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TBLISI

"Good morning, Ms. van de Meer," Ran said, sliding in front of the expensively-dressed woman who seemed determined to use luggage of Hobilo lizardhide as a battering ram through the crowd before her. "What an extremely attractive coat."

The mood of passengers in the Embarkation Hall ranged from funereal to that of a carnival crowd. What was particularly notable was the number of them. Instead of the usual departure staggered by individual fuss and delay, virtually every passenger aboard the Empress of Earth was ready to leave as soon as the gangways fell.

Some of them, like van de Meer, seemed ready to jump and damn the gangways.

"Oh!" the woman said. "I—"

She grounded her twin bags on the deck and lifted out the lapel of the garment, gleaming felt from the fur of a giant Calicheman water rat. The steward drawing the rest of van de Meer's luggage was far back in the mass. "Do you really think so, Mr. Colville? It was just something I got for knocking about."

Van de Meer wasn't young, which didn't matter; and she had the heft of a rhino, which wasn't an absolute bar to Ran finding her . . . interesting. Unfortunately, she had the personality of a rhino also. The only possible interest Ran could have in her was a professional one—at the moment, to keep the self-centered hog from injuring somebody or starting a riot.

"It goes well with your hair, besides," Ran said. He had no idea of whether or not that was true or even what the statement really meant, but it was the sort of thing women liked to hear. "Why don't you just sit right here, though, ma'am? The hatch will open in less than a minute."

The mix of people in the tall room was that of tapioca pudding, nodules of frightened silence embedded throughout a matrix of artificially bright chatter. The stewards had been carefully briefed to stand in front of passengers instead of following them in normal fashion; but that wasn't always possible. All the Staff Side personnel were on hand in the Embarkation Hall, prepared to be as direct as the circumstances required.

Ran turned sideways to survey the hall, looking for hot spots. He saw Wanda, but he couldn't catch her eye. She was planted like a bollard in front of a couple from Calicheman, dressed in fringed layers of suede leather. The ensemble looked rough, but Ran had seen similar outfits in starport boutiques for three thousand credits and up.

The couple was rough, however, and they appeared willing to knock Wanda down and stamp her flat if that would speed their exit from the starliner. The Trident officer wasn't giving a millimeter. Her face was bleakly forbidding in a fashion that Ran hadn't seen until recently.

Until the Grantholm commando had died, some of them beyond the muzzle of Wanda Holly's gun.

The Empress bore very little sign of the fighting. A corner of the Social Hall was a gray bulkhead instead of the facade of the Temple of the Divine Julius, because the blast of a Grantholm doorknocker had damaged the hologram projector for that segment. Stewards whisked away the damaged furniture and rearranged the rest as if nothing had happened, though. The bullet holes scattered here and there across the vessel were mostly hidden by the shimmering holograms themselves.

The same was true of the stains, though stewards scrubbed each of the battle sites thoroughly. Patterns of coherent light wouldn't hide the smell of rotting blood.

"Here we go!" called a rating from the Second Watch, in a perhaps unintentionally loud voice. The main hatch split horizontally, the halves rising and lowering simultaneously onto the mobile shelter extension from Bogomil Terminal.

"Welcome to Tblisi, ladies and gentlemen!" Commander Kneale called from the opposite side of the Embarkation Hall. Though he shouted, his voice was barely audible over the tramp of feet surging forward on the resilient flooring.

The attempted hijacking had done even less physical damage to the passengers than it had to the structure of the ship. The psychic injuries were something else again.

Ran edged aside to let the rush of passengers pass. There would be no trouble, now that they had the freedom to leave what they thought of as a cage.

He pressed his back against a pilaster, looking at the suddenly jubilant crowd but thinking of—other times, and other places; and of the Cold.

"Do you think any of them will ever get back on a starliner, Ran?" Wanda asked from beside him.

He looked down at her and smiled, glad to return to the present "Sure," he said. "Most of them have somewhere to return to, anyway. And they'll forget. It'll be an adventure, once they've been away for it for a couple days . . . and until it happens again."

Passengers poured past them in a joyous torrent, humans and the leavening of alien faces. Wakambria, Rialvans—an individual Szgranian who must have been a courier, female and dressed in drab colors instead of glitter and weaponry. What did the aliens think of the human squabble which had almost cost them their schedule if not their very lives?

"You think it's going to happen again?" Wanda asked softly.

Ran didn't look at her. His eyes stared past the sea of heads and luggage bobbing down the ramp to solid ground. "Until the war ends," he said. "Or something happens to the Empress. The company's going to have to take her out of service. She's too valuable a prize."

