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Any minute now the starting gate laser would flick on and cue the barrier hologram to dissolve. Twelve eager horses would leap forward and strain to reach the inside rail and the front of the galloping competitors. JeLinne was on horse number eight. Wizard. His name was Magic Wizard although it could have been Necromancer for how big and black and scary he was. But JeLinne was not frightened of Wizard. She liked him, although she had only met him two months ago when the Triangs took her from the family camp at the southern tip of the Jersey desert and brought her to the training stable.

She had ridden the small, sturdy, desert mustangs all her life and the stable with its huge, fast muscled horses held no fear for her. A horse was a horse. Something to get around with now that fossil fuels were forbidden because of the Greenhouse Effect. She always thought of it in capitals, the way the omnivision newsreaders said it: "The Greenhouse Effect is blamed for the four hundred dead this week in a hurricane that..." It didn't mean all that much to JeLinne. She had known nothing but the heat and desperate dryness in the summer, the whipping winds of winter for all her 16 years. But she did sometimes feel the sadness in her Grandmama's soft voice when she recalled her own early childhood of peach orchards and green fields. Over the years, JeLinne knew from her EnviroSci courses, the orchards turned to arid dust and the fields to bracken swamps as the rising Atlantic lapped inland. Wizard rumbled a whicker deep in his shiny neck, anxious to leap and run. JeLinne patted his crest absently, feeling his muscles twitch and telling him silently to be patient. She found horses comforting. More than merely useful. Something to sneak apple treats to and to hug for the warmth of sweet-smelling hair and hide.

Horse number six, Sundancer was it?, jumped backwards out of some spook. JeLinne caught the big chestnut's move from the corner of her eye and instinctively tightened her calves around Wizard, telling him with her legs not to move. Don't be frightened. Stay in line. The horses in the desert were ridden with saddle and bridle, but for some reason the Triangs wouldn't let the racehorses be outfitted with any tack at all. The jockeys, always chosen from camps where horses were bred, rode bareback, their hands entangled in mane, their thighs, encased in the thin, reflective, Rayblock bodysuits, in intimate contact with the horse's warm, tightly-muscled barrel. Like sitting on top of an ocean wave that somehow solidified, JeLinne thought. She let herself concentrate on the currents that rippled under the horse's skin as he breathed and tensed and shifted. She really liked this horse, she thought, smiling.

Wizard flicked his ears nervously at Sundancer but responded to his rider's calmness, to her firm legs, and kept steady. JeLinne brushed her dark hair from her shoulder and watched Sundancer's rider slap the mare's flank in an effort to turn his horse back toward the barrier. She wondered if the Triangs would take Sundancer out of the race. Hell, nobody even knew why they ran these races. Nobody knew a thing about the aliens except they landed by the thousands in all the world's major cities on the same day two years ago and threw an perimeter line around the capitols after disabling the communications satellites. The FedWorld's military was stymied as long as their leaders were hostages but it wouldn't have mattered. The Triangs used some sort of wave particle to disrupt the major weapons systems.

Maybe if the world's science and spy satellites hadn't been converted to weather mappers the Triangs would have been spotted before they landed, JeLinne mused. But that was an old argument, and a moot one. Their technology was obviously and frighteningly more advance than Earth's. Still, they hadn't tried to take over or anything. Except for the scientists and the leaders, most people never saw a Triang.

Strangely, they never talked. Well, of course, they couldn't talk, having no mouths in their lumpy, vaguely pyramidal shape. They would have had to communicate some other way, but they didn't try. "Very frustrating," the scientist experts said on the omnivision with ponderous shakes of their heads. "Do not anger them. We don't know what they want yet or what they can do. They haven't hurt anyone. We'll just play along for the moment," the FedWorld Military Chief advised, smiling slyly to hide his own frustration. Actually, JeLinne remembered, there had been lots of attempts to communicate with the Triangs, but after a short try, the aliens just waved one of their three arms and sent all the officials away. Every time.

