Lifehouse

  She sent one back that meant, That’s good.

  He sent, But knowing is going to drive us crazy!

  She sent back, So who said life was fair?

  And both grinned.

  Just then there came a faint crackling sound, and an odor of toasting basil and cinnamon.

  Paul and June stirred in sudden alarm. Wally and Moira caught their alarm at once, and guessed its cause. Each of the four freed their right arm and reached for a weapon. “Double cross?” Paul wondered. A sound at the upper range of perception converged slowly from all directions at once. The temperature rose just perceptibly. Paul started to rise, and June restrained him. The sound swelled and congealed, like a Bronx cheer played backwards—

  A small Egg sat on the roof, directly in front of Wally and Moira.

  It was about the size of a volleyball, but otherwise identical to the one Paul and June had seen appear that afternoon: a perfect sphere of something more transparent than glass. Paul and Wally both had the same wild thought: that the little sphere would contain a miniature Laura Bellamy, something like Tinkerbell.

  But its contents seemed far more mundane.

  The Egg vanished like the soap bubble it resembled, and the item within dropped to the roof and began to slide. Wally reached out and stopped it with a foot, leaned forward and recovered it.

  It was a compact disk. The caddy that held it had no front or back cover or liner notes, was simply a plastic box. The CD itself was almost equally featureless. No corporate or manufacturer’s logo, no catalog data, no copyright warning, none of the standard commercial icons, no printing at all—not even the basic stuff found on a blank CD-ROM. Just a rectangular white block printed on its upper surface, within which someone with careful, Spenserian penmanship had written the words:

  Free As A Bird

  Real Love

  (final versions and

  original demos)

  “What the hell do you suppose that means?” Wally asked.