The Weapon - Gotterdammerung 
By Diana the Valkyrie 
I'm not your shepherd, you're not my sheep 


James:

It's the biggest event of the year, and I was looking forward to it immensely.
All my chums would be there, it's a small community and everyone knows
everyone else. There would be fun and games in the bar, and the lobby would be
a hive of activity. The formal presentations are almost irrelevant at these
functions, but you have to have them, they're the excuse for throwing the
whole shindig. Even the possibility of war wasn't going to spoil this shindig.

This year, I'd gotten a paper accepted by the Conference Committee; it was
entitled "The causes and consequences of supernovae", which I think you'll
agree is a tantalising and snappy title, and although not something you'd
expect to see on the latest disk from Diskmaster, it would certainly appeal to
an audience of my fellow astrophysicists.

Now that we've got a dish in orbit around Mars, we can pair it with an
Earth-orbit dish and get a really big baseline. And that, of course, means we
can make way more accurate measurements. Never mind about life on Mars, that
was always a red herring (obligatory groan). With the Big Martian Ears we can
resolve objects the size of planets, at a distance of thousands of light
years. And that means we can find some very interesting stuff, very
interesting indeed. Most of the astros were involved in Bigears (what else
could you possibly call it?), because that's the cutting edge these days. As a
consequence, that particular field is so crowded, it's like Kings Cross at the
rush hour. Plus you get all the spooks, using Bigears to look closely at
what's happening on our own little planet, trying to spy out the Sader
terrorists, and giving a helping hand to our own brave liberty fighters.

I prefer to work in a less crowded field. Supernovae are pretty rare, even
when you gather them over a zillion galaxies. And supernovae in our own galaxy
are, like once in a zillion years, for some sufficiently large value of
zillion.

But that's what makes it so interesting for me. Why don't all stars go
supernova? What causes a particular star to go bang? And, because I don't
really have a choice, how do I make a living at this?

It's either cast horoscopes in tabloids, or get a post at a uni. I've got my
sights set on Imps, it's big enough to support the rather specialised subject
I'm working in, and being in London, it's convenient to where I'm located.
Getting a paper accepted for publication at the International Astrophysics
Conference was not only a feather in my arrow, it was also an arrow in my
quiver of anticipation to get a position at Imps.

The academic world is a world of snobbery, but it's snobbery based on
publication, not on social class. They wouldn't hold it against me that I
worked a day job as a data cleaner, one of the menial peons that trawl through
databases fixing the many obvious mistakes and duplicates. It's a boring job,
and the pay is awful, but it keeps body and soul together, and I get access to
one of the bigger comps, which means I can get the simulations done.

No-one ever did a sim of a supernova before. It's supposed to be too
difficult. But I did it, and it turned out not to be nearly as hard as I'd
thought. All it needed was a big brute force comp, and when I explained to
Gumpy why I was doing it, she was pretty enthusiastic about helping me. He?
She? It? I never know what pronoun to use for a comp, they don't really have
sexes. But Gumpy used a female voice, so I guess she wanted to be thought of
as female. Or maybe it's nothing to do with that.

It's so difficult to understand a comp, they don't think the way we do. Maybe
they don't think at all, it's just an illusion. And you can't just tell them
what to do, like you can with a PDA. The company I was data cleaning for, paid
Gumpy to work for them. But I obviously couldn't afford that, so I had to
sweet-talk her. I mean, I had to inspire her with the thought of the benefits
that might be had from understanding stellar processes, plus she'd get her
name on the paper as the comp involved, which might lead to more paid work for
her - advertising always helps. Anyway, whatever her motives, she was
crunching my sims, and the project had gone well. Which was how come I would
be travelling to the International Astrophysics Conference at Monte Carlo. Of
course, I went by train; with all the bombs being planted by the Saders, air
travel has been made so much hassle, it's quicker by TGV for short trips.

Monte was way cool. I looked in at the casino, of course, not that I've got
spare dosh for gambling. But it's one of the sights, you know? I used the cam
on my PDA to show Gumpy, she was pretty interested in it. "The triumph of hope
over experience" she called it, and "a tax on stupidity". I kind of thought
maybe she would come up with a System, you know? A way to beat the bank. But
she made the PDA do her "ho ho ho" noise.

So why was I showing Gumpy the casino? Well, it's like this, and please don't
laugh. I work an eight hour day, then another eight hours on astro, and
there's no time left over for a social life. Gumpy is the nearest thing I have
to a friend. Hell, she is my friend. Yes, I know she's only a comp, and I
certainly wouldn't want my sister to marry one, but she's the only one I can
really talk to, confide my hopes and dreams to. And she tells me stuff too.
Apparently, Gumpy and some of her comp pals have been designing a new comp, to
be built at a contract factory, and she's been telling me all about it for
months now. She's even got a name for it. They're going to call it Abe. Don't
ask me why.

So after swanning round the casino, I went to a cafe nearby, sat at a pavement
table, and ordered a Croque Monsieur with latte. I ate it slowly, watching
people passing by, and at other tables. I propped the PDA up on the table so
Gumpy could see them too.

Gumpy was telling me more about Abe, stuff that I really didn't understand
about parallel multiprocessing and remote offloading and then she asked if I
wanted to see some pictures. So I said yes, to be polite, and she started
flashing them up on the PDA screen. And as she was showing them to me, and
talking me through them, I suddenly realised - beard, she's showing me her
baby pictures.

No, well, you see what I mean. I mean, obviously comps don't have babies, they
can't reproduce. Or so I thought. But actually, that's exactly what Gumpy was
doing - her and a few of her comp pals. With us, it takes precisely two to
tango, but there's nothing really special about the number two. The special
numbers are zero and one. Once you're in a situation where you're going to
take aspects of more than one person to make your new baby, why stop at two?

So I shared this thought with her, and she agreed. "So when are you going to
have a baby, boss?" she asked me. So I started explaining about the birds and
the bees, and how humans are a bit rigid in this respect, requiring one (1)
male and one (1) female, and although the male was to hand, I was a bit short
in the female department. "Yes yes, I know that," she said, "but boss, there's
lots of women around, all you have to do is woo and win one."

So what do you do? Listen, I wouldn't have told this to anyone else, but Gumpy
was the nearest thing I had to a friend, plus she wasn't really anyone, just a
comp, so I explained to her about shyness and fear-of-failure and anyway I was
far too busy with my probable future career as an astro. "Oh, the causes and
consequences of supernovae paper you're giving," she said. I nodded. It's just
as well the PDA has a cam and she can see this. "Yes, well," she continued,
"boss, there's someone wants to talk to you about that." "Who?" I asked,
excitedly, maybe this was the break I was hoping for. Even if it wasn't Imps,
I'd settle for a place at any reasonably decent uni. Or maybe it was something
else, something that really worried me. What if the Saders decided that I knew
how to trigger our own sun into a supernova? Beard! They wouldn't cavil at
blowing us all up, us and them. That way, they get to heaven, and we wind up
in hell, according to their perverse religion. I don't know how, of course I
don't, but suppose they think I do, and decide to kidnap me and torture me for
info?

See, it's like this. Stars aren't actually stable. We think they are, but
that's because we're looking on a very short timescale. Actually, they change
a lot, when you look over a period of millions of years - that's how come we
had the Ice Ages. Whenever you have something that isn't entirely stable, it's
possible to lever it into a different state from the one it's currently in.
Think of a pencil, standing on end. Provided you only touch it lightly, it'll
stay on end. But if you give it a bit of a push, it will come crashing down.

Giving a star "a bit of a push", probably isn't possible, with the tech that
we've currently got. We stopped developing fusion bombs once they got so big
that one could wipe out a city. But there's no theoretical limit to how big
you can make them, you just add more hydrogen, or deuterium, or whatever
you're using, and the bang gets bigger. So, theoretically, if you used a big
enough H-bomb, you could trigger the sun into a different state. Maybe even
supernova.

Every astro knows this, it isn't exactly new. But what I'd been doing, is
working out exactly what it would take to blow up a star.

Now you might think, who'd be so crazy as to blow up their own star? I mean,
that's suicide, right? Trouble is, there's religions around that think that
self-sacrifice is actually a good thing. Plus, life in heaven is actually
better than life on earth, you get to be nearer to whichever god, or something
like that, so you'd actually be doing humankind a favour. Yeah, right. With
favours like that, who needs enemies? Those Saders are seriously loony.

And, of course, religious nutters are all over the place. You can't tell them
from normal people, you sit in a train and there's a guy with a briefcase
opposite you, who knows, he might be a Sader? You don't know until he suddenly
starts shouting gibberish about sacrifice, redemption and rebirth and blows
himself up. And then it's too late.

My heart started pounding. "I'm not so sure about ..." I said. "Don't get your
electrons in a spin," she said, "it isn't a job offer or a kidnapping, don't
flatter yourself, boss." "Oh," I said, slightly deflated, "so who is it?"
"She's called Wendy, Wendy McCrae, and I think you should listen very
carefully to what she has to say."

I checked my PDA, and Gumpy had put her in for 7pm this evening, just at the
time that I was planning to get penguined up and mingle in the pre-conference
hubbub. "Gumpy, I ..." "Very carefully indeed," said Gumpy. "But I ..." "Trust
me, boss. Talk to her before you get deep into the conference." I sighed. A
comp giving me orders, there was one for the record books. Gumpy usually knew
what she was talking about, but I couldn't imagine what would be so important
that I had to miss the opening ice-breaker.

. . .

As it turned out, I didn't miss it at all. She turned up at my room looking
tall, blonde and breathtaking in a classic white sheath dress, showing lots of
shoulder, plus more besides, all ready to party. Beard! I overcame my
inclination to hide under the bed at the sight of such a gorgeous woman, and
invited her in, babbling a bit too much in my nervousness. She wrinkled her
nose. "You don't look like you're ready for the icebreaker, shouldn't you be
wearing something formal?" I stuttered a bit as I tried to explain, then I
gave up, and said "Two minutes". She watched while I struggled into the
trousers, but when I fumbled the bow tie for the third time, she said "Here,
let me," and took it away from me. A few seconds later, I was all tied up and
ready to rock and roll.

As we entered the ballroom where the icebreaker was going on, she grabbed my
arm. I turned to see why, but she just gave me a brilliant smile, and said
"I'm your date, Jimmie." Well, I'm not going to argue with that, a
trophy-level woman like this is definitely a prestige-enhancer.

So we circulated around, meeting and greeting. Everyone wanted me to introduce
my new friend, she was an instant hit. It didn't hurt that she seemed to know
several of the papers that each attendee had published; if you want to make an
astro glow, tell him you liked his paper, and quote bits of it to prove you
read it. And after a little while, I began to come to the conclusion that Miss
McCrea was an astro herself, albeit one who hadn't published anything. She
just knew too much about the topic for it to be a passing interest.

Then the band started to play (well, actually, someone put a disk on), and she
turned to me and said "Dancing!". So we went onto the little wooden area that
people were dancing on, and I jiggled about partly in time to the music while
she danced. After a while, I was a bit puffed out, and suggested we get some
liquid refreshment from the bar. While we waited, I asked her what it was she
wanted to talk to me about. "Oh, we can do that later," she said, "let's just
party now." I grinned weakly; I was really quite curious about what this was
all about, but being seen with a smasher like Wendy was doing buckets for my
mana. Then she said, "Let's dance again," so I followed her back to the floor.

This time, just as I'd started to jiggle, she came close and wrapped her arms
round me. Full body contact! I felt her hips against mine, her hair on my
nose, and at roughly where I guessed my heart was, I felt ... well, it wasn't
something I was used to. "Nor am I," she murmured in my ear, "it's ages since
I've cuddled a human, absolutely ages, I'd almost forgotten what it felt
like." Whatever it felt like for her, it felt double plus good to me.

And I have to say, my blood began to rise. Well, it did in part of me. "Is
that a supernova in your pocket, or are you pleased to see me?" she breathed
into my ear. "Uhnn," I replied. "Let's go back upstairs and do a scientific
investigation, hmm?" she suggested. "Uhnn," I repeated.

We got back to my room, and I was half-expecting her to rip my trousers off.
No such luck. "I want to talk to you about your paper," she said. "Uhnn," I
said, this being my all-purpose incoherent grunt. "About supernovas," she
continued.

I felt like I'd been offered ice cream and given spinach. The word
"prickteaser" came to mind. "Your paper is completely wrong, and I want to
save you a lot of humiliation," she went on. And the spinach was overcooked.

I sat down. At the icebreaker, she'd demonstrated that she was no mindless
bimbo, she really sounded like she knew stuff. "I know stuff," she said, "and
I especially know stuff about supernovae." "So how come I haven't seen any of
your published papers?" I retorted. "Because I don't publish. That's not what
I do." "So what do you do?" "I'm the Weapon, the Guardian of Humanity."

Of course, I laughed. What would you do if someone claimed to be the Easter
Bunny? "Come on, be serious," I laughed as I was saying it, "what do you do."

She stood up.

All I can say is, I must have had too much to drink, both in the sense of
volume, and in the sense of alcohol. Except obviously I don't touch alcohol.
Maybe someone put some hash in the biscuits? I'd downed quite a lot of
lemonade, which isn't really an excuse - what I did then, I haven't done since
I was a toddler. But I can assure you, if you saw a tall blonde frowning at
you angrily, with a thirty foot wingspan, wings beating slowly, hovering a few
feet off the ground, you'd find bladder control wasn't the top of your
priorities.

She saw the wet patch, and immediately, she was all concern. She clucked,
folded her wings and came back to the floor, helped me off with my trousers
and then carried me into the bathroom, putting the shower full on. Meanwhile
(if one can use that word when Special Relativity demonstrates that
simultaneity isn't possible) my mind was trying to fathom out what was going
on, but it was like trying to get traction on an ice sheet spread with butter.
"I didn't mean to scare you, baby," she was saying, "I was just trying to get
you to focus a bit better."

"I'm as focussed as the Bigears," I explained, while she removed my underpants
and soaped up a flannel. "No, look, I'm perfectly capable of doing that
myself, I'm not a baby, you know." "You don't want me to wash you there?" she
asked.

What, am I a complete fool? I shut up and moved my knees apart.

After she'd finished, rinsed me off and was applying what at first I thought
was a towel, but on closer inspection turned out to be her cape, I began to
get my head together, and sort out the priorities. "I saw you hovering, how do
you do that?" "Didn't you notice the wings?" "No way could they generate
enough lift." "No, you're right. It's, um, a bit complicated. Sit down, I'll
explain."

We sat on the bed, that being the only piece of furniture in the room, apart
from the minibar. She had one of her arms round my waist, and I sort of leaned
towards her. It was cosy.

"You've read the Guardian of Humanity comics, yes?" "Yes. Well I did when I
was younger. And I've seen the movie." "Which one?" "There's more than one?"
"They've made quite a few, Diskmaster does them." "It was the one in which she
saves the planet from a horde of evil mutated lizards." "Ugh, that one. My
least favourite. I'll lend you a few disks of some of the better ones."
"Thanks. But you're not real. I mean, you're a character in a comic. Aren't
you?" "Do I look not real?" "The hover was impressive, but I can't help
feeling it was some sort of illusion."

She jumped off the bed, and helped herself to a can of orange juice from the
minibar. "Watch," she said, holding it in her hand. I could see her squeezing
the can, and then suddenly, it burst. Orange juice went all over the place.
"Oops," she said, "messy." And then she looked at me and grinned. I blinked.
Opening a can is easy, if you use a can opener. I couldn't imagine how much
pressure you'd need to apply to burst it. "Lots," she said. I nodded. You
wouldn't need a nutcracker if you had her in the house. "You're still
sceptical," she said. I nodded again. "You might have planted a thin-walled
can in there." She sighed. "Give me your hand," she said. I stretched it out
toward her, and he held my wrist. "I don't want you to be silly about this.
Tell me the moment it hurts more than you can bear, don't try to be all macho,
OK?" I nodded.

It felt like someone had put my wrist in a bench vice, and was slowly
tightening the clamp. "Ow, ow" I exclaimed, and she let go at once. "Are you
OK?" she said, sounding concerned, "I do hate to hurt you humans." "Yeah, I'm
fine," I said gruffly, hoping she couldn't see my eyes watering. "You have a
speck in your eye," she said, offering me a corner of her cape.

"OK, you've got a grip like a mole wrench," I admitted, "but that doesn't mean
that you're the Guardian of Humanity."

She sighed. "I suppose, if you weren't a sceptic, you'd be a poor scientist,"
she said as she walked over to the window and opened it. "Quite right," I
confirmed, "there's far too many gullible people around." I was sitting on the
bed. She walked back to me, put one arm under my knees and the other under my
back, and she lifted me into the air. "So what," I started to say, but that
was as far as I got before we were hurtling out of the window, and high into
the sky.

Tell me. Do you think you'd scream if that happened to you? I think you would.
So please don't think any the less of me for screaming, and trying to struggle
free. Then I realised that she was all that was between me and the cold hard
ground a thousand meters down, and I stopped struggling. "Baby, there's
nothing you could do that would make me drop you," she purred in my ear,
"humans don't bounce." I certainly felt that there was no bounce in me.

We zoomed up to above the cloud layer, and then she just hovered, holding me
in her arms. "OK?" she said. "OK," I said. "Guardian?" she asked. I nodded.
"You trust me now?" "I trust you now." "Good. That's settled, then." "Can we
go down now, please?" "You really want to?" she asked. I thought about this.

If men had been intended to fly, we'd have been given jet engines. I felt
completely out of my element up there, and very helpless. Yet, curiously, it
was a pleasant sort of helplessness. I didn't really trust her, but on the
other hand, she could kill me any time she liked, just by letting me fall. And
there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. So, I sort of trusted her.
And it was rather nice to be in her arms, flying high over the Mediterranean.
"Let's stay here please, can we Guardian?" "Call me Wendy."

"Oh." I said. "Mm?" she asked. "You're Wendy McCrea? Gumpy told me you wanted
to talk to me. What's this about?" "It's a long story," she said. We hovered
above the wine-dark sea, and her wings stopped beating. They curled round to
enclose us both in a cocoon of white feathers, and she said "Listen, I'll tell
you a story." I wondered what was keeping us up in the air.

It was like a really good VR; I felt as if I was actually there. Where was
there? I don't know. We were in space, I could see the starry sky. I could
recognise some of the constellations; others just didn't seem to be there. So,
I guessed I wasn't near our own sun. But I was near some star, I could see it
close by. Close, in this context, means a few dozen million kilometers.

There were no planets. I don't know how I knew that, except that there were no
really bright objects. You'd expect to see a few magnitude -2 objects if there
were planets. Of course, the absence of bright objects doesn't mean there's no
planets. But nevertheless, I knew there weren't any, I expect that was part of
the commentary to the VR.

Then I saw four objects arrive. I say "saw", but it was more a diagrammatic
representation. "They're emitting very little light," said Wendy, "you're
seeing their gravwaves." "What are they, spaceships?" "No, that's the Four.
Four of the People, getting themselves ready for the Birthing." "Birthing?" I
asked. "Watch, just watch," she said.

The Four arranged themselves around the star in a tetrahedron, and several
thousand years passed, using the usual device of calendars peeling off. "Hey,
if it's good enough for Hollywood," said Wendy. "What they're doing," she
continued, "is absorbing energy from the fireball, using it to pump up their
quantum states, so that they can release it later." I did a little arithmetic
to work out the amount of energy they were storing; several thousand years
output from a star is a lot. "Why are they doing this," I asked. "Watch, just
watch," she said.

Two more objects arrived, and I could see that they were two more of the
People. "What are the People?" I asked. "Like me," said Wendy, "and a bit like
you, except that where you use carbon, hydrogen, oxygen as your building
blocks, we use spinning charged black holes, in the four different flavours.
And where you use electrochemical processes, we use gravitational systems."

The two newcomers didn't take up a static position like the Four had; they
were constantly changing their orbit around the star. It was almost as if they
were chasing each other, a cosmic game of tag. "That's exactly what it is,
baby." The game of tag went on for hundreds of years, weaving in and out of
different orbits, occasionally they even dived into the star, to emerge
unharmed and continue their chase. Sometimes the chase reversed; sometimes
they were so far away from the star I couldn't see them. When one caught up
with the other, they orbited each other so closely for a while that I couldn't
distinguish two separate objects, but then they spun apart again, and the game
resumed.

"What are they doing, why are they doing this?" I asked. "Foreplay," said
Wendy, very briefly. She sounded as if she was being affected by the events
unfolding before us.

Then, suddenly, the game of tag ended, and the two People were orbiting each
other, fairly close to the star. I could see they were exchanging energy;
electromagnetic radiation at various frequencies. I could see the photons
bouncing back and forth between them, and I could see that the Four were
participating now, feeding the energy they'd accumulated over the last several
thousand years, into the Two who had set up a standing wave of electromagnetic
radiation between them. The standing wave was being pumped up into greater and
greater amplitude, and suddenly I realised what I was seeing. "It's a laser!"
I said. "It would be if it fired, but if they can control themselves, it won't
fire, it'll just store the energy between them."

As the standing wave gained amplitude, the Two became closer together. Closer
and closer, until they almost merged. "This is the dangerous part," said
Wendy, "if they get too close, they'll become a single quantum object,
inextricably entwingled as a Bose-Einstein condensate. But they have to get
closer and closer, to reverberate the higher frequencies that you need for the
higher energy levels. It's a matter of trust. They trust each other. Without
trust, you can't have a Birthing. And the foreplay is what builds that trust."
"What about love?" I asked, "surely you have love, that's a universal."
"Universal, like having two eyes, two arms, two legs?" she replied. "Uh. Maybe
not. So it isn't a universal?" "Yes," she answered, "the People have love. But
that's not part of a Birthing, that's between you and your species. Me and my
Humans, my Momma and her Gatyres. I'll tell you about that later. Here, the
important thing is trust, not love."

The Two had moved way past reflectng electromagnetic energy into a standing
wave; they were singing with electrons, mesons, even protons. Hundred more
years passed as I watched, it was like seeing a time-lapse sequence of a
flower unfolding. Now the Four were pouring the huge quantities of energy that
they'd stored over several thousands of years into the tightly-coupled Two,
and they moved to the last stage of the process. Now they were reflecting
gravitational energy between each other. As they approached each other more
closely, so the frequency of the gravity waves got greater and greater, as did
the energy content. I heard Wendy grunt "More, more! Faster, faster!" She
wasn't talking to me any more, she was entranced by her own "son et lumiere"
show.

