Chapter 2

"We have decided to rescue Rachel, Katherine, Sally and Mark, if possible." Yvonne opened the meeting. The four of us, and almost twenty Zealanders, all sat in soft, padded chairs at a long table in a large room, some thirty feet long and twelve across, with a row of wide windows in one wall showing the distant ground creeping past us at a barely perceptible speed. The zeppelin was 'conserving energy' by drifting with the wind, whatever that meant, at a height of two thousand 'meters'.

Our hosts were a varied lot. Their hair and eyes were mostly of familiar colors — except for one woman whose hair was an eye-watering hue of purple that had me wondering what bizarre Deviation could cause such a thing, until Rosalind giggled and whispered to me that she had probably just dyed it — but their skin ranged from Yvonne's near-white to a dark brown that was too even to be a suntan. I looked at the purple-haired woman again and speculated whether she might harbor some obscure Deviation that made her want to dye her hair such a lurid color.

There were nearly as many women as men. We were surprised to see that only two of the women wore dresses, and those scandalously short; the rest wore blouses, and long or short pants. Women sometimes wore long pants in Labrador, but only for riding, or work that was near-impossible in a dress. These women looked like they wore pants most or all of the time. It was plain that they weren't just here to listen and obey, either. They looked alert and confident, and the men clearly regarded them with respect. It made sense; it was much harder to pretend that women were inferior to men when one could feel that they were not.

None of them, men or women, wore crosses on their clothing.

Yvonne wasn't exactly in command of the zeppelin, or the expedition, but organizing it had been her idea, and the others looked to her for certain aspects of leadership and planning. We were still trying to figure out how the Zealanders organized their society. It seemed that some people naturally took the lead in some areas while different people had authority in other spheres. It was why she was unable to commit the group to a rescue mission on her own, and also why she was now determined to give her best efforts to its success despite the fact that she still had grave misgivings about the wisdom of going so far into enemy territory.

'Consensus' did not mean 'unanimous' — several people had argued against the rescue mission, but most had been strongly enough in favor to carry the decision. The dissenters were now included in planning the mission, mostly playing devil's advocate, seeking out flaws and forcing us to address them. They didn't harbor any resentment at being overruled; apparently this was just how things worked.

"We'll use words," Yvonne continued. "If we use thought-speech, we're likely to forget, and leave our new friends behind. They are entirely self-taught, and have not discovered a lot of the techniques we take for granted." There were nods and murmurs of acceptance around the table. She looked at a tall man with red hair and blue eyes who strongly resembled Harvey. "Steven, what is the ship's status?"

"Good, but we're about bingo on fuel and the batteries are only up to eleven percent." His accent was less understandable than Yvonne's, but more so than Harvey's. "Solar arrays're putting out one-point-four megawatts, about all you can expect at this latitude. Good thing it's high summer here or we'd get a lot less. If we don't use the motors any more today, we should be up to sixty-five, maybe seventy-five percent by nightfall."

She frowned. "We will need the motors. The wind's pushing us north-east, and we don't want to be seen anywhere near our objective before we move in. We don't want to drop low enough to tether here, either."

Steven nodded reluctantly. "Awright, if we use just enough for station-keeping we should get up to forty-five percent or so. If the wind doesn't get much higher."

"Will that be enough for a hundred and forty kilometer trip tonight, and back?"

He nodded. "Hate to run the batteries down again before we get a full charge, but lives are at stake. Keep 'er under sixty and we'll be okay. We've got enough fuel left to run the engines forty, maybe fifty minutes if we need to."

All of that went in one ear and out the other. I had no idea what 'batteries' or 'megawatts' might be, and while most of the other words were at least familiar, I still didn't get much sense out of them. The Zealanders must have seen, and felt, our confusion because Steven said, "Don't worry too much about the details just now. What matters is, we can get to your people tonight, pick 'em up and fly away from this place."

