Chapter 1

The hosannas were done. They'd been greeted, feted, lauded endlessly, and at last all the ceremonials were finished. The journey to Eden had been a complete success, Meiersdottir had won immense praise both official and public, Igwanda nearly as much, Meier had been duly swooned over as the first human baby ever born off Earth, and at last it was time to go home.

At Meiersdottir's insistence they were going by private surface transportation, traversing the back roads between their grounding location in Texas and their destination at Meiersdottir's family home in Indiana.

"I want to drive it the slow, scenic way, Carlos," she'd told him. "I want to see every inch of the countryside between here and home. I want them to see us—and just us, no security troops like we were royalty or something, just you and me and our son. This is home, not Eden, and I want to remember it, all of it."

Igwanda knew better, knew there were places along the route where a black man with a white woman and a child who was a mix of the two wouldn't be welcomed even now. But when gentle efforts to dissuade her failed, he capitulated. They'd been favored with sufficient public honors, he thought, it would surely be all right.

"Very well, Amanda," he said mildly. "If you wish it so, then it shall be so."

It was at their second stop that things went wrong.

The town—not much more than a wide spot in the road, really—was, as she said, "quaint." It was a rustic little village which might have dated to the 20th, even the 19th, century by its appearance. Meiersdottir insisted on a stop, saying she needed to use the restroom and, more important, needed to change Meier. Without thinking much about it Igwanda pulled over at a service station-cum-convenience store and decided to use the opportunity for a partial re-charge of his vehicle.

"Get me a soda," she commanded as she exited the vehicle. "Anything, I don't care." Without thinking much about it, leaving his unit to take on its charge, he went in to do so.

It was an unwise decision, he realized immediately. The fuel stop also doubled as a coffee house, and he drew the immediate attention of a table of three white men, all large and fairly boisterous, one of them truly enormous, as he entered. He ignored them, picked up the requested soda and paid for it, but he found the three close behind him as he exited the establishment.

Meiersdottir was finished at about the same time. Carrying little Meier, she joined him at the door, giving him a casual kiss, and moved toward the vehicle.

"Hey, boy," said one of the white men as he started to follow her.

Igwanda ignored it and continued to move on. But the man laid a hard hand on his shoulder. "I said, hey, boy," he repeated, exerting strength to turn Igwanda to him.

He let himself be turned—turned, in fact, considerably faster than the pressure might have dictated. It was meant as a warning. In that it failed.

"You with her?" his interceptor demanded, nodding at Meiersdottir.

Igwanda sighed. He'd had this sort of encounter before, knew what was coming.

"She is my wife, and that is our son," he answered, hoping the regularity of the status would discourage his accoster.

The man spat down, narrowly missing Igwanda's shoes. "She spread 'em for every nigger?" he demanded with a sneer.

Igwanda started to turn away, but the hand on his shoulder tightened. "I asked you a question, boy," the man growled.

Deliberately Igwanda stared directly into the man's eyes. "Do not press this further," he said softly.

A nasty grin suffused the man's face, revealing two missing front teeth. "You threatenin' me, boy?" he asked. He turned to the giant who had followed him out along with the other man they'd been with. "Hey, Tiny, I believe this here nigger just threatened me, you gone do some­thin' about it?" He stepped back as the one he'd called Tiny moved forward with surprising speed and grace.

He was huge, dwarfing Igwanda's 1.85-meter height and easily outweighing the black man by 50 kilos or more. Without a word he reached out and grabbed a handful of Igwanda's shirt with one hand, lifting him halfway off the ground. Almost lovingly Igwanda reached out and laid a hand on each side of the giant's neck.

The blow the big man had begun with his free hand never fell. Instead, as Igwanda exerted firm pressure on his carotid arteries, his grip on the shirt loosened, his eyes rolled up in his head, his legs buckled and he fell in an untidy heap at Igwanda's feet.

For a second the two men with him simply gaped. Then with a roar the man who'd first accosted Igwanda leaped forward, followed by his companion.

It was over in a matter of seconds. One of the men was on his knees on the concrete apron clutching his groin, unable to utter a sound; the other lay unconscious half on top of the still-insensible giant, his right arm extended at an unnatural angle. Igwanda, untouched, simply shook his head over them.

"Very impressive," came a soft voice. Without haste Igwanda turned to the source of the voice, a middle-aged man with something of a paunch who was emerging from the convenience store. In his hands was a shotgun, the muzzle trained directly on Igwanda.

"Let me introduce myself, boy," he said, still softly. "I'm Cal Perkins, and I'm sheriff here, and I do believe that impressive beating you just handed three of our upstanding citizens has earned you a little trip to my jail."

"For self-defense?" asked Igwanda, unperturbed.

"'Self-defense?'" the sheriff echoed. "Nigger, I don't think any of those good ol' boys ever laid a glove on you."

"It's true, sheriff," called Meiersdottir across the apron. She'd deposited Meier in his car seat, where he was whining uncomfortably, and seemed to be fumbling in her purse. "They attacked him. Didn't you see it? Why would he pick a fight with three men all bigger than he, one of them gigantic?"

"Now, little missy, you just get in your vehicle and go along," he replied, the shotgun never wavering. "You do that, you and your whinin' little pickaninny, and I'll overlook that you got to consortin' with the wrong kind of man and spit out that mongrel."

"Sheriff, he's Col. Carlos Igwanda, the man they've been calling a hero on the holo for what he did on the planet Eden, another world," she cried. "I'm Amanda Meiersdottir, and some of them called me a heroine too. We've just got back to Earth after more than a year away. Is this the welcome home you give us?"

"I have identification here if you will allow me—" began Igwanda, moving his hand toward the pocket where he carried his wallet.

"You go reachin' into that pocket, boy, we'll find out real fast if your talents include dodgin' two barrels of buckshot," the sheriff interrupted him, his voice turning hard. "Missy, I don't care who you say you are, I don't hold truck with that business about other worlds and you're right here, right now, in my jurisdiction. Your buck's goin' to jail, where I already got another of his kind who didn't know to walk soft in my town. He's learnin'; so will you, boy. And missy, if you don't drive away right now I just might oblige you to join him, so get movin'." He gestured at her with the twin barrels of the shotgun.

Almost instantly a hole materialized in Meiersdottir's purse and the barrels as quickly turned to melted slag. The sheriff looked down and his jaw dropped. For a brief moment no-one spoke.

"That there's an illegal weapon," the sheriff finally said in a hoarse whisper.

"Not for me it's not," snapped Meiersdottir in as cold a tone as Igwanda had ever heard from her. It was true; a grateful, and concerned, Space Exploration Service had contrived a waiv­er of the normal prohibition against laser possession for the returning explorers on the premise that they might need extra protection against the outbursts of negativistic extremists—few in number, but making up for it in vituperation—who'd surfaced when they were back. As a pacifist she'd been reluctant to take advantage of the waiver but had, on Igwanda's insistence, agreed to carry one.

"In any case that is not your concern," Igwanda said just as coldly, stepping forward to relieve the sheriff of the damaged weapon. "Your concern is that she not use it further on you when you point this"—he waved the mangled shotgun—"at her child. Our child. You may be grateful that she is a marksman."