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I spent months filling out Homestead Act forms and waiting for a grant of land, then months filling out loan applications and waiting for replies, all the while listening to other farmers tell me I was crazy. But I had the undeniable facts of my readings to hand anyone who could authorize my homestead or loan me the start-up money or even just listen and offer advice, and finally the manager at the Zygian branch bank did listen—and he read my reports, checked my background to see whether I knew anything about moisture farming, which I did, and whether I would keep my word, which I would. He loaned me the money.

He gave me ten thousand days to pay him back.

Ten thousand days was enough time to make any dream come true, I thought.

I lay on my bed in the dark at the end of a hard day, after leaving the Sand People the water I’d pledged them, remembering all this, remembering how badly I’d wanted to come out here, how hard I’d worked to get my homestead and the loan and then to set up my farm. Not once had I thought about who might already be out here, depending on this land I called my farm.

I rolled over and asked the computer to display the holomap I’d made of my farm and this region.

“The files you have requested can only be accessed after a user-specified security clearance,” it said. “Please prepare for retinal scan.”

I stared for a few seconds into a bright, white light that suddenly shone out of the monitor. I had to guard my map. I’d made the map myself—after a year of surveying and taking photographs that I fed into the computer and working from notes and memory—and if the wrong people knew I was making maps it could be dangerous. I programmed the computer to display the maps only to me and to never reference them when working with other files; they were not cross-referenced or indexed. When asked if such files existed, it would say no to anyone’s voice but my own. If asked to access them, it would respond and proceed with the security clearance only if it heard my voice.

“Retinal scan complete,” the computer said. “Hello, Ariq Joanson. I will display the requested files.”

Part of the wall I kept blank and white just for this projection suddenly became the canyons of my farm seen from the air: my house, marked in blue; the vaporators, smaller dots of green, widely separated; the canyons and mountains and dunes all in natural colors. A red dot far up Bildor’s Canyon northeast of my farm marked a Jawa fortress. White dots marked the houses of the farms closest to mine—and none of those dots were very close. “You’ll be three canyons and kilometers away from me—and I’ve been the farthest one out for two years!” Eyvind had warned. Over all the canyons and mountains and dunes I’d had the computer draw in black lines for the boundaries of the farms. The land lay spread out over my wall in the darkness, and the dots for houses and vaporators gleamed like jewels behind their black lines. Except for the red Jawa dot, all of them represented human houses or machines. I’d never thought of putting in dots for the nomadic Sand People—or of drawing boundaries for them and the Jawas.

“Computer,” I said. “Draw in a boundary line from the northeast border of my farm in Bildor’s Canyon, along the ridges on both sides of the canyon to a distance of one kilometer above the Jawa fortress.”

“Drawn as requested,” the computer responded, and it was. The lines appeared.

“Label the space inside those new lines ‘Jawa Preserve.’ ”

“Labeled as requested.”

The words appeared, but I didn’t like them. “Relabel the Jawa Preserve, the ‘Jawa—” What? Land? Reservation? Protectorate? “Just label it ‘Jawa,’ ” I said.

“Labeled as requested.”

The word “Preserve” disappeared from the map, and the word “Jawa” centered below the red dot.

“Now draw borders west from the northwest boundary of my farm to the Dune Sea and west from the northernmost boundary of the Jawa land also to the Dune Sea.”

“Drawn as requested.”

“Label that ‘Sand People.’ ”

The words appeared over