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He chuckled "I hate to break it to you, but you own a bed-and-breakfast and your only guest see yourself an innkeeper is a stretch if you catchabout "How about Auul? Does that ring a bell?"

When pronounced the right way, the na, each vowel stretched until it sounded like the howl of a lonely wolf under the fullto bark atmocked, but I’d like to keep this conversation productive"

I pushed with ic "Ter screen formed on the far wall On it a vast forest spread, viewed froreen leaves shined, sprayed with sparkling stars that glittered like jewels An enor up a quarter of the horizon, gloith blue and green, and past it the secondin the distance An enor with pale blue, flew above the treetops

Sean strained His eyes lit up, catching the light Muscles bunched under the strands The elasticat the i hiaments melted, dripped down, and flowed across the floor toward ed up and a broom handle touched my hand I took it

"Auul," I quoted "Soft like the whisper of love on a eance, you are a memory, a child’s dream, a debt still oatered with our blood, lost forever but never forgotten"

"Who wrote that?" Sean asked, his gaze still fixed on the iot very poetic about your planet after you blew it up"

Sean turned to me "My planet? I was born in Tennessee"

"Where do olves coenetic mutation, an abnormality Where does your brooe doesn’t call to you, Sean"

He looked at the e melted, replaced by a lean wo reddish old hair clasps Delicate old chain ran under her uncovered breasts Music ca, diaphanous dark skirt flaring as she turned She sang in a dead language and Sean listened to it as if he understood every word

The wo The file said it was a lullaby I wondered if Sean had heard it in childhood

"Okay," he said finally "Hit me with it"

"You won’t like it"

"Why don’t you let me decide that?"

He did ask I would remind him of that if he freaked out

"There is a star systeed, pulling the ie of the two planets out of the file "It’s not clear if Auul was habitable at the start or terraforan on Mraar If you ask the Sun Horde, a splinter group occupied Auul and declared independence If you ask your people, they were exiled to Auul and abandoned We don’t knohat the truth is, and we never will Everyone does agree that after the civilizations had existed independently for almost a thousand years, the Raoo of Mraar invaded Auul"

I sat in the chair I was tired of standing

"How do you know this?" Sean asked

"I’, but okay What happened with invasion?"

"The Raoo got their butts kicked It’s difficult to occupy a planet"

"Makes sense in theory Getting enough troops to the surface would be a challenge"

He was taking all this rather well He probably thought I was crazy and had decided to stay cal tinfoil on ed on for years, really more a cycle of invasions and hasty retreats, until the Raoo acquired a gate Whether soy or they stuht it soate?"

"It’s an Einstein-Rosen bridge A miniature traversable wormhole, which permits nearly instantaneous travel from one part of the universe to another There are naturally occurring wore a, and it could only be active for a short time or it would destabilize the planet In the fourteen days it was open, the Raoo dumped millions of their troops on Auul Mraar was overcrowded and Auul had always been sparsely populated Your people were losing With two-thirds of the planet occupied, they resorted to drastic ineered olfism They proceeded to adeneration of superfighters, and the tide of war began to turn"

"Back up" Sean held his hand out "What do you ineered?"

"They created an ossai, an artificial raaniseneration stronger and faster and reshaped their offspring into olves When you change shape it must hurt, but it doesn’t hurt as e, the ossai in your body releases a painkiller"