Think Like A Dinosaur
by James Patrick Kelly

	Kamala Shastri came back to this world as she had left it -- naked.   She
tottered out of the assembler, trying to balance in Tuulen Station's
delicate gravity.  I caught her and bundled her into a robe with one
motion, then eased her onto the float.  Three years on another planet had
transformed Kamala.  She was leaner, more muscular.  Her fingernails were
now a couple of centimeters long and there were four parallel scars incised
on her left cheek, perhaps some Gendian's idea of beautification.   But
what struck me most was the darting strangeness in her eyes.  This place,
so familiar to me, seemed almost to shock her.  It was as if she doubted
the walls and was skeptical of air.   She had learned to think like an
alien.  
	"Welcome back."  The float's whisper rose to a whoosh as I walked it down
the hallway.   
	She swallowed hard and I thought she might cry.   Three years ago, she
would have.  Lots of migrators are devastated when they come out of the
assembler; it's because there is no transition.  A few seconds ago Kamala
was on Gend, fourth planet of the star we call epsilon Leo, and now she was
here in lunar orbit.  She was almost home; her life's great adventure was
over.  
	"Matthew?" she said. 
	"Michael."  I couldn't help but be pleased that that she remembered me.
After all, she had changed my life. 
#	
	I've guided maybe three hundred migrations -- comings and goings -- since
I first came to Tuulen to study the dinos.  Kamala Shastri's is the only
quantum scan I've ever pirated.   I doubt that the dinos care; I suspect
this is a trespass they occasionally allow themselves.   I know more about
her -- at least, as she was three years ago -- than I know about myself.
When the dinos sent her to Gend, she massed 50,391.72 grams and her red
cell count was 4.81 million per mm3.  She could play the nagasvaram, a kind
of bamboo flute.  Her father came from Thana, near Bombay, and her favorite
flavor of chewyfrute was watermelon and she'd had five lovers and when she
was eleven she had wanted to be a gymnast but instead she had become a
biomaterials engineer who at age twenty-nine had volunteered to go to the
stars to learn how to grow artificial eyes.  It took her two years to go
through migrator training; she knew could have backed out at any time,
right up until the moment Silloin translated her into a superluminal
signal.  It was explained to her many times what it meant to balance the
equation.
 	I first met her on June 22, 2069.  She shuttled over from Lunex's L1 port
and came through our airlock at promptly 10:15, a small, roundish woman
with black hair parted in the middle and drawn tight against her skull.
They had darkened her skin against epsilon Leo's UV; it was the deep
blue-black of twilight.  She was wearing a striped clingy and velcro
slippers to help her get around for the short time she'd be navigating our
.2 micrograv.
	"Welcome to Tuulen Station."  I smiled and offered my hand. "My name is
Michael."  We shook.   "I'm supposed to be a sapientologist but I also
moonlight as the local guide."
	"Guide?"  She nodded distractedly.  "Okay."   She peered past me, as if
expecting someone else.
	"Oh, don't worry," I said,  "the dinos are in their cages."
	Her eyes got wide as she let her hand slip from mine.  "You call the Hanen
dinos?"
	"Why not?" I laughed.  "They call us babies.  The weeps, among other things."
	She shook her head in amazement.   People who've never met a dino tended
to romanticize them: the wise and noble reptiles who had mastered
superluminal physics and introduced Earth to the wonders of galactic
civilization.  I doubt Kamala had ever seen a dino play poker or gobble
down a screaming rabbit.   And she had never argued with Linna, who still
wasn't convinced that humans were psychologically ready to go to the stars.
	"Have you eaten?" I gestured down the corridor toward the reception rooms. 
	"Yes ... I mean, no."  She didn't move.   "I am not hungry."
	"Let me guess.  You're too nervous to eat.  You're too nervous to talk,
even.  You wish I'd just shut up, pop you into the marble, and beam you
out.   Let's just get this part the hell over with, eh?"	
	 "I don't mind the conversation, actually."
	"There you go.  Well, Kamala, it is my solemn duty to advise you that
there are no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Gend.   And no chicken
vindaloo.  What's my name again?"
	"Michael?"
	"See, you're not that nervous.  Not one taco, or a single slice of
eggplant pizza.  This is your last chance to eat like a human."  
	"Okay."  She did not actually smile -- she was too busy being brave --
but a corner of her mouth twitched.  "Actually, I would not mind a cup of
tea."
	 "Now, tea they've got."  She let me guide her toward reception room D;
her slippers snicked at the velcro carpet.   "Of course, they brew it from
lawn clippings."
	"The Gendians don't keep lawns.  They live underground."
	"Refresh my memory."  I kept my hand on her shoulder; beneath the clingy,
her muscles were rigid.   "Are they the ferrets or the things with the
orange bumps?" 
	"They look nothing like ferrets." 
