And, he thought, I don’t blame you. But I will hang onto the Fox; the Fox will outlast you. And so will I. You are not going to shoot down the luminiferous aether which animates our souls. I will hang onto the Fox and the Fox will hold me in her arms and hang onto me. The two of us—we can’t be pried apart. I have dozens of hours of the Fox on audio– and videotape, and the tapes are not just for me but for everybody. You think you can kill that? he said to himself. It’s been tried before. The power of the weak, he thought, is an imperfect power; it loses in the end. Hence its name. We call it weak for a reason.

“Sentimentality,” Rybus said.

“Right,” he said sardonically.

“Recycled at that.”

“And mixed metaphors.”

“Her lyrics?”

“What I’m thinking. When I get really angry, I mix—”

“Let me tell you something. One thing. If I am going to survive, I can’t be sentimental. I have to be very harsh. If I’ve made you angry, I’m sorry, but that is how it is. It is my life. Someday you may be in the spot I am in and then you’ll know. Wait for that and then judge me. If it ever happens. Meanwhile this stuff you’re playing on your in-dome audio system is crap. It has to be crap, for me. Do you see? You can forget about me; you can send me back to my dome, where I probably really belong, but if you have anything to do with me—”

“Okay,” he said, “I understand.”

“Thank you. May I have some more milk? Turn down the audio and we’ll finish eating. Okay?”

Amazed, he said, “You’re going to keep on trying to—”

“All those creatures—and species—who gave up trying to eat aren’t with us anymore.” She seated herself unsteadily, holding onto the table.

“I admire you.”

“No,” she said. “I admire you. It’s harder on you. I know.”

“Death—” he began.

“This isn’t death. You know what this is? In contrast to what’s coming out of your audio system? This is life. The milk, please; I really need it.”

As he got her more milk, he said, “I guess you can’t shoot down aether. Luminiferous or otherwise.”

“No,” she agreed, “since it doesn’t exist.”

Commodity Central provided Rybus with two wigs, since, due to the chemo, her hair had been systematically killed. He preferred the light-colored one.

When she wore her wig, she did not look too bad, but she had become weakened and a certain querulousness had crept into her discourse. Because she was not physically strong any longer—due more, he suspected, to the chemotherapy than to her illness—she could no longer manage to maintain her dome adequately. Making his way over there one day, he was shocked at what he found. Dishes, pots and pans and even glasses of spoiled food, dirty clothes strewn everywhere, litter and debris… troubled, he cleaned up for her and, to his vast dismay, realized that there was an odor pervading her dome, a sweet mixture of the smell of illness, of complex medications, the soiled clothing, and, worst of all, the rotting food itself.

Until he cleaned an area, there was not even a place for him to sit. Rybus lay in bed, wearing a plastic robe open at the back. Apparently, however, she still managed to operate her electronic equipment; he noted that the meters indicated full activity. But she used the remote programmer normally reserved for emergency conditions; she lay propped up in bed with the programmer beside her, along with a magazine and a bowl of cereal and several bottles of medication.

As before, he discussed the possibility of getting her transferred. She refused to be taken off her job; she had not budged.

“I’m not going into a hospital,” she told him, and that, for her, ended the conversation.

Later, back at his own dome, gratefully back, he put a plan into operation. The large AI System—Artificial Intelligence Plasma—which handled the major problem-solving for star systems in their area of the galaxy had some available time which could be bought for private use. Accordingly, he punched in an application and posted the total sum of financial credits he had saved up during the last few months.

From Fomalhaut, where the Plasma drifted, he received back a positive response. The team which handled traffic for the Plasma was agreeing to sell him fifteen minutes of the Plasma’s time.

At the rate at which he was being metered, he was motivated to feed the Plasma his data very skillfully and very rapidly. He told the Plasma who Rybus was—which gave the AI System access to her complete files, including her psychological profile—and he told it that his dome was the closest dome to her, and he told it of her fierce determination to live and her refusal to accept a medical discharge or even transfer from her station. He cupped his head into the shell for psychotronic output so that the Plasma at Fomalhaut could draw directly from his thoughts, thus making available to it all his unconscious, marginal impressions, realizations, doubts, ideas, anxieties, needs.

“There will be a five-day delay in response,” the team signaled him. “Because of the distance involved. Your payment has been received and recorded. Over.”

“Over,” he said, feeling glum. He had spent everything he had. A vacuum had consumed his worth. But the Plasma was the court of last appeal in matters of problem-solving. WHAT SHOULD I DO? he had asked the Plasma. In five days he would have the answer.

During the next five days, Rybus became considerably weaker. She still fixed her own meals, however, although she seemed to eat the same thing over and over again: a dish of high-protein macaroni with grated cheese sprinkled over it. One day he found her wearing dark glasses. She did not want him to see her eyes.

“My bad eye has gone berserk,” she said dispassionately. “Rolled up in my head like a window shade.” Spilled capsules and tablets lay everywhere around her on her bed. He picked up one of the half-empty bottles and saw that she was taking one of the most powerful analgesics available.

“M.E.D. is prescribing this for you?” he said, wondering, Is she in that much pain?

“I know somebody,” Rybus said. “At a dome on IV. The food man brought it over to me.”

“This stuff is addictive.”

“I’m lucky to get it. I shouldn’t really have it.”

“I know you shouldn’t.”

“That goddam M.E.D.” The vindictiveness of her tone was surprising. “It’s like dealing with a lower life-form. By the time they get around to prescribing, and then getting the medication to you, Christ, you’re an urn of ashes. I see no point in them prescribing for an urn of ashes.” She put her hand up to her skull. “I’m sorry; I should keep my wig on when you’re here.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Could you bring me some Coke? Coke settles my stomach.”

From her refrigerator he took a liter bottle of cola and poured her a glass. He had to wash the glass first; there wasn’t a clean one in the dome.

Propped up before her at the foot of her bed, she had her standard-issue TV set going. It gabbled away mindlessly, but no one was listening or watching. He realized that every time he came over she had it on, even in the middle of the night.

When he returned to his own dome, he felt a tremendous sense of relief, of an odious burden being lifted from him. Just to put physical distance between himself and her—that was a joy which raised his spirits. It’s as if, he thought, when I’m with her I have what she has. We share the illness.

He did not feel like playing any Fox recordings so instead he put on the Mahler Second Symphony, The Resurrection. The only symphony scored for many pieces of rattan, he mused. A Ruthe, which looks like a small broom; they use it to play the bass drum. Too bad Mahler never saw a Morley wah-wah pedal, he thought, or he would have scored it into one of his longer symphonies.

Just as the chorus came in, his in-dome audio system shut down; an extrinsic override had silenced it.