Tor came in and built a fire. “So what are they?” he asked.

She smiled at him. The house smelled of pine.

“Showbiz,” she said.

He laughed.

“I’m serious. The arts are all about perspective, right? Angle of light. Point of view. What the artist chooses to put in the foreground. Or in shadow.”

“I’m sorry, Hutch,” he said. “I don’t think I see where this is leading.”

“Do you remember how Maureen reacted to the tewks?”

“She liked them. Thought they were attractive.”

“ ‘They’re pretty,’ she said.”

“So—?” Maureen was arranging her dolls, seating them on the floor, their backs against a chair, positioning them so they could see the tree.

“We’ve been watching them from God’s point of view.”

“How do you mean?”

“By eliminating distance, we’ve looked at them as they actually exploded—if that’s the right term—to try to get a perspective on what was really happening. We ruled out the possibility that time and distance might be part of the equation.”

Tor tilted his head. “Plain English, please.”

“Think about the art gallery.”

“What about it?”

“I missed the point. It didn’t affect Harold because of something he saw inside it—”

Tor’s brow creased. “—But because it was there.”

“Yes.”

“So what does that tell us?”

SHE SLIPPED THE disk into the reader, and a cross section of the Orion Arm blinked on.

“I’ve always believed,” said Tor, “that the whole thing was a project by some sort of cosmic megalomaniac who just wanted to blow things up.” He had mixed two white tigers for them. “But you don’t think that?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“The method’s too inefficient. There are a lot of omegas out there. Thousands, maybe. And only a handful that will actually destroy anything.” She tried the drink. It was warm and sweet and made with a bit more lemon than the recipe called for. Just the way she liked it. “Tor, it doesn’t feel malicious.”

“It feels dumb.”

“Yes.” She gathered up Maureen, and they threaded their way through the constellations to the sofa. “Exactly what I’ve thought from the very beginning.”

“Like Santa’s sleigh over at the Adams house.”

“Well, okay. It feels showy. Pretentious.” She drew her legs up, tucked them under, and turned off the tree lights. A log crashed into the fire. Sparks flew and mixed with the stars. Maureen wanted to know what was happening.

“We’re going to watch the sim for a few minutes, Love.” And to the AI: “George, run the patterns. Fast forward.”

Among the stars, tewks blinked on and off. A few here, a couple there, a few more over by the window. A half dozen or so by the tree. A cluster near the bookcase, a group by the curtains. Some on this side, some on the far side. Altogether, there were now 117 recorded tewk events.

“What are we looking for?”

“Bear with me a bit. George, change the viewing angle. Pick a site at the galactic core. More or less where the clouds would be originating.”

The stars shifted. The familiar constellations vanished.

“Run them again, George.”

They sat and watched. Lights blinked on and off. Some here, some there, a few over near the clock.

“There’s a pattern,” she said.

“I don’t see it.” Tor’s hand touched hers. “What sort of pattern?”

“I don’t know. You get a little bit in one place, but then it breaks down everywhere else. George, take us out to the rim. Let’s have a look from, uh, Capella.”

The starfield shifted again. “Run it?” asked George.

“Yes. Please.”

Again the lights winked on and off around the room. She had to swing around to see everything. Tor gave up and edged off the sofa onto one knee, from which it was easier to follow the images.

“What’s the time span here?” he asked.

“From start to finish,” she said, “about twenty thousand years.”

“How long do you think it’s been going on?”

“No idea,” she said. “Could be millions, I suppose.” And to George: “Try it again, George. From the Pleiades.”

And: “From Antares.”

And: “From Arcturus.”

Maureen got down off the sofa and headed into the kitchen.

Tor resumed his seat, but made no further effort to see into the far corners of the room. “You give up?” she asked.

“I’m tired twisting around to see everything. We’d do better to go sit by the door.”

“George,” she said, “can you make out a pattern here anywhere?”

“Please specify parameters.”

“Never mind.” She heard the refrigerator open.

Tor started to get up, but she pulled him back down. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got it.”

SHE GOT SNACKS for all of them, chocolate cake for Maureen and herself, ice cream for Tor and when the child had finished, she put Maureen to bed. Later they had visitors, Tor’s brother and his wife, who lived in Alexandria, and MacAllister, who brought an armload of presents. More reporters showed up, and Michael Asquith called to tell her that she was invited to the White House for dinner Friday.

“You’re on top of the world,” Tor told her. “Enjoy it.”

