had already started dating Katie Clark. Although she was happy
to hear from Roshanda, Allie found she hardly cared that Ian had
gotten over her so quickly. She was so preoccupied with worry
about the fate of the princess, that she couldn’t imagine being
upset by such small concerns.
Allie checked the mailbox every afternoon. Her mother even
expressed amusement at how excited Allie seemed to get “when
there’s usually only junk anyway.” Day after day, Allie’s anxiety
built. She wondered how Avienne had resolved her dilemma.
Had she relented in the end and agreed to marry cruel old
Warlord Morwolf? Allie couldn’t imagine kissing anyone with
only seven teeth—probably brown and crooked ones. And how
could anybody decide on their life’s mate at age fifteen?
It was possible that the princess had chosen instead to accept
exile, to leave her beautiful kingdom. Even an unknown and
mysterious land sounded better than a place called “Fleamarsh.”
Or had she decided that her best chance was just to be locked
inside a nunnery, never to speak a word again, surrendering all
hope of returning to the outside world and freedom? Allie
shuddered.
She had thought her own life was terrible just because she
had moved to a new place and had no friends. Though she still
longed for a companion, someone with whom she could share
her thoughts and her dreams, Allie realized that her problems
were vanishingly small compared to those of the princess.
Avienne’s enchanter friend Mythwell had been wounded;
maybe he was even unconscious or dead by now. What options
did the princess truly have? Allie wished she could be there to
comfort her friend, even if it meant sitting in a dank dungeon
with her.
It was cloudy on Saturday when Allie took Merlin out to walk
and to check the mailbox again. She had already tried twice that
afternoon, and either the postal carrier was late, or they hadn’t
received any mail at all today.
Of course there were no postal delivery trucks from fantasy
land. She wouldn’t see anyone drive up, so she would simply
keep checking.
The black lab frolicked, delighted as usual to be outside. He
pulled on his leash and bounded around the mailbox as Allie
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
139
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
opened it. She was startled to find not a rune crystal, but a
smallish parcel wrapped in crinkly brown parchment and
covered with arcane symbols. Still, the distinctive runes on the
wrapping told her who had sent the package. Allie caught her
breath. She had had so many disappointments over the past
several days that she had almost given up hope. This might not
be one of Avienne’s beautiful holographic letters, but it was
something to be treasured, nevertheless.
When Allie reached for the package, she felt immediately
how strangely heavy it was. What had the princess sent her—a
lead box?
She had to use both of her hands to slide it across the
corrugated bottom of the mailbox, and the instant she pulled it
free, it abruptly felt as if she had lifted a hundred pounds.
Struggling to hold onto the package, Allie lowered it as quickly
and gently as she could to the ground. Merlin sniffed at it with
excitement.
Allie straightened and noticed that the parcel was obviously,
and rapidly, growing. She took a step backward. As the package
continued to expand, parchment tore away to expose a glittering
crystalline crate as tall as Allie herself. A milky mist swirled
within it, and more runes were etched across every exposed
surface. Shadows moved in the depths of the mist, and Allie
heard sounds coming from the box: a thump and then … a bark?
Suddenly the crystalline cover of the crate dissolved, and a tiny
white dog pranced out of the mist.
Not at all what Allie had expected. The dog looked, for all
the world, like an oversized dandelion puff that had sprouted four
legs, a nose, and a tail.
Merlin stepped forward and greeted the diminutive visitor by
exchanging thorough sniffs and nose touches. Then the two dogs
faced the open crate and barked. Its sparkling walls evaporated,
and the mist cleared, revealing a startled-looking girl with raven
hair, smudged cheeks, and a filth-encrusted velvet gown. “Are—
are we truly here?”
Allie gasped. “Princess Avienne?”
The girl smiled. “No longer ‘Princess,’ I fear. Merely a
‘normal teenage girl,’ like you.”
Allie laughed with delight and threw her arms around
Avienne, ignoring the grime and the smell. She released her
friend and stepped back to marvel at what had happened. This
140
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
was no illusion, no sparkling hologram. Avienne was as real and
solid as Allie herself. “You escaped? So you chose exile, after
all.”
The ex-princess gave an elegant shrug. “How can it be exile,
when I have chosen to be in a beautiful land with those who mean
the most to me?”
“But—” Allie said. “What about Mythwell?” The dandelion-
puff barked twice.
Avienne stooped to pick up the little white dog and hugged
it. “He had only enough time and strength to send one such
enchanted parcel. This was the only means by which he could
escape with me.” She scratched the dog’s head. “It is enough that
we are alive and together. Can you tell me, dear friend, where we
can earn food and shelter?”
