Free The Fountain of Age by Nancy Kress

email, Miss Washington.”
    It was Detective Washington, but Tara let it go. “Still—anyone?”
    “No.”
    Had the dancer hesitated slightly? Tara couldn’t be sure. She went on asking questions, but she could see that she wasn’t getting anywhere. Anna Chernov grew politely impatient. Why wasn’t Geraci stopping Tara? She had to continue until he did: “softening them up,” he called it. The pointless questioning went on. Finally, just as Tara was running completely out of things to ask, Geraci said almost casually, “Do you know Dr. Erdmann, the physicist?”
    “We’ve met once,” Anna said.
    “Is it your impression that he has a romantic interest in you?”
    For the first time, Anna looked amused. “I think Dr. Erdmann’s only romantic interest is in physics.”
    “I see. Thank you for your time, Ms. Chernov.”
    In the hall, Geraci said to Tara, “Ballet. Police work sure isn’t what it used to be. You did good, Washington.”
    “Thank you. What now?”
    “Now we find out what resident has a romantic interest in Anna Chernov. It’s not Erdmann, but it’s somebody.”
    So Anna had hesitated slightly when Tara asked if any resident had a special interest in her! Tara glowed inwardly as she followed Geraci down the hall. Without looking at her, he said, “Just don’t let it go to your head.”
    She said dryly, “Not a chance.”
    “Good. A cop interested in ballet . . . Jesus H. Christ.”

    The ship grew agitated. Across many cubic light years between the stars, spacetime itself warped in dangerous ways. The new entity was growing in strength—and it was so far away yet!
    It was not supposed to occur this way.
    If the ship had become aware earlier of this new entity, this could have happened correctly, in accord with the laws of evolution. All things evolved—stars, galaxies, consciousness. If the ship had realized earlier that anywhere in this galactic backwater had existed the potential for a new entity, the ship would have been there to guide, to shape, to ease the transition. But it hadn’t realized. There had been none of the usual signs.
    They were happening now, however. Images, as yet dim and one-way, were reaching the ship. More critically, power was being drawn from it, power that the birthing entity had no idea how to channel. Faster, the ship must go faster . . .
    It could not, not without damaging spacetime irretrievably. Spacetime could only reconfigure so much, so often. And meanwhile—
    The half-formed thing so far away stirred, struggled, howled in fear.

    NINE

    Henry Erdmann was scared.
    He could barely admit his fright to himself, let alone show it to the circle of people jammed into his small apartment on Saturday morning. They sat in a solemn circle, occupying his sofa and armchair and kitchen chairs and other chairs dragged from other apartments. Evelyn Krenchnoted’s chair crowded uncomfortably close to Henry’s right side, her perfume sickly sweet. She had curled her hair into tiny gray sausages. Stan Dzarkis and Erin Bass, who could still manage it, sat on the floor. The folds of Erin’s yellow print skirt seemed to Henry the only color amid the ashen faces. Twenty people, and maybe there were more in the building who were afflicted. Henry had called the ones he knew of, who had called the ones they knew of. Missing were Anna Chernov, still in the Infirmary, and Al Cosmano, who had refused to attend.
    They all looked at him, waiting to begin.
    “I think we all know why we’re here,” Henry said, and immediately a sense of unreality took him. He didn’t understand at all why he was here. The words of Michael Faraday, inscribed on the physics building at UCLA, leapt into his mind: “Nothing is too wonderful to be true.” The words seemed a mockery. What had been happening to Henry, to all of them, did not feel wonderful and was “true” in no sense he understood, although he was going to do his damnedest to relate it to physics in the only way that hours of