hello! What's going on here?"

  "Oh, Fred, you missed it!" Paula said gleefully. "I got Grace to 
  admit she's still recovering from a hangover she had during the 
  supernova!" Grace looked away.

  "Is that so?" Fred said, turning to Grace. She nodded. "Hmm," he 
  continued. "You know, that was when I proposed to Paula, when it 
  appeared. We were out in the woods, camping. It was all very 
  romantic."

  Paula laughed. "Oh yeah. There we were, freezing our asses off, 
  and all filthy and smelly after three days of hiking. Very 
  romantic."

  "Well, I meant the supernova."

  "Yeah, yeah. That was. And then, to sustain the romance, we 
  hurried back to the car and drove to Las Vegas, so we could get 
  married."

  Fred frowned, and Paula reached over and squeezed his hand. "Oh, 
  come on, Fred, that's my favorite part of the story!"

  John cleared his throat. "Jennifer, did you do anything 
  interesting during the supernova?"

  Tim and Sarah walked over to the group. "Trading supernova 
  stories, eh?" Tim asked, smiling. He motioned politely with his 
  wine glass for Jennifer to begin.

  She sighed. "Nothing exciting happened to me. It was during one 
  of those directionless phases, you know? I didn't know what I 
  wanted to do. Then, bang!, there was the supernova and I 
  decided to go back to school. And now here I am." She looked 
  around at everyone. "Quid pro quo, John."

  He furrowed his brow and cleared his throat again. "Oh, there's 
  not much to say. I had a very boring supernova experience."

  "Oh, come now, John," Tim said. "I remember you showed up late 
  for work that morning. You must have something to tell."

  John shifted on the couch, glanced at Tim. "Not really. I'd gone 
  to sleep early and didn't even see the damned thing the night 
  before. I woke up and tried to go to work, but the traffic was 
  miserable. There must have been something in those supernova 
  rays that made people drive slowly and bump into each other."

  "That's it?" Tim asked, a little smile on his face.

  "Yep."

  "What about you, Harold?" Paula asked. "Tell us your supernova 
  story."

  "My story?"

  "Yeah. It's got to be better than John's, at least."

  "Okay, okay. Let's see... It was toward the end of Spring 
  Semester, and I was busy writing final papers and cramming for 
  exams and all. The night before my last final, though, my 
  roommate dragged me up into the hills to celebrate his finishing 
  his finals, and he promptly disappeared into the bushes with his 
  girlfriend, leaving me all alone with nothing to do but stare at 
  the supernova. That's my clearest memory of it. Needless to say, 
  I didn't do very well on my final the next morning."

  Paula laughed. "That has to be one of the best supernova stories 
  I've heard."

  Harold smiled. "Really."


  Harold
--------

  The metallic crunch and the hiss of the escaping carbon dioxide 
  made Harold's mouth water. He took a few gulps of Coke and 
  stared back down at the textbook, at the same page he'd been 
  staring at for twenty minutes. His last final of the semester 
  was the next morning and all he wanted was for it and the 
  academic year to be over.

  He wasn't completely ready for the exam. Math had always been 
  his weakest subject, and there were several key chapters he 
  needed to review. Plus, he'd been averaging three hours of sleep 
  each the past three days and he desperately wanted to catch at 
  least five hours that night. He rubbed his eyes, took another 
  sip of Coke, and turned the page.

  The dorm room door banged open and Harold's roommate, Mike, 
  bounded in.

  "A-ha! Yes! I'm done!!" Mike tossed his backpack on the floor, 
  jumped up in the air, let out a another whoop and collapsed on 
  his bed. "I'm done, Harry! Summer, here I come!"

  "That's great, Mike. Tomorrow afternoon I'll be just as happy as 
  you." He stretched his arms out, arching his back, and then 
  downed some more Coke.

  "Oh yeah, you've still got one more to go." Mike swung his legs 
  over the side of the bed and sat up. "But, man, you've been 
  studying your ass off-- you've got nothing to worry about, 
  you'll do fine. Listen, Christine's coming over with her 
  roommate--you met her, didn't you? Jill?"

  "They're coming over here? Mike, I need to study."

  "No, wait, I'm gonna drive us all up to the lookout so we can 
  get a good view of the nova, you know, and rejoice about the end 
  of finals!"

