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Logos. “She’s our globe,” I said.
    â€œOur baby,” said Polly.
    â€œMy sister,” said Asa.
    Logos massaged his beard. “Look, I hate to play hardball with nice people like you, but you don’t really have a choice here. Our test results are in, and the fact is your biosphere harbors a maverick form of the simian T-lymphotrophic retrovirus. As county health commissioner, I have the authority to remove the creature from these premises forthwith and quarantine it.”
    â€œâ€˜The fact is,’” I snorted, echoing Logos. “‘The fact is’—
the fact is
, our baby couldn’t give my great aunt Jennifer a bad cold.” I shot a glance at Borealis. “Am I right?”
    The doctor said, “Well . . .”
    Logos grunted like one of the pigs we used to raise before the market went soft.
    â€œI think you gentlemen had better leave,” my wife suggested icily.
    â€œWe have a barnful of
dogs
,” said Asa in a tone at once cheerful and menacing. “Mean ones,” he added with a quick little nod.
    â€œI’ll be back,” said the commissioner, rising. “Tomorrow. And I won’t be alone.”
    â€œBastard,” said Polly—the first time I’d ever heard her use that word.
    Â 
    So we did what we had to do; like Amram and Jochebed, we did what was necessary. Polly drove. I brooded. All the way up Route 322, Zenobia sat motionless in the back, safely buckled into her car seat, moaning and whimpering. Occasionally Asa leaned over and gently ran his hairbrush through the jungles of her southern hemisphere.
    â€œGorgeous sky tonight,” I observed, unhooking our baby and carrying her into the crisp September darkness.
    â€œI see that.” Zenobia fought to keep her voice in one piece.
    â€œI hate this,” I said, marching toward the bluff. My guts were as cold and hard as one of Zenobia’s glaciers. “Hate it, hate it . . .”
    â€œIt’s necessary,” she said.
    We spent the next twenty minutes picking out constellations. Brave Orion; royal Cassiopeia; snarly old Ursa Minor; the Big Dipper with its bowlful of galactic dust. Asa stayed by the Land-Rover, digging his heel into the dirt and refusing to join us, even though he knew ten times more astronomy than the rest of us.
    â€œLet’s get it over with,” said our baby.
    â€œNo,” said Polly. “We have all night.”
    â€œIt won’t be any easier in an hour.”
    â€œLet me hold her,” said Asa, shuffling onto the bluff.
    He took his sister, raised her toward the flickering sky. He whispered to her—statistical bits that made no sense to me, odd talk of sea levels, hydrogen ions, and solar infrared. I passed the time staring at Jake’s Video, its windows papered with ads for Joe Dante’s remake of
The War of the Worlds.
    The boy choked down a sob. “Here,” he said, pivoting toward me. “You do it.”
    Gently I slid the biosphere from my son. Hugging Zenobia tightly, I kissed her most arid desert as Polly stroked her equator. Zenobia wept, her arroyos, wadis, and floodplains filling with tears. I stretched out my arms as far as they would go, lifting our daughter high above my head.
    Once and only once in my days on the courts did I ever hit a three-pointer.
    â€œWe’ll miss you,” I told Zenobia. She felt weightless, airy, as if she were a hollow glass ornament from a Garber Farm Christmas tree. It was just as she’d said: the stars wanted her. They tugged at her blood.
    â€œWe love you,” groaned Polly.
    â€œDaddy!” Zenobia called from her lofty perch. Her tears splashed my face like raindrops. “Mommy!” she wailed. “Asa!”
    In a quick, flashy spasm I made my throw. A good one—straight and smooth. Zenobia flew soundlessly from my fingertips.
    â€œBye-bye!” the three of us shouted as she soared into the bright,