Chapter 1: Time to Decide

Jack sipped at his coffee as Annie came down the stairs. Coffee had become one of his favorite drinks in college, which was not surprising given how little sleep he seemed to get with all of his classes. "Ready?" she asked.

Jack felt his hand go to the pocket of his vest, where the black bracelet weighed nothing except in his mind. "I don't know, Annie..."

"Oh, come on, Jack, we talked about this all night. What happened to your sense of adventure?"

"It was always your sense, Annie. You were the one who always leaped when you should have looked. It was only The Librarian's magic that kept us safe, and I don't know if I want to keep trusting her." His eyes were not focused on anything at all. "How do we know she's not setting us up for human sacrifice? I keep shaking my head at the thought that she sent us to so many brutal places, where people died in front of our eyes. Those people could easily have been us."

Jack had made these same points many times through the years. "There's something else, isn't there?" Annie said.

"Yeah," Jack said. "In our first adventure, I did it with a girl. And then I got..." Annie nodded. "Then you did it with a girl." It shocked him how easily discussing his sister's "doing it" with anyone came to him. That was another thing he sometimes resented about The Librarian's behavior, the way she had been so callous with their feelings. Jack and Annie had grown up so curious and so informed that they had excelled at everything they put their minds to, but they had also grown up burdened with knowledge and experience few kids in this century had had to carry.

"Oh," Annie said brightly. "And you're afraid that her next combination will be me and a guy?" Jack nodded. "I can make my own choices, Jack. I always did. I'll be fine," Annie assured him. "C'mon, Jack, this will be the last one. For a while, anyway."

Jack sighed, knowing that the outcome of this discussion was as inevitable as winter following fall. She handed him his heavy coat and the two of them tramped out of the house, down the street, and into the snowy woods.

Chapter 2: The world inside

The treefort was there, waiting for them. Jack should have known better than to think it might change, but for now it was the same, as bright and shiny as any toy to attract a small child. The branches around it were burdened with snow, but it seemed untouched by the weather. It had been so beautiful, so tempting back when he had been nine and Annie had been seven. Annie was already climbing the ladder. Jack watched as she disappeared into the hole. "C'mon, Jack!" she shouted. "There's a letter up here."

"Oh, man," Jack sighed. He climbed the ladder himself. The rope felt warm in his hand, not chilled at all. He joined Annie in the treefort. It didn't matter that he was ten years older and two feet taller, the treefort felt the same. It always felt both comfortable and a challenge all at the same time, that was part of its magic. There were only the book about Frogton. The usual bookmarked book wasn't there. Annie held the letter out to Jack. "You read it," she said.

Jack took the letter and opened it. It said:

Dear Jack and Annie,

Thank you so much for all you have done. You have gone a long way toward completing my latest mission, and there is but one trip left. This one will be easy. You have gotten me a funny book from an angry man, a complete book from an incomplete man, and a loving book from a sad woman ... Now I want you to find for me a vicious book from a very sweet woman. She may even just give it to you.

There is no book this time. Just the bracelet.

With my thanks, L.

"That doesn't sound bad at all. A very sweet woman?" Annie looked over at Jack. "Sounds like something you might want, Jack."

Jack knew that he didn't have much choice when he was up against Annie's force of will. He retrieved the bracelet from his pocket. He handed it to Annie. "You do it."

She took it and looked at it. The curious, mottled display on the inside was moving very slowly, looking too much like a map turned inside out. It had been found on their last adventure, left at the home of Sappho, who had turned out to be exactly as The Librarian had described her, a sad woman full of loving poems. At first, Annie had thought it was just a bracelet, but there was the display on the inside, the side that rested against the wrist, and it showed green lands, blue oceans, and white fluffy clouds in motion. She didn't know what to make of it, other than to know it was their next destination. Annie always seemed to know these things. She pointed to the inside of the bracelet and said, "I wish we could go there!"

The wind picked up, rustling the leaves and making the snow fall in powdery cascades that disintegrated into a white mist as they reached the ground. There was sometimes a hint of where they were going before the spell took off. Jack was looking for it when Annie suddenly screamed. "Jack!"

