There was no mystery about why it had been abandoned. Alien growths were festooned across the building's roof. These were gaudy tubular things, turned to lacework by their own decomposition. But they must once have been heavy, because pieces of the roof had collapsed under their weight. And that wasn't all: a filigree of blue tendrils had invaded the restaurant, covering everything within a few yards of the door (floor, ceiling, tables, chairs, a busboy's cart) in randomly interwoven ropes and strings. These, too, were decaying. Touch them and they turned to rancid powder.

Turk located room keys and opened doors until he found enough undamaged rooms to allow them all some welcome privacy. Turk and Lise took one room, Dvali another. Sulean Moi consented to share a suite with Diane, Mrs. Rebka, and the boy Isaac.

* * * * *

Sulean wasn't unhappy with the room arrangements. She couldn't bring herself to like Mrs. Rebka, but she hoped to be allowed a few moments alone with the boy.

The opportunity came that evening. Dvali summoned everyone for what he called "a community meeting."

Isaac, of course, couldn't participate, and Sulean volunteered to stay with him—she had nothing to contribute to the talking, she said.

Mrs. Rebka agreed, reluctantly. As soon as she had left the room, Sulean went to the boy's bedside.

He wasn't feverish, he was even alert at times, and he could sit up, walk, take food. He had been blessedly quiet in the car, as if some of the dreadful inhuman neediness had passed from him since the flying thing attacked him. Dvali was loathe to discuss that event, since he didn't understand it, but it was the boy's first deeply personal contact with the semiliving creations of the Hypotheticals. Sulean wondered what it had felt like. Was the thing still in his body even now, had it disassembled itself into molecular fragments in order to circulate through his blood? And if so, why? Was there even a reason, or was it just another mindless tropism evolved over uncountable millions of years?

She wished she could ask Isaac. But there was only time for the most pressing questions.

She forced herself to smile at the boy. Isaac smiled back as readily as he ever had. I'm his friend, she thought. His. Martian friend. "I knew someone like you," she said, "a long time ago."

"I remember," Isaac said.

Sulean felt a fluttering in her chest.

"Do you know who I'm talking about?"

One word. "Esh."

"You know about Esh?"

Isaac nodded solemnly, his gold-flecked eyes gone distant.

"What do you know about him?"

Isaac began to tell the story of Esh's brief childhood at Bar Kea Station, and Sulean was astonished to hear the boy speaking Esh's Martian dialect again.

She felt dizzy. "Esh," she whispered.

Isaac said, in English, "He can't hear you."

"But you can hear him?"

"He can't talk, Sulean. He's dead. You know that."