"It's not a problem," she says. "My attention goes where it's needed. Can I borrow your daughter for a while?"

"Is it a good book?" she asks, smiling gently.

"Yeah," says Mehitabel.

"What's it about?"

"It's about a man who made a monster person and then he wasn't nice to it so now it's mad. It's an old book."

"I think I've read the same one," says Aelise. "It's very good. I'd like to take you to see some people; do you think you could finish your chapter in the air?"

"Who?" Mehitabel wants to know.

"I'm not sure yet. Why don't you come along and we'll both find out?"

Mehitabel is not impressed by the idea of going to visit a mystery person. "Why can't I just stay home and read my book?" she asks.

"Because I am your Empress and I said so," Aelise suggests.

"Thank you," says Aelise, leading her out to where the imperial vehicle is parked. It's not spaceworthy, but it's still impressive in an understated kind of way, with sleek engine pods and stubby little wings.

Mehitabel climbs into the vehicle, sits, and opens her book.

Eventually Mehitabel comes to the end of a chapter. She is about to turn to the next one.

"Is that the end of the chapter?" says Aelise.

"Yes. There are some more left though."

"I'd like you to put your book down and talk to me for a while," says Aelise.

"Are you more interesting than this book?" inquires Mehitabel curiously.

"I like to think so. You might not agree, but you're not going to find out if you don't try talking to me."

Mehitabel sighs and dog-ears her page and closes the book. "What do you want to talk about, anyway?"

"A few things. Your parents are worried about you," she says. "I'm sure you've noticed."

"They made me go to a doctor," agrees Mehitabel. "I think I'm okay though."

"Do you know what it is they're worried about?"

"Something about paying attention to announcements."

"The morning announcements," Aelise agrees. "What do you think of them?"

"They're not interesting, I don't know why everyone likes them so much. Half the time there isn't even anything to announce and Chelsa just says good morning and stares at the camera."

"Why do you suppose everyone else likes them so much?" she inquires.

"Mommy says it's because Chelsa is very likeable."

"She is," says Aelise. "That's her Gift."

"Right, that's what it was," says Mehitabel. "I dunno. I think it's weird how much everybody likes her. She doesn't even do anything like you."

"Am I more likeable than Chelsa, then?"

"You do stuff," says Mehitabel. "I don't know all of it but you're the Empress and you made there not be wars and stuff. Chelsa doesn't do anything but make everybody pay attention to her every day for no reason."

"I see," says Aelise. "Well, that's interesting. Is doing stuff what makes people likeable?"

"If it's good stuff. Not if it's bad stuff."

"Naturally," Aelise agrees. "What if I told you that Chelsa is the reason there are no wars?"

"Is she?"

"Partly, yes," says Aelise. "And partly it's me."

"How?"

"What do you know about what the world was like before I was Empress?"

"There were a lot of wars."

"That's true," says Aelise. "Do you know why?"

"No."

"There were a lot of complicated reasons," she says. "But what it boils down to is that there were a lot of people with a lot of power and none of them liked each other very much. So they fought. And because they had a lot of power, and they weren't being very careful with it, a lot of people died when they did that."

"Why weren't they being careful?"

"Good question," she says. "Some of them didn't care who they killed as long as they got what they wanted. Some of them did care, but they wanted to get ahead more than they wanted not to hurt anybody. Some of them thought that if they were too careful, they might get killed by the people who weren't. And some of them were just too scared to think it through."

"Those are reasons," acknowledges Mehitabel thoughtfully.

"They are," Aelise agrees. "But they weren't very good ones. Have you heard of Toronto?"

"Yes. It's not there anymore."

"That's right," says Aelise. "Some of those not-very-careful people dropped a nuclear bomb on it. It's all cleaned up now, but for a while afterward, nothing and nobody could live there at all. When trees started growing there again, I made it an imperial park."

"There were a lot of people in it, right?"

"About five million."

"That's a lot of people," says Mehitabel solemnly.

"It is," Aelise agrees. "But it's not the worst thing that could have happened. The way things were going, I was afraid there would be a war so big, all the people would get killed."

Mehitabel nods.

"And then I found Chelsa. Do you know what her Gift does, exactly?"

"You said her gift was to... be likeable," says Mehitabel slowly. "So - not exactly."

"She makes people like people," says Aelise. "Herself. Each other. So one day everyone was at war with everyone else, and the next day they were pretty much friends. And nobody dropped any more nuclear bombs, and the world didn't end."

Mehitabel stares at Aelise, holding very still.

