Songs of Love and Death: All-Original Tales of Star-crossed Love

Learning to operate a computer can be difficult for the uninitiated. Some computers, however, may be trickier to run than others…

Peter S. Beagle was born in New York City in 1939. Although not prolific by genre standards, he has published a number of well-received fantasy novels, at least two of which, A Fine and Private Place and The Last Unicorn, were widely influential and are now considered to be classics of the genre. In fact, Beagle may be the most successful writer of lyrical and evocative modern fantasy since Bradbury, and is the winner of two Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards and the Locus Award, as well as having often been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award.

Beagle’s other books include the novels The Folk of the Air, The Innkeeper’s Song, and Tamsin. His short fiction has appeared in places as varied as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Atlantic Monthly, Seventeen, and Ladies’ Home Journal, and has been collected in The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances, Giant Bones, The Line Between, and We Never Talk About My Brother. He won the Hugo Award in 2006 and the Nebula Award in 2007 for his story, “Two Hearts.” He has written the screenplays for several movies, including the animated adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn; the libretto of an opera, The Midnight Angel; the fan-favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Sarek”; and a popular autobiographical travel book, I See By My Outfit. His most recent book is the new collection, Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle.

Kaskia

Even afterward, Martin never could bring himself to blame the laptop. Rather, he blamed his foolishness in buying a computer at once so far beyond his means, his needs, and his abilities. “Goddamn bells and whistles,” Lorraine told him scornfully at the time. “LEDs, apps, plug-ins, backup gadgets—you’ve always been a fool for unnecessary extras. You think people will look at that thing and think you’re a real computer geek, an expert.” She gave that little sneeze-laugh he’d once found endearing, and went off to call her buddy Roz and relate his latest idiocy in detail. Sucking a forefinger, cut while he was struggling to open the box, he heard Lorraine saying on the phone, “And on top of that, he bought the thing from his cousin Barry! That asshole. You remember—right, right, anything that falls off a truck is legally Barry’s. I am telling you, Roz…”

The trouble was, of course, that she’d been right. Martin was fond of Barry—if he thought about it, he’d have to say that Barry had been his closest friend since childhood, given a very limited experience with close friends. But he had few illusions about his cousin’s probity or loyalty: even in the first flush of his infatuation with the new computer, he’d known that nothing Barry told him about it was likely to be true. The brand was completely unfamiliar, the keyboard had too many function keys beyond the usual twelve, and there were other keys and markings with strange symbols that Barry never even tried to explain to him. “It’s one of a kind, absolutely unique, same as you. I feel like I’m in Shakespeare, bringing two great lovers together.”

Directions had not been included, but Jaroslav, the amiable graduate student two doors down the hall, who actually did know quite a lot about computers, came over to set up Martin’s laptop for him. It took considerably longer than expected, due in part to Jaroslav’s unfamiliarity with the operating system, and in equal measure to his fascination with the computer’s programs and connections. “No, that cannot be it, that makes no sense. Well, I suppose that would work, it seems to work, but I cannot understand… yes, that works, but why… ?” He made no more sense out of the keyboard than Barry had, and was clearly only half-joking when he muttered, “With this thing, I am lucky to know to set the clock, where to plug in the mouse.” By the time he was done his Iron Man T-shirt was sweated through, and he was talking to himself in Serb. Afterward, Martin noticed—on the occasional times they passed in the lobby or hall, or outside the building’s laundry room—that Jaroslav avoided meeting his eyes.

Despite Martin’s vast ignorance of the workings of his new computer, however, it functioned better than any machine he had ever owned since a beloved bathtub motorboat that ran up a flag and fired pellets at his rubber ducks. Lorraine had once commented that electronic devices seemed to commit suicide in Martin’s presence, and it was a hard point to argue. Yet the strange laptop never misbehaved: never froze, never crashed, never devoured work he had forgotten to back up—never, in short, treated him with the kind of spitefulness that had always been his lot from anything involving electrons and wires. He realized that he was actually grateful, and from time to time found himself thinking of it not as a machine, but as a quiet and singular friend.