  "Ah. Sure." Harold hunched over his book. "Sounds like a plan."

  "Yeah. And, you know, I want you to come along, Harold."

  "No, I'm staying right here. I _really_ have to do some more 
  studying."

  "Aw, man..."

  Harold looked up, exasperated. "Tomorrow night. I'll do it 
  tomorrow night, okay?"

  "Tomorrow night? I'm not gonna be here! I'm jetting after lunch. 
  Come on, man! You gotta come along. Really, you've studied more 
  than enough for the test. And Jill's gonna be coming along, too. 
  You've met her, right? She's a total babe. It'll be just me and 
  Christine and you and Jill."

  Harold ran his hand through his hair. "I really should study."

  "Hey, I swear, it'll only be for a half hour, forty-five minutes 
  tops. We'll go up there, bask in the supernova--every day you 
  wait, you know, it just fades away that much more! It'll be 
  hella romantic, man. Then I'll bring you back, you can do your 
  last little bit of studying, and tomorrow you'll ace the exam. I 
  tell you, this is exactly what you need."

  "Well..."

  There was a knock at the door.

  "That's them, man. You in or out?" Mike skipped over and opened 
  the door. "Christine! Hey! Time to party!" He gave her a big 
  hug.

  Harold looked up from his desk. Rolling her eyes, Jill stepped 
  around them and into the room. She had long black hair and had 
  on jeans and a jacket. Harold _did_ remember her.

  "Hey, Harold." Jill sat down on Mike's bed. "Still studying?"

  "Um, yeah. I've got my last final tomorrow morning." Harold 
  paused, looked over at Jill, then closed his book. "But I'm 
  getting pretty burned out. I think maybe I should take a little 
  break."

  The next thing he knew, Harold was in the back seat of Mike's 
  car with Jill, heading up the windy, hillside roads to Lookout 
  Point. Fifteen minutes later they parked in a clearing and 
  everyone piled out.

  "It's kinda chilly," Christine said, rubbing her arms.

  "I've got a sweatshirt somewhere in the trunk." Mike went around 
  to the back of the car. "You two go on ahead. We'll catch up."

  Harold and Jill walked up the road, around a bend, and then they 
  were at Lookout Point. There was another group of people off to 
  one side but they were keeping pretty quiet. The two of them 
  headed further from the road and sat down on a rocky 
  outcropping.

  The lights of the city stretched out before them, twinkling in 
  the rising heat. Strings of white and yellow outlined the 
  streets and clusters of rectangles where houses and buildings 
  squatted; splashes of red, blue, green and yellow shown from 
  store signs and traffic lights. The full moon was rising in the 
  east and seemed larger than it should be. At the west horizon 
  was the supernova, an intensely bright pinprick of light.

  Harold took a deep breath. "It's beautiful out," he said.

  "Yeah. Aren't you glad you came?"

  "Definitely." He sat there for a moment, stargazing. "I read 
  that the supernova is about eight hundred light years away. So, 
  it took that light eight hundred years to get here." He laughed 
  a little. "Spending a few minutes appreciating it is the least I 
  can do."

  Jill hugged her knees. "We'll always remember it."

  They sat a moment, and Harold gestured up at the sky. "You know, 
  that supernova is ours. It belongs to our generation. It's 
  something we'll tell our kids about."

  "The Summer Recess Supernova?"

  "Exactly. And I can tell, you know, I can tell that this is 
  going to be our most memorable summer."

  "I hope so. My boyfriend and I going to take a trip together. 
  There'll definitely be some serious celebrating going on."

  Harold's hand clenched into a fist. "Oh?"

  "Yeah. I wish he were here now, you know? But he's got two 
  finals tomorrow, so he's in the library, studying."

  Harold's fist unclenched. "Oh." He stared out at the supernova.

  Jill looked back at the road. "Hmm... I guess Mike and Christine 
  are taking their time getting here, huh?"

  "Guess so." Harold lowered his gaze to the city lights and 
  sighed. "Man, I knew this would happen."


  The party wound down quickly. People wandered back and forth 
  between the kitchen and the living room, emptying the last of 
  the wine bottles into their glasses and polishing off the 
  remaining edibles. Vic and Abby had already left, as had the 
  Human Resource group.

