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  "Private channel please!" Lizzie took several deep cleansing breaths to calm herself. Then, more reasonably, she said, "Alan, I'm a _Catholic,_ okay? If I'm going to die, I don't want a grief counselor, I want a goddamned priest." Abruptly, she yawned. "Oh, fuck. Not again." She yawned twice more. "A priest, understand? Wake me up when he's online."

  * * *

  Then she again was standing at the bottom of her mind, in the blank expanse of where the drowned city had been. Though she could see nothing, she felt certain that she stood at the center of a vast, featureless plain, one so large she could walk across it forever and never arrive anywhere. She sensed that she was in the aftermath of a great struggle. Or maybe it was just a lull.

  A great, tense silence surrounded her.

  "Hello?" she said. The word echoed soundlessly, absence upon absence.

  At last that gentle voice said, "You seem different."

  "I'm going to die," Lizzie said. "Knowing that changes a person." The ground was covered with soft ash, as if from an enormous conflagration. She didn't want to think about what it was that had burned. The smell of it filled her nostrils.

  "Death. We understand this concept."

  "Do you?"

  "We have understood it for a long time."

  "Have you?"

  "Ever since you brought it to us."

  "Me?"

  "You brought us the concept of individuality. It is the same thing."

  Awareness dawned. "Culture shock! That's what all this is about, isn't it? You didn't know there could be more than one sentient being in existence. You didn't know you lived at the bottom of an ocean on a small world inside a Universe with billions of galaxies. I brought you more information than you could swallow in one bite, and now you're choking on it."

  Mournfully: "Choking. What a grotesque concept."

  * * *

  "Wake up, Lizzie!"

  She woke up. "I think I'm getting somewhere," she said. Then she laughed.

  "O'Brien," Alan said carefully. "Why did you just laugh?"

  "Because I'm not getting anywhere, am I? I'm becalmed here, going around and around in a very slow circle. And I'm down to my last" -- she checked -- "twenty hours of oxygen. And nobody's going to rescue me. And I'm going to die. But other than that, I'm making terrific progress."

  "O'Brien, you're..."

  "I'm okay, Alan. A little frazzled. Maybe a bit too emotionally honest. But under the circumstances, I think that's permitted, don't you?"

  "Lizzie, we have your priest. His name is Father Laferrier. The Archdiocese of Montreal arranged a hookup for him."

  "Montreal? Why Montreal? No, don't explain -- more NAFTASA politics, right?"

  "Actually, my brother-in-law is a Catholic, and I asked him who was good."

  She was silent for a touch. "I'm sorry, Alan. I don't know what got into me."

  "You've been under a lot of pressure. Here. I've got him on tape."

  _"Hello, Ms. O'Brien, I'm Father Laferrier. I've talked with the officials here, and they've promised that you and I can talk privately, and that they won't record what's said. So if you want to make your confession now, I'm ready for you."_

  Lizzie checked the specs and switched over to a channel that she hoped was really and truly private. Best not to get too specific about the embarrassing stuff, just in case. She could confess her sins by category.

  "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last confession. I'm going to die, and maybe I'm not entirely sane, but I think I'm in communication with an alien intelligence. I think it's a terrible sin to pretend I'm not." She paused. "I mean, I don't know if it's a _sin_ or not, but I'm sure it's _wrong_." She paused again. "I've been guilty of anger, and pride, and envy, and lust. I brought the knowledge of death to an innocent world. I..." She felt herself drifting off again, and hastily said, "For these and all my sins, I am most heartily sorry, and beg the forgiveness of God and the absolution and..."

  "And what?" That gentle voice again. She was in that strange dark mental space once more, asleep but cognizant, rational but accepting any absurdity, no matter how great. There were no cities, no towers, no ashes, no plains. Nothing but the negation of negation.

  When she didn't answer the question, the voice said, "Does it have to do with your death?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm dying too."

  "What?"

  "Half of us are gone already. The rest are shutting down. We thought we were one. You showed us we were not. We thought we were everything. You showed us the Universe."

  "So you're just going to_ die?"_

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Why not?"

  Thinking as quickly and surely as she ever had before in her life, Lizzie said, "Let me show you something."

  "Why?"

  "Why not?"

  There was a brief, terse silence. Then: "Very well."

  Summoning all her mental acuity, Lizzie thought back to that instant when she had first seen the city/entity on the fishcam. The soaring majesty of it. The slim grace. And then the colors, like dawn upon a glacial ice field: subtle, profound, riveting. She called back her emotions in that instant, and threw in how she'd felt the day she'd seen her baby brother's birth, the raw rasp of cold air in her lungs as she stumbled to the topmost peak of her first mountain, the wonder of the Taj Mahal at sunset, the sense of wild daring when she'd first put her hand down a boy's trousers, the prismatic crescent of atmosphere at the Earth's rim when seen from low orbit.... Everything she had, she threw into that image.

  "This is how you look," she said. "This is what we'd both be losing if you were no more. If you were human, I'd rip off your clothes and do you on the floor right now. I wouldn't care who was watching. I wouldn't give a damn."

  The gentle voice said, "Oh."

