Ken Rand - Pheonix

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Pheonix

by Ken Rand

Zumaya Publications - Science Fiction

The sled transformed into an incandescent white flash of light. The explosion seemed to come from

inside her brain. The ground heaved, lifting her into the dust and rock-filled air, throwing her backward.

She flew, spinning, propelled by the shock wave. Sharp, flying rock chips stung her face and hands,

ripping at her. Pain knifed her legs, arms and back. And abdomen.

She landed against a rock spur, knocking the wind from her. Vision blurred, breathing agony, she forced

herself to look back down the canyon.

Through the flying rock and tumult, Anna saw an orange-and-yellow fireball climb the walls like a thing

alive. Atop the fireball, suspended as though afloat on water, an object burned and twisting. A man.

She knew it was Martin, not one of the gang, although they must have also been incinerated. She didn't

know how she knew it was Martin, but she knew.

A sudden sharp pain stabbed through her belly, and Anna knew something else had died, too; but she

didn't know what it was. For a fraction of a second, she understood that if she thought about it she might

identify the source of the pain. Something—no, someone—other than her, other than Martin, had been

hurt in the fire. Not one of the Familia. Someone else.

With deliberate cunning, as though erasing a slate or computer file, Anna shut down the part of her mind

she knew could identify the—the what?

Something—something bad—has happened. I don't know what it is.

She slammed another door shut in her mind, and forgot that there had been anything to forget.

Then she forgot that.

2003

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's

imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales events or persons living or dead is

entirely coincidental.

ISBN 1-894869-96-6

Cover art and design by Martine Jardin

part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is

forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

Published by Zumaya Publications 2003

Look for us online at http://www.zumayapublications.com

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Rand, Ken

Phoenix / Ken Rand.

ISBN 1-894869-96-6

I. Title.

PS3618.A614P48 2003 813'.6 C2003-906641-X

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my children—Molly, Michael and Missy.

Lisan Navarroclan

Lisan Navarroclan had just filled the water pouch from the well a few meters outside Holy Mother Anna

Devlin's alcove when she heard the old woman cry in pain, a sharp-edged groan piercing the night. Lisan

set the pouch beside the well and ran the few short steps back to the alcove.

“Holy Mother Anna, are you—"

As she pushed through the woven-whipgrass gate in the alcove's low mud-brick wall—high enough to

keep the goats out—she saw the old woman on hands and knees in front of the stone bench where

they'd sat together a moment ago. The Holy Mother's sapbalm pouch lay on the ground, an indistinct

black splotch in the dim starlight, like a dead hedge chicken. A few yellow thumb-sized balls of waxy

sapbalm lay where they'd fallen from the open bag mouth, glowing. The Holy Mother's long blond hair

hung like a curtain over her face, so scarred on one side that many of the children had been terrified when

they first saw her.

“Holy Mother,” Lisan muttered—a prayer, in part—as she ran to the woman's side, knelt and clutched

her bony ribs. The narrow ribcage rose and fell in spastic arrhythmia. Lisan could feel the old woman's

body heat. One stick-like hand groped for the nearest sapbalm ball. Just out of reach. The Holy Mother

groaned in frustration.

Lisan grabbed the errant ball and put it into the old woman's hand. She popped it into her mouth and

gulped it down. In a moment, Anna nodded thanks, head still bent low, hair still curtaining her face; and

Lisan heard her raspy breathing become less erratic and tense, felt her sides loosen. The sapbalm did its

magic, as usual, and Lisan marveled.

“What happened? Are you all right now?"

Anna nodded and tried to stand. Her knees quivered. Lisan let the gnarled old woman lean on her as she

eased Anna back onto the bench. Not for the first time, Lisan was astonished at how little Anna weighed.

Her bones must be hollow, like a sawk's.

“Please...” Anna gestured at the sapbalm balls scattered on the ground. “Please..."

“I'll gather them."

Lisan knelt and gathered the waxy balls, counting them as she did so. She placed each one back into the

pouch, secured the drawstring and handed it back to Anna. She sat at the old woman's side.

“I counted three hands and two fingers of sapbalm, Mother—"

“Seventeen."

“I beg your—"

“You counted seventeen, not three hands and—"

“I-I'm sorry, Mother, I..."

