They caught him. We watched on the news. The would-be assassin sneers at the camera like a real Earth punk. Sue Anne glares back and snorts derisively.
Entry 23: Dreamed of my mother at her piano, but her hands were Kondran hands. The fingers were too long, and the nails were set like claws, and her skin was covered in minute, grayish scales.
I think she was playing Chopin.
Entry 24: Sometimes I wish I were a writer, to do all this justice. I might have some function as a survivor.
Look at Sue Anne: Except for some terrible luck, she would have created out of us a new posterity.
Myers is doing prints these days, but not on Earth themes anymore, though the Kondrai beg him to concentrate on what's "native" to him. He says his memory of Earth is no longer trustworthy, and besides, images of Kondra are native to the eyes of reborn Earth souls now. He accepts Nandism openly and goes around doing Kondran landscapes and portraits and so on. Well, nobody will have to miss any of that in my account, then. They can always look at Myers's pictures.
Walter Drake died last winter of Kondran cancer. I went to the funeral. For the first time I wore makeup.
Myers, the arrogant son of a bitch, condescended to share a secret with me. He used this face paint, plus a close haircut or a feathered cap, to go out incognito among the snakes so he can observe them undisturbed. Age has smoothed his features and made him thin, like most Kondrai, and he's been getting away with it for years. Well, good for him. Look at what they're trying to get away with along those lines!
Being disguised has its advantages. I hadn't realized the pressure of being stared at all the time in public until I moved around without it.
They said, "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust," and I got dizzy and had to sit down on a bench.
Retrieval Library listening to the really great performances that are recorded there, to make sure my taste hasn’t become degraded.
It hasn’t. My two crewmates are converting themselves, by some miracle of dedication, into fine performers.
Last night I had to walk out in the middle of a Beethoven sonata to be alone.
Entry 21: Sue Anne had a stroke last week. She is paralyzed down her left side. I am staying with her almost constantly because I know she can’t stand having the snakes around her anymore.
She blames me, I know, for having cooperated with them. We all spent hours and hours with their researchers, filling out their information about our dead planet. How could we have refused? In the face of their courtesy and considering how worried we all were about forgetting Earth ourselves, how could we? Besides, we really had nothing else to do.
She blames me anyhow, but I don’t mind.
A wave of self-immolation is going on among young Kondrai. They find themselves an audience and set themselves afire, and the watching Kondrai generally stand there as if hypnotized by the flames and do nothing.
Dr. Birgit Nilson told me, “Your entire population died out; many of them burnt up in an instant. This created much karma, and those who are responsible must be allowed to pay.”
“You’re a Nandist, then,” I said. “Swami Nanda and his reincarnation crap.”
“I see no other explanation,” she said.
“It all makes sense to you?” I said.
“Yes.” She stroked her cheek with her orange-polished talons. “It’s a loan: We have lent our beautiful material world and our species’s bodies in exchange for your energetic souls and your rich, passionate culture.”
They are the crazy ones, not us.