	We popped through the door bubble into reception D, a compact rectangular
space with a scatter of low, unthreatening furniture.   There was a kitchen
station at one end, a closet with a vacuum toilet at the other.  The
ceiling was blue sky; the long wall showed a live view of the Charles River
and the Boston skyline, baking in the late June sun.  Kamala had just
finished her doctorate at MIT.  
	I opaqued the door.  She perched on the edge of a couch like a wren, ready
to flit away.
	While I was making her tea, my fingernail screen flashed.   I answered it
and a tiny Silloin came up in discreet mode.   She didn't look at me; she
was too busy watching arrays in the control room.  =A problem,= her voice
buzzed in my earstone, =most negligible, really.  But we will have to void
the last two from today's schedule.  Save them at Lunex until first shift
tomorrow.  Can this one be kept for an hour?=
	"Sure," I said.  "Kamala, would you like to meet a Hanen?"  I transferred
Silloin to a dino-sized window on the wall.  "Silloin, this is Kamala
Shastri.   Silloin is the one who actually runs things.  I'm just the
doorman."
	Silloin looked through the window with her near eye, then swung around and
 peered at Kamala with her other.  She was short for a dino, just over a
meter tall, but she had an enormous head that teetered on her neck like a
watermelon balancing on a grapefruit.   She must have just oiled herself
because her silver scales shone.  =Kamala, you will accept my happiest
intentions for you?=  She raised her left hand, spreading the skinny digits
to expose dark crescents of vestigial webbing.   
	"Of  course, I ..."
	=And you will permit us to render you this translation?=
	She straightened.  "Yes."
	=Have you questions?=   
	I'm sure she had several hundred, but at this point was probably too
scared to ask.  While she hesitated, I broke in.  "Which came first, the
lizard or the egg?" 
	Silloin ignored me.   =It will be excellent for you to begin when?=
	"She's just having a little tea."  I said, handing her the cup.  "I'll
bring her along when she's done.  Say an hour?"
	Kamala squirmed on couch. "No, really, it will not take me ..." 
	Silloin showed us her teeth, several of which were as long as piano keys.
=That would be most appropriate, Michael.=   She closed; a gull flew
through the space where her window had been.  
	"Why did you do that?"  Kamala's voice was sharp.  
 	"Because it says here that you have to wait your turn. You're not the
only migrator we're sending this morning."   This was a lie, of course; we
had had to cut the schedule because Jodi Latchaw, the other sapientologist
assigned to Tuulen, was at the University of Hipparchus presenting our
paper on the Hanen concept of identity.   "Don't worry, I'll make the time
fly." 
	For a moment, we looked at each other.  I could have laid down an hour's
worth of patter; I'd done that often enough.   Or I could have drawn her
out on why she was going: no doubt she had a blind grandma or second cousin
just waiting for her to bring home those artificial eyes, not to mention
potential spin-offs which could well end tuberculosis, famine and premature
ejaculation, blah, blah, blah.  Or I could have just left her alone in the
room to read the wall.  The trick was guessing how spooked she really was. 
	"Tell me a secret," I said.
	"What?"
	"A secret, you know, something no one else knows."  
	She stared as if I'd just fallen off Mars.    
	"Look, in a little while you're going some place that's what ... three
hundred and ten light years away?   You're scheduled to stay for three
years.  By the time you come back, I could easily be rich, famous and
elsewhere; we'll probably never see each other again.   So what have you
got to lose?   I promise not to tell."  
	She leaned back on the couch, and settled the cup in her lap.  "This is
another test, right?  After everything they have put me through, they still
have not decided whether to send me." 
	"Oh no, in a couple of hours you'll be cracking nuts with ferrets in some
dark Gendian burrow.   This is just me, talking."
	"You are crazy."
	"Actually, I believe the technical term is logomaniac.  It's from the
Greek: logos meaning word, mania meaning two bits short of a byte.   I just
love to chat is all.   Tell you what, I'll go first.   If my secret isn't
juicy enough, you don't have tell me anything."
	Her eyes were slits as she sipped her tea.  I was fairly sure that
whatever she was worrying about at the moment, it wasn't being swallowed by
the big blue marble. 
	"I was brought up Catholic," I said, settling onto a chair in front of
her.  "I'm not anymore, but that's not the secret.  My parents sent me to
Mary, Mother of God High School; we called it Moogoo.  It was run by a
couple of old priests, Father Thomas and his wife, Mother Jennifer.
Father Tom taught physics, which I got a D in, mostly because he talked
like he had walnuts in his mouth.  Mother Jennifer taught theology and had
all the warmth of a marble pew; her nickname was Mama Moogoo.
	"One night, just two weeks before my graduation, Father Tom and Mama
Moogoo went out in their Chevy Minimus for ice cream.  On the way home,
Mama Moogoo pushed a yellow light and got broadsided by an ambulance.
Like I said, she was old, a hundred and twenty something; they should've
lifted her license back in the '50's.  She was killed instantly.  Father
Tom died in the hospital.   	