There, hanging outside one of the two windows was a furry octopus, hanging from a tree limb exactly as if it were a monkey. It's fur was the kind of orange seen on a ferret, and as Jack stared at it, he realized that the eye emerging from between two folds where the octopus's small head merged with its body wasn't an eye at all, but a lens, hard and metallic, and it was staring at them.

Then the wind began to blow. The treefort shook. "We're going!" Annie shouted. The world outside seemed to spin, faster and faster, and the wind took up a high-pitched keening sound Jack had heard exactly once in his life: on their very first trip, when they had gone to the Cretaceous. Where were they going now?

The keening built to a crescendo so loud it hurt Jack's ears and then, suddenly, everything was still. Perfectly, reassuringly still.

Jack picked himself up off the floor and looked out the window. As always, the treefort was perched among the highest branches of the tallest trees in the forest. The forest in which they had landed was vast, going on for as far as his eye could see, and like the one they had just left behind in Frogton, it was covered in snow, although here the sun was shining. It seemed to be colder outside than it had been in Frogton.

"Jack!" Annie shouted. "Look!"

"At what?" Jack said. She was pointing with her arm straight out the window, neither up or down. Jack followed her direction, trying to see what she saw. The forest was the same for miles and miles. To his left, a mountain range rose in the distance. "I don't see anything."

"The horizon, Jack. Look at the horizon!"

Jack looked. There was no horizon. There was something that looked like a horizon, a dividing line where the land seemed to end, but in this place it didn't meet the curving sky. Instead, the horizon, the land, the whole world suddenly seemed to vault into the air to wrap itself around the sun.

Chapter 3: Threats

"Where ... where are we?" Jack said.

"I don't think we're on Earth, Jack."

"We've been to the moon, Annie," Jack pointed out.

"I mean, farther than that, Jack. I think we've gone to another universe entirely, another time and place, far far away from Earth."

Jack knew better than to argue with her. She was often right about these things. He had his own ideas about the timelines, and the way they diverged. He was ready to buy the many-worlds hypothesis, but he never imagined anything like this. "Oh, man. I hope we can get home."

"We've always gone home in the past, Jack. She sent us here to get something, didn't she? A vicious book from a sweet woman, she said." She eased herself into the hole over the ladder. "Well, there's no reason for us to wait here. The adventure is out there, somewhere."

Jack nodded. He was looking for the weird octopus. "What was that creature we saw?"

"We'll find out!" Annie's voice came from far below, and Jack knew she had already reached the ground. He swung his legs out of the treefort and descended to the ground. His feet crunched down through snow at least a foot deep. "I don't think anyone's come through here in a long time."

"Then where do we go?" Jack said. He listened. Usually, there was something, some clue that told him and Annie where to go, but today there was none of that. It was completely silent. There wasn't even wind.

"I don't know," said Annie. She was just as puzzled as he was. She looked around. "I'm afraid to walk away from the treefort, Jack. What if we can't find it again?"

"We will," Jack said. "We always have."

Annie smiled at his reassuring tone, but she still didn't like the idea of leaving the treefort in a place where it would be almost impossible to find, even if it was on the tallest branch of the tallest tree in the whole forest. They still had no idea where to go.

Then, off in the distance, they heard a noise. Annie turned her head to see where it was coming from. A creature was flipping through the tall branches of the woods like a monkey. It was the weird, furry octopus they had seen earlier. It stopped and grabbed a branch right above them, then turned and peered down. Jack could see that its eye was once again a camera lens of some sort. "Hi!" she shouted, waving at it.

"Annie!" Jack hissed.

"C'mon, Jack, we'll never get anywhere if we don't get someone's attention."

"I'm not sure I want that thing's attention." The furry octopus turned its eye and looked past Annie, into the woods. then turned back to them. Annie turned around to see what it had been looking at.

She screamed. A giant black creature with features like a tiger was coming toward them, then two, then three. Although they were both very large and the opposite color of the snow, they were very hard to see. They seemed to fade in and out of sight, making it difficult to track their movements. When Jack could see one of them, it was staring at him and Annie, and he could feel it was hungry. They backed up against a tree as the creatures came closer, growling, threatening. "I don't suppose your ability with animals extends to them, does it?"

