He got up and padded into the kitchen. Strangely he did not feel agitated. He was on some ledge somewhere in the middle of the quiet night, hung over and a wife-murderer, yet his soul was calm. He found the cigarettes easily, opened them, took one out and lit it. He poured a small amount of gin into a glass, filled it the rest of the way with orange juice, thinking as he did so of how far a distance from California that juice had come, to be drunk by him here in this steel kitchen in the middle of the night on a planet where the grass had become his wife. The whole planet was his wife. His ex-wife. He drank a swallow from the glass, after swishing it around to mix the gin in. The glow from it in his stomach was warm and mystical. He walked slowly, carrying his glass and his cigarette, out to the terrace.

“Ooooh!” the grass said. “I can see you now.”

He looked up to the sky. “I don’t see the rings,” he said. “Your rings.”

And then they appeared. Glowing pink and lavender, clearly outlined against the dim-lit sky. They disappeared.

“I’m only learning to show my rings,” Myra said. “I have to thicken the air in the right place, so the light bends downward toward you.” There was silence for a while. The grass had become clearer when it last spoke. It spoke again finally and was clearer still, so that it almost seemed as if Myra were sitting on the terrace next to him, her soft voice perfectly audible in the silent night. “There’s a lot to learn, Edward.”

He drank again. “How did it happen?” And then, almost blurting it out, “Are you going to tell people about what I did?”

“Goodness, Edward, I hadn’t thought about that.” The voice paused. “Right now I don’t know.”

He felt relieved. Myra had always been good-hearted, despite the self-pity. She usually gave the benefit of the doubt.

He sat silent for a while, looking at the vast plain in front of his eyes, concentrating on his drink. Then he said, “You didn’t answer me, Myra. About how it happened.”

“I know,” the grass said. “I know I didn’t. Edward, I’m not only Myra, I’m Belsin too. I am this planet and I’m learning to be what I have become.” There was no self-pity in that, no complaint. She was speaking to him clearly, trying to tell him something.

“What I know is that Belsin wanted an ego. Belsin wanted someone to die here. Before I died and was… was taken in, Belsin could not speak in English. My grass could only speak to the feelings of people but not to their minds.”

“The singing?” he said.

“Yes. I learned singing when Captain Belsin first landed. He carried a little tape player with him as he explored and played music on it. The grass learned… I learned to sing. He had headaches and took aspirin for them and I learned to make Endolin for him. But he never used it. Never discovered it.” The voice was wistful, remembering something unpleasant. “I couldn’t talk then. I could only feel some of the things that people felt. I could feel what happened to Captain Belsin’s headache when he took aspirin and I knew how to improve on it. But I couldn’t tell him to use it. That was found out later.” The grass rippled and was still. It was darker now; one of the moons had set while they were talking.