“Don't apologize, Lisan Navarroclan.” The Holy Mother took Lisan's youthful, smooth hand in her bony,

aged one and pressed gently. Lisan liked it when she touched her—it felt like her own mother's touch.

She fought back that memory; her mother had been dead only two hands and—no—twelve—nights.

“Seventeen,” she said, and returned the handclasp, warm skin against warm skin.

Lisan wanted to ask the Holy Mother what had prompted this sudden bout of illness. A memory would

surface, or somebody would say something, or she'd find something left over from the rebellion in the dirt

in a collapsed corridor. Or something. Always something preceded each attack.

The last one had been one hand—five—nights ago. The Holy Mother had visited Cousin Michael

Riosclan's alcove. Her unannounced visit, no reason given, surprised Michael as he tended his tomato

plant. When she saw the plant, the Holy Mother had collapsed in pain. Lisan tended to her, popped a

sapbalm into her quivering mouth, and the episode passed. The Holy Mother left Michael's alcove, left

him stunned, speechless, left without explanation.

It was as if the Holy Mother had never seen a tomato plant, and Lisan realized maybe she never had. If

she had, it had been so long ago, was buried so deep in her memory that it hurt her physically to recall it.

She had tried to ask about the tomato plant, as gently as possible, but the Holy Mother seemed not to

hear. She sat for hours after the incident, silent, on the bench where they now rested, gazing out at the

empty desert grassland to the west, where her memories, Lisan knew, were not really buried.

The next night, Holy Mother had asked for a cutting. She had her own tomato plant now, in its pot by the

door.

What if nothing now causes the attacks? What if—

Lisan scowled at the shadowy thought like she would at a furtive bist gnawing a mealsack—What if the

Holy Mother Anna Devlin is...dying?—and pushed it away. She imagined, as she did so, that this must

be like the way the Holy Mother controlled her memories. Or, too often, didn't.

She put her arm around Anna and squeezed those warm, bony shoulders, as she would have done with

any Cousin. Lisan gazed out, too, gazed in companionable silence into the night. The flat plain of

whipgrass below, a star-filled bowl of the sky above.

No questions, not now. Just her with me, just us, like Cousins. Together.

The Holy Mother's alcove had been chosen, by popular acclaim, to give her a view of the west. It was

the coolest alcove in Tierra Natal, the nearest to a well; and the First Grandfather himself used to occupy

it. First Gran was dead, as were all the other adults in Tierra Natal. He had died three nights ago, the last

of the adults to go. The children, who numbered double-twice two hands and nine fingers—no,

forty-nine—decided to give the alcove to Holy Mother.

So she could look out toward the west, where her memories lay. Or not.

Lisan again wondered about those days. She'd heard too little about them, and then only rumor and

story. Fairy tales the adults told before they died, and then with great reluctance, with bitterness, and

often anger. Stories about great huts that floated in the skies—spaceships; about villages on the stars so

far away you couldn't walk there in a lifetime, about the nanofacted things they used to have, and about

the Familia and the Authority and the rebellion that had torn Phoenix, their world, apart. Stories. Fairy

tales for children. Nonsense.

Holy Mother said it was true, and who would deny her? So far, Holy Mother had refused to talk in any

detail about those days. Lisan or another child would ask, “How did you make walls from thin air and

dirt? What was it like when you lived in the sky? Can we make powersleds, too, like you had in the old

days? Are there any more fuel cells left?"; and the Holy Mother would start to answer, utter a few words

that added to the mystery then shake her head and change the subject. Or walk away to sit alone,

looking westward.

Lisan tried to picture in her mind what Holy Mother saw.

Far across the sparse, grassy flat plain surrounding the broken, makeshift town of Tierra Natal lay the

Barrens, hilly country barely fit for grazing sheep and goats. Beyond the Barrens lay Goliath, the rock

wall rising a kilometer straight up from the floor of the world and extending in an almost straight line from

the northern to the southern icecap.

Beyond Goliath, accessible through narrow cracks that split the wall through in some places, lay a broad,

hot desolation the Holy Mother called Ghost Basin. Beyond, farther west, lay a vast maze of hills and

caves she called the Confusions, where she'd lived most of her exile. Beyond that, farther away than

Lisan could imagine, lay the eastern fringe of the Great Eastern Sea, which spread its shallow depths

across almost half the world—their world, Phoenix IV—to the foot of Glacier Mountain.

