Norah groaned. "Twenty-two eighth-grade girls playing twenty-two versions of Cleopatra and the asp."

"Never happen," I said. "With Gene Kruzak teaching the Ancient History module, they'll never even have heard of Cleopatra. They probably think she's a charm you find at the bottom of the oatmeal box."

"Your Salla knows about Cleopatra," Norah said. "I'll bet."

"Salla's too strong a feminist to play that part. If they do a play, she'll probably rewrite Egyptian history to have Cleopatra recruiting an army and conquering Rome."

If I hadn't said that, would it have saved us all from what happened? The Paper-Pushers don't believe in the power of words, for all they use so many of them. My people know better. Words-especially mathemagical equantations-call spirits out of the air. And other things.

However, at the time I didn't feel any frisson of warning. The cold chills were caused by Norah's renewing her inquiries about how the book was coming. She'd been too good a friend, for too long, for me to actually lie to her. I did sort of wish the intimidatingly competent Stephanie hadn't been there too, though, listening to my confession of failure with those perfectly shaped brows rising in perfect half-moon crescents above her eyes.

"Everything else I've written… " I concluded, then glanced at Stephanie. "Er, Stephanie, you don't read science fiction, do you?"

Stephanie gave me a patronizing smile. "In my position, I'm afraid it's all I can do to keep up with the current psychological and technical literature."

"Right. Well. You know, Norah, I'm not so good at making up plots. That first book was just about stuff that happened right here in Austin. And the stories I've been selling to anthologies are all based on things that happened… in my homeland," I said, bearing Stephanie's presence in mind. "Now my editor says she wants the new book to be set in this uni… I mean, country, not in Da… my homeland. And I haven't done anything to write about here, at least not since… that stuff in the first book." Stephanie didn't seem offended by all the elisions; in fact, she didn't even seem to be listening. She was tapping one foot and staring off as if she could see right through the wall to the pile of laundry in our bedroom. Still, there was no point in bringing up my-unusual-background with somebody who didn't already know about it.

"You know what, Riva," Stephanie said suddenly. So much for my theory that she'd spaced out ten minutes ago. "I've met a lot of women like you, and I think I can help you."

"You can?" Somehow Stephanie didn't seem like a good source for sword-and-sorcery adventure plots, but who knows? Maybe she too had a Past.

"Sure. You're one of the standard types," Stephanie said. "I bet you quit your job to raise the kid, right?"

"Well… Not exactly. I tried working part-time for a few years… "

"And it didn't work out! Exactly! It's just too hard for women to divide their attention between the career and the home."

Actually, what I'd found was that after I hit thirty-five, working as a swordswoman-for-hire was too hard, period, but Stephanie was not interruptible.

"Now your daughter is old enough that she really doesn't need you, except to drive her places, and you're at loose ends. The home-based businesses you may have tried didn't work out," Stephanie went on.

I couldn't contradict her about Salla, anyway. Since she turned thirteen Salla hardly said anything to me except, "Oh, Mooom!", "Will you drive me to the mall now?" and "How much longer are you gonna tie up the computer, I want to get on my chat room."

"What you need, Riva," Stephanie announced confidently, "is someone to help you reenter the professional world, get you started back in a career-track job. And I can do that for you."

"Um… " I didn't want to insult Stephanie, but she really didn't look like somebody who would have any contacts at all with my old employers-people like Zolkir the Terrible and Rodograunizzo the Revolting. Even if I'd wanted to get back into that business.

"Stephanie came to the Writers League tonight because she was recruiting tech writers for Xycorp," Norah put in.

"And you," Stephanie announced, looking straight at me, "are just the kind of person I'm looking for! Women who've been shunted out of the mainstream of professional work by our society's sexist attitude towards child-rearing, looking for a way back in… "

"Umm… I don't have much of a resume," I pointed out.

Stephanie waved her hand airily. "I can take care of all that. You have writing experience. And Norah's told me about your past life."

I glared at Norah.

"Any woman with the guts to do what you've already done – to leave your child's father and your homeland, to immigrate to the United States and start a new life from scratch – well, it's clear to me that you have what it takes to make it in the trenches of office politics."

And it was becoming clear to me that Norah hadn't told Stephanie all about my past life.

She leaned forward and took my hands. This close, the fervor in her eyes was almost hypnotic. "I need you, Riva. Xycorp needs you. This society needs you and women like you."

"Writers?"

"Strong women. Women who can roll with the punches and come up fighting."

Hmm. Maybe being a technical writer wouldn't be so boring after all. At least it seemed to call for skills I really had.

"Of course," Stephanie said, "you'll have to dress professionally at work."

I looked down at my jeans and T-shirt, visualized my old working outfit in its box under the bed. Somehow I had a feeling that a bronze chain mail corselet and thigh guards were not quite what Stephanie had in mind.

"What's wrong with these clothes?"

Stephanie and Norah looked at each other and there was one of Those Silences. You know the kind I mean: the kind where you realize that you've just revealed your total ignorance of the game and total unworthiness to play.

"I'm sure," Stephanie said finally, sounding considerably less sure than she had up to now, "that we can find something for you."

"Finding something" turned out to be somewhat more work than I had envisioned. Take shopping malls, for instance. I used to sneer at the ladies who got their exercise by walking up and down the length of an air-conditioned mall because they couldn't stand to work up an honest sweat. After Stephanie and I had been through Barton Springs Mall three times in one afternoon I had more respect for them. If nothing else, their feet were considerably tougher than mine, which ached from instep to heel, with separate factions of rebellious nerves lodged in each toe. As a member in good standing of the Bronze Bra Guild, with forty individual kills and several successful campaigns to my credit, I had too much pride to complain. I did reflect, however, that the Guild's training, which relied heavily on forced marches through the desert, running up mountains, and combat sparring, could reasonably be augmented by a few more endurance tests. In short, I had never trained for so many hours of walking on concrete floors. Of course, on Dazau we hadn't had concrete…

By the time Stephanie pronounced herself satisfied with a gray suit that simultaneously concealed my chest and hobbled my knees, together with a set of undergarments that had been constructed by someone with bridge building and other major engineering feats on his mind, I was too tired to care about the funny-looking shoes that made me look as if I were walking on tiptoe. I couldn't tell if they fit anyway; my feet were going to hurt no matter what I wore. Ice packs seemed like a good choice.

All this may explain why for once I didn't mind when Salla staged her usual homecoming routine. This consisted of yelling, "I'M HOME!", slamming the front door, grabbing a handful of cookies and a Coke from the kitchen, and shutting herself in the cubbyhole we called a "study," where she could simultaneously watch TV, log on to a chat room with her friends, and talk on the phone. This was known as "doing homework." Some days I regretted the passing of the time when she'd wanted to tell me every detail of her day. Today, though, I was perfectly content to lie on the bed listening to my feet throbbing.