Tchicaya looked away. She had the power to incinerate everything around her, the power to break through every stifling absurdity she’d railed against from the day they’d met. When they’d spoken of the future, it was all she had ever talked about: finding a way to force the world to change. Now she could gut the planet with its own stupid rules, and nothing would ever be the same.

Unless he asked her to stay her hand.

Tchicaya slept through the end of Erdal’s Slowdown, and woke from deep dreams, refreshed but disoriented. He lay in bed, listening to the wind, thinking over what had happened in the last two hundred and seventy-two years.

Erdal had traveled to Gupta, a hundred and thirty-six light-years away, and stayed for ten days. When he rose from the crib, back in his birth flesh, he would find that ten days had passed on Turaev, too. He would be the one bearing news, eagerly describing his travels to his family and friends. He would not be a stranger to them, greeted with an incomprehensible litany of change.

The whole planet had waited for him. What else should they have done? Turaev’s sun would burn for four billion years. How much greed and impatience would it take to begrudge the wait, to cast someone aside for the sake of a few centuries?

Tchicaya felt more pride than guilt. Despite his lapse, his heart was still in the right place, and he had resolved never to be so weak again.

As he was dressing, his gaze ran over the scar on his leg. His was sure that his parents had noticed it, but neither of them had asked him to explain its meaning. It was his right to decide who to tell, and when.

Above the scar, between his legs, the skin was newly red and swollen. Tchicaya sat on the edge of his bed and probed the swelling gingerly. Touching it was like tickling himslef; it made him smile faintly, but there was no disguising the fact that he’d much rather be tickled by someone else.

He finished dressing, moving about the room slowly. He hadn’t thought it would happen so soon. Some people were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. He was tall, but he wasn’t strong for his age. He was nothing like his mother or father yet. He wasn’t ready. It was some kind of sickness, some kind of mistake.

He sat down on the bed again, trying not to panic. Nothing was irreversible yet. Whatever his body was constructing might take another year to be completed; the first time always took longer. And he could still change his mind, change his feelings. Everything was voluntary, his father had explained. Unless you loved someone deeply, and unless they felt the same way toward you, neither of you could grow what you both needed to make love together.

Tchicaya exposed the raw skin again, and stared down glumly at the formless nub. Every couple grew something different, just as every couple would have a different child. The molecules that had already passed between them in the air would determine the pair of shapes that formed. The two of them would be bound together then, literally remade for each other, even the chemical signals that gave them pleasure fitting together in a complementary pattern as unique as their interlocking flesh.

Tchicaya whispered, "I don’t love you. You’re nothing to me. I don’t love you." He would picture her face and recite the words every day, once when he rose and once before he slept. If he was strong enough, stubborn enough, his body would have to listen.

Chapter 7

Sophus was far too tactful to ask Tchicaya how he and Mariama knew each other; it must have been obvious that the answer was long, complicated, and largely none of his business. Tchicaya volunteered the bare minimum that the situation seemed to require. "We grew up together, in the same town on Turaev," he explained. "It’s been a while since we last ran into each other."

When Mariama asked to hear what was happening on the Rindler, Tchicaya deferred to Sophus, who took up the task of outlining some seventeen decades' worth of advances and disappointments. Tchicaya listened politely, hoping Mariama was taking in more than he was. His thoughts were still so scattered by the shock of her arrival that he gave up trying to pay attention; he could replay the whole conversation later.

As Sophus talked, the three of them strolled around the ship. Mariama was unfazed by the view from the walkways; she might not have been this close to the border before, but apparently she’d become accustomed to space. Then again, it would not have surprised him if she had decided to choose equanimity in the new environment by fiat, even if this was her first time off-planet.

When Tchicaya tuned in to the discussion again, Mariama was saying, "So there’s no prospect of using universality-class arguments to design a generally effective Planck worm, before we pin down the detailed physics?"