Allie grinned. “Let’s go talk to my parents.”
*
Allie never found out how her father handled the paperwork
or the explanations of why her “cousin” had come to live with
them, but within three days, Avienne was a sophomore at Allie’s
new high school.
Allie never regretted the choice to share her parents with the
gracious ex-princess. They had distinctly different personalities
and rarely found themselves in competition with each other. That
was why in their junior year, Avienne helped Allie become
homecoming queen, complete with crown. In turn, in their senior
year, Allie masterminded the campaign that got Avienne elected
as student body president.
Although it seemed strange to some, since the girls had
adjacent rooms, Allie and Avienne often wrote little postcards
and notes, which they left for each other on beds, in backpacks
or school lockers, on dressers, and on mirrors.
Rebecca Moesta (pronounced MESS-tuh) wanted to be an
author since her early teens, but it wasn’t until 1991 that she
began writing in earnest. Her solo novels include Buffy the
Vampire Slayer: Little Things (2002) and three novels in the
Junior Jedi Knights series. With her husband, Kevin J. Anderson,
she wrote the Crystal Doors trilogy, the movie novelization of
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen under the pseudonym
[ADVANCE
READER COPY]
141
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
“K.J. Anderson” (2003); a movie novelization of Supernova
(2000); a novelization of the popular StarCraft computer game
StarCraft: Shadow of the Xel’Naga , under the pseudonym
“Gabriel Mesta” (2001); and a Star Trek graphic novel, The
Gorn Crisis (2001). The team, currently working on Star
Challengers, a Young Adult science fiction series, has also
written two young adult Titan A.E. novels (2000), two high-tech
Star Wars Pop-up Books, and the 14-book Young Jedi Knights
series of Star Wars novels. They are also co-publishers of
WordFire and can be found online at www.wordfire.com.
142
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Ever since their space ship crashed and they were stranded on
The World, Bailles and Clingerts have been enemies … never
intermarrying … never having anything to do with each other.
But in this classic Robert Silverberg tale, it’s Romeo & Juliet in
space when a Baille and Clingert fall in love …
T H E O U T B R E E D E R S
By Robert Silverberg
The week before his wedding, Ryly Baille went alone into the
wild forests that separated Baille lands from those of the Clingert
clan. The lonely journey was a prenuptial tradition among the
Bailles; his people expected him to return with body toughened
by exertion, mind sharp and clear from solitary meditation. No
one at all expected him to meet and fall in love with a Clingert
girl.
He left early on a Threeday morning; nine Bailles saw him
off. Old Fredrog, the Baille Clanfather, wished him well. Minton,
Ryly’s own father, clasped him by the hand for a long, awkward
moment. Three of his patrilineal cousins offered their best
wishes. And Davud, his dearest friend and closest phenotype-
brother, slapped him affectionately.
Ryly said good-bye also to his mother, to the Clanmother,
and to Hella, his betrothed. He shouldered his bow and quiver,
hitched up his hiking trousers, and grinned nervously. Overhead,
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Thomas, the yellow primary sun, was rising high; later in the day
the blue companion, Doris, would join her husband in the sky. It
was a warm spring morning.
Ryly surveyed the little group: six tall, blond-haired, blue-
eyed men, three tall, red-haired, hazel-eyed women. Perfect
examples all of Baille-norm, and therefore the highest
representatives of evolution.
“So long, all,” he said, smiling. There was nothing else to
say. He turned and headed off into the chattering forest. His long
legs carried him easily down the well-worn path. Tradition
required him to follow the main path until noon, when the second
sun would enter the sky; then, wherever he might be, he was to
veer sharply from the road and hew his own way through the
vegetation for the rest of the journey.
He would be gone three days, two nights. On the third
evening he would turn back, returning by morning to claim his
bride.
He thought of Hella as he walked. She was a fine girl; he was
happy Clanfather had allotted her to him. Not that she was
prettier than any of the other current eligibles—they were all
more or less equal. But Hella had a certain bright sparkle, a way
of smiling, that Ryly thought he could grow to like.
Thomas was climbing now towards his noon height; the
forest grew warm. A bright-colored, web-winged lizard sprang
squawking from a tree to the left of the path and fluttered in a
brief clumsy arc over Ryly’s head. He notched an arrow and
brought the lizard down—his first kill of the trip. Tucking three
red pinlike tail feathers in his belt, he moved on.
