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After a while she turned south, to get over to the nearest platform before the city came gliding over the horizon. When she got over the low rim of the ancient crater Kenk, she would be able to see Terminator’s tracks, gleaming faintly in the valley below.

F rom the top of Kenk, around to its southern side, she saw the tracks, and also a lone figure, toiling up the incline toward her. Round, tall; and she recognized the walk the moment she saw it, oh she knew that walk all right!

She clicked on the common band: “Wahram?”

“ ’Tis I, come hunting for you.”

“You found me.”

“Yes. Were you going to be coming back into town soon? Because I didn’t bring anything to eat.”

“Yes, I was. When did you get in?”

“Yesterday. I’ve just been hiking for a few hours. The city will be along anytime now.”

“Good. Good. Let’s go down to meet it.” She walked down to him and gave him a hug. In their suits she still knew his body well, round and full, a bigger person than her. “Thanks for coming out to get me.”

“Oh, my pleasure, I assure you. I came all the way from Titan.”

“I thought you might have. How is your new leg?”

He gestured down at it. “I keep placing it and finding it’s not quite where I thought it was. Apparently the ghost nerves of the old leg are still speaking to me and messing me up.”

“Just like my head!” Swan said without thinking, and laughed painfully. “Every time I grow a new one it’s not quite where I thought it was.”

Wahram regarded her, smiling. “I’m told it is a quick adjustment.”

“Hmm.”

“In fact, speaking of growing new heads-I was wondering if you had thought about what I said when we were marooned. And also of course on Venus afterward.”

“Yes, I have.”

“And?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

Wahram frowned. “Have you talked to Pauline about it?”

“Well, I suppose.”

In fact this had not even occurred to her.

Wahram regarded her. The sun was going to hit them soon. He said, “Pauline, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” said Pauline.

“Hey wait a minute!” Swan exclaimed. “I’m the one who has to say yes here.”

“I thought you just did,” Wahram said.

“No I did not! Pauline is very much a separate entity in here. That’s why you locked me out of your meetings, right?”

“Yes, but because you two are one. And so we couldn’t let you in without letting her in too. I am not the first to observe that since you were the one who programmed Pauline, and continue to do so, she is a kind of projection of you-”

“Not at all!”

“-or, well, maybe she would be better described as one of your works of art. They have often been very personal things.”

“My rock piles, personal?”

“Yes. Not as personal as sitting naked on a block of ice for a week drinking your own blood, but nevertheless, very personal.”

“Well, but Pauline is not art.”

“I’m not so sure. Maybe she’s something like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Isn’t that art? Some device we speak through. So I am very encouraged.”

“Don’t be!”

But he obviously was. Over time, Swan realized, that would matter-that he believed in Pauline. She walked down toward the nearest platform and he followed her.

After a while he said, “Thank you, Pauline.”

“You’re welcome,” Pauline replied.

Extracts (18)

to form a sentence is to collapse many superposed wave functions to a single thought universe. Multiplying the lost universes word by word, we can say that each sentence extinguishes 10 ^ n universes, where n is the number of words in the sentence. Each thought condenses trillions of potential thoughts. Thus we get verbal overshadowing, where the language we use structures the reality we inhabit. Maybe this is a blessing. Maybe this is why we need to keep making sentences texts are written for people to read later. They are a kind of time capsule, a speaking to one’s descendants. Reading this text, you see back to an older time, when the tumult and disorder may be scarcely believable to you. You may be on the other side of a great divide, your life indefinitely long and headed for the stars. Not so we the living, thrashing around in our little solar system like bacteria filling a new rain puddle. This puddle is all we’ve got. Within it some jimmy the doors to the secrets of life; some tend a patch of dirt for enough food to live. You know all that I know; what can we the living say to each other in that situation? In many ways it’s easier to talk to you, generous reader, unborn one. You might live for centuries, this text one tiny part of your education, a glimpse at how it used to be, a little insight into how your world got to be the way it is. Your author however remains stuck in the tail of the balkanization, desperate with hope for the beginning of whatever comes next. It is a very limited view

Who decides when it’s time to act?

No one decides. The moment happens.