"The reason your parents are worried about you," she says, "is because Chelsa can't make you like anyone."

Mehitabel relaxes visibly, although not all the way.

"They think you might be sick," she says. "But I'm not sure that's true. I think you might be Gifted."

"And my Gift is to be safe from that," Mehitabel surmises.

"Is 'safe' the word you'd use?"

"Yes," says Mehitabel firmly.

"Why's that?"

"It's my brain and I live in it and I don't want anybody but me to make it do things!"

"Can you make it like everyone?" wonders Aelise. "Me and Chelsa and your parents and everyone else?"

"If I want to," says Mehitabel, "maybe. I don't know about Chelsa. I don't think I want to like her."

"Why not?"

"I think she's doing a bad thing." Mehitabel chews her lip a little and looks with sudden suspicion at Aelise.

"I think she did a very, very good thing once," says Aelise.

"I'm not sure," says Mehitabel. "This thing might be worse. And it's going on for a longer time!"

"If everyone had died," says Aelise, "then everyone being dead would have gone on forever. I wouldn't be alive, and you wouldn't be alive, and your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents wouldn't be alive. There would be no more people in the world at all, ever. So in a way, the good thing Chelsa did is still going on too. And if she ever stops doing the bad thing, the good thing will still be going on. It'll be going on for as long as there are still people, and I mean for that to be a very long time."

"Everybody dies anyway except you and Chelsa and your very best friends," Mehitabel points out.

"I'm working on that. Anyway, it's still true that there are people, isn't it?"

"Yeah, people who get Chelsa'd all the time," says Mehitabel in an attempt at a disgruntled growl that mostly sounds kittenish from a six-year-old. "Nobody ever even asked me if that was okay! I'm just safe because I'm Gifted and if I hadn't been she would've done it to me too!"

"Would you rather," asks Aelise, "that everyone was dead?"

"Chelsa doesn't agree," says Aelise. "Chelsa thinks that everyone should get along, and she especially thinks that everyone should like her. So to get her to save the world, I had to promise that she could make everyone like her, for as long as she lived."

"But her Gift isn't being immortal. She could've died a long time ago," Mehitabel says.

"But this thing she is doing is bad."

"It is better than everyone being dead," says Aelise. "And in three hundred years, I haven't found a way to stop it that I think wouldn't lead to everyone being dead."

"That's a long time to think of something," says Mehitabel. "And you're grown up and an Empress and stuff. Were you trying?"

"Yes," she says. "It is not a simple problem. Do you think you could do better?"

"I would try very hard," says Mehitabel. "I would need to know a lot of things and think a lot, though."

"You have time," says Aelise. "Your generation is expected to live to about a hundred and sixty. Do you want to try?"

"If I think of something will you do it?"

"If you think of something that I think will work, I'll do it," she says. "If you think of something that I think will lead to everyone dying, I'll tell you why."

"Have you ever heard someone say, 'err on the side of caution'?"

"Yes," says Mehitabel. "Mommy says it when she's deciding to overcook fish. But I think that's when being very cautious doesn't mean something really really bad happens. Like if overcooked fish would make you like people you don't want to like."

"I think that everyone dying is much, much worse than Chelsa making everyone like each other. So when it comes to everyone dying, I'll err on the side of caution. I have all the time in the world to think of a way to get rid of her, but I'm only going to get one chance to try it, and if I do it wrong, everyone might die."

"Do you like her?" Mehitabel inquires.

"Why do you ask?"

"Sometimes at school people who are especially friends let each other do bad things," Mehitabel says.

"I'm the empress," says Aelise. "That means that I can't let people do bad things just because I like them. I have to have a very good reason."

"But do you like her?"

"Yes. But since I also know why I like her, I'm not going to let it get in my way."

"Hmmm," says Mehitabel.

"Yes?" says Aelise.

"I dunno. I need paper," says Mehitabel. "Or my computer."

"You can borrow a computer, if you want."

"Then someone might read what I put on it," says Mehitabel.

"I could make whatever you put on it a state secret," says Aelise. "Or I could find you some paper, or I could take you back home and get your own computer to bring with us. The first one is fastest, and makes it hardest for anyone to read what you write down. Which one do you want?"

"If it's a state secret doesn't that mean you get to read it because you are the state?" asks Mehitabel.

"Yes, but I'm not going to."

"I don't know you, not really," Mehitabel points out.

"There is nothing you could possibly write down that I couldn't read if I really, really wanted to," she says. "I haven't so far, and I don't plan to start."