Often now, when he came home in the evening from the large chain grocery where he was the produce manager, he would sit at his worktable (dinner having long since evolved into a solitary pursuit for both Lorraine and himself), and let the computer talk to him, either on-screen or through the excellent earphones that Barry had grandly thrown into the deal. The computer had a sound system, with built-in speakers, but Lorraine complained about the noise, and Martin liked the earphones better anyway. They gave him a curious private peacefulness that made him feel as though he were at the bottom of the ocean in an old-fashioned diving suit, talking with a companion he could not see. Not that he had ever worn any sort of diving suit, or actually been in water deeper than his high school swimming pool. Martin had not been to very many places in his life.

He did no store work on the new computer; there was an intimidating, unforgiving desktop model in his backroom cubicle for that. The laptop was for telling him stories at the swirl of a mouse: it was for bringing him news, delivering such e-mail as he ever received—while most considerately eliminating all junk and spam—and for showing him not only the old films noir and television episodes of his youth, but a wider, richer world, a world he had resigned himself early in life to seeing in snippets at best, but never to know in all its sprawling, vulgar magnificence. The laptop seemed genuinely to care for him: him, Martin Gelber, forty-one years old, balding and lonely, spending his days with fruits and vegetables, and his nights with a wife long since a stranger. Absurdly—and he knew bitterly well just how absurd it was—Martin began to feel cherished.

He was also aware that he had no more than scratched the surface of the laptop’s talents and capacities. There were keys he carefully avoided touching, software settings he never once changed from how Jaroslav had left them, areas of the screen where he never let the mouse wander. Now and then he was tempted to click on some mysterious button—just to see—but Martin had the sad virtue of understanding his own capacity for disaster, and the allure of adventure always faded quickly. He was more than happy with the computer the way it was, and the way they were together.

Except for the One Key.

Martin called it that, having seen The Lord of the Rings, and read Tolkien’s books as well. The One Key lived alone on the upper right corner of the keyboard, well past Print Screen and Scroll Lock and Pause/Break… past the tiny blue lights indicating that Num Lock or Caps Lock or Scroll Lock again were engaged… an ordinary key, no different from any other, except for being without a letter, a number, or—as far as Martin could discern—any obvious purpose. It was simply the One Key: it was just there, like a wisdom tooth, and it drew him from the first as the little closet had drawn Bluebeard’s seventh wife, or the chest full of plagues had enticed Pandora. Martin, being Martin, and aware that he was Martin, left it strictly alone.

And left it alone.

And went on leaving it alone, until the afternoon of his day off, when there was nothing on TV—not that he ever watched television much anymore—and Lorraine was away with this or that shopping friend… and the One Key was now somehow looking as big as the lordly Backspace or Enter. Martin stared at it for quite a while, and then said, suddenly, loudly, and defiantly, “What the hell!” and pushed it.

Nothing happened.

Martin had, of course, no idea what he had expected to happen. He had a reasonable assumption that there wouldn’t be an explosion—that the computer wouldn’t either levitate or fall completely to pieces—and that a cuckoo wouldn’t pop out of the screen with a message from something eternal in its beak. But he had rather anticipated that a deep-toned bell would ring somewhere, surely, and that it would be answered. Every key has a function, he told himself, a programmed reason for existing: there would be a response. Martin waited.

A green spark appeared in the center of the computer screen, slowly swelling and swirling, taking on the aspect of a sparkling pinwheel galaxy as it filled the screen. Martin clapped the earphones on his head, hearing a staticky crackle that was not at all like static, but fell into rhythmic, distinctly repetitive patterns that seemed to be trying to form words. The green galaxy revolved dizzyingly before his eyes.

“I don’t understand,” Martin said aloud, startled to hear himself speak. Suddenly frightened, he considered turning off the laptop. But he didn’t, and the vision continued to dazzle his eyes and sizzle in his ears. On an impulse, he moved to the keyboard and typed the same words: I don’t understand.

This time, the response was immediate. The sparkling scene vanished, to be replaced by the image of a face. It was not a human face. Martin knew that immediately, for while it provided the usual allotment of features, they were arranged in a configuration that could only be described as shockingly, impossibly beautiful—Martin actually lurched back, as though hit in the stomach, and made a softer version of the sound that one makes on such occasions.