"If nothing goes wrong." This objection came from a woman who looked a little older than Yvonne, her brown hair cut even shorter, sitting across from us, wearing a blouse and pants made of heavy fabric in a strangely mottled pattern of green, brown and gray. She looked at us steadily, with possibly just a hint of disapproval. She had to be one of those who opposed the rescue mission, and after a few seconds she confirmed my suspicions. "I'm still not convinced this is a good idea, but since we're doing it, I'll do what I can to keep it from becoming a complete disaster."

Yvonne chuckled. "I never doubted you, Helga. What are your thoughts on this?"

"Reconnaissance." She looked around the table, and received several answering nods. "We have to take a look over the target area before we commit. We can't afford to dismiss them as just a bunch of ignorant hicks; they took two by surprise, and came within minutes of getting three more."

Rosalind's hand found mine as Steven grumbled, "Too bad we didn't bring an IR scanner."

Helga half-grinned at him. "You boys and your toys. We'll just have to do it the old-school way." She widened her eyes as if staring really hard at something, and got a general round of chuckles.

Yvonne said, "I'd like to have IR, and Night Vision, and a few other things, but we didn't know we'd need them. We'll just have to make do."

A dark-haired, youngish man two places down from Michael said grimly, "With our biggest zeppelin and forty automatic rifles, I think we can 'make do' just fine."

Yvonne sighed. "Yes, Gary, if it comes to that. I'd much rather sneak in, get our people out and be long gone before they ever know we were there."

Helga gave him a hard look. "That's my plan, too. If that's a problem, you can stay on the ship."

He gave in. "No, you're right. We don't want to endanger the people we're trying to rescue. Sly and sneaky it is."

Helga held his eyes for a few more seconds, then nodded, satisfied. Yvonne went on, "We don't want to be complacent, but we shouldn't jump at shadows, either. They are ignorant, they've never faced organized, trained opponents, and they won't be expecting us."

She paused, and when nobody disagreed she continued, "Our greatest advantage is their lack of communication. They can't move messages any faster than they can travel on a horse, so even if someone is already racing back with the news of what happened this afternoon, they can't reach Waknuk before tomorrow night. We will be there, and gone, tonight."

Helga spoke again. "The moon will set just before midnight; I want our team on the ground at one A.M. I'd have preferred two o'clock, but while summer at this latitude helps us charge our batteries, it makes for awful short nights. The sky will begin to lighten before three A.M. and we want to be at least fifty kilometers away by then."

Yvonne nodded and said, "Next, we have to know where we're going. Petra, sweetie, could you ask Rachel where they've got Katherine and Sally?"

The query blazed out, followed by a long silence. "She says everybody knows that. They're at the Inspector's house."

Michael nodded. "I know where that is." He hesitated, then asked her, "Has she heard anything about Mark?"

Petra sent the question, and a few seconds later she said uncertainly, "She says no, but…it feels funny, and her behind-thinks are hurting. Do you think she's lying?"

I was at a loss, but Michael said quickly, "I think she's just really worried. Tell her to listen for news, but not ask any questions, and we'll talk to her later."

We endured another blast. "She says okay."

Michael looked at us dourly, unwilling to say, or send, anything around Petra. He didn't have to; we knew what he was thinking.

Helga looked at us. "I'd like to know more about their guns. We should have grabbed a couple before we pulled out. How good are they?"

Michael said, "What do you want to know?"

Helga grinned and sent, "Everything, of course." She and Michael rapidly exchanged thought-shapes about numbers, sizes and mechanisms that got hard to follow.

Petra stopped trying, turned to Yvonne, and asked, "When's supper?"

She smiled. "Quite soon. What was that you said, about 'behind-thinks'?"

The girl looked troubled. "I see things people think, behind, sometimes. Things they don't mean to say. David says I should pretend I don't see them, but I can't help it."

Yvonne got a look, much like the one she had on first meeting my little sister. "If you can't help it, you shouldn't worry about it. It's not your fault." She gave us a very…significant look. Like we had something big to talk about, away from Petra.

Michael and Helga's exchange wound down, Helga nodding thoughtfully.

