Things in Houston didn’t happen the way I expected. (As you know, Dr. Cole, and I expect you’ll be the only one to read these pages … unless you show them to Officer Bose, which is all right with me if you do so.) I suppose I took a different path from how I dreamed it. I never robbed any stores, for instance. I guess I could have. God knows I was hungry and angry enough from time to time. But whenever I felt like hurting someone I thought about Turk Findley and the burning man (which was me!), and how terrible it would be to carry around the weight of another man’s death.

I work in the greenhouse mainly at night but they keep the big lights on all the time. It’s like a house where it’s always noon on a sunny day. I like the wetness in the air and the smell of growing things, even the sharp smell of the chemical fertilizer. Do you remember those flowers outside my room at State Care, Dr. Cole? Bird of paradise you said they were called. They look like one thing but they’re really another. But they didn’t choose to look like that. They’re just what time and nature made of them.

We don’t grow that kind of flower in the greenhouse where I work. But I remember how pretty they were. They really do look like birds, don’t they?

*   *   *

I don’t believe I will write to you again, Dr. Cole. Please don’t take that the wrong way. It’s only that I want to put these troublesome things behind me.

The people Officer Bose introduced me to have been real kind. They found me this job, and a place for Ariel and me to live. They are good people, even if what they do is outside of the law. They are not criminals exactly. They just think they can invent a better way of living.

Maybe they will succeed at their work. If they do then maybe the world won’t turn barren and poisonous, like in the dreams I wrote down. I hope that is the case.

I don’t know, of course. But you can trust these people, Dr. Cole.

And I know you trust Officer Bose. He helped me when he didn’t have to. He’s a good man, I believe.

I thank him, and I thank you for the same reason.

Well, that is all I have to say. I have to go to work pretty soon.

Don’t expect to hear from me again.

Ariel sends her kind regards, and asks me to tell you that Houston is too damn hot.

Orrin Mather

Laramie, Wyoming

By Robert Charles Wilson from Tom Doherty Associates

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS