The children sat on the floor and played with paints and dolls, or talked earnestly to brilliantly-colored Virtual figures -- smiling birds, tiny clowns. The children turned to watch as she came in with her mother, their faces round and bright, like dapples of sunlight through leaves. She'd never been so close to other children before. Were these children different, too?

One small girl scowled at her, and Lieserl quailed against her mother's legs. But her mother's familiar warm hands pressed into her back. "Go ahead. It's all right."

As she stared at the unknown girl's scowling face, Lieserl's questions, her too-adult, too-sophisticated doubts, seemed to evaporate. Suddenly, all that mattered to her -- all that mattered in the world -- was that she should be accepted by these children -- that they wouldn't know she was different.

An adult approached her: a man, young, thin, his features bland with youth. He wore a jumpsuit colored a ludicrous orange; in the sunlight, the glow of it shone up over his chin. He smiled at her. "Lieserl, isn't it? My name's Michael. We're glad you're here." In a louder, exaggerated voice, he said, "Aren't we, people?"

He was answered by a rehearsed, chorused "Yes."

"Now come and we'll find something for you to do," Michael said. He led her across the child-littered floor to a space beside a small boy. The boy -- red-haired, with startling blue eyes -- was staring at a Virtual puppet which endlessly formed and reformed: the figure two, collapsing into two snowflakes, two swans, two dancing children; the figure three, followed by three bears, three fish swimming in the air, three cakes. The boy mouthed the numbers, following the tinny voice of the Virtual. "Two. One. Two and one is three."

Michael introduced her to the boy -- Tommy -- and she sat down with him. Tommy, she was relieved to find, was so fascinated by his Virtual that he scarcely seemed aware that Lieserl was present -- let alone different.

The number Virtual ran through its cycle and winked out of existence. "Bye-bye, Tommy! Goodbye, Lieserl!"

Tommy was resting on his stomach, his chin cupped in his palms. Lieserl, awkwardly, copied his posture. Now Tommy turned to her -- without appraisal, merely looking at her, with unconscious acceptance.

Lieserl said, "Can we see it again?"

He yawned and poked a finger into one nostril. "No. Let's see another. There's a great one about the pre-Cambrian explosion--"

"The what?"

He waved a hand dismissively. "You know, the Burgess Shale and all that. Wait till you see Hallucigenia crawling over your neck..."

The children played, and learned, and napped. Later, the girl who'd scowled at Lieserl -- Ginnie -- started some trouble. She poked fun at the way Lieserl's bony wrists stuck out of her sleeves (Lieserl's growth rate was slowing, but she was still growing out of her clothes during a day). Then -- unexpectedly, astonishingly -- Ginnie started to bawl, claiming that Lieserl had walked through her Virtual. When Michael came over Lieserl started to explain, calmly and rationally, that Ginnie must be mistaken; but Michael told her not to cause such distress, and for punishment she was forced to sit away from the other children for ten minutes, without stimulation.