Yvonne told Michael, "We'll need a map of the area around this Inspector's house."

Michael said, "I've only been there a few times, but I'll do my best."

She smiled reassuringly. "There are a couple of people who can help you remember it clearly, and draw it accurately. We'll get together after supper."

As soon as she finished, Helga said, "Their guns are pretty primitive, Yvonne. Near as I can tell, they're fourteen millimeter black-powder flintlock muskets. There's only one approved design, so they're as close to identical as hand-made guns can get. They've discovered bullet patches, but that's about it. Their metallurgy is not very good, so their powder charges are four, maybe four and a half grams. My best estimate is that they shoot a sixteen-gram round lead ball at no more than four hundred and fifty meters per second. That would put their maximum vertical range at between sixteen and seventeen hundred meters. We should be safe from them above two thousand. They also have single- and double-barrel shotguns, about twenty millimeter bore, but those can only reach a few hundred meters. No cannons or artillery. Their muskets seem to be the only real threat."

Yvonne nodded. "Thank you. That puts my mind more at ease." She looked around the table. "I think we're about done for now, unless somebody has something else." When nobody spoke up, she nodded again. "Gary, would you take Petra to supper? I'd like to talk to her friends for another minute."

People started standing up, Gary smiled and held his hand out to Petra and she took it, a little uncertain. He told her, "Hi, Petra. I think we're having chicken stew for supper, and chocolate cake for dessert. Does that sound good?"

They started walking towards the door as she asked, "I know what a cake is, but what's chocolate?"

He laughed. "Something you're really going to like!"

I watched them go, concerned. Yvonne noticed. "Yes, David?"

I said, awkwardly, "Isn't he…?"

"A little dark, a little strange, a little scary?" she filled in, then shifted to thought-shapes. "Yes, he is. He's got…reasons. But he would never, never hurt a little girl, or allow her to be hurt. The sky would fall into the sea before that could happen. She's perfectly safe with him." Her absolute conviction came through clearly, and reassured me more than her deliberate thoughts.

Helga said, "What was it you wanted to tell us, without Petra?"

"It's about those 'behind-thinks' of hers." She clearly took the subject very seriously. "How long has she been demonstrating that ability? Is it a recent development?"

"Just last night," I replied, then went on, "At least, that's the first time she mentioned it. We've only been teaching her to use thought-shapes for a couple of weeks."

"So it's possible she always had it, just never noticed until yesterday," she mused. After several seconds she returned her attention to me. "I'm not sure if she's seeing unconscious thoughts, or if she's a true empath, but either way it's another rare ability. Combined with her incredible power…that little girl is more important than all of us, and the zeppelin. I can't risk her, or the ship we need to get her home. Everybody on the rescue mission has to understand that."

Helga looked at her speculatively. "It's still on? You're not going to scrub it and bug out?"

Yvonne shook her head. "We're committed now, and we gave our word. We'll give this rescue our best try, but if anything goes wrong we may have to leave you to make your own way to a safe extraction site. Safe for the zeppelin, not just for you. If you can't…"

Helga chuckled. "If it all drops in the crapper, us grunts will be left holding the shit end of the stick. When has it ever been any different? We'll get it done, never fear. And we'll come back. You won't get rid of me that easy!"

Yvonne laughed with her. "No, you're going to live forever because you're too cranky to die." Her humor faded as she turned to Michael. "But about Petra's latest behind-think…you're afraid something happened to Mark, and Rachel's trying to keep it from her."

He nodded, and I said, "We all are." as Rosalind took my hand again.

Michael added, "We'll have to wait until we get closer, and don't need to go through Petra."

She asked quietly, "What about your other two friends?"

Michael replied grimly, "We know Katherine was tortured. We don't know what happened to Sally; we picked up a few very strange things from her two days ago, then nothing. We don't even know if they're alive." Rosalind squeezed my hand as he looked at Yvonne challengingly. "But as long as there's any chance, we can't abandon them!"