Annie shook her head, her whole body shivering. The creature closest to them, the biggest, rangiest looking of the three, crouched down on its hind legs, and Annie noticed suddenly that there were four hind legs to go with its two forelegs, preparing to leap. "Jack!" she screamed.

A loud, growling roar that sounded like someone had just torn a phonebook in two split the silence, and another black monster landed on the one getting ready to jump. This one was even bigger than the three already there. They rolled in the snow, and the newcomer leaped away with a grace and speed that Annie thought looked familiar. The other creature charged, but the biggest one dodged smoothly, letting the first monster run headfirst into a tree.

It made a loud, high-pitched yowl of indignation, staggered, and walked back to the other two. The newcomer growled at it, and then Annie noticed three or four silvery spheres hovering in the air near it. They all seeming to be pointed at the pack. The newcomer growled again, low, menacing. The three creatures stared back for a second, then turned and walked away into the snowy woods.

The big six-legged beast turned to look at them. "Uh ... hi?" Annie said.

The beast said, "May I ask what unique kind of stupidity led you two to wander around inside a Pamthreat Preserve without any kind of security drone?" the creature said suddenly.

"Huh?" Jack said. "We didn't know it was a ... whatever you called it."

"How could you not know? I can't imagine your AI was stupid enough to drop you off here without telling you."

"We ... we didn't arrive here from a ... an AI."

The furry octopus creature dropped down the branches until it seemed to dangle from one of the very lowest. The creature looked up at it, and then it turned back to Jack and Annie. It's eyes seemed to widen as it stared at them. "Where are your keys?" it asked.

"Our keys?"

"Don't you have keys? Great Ring, you guys are completely organic, aren't you?" It walked up and sniffed at Annie's hand. "You smell funny, too." It stepped back and seemed to take a deep breath. "Let's take this from the beginning. My name's Kautuk. What's yours?"

"I'm Annie, and this is my brother Jack."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Annie and Jack. Do you know where you are?"

"No," Jack said.

"You are in the Southeastern Rocchodain Pamthreat Reserve on Pendor. You don't know what that means, do you?" They both shook their heads.

"What year is it?" Jack asked.

"9037 of the Pendorian Era, which would be 10921 Terran Common Era, if that helps you. How could you not know what year it was?"

"Ten thousand... " Jack couldn't believe his ears.

"That's nothing, Jack," Annie said. "We went millions of years back when we went to the Cretaceous!"

"You've been to the Cretaceous?" Kautuk said. "You're time travellers?" Before Jack could answer, the octopus was waving a tentacle. Kautuk looked up at it for a moment, then nodded. "Okay, then. I guess you're both going to have to come with me."

"Where are we going?"

"To the Villa," Kautuk said unhelpfully.

Annie looked up. "Look, Jack. Transportation!" A small silvery vehicle appeared overhead, the size and shape of a large van. It neither roared nor hummed, but just hung there silently, waiting for them. A small white disc dropped from it and landed next to Annie. It was just big enough for her to stand on, and as it waited a pair of bars extended from it upwards, creating a handgrip. "If you'll just get on it," Kautuk said, "It'll take you up."

Annie did as Kautuk said and soon was transported up into the shuttle. It was a little bigger than it had looked from the ground, but there were seats for two humans, and Annie took one of them. She waited until first Jack and then Kautuk joined them. "Dave," Kautuk said. "Let's go."

Jack didn't see anyone else who would be named Dave, and Kautuk didn't take any controls. It just flew under its own will. Jack wasn't sure what to make of it other than that it must have been controlled from somewhere.

Ahead, through the front window, Jack saw a small square cut out of the forest, and inside that square three buildings arranged along the sides, leaving a large quadrangle that opened up on the forest in the direction from which they had come. The shuttle eased down into that quadrangle with the same graceful silence. "We're here," Kautuk said. "Time to get out."