Words formed under the face. Martin recognized them as words: they were the equivalent in pixels of the sputtering that had been shaping itself into language in his earphones. To him, dazed as he certainly was, it seemed the speech of space, the common dialect of planets and comets alike. All he could think to do was to type his own words over once again, staring at the lovely, terrifying, utterly perfect alien face as he did so. I don’t understand.

Nothing changed on the screen for some time. Martin occupied himself primarily in praying that Lorraine would not return just then; but also in marveling that a face so beautiful could simultaneously reveal itself as obviously unhuman, yet lose none of its appeal. Nor could he pinpoint the exact reason he knew what he knew—but he knew, and he went on waiting for an answer.

The laptop screen changed again. The face vanished—Martin found himself reaching helplessly toward where it had been—and the screen filled once more with the characters of that otherworldly language. Martin groaned… but in almost the same moment, the words dissolved and reformed themselves into something approximating English. He leaned close to the computer, squinting to read them.Me whatYouHel who loloMe me

First Contact! Martin had seen enough science-fiction movies to know about first contact. The ludicrousness of a computer—a laptop, at that—connecting a suburban produce manager with another world and another life form was not lost on him, as stunned and overwhelmed as he was. “Why me?” he demanded aloud. “Why not a scientist, an astronomer, whatever? Come on, for goodness’ sake!” But all the same, he typed into the screen Where are you? What is your name?

There was no response for what seemed a very long while, as excited and impatient as he was. He tried to calm himself, thinking that he and the alien—his alien, if he was the first to discover her, like an island or a mountain—might likely be communicating over light-years, not mere miles. This was hardly Instant Messaging, after all. Even so, he was fidgeting like a child, unable to sit still, by the time the reply came back.You whatTalkWho no gone goneMe

The next word, which Martin thought must have been an attempt at a name, dissolved back into a flurry of words—or sounds? or mathematical symbols? or plain lunatic gibberish?—in the original possibly cosmic tongue. In turn he went back to his own first contact cry: I don’t understand.

“Story of your life, Gelber,” he said aloud to the computer. “Find a girl to go to the prom with, she lives too far away for a cab ride and she doesn’t speak English. Your life in one line, I swear.”

The computer said back to him in what was still a braver try at his language than any attempt he had yet made at hers:Me belong KaskiaBelong who you

Kaskia. Her name was Kaskia, or else she—belonged? a slave?—to someone of that name. Martin refused to believe that anyone who looked like that could be anyone’s servant, let alone a slave. He took a long breath and typed back Martin. My name is Martin.

He heard nothing back for the rest of the day, even though he forlornly pressed the One Key again and again. Lorraine came home in a good mood, the one benign side effect of her shopping expeditions, and they enjoyed a relatively placid evening, practically together. Martin yearned to get back to the laptop, and Lorraine clearly had phone calls to make—Martin knew the look—but instead they watched a public-television documentary on the history of the Empire State Building, even sitting still through the semi-annual fundraising supplications. Maybe having a special secret makes you nicer, Martin thought. Easier to get along with. He wondered what Lorraine’s secret might be.

When Lorraine went to bed, he booted up the laptop and tried, cautiously and apprehensively, to contact the being who called herself—itself?—Kaskia, but to no avail. Applying the One Key repeatedly summoned no starry crackle to his screen, nor did appealing directly to the computer’s elaborate message-tracing systems produce any unearthly footprints at all. The entire contact—the entire vision—might never have occurred.

Martin mourned it all through the next day’s work at the supermarket. Unlike the protagonists of any number of films and stories, he never for a moment took his encounter with the unearthly for a hallucination or a dream. There had been a connection, however fragmented, with a creature from another place or reality; and the idea of such a wonder never occurring again for the rest of his life made that life seem to him even duller and more pointless than he already knew it to be. “I won’t stand for it,” he said aloud to himself, while showing Jamil the proper way to stack the red cabbages. “I won’t.” Jamil took it as a slight to his cabbage-stacking technique, and was deeply wounded.

