Protector

“That was my best guess. But,” said Bre

“And where would he be now?”

The sky surged again. Bright suns backed by tiny suns, dim-lit gas and dust clouds, a panorama of the universe flowed past and lurched to a stop. “There.”

“I don’t see him.”

“I don’t either.”

“So you haven’t found him. Do you still claim to understand the Pak?”

“I do.” Bre

Unexpectedly Alice spoke. “Could there be a lot of ships?”

“No. Why would the Pak send us a fleet?”

“I don’t know. But they’d be further away than you’d guess from the density of your fu

“Not if they were carrying more cargo,” said Bre

The blur of the sky condensed into hard white points. Now there was no giant sun in the field of view.

But there were a couple of hundred blue points all the same size, tiny, set wide apart in what Roy gradually realized was a hexagonal array.

“I just didn’t believe it,” said Bre

“It is. It’s a whole fleet!” Roy felt horror and the begi

He’d trusted Bre

“There must be more,” said Bre

“These aren’t enough?”

“They aren’t enough,” Bre

Little blue lights against a sky of too-bright stars. All that, from little blue lights?

Alice rubbed her neck. “What could have happened?”

“Any kind of thing. Black holes wandering through the core suns, picking up more and more mass, maybe wandering too near Pak. Or some kind of space-born life. Or the galactic core could be exploding in a rash of supernovae. It’s happened in other galaxies. What burns me is that it had to happen now!”

“Can’t you think of any other explanation?”

“None that fits. And it’s not quite as coincidental as it sounds,” Bre

“Maybe you didn’t want to,” said Alice.

“You can believe that!”

“Why here? Why come to us?”

“To the only known habitable world outside the galactic core? Besides that, we’ve had time to find them some others.”

“Yah.”

Bre

Deep within the eye-twisting maze of “Esher’s Relativity” was a miniature kitchen. It was a landing from one viewpoint, but from another it was a wall, and the wall held cookwear closets and a sink and a pair of ovens and a pull-down platform with burners in it. Raw materials had been dumped near the wall: a squash, a canteloupe, two rabbits whose necks were broken, carrots, celery, handfuls of spices.

“Let’s see how fast we can produce,” said Bre

Roy felt disoriented, cut off from reality. Those little blue lights above the tower room had no intuitive co

Alice said, “That food is all from outside, isn’t it? Why didn’t you want us to eat anything?”

“Well, there’s always the chance that tree-of-life virus has gotten to something. Cooking kills it, and there’s precious little chance it can live in anything anyway unless I’ve spread thalium oxide through the soil.” Bre

Bre

She asked, “Weren’t you lonely?”

“Yah.” Bre

“No, I don’t. You’d have been welcome.”

Bre

Roy nodded.

“How did I wipe out just that section of your memory?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows.” Roy tensed inside himself.

“Simplest thing in the world. Just after I stu

Roy’s voice came out faint. “Bre

“Why? Because for awhile you were a mindless animal? I wasn’t going to leave you that way. I’ve done this twenty times now, and never had an accident.”

Roy shuddered. “You don’t understand. There was a me that spent four months with you. He’s gone. You murdered him.”

“You’re begi

Roy looked him in the eye. “You were right. You’re different. You’d be lonely anywhere.”

Bre