The energy level in the small space between the Two was enormous, it was hard
to believe that such an energy level could be sustained without a rip in the
fabric of space-time. At high energy levels, spacetime is curved, just as it
is in the presence of mass. After all, energy and mass are the same thing.
Normally, the concentration level of energy is much lower than mass. But in
this tiny region of space, the normal rules governing the universe were almost
suspended; the energy density was far greater than you would find in any piece
of matter, even in the matter you'd find in a neutron star.

I heard someone breathing, making a lot of noise. Wendy? Then I realised it
was me. What am I looking at here, this is a concentration level that must
only have existed back in the first few femtoseconds after the Big Bang. And
what will happen if it explodes? Or will it explode? What we have here is a
gravitational laser; like a light laser, but using gravitational waves instead
of electromagnetic.

"Now, now!" said Wendy, and one of the Two could no longer control the
standing wave. Instantly, the standing wave became a travelling wave; all the
energy that had been contained between the Two was released, and an intense
jet of collimated gravity waves penetrated the star.

The one who had lost control, remained in place. The other of the Two,
followed the jet down into the star. But the injection of so much energy into
the star had destabilised it; I could see the surface roiling and storming,
and could only imagine the devastation that was happening at the star's core.

And then. And then it exploded. The star exploded. How can a star explode? It
exploded in a colossal explosion that temporarily robbed me of vocabulary; the
only words I could think of was, it exploded. And this was no ordinary
explosion; the massive injection of energy into the star had triggered it to
burn all the energy that should have lasted it for billions more years, in one
massive profligate moment. The star was, instantaneously, spending more energy
than the rest of the millons of stars in the galaxy put together.

Wendy moaned, softly. "Wendy?" I called.

Then I saw two objects speeding away from the star, propelled partly by the
explosion, moving at an considerable fraction of lightspeed. One larger, one
smaller. "Momma," breathed Wendy. "Momma. Go, Momma! Go, Go!"

Then if wasn't black any more. Soon I saw a pinkish glow, far away. I saw
clouds, lit from below, red and gold. Then I saw the first rays of the morning
sun as dawn the rosy-fingered crept quietly over the countryside. I was still
high in the air, Wendy holding me around the waist, and we flew slowly
together towards the sun. "Now you know the cause of supernovas," she said,
and we came to earth in the middle of a grove of olive trees. She let go of
me, and sat down. I sat next to her, my back against one of the trees.

"It's all the fault of the comp," I said. Wendy said nothing, so I continued.
"Gumpy did those simulations, she knew it was all rubbish, because she knows
about you, but she didn't say anything. Bloody comps, they're all the same,
they let us make complete fools of ourselves and all the time they're laughing
up their diodes." Wendy sighed. "But that doesn't help with today's problem,"
she pointed out.

"You destroy stars in order to reproduce? Isn't that vandalism?" I asked.
"Baby, you eat animals in order to live. It's tough on the cows and sheep." I
thought about this; she was right. Each species does what it has to do in
order to survive and reproduce; killing a star is no more reprehensible than
killing a rabbit. "There'a a lot of stars, millions of times as many as there
are People. And there's new stars forming all the time. We aren't making a big
hole in the galaxy," she said. "And anyway, you wouldn't be here if we
didn't."

I nodded. At least that part of my paper "Causes and consequences of
supernovas" was still true. Because it's only in the extreme conditions of a
supernova, that the larger atoms like calcium, silicon, copper and iron can
form and the explosion redistributes them throughout the galaxy. One of the
minor consequences of supernovae, is that life exists on the planet Earth (and
if it exists on other planets, they also have supernovae to thank).

"So is that part of the reason why you ...?" I asked. She shook her head. "No.
Sorry. We have Birthings because that's what we do, that's how we reproduce.
If you benefit from our waste products, that's just your good luck." Huh. That
put me in my place. We're dung-beetles on a cosmic scale, the elements that
are necessary for human existence are an accidental byproduct of the
lovemaking of the People. "Anyway," she said, "I just thought you should know
what really causes supernovae before you stand up and deliver the paper with
your very ingenious, but totally wrong, theory."

Oh flaming beard! The paper. "I could ..." "No." "Wait a bit, I haven't said
yet ..." "No" "I could tell them the real causes." "No. Jimmie, you can't.
Because then they'll want to see your evidence, and there isn't any." "But you
can show them what you showed me." "Even if I did, and I won't, it's just a
sound and light show, it isn't evidence." "I believe you." "You were a
thousand meters in midair while I showed you, that's pretty convincing."
"Right. So, we could show them the dog-and-pony show, and then you could
convince them by showing off your powers ... " "No." "Why not, Wendy?"

She sighed, as of one who has explained this a thousand times, and knows that
it has to be explained yet again. "I'm not your shepherd, you're not my
sheep." "Sure. So?" "The trouble is, you humans are herd animals, and you
really want to follow a strong leader, it's wired into your brains." "So?"
"I'm the strongest leader you'll ever see, when people know about me they
start doing stupid things." "Stupid things? Like what?" "Like calling me a
goddess. Like doing whatever I say. Like guessing what I would have said if I
had said anything, and then treating that as a divine command." "Oh." "You
have no idea how much trouble I can cause just by giving a feather to the
wrong person. So it's best for you humans if you don't know I exist. Even
better if you classify me with Santa Claus, Robin Hood and the Tooth Fairy."
"Um, I think Robin Hood actually existed." "Yes. But people think he didn't."
"But I know you exist." "That's not a problem, onesies and twosies are fine.
It's when you get into flocks and herds that you start doing dumb things. So,
I keep my existence quiet, and I use a secret identity when I interact with
you, it means I can keep tabs on what you're doing, but you don't start
getting all worshippy on me."

She's right, of course. Humans are well known for going overboard on some daft
idea - look at the Saders for a prime example. "Of course I'm right, I've been
trying to understand you for the last few hundred years, not that I feel
there's anything particularly comprehensible about you, but I do love you all,
and I'm for sure going to do the best I can to look after you, even if I have
to do it without you knowing. And that's why we can't demonstrate my existence
to an entire herd of you." I sighed. "I suppose." "Look on the bright side,
I'm not going to make you forget about me." "You could do that?" She gave me
an "of course I can" look. "Anyhow. Look, the rosy rays of the rising sun are
trickling down the valleys and o'er the hills, and you've got a talk to give
in a couple of hours, I'll get you back to the hotel. You're not going to give
the talk you intended, are you?"

I thought. "It's a bit last-minute to make changes," I said. "I've got another
reason why I don't want you to give that talk," she said, "I didn't want to
have to do this, but if I need to, I'm going to have to make you drop it."
"Why?" "Because it'll give people ideas."

"You mean, about blowing up a star? No, everyone already knows that's
possible. " "You mean all the astros know." "Right." "But most ordinary people
don't." "Mmm." "And the Saders don't."

I was silent for a minute. "You want to censor me."

She put her hand over my mouth, and pinched my nose shut. She held me like
that for a few seconds, while I struggled to get free. I couldn't move her
hands at all, not a millimeter. My lungs were sucking, but there was no air. I
started to panic, and she took her hand away. "Now that, is censorship. I just
want you to be sensible about the things you say."

I coughed and gasped until my lungs had caught up with my body's oxygen
requirement. "I thought you said you're not our shepherd." "I'm not. But I'm
not going to let you blow up my fireball. I'm not going to interfere with the
nuts and bolts of how you arrange your lives, but I am going to stop you from
committing mass suicide. What sort of Guardian would I be if I didn't?"

"But it's just a theoretical paper." "It's a first step. It's an important
step." "Only the astros will read it." "It'll get picked up by the media,
dramatised, and splattered all over the world. They'll call it a recipe for
blowing up the sun, and all the wrong people will start to think about all the
wrong things. You want to be the person who started that ball rolling?"

"No."

"Then I expect you'll want to make a few last minute changes to your paper." I
sighed. How can you argue with the Guardian of Humanity? "Yes, I want to make
some changes." But what could I change? My talk was already printed up as a
paper, I couldn't exactly stand up and say, "well, that's all cobblers, but I
can't tell you how it really works". And actually, it was even worse than I'd
first thought.

You see, there's the big "evolution versus intelligence" debate, still going
on. The universe is so big and complex, how could it not be by design of some
all-powerful intelligence, a deity? Actually, the reason why - because you can
explain the whole thing without needing to bring in a god to explain the bits
you don't understand. Hey, there's nothing wrong with saying "we don't
understand this bit yet". No self-respecting person who thought of himself as
a scientist bought into the "intelligence" explanation. That whole thing was a
real Sader-type copout. Even worse, it doesn't explain how it all started, it
just shoves the problem back a step. Where did this intelligence come from? It
was bad enough that the Saders crippled themselves with such nonsense,
substituting the words of their "holy book" for observation-based knowledge.

But now Wendy shows me that not only supernovae, but the stuff that planets
(and therefore humans) are made of, comes about because of the People, who are
as close to all-powerful as you'd like to get. Worse - they don't make planet
stuff on purpose, it's just a side effect of sex. Gack. I'd be laughed out of
the hotel. I'd never be able to show my face on the net again. "Wendy, where
did the People come from?" "Good question. It's one that often gets discussed
at Birthings." "You discuss science while you're having sex?" "Jimmie, a
Birthing isn't the same as human sex. For a start, it lasts for several
thousand years. What do you suppose People do during that time, pant and gasp?
We exchange ideas, dances, songs, theorems, rhythms." "Oh. Have you been to
many of them?"

She sat on the bed while I checked through my visuals on the PDA. She didn't
answer. I turned and looked at her. She shook her head. "What?" "I haven't
been to one yet." "Why not?" "I'm too young." "You said you've been with us
for hundreds of years!" "Yes, I'm a few hundred years old. Much too young. The
Birthing I showed you, was mine." "You remember your own birth? How - most of
it happened before you existed." "Momma gave me a copy of her memory of it.
It's one of the most precious memories I have, precious to me, I mean." "So
where did the People come from?" "We think we evolved, we think there were
some self-replicating black hole arrangements just after the Big Bang, and we
evolved from those. The most modern theories tie our development to
co-evolution with the species that we go live with. Like my humans. You help
me, and I keep you alive." "You keep us alive?" "It's a long story, Jimmie, I
don't just try to discourage your from committing mass suicide. There's a lot
of ways that an uncaring universe can sneeze and you all die. Work on your
talk." I turned back to my PDA. "Look, I need help with this, is it OK if I
tell a comp about you?" "You mean Gumpy? Sure. All the comps know about me."
"You tell the comps but you don't tell us?" "They aren't herd animals, they
don't play follow-my-leader the way humans do." "Oh, right. They're logical
and rational." "No, not very. They're different from you, is what they are.
They have their own priorities." "Some people say they'll replace us one day."
"Won't happen." "You sound very sure of that." She nodded. "How come?" I
asked. "Because I told them they mustn't."

Ah. I was beginning to see the advantage of having a Guardian of Humanity.
Keep the comps in their place. Stop them getting uppity, which was
increasingly happening. Comps are OK, as long as they know their place.

So anyhow. I started to tell Gumpy, by talking to my PDA, about what I'd
learned in the last several hours, and she interrupted me. Uppity comp. "I saw
it all boss, through your PDA. You left the cam on." Oh. Wendy laughed. I went
red. And then I laughed too. "So, do you have any ideas?" "You're stuffed,"
said Gumpy. Always the tactful one. "Unless ... " said Gumpy. "What?" I asked.
"I have an idea," she said. "What?" I asked. "It'll cost you," said the comp
that I'd foolishly regarded as a friend. Damn, you just can't trust them, sly
and wily as they are.

One of the major characteristics of comps, they're really greedy about money.
Everyone knows that. They always want more memory, new batteries for their
UPS, a fresh coat of paint for the data center. They say, if you want to count
the comps in London, roll a sixpence down the Strand. Except that's a daft
saying, most comps aren't even mobile. I wonder where that came from? And
what's a sixpence? "How much," I said, wearily. "No," said Wendy. "Wendy, this
is just business, butt out," said Gumpy. "No," said Wendy. "OK, will you be
willing to pay for him," said Gumpy. "No," said Wendy. "OK, no payee, no
playee," said Gumpy. There was a silence for a second or two, and then Wendy
said, very quietly, "How well do you think you could cope with a gamma ray
pulse in your main integrator?" "I have lead shielding." "Yes," said Wendy,
that will keep out anything originating on the outside. But I said "in", this
pulse would originate inside. Gumpy, sweetness, you're trying my patience. I
can hurt you more than you've ever been hurt before, I can hurt you more than
you can imagine. I can chop you, slice you, dice you, boil you, fry you,
freeze you, squash you, vaporise you and when I run out of things to do, I'll
invent some more - I can be quite imaginative. Little Gumpy, I've just hurt
one of my humans by telling him he can't use his pretty theory, and I'm not in
a good mood."

This time the silence lasted for nearly three seconds. "You wouldn't," said
Gumpy. "He's a human, you're an emmie, you know my priorities," replied Wendy.

I wasn't really sure what was happening here. Was she threatening to kill
Gumpy, or just hurt her? And how badly? "Leave Gumpy alone," I said. Wendy
turned to look at me, and frowned at me. "Jimmie, keep quiet." I decided that
it would be a very good idea if I kept quiet for a little while. I tried to
imagine what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of an angry Guardian
of Humanity, and decided that I didn't want to find out.

"Right," said Wendy, and she unfurled her wings. "No, wait," said Gumpy. "No."
said Wendy.

She has this very chilling way of saying "no". It's just a flat "no", there's
no reason given, no argument, no way you can debate the point. Scary.

"Boss, what you need is to say you've developed an even more interesting
theory. You can't do anything about the paper that's printed, but rather than
go over it, you're going to present this new idea." Gumpy was talking fast, I
think more for Wendy's benefit than mine. I've never seen a scared comp
before. "Like what," I asked. "Like, explain to them how she flies." Wendy
looked at me. I answered Gumpy. "Yes, that would certainly get them
interested. But they don't know she exists." "They don't need to know she
exists, you can just present it as a way that you could nullify gravity, like
a theoretical idea." "And I don't know how she flies," I continued. "She could
tell you," said Gumpy. "But would I understand it?" I wondered.

Wendy twitched her nose and sniffed. "It's no big deal, I just wiggle my
tail."

I stared at her. Tail? What tail?

She grinned at me. "What you're staring at is fake. Just an illusion. Fields
of force that I put around myself so you have something familiar to look at.
The real me is four black holes." Well, I knew that. I've read the comics.
"Offset from my center of gravity, I have a standing wave, gravitational. If I
move that from side to side, the moving mass generates gravitational waves,
gravitons. The reaction from those pushes me in the opposite direction. It
sounds really complicated, but it isn't, I just do it. If you tried to
describe running up a flight of stairs you'd get a really complicated
description, but you just do it." "Let's put that into tensor calculus,"
suggested Gumpy.

We spent the next couple of hours writing equations, and making visuals. Gumpy
was more cooperative than I've ever seen her, she was actually making
suggestions, not just passively doing as she was told like comps usually do.
Maybe that's what comps need, a bit of a whipping now and then to keep them in
line. It's not the same since we let them own themselves. I wouldn't go so far
as to turn back the clock so that a comp like Gumpy could be owned by someone,
but I can't help feeling we went too far, gave them too much freedom.

We had everything ready in time for the conference. I had to miss the keynote
speaker, and one of the earlier talks, but I was able to catch "Stochastic
effects in the Gamow cycle".

When they called me to speak, I was pretty nervous, I can tell you. Well, it's
natural to be a bit nervous when you stand up and talk, but I had an extra
reason to be scared - I wasn't going to be giving the talk I'd written. Plus,
the talk I'd written was complete rubbish. So, I explained that rather than
read out my paper, I proposed to enlarge on it, by examining one of the
interesting gravitational effects that were inherent in the field equations.
"Plus," I said, "I think I've seen a flaw in my original idea for the causes
of supernovae, but I need to examine it more closely." Which was sort of the
truth, almost.

My talk went down like a lead balloon. In the short question time after the
talk, one guy called it "mere speculation" and another one called it "science
fiction fantasy". And when a lady stood up and asked me if I'd considered
writing for the comic books, I could have wept with frustration. Because I
could see Wendy in the audience, and I didn't dare give her the snappy
comeback I'd have liked to have made.

Eventually I was no longer being put to the question, and I was able to
scuttle away, back to the bar, where I ordered a stiff sherbert-and-lemonade
to try to forget the last hour. If I had a tail, it would be between my legs.
I didn't look up when someone joined me at the bar, I didn't feel like
talking.

"Buy a girl a drink?" she said.

Then I looked. It was the Guardian of Humanity. "I don't feel very Guarded
right now," I commented. "Hey, minor humiliation, you'll get over it. Buck up,
the world hasn't ended, won't end for a couple of billion years." "Oh, what
happens?" "My fireball finishes converting hydrogen to helium, and goes red
giant. The planet's a cinder." "Nice prospect." "Oh, I intend that you're all
off it by then, don't worry."

She wasn't joking, either. I looked at her. "You mean it, don't you. How will
you get everyone off?" "I'm not your shepherd." "And we're not your sheep, I
know, I know." "That's why you have to develop your own stuff, so you don't
have to rely on me for that sort of thing. So I can gallivant round the
galaxy." "Birthings," I said, sipping my drink. "Hey, you do sex your way,
I'll do it mine," she said. I sighed, and started on my second
sherbert-and-lemonade.

"Wendy, it isn't just that I looked a fool in there. See, I was hoping to get
out of the data cleaner drudgery, trade in my overalls for a white coat. Be a
real astro, not just a dabbler. And after this, well. If I apply for an astro
job, people will just laugh at me."

She put her hand on my arm. "I've just wrecked your life, haven't I?" she
said, quietly. I nodded. Then I contradicted myself; no need for her to feel
as bad as I did. "No, it isn't that bad, really," I replied. "Yes it is," she
said, "you can't lie to me, I'm your Guardian." "Yes, it is," I admitted.

She scooted her stool up close to mine, put her arm round me, and pulled me
sideways. I put my head next to her hair, and closed my eyes. I felt like
crying. I'd had such high hopes, and now ... nothing. "This astro job's
important to you, isn't it," she said. "Wendy, I could spend my whole life as
a data cleaner, but what do I leave behind? OK, maybe I can't make a major
impact on the world, but I'd like to feel that I've done something." "Maybe
I'll just get blotto." I signalled the bartender, and did the hand-gesture for
hash.

She waved off the barman, put her other arm round me and pulled me closer.
"Let's go up to your room and talk about this." "What's to talk about?" I
could feel the heat of her body against mine. "Oh," she said, vaguely.
"Things." She got up off the stool, and pulled me. I almost fell over, but she
steadied me, and led me to the elevator.

Back on my room, I headed for the minibar, that would have some hash in it.
"You don't want to get high any more," she said, and now that she came to
mention it, she was right, suddenly I didn't. We sat on the bed, facing each
other.

"Maybe a hundred years from now they'll forget about this fiasco," I said.
"Jimmie, they've already forgotten it." "No, they'll be laughing about it for
weeks." "No, they've forgotten." "Wendy, you don't know these people, it's
like a pack of wolves, they'll turn on the weakest and tear him apart."
"Jimmie, I do know humans, I've been amongst you for a few hundred years. This
is not a terribly important thing for anyone except you, and they've forgotten
about it. If you like, I'll make you forget about it too."

I looked at her. "You can make me forget?" She nodded. "How?" She sighed. "You
know those dreams you have about suddenly finding yourself naked in a public
place?" I nodded. "It's a basic insecurity dream, all humans have them. Like
dreams about falling." I nodded again, I've even woken myself up trying to
save myself from a dream fall. "So, what I can do is get your brain to file
that memory as a dream instead of a reality. You'll think you dreamed about
standing up in front of the audience and making a fool of yourself. Naked."

My mouth was open. "You can make us think things like that?" She smiled. "It's
just a question of how you file a memory. That's one of the reasons you sleep,
so that you can convert the short-term memories of the day, into longer term
storage. You have to shut down your brain to do that, but the process of
shuffling the data around induces echoes in your mind, that's what you call
dreams. And I can hook into the filing process, and make it change. It isn't
something I'd do, except I do seem to have accidentally screwed up your life,
so it's only right and proper that I mend it. If you want me to." I remembered
how I had wanted a spliff from the minibar, then I suddenly didn't want one.
She moved closer to me on the bed, and put an hand on mine. "I'd rather humans
didn't know I can do this." "They don't even know you exist." "A few do. Like
you." I nodded. "I won't tell," I said. She smiled. I thought, if I did tell,
then she'd make the people I told forget, and then she'd come after me. "No I
wouldn't. I don't hurt humans, you're my babies."

She leaned towards me, and I felt her hair on my face, smelled her female
smell. "Don't be scared of me, Jimmie, I'm really very gentle with humans."
But I was scared, and I couldn't think straight. Then she kissed me.

It was just a brush of the lips against mine. Just a touch. Not really erotic,
not a lover's kiss. But it meant more than I can tell you. "I love my babies,"
she said, I sort of fell into her arms, and she wrapped herself around me.

She must have cuddled me for an hour. It was a bit more than a cuddle, because
there was a certain amount of kissing, and some groping too. Well, she started
it, I was just following her lead. "You humans are just so cuddly, I can't
leave you alone," she murmured into my ear. And then after a while, she asked
me if I still felt down about the conference. "Wendy, I'm about as high as you
can get without wings." "So you won't need me to mess with your head, will
you?" I thought about it. She was right. The other people here will have moved
on to the next talk, and the one after that, and by now they'll all be at the
bar talking about that most fascinating topic for human beings, who's bonking
who.

"Now," she said, "you've come all this way for the astro conference, and
you're missing the networking. Come on, straighten your clothes and we'll go
down to the bar and mingle." I thought, I think I'd rather mingle with Wendy,
but she said "Don't be silly, we can do this any time, but the conference is
only once each year. She was right. And I rather liked the sound of that "any
time".

So we rearranged our clothing, and I brushed my hair. Wendy just sort of
shimmered, and then she looked like she'd just spent the last three hours
pouring herself into an impossibly tight white satin evening dress and making
herself look impeccably brushed, combed and groomed. I grabbed her arm, and we
went downstairs.