All they wanted anyway, it seemed, was to watch horses race. Within months, they had sent half their forces out of the cities to commandeer every race track they found. They recruited jockeys at random from broadmare camps. JeLinne shrugged and Wizard snorted lightly at the movement. So they were inter global gamblers with nothing better to do than world hop for excitement. So what? It's not like she had a choice. Every jockey who completed training and finished a race earned a half year's supply of water for his or her family. The Triangs, it seemed, knew how to distill water from the oceans without polluting the air. It was the real reason the FedWorld government had opted to wait rather than fight, JeLinne knew from reading the editorials. Wizard sidled, sensing her wandering thoughts. JeLinne straightened her back and silently apologized to the black horse. She wanted to win this race, she decided. The winner got a year's worth of water and she knew her mother would let her use some of it for a fresh vegetable garden.

She also wanted to win for Wizard's sake, she realized, surprised at herself for feeling so close to a horse she had practically just met. But nobody ever saw the losing horses again and he had been particularly nice to her. Wizard nickered when she thought that, and cocked an ear back to her. "I bet you can read my mind," she whispered, smiling, in that backward ear.

She almost wasn't ready when the laser beamed out and the horses bounded as one line down the Astroturf track. She grabbed a piece of Wizard's thick mane and hung on, riding low over his neck, keeping her legs still and tight, concentrating on her balance and the feel of his power surging from back to front. "Come on," she said. "Come on, Wiz. Don't let them take you." She could feel him responding, feel his urgency. She felt like she could read his mind and it was saying, "Got to win." She reached down with her free hand and stroked his silky neck, ending each stroke with a thump of tension. He forged forward, rhythmically, powerfully, toward the horse in front of him. Ahead of her she saw Sundancer, tossing her head from side to side as her jockey slapped her rump to get more speed. Something was wrong. Without conscious thought, she knew something was going wrong.

"Oh my God!" JeLinne didn't mean the hoarse cry to be more than a whisper but she saw the danger and couldn't suppress the groan. Sundancer, plunging, frightened, threw her rider right in front of Wizard. If they slowed now, they'd lose. If they didn't slow, they'd tumble over the fallen rider, maybe killing him, certainly injuring Wizard.

JeLinne didn't hesitate. She leaned back slightly to tell Wizard to slow down. She couldn't take the chance he'd be hurt. Then suddenly, she knew he had seen the danger too -- and she knew more, though she couldn't say how she knew it. If she shifted her weight just slightly to the right, Wizard would be in position to jump the jockey writhing on the ground. It came as instant knowledge, and became an instant decision. She shifted, not thinking twice. Wizard jumped. Three yards beyond, her horse rocketed past the finish line a neck in front of the second place mount.

There were tears in JeLinne's eyes. "We won," she whispered to Wizard, not believing it. She murmured incoherent happy sounds to the horse as he pranced back toward the gate and the five Triangs waiting there. There were never more than five at any race. There were never less than five. Maybe their groundcraft only held five or maybe there were so many racetracks they could only spare five. JeLinne didn't care. She and Wizard had won and, if they let her, she wanted to ask for him as her prize instead of the water. That would upset her family, though. It would upset her whole camp. The elders circle would be furious if she came with a horse instead of water. What if they gambled her as outcast, sending her to Atlansity for lottery fodder. She could end up treading water, calling keno numbers for the submerged casinos, slaving in the underwater boathouses.

What could she say, she wondered, to convince her compound that this black horse, quick and clever, was more precious than water? Was anything more precious than water? Not that she knew of. "Not that I know," she told herself, trying to push the image of Wizard from her mind. "Not that I know." "We 'know' each other," she said in her imagination to angry elders, not knowing at all what she meant by that or why she thought of it. JeLinne frowned, then furrowed her brow at a more troublesome thought. She was assuming she could convince the aliens to let her keep this horse. She was counting on it. She needed to be with Wizard and she knew he'd be better off with her than anywhere else.

But how do you ask a Triang for anything when they won't communicate? JeLinne closed her right fist on Wizard's mane, her left hand urgently stroking up and under his still-sweating neck. Here was the problem, she thought, recognizing the tremors creeping into her midsection as fear. "I can't ask them to let you come with me," she whispered, emotion turning the whisper to a subvocal wail. Wizard nuzzled the strand of hair at her shoulder, blowing, edgy. "Even FedWorld couldn't ask. Nobody can talk to them." Her camp was Old Scripture/Old Stricture and JeLinne knew the green ash whip punishment she was about to tempt. "Damn and hell," she murmured softly. "Goddamn and hell."