At noon the first blue rays of Doris mingled with the yellow
of Thomas. The moment had come. Ryly knelt to mutter a short
prayer in memory of those two pioneering Bailles who had come
to The World so many generations ago to found the clan, and
swung off to the right, cutting between the fuzzy grey boles of
two towering sweetfruit trees. He incised his name on the
forestward side of one tree as a guide-sign for his return, and
entered the unknown part of the forest.
He walked till he was hungry; then he killed an unwary
bouncer, skinned, cooked, and ate the meaty rodent, and bathed
in a crystal-bright stream at the edge of an evergreen thicket.
When darkness came, he camped near an upjutting cliff, and for
a long time lay on his back, staring up at the four gleaming little
144
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
moons, telling himself the old clan legends until he fell asleep.
The following morning was without event; he covered many
miles, carefully leaving trail-marks behind. And shortly before
Dorisrise he met the girl.
It was really an accident. He had sighted the yellow dorsal
spines of a wabbler protruding a couple of inches over the top of
a thick hedge, and decided the wabbler’s horns would be as good
a trophy as any to bring back to Hella. He strung his bow and
waited for the beast to lift its one vulnerable spot, the eye, into
view.
After a moment the wabbler’s head appeared, top-heavy with
the weight of the spreading snout-horns. Ryly fingered his
bowstring and targeted on the bloodshot eye.
His aim was false; the arrow thwacked hard against the
scalelike black leather of the wabbler’s domed skull, hung—
penetrating the skin for an instant—and dropped away. The
noisily through the underbrush, undulating wildly as its vast
flippers slammed the ground.
Ryly gave chase. He strung his bow on the run, as he
followed the trail of the big herbivore. Somewhere ahead a
waterfall rumbled; the wabbler evidently intended to make an
aquatic getaway. Ryly broke into a clearing—and saw the girl
standing next to the wabbler, patting its muscular withers and
murmuring soothing sounds. She glared up at Ryly as he
appeared.
For a moment he hardly recognized her as human. She was
slim and dark-haired, with great black eyes, a tiny tilted nose,
full lips. She wore a brightly colored saronglike affair of some
batik cloth; it left her tanned legs bare. And she was almost a foot
shorter than Ryly; Baille women rarely dipped below five-ten in
height.
“Did you shoot at this animal?” she demanded suddenly.
Ryly had difficulty understanding her; the words seemed to
be in his language, but the vowels sounded all wrong, the
consonants not harsh enough.
“I did,” he said. “I didn’t know he was your pet.”
“Pet! The wabblers aren’t pets. They’re sacred. Are you a
Baille?”
Taken aback by the abrupt question, Ryly sputtered a
moment before nodding.
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
145
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
“I thought
so. I’m Joanne Clingert. What are you doing on
Clingert territory?”
“So that’s it,” Ryly said slowly. He stared at her as if she had
just crawled out from under a lichen-crusted rock. “You’re a
Clingert. That explains things.”
“Explains what?”
“The way you look, the way you talk, the way you …” He
moved hesitantly closer, looking down at her. She looked very
angry, but behind the anger shone something else—
A sparkle, maybe. A brightness.
Ryly shuddered. The Clingerts were dreaded alien beings of
a terrible ugliness, or so Clanfather had constantly reiterated.
Well, maybe so. But, then, this Clingert could hardly be typical.
She seemed so delicate and lovely, quite unlike the rawboned,
athletic Baille women.
A blue shaft of light broke through the saw-toothed leaves of
the trees and shattered on the Clingert’s brow. Almost as a reflex,
Ryly sank to his knees to pray.
“Why are you doing that?” the Clingert asked.
“lt’s Dorisrise! Don’t you pray at Dorisrise?”
She glanced upward at the blue sun now orbiting the yellow
primary. “That’s only Secundus that just rose. What did you call
it— Doris? ”
Ryly concluded his prayer and rose. “Of course. And there’s
Thomas next to her.”
“Hmm. We call them Primus and Secundus. But I suppose
it’s not surprising that the Bailles and Clingerts would have
different names for the suns. Thomas and Dori … that’s nice.
Named for the original Bailles?”
Ryly nodded. “And I guess Primus and Secundus founded
the Clingerts?”
She laughed—a brittle tinkling sound that bounced prettily
back from the curtain of trees. “No, hardly. Jarl and Bess were
our founders. Primus and Secundus only mean first and second,
in Latin.”
“Latin? What’s that? I—”
Ryly shut his mouth, suddenly. A cold tremor of delayed
alarm passed through him. He stared at the Clingert in horror.
“Is something wrong?” the Clingert asked. “You look so
pale.”
“We’re talking to each other,” Ryly said. “We’re holding a
146
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
nice little conversation. Very friendly, and all.”