"Yes," the Star People replied. "We have medicines for that."

"I would like some of those medicines, if you please."

"They are too valuable to give away. The likes of you could never afford them."

"Surely I have something that you need."

"We always need land," the Star People said. "But whenever we try to buy it from you, you cheat us."

Coyote and the Star People sat down to bargain. The Star People bargained hard, for they had been fooled by Coyote many, many times. In the end, he gave them New England. He gave them Mexico. He gave them San Francisco and Seattle and the Gulf Coast and New York City as well. This is why there are no Mud People in any of those places today. One by one, Coyote gave the Star People everything he owned. For he thought, "Forever is a long time. If I live forever, there'll be plenty of opportunity to trick the Star People into giving me these places back again."

So it was done. The Star People gave Coyote the medicines to live forever, and he went up and down the continent, giving them to all the Mud People who would take them. This was almost everybody, for they all wanted to live forever.

But then a strange thing happened. Everywhere the Mud People began to die. They grew sick and they withered and died. Only those few who had not taken the medicines did not grow sick. Their numbers dwindled to almost nothing.

Coyote went to see the Star People. "Your medicines were supposed to make us live forever," he said. "Instead, they make us all die."

"It is not our fault," said the Star People. "The medicines were perfectly good. How were we to know you didn't have triple-strand DNA?"

"You have cheated me," said Coyote. "Give me back all my lands and wealth."

But when the Star People heard this, they grew angry. "How many times did you trick us?" they said.

"You stole our technology and never gave us the land for it you promised. Now the shoe is on the other foot. There are many of us, and therefore we need the land. There are few of you, and therefore you don't."

So Coyote went away, sorrowing.

Since that time, there have been very few Mud People, and they have never been wealthy again. The world they used to own belongs today to the Star People, who take better care of it than ever Coyotehad. Coyote himself is still famed in stories, but he is never seen walking up and down the Earth anymore, and nobody knows if he's still alive or not.

In Fading Suns and Dying Moons

JOHN VARLEY.

John Varley [www.Varley.net] lives somewhere on the west coast of the United States in a trailer.

He moves around. The last address I have is in Oceano, California. Thank goodness for the internet and email. Varley is a fine and popular SF writer who came to prominence like a skyrocket in the late 1970s but has published only sporadically since 1984. His early reputation is based principally upon the innovative stories in his first story collection, The Persistence of Vision, and his early novels, The Ophiuchi Hotline and Titan. Later collections include The Barbie Murders and Other Stories, Picnic on Nearside, and Blue Champagne. He published two novels in the 1990s, Steel Beach and The Golden Globe, and three stories in 2003, as many as he published in the whole of the 1990s, as well as a new novel, Red Thunder. It is great to have him back.

"In Fading Suns and Dying Moons" is another story from Ian & Resnick's Stars. It is in the great tradition of "universal darkness cover all" SF, like Arthur C. Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God," in which the purpose of life on Earth is revealed, and it ends.

Within the memories of our lives gone by, afraid to die, we learn to lie and measure out the time in coffee spoons In fading suns, and dying moons -from "Aftertones" by Janis Ian The first time they came through the neighborhood there really wasn't much neighborhood to speak of.

Widely dispersed hydrogen molecules, only two or three per cubic meter. Traces of heavier elements from long-ago supernovas. The usual assortment of dust particles, at a density of one particle every cubic mile or so. The "dust" was mostly ammonia, methane, and water ice, with some more complex molecules like benzene. Here and there these thin ingredients were pushed into eddies by light pressure from neighboring stars.

Somehow they set forces in motion. I picture it as a Cosmic Finger stirring the mix, out in the interstellar wastes where space is really flat, in the Einsteinian sense, making a whirlpool in the unimaginable cold. Then they went away.

Four billion years later they returned. Things were brewing nicely. The space debris had congealed into a big, burning central mass and a series of rocky or gaseous globes, all sterile, in orbit around it.