	"Of course, we were all supposed to feel sorry for them and I guess I did
a little, but I never really liked either of them and I resented the way
their deaths had screwed things up for my class.  So I was more annoyed
than sorry, but then I also had this edge of guilt for being so
uncharitable.  Maybe you'd have to grow up Catholic to understand that.
Anyway, the day after it happened they called an assembly in the gym and we
were all there squirming on the bleachers and the cardinal himself
telepresented a sermon.  He kept trying to comfort us, like it had been our
parents that had died.  When I made a joke about it to the kid next to me,
I got caught and spent the last week of my senior year with an in-school
suspension."
	Kamala had finished her tea.  She slid the empty cup into one of the
holders built into the table.
	"Want some more?"  I said.
	She stirred restlessly.  "Why are you telling me this?"
	"It's part of the secret."  I leaned forward in my chair.  "See, my family
lived down the street from Holy Spirit Cemetery and in order to get to the
carryvan line on McKinley Ave., I had to cut through.  Now this happened a
couple of days after I got in trouble at the assembly.  It was around
midnight and I was coming home from a graduation party where I had taken a
couple of pokes of insight, so I was feeling sly as a philosopher-king.  As
I walked through the cemetery, I stumbled across two dirt mounds right next
to each other.  At first I thought they were flower beds, then I saw the
wooden crosses.  Fresh graves: here lies Father Tom and Mama Moogoo.  There
wasn't much to the crosses: they were basically just stakes with
crosspieces painted white and hammered into the ground.   The names were
hand printed on them.  The way I figured it, they were there to mark the
graves until the stones got delivered.   I didn't need any insight to
recognize a once in a lifetime opportunity.   If I switched them, what were
the chances anyone was going to notice?   It was no problem sliding them
out of their holes.  I smoothed the dirt with my hands and then ran like
hell."
	Until that moment, she'd seemed bemused by my story and slightly
condescending toward me.   Now there was a glint of alarm in her eyes.
"That was an terrible thing to do," she said. 
	"Absolutely," I said, "although the dinos think that the whole idea of
planting bodies in graveyards and marking them with carved rocks is weepy.
They say there is no identity in dead meat, so why get so sentimental about
it?  Linna keeps asking how come we don't put markers over our shit.  But
that's not the secret.  See, it'd been a warmish night in the middle of
June, only as I ran, the air turned cold.  Freezing, I could see my breath.
 And my shoes got heavier and heavier, like they had turned to stone.  As I
got closer to the back gate, it felt like I was fighting a strong wind,
except my clothes weren't flapping.  I slowed to a walk.  I know I could
have pushed through, but my heart was thumping and then I heard this
whispery seashell noise and I panicked.   So the secret is I'm a coward.  I
switched the crosses back and I never went near that cemetery again.  As a
matter of fact," I nodded at the walls of reception room D on Tuulen
Station,  "when I grew up, I got about as far away from it as I could."
	She stared as I settled back in my chair.  "True story," I said and raised
my right hand.  She seemed so astonished that I started laughing.   A smile
bloomed on her dark face and suddenly she was giggling too.  It was a soft,
liquid sound, like a brook bubbling over smooth stones; it made me laugh
even harder.   Her lips were full and her teeth were very white.  
	"Your turn," I said, finally.
	"Oh, no, I could not."  She waved me off.  "I don't have anything so good
..."  She paused, then frowned.   "You have told that before?"
	"Once," I said.  "To the Hanen, during the psych screening for this job.
Only I didn't tell them the last part.  I know how dinos think, so I ended
it when I switched the crosses.  The rest is baby stuff."  I waggled a
finger at her. "Don't forget, you promised to keep my secret."
	"Did I?"   
	"Tell me about when you were young.  Where did you grow up?"  
	"Toronto."  She glanced at me, appraisingly.   "There was something, but
not funny.   Sad."
	I nodded encouragement and changed the wall to Toronto's skyline dominated
by the CN Tower, Toronto-Dominion Centre, Commerce Court and the King's
Needle.
  	 She twisted to take in the view and spoke over her shoulder.  "When I
was ten we moved to an apartment, right downtown on Bloor Street so my
mother could be close to work."  She pointed at the wall and turned back to
face me.  "She is an accountant, my father wrote wallpaper for
Imagineering.  It was a huge building; it seemed as if we were always
getting into the elevator with ten neighbors we never knew we had.  I was
coming home from school one day when an old woman stopped me in the lobby.
"Little girl," she said, "how would you like to earn a ten dollars?"  My
parents had warned me not to talk to strangers but she obviously was a
resident.  Besides, she had an ancient pair of exolegs strapped on, so I
knew I could outrun her if I needed to.   She asked me to go to the store
for her, handed me a grocery list and a cash card and said I should bring
everything up to her apartment, 10W.  I should have been more suspicious
because all the downtown groceries deliver but, as I soon found out, all
she really wanted was someone to talk to her.   And she was willing to pay
for it, usually five or ten dollars, depending how long I stayed.  Before
long I was stopping by almost every day after school.   I think my parents
would have made me stop if they had known; they were very strict.  They
would not have liked me taking her money.  But neither of them got home
until after six, so it was my secret to keep."
