"Tell me about her," Jane asked.

"The first time I knew I was in love with her was my junior year in high school," I said. "Our school was doing a performance of Romeo and Juliet, and she was selected as Juliet. I was the play's assistant director, which most of the time meant I was building sets or getting coffee for Mrs. Amos, the teacher who was directing. But when Kathy started having a little trouble with her lines, Mrs. Amos assigned me to go over them with her. So for two weeks after rehearsals, Kathy and I would go over to her house and work on her lines, although mostly we just talked about other things, like teenagers do. It was all very innocent at the time. Then the play went into dress rehearsal and I heard Kathy speaking all those lines to Jeff Greene, who was playing Romeo. And I got jealous. She was supposed to be speaking those words to me."

"What did you do?" Jane asked.

"I moped around through the entire run of the play, which was four performances between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, and avoided Kathy as much as possible. Then at the cast party on Sunday night Judy Jones, who had played Juliet's nurse, found me and told me that Kathy was sitting on the cafeteria loading dock, crying her eyes out. She thought I hated her because I'd been ignoring her for the last four days and she didn't know why. Judy then added if I didn't go out there and tell Kathy I was in love with her, she'd find a shovel and beat me to death with it."

"How did she know you were in love?" Jane asked.

"When you're a teenager and you're in love, it's obvious to everyone but you and the person you're in love with," I said. "Don't ask me why. It just works that way. So I went out to the loading dock, and saw Kathy sitting there, alone, dangling her feet off the edge of the dock. It was a full moon and the light came down on her face, and I don't think I'd ever seen her more beautiful than she was right then. And my heart was bursting because I knew, I really knew, that I was so in love with her that I could never tell her how much I wanted her."

"What did you do?" Jane asked.

"I cheated," I said. "Because, you know, I had just happened to memorize large chunks of Romeo and Juliet. So, as I walked toward her on the loading dock, I spoke most of Act II, Scene II to her. 'But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise fair sun . . .' and so on. I knew the words before; it's just this time I actually meant them. And after I was done saying them, I went to her and I kissed her for the first time. She was fifteen and I was sixteen, and I knew I was going to marry her and spend my life with her."

"Tell me about how she died," Jane asked, just before the skip to Consu space.

"She was making waffles on a Sunday morning, and she had a stroke while she was looking for the vanilla," I said. "I was in the living room at the time. I remember her asking herself where she had put the vanilla and then a second later I heard a crash and a thump. I ran into the kitchen and she was lying on the floor, shaking and bleeding from where her head had connected with the edge of the counter. I called emergency services as I held her. I tried to stop the bleeding from the cut, and I told her I loved her and kept on telling her that until the paramedics arrived and pulled her away from me, although they let me hold her hand on the ambulance ride to the hospital. I was holding her hand when she died in the ambulance. I saw the light go out in her eyes, but I kept telling her how much I loved her until they took her away from me at the hospital."

"Why did you do that?" Jane asked.

"I needed to be sure that the last thing she heard was me telling her how much I loved her," I said.

"What is it like when you lose someone you love?" Jane asked.

"You die, too," I said. "And you wait around for your body to catch up."

"Is that what you're doing now?" Jane said. "Waiting for your body to catch up, I mean."

"No, not anymore," I said. "You eventually get to live again. You just live a different life, is all."

"So you're on your third life now," Jane said.

"I guess I am," I said.

"How do you like this life?" Jane asked.

"I like it," I said. "I like the people in it."

Out the window, the stars rearranged themselves. We were in Consu space. We sat there quietly, fading in with the silence of the rest of the ship.

SIXTEEN

"You may refer to me as Ambassador, unworthy though I am of the title," the Consu said. "I am a criminal, having disgraced myself in battle on Pahnshu, and therefore am made to speak to you in your tongue. For this shame I crave death and a term of just punishment before my rebirth. It is my hope that as a result of these proceedings I will be viewed as somewhat less unworthy, and will thus be released to death. It is why I soil myself by speaking to you."

"It's nice to meet you, too," I said.

We stood in the center of a football field–size dome that the Consu had constructed not an hour before. Of course, we humans could not be allowed to touch Consu ground, or be anywhere a Consu might again tread; upon our arrival, automated machines created the dome in a region of Consu space long quarantined to serve as a receiving area for unwelcome visitors such as ourselves. After our negotiations were completed, the dome would be imploded and launched toward the nearest black hole, so that none of its atoms would ever contaminate this particular universe again. I thought that last part was overkill.

"We understand you have questions you wish to ask concerning the Rraey," the ambassador said, "and that you wish to invoke our rites to earn the honor of speaking these questions to us."

"We do," I said. Fifteen meters behind me thirty-nine Special Forces soldiers stood at attention, all dressed for battle. Our information told us that the Consu would not consider this a meeting of equals, so there was little need for diplomatic niceties; also, inasmuch as any of our people could be selected to fight, they needed to be prepared for battle. I was dressed up a bit, although that was my choice; if I was going to pretend to be the leader of this little delegation, then by God I was at least going to look the part.

At an equal distance behind the Consu were five other Consu, each holding two long and scary-looking knives. I didn't have to ask what they were doing there.

"My great people acknowledge that you have correctly requested our rites and that you have presented yourselves in accordance to our requirements," said the ambassador. "Yet we would have still dismissed your request as unworthy, had you not also brought the one who so honorably dispatched our warriors to the cycle of rebirth. Is that one you?"

"I am he," I said.

The Consu paused and seemed to consider me. "Strange that a great warrior would appear so," the ambassador said.

"I feel that way, too," I said. Our information told us that once the request had been accepted, the Consu would honor it no matter how we comported ourselves at the negotiations, so long as we fought in the accepted fashion. So I felt comfortable being a little flip. The thinking on the matter, in fact, suggested the Consu preferred us that way; it helped reinforce their feelings of superiority. Whatever worked.

"Five criminals have been selected to compete with your soldiers," the ambassador said. "As humans lack the physical attributes of Consu, we have provided knives for your soldiers to use, if they so choose. Our participants have them, and by providing them to one of your soldiers they will choose who they will fight."

"I understand," I said.

"Should your soldier survive, it may keep the knives as a token of its victory," the ambassador said.