“Can you bring up some more moons? So I can see you better? See the grass?” There were four moons.

“I’ll try,” Myra said. There was silence. Nothing happened. Finally Myra said, “No, I can’t. I can’t change their orbits.”

“Thanks for trying,” he said dryly. “The first person to die here would become the planet? Or merge with its mind? Is that it?”

“I think so,” Myra said. He thought he could see a faint ripple on the word “think.” “I became reincarnated as Belsin. Remember the rings lighting after you pushed me over?”

“Yes.”

“I was waking up then. It was really splendid for me. To wake into this body. Edward,” she said, “I’m so alive now, and vigorous. And nothing about me hurts.”

He looked away, back toward the silent house. Then he finished his drink. Myra’s voice had been strong, cheerful. He had been calm—or had been acting calm—but something in his deep self was disturbed. He was becoming uneasy about all this. Talking with the grass did not disturb him. He was a realist, and if grass could talk to him in the voice of his dead wife he would hold conversation with grass. And Myra, clearly, wasn’t dead—although her old, arthritic body certainly was. He had seen it as they brought it in from the helicopter; even in low gravity, falling onto jagged obsidian could lacerate and spatter.

“Do you hate me for what I did?” he said, fishing.

“No, Edward. Not at all. I feel… removed from you. But then I really always did. I always knew that you only allowed a small part of yourself to touch my life. And now,” she said, “my life is bigger and more exciting. And I only need a small part of you.”

That troubled him, sent a little line of fear across a ridge somewhere in his stomach. It took him a moment to realize that it was her word “need” that had frightened him.

“Why do you need me, Myra?” he said, carefully.

“To read to me.”

He stared. “To read to you?”

“Yes, Edward. I want you to read from our library.” They had brought several thousand books on microfilm with them. “And I’ll want you to play records for me.”

“My God!” he said. “Doesn’t a whole planet have better things to do?”

The grass seemed to laugh. “Of course. Of course I have things to do. Just getting to know this body of mine. And I can sense that I am in touch with others—others like the Belsin part of me. Now that I have an ego—Myra’s ego—I can converse with them. Feel their feelings.”

“Well then,” he said, somewhat relieved.

“Yes,” she said. “But I’m still Myra, too. And I want to read. And I want music—honest, old-fashioned Earth music. I have this wonderful new body, Edward, but I don’t have hands. I can’t turn pages or change records. And I’ll need you to talk to, from time to time. As long as I remain human. Or half human.”