They made a few adjustments and planted their seeds, and saw that it was good. They left a small observer/recorder behind, along with a thing that would call them when everything was ripe. Then they went away again.

A billion years later the timer went off, and they came back.

I had a position at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, but of course I had not gone to work that day. I was sitting at home watching the news, as frightened as anyone else. Martial law had been declared a few hours earlier. Things had been getting chaotic. I'd heard gunfire from the streets outside.

Someone pounded on my door. "United States Army!" someone shouted. "Open the door immediately!"

I went to the door, which had four locks on it.

"How do I know you're not a looter?" I shouted.

"Sir, I am authorized to break your door down. Open the door, or stand clear."

I put my eye to the old-fashioned peephole. They were certainly dressed like soldiers. One of them raised his rifle and slammed the butt down on my doorknob. I shouted that I would let them in, and in a few seconds I had all the locks open. Six men in full combat gear hustled into my kitchen. They split up and quickly explored all three rooms of the apartment, shouting out, "All clear!" in brisk, military voices.

One man, a bit older than the rest, stood facing me with a clipboard in his hand.

"Sir, are you Doctor Andrew Richard Lewis?"

"There's been some mistake," I said. "I'm not a medical doctor."

"Sir, are you Doctor-"

"Yes, yes. I'm Andy Lewis. What can I do for you?"

"Sir, I am Captain Edgar and I am ordered to induct you into the United States Army Special Invasion Corps effective immediately, at the rank of Second Lieutenant. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me."

I knew from the news that this was now legal, and I had the choice of enlisting or facing a long prison term. I raised my hand and in no time at all I was a soldier.

"Lieutenant, your orders are to come with me. You have fifteen minutes to pack what essentials you may need, such as prescription medicine and personal items. My men will help you assemble your gear."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

"You may bring any items relating to your specialty. Laptop computer, reference books..." He paused, apparently unable to imagine what a man like me would want to bring along to do battle with space aliens.

"Captain, do you know what my specialty is?"

"My understanding is that you are a bug specialist."

"An entomologist, Captain. Not an exterminator. Could you give me...any clue as to why I'm needed?"

For the first time he looked less than totally self-assured.

"Lieutenant, all I know is...they're collecting butterflies."

They hustled me to a helicopter. We flew low over Manhattan. Every street was gridlocked. All the bridges were completely jammed with mostly abandoned cars.

I was taken to an air base in New Jersey and hurried onto a military jet transport that stood idling on the runway. There were a few others already on board. I knew most of them; entomology is not a crowded field.

The plane took off at once.

There was a colonel aboard whose job was to brief us on our mission, and on what was thus far known about the aliens: not much was really known that I hadn't already seen on television.

They had appeared simultaneously on seacoasts worldwide. One moment there was nothing, the next moment there was a line of aliens as far as the eye could see. In the western hemisphere the line stretched from Point Barrow in Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in Chile. Africa was lined from Tunis to the Cape of Good Hope. So were the western shores of Europe, from Norway to Gibraltar. Australia, Japan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and every other island thus far contacted reported the same thing: a solid line of aliens appearing in the west, moving east.

Aliens? No one knew what else to call them. They were clearly not of Planet Earth, though if you ran into a single one, there would be little reason to think them very odd. Just millions and millions of perfectly ordinary people dressed in white coveralls, blue baseball caps, and brown boots, within arm's reach of each other.

Walking slowly toward the east. Within a few hours of their appearance someone on the news had started calling it the Line, and the creatures who were in it Linemen. From the pictures on the television they appeared rather average and androgynous.

"They're not human," the colonel said. "Those coveralls, it looks like they don't come off. The hats, either. You get close enough, you can see it's all part of their skin."

"Protective coloration," said Watkins, a colleague of mine from the Museum. "Many insects adapt colors or shapes to blend with their environment."

"But what's the point of blending in," I asked, "if you are made so conspicuous by your actions?"

"Perhaps the 'fitting in' is simply to look more like us. It seems unlikely, doesn't it, that evolution would have made them look like..."

"Janitors," somebody piped up.