The crush in the Embarkation Hall had passed, leaving only a few passengers fussing in the great room with unfastened bags or concern for something forgotten in their cabins. The scattered figures quivered like puddles in a spillway after the impoundment has emptied. Commander Kneale made his way toward Ran and Wanda, tossing affable greetings to the passengers whom he passed.

"I hope they take her out of service," Wanda said softly. She too was staring toward the gangway but seeing memories. "Because . . . if I had to do what I did. Again. I don't think that I could."

Ran reached to his side without looking and took the Second Officer's hand. They were on duty, and in public; and when that occurred to him, he still didn't give a damn.

"You can do anything you have to, Wanda," he said. "Anything. But that's not a reason to do it."

"Why don't you two take the next forty-eight as leave?" Commander Kneale offered from a meter away. "I'm not disembarking myself because the repair crews are coming aboard, and—I think you've earned it."

Ran looked at Wanda, then met his superior's eyes. "Sir," he said. "We need to talk, you and I."

Kneale nodded calmly. "All right," he said. "Do you want to do it now?"

Ran looked out toward the gangway and thought about the domed skyline of Bogomil beyond. "No sir," he said, "Right now I want to get off the Empress. Almost as bad as the passengers did."

Kneale nodded and smiled. His square, powerful hand swept smoothly toward the gangway. "Then go," he said. "We'll talk another time. You've earned that too, Mr. Colville."

* * *

The sky was so clear and vast that Dewhurst's wife didn't even comment on the slight orange tint to the sunlight that would in normal circumstances have been her first public reaction to Tblisi. She spread her arms and cried, "Oh, what a terrible experience! I was sure that we were all going to be killed."

"Now, now, Ms. Dewhurst," Wade said. "It didn't cost us anything but perhaps eight hours off our scheduled arrival, and surely the chance of a good story was worth that to all of us. Eh, Dewhurst?"

Dewhurst shook his head more in wonder than disagreement. "Adventures are things that happen to other people, Wade," he said. "Personally, I think I like it that way. Anyway, I can't claim that hiding in my cabin for several hours was much of an adventure, though I suppose—"

He looked hard at Wade.

"—it might be possible to embellish the facts a little,"

Belgeddes chuckled. "Adventure's where you find it. Isn't that so, Dickie?"

"What I'd like to know . . ." said Da Silva as his eyes slid back to his companions from the buildings across the boulevard from the terminal. Ten- and twelve-story brick facades, with swags and carved transoms, lined the thoroughfare. ". . . is just how many of the Grantholmers there were. It can't have been more than a handful, and there were thousands of us aboard."

"You think we should have—what, attacked men with guns?" Dewhurst said. "Refused to cooperate?"

"Nothing of the sort!" Wade said forcefully. "Leave that to the professionals, to the ship's officers and crew. That's no business for passengers, after all."

Ms. Dewhurst elbowed her husband and nodded toward the fleet of buses and taxis jogging forward to carry away disembarked passengers. "Shouldn't we . . . ?" she said.

"Yes, I suppose we should," Dewhurst agreed.

He looked at his companions for the voyage. "I don't suppose you chaps are booked for the return sailing?" he said, a trifle wistfully.

Da Silva shook his head. "We're not all vacationers," he said. "I'll be here a month at least. Longer if my firm decides to set up a permanent office."

"Nor us, friend," Wade agreed, "though we'd considered it. The difference between vacationing and retirement is that nobody expects us to be anywhere. We'll take another ship from here. Maybe a freighter, for a change."

"There's always something popping around Dickie," Belgeddes said, shaking his head with a wry expression. "Been saying that for fifty years, so I suppose it's the way I like things to be."

"Well . . ." Dewhurst said. His eyes narrowed. "What on earth is that in your luggage, Wade?" he demanded. "A cannon?"

"Something like that," Wade agreed, looking at the 15-mm rifle strapped onto his well-worn trunk. Even taken down into two pieces, the weapon looked long and clumsy. "It was given me as a souvenir, I suppose you'd call it."

"Dear," said Ms. Dewhurst, tugging her husband's sleeve.

Dewhurst twisted his arm away. "In a damned minute!" he snapped.

"From Calicheman?" Da Silva asked.

"I believe so, originally," Wade agreed.

Belgeddes chuckled.

"Shouldn't doubt there'll be a story in it the next time somebody comments on the thing," Dewhurst said—half gibing, but half sorry to know that he wouldn't be present when the story was told.