"I understand that now," she acknowledged. "You've all been so isolated, and so close together, that you've become part of each other, far more than usual. I was wrong to demand that you abandon a part of yourself. We'll do our best to rescue your friends."

Rosalind said, "Thank you, Yvonne." while Michael and I were at rather a loss for words. We nodded our agreement.

She gave us a somewhat perfunctory "You're welcome," then stood and turned towards the door. "It's definitely supper-time now. I suspect you're more than ready for a meal cooked in a real kitchen!"

We got out of our chairs and followed her through the ship's long hallways, arriving at last at the end of a line of people. We moved along steadily, and a few others stepped in behind us. We passed through a doorway into an enormous room, at least fifty feet square. Most of it was filled with long tables, hard-looking metal chairs fastened to the floor, and at least thirty people eating their suppers. I could feel a faint background humming in my head, but it was too fast and unfamiliar for me to get any sense out of it. I could feel that Rosalind and Michael were aware of it too.

Yvonne led us to a colorful object that proved to be a stack of trays. She took a yellow one off the top, I got a blue one, Rosalind picked up an orange one, Michael got red and Helga, green. They were all the same, about a foot wide by a foot and a half long with raised edges about an inch high. They were made of some slightly flexible substance that was not metal, or wood, or rock, or anything else I had ever seen before. Michael examined his closely, weighed it in his hands, tapped on it, and finally looked at Helga with a wordless question-shape.

She said, "It's made out of plastic."

I dropped mine in panic. I felt again those deadly strands, pulling at my skin…

I could feel Rosalind and Michael's less extreme disquiet as the slap and clatter of my tray hitting the floor echoed through the room. Everybody looked our way, Yvonne and Helga both started laughing — although the feelings I got from them were understanding rather than mocking.

Yvonne reassured me, "It's a completely different kind of plastic, perfectly safe to handle." She switched to words. "It's called high-density polyethylene. It's tough and easy to clean, so it's a good material for making food trays."

I sheepishly picked up my alarming plastic tray as Rosalind and I sent each other soothing thoughts. Michael chuckled nervously. "As long as they don't start wrapping around us, I guess it's okay."

We set our trays on a pair of metal rails and slid them sideways as Yvonne led us through picking up shiny metal forks, spoons and dull knives with rounded tips, crystal-clear glass cups, glossy white porcelain plates and bowls, and squares of rough brownish paper. All these things took up most of the space on our trays.

None of us had ever imagined a meal being served in such a manner. In my father's house, the men sat down to a table already set with dishes and silverware. The womenfolk brought in plates and bowls and platters of food, filled the cups and sat down themselves. We all folded our hands and bowed our heads while my father intoned a lengthy prayer, thanking God for our bounty, calling for blessings on our family, our workers and their families, our house, our fields and livestock, our District, and the whole of Labrador, followed by a series of long-winded admonitions about brimstone and eternal damnation if we ever failed in our Purity — all while we sat there smelling the food with our bellies growling. He'd claimed it was good for our souls.

I wondered how his was doing, wherever it had gone. I had a strong suspicion he was finding that his new accommodations were not at all to his liking…

We followed Yvonne in picking up salads, hot rolls and butter, and filling our glasses with milk, tea or several other beverages. Yvonne took something cloudy and yellow, I tried something clear and green, and Rosalind tasted a little bit of milk that was colored brown, then grinned widely and filled her glass to the top. We each took a small plate holding a square of dark-brown cake with white frosting.

Next was a serious-looking blond man in a spotless white apron, presiding over a kettle that filled the air with savory smells. One by one we handed him our bowls, and he passed them back filled with generous servings of thick stew. There were potatoes, cabbage, several kinds of familiar and unfamiliar vegetables, and plenty of chunks of meat.

We picked up our now-heavy trays and followed Yvonne to a table end-on to a wide span of windows, where Petra sat chattering away at Gary, so engrossed that she didn't notice us until we sat down. When she did, it was with a mighty flash and bang inside our skulls, followed by metallic clatters and wide-spread protests as people dropped their silverware and clutched at their heads.