Glacier Mountain rose in the opposite direction from where Lisan sat now with the Holy Mother. The

infrequently snowcapped mountain lay to the east, too far away to be seen even in the shimmering

daytime but accessible to a provisioned walker.

Lisan looked westward and tried to imagine it—the Plains, the Barrens, Goliath, Ghost Basin, the

Confusions, the Great Eastern Sea, Glacier Mountain and Tierra Natal.

Phoenix IV. The world.

Michael Riosclan had crossed Goliath, had crossed Ghost Basin and had been as far away as the

Confusions. So he said, and Holy Mother didn't deny it. Only the Holy Mother Anna Devlin had seen it

all.

Lisan sighed. No, she couldn't imagine the vastness of their world, details of which the Holy Mother had

only hinted at and of which Michael had only seen a fragment. Lisan had never been farther west than the

Barrens’ eastern fringe, that time she was out tending the Familia goat herd when her brother Gabriel had

been too ill to go out. There, just as night ended, she stood on a hill, the highest she could find, and

squinted in the rising day-heat to the west. She could barely make it out, the thin dark ribbon that was

Goliath.

It looked so small in the distance, a black hair stretching from horizon to horizon as far as she could see.

Boys had been to its foot, she knew. Some had even entered the Witch's Canyon. They told wild tales

Lisan knew were lies. The walls weren't as high as they said. Nothing was. Except maybe Glacier

Mountain.

Again, Holy Mother didn't deny the stories, even when reminded she had been the witch—The

Witch—those boy sheepherders had dreaded, taunted, lied about.

Holy Mother Anna Devlin refused to deny the stories about those times. Lisan got occasional hints she'd

drop in an unguarded moment. They confirmed, though vaguely, what she remembered the adults had

sometimes said before they'd died out.

Lisan wasn't interested in the wonders in those super-heated deserts beyond Goliath. She wanted to

know...

“Yes, child?"

Lisan hadn't been aware she'd tensed, cleared her throat.

“I was wondering ... I mean..."

A deep shuddery sigh.

Lisan turned toward the Holy Mother, heedless of her impertinence. “We've asked you before. Me,

Michael, Gabriel, and other children. Little Dorothea. You can't deny her, can you? We want to know.

To know."

A long silence, and Lisan thought, again, she'd lost the Holy Mother's interest. Or annoyed her.

Finally: “Your father. Your grandfather. Your mothers, and aunts. They told you. What they said—"

“They told us stories. Lies. As if we were children."

“You are."

“But they're gone. You're the only one who can tell us ... tell us..."

“I can tell you that most of what they said—your family—what they said was true. Mostly."

Lisan suddenly became aware that she touched the Holy Mother in the manner her own mother had

taught her. The Familia way, a ritual gesture of greeting, blessing, fellowship. She pulled her hand away.

Holy Mother seemed to hate the gesture, as she'd hated the sight of the Familia around people's necks,

though she wouldn't say why. She'd been the Witch, and it had been Familia who had branded her so.

Why?

“I-I'm sorry, Holy Mother. I'm just afraid that ... that..."

The old woman hrumphed and stood. Lisan remained seated, head bowed, hands folded in her lap in

respect. She waited.

Silence.

Lisan risked a glance up. Anna stood before her, Lisan's water pouch in her hand. How did she get the

water? I didn't hear her move. And the gate creaks.

Lisan took the pouch, offered the older woman a sip first. Anna touched the spout to her lips and

returned it to Lisan, who repeated the gesture, completing the sharing ritual, and set the pouch on the

bench.

“You're afraid?” The Holy Mother spoke so quietly that at first Lisan wasn't sure she'd spoken at all.

She nodded.

Again, a long silence passed before the older woman spoke. If there had been even a whisper of a

breeze to cool the night air, Lisan would have heard nothing.

“Will you say what you fear, Lisan Navarroclan?"

Lisan gulped in a dry throat. She reached for the water pouch then pulled away. The Holy Mother stood

above her, facing her, one pace away, gaze fixed on her. Lisan tried to look away.

“Look at me,” Holy Mother demanded, voice a knife-sharp hiss. She bent down, her scarred face

centimeters from Lisan's. “Look at me and tell me what you fear."