"Doesn't matter," says Mehitabel, and in fact she makes no effort to hide the contents of the screen as she paints them on, which are completely incomprehensible isolated symbols connected by lines and squiggles.

Aelise makes no effort to read them.

Mehitabel will be incomprehensibly squiggling for a long while.

Eventually Mehitabel concludes, "I need to know more things."

"What things do you need to know?"

"About Chelsa and you and how things were hundreds of years ago and stuff. All the things. When I know how they all work I can figure out how to fix them."

"I see," says Aelise. "It's going to take you a long time to learn all those things. In the meantime, we have a different problem. Do you know what that is?"

"No. I fixed the problem where people could read stuff I write."

"Yes you did," says Aelise. "The problem we have now is that if Chelsa finds out that you exist, or that I spent all this time talking to you about how to get rid of her, she's going to be very upset. Making sure Chelsa doesn't get very upset is one of the ways I make sure everyone doesn't die."

"I won't tell her that you're thinking of how to get rid of her. Or that I am," says Mehitabel.

"That doesn't help at all," says Aelise. "If you were even in the same room as her, she'd be very upset already. If she heard somehow that there was a person in the world who didn't like her, she'd be very upset already. And you're a person, and you're in the world, and you don't like her."

"...So, nobody should tell her?" says Mehitabel. "You can tell Mommy and Daddy and the doctor that I'm not sick and they shouldn't worry. They'll all listen to you."

"Could you go home and pay attention to the morning announcements every day, and pretend that you like Chelsa as much as everyone does, and never talk to anyone about getting rid of her, or say that it would be better if she wasn't making everyone like each other, or anything like that?"

"...Ever?" asks Mehitabel dubiously.

"What about my mommy and daddy, though?"

"What about them, specifically?"

"Either which way what would I tell them?"

"If you went back to pretend for the rest of your life, you'd tell them that I took you to a doctor and I let you read your book all the way there and back. If you went to live with Kers, I would tell them that you'd been terribly sick and died."

"You would have to do a lot of it, to pretend you liked Chelsa and everything."

"Chelsa is spoiled," Mehitabel asserts, "if she can't stand having even one person not like her."

"That is not new information," says Aelise.

"If I were picking somebody who I had to keep happy or everyone would die I would not pick her," Mehitabel says.

"Me neither," says Aelise. "But things like 'somebody you have to keep happy or everyone will die' usually don't come with a wide range of available choices."

"Things like that? What other things are like that?"

"Fortunately, not very many."

Mehitabel giggles. "I dunno," she says, and she sighs, and reaches for the borrowed tablet again and doodles incomprehensibly on it some more. These meaningless symbols are in something like a chart format.

Aelise goes back to her reading.

"My mommy and daddy will be very sad if they think I died," says Mehitabel after a few minutes.

"Yes, they will," says Aelise. "Chelsa could do something about that, but I don't think either of us wants her to."

Mehitabel shakes her head firmly. "She's done way too much to them already."

"So where does that leave you?"

"Of course," says Aelise. "And they'll probably still be alive too, even if it takes you a very long time."

"Maybe since you have already paid special attention to me, you could immortal them, to make sure," suggests Mehitabel. "You could say 'I am sorry I could not fix your sick daughter, would you like to live forever?'" She pauses. "Also, could I be dying slow enough to say goodbye? Is there a disease that would do all that but also be slow?"

"You'd have to lie," Aelise reminds her. "But yes, I could find a disease like that, and a doctor to lie and say you have it. As for making them immortal... right now, I can only make very few people immortal. I'm going to try something soon that might let me make everyone immortal. If it works, your parents will be part of everyone. If it doesn't, I might have room for them, or I might not. But your parents aren't very old right now, so there's plenty of time to figure that out."

"I can lie a little bit to say goodbye," Mehitabel says. "I think that's better than just pretending to die without saying anything. If you can make everyone immortal does that mean you don't need Chelsa anymore because the problem with wars is people dying?"

"No," says Aelise. "I can't make people that kind of immortal. I can only make them younger, down to about eighteen or twenty, and a little bit healthier, so they don't die of old age and usually don't get sick."

"Oh. That is not as good a kind of immortal but it is still pretty good, I guess," sighs Mehitabel.

"It's what I've got. If I found a way to make everyone properly immortal, that would solve a lot of problems. And I don't think I'd use it on Chelsa."

Mehitabel nods once, decisively.

"So. Do I find you a doctor?"

"Yes," sighs Mehitabel, "and then I guess I go and I live with your aunt? Is she nice? I don't think I knew you had an aunt."

