“I asked you first,” said Deborah. “But mine is easy to explain. A car crash and a fire. I lost both eyes and my face is one big scar. Plastic surgeons were able to give me a nose and you might see that around my mouth, they’ve grown me new lips and the musculature needed to make them work properly. But they can’t regrow eyes. I opted for digital glasses. Your turn.”

“It’s a parasite,” said Noxon. “A specially bred variant of a creature called ‘facemask,’ designed for symbiosis with humans.”

“So your having it wasn’t an accident,” said Deborah.

“I asked for it,” said Noxon. “It augments the human brain and body. Speeds up reactions, maintains health, sharpens perceptions.”

“Your eyes are out of place. Too far apart.”

“The first thing the facemask takes is the eyes. Then it grows new ones, better than before. But it’s a little careless about placement. It takes a few years for them to migrate to the normal positions.”

“The skin seems repulsively unnatural,” said Deborah. “Or is that just an artifact of my glasses?”

“No, you’re seeing rightly enough,” said Noxon. “At least the facemask did a good job of matching my skin color.”

“What race are you?” asked Deborah. “Too light for African or Dravidian, too dark for Malay. And you’re not big enough for Fijian.”

“I’m the same color as everyone else in my homeland. I think we may be the original race. That is, we represent a complete mixing of the deliberately diverse sampling of nationalities of the colonists on the starship that Ram Odin is going to pilot.”

“That’s such a bizarre assertion that I’m wondering if it might be truthful, and if so, how.”

“I’m sure Ram is explaining everything to your . . . father?”

“He’s my father, yes. Now. He’s actually an uncle that took me in. My parents died in the crash that blinded me. I don’t remember them, I wasn’t yet two years old.”

“Do you even remember seeing through regular eyes?” asked Noxon.

“I have memories, but I don’t know if they’re really from that time, or manufactured in dreams and imagination. Where are you from?”

“Not Peru,” said Noxon.

“Ram admitted as much when he said you were pretending to be a Quechua speaker.”

“I’m not pretending that,” said Noxon. “I’m fluent in Quechua.”

“But not from Peru.”

“I’m from Ramfold, one of the nineteen wallfolds on the planet Garden.”

“Planet,” said Deborah.

“The colony world that Ram Odin founded. The younger Ram Odin, the one that’s going to pilot the starship in a few years.”

“So there are two Rams.”

“More than that,” said Noxon. “There are two of me, as well. The other one kept the original name, Rigg. I go by Noxon so our friends know which one they’re talking about.”