	"Who was she?" I said.  "What did you talk about?"
	"Her name was Margaret Ase.   She was ninety-seven years old and I think
she had been some kind of counselor.   Her husband and her daughter had
both died and she was alone.  I didn't find out much about her; she made me
do most of the talking. She asked me about my friends and what I was
learning in school and my family.  Things like that ...."
	Her voice trailed off as my fingernail started to flash.   I answered it. 
	=Michael, I am pleased to call you to here.=   Silloin buzzed in my ear.
She was almost twenty minutes ahead of schedule. 
	"See, I told you we'd make the time fly."  I stood;  Kamala's eyes got
very wide.  "I'm ready if you are."
	I offered her my hand.  She took it and let me help her up.   She wavered
for a moment and I sensed just how fragile her resolve was.  I put my hand
around her waist and steered her into the corridor.  In the micrograv of
Tuulen Station, she already felt as insubstantial as a memory.  "So tell
me, what happened that was so sad?"
	At first I thought she hadn't heard.   She shuffled along, said nothing.
	"Hey, don't keep me in suspense here, Kamala"  I said.  "You have to
finish the story."
	"No," she said.  "I don't think I do."
	I didn't take this personally.  My only real interest in the conversation
had been to distract her.   If she refused to be distracted, that was her
choice.  Some migrators kept talking right up to the moment they slid into
the big blue marble, but lots of them went quiet just before.  They turned
inward.  Maybe in her mind she was already on Gend, blinking in the hard
white light. 
	We arrived at the scan center, the largest space on Tuulen Station.
Immediately in front of us was the marble, containment for the quantum
nondemolition sensor array -- QNSA for the acronymically inclined.  It was
the milky blue of glacial ice and big as two elephants.   The upper
hemisphere was raised and the scanning table protruded like a shiny gray
tongue.  Kamala approached the marble and touched her reflection, which
writhed across its polished surface.  To the right was a padded bench, the
fogger and a toilet.  I looked left, through the control room window.
Silloin stood watching us, her impossible head cocked to one side.
	=She is docile?=  She buzzed in my earstone.
	I held up crossed fingers.
	=Welcome, Kamala Shastri.=  Silloin's voice came over the speakers with a
soothing hush.  =You are ready to open your translation?=
	Kamala bowed to the window.  "This is where I take my clothes off?"     
	=If you would be so convenient.= 
	She brushed past me to the bench.  Apparently I had ceased to exist;  this
was between her and the dino now.  She undressed quickly, folding her
clingy into a neat bundle, tucking her slippers beneath the bench.  Out of
the corner of my eye, I could see tiny feet, heavy thighs, and the
beautiful, dark smooth skin of her back.   She stepped into the fogger and
closed the door.
	"Ready," she called. 
	From the control room, Silloin closed circuits which filled the fogger
with a dense cloud of nanolenses. The nano stuck to Kamala and deployed,
coating the surface of her body.  As she breathed them, they passed from
her lungs into her bloodstream.  She only coughed twice; she had been well
trained.  When the eight minutes were up, Silloin cleared the air in the
fogger and she emerged.   Still ignoring me, she again faced the control
room.     
 	=Now you must arrange yourself on the scanning table,= said Silloin,
=and enable Michael to fix you.=
	She crossed to the marble without hesitation, climbed the gantry beside
it, eased onto the table and laid back.   
	I followed her up.  "Sure you won't tell me the rest of the secret?"
	She stared at the ceiling, unblinking.
	"Okay then." I took the canister and a sparker out of my hip pouch.  "This
is going to happen just like you've practiced it."  I used the canister to
respray the bottoms of her feet with nano.  I watched her belly rise and
fall, rise and fall.   She was deep into her breathing exercise.
"Remember, no skipping rope or whistling while you're in the scanner."  
	She did not answer.  "Deep breath now,"  I said and touched a sparker to
her big toe.  There was a brief crackle as the nano on her skin wove into a
net and stiffened, locking her in place.   "Bark at the ferrets for me."  I
picked up my equipment, climbed down the gantry, and wheeled it back to the
wall.
	With a low whine, the big blue marble retracted its tongue.  I watched
upper hemisphere close, swallowing Kamala Shastri, then joined Silloin in
the control room.
	I'm not of the school who think the dinos stink, another reason I got
assigned to study them up close.  Parikkal, for example, has no smell at
all that I can tell.   Normally Silloin had the faint but not unpleasant
smell of stale wine.  When she was under stress, however, her scent became
vinegary and biting.  It must have been a wild morning for her.  Breathing
through my mouth, I settled onto the stool at my station.  
