To Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett with thanks for many years of adventure.

“You can’t leave now,” Daniel Holm told his son. “Any day we may be at war. We may already be.”

“That’s just why I have to go,” the young man answered. “They’re calling Khruaths about it around the curve of the planet. Where else should I fare than to my choth?”

When he spoke thus, more than his wording became bird. The very accent changed. He was no longer using the Planha-influenced Anglic of Avalon — pure vowels, r’s trilled, m’s and n’s and ng’s almost hummed, speech deepened and slowed and strongly cadenced; rather, it was as if he were trying to translate for a human listener the thought of an Ythrian brain.

The man whose image occupied the phone screen did not retort, “You might consider staying with your own family,” as once he would have. Instead Daniel Holm nodded, and said quietly, “I see. You’re not Chris now, you’re Arinnian,” and all at once looked old.

That wrenched at the young man. He reached forth, but his fingers were stopped by the screen, “I’m always Chris, Dad,” he blurted. “It’s only that I’m Arinnian too. And, and, well, if war comes, the choths will need to be prepared for it, won’t they? I’m going to help — shouldn’t be gone long, really.”

“Sure. Good voyage.”

“Give Mother and everybody my love.”

“Why not call her yourself?”

“Well, uh, I do have to hurry… and it’s not as if this were anything unusual, my heading off to the mountains, and — oh—”

“Sure,” said Daniel Holm. “I’ll tell them. And you give my regards to your mates.” The Second Marchwarden of the Lauran System blanked off.

Arinnian turned from the instrument. For a moment he winced and bit his lip. He hated hurting people who cared about him. But why couldn’t they understand? Their kind called it “going, bird,” being received into a choth, as if in some fashion those who did were renouncing the race that begot them. He couldn’t count how many hours he had tried to make his parents — make any number of orthohumans — see that he was widening and purifying his humanity.