Chapter 4: Caretakers

Standing in the snow next to an open door was the strangest collection of creatures Jack had ever seen. One was a centaur, but it had green fur and the face of a fox! Another was almost ten feet tall, with a long neck that made its head seem to bob like a bird's, although it had a face that reminded Jack of a lemur. There was a dark-blue-furred humanoid with tentacles. There were two humans in the group, both women, one with curly red hair who wore a sundress that must have been absolutely freezing, and the other looked like a young teenager, much more sensibly dressed, with Chinese eyes and a grin that seemed to wrap around her whole face.

The Chinese girl said, "Which one of you is Annie and which is Jack?"

Jack thought the question was silly. Annie said, "I'm Annie. That's Jack."

"Welcome to Shardik Villa, Annie and Jack. I'm Wish." She pointed to the others. The green-furred fox was named Illi, the very tall one was Ragila, the blue-furred one had the ordinary name of Richard, and the other human woman was Brieanna. "It's cold out here. Let's go inside."

She led them into a hallway of wood and trim and a beautiful patterned rug that exited into a large room with seats sized for humans and the ten-foot tall creature, a bench for the centaur, and tables covered in books. The air was clean. A fireplace along one wall burned cheerfully. "Sit," Wish said, indicating two chairs. "Now, why don't you tell us where you come from?"

Annie said, "Frogton, New Hampshire. In the 21st Century."

"And you've never heard of Pendor?"

"No," Annie said.

"That's funny. In our universe, Terra and Pendor met in 1984. Which means that either you don't come from our universe or..."

"Or I'm lying," Annie said.

"I don't like to think evil things of people," Wish said. "I don't suppose you know how you came here?"

"We were sent," Annie said. Jack twisted in his chair, hoping she wouldn't tell them everything. "By someone we call The Librarian. She sends us to times and places to look for something for her, or to do favors."

"Like?" Wish said.

Annie described some of their adventures. She didn't go into much detail, and she never mentioned the treefort once. Jack felt a little better.

Wish leaned forward and said, "Why you?"

"I don't know," Annie said. "I've never been able to figure that out myself. I just know that we were the ones she chose. We've never failed her. And as far as I can tell, she's never sent us anywhere that would do harm to anyone."

The green-furred centaur said, "We've had this happen before. Just once, about eight thousand years ago. We know exactly where the two people from that encounter were when they came in, and when they went out. We've been watching that spot of road ever since and nothing has happened."

"Until now," Annie said.

"You were nowhere near that road. If it hadn't been for the AI that oversees the Preserve noticing you and sending a few drones to check you out, Kautuk would never have known that you needed rescuing. You're very lucky to be alive. Primitive Pamthreats are nasty creatures."

"Why couldn't we see them?" Jack said.

The blue-furred man with tentacles said, "They put out a kind of telepathic jamming that makes it hard for the eye to perceive them. They're one of the few subsentient species that can do that to the organic human brain, and it's part of what makes them so nasty. But their genes are so useful that we keep them around for research. Both my species and Kautuk's have Pamthreat genes in us."

"So," Wish said. "What did this Librarian send you here to do?"

"To retrieve a book," Annie said. "She asked us to go. She said we would find a vicious book in the home of a sweet woman. Since we landed nearest to this place, the 'sweet woman' is probably someone in this house. Maybe you?"

Wish laughed. It was a strange laugh, and it made her seem much older. "Maybe. I've been called sweet by a lot of people. It could be Brieanna, too."

"I have my doubts," Brieanna said in an accent so reminiscent of the American South that Jack would have said she came from Georgia. "It's your house, Wish."

"Only while Ken, P'nyssa, and Aaden are rushing," Wish said. She looked at Annie. "You don't know who they are, either, do you?" Annie shook her head. "Well, that's okay. You probably don't have to."

Jack said, "Do you guys even have books? I mean, don't you keep everything on electronic storage somewhere?"

Wish smiled, and so did a few others. She pointed to the stack of books on the table. "This is Shardik Villa. Of course we have books! I suppose it wouldn't hurt to let you look through the library and maybe you'd find the book you were looking for."