Petra immediately looked guilty, and called out, "I'm sorry, everybody."

There was a general grumble of acceptance, then people cautiously resumed eating. I caught a fleeting snatch of disgruntled thought, "…live grenade, only this one keeps going off over and over…" I didn't know what a 'grenade' was, but couldn't really blame the anonymous complainer.

Rosalind took her hand down from her forehead and said, kindly but sternly, "Petra, dear, you really must learn to control yourself. It hurts when you do that, and now there are dozens of people around us who can feel it."

Petra shrunk down into herself a little more and mumbled, "I'm really sorry, Rosalind. I'll try."

Gary looked at us blandly. "Try not to be too hard on her. She didn't mean to do it, and I'm sure she'll learn better. We'll all do our best to help her."

I was ready to snap something along the lines of 'Keep your nose out of our family business!' but I saw Petra look up at him, a little less glum already, and remembered how cheerfully she'd been prattling at him before she rang our bells. Almost as if the last four days had never happened — and even her outburst, painful as it was for us, had been a happy one. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, as Yvonne clearly wanted us to.

Michael used thought-shapes to say emphatically, "She has to learn, and fast. I almost chopped my leg off from one of her brain-shots, and Katherine nearly doused herself with boiling water. There must be things on this zeppelin that could cause even worse disasters if somebody gets knocked in the head at the wrong time."

Yvonne put in, "There are. I can think of dozens of things without even trying." She looked at Gary. "The battery rooms, for example? As you said, we'll all have to help her."

"I'll do anything I can for her," Gary declared, and I could feel his determination, and a kind of iron integrity behind it.

I felt better about him, and joked, "Well, it was good of you to let her bend your ear, chattering on like that. None of us have been able to relax much these last few days, and it's been pretty hard on her."

"It does me good to see such a happy little girl." I felt a kind of darkness pass through him as he added, "And get her out of a horrible place like that."

I said dismissively, "It wasn't so bad; we were only in the Fringes for two days."

"I don't mean the Fringes." He gave me a penetrating look. "You were running to the Fringes, weren't you? But what were you running from?"

He had me there. The Fringes was refuge and safety compared to what had driven us out of Waknuk. Whatever they'd done to Katherine, they wouldn't hesitate to do the same, and worse, to Rosalind, and even Petra. I began to understand why Yvonne hadn't hesitated to bury all those not-so-innocent souls under her deadly plastic webs.

Similar thoughts must have occurred to Rosalind. She asked Yvonne, "Are you going to kill more people tonight?"

I looked at Petra. She was asking Gary whether one of the strange vegetables in her bowl was a Deviation; that should keep her occupied for a while.

"If they make it necessary," Yvonne replied, and we could feel her adamant resolve. "Our mission is not to kill Norms, but we will kill as many as we have to."

She gripped my arm hard, and her mind-voice wailed, "There has to be another way!"

Yvonne regarded her sadly for a long moment. "Our mission is to bring Rachel, Sally, Katherine and Mark aboard this ship and take them back to Zealand with us, without losing any people in the doing. Are we agreed on that?"

She nodded, with an affirmative thought-shape.

"Will those people allow us to do that, or will they try to stop us?"

Rosalind admitted reluctantly, "They'll try to stop us if they can."

"How can we prevent them from stopping us? Can we persuade them? Can we reason with them? If we tell them we're not what they think we are, not a threat to them, will they believe us?"

She shook her head. "No. They'd never listen to a bunch of Mutants."

"Can we buy their lives? Is there something they value, that they would accept in exchange?"

Michael answered this time. "Only a very few, and you can't trust them." He snorted. "Actually, you can trust them — to stick a knife in your back!"

She spread her hands helplessly. "Now that we have ruled out negotiation and trade, what option remains to us but force?" She raised her eyebrows, widened her eyes and looked a challenge at us. "Can you think of any other approach?"

Rosalind shook her head in grudging acquiescence.