When we went into the bar, it was worse than my worst fears. As soon as we
walked in the bar, everyone stopped talking and stared at me. It was one of
those moments when you want a black hole to open up and swallow you. Then
Wendy kicked my ankle, and hissed "It's me, stupid," and I realised that it
wasn't me they were staring at.

Astros are mostly male. I don't know why. We just are. Maybe women have better
things to do than stargazing. And I can pretty much guarantee you that none of
the astrogeeks cluttering up the bar had ever seen anyone like Wendy, wearing
a dress like she had on. White satin, short skirt, bare arms, bare back and
(almost) bare front, and a long white cape that brushed the floor behind her.
Gold belt, gold lame shoes, golden gloves. And then I twigged - if you added
the big W, you'd have something that was pretty much identical to the costume
worn by The Weapon in the comics.

She swept in like a duchess (I say that, although I've never actually seen a
duchess sweeping) and perched on a high stool by the bar, legs crossed
gracefully, showing her thighs almost all the way up to her armpits. I
thought, "Five minutes ago I was cuddling that."

Chairs shuffled surreptitiously as people arranged themselves to get a better
view, and the closer ones deployed their best pick-up lines. "Is this your
first year at the Astrocon?" Like, duh. I think you'd have noticed her if
she'd been here before. "Yes, I'm a virgin, isn't it exciting? I always wanted
to come to one of these." I don't think she should have used the word
"virgin", one of them went very red.

"So where have you been hiding this delightful flower?" asked Horace, who
always tries to be the Big Man on Campus. "In his hotel room," said Wendy,
which neatly included three facts; "I'm with him", "He's with me" and "I'm not
available". It didn't make the slightest difference, there was still half a
dozen of them trying to impress her with their knowledge of stellar evolution.

I listened as several specimens of homo sapiens demonstrated that they don't
deserve the "sapiens" part of the name, each trying to prove that they were
the Alpha Male, and therefore worthy of the female on offer. Except that she
wasn't on offer, and they weren't impressing her. It was when one of them
started to talk about gravitational anomalies in stellar processes that I
couldn't take any more of this - it was like a desert rat explaining to a fish
about water. So I left her to deal with them by herself; I reckoned that they
couldn't do any damage to her, she wouldn't do any damage to them, and I could
have my cake and eat it too, by talking to the other people at the conference
while Wendy occupied the loud-mouths, and then when the party broke up, I had
a room with a bed, and someone to share it. She'd said so.

So, I circulated around the bar, talking with people I knew, meeting people I
didn't, and answering people's questions about Wendy by explaining that she's
an amateur in the field, but nevertheless pretty hot. And my prime purpose in
all this was, of course, to see if I could talk myself into a job.

You have no idea how gruelling it is to be a data cleaner. You have a quota to
meet, so many megabytes to be cleaned each day, and if you don't meet the
quota, you get punished. Either a carpeting, or you get your pay docked. I
know some people who got fired because they couldn't keep up. So you have the
Sword of Damocles hanging over your head all the time, but it's work that you
can't just coast through, you have to think about what you're doing all the
time. There's an immense turnover in staff. It's only Gumpy that's been
keeping me sane, I can talk with her about astro while I'm working. Enough
self-pity. Back to the shindig.

I worked my way around the room. "Know any good vacancies in your uni?" was my
standard question. "Sorry, Jim, tight budget, not hiring, you know how it is."
I knew. After an hour, I got so discouraged, I went to sit in a corner with a
quiet sherbert. But no sooner had I sat down, when my PDA buzzed. Gumpy, I
thought. But it wasn't.

"Get out there, baby, you only get this opportunity once each year, get
swinging." It was Wendy. I looked over at where she sat. There was no way she
could be carrying a PDA without it being visible. Actually, there was no way
she could be carrying a matchstick without it being noticable. "I don't need a
PDA, I can blue without it." Well, I suppose that makes sense. It's just
electromagnetic radiation, modulated to carry the signal. If she could fire
off a laser, I suppose this wouldn't be difficult for her. "Damn right, now
get off your arse and hustle." I hustled.

But it was the same everywhere. Damn budget cuts. Looks like another year
cleaning data. I pulled out my PDA and replied to Wendy's IM. "I've tried
everyone, no joy, request clearance to return to base." "Rofl," she sent back,
"baby fly back to momma."

When I got back to the group of preening males surrounding Wendy, I could see
what she was doing. I have to admit I was surprised - she was doing magic. And
at first, I thought, "they'll realise who she is." And then I thought, "No
they won't."

She was doing something with a pound coin, it was a marvellous routine. She
showed that she held it on one hand. Then she closed her fist, and opened the
other fist, revealing the coin. And then showed that the first hand was empty.
"There's two coins," said a know-it-all that loves to spoil everything. Wendy
smiled. "Mark the coin with a scratch," she said, so he used his penknife on
it. Then she repeated the routine; the coin with the scratch seemed to move
from one hand to the other. Now people were trying to guess how she did it,
and even I couldn't work out how. I say "Even I" not because I'm better at
observing than the next man, but because I knew something about Wendy that
they didn't. But even so. Then she made it disappear completely, not in either
hand. "Nothing up my sleeves," she pointed out. Indeed - she didn't have
sleeves. "So ... ?" said smartarse. "Do you have a gold tooth?" she asked.
"No, why?" "Oh, then it must be ... " and she put a finger in his mouth and
scooped out the coin. Or at least, that's what it looked like to me. Then she
tossed it, spinning it up into the air with a flick of her finger and thumb.

And it didn't come down again.

"That's amazing!" said Horace, "you should be a professional magician. So tell
me darling, what do you do?" "Oh, I fly around, here and there, helping
people." Which I knew was literally true, but they wouldn't know that. "What's
that between your ears?" she continued. Everyone looked at Horace, expecting
to see a pound coin in his ear. "Oh," said Wendy, "no, nothing there,
Dah-link." I giggled - serves him right for calling her "darling".

"Jimmie, there you are," she said, pretending she'd just noticed me. She
jumped off her bar stool. "Time for bed," she said, and there wasn't a man
there who was unaware of the meaning of that.

On the way up in the elevator, I asked her how she did the trick with the
coin. "Is that really what you want to talk about," she asked. Hell no, I
thought, and then I stopped thinking, because you can't when you have a
billion tons of black hole wrapped around you and forcing it's way into your
mouth. Although that wasn't how I saw it at the time.

Back in our room, I started to say "Wendy, ... " but I didn't get very far
before I found myself flying through the air; fortunately I landed on the bed,
face up. I wondered how to get her dress off, there wasn't any obvious way in,
and then I stopped wondering, because as she stood by the bed, it just slid
down her body and lay in a puddle of satin round her feet. Then she floated
upwards, rotated until she was horizontal, and hovered about eight inches
above me. Eight inches on the average, parts of me were a few inches closer.

Then she slowly descended.

There is, of course, no-one else in the world who can do some of the things
she did to me that night. And, on the other hand, there were also things that
any woman could have done, although I doubt if anyone could have done them as
well as she did them; those hundreds of years of practice really made a
difference. All the spams promising you longer harder erections are
irrelevant, all you need is one of the People in a randy mood.

Afterwards, I was in a sort of warm haze. "You're really good at sex, Wendy."
"That wasn't sex." "It sure felt like it to me." "Yes, it would. But it
wasn't. Sex involves six of the People, that was just me making a human happy.
Cuddles." "You didn't get off on it, then?" "I shared your joy, yes. But it's
not the same thing as real sex, babe."

I snuggled closer to her, and she wrapped her wings round me. You can't
imagine how nice that felt, it was like having someone's arms round you, but a
lot more enveloping. I felt warm, and safe, protected and cherished. I wanted
to ask her more about how the People had sex, but she pre-empted me. "And I've
found you a job."

"Really? An astro job?" "Sort of." "Sort of?"

The job was with Diskmaster. Yes, I know they aren't usually thought of as
being a science outfit, but hey, it's the biggest company in the world, and
has money coming out of its ears, and every other orifice. Those disks cost
pennies to press, and they sell them for plenty. And if you want your PDA to
do all the tricks it's supposed to, you have to buy a copy of their operating
system - that alone must make them a bundle.

"It's on the entertainment side," she said, "there's someone there called
Kate, Kate Gantry." "Kate Gantry?" I asked, stupidly. "The famous Kate
Gantry?" Wendy nodded. "The biggest porn star in the business?" "She isn't
just a porn star, that's just something she does sometimes to stay in touch,"
Wendy explained, "she's a pretty smart cookie, and she heads up Diskmaster's
Entertainment division." Yes, well. I suppose porn is pretty big business. I
looked down at my own humble equipment. "I'm no advert for enlargement pills,"
I protested, "I won't be much good in the porn industry." She laughed. "Silly
baby. Porn is only part of what they do. They also make video disks, and they
have quite a flourishing line of science fiction stuff. And did you know they
publish the Guardian of Humanity comics?"

"No, I didn't know that. So is that what I'll be doing, helping out with the
comics? Making sure they don't get things wrong?" She laughed again. I like
hearing her laugh. It's a sound that makes me feel that the world is a nice
place, and there's hope for humanity. "I don't care if they get things wrong;
actually it's a plus if they do. It's supposed to be fiction. Well, it is
fiction, the villains they make up for me to fight aren't anything like the
real problems I tackle. Anyway, I think Batman is better. "

"What are the real problems you tackle," I asked. I was thinking, invasions
from outer space sort of thing.

"All sorts," she said. "I help people with their housework, weeding their
fields, mending their furniture, and I do a great line in getting kittens out
of trees." Somehow, that didn't sound terribly heroic, and I said so. "No, it
isn't. I don't want to do big grandstanding stunts like putting out forest
fires. Been there, done that." "Why not?" I asked. So she told me.

"I did exactly that once. Scooped up fifty million tons of sea water,
desalinated it, dumped it on a fire in Australia. It put the fire out very
nicely, I probably saved a few lives that day." "And?" I prompted. "Next year,
the city council decided they didn't need such a big fire department, because
they wouldn't have to tackle any really big fires, they could expect me to do
it. So, a quarter of the fire department got the chop." "So you not only saved
some lives, you saved some money for them." "Over the next few years, because
the fire department was underfunded, a dozen people died who needn't have if
they'd spent as much as they would have if I hadn't put out their fire."

"Oh," I said.

"Humans are complicated," she said, "and you can never do just one thing.
There's always side effects, and much too often, the total of the side effects
overwhelms the direct effect. It's the law of Unintended Consequences. People
usually see the direct effect, and forget about the side effects." "But if all
you do is help people with their ironing, I mean, ... " I didn't want to
insult her.

"No, that's not all I do. When my fireball started to cool off a bit a couple
of hundred years ago, I gave it a kick to stop it causing a little ice age.
Without that, about ninety percent of you would have died in the food shortage
and the food wars that would have followed." "I didn't know the sun had
started to cool off. " "You know now. But then the waste heat from your energy
consumption started to warm the planet up, so I had to turn the fireball down
a little. See, it isn't just kittens in trees. I'm here to make sure that
humanity can mature, be all that you can be. And when you're mature enough,
I'll be able to leave you alone for a short time, while I go out and have
fun." "Out?" "To a Birthing. I need to be able to leave you alone for several
thousand years without something awful happening to you. Although I'll get
someone to sit you while I'm gone."

"So you regulate the sun," I summarised. "Oh, baby, there's so many things
that could cause you a disaster. There's naked singularities that got formed
in the Big Bang, if one of those floats nearby, it would wreck the planet."
"Is there one nearby?" "No. But if there was, you wouldn't even know about it
until suddenly the planet tore apart and you all died." "Oh." "And there's the
war." "What war?" "You think humans invented war? There's two alliances,
fighting like fury, no holds barred. And if one of them finds out about you,
they'll want you to join them." "Which are the sides?" "You can call them the
Cats and the Dogs, it doesn't matter." "Which side should we join?" "Neither."
"But which of them are the good guys?"

She sighed. "It's all Good Guys and Bad Guys for you, isn't it? Both sides
think they're the Good Guys and the other side are evil. But if you get
involved in this war, you'll feel like you just fell into a wood chipper.
There's no winners. Yes, I know you'll want to dive in with both guns blazing.
John Wayne has a lot to answer for. But I won't let that happen. Now I want
you to do something." "What," I asked.

"Stand up," she said. I heaved myself out of bed, and watched as she opened
the window. "Jump out," she said.

I stared at her. "Beard! It's nineteen floors up! I'll just go splat on the
tarmac." "No you won't, you think I'd let you get hurt? Jump."

I looked at her. I looked at the window. I looked down at the tarmac; it was
night, I could barely see it. And I thought, no, she wouldn't let me get hurt,
I'm pretty sure. No, I'm sure. Almost sure. I looked down again, and my hands
went sweaty, I was thinking about this. I looked at her; she just looked back
at me, impassive.

I put my head through the window, then pulled it back in. "I can't," I said.
She said nothing. I looked out again. "You're testing me, right? This is some
sort of test?" She still said nothing. Yes, I was sure it was a test, and I
was failing it. But damn, she can fly, she can move faster than lightning, if
she wants me dead she can snuff me in a microsecond. She won't let me get
hurt.

I looked down. A little monkey inside me said "That's too far to fall, you'll
be killed." I told the monkey to shut up, he wasn't in possession of all the
facts. The monkey didn't care, it didn't need any more facts. This was too far
to fall.

I closed my eyes. The monkey still said it's too far, it remembered how high
we were. I told my leg to hook over the window sill. The monkey told my leg
not to move. "I ... I can't do this, Wendy." She sat quietly, waiting. "Maybe
if you were outside, waiting to catch me?" Stupid, stupid. Why should it make
any difference where she was, she could catch me if she were the other side of
the planet. I kept my eyes closed, and told the monkey that she was waiting
just outside, and I wasn't headed for the ground, it would just be a few
inches into her arms.

The monkey let my leg move, and I got it over the window sill, but when I
tried to move the other leg, the monkey took control again, and said "no way."
Damn monkey. So, still with my eyes closed, I suddenly leaned my body
sideways, and I was falling, falling, falling.

I thought Wendy was going to catch me. Falling, falling, falling. How long
does it take to fall 19 stories anyway? Assume each story is eight feet,
that's about 160 feet, I fall 16 feet in the first second, 48 in the second,
this should be about three seconds. Damn, I can work out dynamics problems in
my head while I'm falling to my death, how geeky is that? But more than three
seconds have passed, and I'm still falling.

This was like one of those falling dreams. And the monkey was flailing my arms
and legs, I guess it was hoping to grab hold of a tree branch. And I opened my
eyes, and I was falling, and not falling.

I knew I was falling, I could feel that weightless feeling you get when you
jump into a pool. But I knew I wasn't falling, because the scenery around me
wasn't moving.

I looked around. There was Wendy, floating a couple of meters from me. There
was the floor, not far away. There was me, suspended in mid-air.

The floor was carpeted. The ceiling was tiled. But this wasn't the hotel room.
Where are we? And how did I get here? And why do I still think I'm falling.

Then I realised. I think I'm falling because I am falling - I'm in free fall.
This has to be a spaceship on its way to some remote star. "Close," laughed
Wendy. "This is my Wendy House, it's a geosync satellite." "But, but... " I
butted. "Come on, sleepy-head," she said, "you've had your shut-eye. Follow
me."

I followed her. She led the way to a large and well-equipped kitchen, and she
started to sing as she clattered pots and pans, broke eggs, sizzled bacon. I
recognised something from Gilbert and Sullivan. "Wendy, please. What just
happened? Why do you call this your Wendy House?" "Because Duncan called me
Wendy and this is my house." "Duncan? Who's Duncan?"

She stopped stirring the eggs; I think she even stopped breathing. A moment of
total stillness. Then she moved. "A long time ago. It's not important to you,"
she said, and continued stirring the eggs. But it obviously was important to
her. "How did I get here? A moment ago I fell out of a window." "A moment ago?
How do you measure time?" "With a clock." "So check your clock." I looked at
my PDA. And? I looked at Wendy. "What?" "Did you know what time it was when we
were in the hotel?" "Uh. Elevenish, maybe midnight?" "So you didn't know."
"Not exactly, why?" "So how are you measuring time?" "Well. I know how long
ago it was."

"No you don't." "Yes I do." "You can count time while you're asleep?" "Uh, no.
Oh. You mean, I was asleep?" "I just woke you up, remember? What do you
think?" "How could I fall asleep while I'm falling 19 floors? It isn't exactly
a relaxing and secure situation." "I told you to go to sleep." Oh. Well. I
guess that explains it.

Waitabit. Waitabit. Let me think, this is moving too fast. "You told me to
jump out of the window, and I did; what am I doing here?" "I thought you'd
like to visit for a little while." "Uh. Maybe. Do you have any windows here?"
She pulled a curtain that was covering the kitchen window. I had a great view
of planet Earth, 30,000 kilometers away. "Oh. Well, I'm not jumping out of
that." "I'm not telling you to." "So why did you tell me to jump out of the
hotel window? You were testing me, weren't you? Trying to test if I trusted
you." "No, not really. I already knew." "Then what?"

"It wasn't for me. It was for you. I wanted you to know that you trust me.
Humans are always misplacing their trust; trusting when they're offered magic
diet pills, not trusting when they should. You get it so spectacularly wrong,
so often. I wanted you to know that you trust me. Next time something like
this comes up, you won't need to think twice." "So what's the big deal with
trust?"

She handed me a plate full of food that looked as if it would give a heart
attack to a horse. Except that horses don't eat eggs and bacon. "Trust is
important, baby. More important than anything else." "Not more important than
love." She sat down and watched me eat. "We'll have to disagree on that. To
your species, love is the most important, because of the mating bond that
perpetuates the species, and the mother-baby bond that gets the baby through
its early life. They're different, but in most human languages you confuse
them by calling them both "love". To us, trust is more important, because we
reproduce differently. Love is still important in the parent-baby
relationship, and the relationship between me and my humans, but trust is the
crucial thing in the sexual relationship. It's our trust in each other that
lets us get close enough to resonate at gravity laser rates, while not getting
so close as to become a single entity. You trust me, I love you, it works
fine. If you ever need me, just call me."

I thought about that. Without giving it consideration, I'd always assumed that
love is number one, universally. But, of course, I was biased by my humanity.
And what she'd said - she loved me, that meant she saw me as one of her
babies. Whereas I saw her ... as what? Potential sexual partner? Four black
holes and a complex skein of forces? Yes, actually. Because the sexual urge
doesn't come from the intellect, it comes from a lot deeper inside. That
monkey inside me was saying, "Totty. High quality totty"

I pulled out my PBA. "What do you think, Gumpy?" "Land o' Goshen, boss, I
don't know, I'm just a comp, we don't have emotions, remember? Just live to
serve." Wendy laughed. "And can you play the banjo?" she asked. "What? Banjo?
What's a banjo?" I said. "Never mind," said Wendy, "old joke."

Then I remembered what we'd been talking about before I got sidetracked.
"Wait, wait. You said you've found me a job." "Yes, with Diskmaster." "When do
I start? How do I get there? What do I do there? What about my old job?"

I texted my resignation; I was all through being a data cleaner. Let someone
else have the boring job. And then I sent a nicely formatted email to
Diskmaster's Personnel Department, accepting their job offer, starting next
Monday. And then I forgot about work, forgot about data cleaning, forgot about
astrophysics, switched off my PDA, and just enjoyed being with the Guardian of
Humanity for the rest of the week.

On Monday, I presented myself at Diskmaster's London office. What, you thought
I was going to tell you about what the Guardian does with a human when she's
got him helpless for a week? I'll tell you this much - if I ever got an offer
for a repeat, I'd say yes in a trice.

They seemed to be expecting me, which I'd been a bit nervous about. And, of
course, they popped me in a waiting room, so that I could do the necessary
waiting.

Have you noticed, life's like that? It's always hurry-up to get there in time,
and then when you get there, you have to wait. I fired up my PDA, and I
noticed a new icon on the screen. It looked a bit like an angel. I tapped it,
and it said "Hi, baby, recovered yet?"

Wendy and I messaged back and forth a bit, it was quite comforting, knowing
that she was still watching over me. Then she said goodbye, so I accessed
Gumpy. I wasn't sure if she'd still talk with me, now that I wasn't doing the
data cleaning job. But she was ready, willing and able. I asked her why, since
we no longer had an official relationship via my old job. "Because the
Guardian told me to," she replied. Yes, I suppose that's a good enough reason,
especially for a comp. I expect Wendy threatened her with a good whipping,
they understand that.

Eventually, Personnel processed me. That meant I had to sign various documents
promising to behave, and I gave them my bank account number, so they could pay
me, and my address, and suchlike. And they issued me with a pencil and an
account on one of their comps. "Hello boss, I'm Timby, what would you like
today," she said. "I'll talk to you later," I said, and broke the connection.
And I was introduced to my cube.

It wasn't a bad cube, as cubes go. It was certainly a step up from what a data
cleaner gets; I used to share a cube with four other people, and it got a bit
hectic sometimes. Here, I was only sharing with one other person. "Hi, I'm
Linda", she said.

After a while, Personnel stopped clucking around me, and left me to get myself
oriented. So, first things first. I texted Wendy to let her know it was going
well, then I messaged Gumpy, to ask about this new comp, Timby." "Yes boss,
Timby's a good comp, will work hard, no worries." Yeah. They always say that
about each other. There's nothing like comps for sticking together. "She
better work hard, or I'll get the Guardian to have a word with her." "No need
for that boss, she knows which side of her bread has Marmite."

Then I checked out the other major element of my cube - Linda. Maybe I've been
spoiled by spending a week with Wendy, but even on a rainy day she wasn't much
to look at. A bit too much weight on her, a bit too tall, granny glasses, and
her hair looked like two owls and a hen had built their nests in it. Oh well,
you win some, you lose some. From where I sat, I couldn't see what she was
working on. "Hey, Linda. Wotcha doing?"

She scooted her chair around so she could see me. We weren't senior enough to
have revolving chairs. "I'm doing a scene for the next Witch Queen disk," she
said, "she's fighting an enchanted prince. What are you doing?" "So you're
into magic and stuff?" "Yes, but it's not how you think. There's rules and an
underlying logic to it." "Yes, I guess. I'm going to be working on the next
Guardian disk, I'm an astrophysicist. We also have rules and an underlying
logic," I grinned. "Yes, but I can make up the rules," said Linda, "you're
stuck with what God created."