  Harold was standing by the snack table, wondering if he should 
  have one last bite of brie, when he heard, "Bye, Harold. Nice 
  meeting you." He looked around and saw Jennifer, smiling, wave 
  at him as she disappeared into the hallway. "Bye," he said, 
  walking after her.

  He reached the hall as she was buttoning up her coat. "Hey," he 
  said. "Need a ride?"

  She shook her head. "No, thanks. I drove." She finished fiddling 
  with her coat and picked up her purse. "I got a great parking 
  spot, right out in front."

  "Lucky you. I had to park blocks away."

  She started towards the door. "Well, hey, be careful. See ya." 
  She walked out the door.

  Harold sighed and walked back into the living room, where he 
  found John hovering over the snack table, eating the last of the 
  brie.

  "Get her phone number?" John asked.

  "Yeah," he lied. "I did." Harold looked past John and found the 
  party's host. "Hey, Fred, thanks for having me over. It was 
  fun."

  "Good! Glad you had a good time."

  Harold went back to the hallway, donned his jacket, and headed 
  outside. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and stared down 
  at the sidewalk as he walked to his car. Why do I bother going 
  to things? Swapping nova stories... Jeez. At least Jennifer was 
  there. Could've been worse, I guess. Fred could have pulled out 
  an acoustic guitar and played folk songs all night.

  Three blocks. He reached the fire hydrant and stopped. His mouth 
  dropped open and he blinked a few times as he stared at the 
  empty asphalt. Fire hydrant, curb, empty asphalt. No car. His 
  car was gone.

  Harold let out a strangled cry and looked around. He ran his 
  hands through his hair. Oh, man, he thought despairingly, 
  not tonight! Why would this have to happen to me? Tonight?

  He kicked the hydrant and winced as pain shot up through his 
  leg. After a few moments, he turned back towards Fred's house, 
  intending to call the police. A taxi came down the street; 
  Harold stopped, swallowed and flagged it down. He gave the 
  driver directions and went home, the whole time staring out the 
  window at an empty space in the sky, expecting another 
  supernova.


  Novalight   Part Three
========================

  August 1998
-------------

  It wasn't over.

  A second nova appeared, not as bright and as powerful as the 
  first, but as beautiful and terrible all over again. It had the 
  same spectral progression as the other nova, the same radiation 
  flares, and was in the same piece of the sky. No barrage of 
  information had preceded this one--nobody tapping out a message 
  before being consumed by fire.

  Reporters flooded the group with phone calls, asking why they 
  hadn't warned them about this.

  They hadn't warned them because they hadn't known it was coming.

  The astrophysicists gave press conferences re-explaining 
  everything they had said four years ago, but this time they 
  started hearing questions they couldn't answer. What were the 
  odds of two novae occupying the same portion of space? Are they 
  related? Will there be more?

  One could start a panic, answering questions like that.

  The group went over the second part of the message again and 
  re-ran the models they'd built, expanding them beyond a single 
  solar system. They input information about the nova's five 
  nearest neighbors and coded them into the model.

  Eventually, it happened in the computer, too.

  The neighboring stars felt the effects of the nova, felt it and 
  suffered for it. It was something beyond radiation or simple 
  shock waves or even some hypothetical space-time compression. 
  The simulation somehow duplicated it, but they didn't have a 
  real theory as to how it happened.

  There was a harmonic in the original nova that seemed incidental 
  when they first ran the models, something that went on deep in 
  the star's core. It started subtly, then built until the center 
  of the star literally tore itself apart, allowing the surface to 
  collapse inward. The sudden compression caused the nova.

  In the model, that same harmonic showed up in the neighboring 
  stars. It wasn't immediate, but it built over time. After being 
  exposed to the original nova, the harmonic began in the new 
  star, eventually causing it to collapse and explode as well.

  Distance played a factor. The star closest to the first nova 
  suffered the first collapse--almost exactly like the second nova 
  that burned in the sky--while the furthest didn't show any 
  significant change until it was showered by the remains of the 
  second star.

  Like dominos.


  October 2041
--------------

  The sky is on fire.