	She was working quickly, now that the marble was sealed.  Even with all
their training, migrators tend to get claustrophobic fast.  After all,
they're lying in the dark, in nanobondage, waiting to be translated.
Waiting.   The simulator at the Singapore training center makes a noise
while it's emulating a scan.  Most compare it to a light rain pattering
against the marble; for some, it's low volume radio static.  As long as
they hear the patter, the migrators think they're safe.  We reproduce it
for them while they're in our marble, even through scanning takes about
three seconds and is utterly silent.  From my vantage I could see that the
sagittal, axial and coronal windows had stopped blinking, indicating full
data capture.  Silloin was skirring busily to herself; her comm didn't
bother to interpret.  Wasn't saying anything baby Michael needed to know,
obviously.  Her head bobbed as she monitored the enormous spread of
readouts; her claws clicked against touch screens that glowed orange and
yellow.
	At my station, there was only a migration status screen -- and a white
button.   
	I wasn't lying when I said I was just the doorman.  My field is
sapientology, not quantum physics.  Whatever went wrong with Kamala's
migration that morning, there was nothing I could have done. The dinos tell
me that the quantum nondemolition sensor array is able to circumvent
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle by measuring spacetime's most
crogglingly small quantities without collapsing the wave/particle duality.
How small?  They say that no one can ever "see" anything that's only 1.62 x
10-33 centimeters long, because at that size, space and time come apart.
Time ceases to exist and space becomes a random probablistic foam, sort of
like quantum spit.  We humans call this the Planck-Wheeler length.  There's
a Planck-Wheeler time, too: 10-45 of a second.  If something happens and
something else happens and the two events are separated by an interval of a
mere 10-45 of a second, it is impossible to say which came first.  It was
all dino to me -- and that's just the scanning. The Hanen use different
tech to create artificial wormholes, hold them open with electromagnetic
vacuum fluctuations, pass the superluminal signal through and then assemble
the migrator from elementary particles at the destination.  
	On my status screen I could see that the signal which mapped Kamala
Shastri had already been compressed and burst through the wormhole.  All
that we had to wait for was for Gend to confirm acquisition.  Once they
officially told us that they had her, it would be my job to balance the
equation.
	Pitter-patter, pitter-pat.
 	Some Hanen technologies are so powerful that they can alter reality
itself.  Wormholes could be used by some time traveling fanatic to corrupt
history; the scanner/assembler could be used to create a billion Silloins
-- or Michael Burrs.  Pristine reality, unpolluted by such anomalies, has
what the dinos call harmony.  Before any sapients get to join the galactic
club, they must prove total commitment to preserving harmony.
	Since I had come to Tuulen to study the dinos, I had pressed the white
button maybe three hundred times. It was what I had to do in order to keep
my assignment.  Pressing it sent a killing pulse of ionizing radiation
through the cerebral cortex of migrator's duplicated, and therefore
unnecessary, body.  No brain, no pain; death followed within seconds.  Yes,
the first few times I'd balanced the equation had been traumatic.  It was
still ... unpleasant.  But this was the price of a ticket to the stars.  If
certain unusual people like Kamala Shastri had decided that price was
reasonable, it was their choice, not mine.  
	=This is not a happy result, Michael.=  Silloin spoke to me for the first
time since I'd entered the control room.  =Discrepancies are unfolding.=
On my status screen I watched as the error-checking routines started
turning up hits.
	"Is the problem here?"  I felt a knot twist suddenly inside me.  "Or
there?"  If our original scan checked out, then all Silloin would have to
do is send it to Gend again.  
	There was a long, infuriating silence.  Silloin concentrated on part of
her board as if it showed her firstborn hatchling chipping out of its egg.
 The respirator between her shoulders had ballooned to twice its normal
size.  My screen showed that Kamala had been in the marble for four minutes
plus.  
	=It may be fortunate to recalibrate the scanner and begin over.=
	"Shit."  I slammed my hand against the wall, felt the pain tingle to my
elbow.  "I thought you had it fixed."  When error-checking turned up
problems, the solution was almost always to retransmit.  "You're sure,
Silloin?   Because this one was right on the edge when I tucked her in."
	Silloin gave me a dismissive sneeze and slapped at the error readouts with
her bony little hand, as if to knock them back to normal.  Like Linna and
the other dinos, she had little patience with what she regarded as our
weepy fears of migration.   However, unlike Linna, she was convinced that
someday, after we had used Hanen technologies long enough, we would learn
to think like dinos.  Maybe she's right.   Maybe when we've been squirting
through wormholes for hundreds of years, we'll cheerfully discard our
redundant bodies.  When the dinos and other sapients migrate, the
redundants zap themselves -- very harmonious.  They tried it with humans
but it didn't always work.   That's why I'm here.   =The need is most
clear.   It will prolong about thirty minutes,= she said. 
	Kamala had been alone in the dark for almost six minutes, longer than any
migrator I'd ever guided.  "Let me hear what's going on in the marble."  