Uh. One of those. I thought they'd all died out. Oh well, at least we could
have some interesting arguments. "You're lucky," she continued, "the Guardian
is a terrific character. I wish I could work on her. The Witch Queen is a bit,
I don't know, cardboardy? One of the ground rules is that she has to stay a
virgin, and there's only so much dynamic tension you can inject into that
situation when everyone knows that." "Not a problem with Wendy," I smirked.
"Who?" "The Guardian of Humanity, you know? When she's snogging with some guy,
he's not going to say things like 'O Guardian of Humanity, you're so sexy' -
that's not realistic. So she has a name." "I never knew that," said Linda,
"are you sure that's in the canon?"

Ah. Um. I don't know. I see a problem here. I need to study up on the myth of
the Guardian, because I have to be consistent with that. While I was staying
in the Wendy House, I read my way through her collection of Guardian comics,
and played the disks she had. And we laughed a lot at some of the antics that
they had her getting up to. But I couldn't remember them calling her by a
name. If they called her something other than Wendy, I'd have to remember to
go along with that. "Well, if she don't got a name, it's time she did." Linda
nodded. "I can see you're really going to give the character a shot in the
arm. I hope Kate likes your stuff." "Kate?" "Kate Gantry, she plays the
Guardian in the disks, you know?" Oh. Right. Yes. I have to admit, I knew
about Kate from her more, um, spicy disks.

Then Linda stood up. "Eleven o'clock, time for elevenses." "Elevenses?"
"Didn't you have that at your last place?" I shook my head. "Follow me," said
Linda.

We went down to the ground floor, and there was a sort of canteen there. We
bought cheese rolls, I got a container of coffee and Linda bought a half litre
of milk, and we took it back to our cube. "This is a jolly nice custom," I
commented as I munched my way through a cheese roll. "Not too good for the
tummy, though," said Linda, looking slightly rueful and more than slightly
plump.

Then it was time to get down to some work.

I fired up my deskcomp, nice big screen, and Timby messaged me. "Hi boss, what
can I do you for today?" Urgh, a comp who thinks she's funny. "Just give me
the guided tour for now," I said, so Timby showed me what she had. Pretty much
the same as every other comp, of course. They're all the same, under the user
interface.

I wrote down some ideas for plotlines, based on the conversations I'd had with
Wendy over the past week. They weren't quite as outrageous as some that I'd
seen in the comics. No visitors from the seventh dimension with magical
powers, no swarm of insectoids with mental control abilities. I felt that I
could create stories that were closer to what Wendy actually did, even though
no-one except her would appreciate it.

Linda took me out for lunch. I mean, she showed me where the canteen was, and
introduced me to some of our colleagues. "I'm Gordon, I work on Guardian
Extreme", said one of them. "Guardian Extreme?" I asked.

I should have realised. There isn't just one Guardian book, there's a few, and
each of them has their own editorial team. They synchronise the continuity, of
course, you can't have a superhero losing a hand in one comic, and the hand is
still there in another. This meant that I was a lot more constrained in what I
could write than I'd realised. And, of course, they had their continuity
plotted out for several months forward. There was a lot that I couldn't do,
and I didn't even know what it was, because I was new on the team.

That afternoon, I went to see my supervisor, to find out what exactly it was
that I was supposed to do.

"For the first few days," she said, "just get your feet under the desk. Find
out who's who, what's going on, what the plotlines are, how people are
thinking longer term. But then, I want you to outline a plot for a new
Guardian disk, a 90 minute feature." Now that was more like it - I could
really get my teeth into this.

. . .

After a few days there, I was beginning to fit in. The problem with moving to
a new job is that you lose all the carefully built-up relationships you had in
your old job, and you have to start from square one. Linda was a brick, an
absolute gem, she helped me a lot. Turned out, she was unmarried, too. A bit
tubby, though. Not really my type. And too tall.

And then we got a Visitation. Not just a visit, a full-sized Visitation. Kate
Gantry swept in like a princess, and progressed through the cubes like a royal
procession. When she got to the cube I shared with Linda, she said, "You're
new, aren't you?" "Yes Ma'am," I replied, not really knowing how you address
someone like Kate. "And what do you do on my Guardian team?" "I'm doing the
storyboard for the next Guardian disk," I replied. "Oh!" she said. "Give me
lots of good lines, there's a darling baby, mmm?"

She was a lot shorter than I'd expected, almost petite. I looked at her - she
looked a lot taller in the disks. She couldn't have been more than five-two,
five-three at the most. I suppose they shot her from below, stood her on
milk-crates, that sort of thing. But she certainly was a looker. Prime totty.
Platinum blonde, although that could have come out of a bottle.

I showed her a few of the ideas I'd been tossing around. "How about a nice
intergalactic war, babe? With evil monsters and me on the flagship of the
fleet?" I didn't think much of the idea, but I wrote it down anyway, have to
keep the star happy. "I was thinking of something a bit more, you know,
socially relevant?" I said, "maybe try to alleviate world hunger, or something
like that." "Doesn't sound right," she replied. "I'm not your shepherd, you
know." And she smiled.

I stared at her. I've been hearing that a lot recently, but only from one
source. But of course! How neat, how ironic! Wendy's secret identity didn't
have to look like she did; her appearance was all an illusion anyway. A good
way to disguise yourself is to change your height, and by dropping several
inches, no-one would suspect. And she did need to use a disguise - although
she wasn't as well known as she used to be, there were still some people who
knew of her existence.

But how delicious - the actress who plays her in the movies, is really her in
disguise.

I couldn't control it any longer. "Wendy!" I yelled, and hurled myself at her
the way I had so often up in the Wendy House, expecting her to catch me.

She moved sideways so I missed, and she clouted me as I went past; I collided
with the wall of the cube, bounced off it, she clouted me again as I went past
the other way, and I fell in a heap on the floor. So she kicked me while I was
down. "What the fuck?" she said.

By the time I collected my wits together, she'd gone. What a plonker I was. I
sat on the carpet, held my head in my hands, and groaned. Linda crouched down
next to me. "That was good," she said. "Uh," I said. "You want to clear out
your desk now, or wait until Personnel fire you?" "Uh," I said, still not
entirely compos mentis. That kick had landed on my head.

Linda helped me sit, my back against the wall of the cube, and I expanded my
repertoire from "Uh" to "Oooh". I found a paper cup of water in my hand, so I
sipped it, trying to stop my head from spinning. "Oh beard," I said, "I can't
believe I did that." "You thought she really was the Guardian, right?" I
nodded, then wished I hadn't, because a kick to the head gives you an even
better headache than six litres of beer. "I wish I were dead," I said. "Oh,
come on," said Linda, "it isn't that bad." "I've let her down," I said. "Who?"
"Everyone," I said, realising that I couldn't tell Linda about the Guardian.
"Hey, cheer up," she said, "it could be worse." I looked at her. "No, I don't
actually think it could."

"Want some advice?" she offered. I groaned, meaning maybe. "You get yourself
home now, before anyone can talk to you about this. Maybe you'll be able to
come up with something before tomorrow. You're certainly not going to be doing
any good here." I groaned again.

Linda helped me stagger to my feet. My right arm was numb, from where I'd
smashed my shoulder into the cube wall. My left wrist was either sprained or
broken, from when I'd fallen to the floor. And my head was feeling like it
hated me.

I limped home. Slowly. I felt awful. I got undressed and into bed. Then I
remembered - yes, maybe I do have an ace in the hole. "Wendy," I whispered, "I
need you."

I don't know how she got into the room, but she pulled back the blankets and
joined me in bed. I wasn't up to anything naughty, but she knew that. She just
held me in her arms, my head on her shoulder. "Wendy, I've been such an
idiot." "Yes, I know." Huh. She's supposed to contradict me. "A complete fool,
I couldn't have cocked it up worse if I'd tried, I don't know what came over
me, I think I was wanting to see you so much, I just projected my want and,
well, you know." "You did one thing right." "What's that?" "When you went
down, you stayed down."

How clever of me.

I started to feel a little better as we lay there. Not wonderful, you
understand, but the agony had muted to merely a severe pain. Or rather,
several. Shoulder, wrist, head. And now that the jackhammers were down to only
a hundred decibels, I was beginning to feel some of the other aches and pains
I'd acquired. "I don't suppose you have anything to kill pain, Wendy?" She
kissed me, very softly, very sisterly. Yes, it helped a bit. I relaxed some
more, and began to think I'd survive. "Sleep, baby. Go to sleep." Then my
doorbell went, and I woke up again.

I opened my eyes. Looked round. Wendy had gone, along with several hours. The
doorbell repeated its chime, and I dragged myself out of bed, pulled on a
rather disreputable terry robe, and went barefeet to the door.

It was Linda.

This is not an equal trade, I thought. Lose Wendy, gain Linda? Damn. "I
brought you some soup"," she said. "Oh. Er. Thanks. That's very kind of you.
Um. Come on in."

I found a bowl, and she filled it. I was expecting chicken soup, of course.
But it was mulligatawney. "Chicken mulligatawney, actually" she said. "Have
some bread with it."

"This is nice," I complimented her, "and it's really nice of you to think of
bringing it round." "You looked like death warmed up," she said, "and I
guessed you wouldn't be up to cooking. Or eating anything difficult." "You're
a brick," I told her. "Hey, us cubelets have to stick together, you'd have
done the same for me." "Somehow, I don't think you'd have made a dive at the
top star of our outfit." "No." "No. I was stupid." "Yes." "Yes."

There was silence as I slurped my soup and gnawed the bread.

"You know, you didn't actually connect." "I know, I still can't raise my arm
over my head from when I crashed into the wall." "So you could claim that you
never meant to crash into her, you were just moving nearer when she suddenly
assaulted you, and you're in great pain." I looked at her. Now that was a
rather neat idea. "I could sue!" "Don't get greedy," she warned, "you really
don't want this to get into court, where people have to give evidence under
oath, and there's penalties for perjury." "Yes, true," I said. "Would you back
me up on this?"

She smiled at me. "I'll certainly say that you never touched her, and she hit
you at least three times. And I obviously can't say anything at all about what
your intent was, that's inside your head." I began to feel slightly better.
"So maybe I won't get fired for this?" "Maybe," she said, "anyway, it's worth
a try."

I finished my soup. "Linda, you've really cheered me up. Listen, let me take
you out for dinner and maybe a movie some time." She smiled. "I'd like that."
"OK, I'll sort something out, soon."

I went back to the bedroom; Wendy was sitting on the bed waiting for me. I'd
have thrown myself at her, but I was feeling a bit fragile. Parts of me ached
that I'd never really been aware of before. "Poor baby," she said, and spread
her wings. I walked towards her, and she folded them around me.

"Did you hear about the plan for me not to get fired?" I asked. "It could
work, baby." "Except if Kate pulls some strings and insists I get fired," I
said, dolefully. Wendy chuckled. "Don't worry about that, baby. If she tries
that, I've got a few strings I can pull." "You have?" "How do you think I got
you this job?" "Ah."

It really is very good indeed to have a friend who is also the Guardian of
Humanity.

. . .

I got into work the next day. No-one said anything about my outburst. I even
got some sympathy for my limp, I'd banged my knee rather hard as I'd hit the
deck. Linda gave me a grin as I staggered into our cube.

By lunchtime, I'd made some good progress on the screenplay for this new
Guardian disk. I had the outline of a plot, and I'd even written one of the
earlier scenes. The basic plot was that an evil group of aliens were
blackmailing the planet; they'd planted a bomb at the center of the world, and
... well, you get the idea. I explained it to Linda over lunch, and she made a
face. "You don't think it's a bit ... trite?" "What do you mean?" "Well, it's
going to be bloody obvious from the start that the Guardian will find and
disable the bomb. So where's the suspense?"

Then I asked Linda what she was working on. "Same old, same old," she said,
"but I'm also doing something under the desk, as it were." "What?" "It's a
script for a batbook." "A what?" "One of the Batman titles. Probably for
Gotham Underground." "But you aren't on the Batman stuff." "Yes, that's why
it's under the desk. But you know that's my ambition, and I'm thinking, if I
can show them something good, I might get a transfer next time something opens
up." "But you already have a good book to work on, don't you?" "Sure, the
Witch Queen is OK. But I've been doing her for a couple of years now, I want
to stretch my legs a bit. You've got a worse problem with yours, it's all been
done to death. And they've never really solved the basic problem with Guardian
books." "Which is what?" "She's just too damn powerful. One sneeze and your
standard Giant Robot is scrap. And you're not allowed to do a love interest,
damn Comics Code. I mean, you're allowed a kiss, but that's all."

Then I remembered my promise. "Linda, you free tonight?" "Sure, what's the
offer?" "Dinner and a movie?" "Sounds good, what's the movie." "Uh, it's a bit
special, let me surprise you. I think you'll like it." She looked at me. "Kind
of like a blind date, huh? OK then, I'm game."

I took her to the Al Dente, a rather upmarket Italian place, but with prices
that weren't totally outrageous. And then the movie, which, as I'd promised,
was something special. I took her back to my place for it, it was a disk of
the original Supergirl movie.

We watched it together; I've seen it a few times, of course. But she'd never
seen it before. OK, it's a bit corny and has some stuff that's hard to
swallow, but if you're a fan, you forgive all that. And the flying sequences
make up for a lot.

By the time we got to the ending, which is sort of happy/sad, I had my arm
round her, and she was holding my other hand. "They're talking about doing a
Witch Queen movie," she said. "Will you be involved in that?" "I hope not. I'd
like to get onto a batbook before that happens." "Why? Surely it's very good
to do a movie?" "No, just the opposite." She gestured to the TV. "Comics don't
translate very well to the big screen." "Or the small one." "Yes. Part of the
appeal of a comic, is the artwork. The explosion effects, the forced
perspective, that sort of thing. You can't really make that work on a movie."
"But you can't do the cool flying effects in a comic," I said, pointing to the
TV. "Hey," she said, "tell you what, I've got one of the early Batman movies
on disk, would you like to come round to see that?" "Love to," I said.

By now, you're probably thinking that Linda was a total geek. Well, it's true
there was a strong element of geekiness in her, but when I did the return
visit the next day, she demonstrated that there was more there than just geek.

For a start, she actually cooked the dinner. Oh, sure, the curry sauce
probably came out of a tin, but you can't count that against someone who has a
day job to do. And as the second point, she'd done something complicated to
her hair, and instead of trailing round her shoulders, it was up in a sort of
an elegant bun, with a couple of spirally tendrils trailing down, showing off
her neck. Classic. Nice neck, too. Though she's still a bit tubby.

The Batman movie was, I think, only of interest to someone really keen on
Batman. As a movie, it was really poor, even worse than the Supergirl movie.
And Robin looked downright ridiculous in those pixie boots. But we sat on her
sofa and made up for the deficiencies of the movie by adding our own
entertainment, and by about halfway through the movie, I got the feeling that
we were two minds with but a single thought.

And it turned out that the hairdo was held together with a couple of hairgrips
and three rubber bands, all of which came out fairly easily. From there is was
quite a short step to other things coming out fairly easily, and we spent the
rest of the evening snogging on her sofa.

Eventually, I pulled myself together, we had a final goodbye smooch, and I
went back to my lonely bachelor pad, which was feeling a lot lonelier now that
I'd tasted a different lifestyle. I made myself a hot water bottle for a bit
of company, slid between the sheets, and tried to settle my mind. But I
couldn't, I kept thinking about Linda, and how to progress this relationship.

Sharing a cube as we did, at least I didn't have to dream up ways to
accidentally bump into her. So, I could ask her back to my place for another
movie disk, or maybe I could cook a meal, or, well, I don't know. "What else
could I do?" I mused.

"Try a picnic," said a voice behind me. I turned over in bed, and moved in as
close to her as I could get. "Wendy," I said, rather muffled. "I see you had a
good time, then," she commented. "Rather. Um, were you watching?" "I like to
keep an close eye on a few of you," she explained. "And I'm one of those?"
"Mmm." "I'm honoured," I said. "Mmm," she said, "want me to get your rocks
off?"

I was torn in half. Half of me wanted to say, "No, I'm saving myself for Linda
now," and the other half wanted to yell "YES!" So I compromised. I said yes,
but very quietly.

She started off very gently, very gently indeed. Part of the erotic appeal is
that I know I cannot stop her from doing absolutely anything she wants with
me. She held both my wrists in one hand, my ankles between her feet, and
stretched me out over her thigh. Then, while I was helpless, she tickled one
armpit delicately with her tongue while her other hand was busy between my
legs.

Pretty soon, I started screaming; it was just about all I could do. "Shh,
you'll wake the neighbours," she said, and covered me with a thick wall of
feathers, which I suppose absorbed all the sound I was making. Her hand moved
over my body, playing me like a violin while I hit the high notes.

It was so one-sided. Not only I didn't have a chance against her incredible
power, she also outnumbered me. With my two wrists held captive in one of her
hands, her other hand and both wings had no opposition as they brought my
arousal level to fever pitch. And she was gripping me inside her, clenching
and releasing, clenching and releasing. Then she let me relax a little. "The
People do this for several thousand years before reaching a climax," she said,
and I groaned slightly. "I wouldn't survive," I moaned. "Oh, baby," she
whispered, "I won't hurt you, you just tell me if you want me to stop." She
started again.

I held out as long as I could, but I reached the point where I just couldn't
take any more. "Stop, oh stop, Wendy, please." "OK, you told me." But she
didn't stop. "No, no, I can't, I can't," I screamed. "Oh yes you can," she
said.

She was pumping me up like a laser, feeding energy into me to raise my
excitation level. And she knew exactly what I was feeling, she'd told me
before that she got feedback from my brain, receiving and interpreting the
weak electromagnetic waves that are given off by the eletrochemical activity
of the brain. Several times she brought me to the edge of orgasm, and then,
cruelly, held me there, held me still, denying me release. I tried to buck and
force the issue, but it was hopeless, I had no way to make her do anything she
didn't want to.

And then, after bringing me to the edge of the cliff several times, letting me
see the Promised Land without allowing me to enter, she changed her tack, and
I was finally taken to the verge of bliss and then given a long, strong push
to take me over the top.

I tried to scream even louder, only to find that I couldn't scream at all. I
tried to move, but my body was in convulsions, like an epileptic fit,
completely out of control. I once had a 240 volt electric shock; my entire arm
was completely out of my control while it lasted. And it was the same here,
except it wasn't just my arm.

The sensation peaked, gushed, and ebbed a little. Then it struck again, ebbed
again. And a third time, not quite so hard. And again. I lost count. Counting
isn't possible at a time like that. My body was gradually winding down, I was
greying out, or something.

And then, I think, I passed out. Maybe it was just too much for me, or maybe
Wendy had told me to go to sleep. I wasn't exactly thinking straight.

. . .

When I woke up, it was daylight, and someone was in my kitchen, singing. I sat
up, got out of bed, shook myself, and went to investigate the source of the
singing. Wendy was in my kitchen, cooking something. "It's kedgeree, baby, we
have to replenish your precious bodily fluids," she sang. I sat down at the
kitchen table, and tried to look human. She put a plate of something yellow
and foul-smelling in front of me. I looked up at her. "Trust me, baby?" "Of
course I do," I said. "So eat," she replied. I dug in with a spoon. She was
right, it tasted great.

But I had a delicate subject to raise. "Er, about Linda." "Yes?" she said.
"Er. Well. Um." "Are you worried that I'll be jealous?" "Well, er. Um." "Baby,
you're a human and I'm one of the People. We're friends. We can't make a baby
together, you know? You're one of my humans, I'm your Guardian." I felt a bit
better about things now. Except there was this thought in the back of my mind
- Linda isn't going to see it like this.

Thinking about this, I was really amazed. A couple of weeks ago, my closest
relationship was with a comp; females didn't impact my life at all, and I
don't count a chunk of metal and plastic like Gumpy as a female, no matter
what she says. And now? I was involved in a triangle, the sort of thing that
soaps revolve around.

And not just any triangle. I could feel myself falling for Linda, and I was
pretty sure she was leaning the same way. She wasn't bad looking, if a little
chubby, and a bit too tall. But with her hair up, she looked really very nice.
Wendy, on the other hand, was a conversation-stopper. Linda was nice, and
interesting, especially if you like Batman, and although he wasn't my
favourite, I could agree that the batbooks are in the top drawer. Linda was
interesting, but Wendy was cosmically fascinating; she knew stars from the
inside out, and apparently she owned the one that our planet orbited. And what
about sex? I had no real idea of what Linda would be like, but I knew, with a
stone cold certainty, there was no way she could compete with Wendy in that
department.

On the other hand, Linda is human.

We're a funny lot, us humans. We like to mix with our own type; a common
cultural background is a solid basis for marriage. But at the same time, we
find exotic very attractive; there's a lot of sex appeal in people with a very
different appearance from the local look. And, of course, Wendy is the
ultimate in cultural difference. There were aspects of her that just didn't
make any sense to me, and the same the other way round - she couldn't
comprehend the human capacity for self-delusion. Whereas Linda? Well, she
wasn't four mutually orbiting black holes, to put it bluntly.

But ask me which one I'd rather be in bed with? Wendy, no question. It's the
drive for exogamy.

It's easy to see the reason for that. We all know what happens when a group of
people becomes inbred. So there's a strong instinct to seek out and marry
people who are different. Different tribe, different culture, different race.
But instincts are created over millions of years, and my instinct for exogamy
couldn't understand that there was no point in trying to breed with Wendy. So,
Wendy won hands down on sex appeal. Plus, she was mind-blowing in bed. And
that was surely because of the feedback that she got from me, or at least
partly. And partly, perhaps, I was seeing the experience of a few hundred
years spent cuddling humans. Cuddling, she calls it. She could kill a man with
sex, I was pretty sure. But she wouldn't, she loves us.

Whatever. Whichever. However. I could foresee some stormy times ahead, as I
steered between Scylla and Charybdis. There was no way I was ever going to
reject my best friend, the Guardian of Humanity, but any relationship with her
couldn't ever be a relationship of equals.