Three further days passed, during which Martin spoke less and less, both at home and at work, and spent more and more time trying to coax the strange laptop to find Kaskia’s world for him again. The computer remained not so much mutinous as regretfully firm, almost parental, as though it had decided that passing the borders of his own understanding was simply bad for him. The One Key remained so unresponsive that he came to fear that he might have damaged it by punching it in frustration when he lost contact with Kaskia. During that time, he could hardly endure to look at the laptop, which Lorraine noticed, teasing him about it. “What happened? Novelty wear off? Barry’ll sell you a new toy anytime, if you can find him.” Martin hardly heard her.

On the fourth night, sleepless, he finally wandered to his worktable, sat down at the laptop, and played several games of solitaire, as he could have done at any of the store computers. Then he reread his e-mail, browsed a favored newsletter, played a round of Battleship against himself, and tapped the One Key, almost diffidently, with his head turned away from the screen. He had not even put his earphones on.

When he heard the static of the spheres, he did not turn immediately, but moved very slowly, as though that other place were a wild bird he was trying not to startle away. The screen was, as before, aswarm with wheeling green sparks, and though Martin waited patiently, neither words nor the image of the wondrously alien beauty appeared. Finally he was unable to resist typing once again My name is Martin, and then, after some thought, adding boldly, Your name is Kaskia.

The reply was long in coming, leaving him to fear that he really had frightened her off; and then to speculate on whether an astronomer or mathematician could work out, just from the time it took his electronic missive to receive an answer, how distant Kaskia’s world actually might be. He vaguely recalled Barry as having been good with algebra and trigonometry in high school, and thought about setting him the problem.

Words shivered into place on the screen.Kaskia. You Martin. Where you.

Martin slapped his palms exultantly on the table, and then quickly deadened the vibrations, for fear of waking Lorraine. “It’s real!” he whispered, raising his head to look toward the ceiling, and far past it. “Oh, sonofabitch, it’s real!” And either her English or the transmission was clearly improving, along with her comprehension. She must have one of those universal translators, like on Star Trek and those other shows. Or maybe she was just a fast learner.

He was up most of that night, happily reenacting all the first contact scenes and dialogue he remembered from movies and television. He placed himself and his planet in the universe for her, as best he could (though she seemed, to his chagrin, to have little knowledge of her own world’s relation to any other); and even told her, out of his own small store, something of the Earth’s history and geography. Kaskia was rather less informative, which he put down to her continuing difficulties with the language and her consequently understandable reticence. He did learn that she lived in some sort of grandly sprawling extended-family setting, that she was a singer and musician—apparently quite well-known, as far as he could make out—and that she felt happy and fortunate (if that was what the word she used meant) to find him a second time. The galaxy was very big.

The contact began to break up toward morning, presumably due to the rotation of both worlds and the slow, endless drift of the entire cosmos. But he understood by now when it would be possible for them to speak again; and when he asked her shyly if he might see her image once more—it took her some little time to grasp the meaning of the request—the face that had so literally made him forget how to breathe reappeared for a moment, sparkling against the stars. Then it was gone, and the screen of the laptop went blank.

Sleep was neither an issue nor an option. He lay down on the living-room couch—not for the first time—and stared at the ceiling, consumed by a need to tell someone about his discovery, whether or not he was believed. Lorraine was out of the question, for a good many reasons, while Jaroslav was still avoiding him in the hall, and shopping elsewhere. As for his fellow workers, matters of authority forbade his taking any of them into his confidence… except perhaps for Ivan, the black security guard. Ivan read on the job, whenever he could get away with it—he had often been seen reading as he walked through the parking lot—and Martin, as management, should not have sympathized with him, or protected him, for a moment. But he did. Most of the books Ivan read were science fiction; and Martin had a growing feeling that, out of all the people he knew, Ivan might very well be the only one who might sympathize with him, for a change.

Ivan did. Ivan said, “Wow, man, that is a good story.” He slapped Martin’s shoulder enthusiastically. “That’s like Niven writing Bradbury. I didn’t know you were into that stuff. You got any others?”

Martin did not waste time protesting the complete truthfulness of his account. He said, “Well, I’m not a writer, you know that—I’m just fooling around. You think I ought to change anything? I mean, if you were writing it?”