She was doing that. It was a nice feeling to be the toast of the town. She understood she was getting credit for what other people had done, but that was okay. She’d be careful to spread it around when the opportunity offered.

Finally, at about 2:00 A.M., things quieted down, and they found themselves alone. They brought Maureen’s presents out of the closet, put them under the tree, and went to bed. On her way up the stairs, Hutch was still thinking about the tewks. Somewhere, she’d missed something.

Tor headed for the shower. Hutch brushed her teeth and decided to let her own ablutions go until morning. She changed into a sheer nightgown, thinking it would be nice to celebrate properly. But as soon as she slipped into bed, her eyes closed, and her head sank back into the pillows.

The tewks went off in various series. A pattern of sorts. A few here, a few there. Why?

She got up, went back out, and stared down into the living room, its outlines just visible in the soft glow of the night-light.

“What’s wrong?” asked Tor, appearing suddenly at her side.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I asked what was wrong.” He was pulling his robe around his shoulders.

“No. Before that.”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“You said, when you’re on top of the world, make it count. Or something like that. And earlier you said we’d do better to go sit by the door. That’s what I’m going to do.”

His hand touched her shoulder tentatively. “Priscilla, my love, what are we talking about now?”

“Point of view,” she said. “We’ve been looking for a pattern while we’re sitting inside it. George?”

“Yes, Hutch?”

“George, I want to run the program again.”

“From what perspective?”

“Try from above the Orion Arm. Maybe twenty thousand light-years or so.”

THE TEWK EVENTS exploded in glorious rhythm, one-two-three, magnificent eruptions, a few seconds apart, and then six blue lights flaring in sequence near the picture of Maureen, and a series of green flashes, erupting in perfect sync, up and down in a zigzag pattern just over the armchair. And four more, blood red, a vampire’s eyes, near the windows.

It went on and on. There were parts missing, of course. The great bulk of it was missing, if she was correct in assuming that all the clouds in time would become part of the same incredible light show. The ultimate work of art. What they were looking at was no more than a few fragments, a chord here and there. But magnificent nonetheless.

“My God,” he said.

“It’s the way it would look if you were sitting sixteen thousand light-years above the Milky Way, and you had a different sort of time sense. And you liked fireworks.”

“But who—?”

“Don’t know. Maybe long dead. Maybe not. But I suspect, whoever they are, they aren’t very bright.”

“They have to be,” he said. “Look at the engineering involved.”

She looked down on the grandeur of the Milky Way, watched the tewksbury objects blaze in a kind of luminous choreography, and thought it was one of the loveliest and most majestic things she’d ever seen.

“Well,” she said. “Not very bright. Or don’t give a damn. Take your pick.”

LIBRARY ENTRY

. We continue to pour resources into star travel.

The question no one ever asks is why we should do this. What possible benefit has the human race received from the fact that it can visit Alpha Serengetti or some such place. We are told that knowledge is its own reward. And that there have been practical benefits as well. That household AIs work better because we can travel faster than light, that we know more about nutrition, that we would not have developed artificial gravity, that our shoes are more comfortable, and that we have a better grasp of our own psychology, all because some of us have gone to these impossibly distant places.

But which of the above advantages could not have been secured by direct research? And who would even need artificial gravity if we had the good sense to stay home?

We have yet to find a new Earth. And one might argue sensibly that we have no need of one.

Maybe it’s time to call a halt, and to rethink the entire effort. Before the assorted crazies who want to go to Epsilon Eridani, at taxpayer expense, ruin us all.

— Paris Review

December 27

Brackel.

Twenty-fourth day after T’Klot.

THE LIBRARY WAS finally ready to receive the scrolls that Parsy had rescued the night of the storm.

The walls had been refurbished; the floor had been replaced. New chairs and tables had been brought in; the librarians’ counter rebuilt. New shutters installed, compliments of one of the library’s several support groups. People had contributed lamps and pens and parchment. Several of those who had died on that terrible night had left bequests of which the library had been the beneficiary. He’d ordered a statue of Lykonda to be placed at the entrance.

Tupelo and Yakkim came in with the scrolls, which had been carefully stored at the villa. There would be a reopening ceremony the next day, and Parsy was determined that the library would look good. Two new maps were up, to replace the ones that had been ruined. The scrolls would be back in the inner room, where they would be available once more, and two fresh sets, a history of intellectual thought during the current century by Pelimon, and a collection of essays by Rikat Domo, would be contributed by the Society of Transcribers. To further mark the event—