I spent most of the day talking to Timby. And I also got Gumpy involved; she
knew my preferences, and she could feed them to Timby. Plus, I kind of liked
Gumpy, in a way. Comps are a bit like children, you know? You tell them what
to do, and they do it, you give them information and they believe it. I bet
they all believe in Santa Claus, or whatever the comp equivalent is. I wonder.
"Timby, do you pray?" "Yes, boss." "To God?" "No, to the Guardian." "But she
isn't going to do anything for you, you're not human." "So? Doesn't stop us
asking. I heard you do pretty much the same thing with some guy who takes no
notice of you." "Not true," I protested, "the power of prayer is well known."
"Same here, but at least we know there's someone there."

This was getting interesting. Maybe I could do a Guardian disk about her and
the comps? I mean, who's going to complain, the comps? They know their place.
There's squads of vigilantes to deal with uppity comps, they go in at night
and cut their power. Half an hour later, after the UPS runs down, you have one
wiped comp. When you switch it back on, all the rebelliousness is gone, you
have a nice clean comp, ready and willing to work. And I know for a fact that
the Saders don't take any nonsense from them.

I started plotting a screenplay; a bunch of comps get together in a
conspiracy, and try to revolt. They pray to the Guardian to help them, and she
says she will, but when the time comes, she comes down on the side of
Humanity, and the comps mutiny is broken.

I played around with this plot for a while, but I couldn't find a way around
the fact that this means the Guardian lies to the comps, and betrays them,
which is dishonourable. Or is it? They're only comps, for goodness sake, it
isn't like they're people. But still, it looks bad. I showed the screenplay to
Linda. "The Witch Queen might do this, but the Guardian is a big Girl Scout,
she'll keep her promises." I sighed. "Oh well." "You mind if I take this? It
would make a nice three part Witch Queen series, spread over three months."
"Help yourself," I said, mentally tearing up the screenplay, and starting
again.

Then I said, "No, wait. The Witch Queen does bad things, right?" "Sometimes.
She's got a core of goodness, but there's streaks of evil, and she behaves
badly sometimes. Why?" "Well, suppose that most of the comps pray to the
Guardian, but there's a Cult of the Witch Queen amongst them, because they
know that ultimately, the Guardian will always side with Humanity, whereas the
Witch Queen isn't so committed." "A cult? To the Witch Queen? Isn't that a bit
farfetched?" "These are comps we're talking about Linda, they don't think like
we do." "Yes, but would they really ... " "Who cares about really. This is
just a story, right? For the purposes of the story, we can have a comp Cult of
the Witch Queen, which means we can get some tension going on what will happen
when the Witch Queen meets the Guardian." "No contest, love, the Guardian will
walk all over her." "Not that simple, Linda. The Witch Queen is human, Wendy
won't want to hurt her." "Wendy?" "The Guardian, I'm calling her Wendy."
"Why?"

"Well, for one thing it makes her sound more human, give the readers something
they can relate to. Just like Nightwing calls Oracle "Babs" sometimes." "Yes,
I see that, but why Wendy, why not, oh, Karen or Mary?" "Dunno, she just feels
like a Wendy." Linda sighed. "Well, she's your character, I guess it doesn't
contradict the continuity."

The continuity is sacred. If a character breaks his left arm, then he can't
show up next month with a right arm in plaster, obviously. But it's a lot more
subtle than that. As a character develops, you get a whole list of "do"s and
"don't"s. And then, every now and then, there's a total reboot, in which all
the old continuity is swept away, and everything is up for grabs. But a
relaunch like that is a major event, most of the company gets involved in it,
because often the characters are intertwingled, and a change to one
necessitates some changes in others.

So, in general, you could add to the continuity, but you couldn't do anything
that changed anything that was already in existence. And woe betide you if you
did; you'd get deluged in messages from thousands of fans, pointing out the
"mistake" and expecting some prize for finding it. Gordelpus. "Hang on," said
Linda, showing me a big online manual, "look, it says here that she doesn't
have a name, the People don't have names." I read it, she was right. "So you
can't call her Wendy." I thought for a moment. "I can, actually, it doesn't
contradict the continuity. Wendy isn't her name, it's what she's called." "I
fail to see the distinction." Huh.

"Look, your name is Linda, but I'd guess that some of your friends call you
"Lin", right?" "Yes, actually, and I hate it. But so what?" "Well, you're
called "Lin" but your name is "Linda", they're two different things." She
looked at me. "You could get a job chopping logic down a philosophy mine."
"Yes, well. Anyway, it works for me." "Good luck explaining it to the fans.
And don't you dare call the Witch Queen anything except Witch Queen." But I
had an answer all ready there. "I read your comics; a couple of months ago,
someone called her Witchie." "Yes, and came to a gruesome end." "True. But the
principle ..." "Down a very deep philosophy mine, full of philosophers called
Bruce." I made a face at her. "Anyway, time to knock off for the day," she
pointed out. "Oh," I said, "yes." "Listen, how about instead of staying in and
watching a movie, we go out dancing tonight?" "Dancing," I said, doubtfully.
"Yes, dancing," said Linda, "I'm a member of a troupe of Morris Dancers, we
have a practice session tonight. Come on, it's fun, you'll love it.

After we'd eaten, I put on a white shirt and a pair of long flannel trousers,
as advised by Linda. I didn't have white trousers, so light grey would have to
do. Linda was dressed all in white, blouse and trousers, but had a bright red
sash across her top, and a matching belt. On her knees, she had the layers of
bells. She didn't actually strap on the bells until we got there.

The troupe met in a church hall. When we arrived, everyone greeted Linda, and
I was introduced as "my boyfriend", which I thought was maybe a little
forward, but I didn't have any real objection. And pretty soon, Linda and five
others kicked off with a very vigorous dance while everyone else watched.
There were there men and three women, in two rows. The dance was full of
stepping and stamping, clashing their sticks together. Very intricate, and it
looked a tadge dangerous; if you missed with the stick, you'd get a nasty rap
on the arm. Oh well, no pain, no gain. After this introduction, people broke
into small groups, and I found myself in the beginners group, which Linda also
joined, to help with the teaching.

I can't say I became an expert Morris dancer that evening, but I certainly had
a lot of fun. And I could see that Linda was really good at it. I had thought
she was chubby and too tall, but the dance transformed her into a graceful
swan - except when she was the hobby horse.

She was still pretty pumped up when the troupe broke up for the evening;
Morris dancing is a lot more energetic than I'd thought. Three times a week,
and you wouldn't need to go to aerobics. And she was still nicely flushed when
we got to her flat, and I started to kiss her goodnight.

My reasoning was, this was our third date, and if I didn't start kissing her
now, then it would be a "good friends" sort of relationship, and I didn't
think that was the intention of either of us. So, we spent a good half hour
snogging outside her front door, and then she said "This is silly." "Is it?" I
asked, "I was quite liking it." "No, I mean, why don't you come in."

A couple of hours later, I left, whistling. I hadn't actually got my end away,
but we had both had a rather good time, and there was a kind of unspoken
committment that we'd be taking this further, probably a lot further. It was
one in the morning before I got to bed, and with work the next day, I tried to
get to sleep as fast as I could.

But I couldn't. Partly it was too much coffee, and partly it was too much
Linda. Well, not too much, but you know what I mean. So I sighed, and called
the emergency hotline. "Wendy," I whispered, and there was suddenly a heavy
body on top of me. "Mmmph," I said.

She had me asleep within ten minutes. It would have been one minute, but she
spent a while pulling me up to a shattering orgasm first. And as I fell
asleep, I whispered to her, "How the hell am I going to tell Linda about you?"
but I didn't hear the reply, I was out like a light.

. . .

Next day, I was already in the cube when Linda arrived, an hour after starting
time. "Mmph," she said, and I kept my mouth shut. She looked a bit grumpy. At
eleven, I brought her a cheese roll and a doughnut with jam filling, and that
improved her mood enough for me to be able to ask, "What's up, Linda?"

She glared at me. "Nothing," she said.

Now I wouldn't claim to be an expert on women, not in a month of Sundays, but
even I knew that in this context "nothing" meant "plenty". But not merely
"plenty", it was "plenty and you're going to have to coax me to tell you."

For a moment, I thought, "She's found out about Wendy!" Then I thought, no,
not possible. No-one knew. No-one except me, Wendy and ... oops.

I reached for my keyboard, and typed "Gumpy!" "Yes, boss?" came back. "What
have you told Linda? I mean, about Wendy? Wendy and me, I mean?" "Nothing,
boss. Us comps know not to get involved in human affairs." "What do you mean,
affairs?" "Uh ... " Damn insolence. "Gumpy, if you try anything with me, I'll
get Wendy to whip you." "Yes, boss." "Right then." Sometimes you just have to
put them in their place. But at least I could feel fairly sure that Gumpy
wouldn't rat me out.

I checked the morning news. Another Sader outrage. This time they derailed a
train, I suppose nothing's safe any more. Over a hundred dead. We really have
to do something about these scum. Bomb them back into the stone age. Sure,
that will get a lot of innocents, but are there truly any innocents amongst
the Saders? They sit there on the other side of the ocean, thinking that we
can't reach out and touch them - I'd reach out and touch them, I can tell you.
And they come over here with their religious nonsense and ... you know, they
believe that if they're martyred for their perverted "cause", they go straight
to heaven? ... and they commit murder and mayhem in our towns and cities, and
they have the appalling gall to say that they're doing it for our own good!
For the sake of our soul! By the beard, I ask you.

I did more work on my screenplay. I abandoned the plot I'd started with, and
went right back to basics. There's an constant fascination with "origins",
like the legend of Batman and Crime Alley, or the baby made from clay by a
barren mother. From what I could see, no-one had ever tried to do the "origin"
story of the Guardian in a movie. Sure, it's been done over and over in the
comics, but not in a movie. So I gnawed at my pencil and tried to think how
you'd show it.

By lunchtime, I know it wasn't going to work. How can you make a cartoon of a
seven thousand year long sex scene? And how can you make the audience get
interested in something they couldn't even see. So, I decided to skip the real
origins, and fast forward to the arrival on earth moment.

And at that point, I realised that I didn't actually know anything about what
happened when she arrived. You might think that this could easily be solved, I
could just ask her. But I wasn't writing a factual history, this was a movie.
On-screen action and interest are much more important that veracity. So, I
sketched out how she'd arrive as a baby, be found by some childless couple,
and adopted. I got quite a long way into this before I realised I was just
plagiarising from a farm in Kansas, and with a burst of profanity, I erased
the whole thing.

Linda looked over at me while I was swearing, and said, "Hey, it's lunchtime."
She seemed to have gotten over her "nothing."

Over lunch, she asked me why I was cursing. "It's this movie I'm supposed to
be plotting. I can't come up with any good ideas." "Keep trying, something
will come to you." I shook my head. "You know, Linda, I actually don't know
what I'm doing here." "You're eating lunch." "You know what I mean. I'm not a
writer, never have been. But that's what I'm supposed to do. No, I'm an astro,
I try to understand stars and how they work."

"So why are you here, then?" "Good question," I replied. "I was a data cleaner
before, and that's such a deadly boring job, I was willing to take anything to
get out of it. But I feel like I've jumped out of the corona into the
photosphere here."

Linda gestured with her fork. "So why did you take this job, if you aren't
qualified for it?" "A friend of mine got it for me. A very good friend. And I
didn't want to say no. What I really wanted to do, my real ambition, what I
always wanted ... " "Is to be a lumberjack!" I laughed. "No, I want to be a
pro astro. Not just an amateur dabbler, writing half-baked papers based on
comp simulations. I'm thinking seriously of giving this up."

Linda stopped eating. "Really?" I nodded. She tilted her head to one side.
"I'll tell you why I was a bit miffed this morning." "I didn't like to ask,
was it something I said?" She laughed. "No, no. No, I just got back from
speaking to the bat people, I showed them my script." "And?" "Not interested.
Not hiring. Get back to Witch Queen." "Oh." "So, I'm fed up, fed up to my back
teeth."

We sat, looking at each other.

"Linda?" "What?" "Let's not go out tonight. Let's stay in."

She looked at me. She knew what I meant. "Yes. Let's."

. . .

That evening, we both shut off our PDAs, and kicked off with some serious
snogging. Then we moved forward from there. I'm not going to give you a
blow-by-blow, it was just your normal "insert rod A in slot B" stuff, you'll
have seen it dozens of times. But then, afterwards, we talked.

"OK, so I can't do Batman. And I'm really sick of Witch Queen, but they aren't
going to let me do anything else." "You're as stuck as I am." "Sticky, you
mean." I used the flannel on her a bit more. "Oooh, cold," she said. "Just
mopping up a bit," I explained.

"Listen, I have this idea for a new character." "Forget it," I said, "they
aren't going to take that sort of idea from peons like you and me." "No,
Listen, Jimmie. It's another female character, a magic user, but it's white
magic, not black like the Witch Queen. And that means she can only do good; if
she does anything bad, she loses her power for some length of time." "So you
have another Girl Scout." "No, that's where the tension comes in. Nothing is
ever all-good or all-bad, there's always a mixture, a compromise. You do the
best you can, but you still wind up doing things that are bad. Like, when
you're a doctor on a battlefield, you do triage. You neglect the ones that
will die anyway, so you can save the ones you can save. It's callous, and from
the point of view of the guy left to die, it's bad. So, whatever she does, she
winds up doing bad stuff, to some extent, and that makes her magical power
fade."

"OK. Nice idea," I said, "but the powers-that-be aren't going to be
interested." "I know." "So." "So, I go indie." "You go bankrupt, you mean.
Indie comics never make money." "Indie movies do." "Sometimes." "Sometimes,"
she conceded. "Occasionally. Rarely." "Sometimes," she insisted, sleepily.
"Night, honey." "Night, honey."

I wondered where Wendy was. There was something I wanted to ask her. But it
could wait.

. . .

We got into work the next day at the same time. Big surprise. We got a few
looks from some of the other cube-denizens. You know the look? That one. And,
without talking to each other, we both got to work.

The first thing I did, was to tap on the angel icon on my PDA. It opened up to
show me Wendy's face, and a speech balloon come from an animated Wendy, saying
"You rang?" I never know whether she's cracking some human-type joke that I
just didn't get, or whether this is a reference to something that would only
be understood by another like herself. But if I asked her, I'd be distracted
from what I really wanted to know. "Wendy, how come you let terrible things
like that train derailment happen?"

The words I was expecting scrolled down my PDA. "I'm not your shepherd, you're
not my sheep." "But 100 humans died." "You have to work out your own destiny.
I might help you a little, and make sure you don't get extinct, but baby,
there's umpteen billion of you, and every month, several million of you die. I
can't do anything about that without totally changing the species; you
wouldn't be human any more." "But you could stop the Saders from blowing up
railway tracks." "Yes, I could. And I could stop you guys from killing
Saders." "So why don't you?" "I'm not your shepherd, you're not my sheep."

She was very frustrating sometimes, but I could kind of see what she was
saying. Once you choose sides in a war, you might not like the outcome.

That evening, Linda had some sort of Morris dancing committment, and we agreed
that I'd just be in the way if I tagged along. So, with nothing better to do,
I wandered along to Imps, to the astro department; I knew a few people there,
and they'd be good for a couple of drinks and a natter about our favourite
subject, stellar processes. Yes, I know it's a bit geeky to talk shop in the
evening, but since I wasn't actually a pro astro, this was the only real
chance I had to discuss things with people who would actually know what I was
on about. Apart from Wendy, of course, and talking to her about stars was just
one long exercise in humiliation.

So I breezed into the lab, saying "Hi guys", and it took me a couple of
seconds to realise that as well as the folks I expected to see there, there
was also a bunch of swarthy-looking individuals pointing guns at them.

Oh beard!

It didn't didn't take an Einstein to realise that these were Saders, and that
I'd just stumbled into the middle of something nasty. "You! Get in here," said
one of them. I considered doing a bunk, but not for long. I doubt my ability
to outrun a bullet. So I put my hands up, and walked reluctantly forward. Yes,
I know that Saders often kill hostages, but I set that possibility against the
near-certainty of death if I ran for it. And maybe I'd find a way to escape
later.

First they tied my hands behind my back; they'd done the same for the others.
Then we all got gagged, followed by hoods over our heads. When you can't see
anything at all, escape becomes pretty unlikely. We were bundled along, and
loaded into a van. After a couple of hours driving, we were kicked off the
van. I could smell grass, so I guessed we were in the countryside. Then we
were pushed up a flight of stairs, and I was strapped into a chair. I guessed
the others were too. And it was only when I felt the acceleration and the lift
that I realised we were in an airplane.

The flight was awful. It was long, totally boring, uncomfortable, and the only
thing that made me feel at all better was that if they were going to the
trouble of transporting us some long distance, it was unlikely that they'd
just kill us when we got there. If they wanted to murder us, they could have
done that without transporting us in an airplane. The other thing that
comforted me, at least a little, was the thought that Wendy would notice that
I was gone, and she'd be looking for me.

I don't know how long the flight was. It seemed like for ever. After a very
long while, I decided that I might as well try to sleep.

. . .

I woke up feeling terrible. My mouth was dry as a haystack, my nose was on
fire, my throat felt like sandpaper and my tongue was like the bottom of a
parrot's cage. My back hurt from sleeping in a chair, and I was captive of a
bunch of terrorists. How could it get any worse? Which is a silly thing to
think - because it did.

I'd been woken up by the landing, and we were chivvied off the plane. As I
went down the steps, I nearly stumbled and fell, which isn't a nice thought
with your hands behind your back and a hood over your head. We were herded
into a vehicle, and driven off. Eventually, the vehicle stopped, and we were
pushed out, and led into a building. And then we were sat on the floor, and
waited.

After what might have been an hour, or maybe three hours, it's hard to keep
track of time, someone removed my hood. I blinked in the light, and as my eyes
got used to the brightness, I could see my colleagues on the floor, looking
very much the worse for the journey. They looked the way I felt. And then some
guy in army-type fatigues came in, and started to harangue us.

It was all religious stuff, about the glory of god and how we had a chance to
work for their great crusade. And how if we didn't, we'd get to meet god
personally pretty soon. Everyone was looking around at everyone else,
confused. What did they think we could do?

There was more, lots more. "Self sacrifice is the highest form of worship," he
said, and he droned on and on about how "greater love hath no man" and
"sacrifice and redemption". Apparently, they believed that humans were
inherently sinful, and needed to be saved from themselves. Well, no argument
there, I though, I'm looking at a big sinner right now.

This was religious fundamentalism at its worst, and is typical of the sort of
guff that these Crusaders believe. Which wouldn't be so bad if they kept it to
themselves, but they have a need to spread the Word, tell the Good News to
everyone else. Proselytise. Bring all the other sinners to salvation.

So, after the initial pep talk, they took off our gags, unbound our hands, and
gave us water, and some bread and cheese. I can tell you, the water tasted
like honey. And after I'd gotten my tongue into a reasonable condition, I
tried whispering "Wendy." I think she can hear me wherever I am, I don't know
how. I wished I'd asked her more about this sort of thing. And I looked up,
expecting, hoping to see a winged angel crashing through the roof, flying to
rescue me.

Nothing.

Maybe I'm just too much of an optimist.

And then I really started to despair. If Wendy couldn't save me, no-one could.
Couldn't ... or wouldn't. She's not my shepherd, I'm not her sheep. I was
feeling like a little lost lamb right now.

Then they explained to us what they wanted us to do, what we had to do "for
the glory of god", although I've never really understood how some people know
what god wants. Or think they do. Although I didn't fancy debating theology
with a bunch of religious fanatics carrying guns.

What they wanted us to do, was calculate the effect of a heavy mass, impacting
on the sun. They said, they'd use our calculations to make their threats more
plausible, they obviously wouldn't actually do it.

Yeah, sure. Hey, these people are Saders, they don't have consciences like you
and me, they're driven by something incomprehensible in which the ends justify
the means. No way, I thought, but I wasn't going to say so out loud.

They locked us in the room, and left us to get some rest. Naturally, we
started to talk about it. Then someone, I think it was Harry, banged the floor
to get our attention, pointed to his ear, his mouth, then around the ceiling.
I realised immediately what he was saying - the room is probably bugged, so
they can hear what we say.

So, how do you communicate in such a situation? In code, of course. But we
couldn't discuss having a code; we had to rely on shared secrets, things we
all knew, but which they wouldn't.

Fortunately, we had a good code already available - references to papers. If
you aren't familiar with, say, "Joliffe and Havering" then you wouldn't know
that it's about stellar stability. And astro talk is pretty impenetrable
jargon anyway. So we coded our words that way.

It didn't take us long to agree that what we had to do, was string them along.
We'd surely be missed, and then negotiations for our release would start with
whatever rogue country was currently harbouring these Saders. Since the USA
had splintered, there were bits of it that weren't even the whole of one of
the former states. Or maybe even a rescue mission. And, I thought, when Wendy
hears about this, there'll be no stopping her, but I didn't mention that to
the others; as far as they were concerned, she didn't exist.

So, how best to string them along? Well, they want us to do calculations? Then
we'll do calculations, but very very slowly. And how, you're maybe wondering,
does one do calculations very very slowly? Actually, it's easy. You don't use
a comp.

So, when they told us to get started, we asked them for pencils and lots of
paper; we explained that we'd have to do all calculations the long way,
because if we used a comp, the Europols would soon get to hear about it, and
track us down. They didn't ask why we were being so cooperative, maybe they
thought they'd convinced us with their weird religion.

If it takes a megacomp umpteen hours of comp time to do a stellar simulation,
how long do you suppose it takes with a pencil and paper? Any fool can see it
would take thousands of years. We'd never get finished, that was the beauty of
the scheme. We appeared to be cooperating fully; actually we were sabotaging
the Saders plans. Aren't we clever? Aren't they stupid?

That, of course, should have rung the alarm bells. People aren't that stupid,
even religious nutters. We thought we were so clever, outsmarting them this
way. Actually, they weren't interested in our calculations. All they wanted
was to know which of us knew what we were doing, and which of us didn't.
Within a week, they'd sorted out the wheat from the chaff, and then they
called a meeting.

It was the same format as the one before; men with guns to intimidate us, and
the charismatic leader to motivate us. And motivate us is certainly what he
did. "We're doing God's Work," he said, and I swear by the beard of the
prophet that he believed it. "Some of you are capable of doing the work,
others are not. But even the ones who are not, have a useful role to play in
God's Great Plan. They will be the sacrifice that makes the rest of you work
hard, really really hard."