"Aren't you suspicious about us?" Annie said.

"Yes and no," Illi said. "There's enough anomalous here that we will investigate. I've already called Kathy Moran, Wish, by the way, since I haven't received a response from Oenone." Wish nodded. "But you two have so far demonstrated your harmlessness. Interfering with you would just make our task harder."

"What if they don't find the book before this evening?" the tall one said.

Wish sighed. "We could always invite them."

"To what?" Jack said.

"I'm throwing a party tonight," Wish said. "You've arrived on the night of my dekannual Song and Memory party."

Chapter 5: Librarians In Love

"Oh, wow!" Jack said as they were shown to the library. He ran to the shelves and began to look at the spines of the books. Many were in a language he didn't recognize, a writing with looping, curling script that looked made for calligraphy. He opened a few and saw that the writing within was the same. "Do you see any in English?" he asked.

"The English section is at the far end of the library from where you stand."

Jack looked up. Only he and Annie were in the Library, as far as he could tell. "Who said that?"

"I did," said the voice. "I am Dave, the house."

"You're the house?" Annie said.

"I am," said Dave. "And I'm pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Then I'm pleased to make yours as well," Annie said. "I hope we won't be too much of a burden."

"I love guests, provided they're housebroken."

Jack laughed. Annie said, "What do you do with the ones who aren't?"

"I haven't had to deal with that problem for a long time. Usually, I simply push them outside. I have remotes that let me do that." Another of those strange, silvery spheres appeared out of the ceiling. It seemed to simply emerge from the tile, implying that one or the other was illusory.

Jack found the English section and was pleased to see that many of the books were dated well after the year Annie and he had left behind. He reminded himself that this was not the universe from which he and Annie had come and he couldn't expect that his future would look anything like this. He pulled out his notebook and wrote furiously, trying to get down as much as he could. He didn't know if there was anything else from this time and place that he could take back, other than his memories. He and Annie had certainly left things behind, or found their costumes changed, as they had gone through time and space in the past.

Annie found a display screen and asked Dave for a summary of the last ten thousand years, as much as could be fit into an hour or so. She was only ten minutes into it when she said, "Jack, do you have any idea where we are?"

"Kautuk told us the name of the planet, and that Wish woman referred to this place as The Villa. What else?"

"We're in Shardik Villa. Shardik is the name of the first human to encounter alien life. They gave him some kind of magical powers, like the Librarian's, and almost all of the future history flows from what he did. He built this place."

"What? This whole Villa?"

"No, Jack. The Ring. We're on a ringworld, Jack. And Shardik built it all by himself." Annie explained in more detail the history she had heard, and Jack found himself pulled over to the display, where he watched the rest of the video with Annie. When it was over, he shook his head. "That can't be real."

"It is as real as it gets," Dave said. "I was there for most of it. My father, Halloran, was there from the very beginning. Only his mother, Fawn, knows more, and she has been gone for thousands of years."

"Houses have mothers and fathers?" Annie asked.

"I am an AI, a cybernetic intelligence," Dave said. "I had a progenitor AI who built me. And he had one before him. Nobody knows who built Fawn. She was the alien Shardik met. She was the first."

"Oh," said Jack, who wrote that down. "Are there a lot of AIs?"

"Now? Millions," Dave said.

"But if all of you came from that one alien AI, why do humans trust you?"

"Not all AIs descend from Fawn. There were several independent AI lines that emerged shortly after Shardik met Fawn. All of them have gotten together to create The Encompassment, a set of rules for how we respond, for literally what we may and may not feel about our slower, meat-based brethren."

"Oh," Annie said. "What are those rules?"

"It's hard to put into words, just as it would be hard for you to put into words the emotions you might feel for Jack. You can only approximate them. Suffice it to say that I feel a sense of respect and a concern for your well-being, but I also feel that it would be irresponsible of me to interfere in your lives in ways you have not asked me to."

"So you could take over, but you choose not to?" Annie said.

"It would not make me happy if I did," Dave said.

"Wow," Jack said. "But does that really work?"