Ivan considered. “One thing, I’d find a way for them to meet up. Not rocket ships, no Buck Rogers shit like that, I’m thinking transporters or some such. I mean, that’s exciting, man—that’s risky. Yeah, he’s seen her picture, he’s seen somebody’s picture, but what if she turns out to have a tail and horns and six-inch teeth? Mail-order brides, you know?”

“Well, I don’t think the guy’s thinking about getting together with her. I mean, she’s sort of famous on her world, and he’s married, and he could be a lot older—”

“Or she could. He don’t know how long it takes her planet to get around the sun, or anything about the biology. She could be seven hundred or something, you never know.” Ivan patted Martin’s shoulder again. “Tell you one thing, I’d sure like to have a laptop like the one you thought up. Dell ever makes that puppy, I’m first in line.”

Martin spent a good deal of time looking at the computer himself, even when the link to Kaskia was not open. His growing sense of the laptop’s true potential had, paradoxically, begun to distance him from the machine that he still believed loved and cared for him. “You scare me,” he said aloud to it more than once. “You’re with the wrong guy, we both know that.” To his mind, the One Key, employed skillfully by someone who knew what he was doing, could probably open channels quite likely beyond the reach of the Hubble Telescope. “But that’s just not me,” Martin said sadly. “I wish it were. I really do.”

He did finally get in touch with Barry, who, as expected, claimed absolute ignorance of the laptop’s provenance, and could offer no clues toward tracing its history. “I told you everything I know the day I put it in your hands, kid.” He gave Martin the warm, confiding smile that not only attracted new victims every day, but continued to reseduce the old ones, who knew better. “I told you, you belonged together. Was I wrong? Tell me I was wrong.”

Martin sighed. “It’s like the time you sold me the motorcycle.”

Barry’s grin widened. “The Triumph. The Bonneville T100. You looked great on it.”

“I almost killed myself on it. It was way too much power for me. I sold it two weeks later and only got half what I paid you for it.” Martin rubbed his left shoulder reflectively. “This computer’s the same way.”

“I can’t take it back,” Barry said quickly. He looked alarmed, which was exceedingly rare for him, and it was Martin’s turn to smile reassuringly.

“I don’t want to sell it. I just wish I could live up to it.” He sighed again. “I wish we really did belong together.”

Lorraine came home from work then, and Barry promptly disappeared without a further word. Martin thought, Those two understand each other better than I understand either one of them. He wondered whether Lorraine had heard the last thing he said to his cousin. He wondered whether he cared.

The link, or channel, or the hailing frequency, or whatever it actually was, seemed to be open to wherever Kaskia was every five days, sometimes in the afternoon, like that first time, but most often at one or two in the morning. He often asked Kaskia what time it was there, but she seemed to have no concept of measuring time that Martin could translate into his mind. They usually spoke, through the good offices of the laptop screen, until nearly dawn, when Martin would slip quietly into bed beside Lorraine and try to catch at least two or three hours of sleep before heading off to work. It was a wearying regime, but generally manageable.

Kaskia’s English had improved further each time they communicated. When Martin questioned how she could be learning the language so fast, since she had not known of its existence until a few weeks before, she replied lightly, Must be good teacher you. Asked whether Martin could possibly learn her language in the same way, her answer was a somewhat puzzled How could you. She had not yet mastered question marks, or else there was a translation issue involved that he did not understand.

Which did not mean that she did not ask questions. She asked constantly and charmingly—if sometimes startlingly—about the smallest details of Martin’s life, from when and where and how he slept, to the names of every fruit and vegetable he handled in his work, and whether there were nildrys on his planet. Martin never found out what nildrys were, but retained the distinct impression that a planet—or did she mean a house?—without nildrys was beneath contempt.