"Not a lot of people do," says Aelise. "I think she's plenty nice. My mother died when I was a little younger than you are, and Kers raised me from there."

"Where does she live?"

"That's a secret. It's such a big secret, I can't tell you until I take you there, even though you're a pretty big secret yourself."

"I'm a secret," giggles Mehitabel.

"Yes you are. A state secret."

"Okay. I'm a secret and I'll go live with your secret aunt and my mommy and daddy will think I died and I will get to say goodbye but I have to lie a little to do it." Mehitabel sighs and traces her finger in apparent idleness across her borrowed tablet.

Mehitabel rubs her stinging eyes and follows Aelise.

After dropping off the doctor, she does something to a control panel and heads south.

Aelise takes them to one of the orbital towers, parks at the bottom, and waits.

"There are plenty of things," Aelise promises. "And it's always possible to get more."

"Okay. That's good. I don't want to actually die."

"I don't want you to either," says Aelise. "C'mon, let's go meet Kers."

Mehitabel follows her, book clutched in her hand.

"I wish there were windows," sighs Mehitabel.

"There are windows at the top," says Aelise.

"Will I be able to see the Earth from them?"

"Yes."

"I bet it's pretty," predicts Mehitabel. "Does anyone live where I'm going besides your aunt?"

"No one lives where you're going besides my aunt. Someone else does live in the orbital ring, but he's almost as big a secret as you are, and he doesn't know Kers is there."

"Do I get to meet him ever?"

"Maybe. I'll have to think about it."

"Why does he live up in it?"

"Also a secret. I'll tell you sometime, but I won't tell you today."

"When is sometime?"

"I don't know. I have to think about it."

Mehitabel frowns.

"I'm going to tell you when you're older; I haven't decided how much older."

"Do you have a guess?" Mehitabel tries.

"I haven't had time to think about it properly. Not much more than ten years from now, I don't think."

"I hope you can," says Aelise.

"I will try very hard. I am very smart," says Mehitabel.

"Yes you are," says Aelise.

"Where's your aunt?" Mehitabel asks.

"Somewhere in the orbital rings. She knows we're here; she'll be along."

"Okay. What do I call her?"

"You call her Kers."

"There's some. I don't know what qualifies as 'a lot'."

"I want to learn it. It seems like it will help, I think."

"You can learn whatever you want."

"Yes," agrees Mehitabel. "Teachers and stuff are useful for finding the best things to read to learn whatever, though. Is Kers good at that?"

"She's pretty good at it, yeah."

"That is good and important if I am going to fix the world any time soon," Mehitabel nods.

"I wouldn't get your hopes up about doing it in the next decade," says Aelise. "All things considered."

"Well," says Mehitabel, "maybe not, but it would be good if I did, so I shouldn't waste any time just because maybe not."

"True. But on the other hand, it's not nice to be disappointed because you didn't solve a complicated problem unreasonably fast."

"Being disappointed would waste time," Mehitabel says after a moment's thought. "So I won't do it, at least not very much."

"That's good."

Kers shows up just before the end of the book.

"Hello," says Mehitabel politely. "I'm a secret. Are you Kers?"

"I am Kers," she says. "And you're Mehitabel."

"Yes. I'm not a secret from you," says Mehitabel.

"Correct."

"I am supposed to live secretly up here and figure out how to fix the world," Mehitabel says.

"Yes, you are," says Kers. "Want a tour?"

"Yes please," says Mehitabel.

Mehitabel is duly fascinated by all the intricacies of her new home.

"Where will I stay?" asks Mehitabel.

"Anywhere you want," says Kers. "Well, anywhere that's not section 214, because there's another secret living in that one. But that's miles away. Right now, I'm in this room," she indicates a door, "and you can pick any other room on this hallway."

"Okay." Mehitabel evaluates the rooms, one at a time, in case they have salient differences. "Are you supposed to tell me which section the other secret is in?"

"How else are you going to know to stay out of it?"

"By it being miles away," suggests Mehitabel.

"'Miles away' isn't as much of a barrier as it sounds like, up here."

"Because of the train," Mehitabel surmises.

"Yep!"

"Okay. Why is the other secret a secret?"

Mehitabel sighs.

"It's not nice to do that," says Kers.

"I want to know things," says Mehitabel.

"I said it's not nice to do that," says Kers. "I didn't say don't. But remember that every time you ask me to tell you something that we both know you're not supposed to know yet, I get a little bit more suspicious about all the other questions you might ask me and whether or not you're supposed to have the answers."

Mehitabel considers this thoughtfully. It seems an eminently reasonable sort of statement to her, so after a while, she nods.