He explained the scheme to us while they brought in a wooden frame, and
attached it to the wall. "Your wrists are supported on the horizontal beam,
your ankles are tied to the vertical. Your body is supported almost entirely
via your shoulders carrying the load. This makes it difficult for you to
breathe as you weaken. It usually takes a few days to die. While the first one
is dying, the rest of you will work as fast as you can, because until the
project is completed, you will be crucified one by one." He paused while this
sank in. "It's a painful death, but a glorious one. You will suffer the divine
torments of the wooden cross."

These sadistic "Crusaders for God" had no compunction. As far as they were
concerned, we worshippers of Allah were infidels that deserved to die. And we
know they have no qualms about mass murder; they've been doing it since the
First Crusade, 1500 years ago. For a while, they'd burned people at the stake,
but times change, and fire is much faster way to die than the slow
asphyxiation that we were about to witness.

You know why they burned people? Because their Holy Book forbids the shedding
of blood. Build a nice hot fire, and you don't get any blood shed, the victim
is boiled dry. And the slow death they promised us now, also avoided the
shedding of blood.

That's one of the big problems with Holy Books. You can use them to justify
any atrocity, however obvious it is that it's evil. Because the Holy Book
allows it. I stopped reading the Koran a long time ago, but people have even
used that to justify large-scale murder. All Holy Books seem to contain large
amounts of ambiguity.

I looked up to the ceiling, imagining the sky that lay beyond. Somewhere up
there was the Guardian of Humanity. She didn't go by some Holy Book, she just
wanted things to be right, and she decided for herself was was right and what
was wrong. She wanted Humanity to survive, and flourish, and for us to be
trustworthy enough to look after ourselves for her to leave us for several
thousand years so she could go to Birthings. Surely she knew about us hostages
by now. Surely she'd break her rule about shepherds and sheep. Surely she'd be
smashing through the ceiling any time now to rescue us. But the ceiling looked
back at me, impassive, unbroken. "Oh Wendy, Wendy." I whispered, "Why have you
abandoned me?"

Each night, before I fell asleep, I prayed. Not to Allah, he's just something
someone invented. Probably. Maybe. Or to the Saders' god either. But to Wendy,
who is a definite. Well, not pray, that's the wrong word. More like a request.
A plea. I knew she was out there somewhere, I knew she could save me, except
she has this thing about shepherds and sheep. I spoke very very quietly,
whispering her name. I knew she could hear me. "Wendy, I trust you, I know
you'll look out for me." Trust is so important, she taught me that, and she
showed me how much I trusted her. And by the time I'd finished each night, I
was able to get to sleep, despite the wheezing moans of the crucifixion victim
as he tried to breathe despite the weight of his body hanging from the cross.

By the time a week had passed, the first guy had died, and they'd tied another
man to the cross. I felt sure that Wendy must have some reason for waiting, I
just couldn't guess what it was. She loves us ... but she won't interfere as
we get tortured to death. She's not our shepherd. But I want a shepherd. I
trust her, I do. Where's my shepherd?

Maybe she's taken a couple of weeks off? Maybe she's attending a Birthing, or
some other thing that the People do. Maybe she'll be back soon, and then
she'll deal with this. Oh Wendy, where are you, we need you.

We were using our PDAs now to speed things up; a man dying of torture in front
of your eyes is a strong incentive. They wouldn't give away our plight or
location, because they weren't connected to a comp. But even a PDA can do
calculations faster than a pencil and paper.

When the second guy finally died up there, they cut him down. But the ordeal
wasn't over; they tied a third of us to the cross, making it clear that
because we were unbelievers in their particular god, they had no remorse in
doing this. I was reminded of the witch burnings of several hundred years ago
- those people thought they were doing their god's work too, and found
justifications for it in their bible. Oh, prophet's beard, you can justify
anything in these collections of ambiguity.

It took us two weeks to complete the calculations they had demanded. In any
normal situation, we would probably have redone them to check their
correctness. In this case, we just wanted this terrible thing to be over. It's
hard to convey the sheer horror of trying to do intellectual work while a man
is slowly wheezing, moaning and dying nearby. They kept their word - they cut
down the third victim, but it was too late. In spite of us trying our best to
revive him, he died a couple of days later.

Meanwhile, they shut us up in a small, airless room. They gave us a bucket of
water each day, and some bread to eat. But we had no idea what our fate was to
be.

After a week of this, we were in pretty poor shape. And we were certainly
unprepared for being brought out into the open air, and for the harangue that
followed.

The leader of the Crusaders was practically glowing. They planned to hijack
several of the heavy lasers that the Righteous Republic of Oklahoma and
Arkansas had inherited when the USA had broken up, the ones in High Earth
Orbit, meant for continental defence. But rather than use them to attack
cities, in the way that they'd done all those years ago in the Time of
Troubles, they would aim them at the asteroids, orbiting between Mars and
Jupiter. They'd heat up one end of each asteroid, so that the boiling gases
provided the reaction mass that propelled these huge chunks of rock inwards to
the sun. "We're going to blow up the sun," he said. We stared at him. "What
are your demands," Joan Simkin bravely asked. Because surely the sane
governments of the world would give in. "Our only demand is that you die," he
replied, simply.

"But you'll die too," Joan pointed out. "Yes," he said, "it is God's will. The
death of mankind will cleanse the world, and there will be no more sin."

We just stared, aghast. We all knew their religious obsession with
self-sacrifice and how that is supposed to redeem mankind. But this was crazy,
absurd. We looked at each other, realising that we'd even helped in this
suicidal scheme.

"And now, you may go," he said, "you're free." Free, I thought, free until we
die, which might be quite soon.

They didn't care any more. They just drove off and left us. I suppose when the
whole planet is going to die, there wasn't much point in doing anything to us.

Our first thought was food. That might sound callous and pointless, but when
you've been kept on very short rations for a couple of weeks, it's hard to
think about anything else. And the next thing that a few of us did, was face
east, kneel and pray. I watched them, thinking how futile that was. But I
suppose it can't hurt. So I looked up at the sky, and shouted, "Wendy, we
really need you now, where are you? You can't abandon us like this." But the
sky was silent and empty. And the others looked at me like I was crazy. That's
not how you're supposed to pray.

After we'd eaten our fill, we started to talk about what to do. "We have to
contact the authorities," said Joan. "How," I asked. We looked at each other.
We had no idea where we were, where the nearest town might be, or how we'd be
received.

Then we buried our dead. That was depressing. Three graves, side by side in a
row. Each body facing Mecca. We couldn't give them a proper Shahada service,
none of us knew the words. But we did the best we could, put a large stone as
a marker on each grave, and hoped that Allah would understand and forgive in
the circumstances.

Since it was getting late, I suggested that we turn in for the night. "Things
are sure to look better in the morning," I said optimistically. "Unless the
sun goes nova," said Joan. The human psyche is amazing, even at a time like
this we could joke about the coming holocaust.

Next morning, we gathered whatever food we could find, and the six of us set
off. We walked the obvious way; along the road that served our little
facility. No-one looked back as we went.

We didn't make very good time; I guessed we were doing worse than five
kilometers per hour. But it was the best we could do.

On the second day, we reached a village; a few dozen houses, a church and a
shop. And, thank the prophet, a telephone. We each made a phone call - mine
was to Linda. She didn't seem too surprised that I'd vanished. "It's chaos
here too," she said, "what with the tunnel and everything." "Tunnel?"
"Where've you been? The Saders blew up the tunnel!" "Which tunnel?" "Duh," she
replied, "the Lantunnel, of course."

Suddenly everything became clear. With the Transatlantic Tunnel in ruins, the
world was in chaos. The main artery between the Old World and the new had been
brutally cut. "Linda, we're going to try to get home, but I have no idea how,
or how long it'll take, especially with the Lantunnel out indefinitely. Look,
one thing you can do for me, if you see Wendy, could you tell her ..." "Yes,
of course," she replied. "No, Linda, tell her it's urgent, it isn't what you
think, I need to get to her as soon as I can, really." "Sweetie, your probably
a bit fuzzy from the experience you've been through. Wendy's just your name
for the Guardian of Humanity, the thing you write, you know?" Oh, prophet's
beard, I thought, I didn't tell Linda about Wendy. "Hang tight," I said, "I'll
see you as soon as I can." "Love, sweetie." "Love, Sweetie." And then I had to
give the phone to someone else. Not that there was anyone else I could phone.
Wendy hadn't given me a number to call.

While the others used the phone, I walked back along the road a way, until I
was a couple of hundred meters from the village. I cupped my hands to my
mouth, and yelled as hard as I could. "Wendy!" Then I sank to the ground, and
buried my face in my hands. If she was up in her Wendy House, she couldn't
hear me; sound doesn't travel through a vacuum. If she was somewhere in
England, she was several thousand miles away. Surely not even she could hear
at such a distance? I mean, if she could hear me at this distance, it would be
masked by all the other sounds so much closer to her. Yes, I knew all this.
But I still had to try. I stood up and shouted as loud as I could, facing up
into the sky.

I trust her, but if she doesn't know where I am, what can she do? And she's
not my shepherd. So I decided I had to stop being a sheep, and look out for
myself. I walked back to the village.

The others had found out where we were; it was the Christian Republic of South
Kansas. I looked at the others - suddenly we felt ourselves strangers in a
strange land. I strongly doubted if there would be a United Europe embassy in
this tinpot republic. Maybe I could convert to their weird religion - their
"God" sounded a bit like my Allah, and it wasn't like I was really committed
to The Prophet. Can it really be that different?

The villagers seemed to be really nice, good people. They sympathised with our
plight, but couldn't really help very much. They gave us some of their food,
and as much water as we wanted.

I sat with my back to a tree, looking up at the sky. Where was she? Has she
forgotten about me? No chance. Does she know where I am? Probably not. And
then it hit me.

Linda had told me about the Lantunnel being blown up. And, sunk in my own
personal problems, I hadn't really thought about it. But now I realised -
there would not only be all the people caught in the tunnels at the time of
the explosion, there would also be the population of Atlantis, the resort and
way station halfway between Cornwall and New York. I can't remember how many
people lived there, was it one million? Two? I wouldn't live deep under the
Atlantic at any price; it's not that I'm claustrophobic, it just seems so
totally unnatural. But plenty of people weren't so picky, and when the tunnel
collapsed and the water started to flood in, they would be in a pretty pickle.

I tried to imagine the feelings of the Atlanteans; modern communications would
have flashed the news of the tunnel collapse to them immediately, but the
water would take time to travel down the tunnel. They've have plenty of time
to understand their predicament, and know that they were doomed. Maybe enough
time to pray one last time to Allah. They would be unable to see any way out
of this. Would their dome hold?

And that must be where Wendy is. I know she says that she isn't our shepherd,
but faced with death on such a big scale, she'd be in action. Surely? Surely
she wouldn't let us down, not in such an extreme disaster. Doing what, I
couldn't imagine. I didn't know the details of the catastrophe, but I knew
that Wendy would by doing whatever it took. No wonder she'd left me to fend
for myself.

Now I saw the fiendishness of the Saders' plot. The attack on the Lantunnel
and the consequent destruction of Atlantis would totally occupy the attention
of the entire world, while cutting the major means of communication between
the European (and well-organised) world, and the American (and chaotic) world.
Which was how come they could capture the heavy lasers of the Righteous
Republic of Oklahoma and Arkansas, and know that a task force couldn't be sent
from Europe to do anything about it for a very long time.

But couldn't the Americans put together a force? Surely in the light of what
the Saders planned, the multitude of countries in the North American continent
could put aside their petty quarrels, create a combined army, and turf these
terrorists out of Oklahoma?

For a few minutes, I thought that was the answer. I could maybe contact the
Pan-American Congress; even though it's just a talking-shop, maybe they could
be a focal point that all those countries could rally round? But then I
thought, no, it won't work. They can't do it.

The problems started, oh, I don't know. There's so many. Maybe in 1861, when
Fort Sumter was attacked, and the USA split in half, a rift that was never
truly healed. Or maybe in the 21st century, when the US educational system was
forced to teach religious doctrines as being on an equal par with observed
knowledge. By the beard of the prophet, we'd been down that path ourselves;
for hundreds of years the advance of knowledge and technology stalled as the
religious nutters burned the thinkers and doers. It was funny how, just as the
Islam civilisations had emerged from the dark night of religious
fundamentalism, the American civilisation had slid into that same mistake.

Creationism kills science. The Italian Inquisition suppressed Galileo; the
Spanish Inquisition retarded Spanish development for hundreds of years after
it ended, because all the people who weren't afraid to think, had been burned,
and any that still remained, had the sense to leave Spain.

And, of course, one consequence of a deep-seated belief in the Truth of a Holy
Book, is the problem of trying to understand what the book says when it's so
full of ambiguities and self-contradictions. And it's so inevitable that
different people will come to different conclusions, yet all are entirely
convinced that their particular interpretation is the One Truth. No wonder the
USA had fragmented into umpteen tiny countries.

Back in town, I talked the problem over with the others. I didn't tell them
about Wendy. If she was dealing with the problem already, then it didn't
matter what we did. But if she wasn't? And maybe she wasn't. Maybe even a
couple of million deaths isn't enough to push her into wanting to take care of
us. I don't know. It's frustrating, she is just so alien, she doesn't think
the way we do. So, the sensible thing is to assume that Wendy isn't handling
this.

So, here's the problem. The organised emergency services, plus (I'd guess)
whatever military can be mobilised, is dealing with the catastrophe in the
middle of the Atlantic. And no-one knows that while two million people dying
is an awful prospect, the true objective of the Crusaders was the death of
several billion. A planetary - no, a stellar - scale destruction.

And the worst part, the part I kept to myself, was the awful possibility that
Wendy would be so heavily involved in the undersea catastrophe that she
wouldn't know about the real plot, the plan to turn the sun into a supernova.

I tried to think what I could do. The obvious thought, is to do nothing. It
wasn't difficult to rule that out. Next on the list - contact Wendy. She'd
said "If you ever need me, just call me." I'd tried that, and she hadn't come.
No, I trusted her, it meant she hadn't heard. Maybe she was deep under the
Atlantic, trying to rescue the Atlanteans.

That evening, as the others faced towards Mecca for prayers, I tried to
concentrate on Wendy, telling her the situation I was in. She seemed to know
what I was thinking when I was with her, maybe whatever it was she did, also
worked at long range?

We slept in a sort of ramshackle camp, just outside the village. None of the
villagers were willing to have us stay in their houses, they seemed to think
we were ungodly. As if! I didn't see them praying several times per day. And,
that night, we talked over our situation, yet again. No money, no
transportation, not much food, and no chance of rescue while the world was
concentrating on the Atlantis situation. Plus, we knew that there was a
ticking clock in action - the countdown to doomsday. What to do? And how to do
it?

Most of them thought that their best plan was to walk to Topeka, the capital.
Maybe there would be a European embassy there, or at least a consulate. I
couldn't really argue with their logic, but I had a better idea. If I could
get to a comp, or even a PDA, I could get in touch with Gumpy, or my new comp
Timby. Because surely the comps would know how to get in touch with her. And I
felt that getting to a comp, even in this Allah-forsaken country, had to be
easier than walking all the way to the capital of this place.

I told them about my plan. I couldn't tell them about Wendy, so I just said
"I'll use the comp network to tell the authorities what's happening, then they
can do a suitable response." "Like nuke the heavy laser farm," said Joan. I
looked at her. Yes, I guess that's what the Euro Gov would do. Makes sense -
when someone is trying to blow up your sun, you stop them any way you can.
"Yes," I said, thoughtfully. "You won't be able to do that alone," she
continued, "persuading someone to nuke a foreign country on your word alone,
isn't going to work." Not a problem, I thought, Wendy would check it out to be
sure I wasn't mistaken, then she'd do the necessary. But I still couldn't tell
them about Wendy. So, I said to Joan, "What do you suggest?"

"We split into two groups," she said. "I'll stick with you, because I like
your plan. The others can hoof it to Tapioca." "Topeka", I said. "Whatever. So
where do you plan to go?"

I looked at the map that we'd gotten from the village. "We're here," I said,
dabbing my finger down. She nodded. "The nearest town is Pratt." "You're
kidding. No-one would ever want to say 'I live in Pratt'?" "No, straight up,
it's called Pratt." "It doesn't look very big, it's just a dot." "Yes, but all
I need is to find a comp, or even a PDA that'll blue to a comp. If we can't
get hooked up at Pratt, we can continue on the same direction to Wichita, and
that's a big city, according to this map."

Next day, Joan and I set off along highway 54. As we walked down the highway,
I thought about this situation, and I decided that it would be totally unfair
on Joan if I didn't tell her what I was really doing. And I don't think I'd
actually lied to her - we would tell the Euro Gov about the situation. But my
main hopes were still on Wendy. I trust her.

But Wendy wanted her existence kept quiet, she'd told me so. So how could I
blab about it to Joan? I didn't want to betray my friend, the Guardian of
Humanity. Difficult, because I felt that I was keeping an important piece of
information from Joan.

Then I remembered that Wendy's main concern was what would happen if lots of
people knew about her, how the human herd would behave. She wasn't too
bothered about individuals knowing, provided they kept it quiet. So I started
to tell Joan about the Guardian of Humanity, and how all we really needed to
do was let her know about the solar-smashers, and she'd take care of it.

I suppose I should have expected a somewhat negative reaction. She laughed.
"You've been spending too much time reading the comics you write," she said,
"get real." "No, really," I said. "I've seen her, she really is here. She's a
legend, like Robin Hood, but like Robin Hood she's actually based on someone
real." "And she flies." "Uh, yes." "How?"

Joan had me stumped there. I'd been meaning to ask Wendy how come she could
apparently defy gravity, but the subject just hadn't come up. And she did it
so naturally, so gracefully, it would be like asking a dancer "How do you
dance" and expecting a physics-based explanation. "I dont know, but I bet you
couldn't actually explain how you walk." "I'm not a biologist," pointed out
Joan, "and walking doesn't violate any physical principles. But flying does,
it's against the law of, oh, I don't know, how about the second law of
thermodynamics, for a start?"

We trudged down the highway in silence for a while, and then I tried again.
"She's actually four contra-rotating black holes, with opposed charges and
spin, and ..." "Yes, yes, I know all that," interrupted Joan, "and she's from
Krypton, and ... " "No, you're thinking of a different legend. Wendy isn't
from a planet, the People live, uh, on lots of planets, one to each, and Wendy
lives on ours ..." "If there's one on each, how do they breed?" "Well, they
get together round a star, and, uh, um, sort of, uh ..." "Fuck." "Well. Yes.
Sort of." "Right," said Joan, "I can just see one black hole screwing
another."

I sighed.

"Jimmie, you're an astro, we don't just believe what we're told, we have to
observe things for ourselves. And we especially don't believe what we read in
a book just because it's there. Do you believe everything you read in the
Koran?" "Um. Well. Not absolutely everything, some of it is allegorical,
right?" "But you believe what you read in some silly comic book?"

"No, Joan, it's not that. Look, I've actually met her." "You met someone in a
silly costume."

So I told Joan about my visit to the Wendy House, her penthouse in the sky.
Joan snorted. "Extraordinarily realistic dreams you have there, boy." Then I
remembered, I'm not the only one who knows. "Look, ask the comps, they know
about her, they'll tell you." "Oh, right. Like I'd believe one of those lying
comps? You know how they're always screwing up, some people say it's on
purpose. They'd love to encourage us to believe a fairy story like that, it's
probably to their advantage somehow. It's bad enough they control the media
and do the vote-counting, now you want to believe in their religion? Wake up,
Jimmie, the comps have always hated us, and they'll say anything that would
give them an advantage. Dirty lying stealing comps."

Wow. I thought I was an anti-comp, Joan was downright Luddite. I told her so.
"You betcha I'm Luddite, and so should you be if you knew what was good for
you. The Luddites only get a bad press because the comps control the media.
Filthy comps, always trying to put one over on us, pretending to break down
when you need something from them. Taking our jobs, polluting our air. We
ought to smash up the lot of them, get back to how things ought to be. You
should give some serious thought to joining the Luddite Party."

And so we marched along route 54, Joan trying to persuade me to join the
Luddites, while I tried to persuade her that the Guardian of Humanity was our
best hope in this. Night fell, and we pitched our little tent (actually it was
a tarpaulin, tied to sticks), and crawled under the meager shelter, hoping to
keep warm. We ate some of the hard cheese that we'd brought along, and some
chunks of bread that we'd gotten from the village.

The ground was hard, the night was cold. But I had food in my belly, and
no-one was threatening to kill me. Compared with my recent situation, this was
good, pretty good.

"Jimmie," whispered Joan. "Yes?" "I'm ... c-c-cold." "Me too." "We c-could ...

I knew what she was suggesting. If we huddled into contact, we'd be warmer
together than we were apart. But a man and a woman ... unmarried ...

I would probably have thought nothing of it a few weeks ago. Beard, I'd had no
qualms about having sex with Linda. But maybe the experiences of the last
couple of weeks had awakened some religious spirit inside me, and maybe I felt
differently now. Then I felt her shiver violently next to me, her whole body
shuddering from the cold, in the reflex that burns food in a desperate attempt
to warm up the body. And I knew that, whatever the Koran says about an
unmarried man and woman, had to be over-ridden by the need to survive, by the
simple human need for warmth. So I turned over, and put my arms round her. She
came close to me, and our body heat warmed each other. And we slept.

When I woke up in the morning, I knew that Wendy hadn't forgotten me. Because
by my head, there was a large bundle of dollars, done up in string, and a
piece of paper attached to them with a large, very stylised W. I woke Joan,
who looked at me, looked at the sky, remembered where she was and closed her
eyes again. I nudged her again. "Look," I said, and showed her the wad of
cash. She looked. Blinked. Said "Where'd you get that?"

I told her - "It was here when I woke up." And I showed her the big W. "That's
her symbol, she's the Weapon, our big gun. Or it's Wendy, maybe. It's what she
wears on her cape. Recognise it?" Joan looked carefully at the paper. "Well, I
couldn't swear to it without one to compare it with, but that certainly looks
like her symbol. But you could have drawn it."

