Free FSF, January-February 2010 by Spilogale Authors Page B

tempted to cop out, to find a different way to attack the Minds. Maybe I'd think of a way to plant a bomb before getting caught and thus escape with my ship and my life intact. Or maybe I'd come up with a special impossible plan that would lead to harmony between the Thousand Worlds and the Minds, but Esner had me believing that Valentine wouldn't do any of those things. Rahul Valentine would fly sixty-five million kilometers and dive right into the heart of the enemy, perhaps destroying just a few million tons of memory before his ship was obliterated, and that would be a worthy statement that humans would not live benignly before the omnipresence of the Minds, circling the sun like a silver-yellow halo where once our Earth used to orbit. How I loved the way Esner wrote!
    The next chapter: I was no longer Rahul Valentine, a solitary fighter pilot. I was Nina, his lover. I stood by Rahul as he packed his kit, and I tried to talk him out of going. The reader me yearned to have such a lover, because girls didn't seem to take an interest in anything I did. But in this case, while Rahul made his final preparations, while his ship was being readied, while he was given his final briefing, Nina secretly investigated the purpose of the mission. In chapter four, she discovered the mission was a ruse, that Rahul has been set up to die. I knew immediately who had arranged this. It was Alexander Sober, and that's who she now confronted. I knew it was a mistake to confront Sober, but I could feel her passionate stubbornness carry us down the corridor to that office door.
    My friend Henry had also loved Suicide Missions . He couldn't believe that Nina would confront Sober like that. Why alert the bad guy before you had any proof to use against him? Henry was appalled. And in Henry's reading, Nina stopped right in her tracks, just outside Sober's door. She so badly wanted to pound her fist, so badly wanted to confront him, but this didn't convince Henry at all. And Nina realized that deep down it was the wrong move to make. She had four weeks until Rahul's ship reached the Minds, four weeks in which to warn him. She would keep an eye on everyone.
    This is what made Esner such a great writer. He knew the points where a reader might want to let things go differently, and he plotted for them. In some books, if you disagreed, the book just went blank. Other books were powerful enough that you could invent the rest, but often then the novel would have this odd, dreamlike feel, as if reading the ghost of a book that might one day exist.
    On the afternoon of a scheduled rain, Henry and I compared our readings. Henry thought the middle part was slow. Nina did too much observing and not enough acting. I said, Not a problem the way I read it. Henry was adamant: It was utterly stupid for Nina to confront Sober the way she had in my reading. But it's more exciting, I insisted, if she does. Later that year, when everyone was queuing up for the new Esner, Henry reread Suicide Missions . He allowed Nina to burst through that door and tell Sober exactly what she thought, putting her own life in immediate danger. You're right, he said. It's not quite convincing, but it sure is more intense.
    After I turned ten, having reached legal maturity, I went on my worlds tour. The first few worlds are a blur to me because all I wanted to do was get to Santa Fe, where I had arranged to attend one of Magnus Esner's workshops. I had submitted a sample chapter, and I had been accepted. Clearly I had some talent and the possibility of a future.
    From a distance, when light from the sun hits its solar panels, Santa Fe gleams like a sword spinning through space, but up close, it's clearly shaped like a crucifix formed by the joining of two cylinders. My father would have expected me to know the exact challenges involved in keeping such a configuration rotating; fortunately, my elder sister lived next door to him and she was the one to know if such a marvel were an