Lisan looked up at the Holy Mother Anna Devlin. She took a shuddery breath and tried to speak. She

failed. Etiquette be damned, I need water. Lisan drank a mouthful from the pouch and set it down

without offering it to Anna. The Holy Mother didn't seem to notice the affront.

“I fear ... I fear you will ... I fear you will ... die.” The last word choked off.

The Holy Mother grunted, nodded and stood upright. She walked to the wall, four short steps, and

leaned against it. Her long blond hair seemed to glow like a halo in the faint starlight. She stood in silence

for so long...

Holy Mother spoke, but Lisan didn't hear. She joined Anna at the wall, looking westward.

Anna turned to her, smiled and gripped her soft hand. “I, too, fear. But nobody lives forever, you know."

“I-I know."

“I heard—long ago—that as long as somebody remembers you it will be as if you are still alive."

“I could never forget you, Holy Mother."

Anna nodded, turned to sit on the bench. Lisan followed. “So, in you, I'll live as long as you live.

Remembered."

“And the other children. They'll remember, too."

Anna shook her head. “No. Memory is ... so fragile a thing. So fragile."

“What if—"

“There is another way each of us lives forever."

“What do you mean?"

Anna smiled, silent. A brief glance at Lisan's budding breasts was all it took for Lisan to understand.

“Oh,” she said, cheeks red. Her mother had told her about the change seven nights before she died.

Lisan was still trying to fathom it. “You mean...?"

“It's time I told you."

“Ah. Mother already told—"

“Not that. About those times. You asked. You fear. As do I.” She touched her belly, where the pains

gnawed from time to time. “Now. I should tell you, shouldn't I? Someone must know."

Lisan nodded, not daring to breathe.

“One day, long, long ago..."

Chapter One

“Affirmative."

Anna Devlin was pregnant.

In her womb, she nurtured a child, now smaller than a needle tip but growing each second. She carried

new life; not a clone but one she and Martin had conceived the old-fashioned way.

Anna let out her breath—she hadn't realized she'd been holding it—as she waited for the computer to

answer her query. “System pregnant?"

“Affirmative.” The glowing cursor blinked green in the still air before her eyes. Her audio implant

confirmed in a soft metallic whisper inside her right ear: “Affirmative."

She disengaged the hair-thin wire link between the nanomed interface plug behind her right ear and the

computer console on the desk. The link retracted back into the console with a faint snaky hiss. Then she

turned to look toward Martin's chair, heart pounding.

“Oh, Martin..."

For an instant, panic replaced joy as Anna saw in the dim light from the computer telltale that he wasn't

there. Then she remembered.

He'd gotten a call from Security Chief Captain Georg Jakes an hour ago, and he'd left for the admin

office. He hadn't turned on the lights as he dressed, a dark shadow against the spacious room's deeper

dark, but Anna had stirred. He murmured an apology about admin business, reason for leaving early and

skipping their private breakfast together in their alcove, a long-standing ritual.

“I'll call you for lunch,” he'd whispered. “My office, not the Commons."

He didn't sound agitated or concerned, but he'd long ago mastered the art of keeping his true feelings

hidden, even from Anna.

She'd mumbled agreement.

No surprise, the call. Colony administrators kept no fixed office hours wherever they served. A call from

Martin's security chief was always an emergency, however calmly he appeared to take it. It had

happened several times before since planetfall a year ago. In fact, Anna recalled, it had happened three

times in the last month. This was the fourth.

Peculiar, she thought, as she drifted back to sleep. Had there been another argument among the small

contingent of police troops under Jakes's command, a brawl, an accident? Anna had heard rumors of

theft. Unconfirmed.

She accepted Martin's musky-breath kiss on her cheek with a weak smile, turned over in their soft, warm

bed and gave herself back to sleep.

She dreamed.

In the dream, she stood somewhere outdoors, knee-deep in thick whipgrass under the hot Phoenix sun, a

little girl in her arms. She cuddled the three or four-year-old as if she were the child's mother, but the girl

didn't look much like her or Martin. She had a round face, jet-black hair, large dark eyes, and a broad,

flat nose. Her skin was tanned almost black, as if she'd lived all her life under a hot sun. Both Martin and

Anna had blond hair, oval faces and blue eyes. Authority features.

