The counterargument was speculative but powerful: we can’t risk another information disaster. What if something did happen to Key West? What if our end of the system broke down? It wasn’t just a matter of losing cultural continuity or even technical information. The people in Key West are living on a planet, which is something 97 percent of us have never done. They might know a lot of things useful for starting out on Epsilon; things not in books.

The difficulties expected in developing Epsilon also made one class of people automatically eligible for cryptobiosis: the young. Anyone born aboard ’Home would be allowed, even encouraged, to go crypto as soon as they were old enough, an insurance against the pioneer population being too heavily weighted toward the middle-aged and elderly. Nobody foresaw any problem in quickening a couple of thousand embryos in the last two decades of flight. But ’Home’s leaders were becoming cautious about unforeseen problems.

O’Hara didn’t see the policy ever affecting her. When Sandra was a little girl, she shared wholeheartedly her mother’s revulsion toward cryptobiosis. But people change.

11 August 2116 [5 Handy 332]—You lose one, you win one, you lose one… I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming. Daughters are little surprise machines.

Sandra declaring her love for Jakob was no surprise. That she wanted to marry at seventeen was a little bit of a shock, but her crowd are doing everything young. At least I talked them out of making it an exclusive bond—though they obviously consented just to humor my old-fashioned sexual attitudes. How could I ever want to do that with anyone else? Stick around, darlings.

And now she says that next year, as soon as she’s old enough, they’re going into the can together. Face the brave new world of Epsilon as young pioneers, ready to fight whatever dinosaurs or Martians are waiting on the other side of the airlock.

I really was caught off guard. She knows how I feel about it, anyhow. It would be stupid of me to try to talk her out of going.

I feel so old. Prime, come talk.

• • •

On 10 August 2117, Sandra and Jakob went into cryptobiosis. As soon as her term was over, O’Hara pulled strings and followed them.

AGE 55

IN DREAMS AWAKE

For time beyond time it was nothing but dark gray shot through with black stars the black stars slowly moving sparkling she could smell them move hear the burning cold as the stars sucked heat tinkling out of space space with the feel of stiff velvet folding

Then colors whistling soft harmonies indistinct shapes smelling no looking fuzzy sharpening up pictures this is not a dream not quite you don’t watch your dreams