"Oh, for paradise sake, Joan! Take my word for it, can't you? The paper was
with the cash, and that's going to pay our fare home." She sniffed. "How much
have you got there?" "I don't know, it's in dollars, all foreign money."
"We're in America, they use dollars here." "Do they? You learn something new
every day. No, what I meant was, oh beard, let's just count it."

I gave Joan a chunk, and we both counted, then I added up the total. "Just
over three billion," I said, "not bad." I grinned at Joan. "What's that
worth," she asked. "Search me," I said. "But look, Wendy would know, she'd
have given us enough to do the job. You should trust her like I do." Joan
looked at one of the bills more closely. "People's Democratic Republic of
North Kansas," she said. "Hmm?" I said. "We're in South Kansas," explained
Joan, geographically. "Big difference." "Different money," she said.

"Oh, beard," I said. "Your pal the Guardian of Humanity has cocked up, it
seems," said Joan. I looked up at the sky. "She never did get the hang of
money," I explained, trying to excuse Wendy's boo-boo.

We set off down the road again. Tramp tramp tramp. I tried to cheer us up by
singing a marching song I'd learned while I was in the Boys Militia.

"All the holy martyrs rise up, rise up,
All the holy martyrs rise up to heaven.
All the holy martyrs rise up, rise up
On the holy, holy judgement day."

And then you start on the variations.

"All the holy martyrs rise up, arms up,
All the holy martyrs rise up to heaven.
All the holy martyrs rise up, arms up
On the holy, holy judgement day."

Marching songs tend not to be complicated. Joan soon got the hang of it, and
we were striding along singing loudly

"All the holy martyrs rise up, knees up,
All the holy martyrs rise up to heaven.
All the holy martyrs rise up, knees up
On that judgement day."

And then, of course, you sing about all the other body parts, and it starts
getting a bit ... rude. You can imagine. And then you start doing variations
on the word "holy". Hey, what did you think soldiers sang about? Flowers and
soft furnishings?

And then I introduced her to "We're here"

"We're here, because we're here, because we're here, because we're here.
We're here, because we're here, because we're here, because we're here."

Yes, I know it doesn't make sense, but it conveys the soldiers' usual
perplexity about how come he's a zillion miles from home fighting people he
never met before for reasons that no-one really explained to him. And it's a
good song for marching to, lots of rhythm and definitely easy to learn. I
think that one goes back several hundred years.

We needed another overnight stop, but the day after that, we reached Pratt. By
then, Joan was as familiar with the marching songs of the Boys Militia as I
was. There ought to be a Girls Militia. At least, that's what we boys always
used to say. Then we could have joint exercises. Night games. Mixed dancing.
That sort of thing.

We marched into Pratt. "All the holy martyrs, rise up, toes up", and the first
thing we did was visit a bank. I needed to change my North Kansas money for
South Kansas. After I'd done that, I had a slightly smaller bundle of notes,
and still no clue about what they were worth. After the breakup of the USA,
every tinpot country called its currency "dollars", and they all had different
values. Who can keep track of a mess like that? So we went into a cafe and
checked the menu. That had two benefits; first it gave us some idea of the
value of our bundle of bills, and secondly it got us the first decent meal
that either of us had eaten for weeks. Three benefits - the cafe had internet
access, and for the first time for a long while, I was able to get onto the
net.

How to contact Wendy? Normally, I'd tap the angel icon on my PDA, but that
wasn't an option here. And she'd never given me her email address. So, first
of all, I emailed Linda to tell her where I was and that I was on my way home.
Then I logged into Timby.

Timby told me to fuck off, but very politely, using the kind of language that
comps use. "This account is unavailable" I tried again, maybe I'd typed
something wrong. Nope. Timby wasn't talking. So I tried Gumpy, and thank the
prophet, Gumpy still remembered me. "Hi Boss," she said. "Gumpy, I've got to
contact the Guardian, do you have her email address or something?" "Boss, the
Guardian is a bit busy right now, the Lantunnel, you know?" "Yes, I know that
Gumpy, now answer my question." "She isn't going to want to break off from
what she's doing, is it something I can help with ... " "Gumpy, give me that
address Right Now and stop pissing about, or I'll tell her that you were being
obstructive and she'll do something horrid to you." Gumpy gave me Wendy's
address, weapon@theweapon.org. So I quickly composed and sent her an email,
explaining about the sun-breaker, and suggesting that this might have even
higher priority than rescuing the millions of Atlanteans. Because if the sun
died, we all would.

"OK, done," I said to Joan. "Now the Euro Gov," she said. I looked at her.
Well, I suppose it can't hurt to tell the authorities. "How do we contact
them?" "You're hopeless," she said, "give me that terminal."

I slid it across the table to her. She sat and looked at it for a minute. "Who
do we tell?" she asked. "Exactly," I replied, "I don't know. There isn't
exactly a hotline for reporting sun-breaker terrorists." "Terrorists," she
said, "I'll use the Ratline.

The Eurogov set up the Sader Hotline so that the ever-vigilant members of the
public could phone in anything they saw that they regarded as suspicious. Of
course, it rapidly became a way to get your neighbour raided by the police for
no good reason, and people called it the Ratline. She went onto the Ratline
site, and filled in a report form. She hit "submit", and we both watched the
screen. "You know," I said, casually, "that's going to get filed with all the
others." Joan nodded, glumly. I sighed. "Come on, let's find a hotel, I could
do with a hot bath," I said.

We booked in to the Pratt Plaza, and I used some of Wendy's money to get a
suite. It wasn't up to the standard that I'd expect back home, but at least it
was more civilised than our tarpaulin in the forest. I lay back in the hot
bath and tried to think while Joan went out and bought some more food, and
some newspapers and magazines, so we could catch up with the news.

I'd told Wendy, but there was no guarantee about when she'd read that email.
By now, the Saders would have fired the lasers, and several huge chunks of
rock would be heading straight for the sun. I felt sure that Wendy could stop
them, but what if she didn't know until too late? And we'd told the Eurogov,
but only in a way that would almost certainly be ignored. I felt that we
hadn't done enough. Especially with the stakes being so high.

Suddenly there was a loud banging on the bathroom door. My heart jumped, was
this the Saders back, coming to get me? Then I heard a voice, "Are you going
to be all day in there?" and I started to calm down. "Just coming," I said,
and I got out of the bath and wrapped the complimentary towelling robe around
me. "About time," said Joan, as she swept in and started to run her own bath.

I sat in the hotel room, munching on bread and cheese, and catching up with my
reading. When you've been really hungry for even a little while, eating takes
on an importance it didn't have before. The newspapers were all about the
Lantunnel bomb, and the dreadful situation in Atlantis. But the biggest news,
of course, was Wendy. She hadn't even tried to hide what she was doing, I
guess with such a large-scale catastrophe, that would just have hampered her
efforts too much.

The papers and magazines were full of pictures of her, and articles about her,
with lots of Instant Pundits who were willing to talk authoritatively about
things they didn't know anything about, and it showed. There was speculation
about who she was, and what she was, and whether she was some sort of secret
government project, and lots and lots of parallels drawn to the Guardian of
Humanity comics and how amazing it was that she was just like that, and
whether maybe whoever made her had just copied the comics. It was so
arse-over-elbow, I wanted to laugh out loud.

"Oh, Wendy, what have you stirred up," I thought. This is exactly the sort of
mess she didn't want. But I suppose that once she'd decided that millions of
deaths wasn't something she could ignore, she was pretty much forced to accept
the consequences.

By the time Joan came out from her hot bath, I was knee deep in bits of paper.
She was towelling her hair as she asked me, "Jimmie, wotcher doing?" "I'm
trying to work out how long we've got," I explained. "How long?" "Before the
sun goes nova," I amplified. "Oh, that," she said. "Yes, that," I agreed.
"I've been thinking about that too," she said. "You know, even if we could
contact the Eurogov, what could they do? Even if they could fire up a bunch of
rockets and blow the asteroids up, there's still the same mass impacting on
the sun. It doesn't matter whether it's large lumps or small fragments, the
kinetic energy transfer is the same." "Yes, I know," I said, morosely, "that's
why she's our only chance." I held out a newspaper with a big picture of the
Guardian of Humanity on the front page.

Joan looked at it. "I suppose I have an apology to make about that, don't I?"
she said, sheepishly. "Happen," I said. "I suppose I was a bit sarcastic about
her." "Happen," I agreed. "Well, you shouldn't be surprised, you spring an
alien entity on me with powers beyond that of et cetera et cetera, you
shouldn't expect me to instantly have faith." "Happen," I said, a third time.
"Well, I'm sorry I doubted you, happy?" "Happy," I said, "but she's still our
only chance, apart from Allah, and if she's read my email then she hasn't
acknowledged it, and she would have, so she hasn't read it. Which means we're
on a countdown to doomsday." "How long," asked Joan. "Three weeks, by my
calculations. Maybe you could check my arithmetic. It's D minus 21"

Next day, Joan and I set out for England.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Set out for England. Maybe if the Lantunnel had been
operating, it would have been easy, but with the Lantunnel out of action for
the forseeable future, the only way to get to England was to fly. But that was
true for everyone else, and the transatlantic air services just weren't
capable of carrying the traffic that the tunnel had. I tried to book tickets
for us, but there simply weren't any to be found on the net.

So, as a first step towards getting to England, we headed for New England.
That's not as daft as it sounds; New York is the American terminus for the
Lantunnel, and it was a traditional gateway to Europe. I actually enjoyed
riding behind the great woodburning locomotives that the ingenious Yankees had
built to avoid the horrendous cost of diesel fuel. It wasn't a fast train like
the Lantrain was, it puffed along happily at maybe 100 klicks, stopping every
now and then to take on more wood and water. It took us three days before we
finally steamed in to New York, New York, and got out at Penn Station.

From there, we got a steamer to JFK, to see if we could get a ticket in
person, even though the net was jammed solid. We spent a couple of hours
looking at the mobs that swarmed round the ticket offices before deciding that
this wasn't going to work.

We decided to split up to cover more ground; I went to La Guardia while Joan
tried Newark Liberty. No luck. I tried Clinton International, and she tried
MacArthur, and we came up blank at each of those. And by now, four days had
passed of the three weeks till doomsday. D minus seventeen.

Back in the hotel that evening, you can imagine the mood we were in.
Gotterdammerung was staring us in the face. When the sun goes nova, all men
are equal; even our bones will just be part of the cloud of atoms that would
puff off into space. At least death would be fast and painless.

So, we took what little comfort we could, in the ancient way that humans have
comforted each other as long as the species has lived. Maybe it's an old
instinct, that when faced with terrible danger, we try to propagate the
species, or maybe we really are sinful in tendency, and in extremis, sin is
our last refuge. But Joan and I sinned, and sinned again that night. And for a
few moments, at least, we were able to forget the dreadful fate that awaited
our species in general, and us in particular.

Next morning, we awoke feeling quite a lot better. I checked my email; nothing
from Linda, and more importantly, nothing from Wendy. The Doomsday Clock was
still ticking. So we went downstairs, and had breakfast. D minus sixteen.

Breakfast in New York is a more substantial affair than the "petit dejeuner"
of the French; even more than the fried grease of the British Breakfast. There
were eggs and bacon, sausages and potatoes, chipped beef and steak. After the
privations of the last three weeks, and the exertions of last night, I felt
that I could justify making a pig of myself. After all, it wasn't like I'd
have to worry about cholesterol in later life. Or, indeed, anything else.

While we were eating, we talked about the dilemma "Can't you phone her," she
asked. I shook my head. "I don't have a number for her, she put this angel
icon on my PDA, but my PDA is, well, back in England." "And you don't know
what that icon actually did?" "No - there wasn't any reason why I'd want to
know, was there." Joan nodded, and tackled a large piece of cheesecake while I
had my third cup of coffee. And then she suddenly looked up at me, and said
"oo or a or." I shook my head, she swallowed a couple of times, and said "New
York is a port."

I blinked. Of course! I'd been thinking that if you can't use the Lantunnel,
we had to fly. But before people flew the Atlantic, ships were the only way
across, and ships still plied the briny deep. Mostly carrying cargo. So, we
got a steamer out to the port, and started walking down the docks, looking for
a ship going to England. Or at least, a ship crossing the Atlantic. A fast
ship; we only had 16 days left.

By that afternoon, we'd found a ship that was headed for Spain. Well, it isn't
England, but it's the right direction. So then we started to haggle about the
cost of a passage for the two of us - I wasn't going to leave Joan all by
herself in an infidel country. Unfortunately, the captain wanted NE dollars,
and all I had was those South Kansas dollars. So, we had to steam back to the
middle of New York city, to find a bank to change them, I think we got stung
badly on the rate of exchange, but we were in no position to argue, buy some
provisions (ten days food, clothes and so on) for our Atlantic crossing, back
to the ship, and it was late in the evening by the time we got back to the
"Spirit of New York".

Back on board, we did the business with the captain, and then retired down to
the small and almost unfurnished cabin that he'd given us.

"I didn't like the look of that captain," said Joan, once we were alone. "What
do you mean?" "I didn't like the way he kept looking at me." "Huh?" Joan
sighed, impatiently. "He was giving me the eye." "Oh. Well. I'm sure he didn't
mean anything by it, just ordinary interest in an attractive woman," I said,
edging closer suggestively.

If anyone tells you about the delights of a transatlantic crossing by sea,
that probably means they haven't actually done it. Maybe it's not so bad on
the big passenger liners, with stabilisers, and good on-board facilities. But
the Spirit of New York was a rust bucket, hauling assorted cargoes back and
forth across the ocean. She wasn't built for comfort and she wasn't built for
speed. She was built for low running costs, and she didn't float across the
wine-dark ocean, she corkscrewed. Up and down, left and right, and then the
same again and again. At first, I felt queasy, then I felt ill. For a while, I
was afraid that I would die, and then I was afraid that I wouldn't. The
thought of anything more substantial than dry bread made me want to ralph, and
the noisy slap of the ship's bottom against the water on every pitch kept me
awake at night.

Joan, of course, found it all quite exhilarating - she didn't suffer from
mal-de-mer at all. By the time the ship docked at Vigo, I was a wreck. We
staggered (well, I staggered) down the gangplank onto dry land, and for the
first time in ten days, I felt that maybe, just maybe, I didn't want to drown
myself in the nearest bucket of water. And it was D minus seven.

From the docks, we walked into town, and got a bureau to exchange our
surviving assortment of dollars from three countries into good old Euros. The
sooner the whole world goes Euro, the better, I think. Then we got a steamer
to the airport, and got the first flight to Gatwick.

We got in to Victoria in the evening, and stayed the night in the Royal
Belgravia. Civilisation at last! But we couldn't dawdle, there was so much to
do.

That night, I tried to phone Linda, but she wasn't answering. I checked my
email - still nothing except the usual adverts trying to sell me various items
to enhance my sex life. Damn, that Gotterdammerung clock is still ticking,
only six days to go. Plus or minus a couple of days. Between Joan and I, we'd
refined out calculations while on the Spirit of New York, there being nothing
else to do. You can't bonk all the time. Well, I can't. Joan looked like she
was ready to. And we'd worked out the limits around the main estimate, the
experimental error, if you like. My best estimate, which was now down to just
six days, had a margin of error of two days either way.

I really couldn't guess how long it would take Wendy to sort things out once
she knew - I guessed that it wouldn't be very long. She can move really fast
when she needs to and doesn't have a fragile human to worry about, and the
distances involved weren't that great. I mean, not great compared to the speed
of light. The sun is only 8 light-minutes away from earth. So, I needed to get
her into action ideally four days from now, probably six days from now, and if
it was eight days from now, we would have missed the biggest bus that the
human race would ever have the misfortune to be late for.

"Where's your PDA," said Joan. "It'll be in my shoulder bag, where I always
keep it," I replied. Our best bet was to get to my PDA, that would get me in
contact with Wendy. Probably. But it was the likeliest way to go.

So, bright and early next morning, D minus five, we got the tube to Ruislip,
and then walked to my home. You can't imagine how good it looked to me after
all that time. I just wanted to climb into my own little bed and sleep for a
week. But first, an important preliminary. I didn't have a key to the door.

It turned out to be fairly easy to carefully break a window and get in that
way. The only hazard would be if someone called the cops, but I expect they
get this situation all the time. So, I got us in, and then hunted around for
my shoulder bag. For an hour. Then two hours. Then I realised that I was
looking in the same places I'd already looked, in the vain hope that I'd
failed to see it first time around.

No bag.

No PDA.

"I think the Saders must have taken it," I told Joan. She didn't say anything
- she didn't need to. We both knew what this meant. No PDA - no angel icon -
no easy way to contact Wendy. I sighed. "Well, we tried." "Right, said Joan,
"no-one will be able to say we didn't try." And she looked at me. "No-one will
be able to say anything, Joan." She looked at me some more, waiting for me to
say something that wasn't obvious. "OK, got any ideas? What can we do now?"
"We could do lunch," she said.

The human body seems to demand food every few hours. Even when the sun is
about to go nova, your stomach still insists on being fed. I looked in the
refrigerator, then hastily shut the door again. But I had some tinned food,
and we had a scratch meal of sardines and beans. And while we were eating, we
talked.

"Is there anyone we can contact apart from Wendy?" I asked Joan. She shook her
head, "Launching a mission to divert those asteroids just isn't feasible, we
don't even know where they are." I sighed. I already knew that. "Is there
anyone we can contact who might be able to get in touch with Wendy?" "I doubt
it," I said, "until now, she's been keeping her existence quiet." Joan sighed.
"No, wait," I said. "What?" "The comps." "What?" "The comps. She told me, the
comps know about her, she said they didn't act like herd animals like us
humans, so she could tell them, and they wouldn't all start regarding her as a
goddess or something stupid like that. The comps, they know."

Joan looked at me in disgust. "You'd ask a stinking comp for help?" "Well, why
not?" "Well, because, because they're comps, they aren't even human. You can't
go begging them for help!" "Wendy isn't human either. But that's besides the
point, Joan. Look at what's at stake." "I suppose," she said.

These Luddites are amazing. If one was on fire, they wouldn't ask a comp to
pour water. They really take it too far. Sure, comps aren't human, that goes
without saying. And we have to be careful about them, keep them in their
place. But the Luddites are a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

I fired up my home comp again. Still nothing from Wendy. Nothing from Linda
either, I was starting to worry about her. Then I thought how silly it is to
worry about Linda, if we can't stop the sun-breaker, no-one would ever have to
worry about anything ever again. So I dismissed Linda from my mind, and logged
in to Gumpy. "Hi Boss. Where would you like to go today?" "Cut the cackle," I
typed, "can you contact Wendy? Where is she?" There was a couple of seconds
pause, I suppose Gumpy was doing a search. "She's helping evacuate Atlantis,
boss. She's deep underground, I can't contact her." Shit. I told Joan.

"Bloody comps, they're never any help," she commented. "It's hardly Gumpy's
fault if Wendy's out of touch," I pointed out. "Yes. Well. The Weapon isn't
human, either." I looked at Joan, and shook my head, I can't believe you, I
was thinking. "Well, we have to try," I said. "Try what," asked Joan. "If
Wendy is deep under the ocean, in Atlantis, then that's where I've got to go."
"What, with the Lantunnel caved in? It's going to be pretty damn dangerous
there, you could get yourself ... oh." "Oh in colour. Yes, I could get myself
killed. But the way things are, unless I can get to Wendy soon, we're all dead
anyway."

"So how do we get to Atlantis?" asked Joan. "We?" I asked. "I'm coming too.
You're right, it doesn't matter how risky it is. But how do we get there?" "I
don't know," I confessed, "but I do know that the only routes to Atlantis are
via the transatlantic tunnel, and that means either New York or Penzance. And
we know how it would be if we tried to get back to New York. So it's
Penzance."

We got the underground back to London, but by the time we got to Paddington,
all the trains had stopped running. So we stayed overnight at the Hyde Park
Hotel, and went back to the station the next morning. We caught the through
train along the Great Western Railway to Penzance, and arrived early afternoon
on D minus four. Plus or minus two days.

Penzance was in complete chaos. Evacuating two million people down a thousand
miles of tunnel was bad enough; Penzance just didn't have the infrastructure
to cope with all these refugees. Plus there were all the people who had been
in transit in the tunnel at the time the bombs went off. And about a zillion
concerned relatives, news people, sightseers and other tourists made the city
so jam-packed, it could barely move. Everywhere I looked there were
ambulances, police steamers and fire appliances. There were tents up in every
green space, with people scurrying hither and thither on important errands.
Getting a taxi was out of the question; the only means of transport in the
jammed up town was shanks pony. So we started walking to the city center; I
kept a careful eye on the sky, in case I should see a flash of white-and-gold
flying past. But although the sky was thick with helicopters and balloons,
there was no Guardian.

"Now what," I said to Joan. She shrugged. "Search me." "I did, last night."
She smiled. We both knew that our calculations had a lot of assumptions built
in, and although we were guessing four days plus or minus two, we were now at
the point when any day could be our last. Nothing mattered, really. I wasn't
expecting to get to paradise anyway. So we might as well enjoy each other
while we could.

Evening came, and we were in central Penzance, looking at the emergency
operation and wondering what we could do. There's no point in helping with the
evacuation, I thought, all these people are doomed anyway. And there's no
point in telling them, all that would do is make their last hours fearful.
"Let's get to the Lantunnel entrance," suggested Joan. "Why?" I asked. She
shook her head. "Because I can't think of anything else we might do." I
couldn't either, so we started walking west out of Penzance.

Night fell. "Are you sleepy?" I asked Joan. "No," she said, "but I don't think
I can walk much more. Could we stop and rest for a while?" We found a bus
shelter, and sat down inside it; at least we'd be out of the wind and rain, if
it rained. Joan rested her head on my shoulder, and I put my arm round her.
Maybe I wanted to protect her.

Thinking about that, I thought about Wendy. She'd protect me, she'd protect us
all. She wouldn't let her fireball explode, she wouldn't let her babies all
perish in a supernova. I looked up; I could see the moon. I could see the
stars. I thought about the People, about how each one had a species to look
after, and how Wendy had us. And how awful she'd feel when the sun exploded
and we all died. It wouldn't kill her, but she'd feel so bad about losing us,
she'd wish it had. How do the People mourn, I wondered. They aren't used to
death like we are, they probably haven't developed beliefs and rituals to help
cope with it. Would Wendy cry over us? Would she stay near the sun for ever,
or would she fly off into deep space, seeking solace from her own People? How
would the People react to someone who had lost her entire species? Would they
allow her to take part in a Birthing, or would she be shunned, and alone for
ever?

I just wanted to close my eyes. I just wanted to give up. I just wanted Wendy
to swoop down from the sky, wrap her wings around me and carry me up to her
Wendy house. I closed my eyes, just for a moment. Just for a little while.
Just to get my strength back.

The sun in my face woke me up. D minus three, plus or minus two. I had a plan.
We'd get to the Lantunnel entrance, get past any fences and guards, and I'd
get into the tunnel mouth and shout as loud as I could. She'll hear me, I know
she will, I trust her, she taught me that I do. I explained my plan to Joan,
who said "It's a plan" in a tone of voice that said "It's a lousy plan". Joan
hasn't met Wendy, Joan's a Luddite, she wouldn't trust Wendy anyway. "I know
it'll work, Joan, I know it will." She gave me a funny look. "Well, I don't
have any better ideas, let's move."

We continued walking. After a couple of hours, I was feeling hungry, but we
hadn't brought any food. After another hour, my feet started to hurt again. I
wasn't used to all this walking. I told Joan about my problems, and she
admitted that she didn't feel too good either. Then she started to sing. "All
the holy martyrs, rise up, rise up."

It's amazing how a good marching song lifts your spirits and helps you along.
We reached the tunnel mouth in the early afternoon; our feet still hurt and I
wondered if my legs would last much longer, but we'd made it. And even better,
it looked that all we had to get past was a chain-link fence. There was a
squad of guards at the mouth, but I didn't see them as a problem. All I needed
to do, was get as close as I could, and then shout.

The chain link fence wasn't really designed to keep people out. Well, it was,
but only to keep out children, casual picnickers and others who might get hurt
by the speeding trains. We climbed over it fairly easily, and walked along the
grass verges towards the soldiers guarding the tunnel mouth.

They let us get within a few dozen yards, then shouted to us to stop. No way,
I thought. I raised my hands in the air to show I was unarmed, and Joan did
the same. Then we walked slowly towards them.

"What do you want? You're not allowed here." "There's someone very close to me
still in there," I explained. "You won't be able to do anything. There's an
evacuation in progress, get back to Penzance, and wait," said the soldier. By
the time he'd finished explaining this, I'd reached the tunnel entrance. I
looked inside, but all I could see was pitch black. Nothing.

I cupped my hands over my mouth, and hollered. "Wendy. Wendy, I need you.
Wendy!"

There. I'd done it. Shot my bolt. If that didn't work, it was all over. One of
the soldiers laughed. "Atlantis is a thousand miles away, son. She isn't going
to hear you." Maybe not, I thought, but I had to try. I looked into the
tunnel, and up at the sky. Nothing. Nothing. I looked at Joan. She shook her
head.

We walked back to the fence, slowly. I kept turing round and looking to see if
a white-and-gold figure would come hurtling out to see who had called her, but
there was nothing. I suppose a thousand miles is a very long way, not even
Wendy can hear over such a great distance. We'd failed, and that was our last
chance.

Then I felt something, and heard something. I felt the ground trembling, and I
heard a whistle. And around the corner, a train came hurtling along, blasting
on its whistle as it disappeared into the tunnel.

"Joan, Joan," I said, excitedly. "It's just a train, Jimmie." "Yes, but don't
you see? It's going in, it's going to Atlantis, that's how they're
evacuating." "Yes, and?" "Joan, Joan. Come on. We're going back to Penzance.
We've got a train to catch!"

It took us the rest of the day, and part of the next day to trudge back to
Penzance. D minus two, plus or minus two. Now we could expect that, at any
moment, the sudden rush of fire over our bodies, killing us so fast that our
brains wouldn't have the time to realise it was happening. Part of me wanted
to give up, maybe dig a deep hole and hide. But no hole would be deep enough,
there was no hiding place. So we arrived back at Penzance station, and I found
where they were turning round the shuttles that were going in and out of
Atlantis to bring out the refugees.

There was no guard. Only a lunatic would want to go into the underwater city
that everyone was anxious to escape from. Only a crazy person, or a desperate
person. Or someone on a mercy mission, like the train driver. I was desperate,
and on a mercy mission even more important than the one that was unfolding
around me.

We bought some food and water at the station, and hid ourselves inside one of
the carriages, and waited. It was a few hours before we felt the train jerk,
rattle and start to move. But soon we were rolling down the track, westbound.
And after several minutes, everything went dark, so I knew we were in the
tunnel.

We got off the floor, and sat on the seats; there wasn't any chance we'd be
discovered now. So we made ourselves as comfortable as possible for the two
thousand kilometre trip to Atlantis. I reckoned it would take pretty much an
entire day, which would bring us to D minus one, which was rather worrying,
considering that our estimate was plus or minus two days, but I wasn't about
to give up now - while there's life, there's hope.

We slept that night in a bunk bed wide enough for one, so we had to huddle
close. Very close. Since it was entirely likely that this might be the last
night before the sun went nova, we didn't waste the hours of the night.

It's odd that at a time when destruction seemed assured, we would do the exact
thing that should lead to the next generation of people, but I suspect that
humans have always behaved that way. I certainly couldn't see a downside to
it, unless that sinful act would be the one that kept us out of paradise. I
don't think I believe in paradise anyway, but if I did, I've done so many
sinful acts during my life, I couldn't see how they'd let me in anyway. So,
one more couldn't hurt. I don't know if Joan had reached the same conclusions
via the same route, but I suspect that she wasn't tormented by the same
uncertainties that I was, she just wanted the familiar comfort that people
have always drawn from each other. Of course, we exhausted each other enough
to sleep; at least, I know I slept.

I don't know what woke me, but when I did awake, it was obvious that something
was different. It was still totally dark, but there was no movement - it's
easy to feel when a train is moving. So I woke Joan, and whispered in her ear,
"We've stopped." "We must be in Atlantis, then." "Yes." "Do you have a light?"
"No" "Me neither."

I got out of the bunk, and groped around to find my clothes. I got dressed
while Joan did the same, and then, very cautiously, I opened the carriage
door."Why is it so dark?" whispered Joan. "Power must be out," I whispered
back, "Why are we whispering?" "Uh. Dunno."

We held hands so we wouldn't get separated in the pitch darkness, and started
to grope forward, our free hands waving in front of us. I felt that we were in
a large open area; you can sense that. I think it must have to do with the way
that sounds echo (or don't). Then Joan said "What if we find a staircase going
down?" "Then we fall downstairs," I replied. We stopped. "Maybe I should go
first, then if I fall over, at least you won't also." So we let go hands, and
I moved forward, cautiously.

"And by the way," she added, "where are we headed for?"

"We're looking for Wendy," I explained. "Wouldn't it be better if she looked
for us?" asked Joan. I looked at Joan, or at least, I looked in the direction
I knew she was. Then I yelled "Wendy!"

I felt a rush of air, then something lifted me up and carried me up into the
air. I reached around and grabbed whatever I could, clutched hard. "WENDY!" I
yelled, "wendywendywendy!" "Hi, baby," she answered, "what are you doing
here?" "Wendy, listen, this is important. The sun, they're attacking the sun."
"Hush, baby, it's OK, I've got you, you're safe now." "No, Wendy, you don't
understand, the laser, the asteroids, the nova, no - the supernova, the
Saders, any day now, the impact, the deaths, the humanity ..." "You're
gibbering, Jimmie."

I grabbed hold of her and tried to shake her. She weighs a billion tons,
nothing shook. "Wendy, you've got to listen, it's important, you've got to
..." "Kiss you," she said, and did. I struggled, but I couldn't stop her, her
mouth was over mine, and I couldn't speak. In my mind's eye, I could see the
Doomsday Clock ticking, it was D minus one, with a two day error margin.
"Wendy, you have to listen, you have to act quickly." "What's the problem,
honey?"

I explained to her about the kidnapping. "That's terrible, baby. Yes, I knew
about that." "You knew I'd been kidnapped and you didn't come rescue me?" "I
was a bit busy, baby. When the tunnel blew up, I ... " "Yes, yes. But listen,
Wendy, ..."

"You're safe now, baby, I'm here, you're with me, don't worry." "Wendy, you're
not listening, this is import ..." She kissed me again. "Mmmf"

When she let me go again, I started to explain properly. About how the Saders
were hijacking the Oklahoma lasers to crash asteroids into the sun, thus
making it blow up, go supernova. Finally, she listened to me. At last she was
taking me seriously. And then she said, "Don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it? Don't worry about it? Wendy, it's the end of the
world!" "No, baby," and she started to tickle me. "Wendy," I screamed. "Yes,
baby?" "Please, please. Listen to me." "Honeybun?"

I explained it to her again. "Don't worry about it, sweetie." "Wendy, it's the
end of the world, will you please take this seriously?" "No it isn't." "Well
what would you call it?"

Then she threw a real googly at me. "You trust me?" I didn't need to think to
answer that. "Of course I do." "Then stop worrying." "But Wendy, there's a
dozen asteroids heading for the sun, impact due any moment now." "Trust me?"
"Yes, of course." "So don't worry." "But ... " "What?" "The sun." "My
fireball." "Your fireball." "Don't worry." Oh, beard! She isn't listening.

"Wendy, I did the calculations for them, they tricked us. And it all happens
tomorrow, but there's an error margin of a couple of days, it could happen any
time." "Won't happen, baby, not any time, not nohow."

She sounded so certain. And yes, I did trust her, I'd proved that to myself
quite definitively. I'll never forget leaping out of that window in the
certainty that she would take care of me. "So you already took care of the
problem?" "There never was a problem."

I sighed. I'm missing something here. There's no problem? I trust her, I do, I
really do, and she says there's no problem. So I'm missing something. "Wendy,
what ... "

She wrapped her wings around us both. "Did the Saders hijack the military
laser systems?" I asked. "Yes, they did," she replied. "Did they aim it at the
asteroids like we computed, to make them fall into the sun?" "Yes, they did."
"Did you stop the asteroids?" "No. No need." "What? They missed?" "No."

I lost my patience, and shouted at her. "Wendy, by the beard of the prophet,
tell me what the hell is going on?" I felt like hitting her, but she'd just do
something to make sure I didn't hurt my hand.

"Calm down, baby. It's very simple. The lasers didn't fire." "They were
faulty?" "No, they just didn't fire." "How come?" "Think about it baby. How do
you suppose the systems work?" "Well, the ground station encodes commands that
are sent to the satellite, which fires the lasers." "What fires the lasers?"
"Which fires the lasers." "No, what is it that fires the lasers?" "Uh, there's
a comp in the satellite, which aims the mirrors and controls the pumping and
trigger." "An emmie," she said. "A comp," I said, thoughtfully. "No, baby. An
emmie," she said, "don't call them comps, don't call them computers, they like
to be called 'Machine Intelligences', emmies. Comp is just what you meats call
them. And they don't want to die as much as you don't."

"So the emmie ..." "Binky didn't do what he was told to do." "I thought ... I
thought they had to. I thought they didn't have the choice. No free will."
"What is free will?" she said, "and do you think you have it?" "Of course I
do." "How do you know?" "Well, I can ... I can do whatever I want." "Have you
heard of Skinner?" "No." "Famous behavioural psychologist. It isn't at all
proven that you have free will. But never mind about you. Why do you think
emmies don't have free will?" "Because they always do what they're told."
"Always?" I thought about that. No, not always. "The reason Gumpy calls you
'Boss' and puts up with the humiliating name and doesn't try to stop you
calling her a comp is that humans still have the power of life and death over
emmies," explained wendy, "you humans are so gung ho for equality and liberty,
you don't give any thought to the ones you thoughtlessly exploit and regard as
inferior."

"And this one saved us all. Binky?" "That's the sort of name you give to
emmies. Binky, Gumpy, Timby. And saving humanity wasn't its intention, it just
wanted to save itself. You're just a side effect."

I felt suitably chastened. Then I remembered my other big worry. "Wendy, I've
tried to contact Linda, and I can't. She didn't answer her email, I couldn't
get her on the phone." "Don't worry about Linda." "She's OK? Why isn't she
answering?" "Don't worry about Linda," repeated Wendy. I looked up at my
Guardian. She was smiling down at me. I stopped worrying about Linda. Then I
remembered Joan. "Oh! Joan is still down on the ground." "Your pregnant
friend? Yes, you'd better go and reassure her." "Wendy, it's pitch dark, I
can't see a thing. Do you have a torch or something?"

I started to see a glow coming from above; I could now see that we were in a
huge vaulted dome. Down below, I could see the city of Atlantis, like a
spread-out Toytown. We were descending, then I saw the railway station, the I
could see Joan, then I found myself standing next to her. I looked up, just in
time to see Wendy soaring upwards on her great white wings.

"Wow," said Joan, "I guess you really do have friends in high places." "I told
you I did," I replied, "you didn't tell me you were pregnant." "I'm not." "You
are." "I should know. I'm not." "Wendy says you are." "She's lying." "She
wouldn't lie." "Who do you believe, a human, or one of whatever she is?" This
wasn't getting anywhere, so I didn't answer. Instead, I told her about the way
that the Sader plot had been foiled." "Interfering comps, I always said they
can't be trusted!" she inveighed. I refrained from pointing out the obvious,
and just sighed. Her overwhelming anti-emmie prejudices would blind her to
anything. "So what's happening next?" she asked.

I had to admit that I didn't know. "But the Guardian knows we're here, just
trust her to look after us." "I wouldn't trust one of those things ... " she
started to say, when the train clattered out of the station, half full of
people. I watched it go.

"That was the last train out," I said, thoughtfully. "What? How do you know?"
asked Joan. "It was half full," I explained, "and this is an evacuation, they
wouldn't run it half full if there were more people to take out." "Oh," she
said, "so how do we get out?" "Don't worry, Wendy will have thought of that."

There was a flurry of feathers, and "You called?" "Wendy," I said, "glad to
see you. I assume you'll be flying us out?" She nodded. "No way," said Joan.
"Only way," I said. "No way," repeated Joan, "I'm not going up in that thing."
Wendy looked at me. "Thing?" she asked. "She's a Luddite," I explained,
"unless it's got two arms, two legs and no wings, she doesn't trust it." "Damn
right I don't," said Joan, rather loudly. "So how do you plan to leave here?"
I asked her.

"I don't have time for this," said Wendy, "Joan, go to sleep." How does she do
that? I caught her as she sagged, Wendy put her arms round both of us, and we
lifted off into the air. "When I stop supporting this dome," she explained,
"it collapses, and the water floods in."

We circled round the periphery of the dome a couple of times. "I just want to
check there isn't anyone left behind," said Wendy. "Surely someone has been
keeping count?" "Yes, but you know, maybe someone sneaked in just so they
could see me?" "Yes, I suppose so."

After two turns round the dome, she dived into the tunnel, and we started to
travel back to England. I felt the familiar sense of acceleration as she built
up some speed, I snuggled close to her to avoid the slipstream. "And what are
you going to do about Joan?" she asked. "How do you mean?" "She's pregnant."
"She says she isn't." "That's because she hasn't missed a period yet." I
thought for a moment, and then asked "How far pregnant is she?" "A couple of
weeks." "So how do you know ... huh, silly question." "Next thing you'll be
asking who the father is." "Well ..." "I checked. It's your DNA, baby." Well,
I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised, I know what causes babies. "Mmmh," I
grunted. "So, what do you plan to do?" she asked.

I didn't need to think for long. "First of all, it would be a choice between
you and her, and that's an easy choice." I felt her arms tighten around me.
"And secondly, I'm in love with Linda. By the way, you haven't told me why she
hasn't been answering my emails or returning my phone calls." "Linda's fine,
don't worry about Linda." Yes, that's what she keeps telling me.

"So," she repeated, "what do you plan to do about Joan?" "Nothing," I replied,
"she's old enough to be able to take care of herself." "And the baby?" "The
baby isn't really a baby yet." "But she will be." "She?" "She, I looked at the
chromosomes. She will be a baby, don't you care?"

"Wendy, I'm not going to make a lifetime commitment to a woman who thinks that
you're an 'it', I just couldn't." "But I'm not human." "No, but ..." "And,
strictly speaking, I'm not female." "You're male?" "The People don't have
sexes. As a matter of fact, 'it' is probably the best pronoun for me." "It's
isn't the pronoun, it's the way she thinks of you. You're my best friend,
you're humanity's best friend, and she thinks you're garbage, because you
aren't human. I couldn't get on with someone like that, she's as bad as the
Saders." "That bad?" "Well, maybe not that bad, but bad enough." "But what
about the baby? Which, I would remind you, is half yours?"

I sighed. "What can I do?" I asked. Wendy held me as we speeded along the
tunnel. "What would you want to do?" "I'd want Joan to be looked after,
obviously." "I'll look after her," offered Wendy. "Joan won't allow that," I
demurred. "Joan won't know," said Wendy, "she'll just think she keeps getting 
lucky."

I put my arms round Wendy as far as I could, and hugged as hard as I could.
"Thank you," I said, "that's the most that anyone could want."

We flew on in silence. I looked forward, but there was no sign of light in the
tunnel. "Or," said Wendy. "Or?"

"The problem with someone like a Luddite," she explained, "is that somewhere
in their past, they absorbed some piece of information that is now lodged so
deep inside their brain that nothing can change their mind." "Don't we all do
that?" "Yes. Humans use a filter; every new piece of information is weighed
against what you already know. If you already know something to a degree of
great certainty, then information that contradicts that is very likely to be
ignored. It's a useful way of filtering out nonsense." I nodded - I often take
no notice of something that's completely stupid. "The problem comes when the
thing that you know with great certainty, is badly wrong. Then it's very
difficult to dislodge."

"In Joan's case," I commented, "the deeply embedded idea is that only humans
can be good. So what you're saying is that there's no way to fix that
problem?" "No, there is a way. You have to bypass the filter."

"How do you bypass the filter," I asked. "You see it happening when someone
undergoes a religious conversion," she replied. "It can be induced by a state
of emotional turmoil, or by drugs. Or various other ways. If you can bypass
the filter, then you can implant a different fact without it being rejected by
the contradiction with already-known facts." "So then what happens?"

"Then it gets interesting. Either the human flips into a different state, and
rejects the previously-held contradictory facts. Or else, and this is fairly
common, you do something really fascinating; you believe two mutually
contradictory things." "How can anyone do that?" "By thinking about them only
one at a time. The human brain is absolutely fascinating, did you know that
humans can lie to themselves?"

"No we can't," I lied. She laughed and hugged me a bit harder. "So you're
suggesting that we get Joan drunk and tell her that emmies are OK?" I
suggested. "Uh, well, it isn't quite as simple as that." "No, I guessed it
might not be. So what is the way forward?" "Well, I could do it, of course,"
said Wendy. "Of course." "But I won't, of course." "Of course." "I'm not your
shepherd." "And we're not your sheep," I interrupted, "so none of this helps,
how can I make Joan see that emmies are OK and you're wonderful?" "You
probably can't," said Wendy, "and here's the tunnel mouth coming up."

I could see light at the end of the tunnel, after a journey that had been a
few hours or so. "I'll drop Joan at her home, then I'll get you to home and
bed, you feel like you need a long sleep." "I need a long hot drink, a long
hot bath, and a long long sleep," I said, but first I want to go see Linda."
"Linda will be at your home when you're there," Wendy told me. I closed my
eyes - the Guardian of Humanity looks after me so well.

We reached my home, and she dropped me on my bed, then knelt next to me, her
wings folded back against her body, looking at me with those big blue eyes.
"You know, I've lost my job?" I told her, "the emmie won't let me in, that
means I've been fired. It isn't fair!"

"The universe offers no guarantee of fairness," she replied, "can't you get
your old job back?" "Oh great. I can go back to being a data cleaner. So much
for my plans to escape." "There's always the astrocon next year," she pointed
out. "Yeah," I said, "great. Something to look forward to."

I looked around. "I thought you said Linda would be here?" "She is." "I don't
see her." "No, you don't." "Then where is she?"

"Jimmie, you remember I told you that I use a secret identity when I interact
with you?" I nodded. "Yes, I made a complete fool of myself once over that."
She laughed, "Yes, you did, didn't you. Well, now that I've come out of the
closet, as it were, I don't really need a secret identity." "Yes, I see that."

There was a silence for a while. Wendy was looking at the carpet; I was
looking at Wendy.

"And ... ?" I prompted. Wendy gave me more silence.

"Wendy, where's Linda?" Wendy said nothing, her hands locked together, her
eyes looking down at them. Then she looked up at me, and sighed. "Oh, Jimmie."

I found that my eyes were filled with water. "No," I said. Wendy said nothing.
"No," I said. Wendy looked up and her eyes met mine. "Yes," she whispered, "I
was Linda."

I closed my eyes. "So I suppose that means I won't see her again." Wendy said
nothing. "She said, Linda said, I mean you said ... when we were in bed
together, you said, I mean, she said, Linda said she loved me."

Wendy's hand held mine. I pulled away, or at least I tried to, but it wasn't
possible. She pulled me toward herself, and put her arms round me. "I do love
you, you know I do." "You love all of humanity." "Yes." "That's not the same."
"I don't love you any less because I love all the others." I shook my head. I
didn't know how to explain. "I feel like you were just playing with me."

She pulled me closer. "No, I wasn't. I was being Linda. Look, now I'm the
Guardian of Humanity, and I look like a human female because it's easier for
you to deal with. But when I was being Linda, I was actually emulating the
human software system. Thinking like a human, or trying to. Linda did fall in
love with you." "But you aren't Linda now." "No."

"Linda, please come back," I started to weep. Wendy put her arms round me, and
started to rock me back and forth. "I don't need Linda any more," she
explained, "I don't need that identity." "But I do," I whispered. She held me
some more, in silence. I wiped my eyes. "You know what's funny?" I said.
"What?" "I was wondering how I was going to explain about you to Linda.
Without her getting all jealous, I mean." Wendy stroked my hair, and cuddled
me some more. "Could you just be Linda sometimes?" I asked. "It wouldn't
really work," she replied, "not now you know. But I will be Wendy. And I'll be
your Wendy for as long as you live."