The girl looked to be of Familia stock, yet in the dream, Anna thought of the girl as hers, born of her

womb. Hers, yet born the Familia way, not the Authority way.

In the dream, the girl touched Anna's face with a finger, a gesture filled with innocent curiosity and

childlike tenderness. A golden, honey-like goo clung to the fingertip, which she pressed to Anna's cheek

below her right eye.

In the dream, Anna didn't feel the touch, yet even now she remembered the sharp pungency the stuff the

girl's fingertip exuded—like cinnamon.

For some reason she couldn't quite understand later as she pondered the dream, it felt as though she'd

been separated from the little girl, her own child despite appearances, for a long time—thirty-five years,

to be exact. Yet, the girl looked to be a toddler.

Then, Anna sensed she was about to lose the girl again.

With a feeling close to panic, an oddity in an already weird dream, Anna had come full awake. She

bolted upright, the dream still vivid. She thought about the dream a while, eyes closed, as she sat on the

edge of the bed. She couldn't remember ever having such a disturbing, vivid dream before.

Why thirty-five years? And the smell—do people dream smells?

The dream inspired a hunch. She and Martin had disengaged their contraceptive programs a few days

ago. Maybe it was too soon to tell. Still, she decided to check med for pregnancy. She plugged in

quietly, in the dark, to avoid waking Martin.

“Query: System pregnant?"

Time froze, turned to molasses. Then med reported: “Affirmative."

If the odd dream had excited her, the med report had done so even more.

“Oh, Martin..."

But Martin had left earlier, and Anna sat alone in their alcove. The room, though large, seemed to shrink,

emphasizing her loneliness. She wasn't alone, knowing Martin's voice and image were an instant away

through a tap of her comlink, that he was a few hundred meters away. Some thousand colonists slept in

alcoves like hers or ate in the Commons or worked in offices or shops, all within a few hundred meters.

The room had special meaning. Here, she and Martin shared each other's company in privacy, slept

together and made love. Here, they had conceived a child.

But she found no comfort in the colony's hive-like nearness, or Martin's lingering musky scent. Not alone,

not exactly. Nonetheless, loneliness, a sudden and bitter pang, wrenched her heart and pressed tears to

her eyes.

She hated the room, hated its emptiness, its hollowness. She hated the livewall murals designed to hide

the real walls behind Earthome scenes. She hated the ever-present hot-plastic odor, the rounded corners,

the seamless hardfoam walls, ceiling and floor—featureless, unmarred by blemish or deviation from

design specs.

Programmed nanoconstructors had turned Phoenix IV's silicate-rich soil into hundreds of “living rooms,”

as colonists called the alcoves, all alike, within a few hours after first planetfall. All the rooms measured

ten-by-twenty meters, spacious enough for a large bed, four chairs and a table, a large wardrobe,

personal hygiene module, computer interface console, food prep unit, air recirculator, light panels,

opacable ceiling, a door, plants and whatever else colonists might want to add to help give the illusion

they weren't half-buried under an alien planet light-years from Earthome.

The alcoves resembled those on the nullspace transport ship, part of the fleet that brought them from

Earthome, and like too many she had seen on Earthome itself. Alike, but larger. The null-transit

deepsleep pods on the huge transport were coffin-sized versions of the living room where she now sat

with such unease.

The alcoves, half-buried in the hard Phoenix IV ground, were linked by a network of nanoconstructed

streets in a helix spiral pattern. The design allowed ready access from any point to any other in the

complex, and for efficient colony expansion. Each room in the hive provided perfect insulation against

temperature and weather extremes. Lightproof and soundproof, they offered perfect privacy.

Self-repairing, they were indestructible. Transparent ceiling panels admitted light from the Phoenix sun in

daytime hours but could be opaqued for privacy and temperature control. No windows or other

accesses had been programmed though, with little effort, windows could be made.

Hygiene and food prep facilities were lavish, a luxury first-wave colonists enjoyed. Later arrivals might

have to do with less. A simple modification of the living room nano-program created larger, smaller or

specialized rooms—family housing, offices, commons, labs, hydroponics, meeting and storage rooms.