Kers smiles.

Mehitabel continues inspecting rooms, and she chooses one, and puts her sole souvenir from home on the bookshelf.

"Check out the computer," Kers advises.

Mehitabel follows this suggestion.

It is a pretty excellent computer!

Mehitabel sets about fixing all the preferences how she likes them. "Aelise said you might be good at helping me pick out books to read so I can learn all the things I have to know to figure out how to fix the world," she says.

"I might!" she agrees.

"I need to know how Gifts work and why people have wars and stuff," Mehitabel says.

"Right to the hard stuff, huh," laughs Kers. "I'll queue up some history."

"Thank you!"

"History and science."

Mehitabel nods. "How come you live up here?" she asks.

"Because nobody thinks there is anyone living up here, which makes it a good place to hide. And the reason why I'm hiding is because I have a Gift," she says. "I'm a shield. A very, very powerful shield. So I keep my Gift covering all the people Aelise most wants protected, and I hide, because I can't cover myself."

"I cover myself," says Mehitabel. "How do you do other people?"

"How do you cover yourself?"

"I didn't even know I was doing it until today."

"I wonder if I could do other people, though."

"How would you test that?"

"It would have to be somebody Chelsa wouldn't notice. Because I'm a secret," Mehitabel says, after thinking this over. "And then I would try stuff."

"But right now, the only thing you're sure you shield against is Chelsa," Kers observes.

"Ye-e-es. But she didn't notice me not paying attention to the morning announcements, right?"

"Right. But how are you going to experiment on people down there, without anybody noticing, when you're up here?"

"Would she notice if you didn't like the morning announcements anymore?" inquires Mehitabel.

"As a matter of fact, she didn't."

"Oh - do you already not watch them?"

"I don't get them up here. Chelsa thinks I'm on the planet."

"Oh. Well, then I guess I can't test on you, huh."

"Guess not."

Mehitabel contemplates this problem, stumped. "Maybe if I could shield you I could just tell somehow. I don't know."

"Maybe you could. You've got time to think about it, anyway."

Mehitabel nods. "And if I do manage to do it for you nobody else will see. Because we're secret."

"Exactly."

"What would happen if Chelsa knew you were not on the planet listening to her say good morning every day?"

"I believe the phrase is 'very upset'."

"I don't like her one bit," Mehitabel announces. "In fact I think I hate her."

"Good thing you're living in the only place where you can safely say that, huh?"

"Yes, but there should be more places like that." Mehitabel ponders. "What do you keep people safe from?"

"Just about everything. Except Chelsa. It's possible I could keep people safe from Chelsa too, but I can't experiment with that, because when I make a change to what my Gift covers it's the same change for everyone I'm covering. And most of those right now are Chelsa's very special friends."

Mehitabel makes a face.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"How did you find out what you could do?"

"My kid sister used to run into things a lot."

Mehitabel giggles. "What about the rest of it - that you could cover more people, and that you could change what from but not per person, and stuff?"

"I couldn't always cover more than one person, actually."

"How did you get to be able to? How did you know when you could?"

"I can tell who I'm covering; that part wasn't hard. As for getting to... I tried for a while once when I was pretty young, and it didn't work at all, and then years and years later I tried again and it worked fine. Maybe I was doing something different, or maybe it was all the practice the first time around, or maybe my Gift just grew an extra trick as I got older."

"Do many peoples' Gifts grow like that?" Mehitabel asks.

"Sometimes. Not that often, but it happens. More often if you use it a lot, and more often than that if you keep trying new things with it."

"Does anyone's Gift ever shrink?"

"Nope. Not that I've ever heard of."

"So Chelsa's won't ever just shrivel up all by itself."

"It would be very unlikely."

Mehitabel frowns. "Drat."

"Anyway, if it shrivelled up too fast, we'd have the same problem as if she just up and died one day. People wouldn't take the transition well."

"Yes, but maybe it could shrivel up slow. And she could go on the broadcast and say whatever Aelise told her to to make people be okay with it. And it would just be shriveling up by itself so she couldn't get mad at anybody."

"You know what else would be nice? Getting a flying pony for Christmas."

"That would also be nice, except I don't know where it would fly up here," says Mehitabel, "and also a flying pony would not make billions of people safe from Chelsa so I don't think it would be as good."

Kers laughs.

"I would like to fly," muses Mehitabel idly. "I think that would be fun."

"You live in the orbital ring now," says Kers. "You can bounce around the zero-gravity sections all you want."

"I want to try that," says Mehitabel, and up she goes and off she traipses.