She herself liked best to talk about her pet, whose name on the computer screen was Furtigosseachfurt, and who sounded, in Kaskia’s description, like a cross between a largish ferret and a squirrel. He was quick and affectionate, liked to have his back scratched and his belly tickled, and on occasion he hid from her behind a rock or high in a tree, and then she had to find him. Her messages regarding the creature took up so much time that Martin would rather have spent on many other matters, and he even found himself skimming a bit over writing from the stars. But they were also so tender and guilelessly touching that they brought Martin just as often close to tears. Once she wrote Sometimes he is all I have. Sometimes not. You. Because of the lack of question marks, you could imagine, if you wanted to, that she might be saying that Martin was at times all she had. Martin wanted to think so.

One day the green sparks on the screen formed one word and nothing more. Dead.

Martin never thought for a moment that she was speaking of anything but the ferret-squirrel. She never mentioned family at all, and only rarely spoke of friends or acquaintances. He wrote as earnest a condolence as he knew how, sent it off into space expecting no reply, and got none. He wrote another.

Not being an obsessive person by nature, it never occurred to him that his concern for the sorrow of a person infinitely far away across the galaxy might in any way affect his work, or concern anyone else. But in fact, his increasing distraction had indeed been noticed by his superiors at the market, and by Lorraine as well. This was less of a worry for her than it might have been—Lorraine had survived far worse disasters, and had already chosen her parachute and a cozy landing strip. But she retained a certain rough fondness for Martin, and actually wished him well; so when she confronted him for the last time, it was without much malice that she said, “I have a bet with myself. Twelve to seven that when I walk out of here, you won’t notice for three days. Want to cover it?”

Martin’s response was as distant as Kaskia’s planet, though of course Lorraine couldn’t know that. He said quietly, “You left a long time ago. I did notice.”

Somewhat off balance, Lorraine snapped, “Well, so did you. I’m not even sure you were ever here. Stop playing with that damn computer and look at me—you owe me that much. I’m at least more interesting than a blank screen!” For Martin had the laptop open, and was indeed staring at the empty screen, only now and then cutting a quick peripheral glance at her. Lorraine demanded, “What the hell are you looking at? There’s nothing there!”

“No,” Martin agreed. “Nothing there at all. Good-bye, Lorraine. My fault, I know it, I’m really sorry.” But the last words were entirely by rote, and he was looking at the computer screen again while he was speaking them. Lorraine, who had not planned to leave quite this soon, gave a short sneeze-laugh and went to make a phone call.

She would have collected on her bet, for Martin was too occupied with the One Key to be paying attention when she did leave the next day. They were into the second five-day cycle since his last communication from Kaskia, and he was growing anxious, as well as frustrated. He had reached the point lately of stepping outside when the night was at its darkest, and staring until his eyes blurred and burned up at the black, empty sky, currently just as much help to him as the empty computer screen. He would never have said—and never once did—that nothing else mattered but hearing once again from a nonhuman woman unimaginably far away on the other side of the other side, and he could not make anything else be real. All he could do, at this point, was simply to keep saying her name, as though that would make her appear.

And when he returned to the laptop she was there. Rather, the green sparks were crowding his screen, leaping this way and that, like salmon fighting their way home. And there was that unchanging alien face that chilled and haunted him so… and there was a message, as the sparks flew upward into words:I missso much so muchI misshelp me

It was as though her grief had driven her language back to the basics with which their conversation across the night had begun—how long ago it seemed now to Martin. Nevertheless, the cry for comfort was clear; and he, whom so few had ever truly needed or called on for aid, would respond. He began to type, letting the words come without reading over them:Dear lovely Kaskia,I too know something about loss.I never had such a pet as yours—I cannot have pets, because I havealways been allergic to animals.Do you know what that means,allergic?It means that the skin and the furand the hair of most animalsmakes you ill,sometimes very ill indeed.I think sometimes that I have beenallergic to people,even to my customers in the produce department,and to my fellow workers.I think I would do better with animals than people,if I were not so allergic.You have lost a great friend,but at least you let yourself have him,you took the risk of having a friend,and he had you,so you cannot ever really lose each other.

The words rolled steadily up the screen and disappeared into the night, and the stars beyond. Martin wrote on, haltingly, but never looking back.I have not been as brave as you,so I have no friend like that,except you.We cannot really know each other,and I suppose we never will,but I have come to think of you as a dear friend,and I cannot bear to think of you so unhappy.

