I had to set everything, you have no idea. I could look it up in the manual, but-' She laughed. I can't figure out how to get a line outside the village. 'But it's patched into the IBI switchboard. It's their job to make connections that people like us miss.''Yeah, but how did so many aliens lose their claspers in the first place, that's what I really want to-''Did your house come with a phone?''Huh? Um, yeah.' She twisted to look up at it, clinging to the wall like a shiny, black beetle. The picture tried to come back a few times, showing Sarah glimpses of her sister through a haze of multi-colored distortion. The point is, how many aliens had to lose their claspers and die without having any other.What's the word I want? Variables?'Kate was quiet for a while. 'What are claspers?''Oh, that's not the point, they're like tiny little extra arms that smell things. Some of the little things he said just.just really got to me.''Like what?' Kate asked, sounding concerned now and not big-sister patronizing.'Like.Like he said that if their claspers came off, they'd die.'A short pause.

'It didn't sound right, that's all I'm saying. You're that good.'Sarah felt herself blush.

'Okay, so the guy who's been studying them for twenty years is wrong and Sarah Fowler, who hasn't even met one yet, is right. She could hear the distraction in Kate's voice, and the tight I'm-pretending-I'm-not-angry tone that had been her default setting pretty much since Sarah told her she was really moving to Cottonwood. 'These people came to us in a spaceship! A planet full of stupid layabouts does not master intergalactic space travel!'Kate's image flickered again and snapped to black. Kate!' she said, trying to laugh through her frustration. 'So? Maybe they do.''And maybe they don't. The two weren't exactly compatible anymore. 'They're not smart, they don't take care of themselves, they need to be controlled.''Kate's tiny image on the screen flickered as she shifted her own paz and had trouble restabilizing. 'But he just really drilled it in,' she continued, resigned. The guy spent five hours essentially telling us that the aliens are retarded.''Oh come on.''Not in so many words, but-hang on.' Sarah moved the paz to her other hand so that she could lay her right arm over Fagin's back, since he was being insistent about it. It was subtle, but it wasn't my imagination. They were never allowed to leave.Welcome to Cottonwood.Excerpt:'You should have heard it, Kate.

Cottonwood r lee smith