"Buzz off," she said with a haughty shudder. "I'm Pooh."

"Buzz off! You can fly," Andrew Jaguar sang. "You can fly, you can fly, you can fly!"

William took Ariel around the waist and swung her legs up over the heads of several squatting children, who ducked and laughed.

"Bravo!" Theresa cried.

Martin clapped his hands in time to the loops of the dance, and the children joined in, making music, humming a waltz. Ariel assumed a pose of dignified involvement in her art, chin lifted, nose out-thrust, eyes half-closed, fingers tipping along William's fingers, swirling, swirling.

Martin noticed the War Mother had entered the room. The dance continued until William said, "Oh Lord, enough, I'm worn out." Ariel let him go and he echoed off the wall, grabbing a ladder field, laughing and waving one hand in time with the hummed waltz.

"Who's next?" she called, swinging closer to the center. Her face glowed with exertion, eyes on fire, and she focused suddenly, unexpectedly, on Martin, hooded her eyes seductively, leaned back in an abbreviated S with fingers extended. "You, Pan? Dance with Pooh?"

Martin blushed, laughed, and extended his hand. Ariel touched it with an expression of anything but addle-headed Pooh-bear affection, and was about to swing him off when the cabin lurched violently. The children instinctively dropped to the floor, fingers clutching uselessly. Martin felt their weight increase: a tenth of a g, half, three quarters… He glanced at Ariel, sprawled across from him, eyes wide, scared, then rolled over to find Theresa on his other side; the couches had collapsed into the floor, leaving an unobstructed, cushioned environment.

The War Mother grounded against the floor, fastening itself. Ladder fields sprang up and the air vibrated with milky rainbow colors.

Martin tuned his wand to show Tortoise'sexterior. Like a wooden stake shivered by the tap of an axe, the Dawn Treaderhad split from the third homeball forward. The last tissue of connection—Martin noticed the flexibility of that connection, so unlike metal—parted, and Hareleaped with new freedom.

"Separation?" Theresa asked, though the answer was obvious. Belief did not necessarily follow seeing.

"The Ship of the Law is now two ships," the War Mother said. They had already moved a dozen kilometers from Hare, and the distance quickly increased.

"We made it," Martin said.

"Shit," said Ariel, crossing her legs on the soft floor.

The children squatted and clasped their hands in front of them like so many Buddhas. Martin reached for Theresa's hand, gripped it tightly. She smiled at him.

All so very brave. No choice.

"Let's do it," Martin said.

"Super deceleration will begin in one minute," the War Mother said.

"Count!" Andrew Jaguar shouted, and they counted as the numbers from Martin's wand gleamed in the air above them.

Five, four, three, two

Martin took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Like a soft electric hand probing his body, the volumetric fields diffused through him. He heard a tiny distant whining noise in his ears, felt the blood stop in his veins, all the protoplasm in his cells pause, then the blood start again, pause, start: the vibrating jerkiness of fields controlling the path of each molecule, adjusting to allow normal vectors, to cancel the effects of the deceleration, temporarily paused thought, jammed his mind with half-aware impulses, threw him into blankness.

He could not see. His eyes hurt but he could not be fully aware of the pain. They would be in this state for days, but fortunately, the fields would soon give them a semblance of normality. They could see, move, talk, eat, however slowly and carefully.

If all goes well. No machine works perfectly. Every machine can fail.

The wands would not work under super deceleration. The War Mother would be inactive. They would have only themselves, in this small space, for days as they dropped from the top of the universe to the bottom, as they drained their momentum into massive sumps… as they let themselves be guided like pigeons in the head of a bomb, pigeons ready to peck their final destination, coo their final judgments, hoping to put out the eyes of those who had eaten their eggs, their young, their very coop.

Theodore came into the room where Martin sat alone with just the drip of thoughts to occupy him.

"Is it sadness then that makes you think of our enemy so?"

"Ah, Christ, Theodore. I miss you. Why did you kill yourself?"

"Because we're just pigeons, that's all."

"You never said so."

"I was never omniscient, Martin. You have original thoughts, you know, some better than mine ever were. Death just makes me larger, and that's silly. I'm actually very small now, being dead; a dust mote in your mind."

"I'd like to have you back in more than just dreams…"

"Hardly a dream. You're awake."

Martin sighed, shook his head. "I think we've gone through the worst part, and this is me, sleeping and dreaming, waiting for the whole thing to end. Boredom can do this to us. I think we're all sleeping now, tired of each other, bored with being in a tiny room."

"You've been thinking of Ariel, haven't you?"

"I suppose… What can you tell me about her?"

"Nothing you don't already know. The disadvantage of being dead. I can only be the image of your thoughts."

"So what do I know about her that I can't recognize?"

"She's tough, she keeps her mind about her, she believes in very little, and she has a capacity for great"

love

Theresa lay next to him, snoring lightly. Martin stroked her hip, feeling the tingle of field adjustment in his hands, the constant bind of constraints as the fields decided (if such was the right word) what motion was permitted, and what might be the beginning of a disastrous tumble into one-thousand-g deceleration.

love

for individual, for family, for group, for companions, for ship, for world, for Earth.

How does one come to love a world? Born into it, suffused with it, the world is part of everything and not differentiable. The Dawn Trcoderwas a world, as large in its way as any human lifetime; plenty of places to live, plenty of dreams to dream, even allowing them fragments of Earth. Scientific, curious Theodore Dawn, always observing, making notes, bent over his lenses and clear tanks of pond water in the quarters he shared with Martin, his personal equivalent of the cats and parrots other children kept as mutual pets and mascots. The lenses—the moms' equivalent of microscopes—hovering in the air before Theodore's face like tiny white jewels, light-refracting fields of optical strength and clarity far better than fluorite. Caught in a small spherical field that allowed in oxygen, but kept water from escaping, several chaoborusspecimens, the larvae of phantom midges that Theodore favored so highly. The specimens were kept from escaping by gentle fields… fields within fields, allowing Theodore access to these living creatures that would have been impossible on old Earth.

"Quite lovely," Theodore said. "And even better—harmless. Aren't you glad I'm not raising mosquitoes? You'd sneak in at night and destroy my tanks."

"We'd put up with it," Martin said.

"No you wouldn't," Theodore said. "You're much too judgmental… "Chaoborus, zooplankters, phytoplankters, varieties of beautiful algae, and above the pond, flying about the room, adult phantom midges buzzing, almost invisible, preening themselves on the walls; ignorant that they were no longer on Earth.