He took a deep breath here, paused just for a moment, and went on.I am very lonely.I have always been lonely.It is my fault.Do not let your grief shut you off.It is too easy,and it lasts too long.Oh, Kaskia, so far away

The screen, with his last words still on it, went abruptly blank. Martin stared. The laptop was vibrating under his hands, making a sound like an old-fashioned sewing machine, or a car about to throw a rod. It stopped presently, and new words began to appear on the screen. They were like the sparkling pixel words that Kaskia had first tried before she began to absorb English, but the hand—and, somehow, the tone—were definitely not hers. Martin typed, as before, My name is Martin Gelber, and added, with a touch of defiance, I am Kaskia’s friend.

That got somebody’s attention immediately. He was answered by what came across the screen as a bellow of fury.YOU.

Martin repeated, My name is Martin Gelber. I am a friend of Kaskia’s—I KNOW YOU.

The laptop seemed to shiver in the face of such outrage, however faraway.THE ONE TRIES COMMAND MY CHILD.

Martin stared at the screen in bewilderment and horror. He typed back Child? I’m talking about Kaskia!

The new voice was slower to reply this time, and not quite as accusatory.MY CHILD. MY DAUGHTER.

Martin thought of Ivan at the supermarket. Then he typed, I didn’t know.

The voice on the laptop screen still resolved in capitals, but the tone no longer came across as menacing.WOULD NOT. KASKIA LIKES TALK. STORIES. LIKES STORIES.

“Yes,” Martin said softly, remembering; and then typed, Yes. So then she is not a famous singer and musician?LIKES SINGING.

Of course, he replied. The sad story about her pet dying?DEAD. YES. OLDER SISTER’S.

Martin said, “Oh dear.”GOOD GIRL. GOOD GIRL.

Yes, Martin typed again. Smart girl. Don’t punish, please.

The voice did not answer. Martin wrote, slowly now, Your daughter changed me. I don’t know how, or in what way. But I am different because of her. Better, perhaps—different, anyway. Tell her so.

Still no answer. Martin was no longer sure of the voice’s presence, but he asked, One other question. Every time we spoke, Kaskia and I, there was an image of the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I thought it was a picture of her. Not?GOOD-BYE KASKIA FRIEND.

“Good-bye,” Martin said softly. “Good-bye, Kaskia.”

The laptop went dark and still. Martin touched the One Key, but nothing happened. He had an odd feeling that nothing would again; the computer had served its purpose, at least for him. He shut it off, unplugged it, wrapped the power cord around it, and put it in a drawer.

After two cups of strong percolated coffee, he called Barry. When his cousin—hungover and grumpy, by the sound of him—answered the phone, Martin said, “Barry? Do you remember the old Prince Albert sting?”

“Prince Albert?” Barry was definitely hungover. “Say what?”

“You remember. Big fun for bored kids on rainy afternoons. Call up a smoke shop, a candy store, ask them if they’ve got Prince Albert in a can. Remember now?”

A hoarse chuckle. “Right, sure, yeah. They say yes, and we say, ‘Well, let him out right now, he can’t breathe in there!’ Then we giggle like mad, and they call us little motherfuckers and hang up. What the hell put that in your head?”

“Just Memory Lane, I guess.”

“Hey, I heard about Lorraine. That really sucks. You okay?”

“I guess. Not really sure what okay is right now. I guess so.”

“Okay means there’s better out there, lots better. Seize the weekend, like they say in Rome—old Cousin Barry’s going to hook you up with one of his Midnight Specials. Meanwhile you’re crazy free, right?”

“Crazy, anyway.” To his own surprise, Martin realized he was smiling. “We’ll see about the free part.”

There were bathroom-sink noises at the other end. “’Scuse me—trying to make an Alka-Seltzer one-handed. Hey, you still happy with that computer I sold you? I got a buyer, if you’re not.”

Martin hesitated only briefly. “No, I’m fine with it. Great little machine.”

Barry cackled triumphantly. “Told you it’d change your life, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t. But thanks anyway.”

Martin’s smile widened slowly. Standing alone in the kitchen, he closed his eyes and listened to the stars.