She heard Wizard snort and saw him lift his head to look at the aliens, trundling forward, no legs in sight, but moving steadily nonetheless. The Triangs came toward her, silently, and JeLinne sidled closer to her horse. She kept close to him, too. Those Triangs were spooky. Was she about to be punished for swearing? Should she and Wizard run? Could they? Would the Triangs stop her?

"Peace. Mutual aid, safety, understanding, knowledge," they said. Wait. It wasn't a Triang who said that. Nobody actually said it, JeLinne knew. Somebody seemed to have thought it and she heard it. Or rather, her mind gave words to feelings it was interpreting. This was REALLY SPOOKY. She figured the race had tired her more than it should. "That's it. I'm so tired I'm hearing things," she thought, not sure of her conviction. Wizard nickered while breathing out.

"Healthy, uninjured, energized, freely think, happy horse," her mind interpreted.

"Wizard. Is that you?" JeLinne whirled to look the horse in the face -- and, ohmigod, he was looking right back. "Strongly emote, sensitive equine, neural mazes, linkage, satisfaction." This was -- was it? -- making some sense, JeLinne thought, stunned. She was feeling complex patterns and her mind was presenting her with whole pictures built of the patterns. Each Triang sent her one component of the pattern, she realized suddenly, through her shock. That's why there were five of them. It must be the minimum number needed for an emotional pattern complete enough to make a mental picture.

"You mean that's why you hold these races?" JeLinne didn't know whether to look at Wizard or the Triangs, who were now crowding closer, almost eagerly. Wizard trembled but didn't shy and JeLinne took comfort from that. "Let me see if I can, uh, 'emote' this to you." She looked at the aliens but patted Wizard's forehead. "You can contact the horse mind, emotionally, but not ours? I mean, a human's?" She tried to send Wizard a feeling of closeness, of questioning, of openness. "This isn't happening", she thought. JeLinne laughed under her breath. She felt absurd. But every Triang was looking at her intently with all three of its eyes and Wizard nudged her gently. She filled her lung slowly, deeply, and decided, like Wiz had, to plunge ahead. "O.K. So to talk to us, you needed a human who could get into the mind of a horse?" This whole thing was ridiculous, JeLinne thought. Surely the scientists would have figured this out. Still, she closed her eyes and concentrated on how she felt guiding Wiz during the race and feeling him respond. Suddenly her eyes flew open. Pictures were becoming words very quickly in her mind, as if a direct link had been forged, filtered through her feelings for the horse, and his for her.

"Yes. If you (strange being, awkward bilateral, incomprehensible creature, frightening alien, unilateral thinker) human (ride, move, go, merge, run) fast on horse without (objects, items, devices, things, artificialities) of control there is speaking with the horse, and possibly also with us", the Triangs said. Not said. Sent. In five individual pictures that somehow merged in her mind. "However, you are the first (solitary figure, start of count, desert with one plant growing, single solar prime, all together meaning -- Me!? ) where this has truly happened. We (relief, conduit discovered, sacred mission saved, needing vital antibiotic aid, earth generics) speak with you through this horse. You must speak to other humans for us. We are anxious, (Wizard trembled as the emotion was sent. She was getting very good at reading these aliens through him), happily anxious to cooperate with your race."

JeLinne breathed in very slowly, the words and images, all the fives separate but merging, crowding her mind. The chaotic confusion was fading. She looked at the five Triangs, forcing herself to stillness, to a suspension of fear and judgment, to a deliberate regard of their nonhuman, unreadable, pyramidal geometry. They looked back, seemingly solemn, with all fifteen of their eyes. She looked at the horse. He watched her, not understanding but trusting his rider. Imperceptibly, she nodded.

"So," she said, putting her hand on Wizard's sweating neck, savoring his smell, the moment, her own triumph. Her family would have water. The whole world would have water. And she could ask her question. She put her whole brain and heart into her question.

"Does this mean I can keep him with me, since we're such a winning team?" She smiled privately at her cleverness - Wizard and she without each other were of no use to the aliens. Indeed, she felt the grin move deeply inside, happy about the peaceful Triangs, about the coming water, about being integral - maybe even important. Happy she was the one who could ride the horse. And mostly, happy that Wizard would be with her.

The horse turned his gleaming black head into her shoulder and carefully nipped her sleeve with his muzzle. "Happy horse," he said, and JeLinne knew it was Wizard, not the Triangs, speaking.