That was several too many “beautifuls,” I said to myself. It was true then: Aguella was spreading mones. And I was helpless in her slipstream.
I cut left, clear of her backwash. It slowed me down a bit but that was good. Anything to bring me clear air.
I sucked fresh air but it was almost too late. My quills were ticklish for sure. How could she do this? She was a fellow gamer! It was an outrage, and with the trip coming up, and the Dance By and … it was a low trick, that was for sure.
She had to have noticed my sudden, graceless exit. She had to know why I’d done it. Great, now she’d be angry at me, and I was so completely not in the frame of mind to be diplomatic and polite and play it breezy. My brain had crashed.
“Almost there,” she said. “Look!”
“What? Look at what?” I yelped.
“There are the first Polars, just ahead. They look to be about our age.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not exactly the same age, you know, Aguella.”
She laughed. It was a disturbing laugh. “We’re almost the same age, Toomin — physically. Now, psychologically …” She laughed again, a mocking, condescending, yet frighteningly intimate laugh.
I gulped and tried not to read anything into the fact that she had used my chosen name, not my game name. She always called me Ellimist. Never Toomin.
Oh, this was great. Oh, this was just great.
I ignored her joke, her laughter, and, as well as I could, the lingering mones. I focused on the Polars.
There were two or three hundred of them in the air, spread around in an irregular two-mile space. Much as we Equatorials were. Like two sparkling clouds of veiner pests.
I looked back and saw my own home crystal. It looked very old-fashioned now, dull, compared with the radical Polar design that was now undeniably visible as an eventual airfoil. It made me a little defensive, I guess. Our home was larger, older, and I thought, more beautifully colored. But the Polar was the future, and that crunched.
I searched the Polars themselves, looking for the artificially colored quills I’d heard about, but they seemed no different than us. They each had “2 plus 4 equals 4 plus 2 and no one the better,” as my presire used to say: two pods, four wings, four eyes, and two arms.
Aguella and I picked out a pair of Polars who seemed willing to encounter us. They were about our age, both male. One had nice but natural yellow quills and ochre eyes. The other was more notable for his awkwardly large wings. We and they flew to intersection and floated at a polite distance.
“This is my friend Doffnall,” I said, introducing Aguella by her chosen name. “I am Toomin.”
“This is my friend Oxagast, and I am Menno,” said the large-winged one.
“Well encountered,” we all said simultaneously.
“You have a deep-space probe ready to launch!” Menno blurted.
He spoke at the very instant that I said, “You’re configuring an airfoil!”
We all four laughed and I at least felt more comfortable. Their curiosity matched ours, and we had something to boast of after all.
“Yes, it’s the Mapping Crystal Quadrant Three,” I said, then, without even a pretense of modesty added, “Doffnal and I are crew.”
“Essential crew?” Oxagast demanded.
Aguella laughed. “No, sorry, neither of us is a scientist. We’re just a couple of gamers who got lucky.”
We chatted about gaming and about the possibility of developing a crystal-to-crystal uninet.
Menno seemed about to say something, had his mouth open, then closed it and forced a smile. Oxagast’s open gaze went opaque.
“That would be great,” Oxagast said blandly.
Then Aguella brought up the airfoil design. “Didn’t your Wise Ones resist the idea?” Aguella asked.
The two Polars exchanged a glance. “They did. So we took a vote.”
“A what?”
“We voted. Each of us was allowed to decide our position, yes or no, then we added up the totals. The airfoil design was approved by sixty-one percent of the votes cast.”
Aguella and I must have looked fairly shocked.
Menno smirked, nodding knowingly at our disturbed expressions. “We’ve made some changes in our society.”
“Some changes? Why?”
Menno waved his hand toward his home. “Because it was necessary. We can’t let the Wise Ones stop progress. Change is coming. Big changes. The people decide now. We’re just two years away from completing the airfoil. Our lives will never be the same.”
“No, I guess they won’t be,” I said. Was I upset or jealous or both? I was definitely disturbed. That much I knew.
Oxagast seemed less enthusiastic than his friend Menno. “The idea is that people will have so much more free time once the airfoil is operational, we’ll make huge leaps forward. That’s the idea, anyway.”
“Of course we will,” Menno said. “That MCQ3 of yours? No offense, but it will be a toy compared to what we will build. Polar Orbit High will lead the way, and others will follow. By the time you return from Three Quadrant, things will be very different.”
“Different isn’t always better,” I muttered. I was thinking of the Pangabans.
But Menno shot back. “You’re a gamer and you’re afraid of change? What games do you Equatorials play? Any game worth playing is about control. With voting and with the other changes that are coming we stop being the playing pieces, moved here and there by the Wise Ones. We all become the Wise Ones. We become the players instead of the played.”
“In any game scenario there’s a balance between change and stability,” I argued. “The game — at least the way we play it — is to make the slightest, most unobtrusive change — and achieve the desired result.”
“Much the same with us,” Oxagast agreed. “Only lately some gamers,” he inclined his head toward Menno, “some gamers are looking to change the rules.”
“We call ourselves Intruders,” Menno said with a self-conscious laugh. “We’re getting a little more
