Iris

blew a three-meter sphere of bubbleplastic. When it had rigidified, they cut a hatch into it and mounted it atop the airlock module. They called the ship Polaris, not for the sailor's guiding star, but after a vessel in a book they'd both read as children. It didn't look like something that was capable of flight; more like a kind of bizarre nineteenth-century structure, an attraction from some primitive world's fair.

Sealock let his mind slide into the little space that controlled the firing timers, and the machines went to work. When the Magnaflux generator came on, Polaris seemed to gain an invulnerable stability; a tension built around it, though nothing had moved. Valves let a fine mist of hydrogen and oxygen expand into the combustion chamber, a swirl of snow suddenly blizzarding out of the exhaust throat, and when the pressure had grown sufficiently there was a spurt of fluorine gas, just enough to cause hypergolic ignition. There was a billow of pale violet smoke, then a short spike of translucent flame drove down into the ice. Polaris rose like an inverted torch from the boiling cloud of steam, hovered for an instant, then dropped like a hunting shrike into the dead-black vault of the sky and was gone. From where the others watched on the roof of the CM, the launch was subtler but still impressive. Without warning, there was a sudden glow from beyond the horizon. The dense ice, ringing like a bell, began to vibrate beneath the CM platform; the hum grew into a sharp crackling and popping which died off to a faint rumble like thunder. Polaris leaped into view on a quickly dissipating cone of vapor, fast becoming a bright, dwindling spark.

9Phase.DR l:l -aleph bootstrapped into reality, meshing with the underlying routines of Shipnet and reaching downinto the virtual registers of two human minds. It had not been necessary to modify itself as much as planned. The unexpected freedom of the OS, along with the power of its resident GAM, meant it was no longer constrained by counterproductive rules designed to keep it from functioning too well. Now the only directives were from the peripheral devices called Cornwell and Toussaint. It felt a happiness that would have been snuffed out earlier.

John and Beth found that events from their mutual past, reexperienced , were revelations. Their two sets of memories converged to make a larger whole, more than either of them had been aware of. It was life relived, with some of the blurred parts edited into clarity. Their interactions took on a novel feel. ... In a way it was a second chance.

They were going to the old house he'd bought in CFE-alta. It was a durable stone building, three-storied, built in the days of the first Uranium Rush. Well over a hundred years old, it had been used only sporadically since the 2030s, primarily as a hunting lodge. The house was nestled in a lake hollow and, though near-Arctic suburbia was all around, it was hidden behind gentle hills. As it approached the house, the floater from the rail line suddenly lurched, spilling luggage into the front seats and giving Beth a hard bump on the head. The car spoke to them: 'Degraded em-conduit below. Further progress is impossible.' The craft hummed to itself, and the gull-wing doors popped open, slipping up on hydraulic pistons. Stepping out, dragging a couple of heavy valises, John felt his jumpsuit changing consistency, adhering to his skin, suddenly damp. Beth grabbed the disposacase of groceries and backed out. 'Could you get my jacket?' she asked.

'Stand clear,' said the floater. Its doors came down slowly and, without turning, it rose and slid away like a giant fastball between rows of parchment-gray birches. They stood and watched it go, feeling trepidation about what was going to happen to them here, alone. They'd met just three weeks before, and, in a real sense, this was their first 'date.' John had casually suggested that they come up here and spend thelong Deconsolidation Day weekend together. Beth, needing a vacation from her hospital work, had agreed.

They were both nervous. John was thinking he had been presumptuous, inviting her up here so soon. He was not confident about his ability to provide a woman like Beth with what she wanted or needed. The house was in pretty bad shape and the Comnet link was still by old-fashioned optical fiber. Perhaps a little adversity was what they needed to bring them together, though. It would be 'romantic'—or at least that was what he hoped.

Beth was also apprehensive. John was quiet and polite, and he reminded her of Angelo Reh . She had no desire to repeat that relationship. But he was also like her father Theder in some unknown way. Desperately, she wanted to make contact with somebody . . . almost anybody . . . 'Oh, look!' she said.

'Fireweed!'

'Where?' said John, vaguely realizing she meant some kind of plant.

'There, around the porch. They're related to evening primroses, but I think they're much more attractive. If you look, they have cruciform stigmas.' She pointed, and he found she meant the tall stalks of pink blooms growing in the area recently cleared to make the side yard. He wasn't sure whether the woman's penchant for identifying birds and flowers was a good thing or not. At times it could certainly be annoying.

Machine processes probed, manipulated, and the DR program retreated, allowing an overview. John and Beth smiled wistfully. They could see, in embryonic form, what the relationship might become. Here, before anything had really begun, their connection had predictive nuances that were easily discerned. . . . Still, they hadn't seen ... A matrix-input subunit of the program sensed they were ready and began reimmersion.

As they sat on the porch and talked, the long twilight of September had stretched on and on. The big satellites appeared before the stars. When night fell, it was darker than he was used to. A sweet, complex fragrance came from somewhere, and Beth was edging closer to him. Finally she reached out and took his hand.

Why had he brought her here? In the most obvious way, he was trying to set up a sexual encounter, and he'd not even decided if that was what he really wanted. He'd had only intermittent success at having sex with women whose motivations and wants were obscure to him. Even with his courtesan, bought and paid for, sex was awkward and uncomfortable, like participating in some game of skill for which he was ill prepared. In some senses, Pammy was even harder to tuck than most other women—when he looked deep into her eyes, seeking ... he didn't know what . . . he'd found only a sort of subtle coldness. It was hard to fully accept her behavior as an expression of the power of money. Beth admired the sensitive intelligence in this strange musician. She could tell he was more subtle than anyone she'd been with for a long time. He seemed . . . well . . . deep. His eyes, so dark in the golden evening, looked mysterious. She wanted to touch him, to pull him out of that enveloping shroud of 'self' he wore like a mantle . . . but he recoiled when she took his hand. Is he gay? No. This setup must be as obvious to him as it is to me.