style he'd seen at the end of her diary.
T By the time you read this, you'll probably have all the explanations (hopefully from me direct!), but I want to tell you what I remember.
T There was the party at the Robinsons. I left early, so mad at Don that I could spit. They've really done us dirt, you know that? Anyway, it was past the Witching Hour and I was walking the forest path to the house. Fred was about five meters up, in front of me; I remember the moonlight glinting off his hull.t
Fred? The diary's overdoc said that was the auton with Marta that night. Wil hadn't realized they were personalized. You never heard them addressed by name. Come to think of it, that wasn't surprising; the high-techs generally talked to their mechanicals via headband.
T From Fred I had a good view over three octaves. There was no one close by. There were no autons shadowing me. It's about an hour's walk up to the house. I had taken longer. I wanted to be cool when I talked to you about Don's little game. I was almost to the great steps when it happened. Fred had no hint. There was a cinnamon burst of static and then he crashed to the ground. It's the most startled I've ever been, Lelya. Our whole lives we've had autons giving us extra eyes. This is the first time I can remember not having
T Ahead of me, the great steps were gone. There was my reflection staring back. Fred was lying at the edge of the bobble. He'd been cut in half by the stasis field.
T We've had some rough times, Lelya, like when we fought the graverobbers. They were so strong, I thought the battle might carry us past fifty megayears and ruin everything.
You remember how I was after that. Well, this was worse. I think I went a little crazy. I kept telling myself it was all a dream. (Even now, six months later, that sometimes seems the best explanation.) I ran along the bobble's edge. Things were as peaceful and silent as before, but now the ground was treacherous beneath my feet and branches clawed at me. I didn't have Fred to be my high eyes. The bobble was hundreds of meters across. It met the ground just beyond the great steps It didn't cut through any large trees. It was obviously the bobblement we'd planned for the property.
T Well, if you're reading this, you already know the rest.
The Robinsons' place was bobbled. Genet's was bobbled. It took me three days to hike across all of Korolev Town: everything was bobbled. It looked exactly like the jump we'd programmed except for two things: (1) (obviously) poor little
Marta had been left outside, and (2) all automatic equipment was
Those first weeks, I could still hope that every ninety clays the stasis would flicker off while the autons checked the Peacer bobble. I couldn't imagine how all this had happened ( I still can't), yet it might turn out to be one of those stupid mistakes one can laugh about afterwards. All I had to do was stay alive for ninety days.
T There's damn little outside stasis, Lelya. There was no question of salvaging Fred. Looking at that compact pile of junk, I was surprised how little I could do with it-even if his power supply had been on my side of the bobble. Monica Raines is right about one thing: Without autons, we might as well be savages. They are our hands. And that's not the most horrible part: Without processor and db support, I'm a cripple, my mind stuck in molasses. When a question occurs to me, the only data is what's wedged in my own gray matter. The only eyes I see from are my own, fixed in space and time, seeing only a narrow band of the spectrum. To imagine that before our time people lived their whole lives in this lobotomized state! Maybe it helped that they didn't know anything better.
T But Monica is wrong about something else: I didn't just sit down and starve. All my time in survival sports paid off. The Robinsons had left a pile of trash just on our side of the property line. (That figures.) At a glance you might not think there was much worthwhile: a hundred kilos of botched gold fittings, an organic sludge pond that made me want to puke, and-get this-a dozen cutter blades. So what if they've lost their micrometer edge? They're still sharp enough to cut a hair lengthwise. They're about half a kilo each, single diamond crystals. I lashed them onto wood hafts. I also found some shovels on a pile of rock ash in town.
T I remembered the large carnivores we spotted coming in. I f they're still around, they're lying low. After a couple of weeks, I was beginning to feel safe. My traps worked, though not as well as on a sport trip; the wildlife hasn't recovered from the Peacer rescue. Just as we'd planned, the south gallery of the house was left out of stasis. (Remember how you thought it hadn't aged enough?) It's all naked stone, stairs and towers and halls, but it makes good shelter-and parts are easy to barricade.
T I didn't remember how long the lookabout would last, so I decided to hit you over the head with my message. I lashed a frame between the trees at the bottom of the great stairs. I spread bark across the framework and used wet ash to spell HELP in letters three meters high. There's no way it could be missed by the monitor on top of the library. I had the sign done a good week ahead of time.
T Day ninety was worse than waiting for the judge's call in arbitration. No day ever seemed so long. I sat right by my sign and watched my reflection in the bobble. Lelya,
Of course, Marta had not given up. The next pages described how she had built similar signs near the bobbles of all the advanced travelers.
T Day 180 just passed, and the bobbles still sit. I cried a lot. I miss you so. Survival games were fun, but not forever.
T I've got to settle down for the long haul. I'm going to make those billboards sturdier. I want them to last at least a hundred years. How long can I last? Without health care,