The living rooms were a universal constant, an Authority engineering triumph, yet they represented a

compromise for the people who would most often occupy them. Since Familia had embraced the

Authority's colonization program in the last few decades, Authority officials bowed to Familia hierarchy

demands for modifications in the nano-programs they'd have to live with wherever in the galaxy they

went.

The result, Anna complained to him as often as she thought Martin would tolerate, combined the worst of

Authority materialistic regimentation and Familia dogmatic intransigence. Government and the governed

worked together to create perfect disharmony, barren and unimaginative. And the Familia exhibited a

growing resentment seeded by their restrictive cultural beliefs, most of which were at odds with Anna's

education and outlook as a child of the Authority.

Martin agreed but added little, often changing the subject. He didn't talk about some things.

The feeling of being trapped in the alcove, despite its spaciousness and the illusion of even more room the

livewalls provided, wasn't new to Anna. It happened. When it arose, she plugged into the entertainment

net, the program source that provided a view of the Wind River Mountains of Earthome on the alcove

walls, or some other program that met the same goal, and hid in fantasy for hours. Or she went to the

Commons to eat. Most people there were Familia, and some shunned her, refused to touch her in Familia

ritual greeting; but at least she was among people there. It sometimes helped.

Less often, and when it wasn't deadly hot, she had time to go outdoors to stand under the broad, starry

Phoenix night sky.

Teaching provided her best and fondest outlet when she felt trapped. She loved the children, Familia and

Authority, loved seeing their bright eyes and their eager young faces.

Now, the trapped feeling arose again.

“'Living room,'” she muttered. “Ha."

She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes and balled her fists to fight back a growl of frustration. The alcove's

gloomy closeness didn't rankle. That was just a manifestation of the real problem—the constant bickering

between Authority bigots and Familia zealots. Or was it the other way around? It put people like her and

Martin in the middle—a person not Familia or Authority was suspect by one side as being loyal to the

other. Neutrality had become an untenable position. Anna had heard the bickering produced riots back

on Earthome and on other colonies. Unconfirmed. She suspected the Authority hid such embarrassing

incidents with its usual militant diligence.

Martin administered Authority law fifty light-years from Earthome, doing the best he could. Sometimes,

he had to consult by nullwire with Government House advisers back on Earthome, advisers who often

monitored discussions in his office in realtime. The miracle of instant trans-null communication the nullwire

provided still left Martin alone in administering decisions. Jakes's command provided a token force to

back him if a decision met resistance. Sometimes Anna wondered if he wasn't just a bit afraid.

Stony-faced, he never showed it.

For all practical purposes, like it or not, Martin was the Authority government on Phoenix IV.

And Anna, with a dozen other teachers, was the Authority education system. Under law, all colonial

children had to meet certain educational standards, regardless of religious beliefs, political affiliation,

economic condition, birthright heritage or other factors. Earthome children learned from the same text as

did children on the farthest colony planet or station. Text revisions arrived by nullwire often.

The alarm in Anna's right ear buzzed, and the chrono flashed under her right eyelid—time to wake up and

face the day.

Time to teach her charges, mostly Familia children, things they didn't want to know or couldn't use on

Phoenix IV. The First Migration, the Fall, the Second Migration, Authority Heritage, Shipley's Argument,

the Code of Citizenship. Politics went hand-in-hand with basics such as computation, nano-technology,

life and physical sciences, math, logic and language skills.

After classes, Familia children went to Sanctuary, where they learned Familia doctrine, which often

contradicted what had been taught in government class minutes before.

A stupid system, Anna thought as she went to the shower. Stupid and frustrating.

She dressed in a light one-piece pantsuit, the suit standard nanofacted, Authority-designed material and

pattern. The suit was a bright yellow, a stark and deliberate contrast with the drab Familia earth tones.

She checked herself in the mirror, brushing her long hair behind her ears. A flush on her high cheekbones,

accenting pale, translucent skin, made her face seem narrow, delicate. This will change, I'm sure.

She plucked a small ripe tomato from the plant near the door and ate it. She didn't bother to program a

full breakfast, since Martin wasn't there to help her enjoy it. She wasn't hungry.

Anna checked her chrono. No hurry.

As she reached to palm the door open, something occurred to her. She hesitated and looked back at the

alcove, where a moment before she'd felt claustrophobic. Now, she didn't.

Why?

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