	The control room filled with the sound of Kamala screaming.  It didn't
sound human to me -- more like the shriek of tires skidding toward a crash.
	"We've got to get her out of there," I said.
	=That is baby thinking, Michael.=  
	"So she's a baby, damn it."  I knew that bringing migrators out the marble
was big trouble.  I could have asked Silloin to turn the speakers off and
sat there while Kamala suffered.  It was my decision.
	"Don't open the marble until I get the gantry in place."  I ran for the
door.  "And keep the sound effects going."   
	At the first crack of light, she howled.  The upper hemisphere seemed to
lift in slow motion; inside the marble she bucked against the nano.   Just
when I was sure it impossible that she couldn't scream any louder, she did.
 We had accomplished something extraordinary, Silloin and I; we had
stripped the brave biomaterials engineer away completely, leaving in her
place a terrified animal. 
	"Kamala, it's me. Michael."
	Her frantic screams cohered into words.  "Stop ... don't ... oh my god,
someone help!"   If I could have, I would've jumped into the marble to
release her, but the sensor array is fragile and I wasn't going risk
causing any more problems with it.   We both had to wait until the upper
hemisphere swung fully open and the scanning table offered poor Kamala to me. 
	"It's okay.  Nothing's going to happen, all right?  We're bringing you
out, that's all.  Everything's all right."    
	When I released her with the sparker, she flew at me.  We pitched back and
almost toppled down the steps.  Her grip was so tight I couldn't breathe.  
	"Don't kill me, don't, please, don't."
	I rolled on top of her.  "Kamala!"  I wriggled one arm free and used it to
pry myself from her.  I scrabbled sideways to the top step.  She lurched
clumsily in the microgravity and swung at me; her fingernails raked across
the back of my hand, leaving bloody welts.  "Kamala, stop!"   It was all I
could do not to strike back at her.   I retreated down the steps.   
	"You bastard.  What are you assholes trying to do to me?"  She drew
several deep shuddering breaths and began to sob.
	"The scan got corrupted somehow.   Silloin is working on it."
	=The difficulty is obscure,= said Silloin from the control room.
	"But that's not your problem." I backed toward the bench.        
	"They lied," she mumbled and seemed to fold in upon herself as if she were
just skin, no flesh or bones.  "They said I wouldn't feel anything and
here... do you know what it's like ... it's ...."
	I fumbled for her clingy.  "Look, here are your clothes.  Why don't you
get dressed?  We'll get you out of here."
	"You bastard," she repeated, but her voice was empty. 
	She let me coax her down off the gantry.   I counted nubs on the wall
while she fumbled back into her clingy.  They were the size of the old
dimes my grandfather used to hoard and they glowed with a soft golden
bioluminescence.  I was up to forty-seven before she was dressed and ready
to return to reception D.  
	Where before she had perched expectantly at the edge of the couch, now she
slumped back against it.   "So what now?"  she said.  
	"I don't know."  I went to the kitchen station and took the carafe from
the distiller. "What now, Silloin?"  I poured water over the back of my
hand to wash the blood off.   It stung.   My earstone was silent.   "I
guess we wait,"  I said finally.
	"For what?"
	"For her to fix ...."
	"I'm not going back in there." 
	I decided to let that pass.   It was probably too soon to argue with her
about it, although once Silloin recalibrated the scanner, she'd have very
little time to change her mind.   "You want something from the kitchen?
Another cup of tea, maybe?"
	 "How about a gin and tonic -- hold the tonic?"   She rubbed beneath her
eyes.  "Or a couple of hundred milliliters of serentol?"
	I tried to pretend she'd made a joke.  "You know the dinos won't let us
open the bar for migrators.  The scanner might misread your brain chemistry
and your visit to Gend would be nothing but a three year drunk."
	"Don't you understand?" She was right back at the edge of hysteria.  "I am
not going!" I didn't really blame her for the way she was acting but, at
that moment, all I wanted was to get rid of Kamala Shastri.  I didn't care
if she went on to Gend or back to Lunex or over the rainbow to Oz, just as
long as I didn't have to be in the same room with this miserable creature
who was trying to make me feel guilty about an accident I had nothing to do
with.
	"I thought I could do it."  She clamped hands to her ears as if to keep
from hearing her own despair.  "I wasted the last two years convincing
myself that I could just lie there and not think and then suddenly I'd be
far away.  I was going someplace wonderful and strange."  She made a
strangled sound and let her hands drop into her lap.  "I was going to help
people see."
	"You did it, Kamala.  You did everything we asked."
	She shook her head.  "I couldn't not think.  That was the problem.  And
then there she was, trying to touch me.  In the dark.  I had not thought of
her since ...."  She shivered.   "It's your fault for reminding me."
	"Your secret friend,"  I said.