Yvonne regarded her for a few seconds before she went on, "Will any degree of force less than killing them be sufficient? Can we threaten them, or frighten them badly enough, to ensure that they will leave us alone?"

I thought of my father and answered, "No. They think they're doing God's Will. They'll always be more afraid of failing, or the men that would punish them for failing, than of you." I put my hand over Rosalind's. "The most devout won't believe that they can fail against the Devil's minions."

Yvonne heard me out, then turned her attention back to Rosalind. "It is not pleasant to kill any creature, but to pretend that one can live without doing so is self-deception." She gestured to Rosalind's stew-bowl. "There has to be meat in the dish, there have to be vegetables forbidden to flower, seeds forbidden to germinate; even the cycles of microbes must be sacrificed for us to continue our cycles. It is neither shameful nor shocking that it should be so. It is simply a part of the great revolving wheel of natural economy. And just as we have to keep ourselves alive in these ways, so, too, we have to preserve our species against others that wish to destroy it — or else fail in our trust."

"The unhappy Fringes people were condemned through no act of their own to a life of squalor and misery — there could be no future for them. As for those who condemned them — well, that, too, is the way of it. There have been lords of life before, you know. Did you ever hear of the great lizards? When the time came for them to be superseded they had to pass away."

"Sometime there will come a day when we ourselves shall have to give place to a new thing. Very certainly we shall struggle against the inevitable just as these remnants of the Old People do. We shall try with all our strength to grind it back into the earth from which it is emerging, for treachery to one's own species must always seem a crime. We shall force it to prove itself, and when it does, we shall go; as, by the same process, these are going."

"In loyalty to their kind they cannot tolerate our rise; in loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction."

"If the process shocks you, it is because you have not been able to stand off and, knowing what you are, see what a difference in kind must mean. Your minds are confused by your ties and your upbringing, you are still half-thinking of them as the same kind as yourselves. That is why you are shocked. And that is why they have you at a disadvantage, for they are not confused. They are alert, corporately aware of danger to their species. They can see quite well that if it is to survive they have not only to preserve it from deterioration, but they must protect it from the even more serious threat of the superior variant."

"For ours is a superior variant, and we are only just beginning. We are able to think-together and understand one another as they never could; we are beginning to understand how to assemble and apply the composite team-mind to a problem — and where may that not take us one day? We are not shut away into individual cages from which we can reach out only with inadequate words. Understanding one another, we do not need laws which treat living forms as though they were as indistinguishable as bricks; we could never commit the enormity of imagining that we could mint ourselves into equality and identity, like stamped coins; we do not mechanistically attempt to hammer ourselves into geometrical patterns of society, or policy; we are not dogmatists teaching God how He should have ordered the world."

"The essential quality of life is living; the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution; and we are part of it."

"The static, the enemy of change, is the enemy of life, and therefore our implacable enemy. If you still feel shocked, or doubtful, just consider some of the things that these people, who have taught you to think of them as your fellows, have done. I know little about your lives, but the pattern scarcely varies wherever a pocket of the older species is trying to preserve itself. And consider, too, what they intended to do to you, and why…"

I found her rhetorical style somewhat overwhelming, but, in general, I was able to follow her line of thought. I did not have the power of detachment that could allow me to think of myself as another species — nor am I sure that I have it yet. In my thinking we were still no more than some unhappy minor Deviations. I could feel that Rosalind was equally at a loss, but Michael was gazing at her keenly, with a sense of enlightenment, as if he had just grasped some great mystery of the universe.

Yvonne shook her head slightly, chuckled, and said in words, "Well. Look at me, running on while our food gets cold. Still, do you understand that we may have to kill people tonight? We won't do it lightly, or without a good reason, but if we need to, we will."

Rosalind's hand tightened on my arm again, and she nodded slightly. "Yes, Ma'am," she said in a subdued voice.

Yvonne affected a slightly horrified expression. "Don't 'Ma'am' me, Rosalind! You'll make me feel old!"

That won her a small, shaky smile. "Yes, Ma'am."