The colonel was frowning at us.

"You think they're insects?"

"Not by any definition I've ever heard," Watkins said. "Of course, other animals adapt to their surroundings, too. Arctic foxes in winter coats, tigers with their stripes. Chameleons."

The colonel mulled this for a moment, then resumed his pacing.

"Whatever they are, bullets don't bother them. There have been many instances of civilians shooting at the aliens."

Soldiers, too, I thought. I'd seen film of it on television, a National Guard unit in Oregon cutting loose with their rifles. The aliens hadn't reacted at all, not visibly...until all the troops and all their weapons just vanished, without the least bit of fuss.

And the Line moved on.

We landed at a disused-looking airstrip somewhere in northern California. We were taken to a big motel, which the Army had taken over. In no time I was hustled aboard a large Coast Guard helicopter with a group of soldiers-a squad? a platoon?-led by a young lieutenant who looked even more terrified than I felt. On the way to the Line I learned that his name was Evans, and that he was in the National Guard.

It had been made clear to me that I was in charge of the overall mission and Evans was in charge of the soldiers. Evans said his orders were to protect me. How he was to protect me from aliens who were immune to his weapons hadn't been spelled out.

My own orders were equally vague. I was to land close behind the Line, catch up, and find out everything I could.

"They speak better English than I do," the colonel had said. "We must know their intentions. Above all, you must find out why they're collecting..." and here his composure almost broke down, but he took a deep breath and steadied himself.

"Collecting butterflies," he finished.

We passed over the Line at a few hundred feet. Directly below us individual aliens could be made out, blue hats and white shoulders. But off to the north and south it quickly blurred into a solid white line vanishing in the distance, as if one of those devices that make chalk lines on football fields had gone mad.

Evans and I watched it. None of the Linemen looked up at the noise. They were walking slowly, all of them, never getting more than a few feet apart. The terrain was grassy, rolling hills, dotted here and there with clumps of trees. No man-made structures were in sight.

The pilot put us down a hundred yards behind the Line.

"I want you to keep your men at least fifty yards away from me," I told Evans. "Are those guns loaded? Do they have those safety things on them? Good. Please keep them on. I'm almost as afraid of being shot by one of those guys as I am of...whatever they are."

And I started off, alone, toward the Line.

How does one address a line of marching alien creatures? Take me to your leader seemed a bitperemptory. Hey, bro, what's happening...perhaps overly familiar. In the end, after following for fifteen minutes at a distance of about ten yards, I had settled on Excuse me, so I moved closer and cleared my throat. Turns out that was enough. One of the Linemen stopped walking and turned to me.

This close, one could see that his features were rudimentary. His head was like a mannequin, or a wig stand: a nose, hollows for eyes, bulges for cheeks. All the rest seemed to be painted on.

I could only stand there idiotically for a moment. I noticed a peculiar thing. There was no gap in the Line.

I suddenly remembered why it was me and not some diplomat standing there.

"Why are you collecting butterflies?" I asked.

"Why not?" he said, and I figured it was going to be a long, long day. " You should have no trouble understanding," he said. "Butterflies are the most beautiful things on your planet, aren't they?"

"I've always thought so." Wondering, did he know I was a lepidopterist?

"Then there you are." Now he began to move. The Line was about twenty yards away, and through our whole conversation he never let it get more distant than that. We walked at a leisurely one mile per hour.

Okay, I told myself. Try to keep it to butterflies. Leave it to the military types to get to the tough questions: When do you start kidnapping our children, raping our women, and frying us for lunch?

"What are you doing with them?"

"Harvesting them." He extended a hand toward the Line, and as if summoned, a lovely specimen of Adelpha bredowii fluttered toward him. He did something with his fingers and a pale blue sphere formed around the butterfly.

"Isn't it lovely?" he asked, and I moved in for a closer look. He seemed to treasure these wonderful creatures I'd spent my life studying.

He made another gesture, and the blue ball with the Adelpha disappeared. "What happens to them?"

I asked him.