	"Friend?"  Kamala seemed puzzled by the word.  "No, I wouldn't say she was
a friend.  I was always a little bit scared of her, because I was never
quite sure what she wanted from me."   She paused.   "One day I went up to
10W after school.  She was in her chair, staring down at Bloor Street.  Her
back was to me.   I said, 'Hi, Ms. Ase.'  I was going to show her a genie I
had written, only she didn't say anything.  I came around.   Her skin was
the color of ashes.  I took her hand it.  It was like picking up something
plastic.  She was stiff, hard -- not a person anymore.   She had become a
thing, like a feather or a bone.   I ran; I had to get out of there.  I
went up to our apartment and I hid from her."
	She squinted, as if observing -- judging -- her younger self through the
lens of time.  "I think I understand now what she wanted.  I think she knew
she was dying; she probably wanted me there with her at the end, or at
least to find her body afterward and report it.  Only I could not.   If I
told anyone she was dead, my parents would find out about us.  Maybe people
would suspect me of doing something to her -- I don't know.   I could have
called security but I was only ten; I was afraid somehow they might trace
me.  A couple of weeks went by and still nobody had found her.  By then it
was too late to say anything.   Everyone would have blamed me for keeping
quiet for so long.  At night I imagined her turning black and rotting into
her chair like a banana.   It made me sick; I couldn't sleep or eat.   They
had to put me in the hospital, because I had touched her.   Touched death."
	=Michael,= Silloin whispered, without any warning flash.  =An
impossibility has formed.=
	"As soon as I was out of that building, I started to get better. Then they
found her.  After I came home, I worked hard to forget Ms. Ase.  And I did,
almost."   Kamala wrapped her arms around herself.   "But just now she was
with me again, inside the marble ... I couldn't see her but somehow I knew
she was reaching for me."   
	=Michael, Parikkal is here with Linna.=
	"Don't you see?"  She gave a bitter laugh.   "How can I go to Gend?   I'm
hallucinating."
	=It has broken the harmony.   Join us alone. =  
	I was tempted to swat at the annoying buzz in my ear.
	"You know, I've never told anyone about her before."
	"Well, maybe some good has come of this after all."  I patted her on the
knee.  "Excuse me for a minute?"   She seemed surprised that I would leave.
 I slipped into the hall and hardened the door bubble, sealing her in. 
	"What impossibility?"  I said, heading for the control room. 
	=She is pleased to reopen the scanner?=
	"Not pleased at all.  More like scared shitless."
	 =This is Parikkal.=   My earstone translated his skirring with a sizzling
edge, like bacon frying.   =The confusion was made elsewhere.  No mishap
can be connected to our station.=
	I pushed through the bubble into the scan center.  I could see the three
dinos through the control window.   Their heads were bobbing furiously.
"Tell me,"  I said.
	=Our communications with Gend were marred by a transient falsehood,= said
Silloin.  =Kamala Shastri has been received there and reconstructed.=
	"She migrated?"  I felt the deck shifting beneath my feet.  "What about
the one we've got here?"
	=The simplicity is to load the redundant into the scanner and finalize ....= 
	"I've got news for you.  She's not going anywhere near that marble."
	=Her equation is not in balance.=  This was Linna, speaking for the first
time.   Linna was not exactly in charge of Tuulen Station; she was more
like a senior partner.  Parikkal and Silloin had overruled her before -- at
least I thought they had. 
	"What do you expect me to do?   Wring her neck?"
	There was a moment's silence -- which was not as unnerving as watching
them eye me through the window, their heads now perfectly still.  
	"No," I said.
	The dinos were skirring at each other; their heads wove and dipped.  At
first they cut me cold and the comm was silent, but suddenly their debate
crackled through my earstone. 
	=This is just as I have been telling,= said Linna. =These beings have no
realization of harmony.  It is wrongful to further unleash them on the many
worlds.=
	=You may have reason,= said Parikkal.  =But that is a later discussion.
The need is for the equation to be balanced.=
   	 =There is no time We will have to discard the redundant ourselves.=
Silloin bared her long brown teeth.   It would take her maybe five seconds
to rip Kamala's throat out.   And even though Silloin was the dino most
sympathetic to us, I had no doubt she would enjoy the kill. 
	=I will argue that we adjourn human migration until this world has been
rethought,=  said Linna.   
	This was typical dino condescension.  Even though they appeared to be
arguing with each other, they were actually speaking to me, laying the
situation out so that even the baby sapient would understand.  They were
informing me that I was jeopardizing the future of humanity in space.  That
the Kamala in reception D was dead whether I quit or not.  That the
equation had to be balanced and it had to be now.
	"Wait," I said.  "Maybe I can coax her back into the scanner."  I had to
get away from them.  I pulled my earstone out and slid it into my pocket.
I was in such a hurry to escape that I stumbled as I left the scan center
and had to catch myself in the hallway.  I stood there for a second,
staring at the hand pressed against the bulkhead.  I seemed to see the
splayed fingers through the wrong end of a telescope.  I was far away from
myself.
