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fears? Casual simplicity? No. Definitely not. We are definitely not a little stone in the road. I wish we were.”
    “Here’s one,” Badim says quickly. “Another one from Bronk, Emily’s little brother:
    “However it did it, life got us to where we are
    And we are servants and subjects under its laws,
    In its many armies, draftees and generals.
    Outraged sometimes, we think of ways out,
    Of taking over, a military coup.
    Apart from absurdities on the surface of that,
    Could we ever be free from our own tyrannies?
    As slack soldiers, we re-up and evade the rules.”
    “Ouch,” Devi says. “That one I understand. Now make a couplet out of it.”
    This is another game they play. Badim goes first, as usual.
    “Against our lives we would like to rebel,
    But we worry that then it would all go to hell.”
    Aram smiles his little smile, shakes his head. “A bit doggerel,” he suggests.
    “Okay, you do better,” Badim says. The two men like to tease each other.
    Aram thinks for a while, then stands and declaims,
    “We like to blame life for the problems we make,
    We threaten to change, but it’s always a fake;
    We bitch and moan that everything’s wrong,
    Then we get right back to getting along.”
    Badim smiles, nods. “Okay, that’s almost twice as good.”
    “But it was twice as long!” Freya protests.
    Badim grins. Then Freya gets it, and laughs with them.

    The next time Euan and his little gang approach Freya in the park, she picks up a rock and holds it clenched in her hand in a way he can see.
    “You guys aren’t really feral,” she tells them. “Your little hole in the ground, what a joke. We’re all chipped, they do it when you’re a baby. The ship knows where we are every second, no matter how you try to hide.”
    Euan still looks foxy, even with his mouth clean. “Want to see my chip scar? It’s on my butt!”
    “No,” Freya says. “What do you mean?”
    “We take the chips out. You have to do it if you want to join us. We’ll put your chip on a dog in your building, and by the time they figure it out, you’ll be long gone. They’ll never find you again.” He grins hugely. He knows she’ll never do it. He himself hasn’t done it, she sees that.
    She shakes her head. “Big talk for a little boy! The first time they catch you off leash and check who you are, you’ll be cooked.”
    “That’s right. We have to be careful.”
    “So why are you talking to me?”
    “I don’t think you’ll tell anyone.”
    “Already told my father. He’s on the security council.”
    “And?”
    “He doesn’t think you’re a problem.”
    “We’re not a problem. We don’t want to break anything. We just want to be free.”
    “Good luck with that.” She’s thinking of Devi now, how what her mother gets maddest about is the idea that they’re all trapped, no matter what they do. “I don’t want to leave where I am.”
    He stares at her, grinning his foxy grin. “There’s a lot more going on in this ship than you think there is. Come with us and you’ll see. Once your chip is gone you can do a lot. You don’t have to leave forever, not at first anyway. You could just come along and see. So it’s not really an either-or.” And with a final smirk he runs off, and his friends follow him.
    She’s glad she was holding the rock.

    Mysteries abound. Every answer provokes ten more questions. So many things change exponentially, as they are teaching her again in school now. Shift one dot just one spot, but it’s ten times bigger, or littler. Apparently this is another case of that deceptive logarithmic power: one answer, ten new questions.
    What she is finding strange is that this silly Euan’s version of what is going on in the ship sort of fits with things that Badim and Devi say, and even explains some things her parents never talk about. Well, but there are so many things they have never told her. What is she, some kind of child who has to be protected? It irritates her. She is