  * * *

  And then she was back in her suit again. She could smell her own sweat, sharp with fear. She could feel her body, the subtle aches where the harness pulled against her flesh, the way her feet, hanging free, were bloated with blood. Everything was crystalline clear and absolutely real. All that had come before seemed like a bad dream.

  _"This is DogsofSETI. What a wonderful discovery you've made -- intelligent life in our own Solar System! Why is the government trying to cover this up?"_

  "Uh..."

  _"I'm Joseph Devries. This alien monster must be destroyed immediately. We can't afford the possibility that it's hostile."_

  _"StudPudgie07 here. What's the dirt behind this 'lust' thing? Advanced minds need to know! If O'Brien isn't going to share the details, then why'd she bring it up in the first place?"_

  _"Hola, soy Pedro Dominguez. Como abogado, Áesto me parece ultrajante! Por que NAFTASA nos oculta esta informacion?"_

  "Alan!" Lizzie shouted. "What the_ fuck_ is going on?"

  "Script-bunnies," Alan said. He sounded simultaneously apologetic and annoyed. "They hacked into your confession and apparently you said something..."

  "We're sorry, Lizzie," Consuelo said. "We really are. If it's any consolation, the Archdiocese of Montreal is hopping mad. They're talking about taking legal action."

  "Legal action? What the hell do I care about...?" She stopped.

  Without her willing it, one hand rose above her head and seized the number 10 rope.

  Don't do that, she thought.

  The other hand went out to the side, tightened against the number 9 rope. She hadn't willed that either. When she tried to draw it back to her, it refused to obey. Then the first hand -- her right hand -- moved a few inches upward and seized its rope in an iron grip. Her left hand slid a good half-foot up its rope. Inch by inch, hand over hand, she climbed up toward the balloon.

  I've gone mad, she thought. Her right hand was gripping the rip panel now, and the other tightly clenched rope 8. Hanging effortlessly from them, she swung her feet upward. She drew her knees against her chest and kicked.

  _No!_

  The fabric ruptured and she
began to fall.

  A voice she could barely make out said, "Don't panic. We're going to bring you down."

  All in a panic, she snatched at the 9 rope and the 4 rope. But they were limp in her hand, useless, falling at the same rate she was.

  "Be patient."

  "I don't want to die, goddamnit!"

  "Then don't."

  She was falling helplessly. It was a terrifying sensation, an endless plunge into whiteness, slowed somewhat by the tangle of ropes and balloon trailing behind her. She spread out her arms and legs like a starfish, and felt the air resistance slow her yet further. The sea rushed up at her with appalling speed. It seemed like she'd been falling forever. It was over in an instant.

  Without volition, Lizzie kicked free of balloon and harness, drew her feet together, pointed her toes, and positioned herself perpendicular to Titan's surface. She smashed through the surface of the sea, sending enormous gouts of liquid splashing upward. It knocked the breath out of her. Red pain exploded within. She thought maybe she'd broken a few ribs.

  "You taught us so many things," the gentle voice said. "You gave us so much."

  "Help me!" The water was dark around her. The light was fading.

  "Multiplicity. Motion. Lies. You showed us a universe infinitely larger than the one we had known."

  "Look. Save my life and we'll call it even. Deal?"

  "Gratitude. Such an essential concept."

  "Thanks. I think."

  And then she saw the turbot swimming toward her in a burst of silver bubbles. She held out her arms and the robot fish swam into them. Her fingers closed about the handles which Consuelo had used to wrestle the device into the sea. There was a jerk, so hard that she thought for an instant that her arms would be ripped out of their sockets. Then the robofish was surging forward and upward and it was all she could do to keep her grip.

  "Oh, dear God!" Lizzie cried involuntarily.

  "We think we can bring you to shore. It will not be easy."

  Lizzie held on for dear life. At first she wasn't at all sure she could. But then she pulled herself forward, so that she was almost astride the speeding mechanical fish, and her confidence returned. She could do this. It wasn't any harder than the time she'd had the flu and aced her gymnastics final on parallel bars and horse anyway. It was just a matter of grit and determination. She just had to keep her wits about her. "Listen," she said. "If you're really grateful..."

  "We are listening."

  "We gave you all those new concepts. There must be things you know that we don't."

  A brief silence, the equivalent of who knew how much thought. "Some of our concepts might cause you dislocation." A pause. "But in the long run, you will be much better off. The scars will heal. You will rebuild. The chances of your destroying yourselves are well within the limits of acceptability."

  "Destroying ourselves?" For a second, Lizzie couldn't breathe. It had taken hours for the city/entity to come to terms with the alien concepts she'd dumped upon it. Human beings thought and lived at a much slower rate than it did. How long would those hours be, translated into human time? Months? Years? Centuries? It had spoken of scars and rebuilding. That didn't sound good at all.

  Then the robofish accelerated, so quickly that Lizzie almost lost her grip. The dark waters were whirling around her, and unseen flecks of frozen material were bouncing from her helmet. She laughed wildly. Suddenly, she felt _great!_

  "Bring it on," she said. "I'll take everything you've got."

  It was going to be one hell of a ride.

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