  Novae have been blossoming across the horizon for months, the 
  number increasing exponentially. Even our sun is showing signs 
  of internal deterioration and collapse, following the cycle laid 
  out in the second part of the message. The physicists say we 
  have another century or so before it goes nova as well. By then, 
  it will be a blessing. The radiation will have done enough 
  damage.

  We decoded the third part of the message, not that it makes much 
  of a difference. Abstract concepts are the hardest things to 
  express across cultures, much less across species, but the 
  linguists are fairly sure of what they have. The group is 
  divided about whether to announce what we found, because it all 
  seems so sad.

  The message we received from the aliens, almost fifty years ago 
  now, isn't a greeting. We were naive to think so. It's not a 
  gift, either, or a warning.

  Fluid, exaggerated movements mime an act of horror. A small 
  group of aliens gracefully disassembles a sphere, carefully 
  sliding out interlocking puzzle pieces, dropping each to the 
  floor to shatter. Halfway through, the sphere can no longer 
  support itself and it collapses, falling and splintering, shards 
  sending dizzying reflections to play off the muted walls.

  An alien stands a moment, staring at the shattered wreck at its 
  feet, and drops to its knees to begin shifting among the pieces, 
  hopelessly trying to fit them back together. The pieces large 
  enough to pick up crumble to sand as it fumbles for them and the 
  alien is eventually left moving long, slender fingers through a 
  pile of dust.

  Finally, it scoops up a handful of the dust and slowly lets it 
  drain through its fingers.

  The aliens didn't send us a greeting, or a gift, or a warning.

  They sent us an apology.


  About the Writers
===================

  Greg Knauss (greg@cwi.com) is a longtime contributor to 
  _InterText_ who works as a programmer at CaseWare, Inc. in 
  Irvine, California.

  Eric Skjei (75270.1221@compuserve.com) is a senior technical 
  writer at Autodesk in Marin County, California.
  
  Patrick Hurh (hurh@admail.fnal.gov) is a mechanical design 
  engineer at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, 
  Illinois, and would like to thank Petru Popescu for his book 
  _Amazon Beaming_ (Viking Penguin 1991), which provided education 
  and inspiration for "Little Sun."
  
  Daniel K. Appelquist (dan@porsche.visix.com) is the editor of 
  _Quanta,_ a longtime contributor to _InterText_ and a technical 
  writer at Visix software in Reston, Virginia.
  
  Chris Kmotorka (ckmotorka@pimacc.pima.edu) is a writing 
  instructor at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona.
  
  Robert Hurvitz (hurvitz@netcom.com) is a longtime contributor to 
  _InterText_ who, when last heard from, said he was heading for 
  Seattle.
  
  Jason Snell (jsnell@etext.org) is editor of _InterText_ and an 
  assistant editor at _MacUser,_ and lives in Berkeley, 
  California.
  
  Geoff Duncan (gaduncan@halcyon.com) is an assistant editor of 
  _InterText_ and lives near Seattle, Washington.

  The editors of _InterText_ would like to thank everyone who 
  participated in this project. Thanks to Aviott John and Chris 
  Kmotorka for their work on material not included in this issue. 
  Special thanks to Bram Boroson, Joseph Snider and Robert Orr for 
  their heavenly guidance.


  FYI
=====

..................................................................
      InterText's next issue will be released July 15, 1994.
..................................................................


  Back Issues of InterText
--------------------------

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  You may request back issues from us directly, but we must handle 
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  On America Online, issues are available in Keyword: PDA, in
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  The InterText Staff
---------------------

...................................................................
    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@etext.org                       gaduncan@halcyon.com
...................................................................
    Assistant Editor          Send subscription requests, story
    Susan Grossman              submissions, and correspondence
    c/o intertext@etext.org              to intertext@etext.org
...................................................................
  InterText Vol. 4, No. 3. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published 
  electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this 
  magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold and 
  the entire text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1994, 
  Jason Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1994 their original 
  authors. All further rights to stories belong to the authors. 
  InterText is produced using Aldus PageMaker, Microsoft Word, 
  and Pete Keleher's Alpha on Apple Macintosh computers.  
...................................................................

  When your seven worlds collide, whenever I'm by your side,
  Dust from a distant sun will shower over everyone...


..

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