"Oh, you wicked girl! A little help, here? I'm being Ma'am'd!"

The remaining tension broke as we all laughed and resumed eating. After a few minutes I asked Helga, "What do we have to do, to get ready for the mission?"

Helga started to answer, but Yvonne said flatly, "You're not going."

I couldn't believe she'd said that. "The hell I'm not! I have to go!"

Yvonne looked at me intently, and thought persuasively, "David, you're the eldest son of a prominent local family, and a notorious wanted criminal. Everybody down there knows who you are. You'll compromise the mission." She looked at me even more intently and sent with even more emphasis, "You'll endanger your friends."

"I'm going!" I shouted, in words and thought-shapes alike. "I felt what they did to Katherine! I can't just sit up here, and wait."

This time Helga spoke ahead of Yvonne. "I'll take him."

Yvonne looked surprised, and a little upset. "Helga…"

"I decide who goes, remember?" Helga said in a matter-of-fact tone. "He's got fire in his belly. I like that. Besides, if they see his face, we're already so screwed it won't make any difference."

Instead of arguing further, Yvonne gave a resigned sigh. "I guess you're right. It's just…after everything they went through to escape, after rescuing them, having them safe here on the ship…and then sending them back into that…it just rubs me the wrong way."

Helga smiled, a little grimly. "Safety and freedom aren't given; they have to be fought for, and won. He's ready to fight. For himself, for his friends — and for us. It's his right. We can't deny it to him."

Yvonne smiled back, graciously. "All right, Helga, you win. David's in. What about Michael?"

She nodded. "I'll take him if he volunteers."

He said instantly, and emphatically, "Yes! I want to go!"

Helga chuckled. "I guess that's settled, then."

"This brings up another issue," Yvonne said pensively, then turned her attention to Rosalind. Her thoughts were somber as she sent, "David may have to kill someone tonight, Rosalind. Maybe more than one. To defend himself, to protect his friends, to protect you, he may have to end someone's life. Can you accept that? If he comes back from this mission with blood on his hands, can you welcome him, love him, comfort him — and he will need your comfort, you can be sure of that — and not turn your back on him, or condemn him?"

"There's blood on mine already. That's why I didn't want…to see any more killing." Rosalind was equally serious as she took my hand. "You're going to rescue our friends. I'll stay by your side, no matter what you have to do."

I squeezed her hand and thought my gratitude and concern back at her.

Michael looked away and said, "Harvey! I didn't see you."

"No worries, mate," he said cheerfully from the next table. "You've been talking about the big stuff, and I didn't want to intrude."

Michael chuckled ruefully. "I think we've all had enough of the big stuff for a while."

Harvey chuckled back. "Well, if it's the small stuff you're wantin', you still up for cleaning the lift?"

Michael was almost eager. "Yeah!" Then a thought hit him. "If I've got time. I'm going on the rescue mission."

The red-head said thoughtfully, "Should be time. Takes about half an hour."

Helga smiled and nodded. "We can spare you for that long."

Harvey said, "Good enough. Soon as we're done eating, we're off," and turned back to his tray.

We were almost finished, and soon all that remained was the cake. It was like nothing I had ever tasted before, and it was gone all too soon. Rosalind enjoyed it even more than the brown milk, and Petra let a small excited pulse escape, raising a few more complaints. Yvonne had us make sure that everything was on our trays, then led us to the 'scullery' where we passed them through a window to be cleaned. Michael and Harvey walked off, talking about something mechanical.

Yvonne took her leave, saying, "Helga and I have things to do, but Gary can show you around the ship a little." She chuckled. "Harvey's itching to give you the real tour, but that'll have to wait."

Author's Notes

I considered giving the Zealanders infrared imagers and Night Vision, but it comes off even more deus ex machina and I probably have too much of that already. So, all they have are large-objective binoculars and tactical flashlights.

I have inserted the Zealand woman's famous lecture on evolution from Chapter 17 of The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham, into the dinner conversation. It's not plagiarism, it's a quote!