	She had curled into herself on the couch, arms clutching knees to her
chest, as if trying to shrink so that nobody would notice her.  
	"We're all set," I said briskly.  "You'll be in the marble for less than a
minute, guaranteed."
	"No, Michael."
	I could actually feel myself receding from Tuulen Station.   "Kamala,
you're throwing away a huge part of your life."	
	"It is my right."  Her eyes were shiny.
	No, it wasn't.  She was redundant; she had no rights.  What had she said
about the dead old lady?   She had become a thing, like a bone.
	"Okay, then,"  I jabbed at her shoulder with a stiff forefinger.  "Let's go."
	 She recoiled.  "Go where?"
	"Back to Lunex.  I'm holding the shuttle for you.  It just dropped off my
afternoon list; I should be helping them settle in, instead of having to
deal with you."
	She unfolded herself slowly.
	"Come on."  I jerked her roughly to her feet.  "The dinos want you off
Tuulen as soon as possible and so do I."   I was so distant, I couldn't see
Kamala Shastri anymore.
	She nodded and let me march her to the bubble door.    
	"And if we meet anyone in the hall, keep your mouth shut."
	"You're being so mean."   Her whisper was thick. 
	"You're being such a baby."  	
	When the inner door glided open, she realized immediately that there was
no umbilical to the shuttle.   She tried to twist out of my grip  but I put
my shoulder into her, hard.  She flew across the airlock, slammed against
the outer door and caromed onto her back.  As I punched at the switch to
close the inner door, I came back to myself.  I was doing this terrible
thing -- me, Michael Burr.  I couldn't help myself: I giggled.  When I last
saw her, Kamala was scrabbling across the deck toward me but she was too
late.  I was surprised that she wasn't screaming again; all I heard was her
ferocious breathing. 
	As soon as the inner door seated, I opened the outer door. After all, how
many ways are there to kill someone on a space station?   There were no
guns.  Maybe someone else could have stabbed or strangled her, but not me.
Poison how?   Besides, I wasn't thinking, I had been trying desperately not
to think of what I was doing.  I was a sapientologist, not a doctor.  I
always thought that exposure to space meant instantaneous death.  Explosive
decompression or something like.  I didn't want her to suffer.  I was
trying to make it quick.  Painless. 
	I heard the whoosh of escaping air and thought that was it; the body had
been ejected into space.  I had actually turned away when thumping started,
frantic, like the beat of a racing heart.   She must have found something
to hold onto. Thump, thump, thump!   It was too much.  I sagged against the
inner door -- thump, thump -- slid down it, laughing.  Turns out that if
you empty the lungs, it is possible to survive exposure to space for at
least a minute, maybe two. I thought it was funny.   Thump!   Hilarious,
actually.  I had tried my best for her -- risked my career -- and this was
how she repaid me?   As I laid my cheek against the door, the thumps start
to weaken.  There were just a few centimeters between us, the difference
between life and death.  Now she knew all about balancing the equation.  I
was laughing so hard I could scarely breathe.  Just like the meat behind
the door.   Die already, you weepy bitch!  
	I don't know how long it took.  The thumping slowed.  Stopped.  And then I
was a hero.  I had preserved harmony, kept our link to the stars open.  I
chuckled with pride; I could think like a dinosaur. 
#
	I popped through the bubble door into Reception D.  "It's time to board
the shuttle."
	Kamala had changed into a clingy and velcro slippers.  There were at least
ten windows open on the wall; the room filled with the murmur of talking
heads.  Friends and relatives had to be notified; their hero had returned,
safe and sound.   "I have to go," she said to the wall.  "I will call you
all when I land."
	She gave me a smile that seemed stiff from disuse.  "I want to thank you
again, Michael."  I wondered how long it took migrators to get used to
being human.  "You were such a help and I was such a ... I was not myself."
 She glanced around the room one last time and then shivered.   "I was
really scared."
	"You were."
	She shook her head.  "Was it that bad?"
	I shrugged and led her out into the hall.
	"I feel so silly now.  I mean, I was in the marble for less than a minute
and then --" she snapped her fingers --- "there I was on Gend, just like
you said."   She brushed up against me as we walked; her body was hard
under the clingy.   "Anyway, I am glad we got this chance to talk.   I
really was going to look you up when I got back.  I certainly did not
expect to see you here."
	"I decided to stay on."  The inner door to the airlock glided open.  "It's
a job that grows on you."  The umbilical shivered as the pressure between
Tuulen Station and the shuttle equalized. 
	"You have got migrators waiting,"  she said.
	"Two."
	"I envy them."   She turned to me.   "Have you ever thought about going to
the stars?"
	"No," I said. 
	Kamala put her hand to my face .  "It changes everything."  I could feel
the prick of her long nails -- claws, really.  For a moment I thought she
meant to scar my cheek the way she had been scarred.
	"I know," I said. 