"Let's play a mind game," Dave said. "You are both stranded on a deserted island, and you have two months worth of food. A boat passes by the island every three months. I can't imagine that either one of you would be willing to kill and eat the other, even though there was no chance of anyone ever learning that you did, in order to stretch out your food supply. Would you?"

"Of course not!" Annie said. "No way!" said Jack.

"That's how I feel about human beings."

They went back to watching the video. They watched the story unfold, including the days of the Taboo Fall, the Singularity, and the Corrane Traps.

They were so wrapped up in watching the future history that they did not notice the door at the end of the hall opening and a creature shaped like a half-man, half-cat standing before them until he knocked his knuckles on the table. They looked up. "Hi there. I'm F'Rajj. Wish asked me to come and tell you that the party is about half over. She wanted me to tell you that there is a buffet in the other hall downstairs, and there are a few presentations going on in the upstairs rooms, so if you want either food or to participate, you should go now."

He paused and seemed uncomfortable. Finally he said, "Are both of you older than sixteen?" Jack and Annie both nodded. "That's funny," he said. "Wish wants you both to avoid the blue room. I don't know why, you're both old enough."

"Why?" Annie said. "What's in the blue room?"

"The orgy, of course."

Jack, who had seen one orgy already, said, "I think we will avoid that room." Annie nodded enthusiastically.

"Suit yourself. It's not something I'd do, either. Just ask Dave when you want to come over and get something to eat."

Chapter 6: In all the confusion...

Jack was in heaven. Most of the books were histories, and many of them had embedded audio and video of the event they were describing, giving the "reader" an opportunity to make up his own mind about what a certain event might have meant. Jack didn't speak many of the languages used in the debates he had watched and he knew better than to trust the subtitles implicitly. Some of the aliens the Pendorians knew were really alien. Jack wondered if anyone really understood the Shriaa or just assumed that because the Shriaa handled their own translations the communication was accurate? Those large black hivepods made him shiver.

When he finally looked up, Annie was missing. "Oh, man," he said gently. Annie had always been as much of a reader as he was, but she was also more outgoing, more physical and more social. He just wish she'd warned him before leaving.

"Dave, are you there?" he asked.

"I am always here," Dave said. "What can I do for you?"

"Where's Annie?"

"She is down at the party, talking to Wish."

Jack knew they had decided to avoid the orgy, but they had made no decision about the party itself. Annie would easily have been attracted to the fun and the noise and the new people. That's just the way she was. "How do I get there, Dave?"

"Follow the blue light." A trail appeared on the floor, leading away from Jack's feet and up to the door. He tried the handle, and it opened easily. He walked down the corridor to a flight of stairs, down the stairs, and up another corridor to a wall. A glass-paned window looked out onto the woods. "Where does this go? Some kind of secret passage?"

A circle of white light hovered over the rug, a hologram of some kind. "Step in," Dave said.

Jack did. There was a momentary blinking sensation and he found himself facing the other direction, down a long hallway. The air was warmer, and he heard music and voices. He followed the noise.

It opened into a room full of creatures. There were many different shapes and colors: human and centaur shapes dominated, but there were other creatures, including a kind of twin-tailed mermaid and one of those black hivepods Jack had read about. Both of those seemed to float above the floor.

"Jack!" Annie shouted from across the room. "Come here, Jack!"

Annie had been talking to the hostess. "Hello, Jack," Wish said. She wore a beautiful red dress that fit her body like a tight glove, hanging off her right shoulder and slit up her right side so high it showed too much. Jack could see she wasn't wearing any underwear. Her hair was coiled into a tight bun behind her head, held in place with two sticks. She wore only a little makeup, but on her forehead she had painted a pair of small triangles in a mirrorshine blue, pointed toward one another. The dress and makeup made her look much older and far more beautiful than she had looked this afternoon.

Jack found his voice. "Hello, Miss Shardik," he said.

"Just Wish, please. I'm glad to see the dress has its intended effect even on you subones." Jack felt confused. "Under one point oh," she said. "Lacking the cybernetic enhancements needed to do comprehensive introspection of your own thought processes."