"Shouldn't doubt that you were right," Belgeddes agreed.

A limousine pulled into the cab rank. When a taxi hooted its horn angrily at the interloper, a uniformed traffic warden rapped the cab's windshield firmly enough with her baton to threaten the glass.

"There he is," said Belgeddes.

"Your ride?" Da Silva said in amazement

"Not exactly," said Wade. "Tom and I have business, well, elsewhere for the while. But we took the liberty of arranging three days for you in the penthouse of the Circassia Palas. Manager's a friend of ours, you see. He's sent his personal car for you."

"The penthouse?" Ms. Dewhurst gasped. "We could never afford that, Mr. Wade!"

"It's on me, good lady," Wade explained with a courtly bow. "The least I could do after all the drinks your husband and Mr. Da Silva here bought me during the past weeks."

Belgeddes nodded. "Never remembers to carry small change," he murmured. "You'd think Dickie'd have learned in fifty years, but he never has."

"Perhaps we'll meet again," said Wade as he straightened. "It's not so big a universe as some people think."

"Until then," Belgeddes added. He gave Da Silva and the Dewhursts a languid salute, then followed his taller companion back toward a door in the terminal marked OFFICIAL PERSONNEL ONLY.

Even Ms. Dewhurst gaped after them. The limousine's chauffeur waited stolidly, continuing to hold the vehicle's door open.

* * *

"It's a triumph of people over architects," Wanda Holly said to Ran as they sauntered through a trattoria with tables of extruded plastic and exquisite, hand-carved chairs.

Bogomil Old Town was an area of slab-built concrete buildings set in a rectangular grid of broad streets, a district as functional as a prison. Though preserved as a monument to the early days of the colony, Old Town was a living museum whose current-day residents added humanizing touches.

Apartment facades were individually painted, and no two suites had identical sets of shutters. The entranceway of a seven-story box was framed with pillars of hammered copper extending to roof level and supporting balcony railings at each floor. On all the buildings fronting the Mirza, an arm of the sea too shallow for commercial navigation, the ground-floor shops were open in front so that they could spill out onto the boulevard.

"Happy-looking place," Ran commented.

"Peaceful" wouldn't be the right word, however. Locals sipping clear liquor not infrequently shouted and made the flimsy tables jounce with their fists. There was passion as well in the haggling of brightly-dressed shoppers; and though the knives most men wore were for show, a culture whose ornamentation includes weaponry is not wholly peaceful.

But then, no organism that survives to pass on its genes will be wholly peaceful.

"A place you'd like to live?" Wanda asked.

Ran looked out over the Mirza. Couples were rowing there. It must be possible to rent boats somewhere.

"No," he said softly. "I wouldn't belong here."

He faced Wanda. She was watching him, and he couldn't read her expression. "I don't belong anywhere, Wanda," he said. "Not even on Bifrost, not after I went through the library Dad brought back from—from Hobilo."

Ran smiled, and though he had to force it, the impulse was real enough. He was better off than most people. It was just that he knew where he was, while not many other folks seemed to. Maybe they were happier not to know, but ignorance hadn't been something Chick Colville held forth as a virtue to his son.

"I'm . . ." Ran continued. "Everybody's—out of place, you know, on a starliner. I'm happy there, I'm where I ought to be."

They skirted a shop selling hologram projectors and other electronics, much of it locally made. Tblisi had considerable industry, though grain and fisheries were its main exports, and out-system trade traveled on foreign bottoms. The Empress of Earth docked in a three-meter news projection, while a newsreader's voice gave a garbled account of the attempted hijacking.

"I've got my job," Ran continued, "and I'm good at it. And most of my duties . . ."

He glanced back at the hologram of the starliner. He imagined the sullen splendor of sponge space wrapping the vessel and those on her hull, dissolving their souls and filling the psychic cavities with Cold.

Wanda squeezed his hand.

"Most of my duties," Ran said, "I like a lot."

At the cafe ahead of them, waiters were beginning to serve plates offish and pasta as well as drinks. It was late morning in Bogomil, several hours behind ship's time.

"I wouldn't mind some lun—"Wanda began. The rest of her sentence was drowned by excited shouts from those watching the news in the electronics store.

The Trident officers turned, their faces pale and sickly in Tblisi's orange-touched sunlight They strode back toward the holograms.

For a moment, Ran thought the Empress was the starliner filling half the huge projection while the newsreader spoke from the other side of the display. The vessel was deep in an atmosphere, but her landing outriggers were not deployed.

"No, it's the Brasil," Wanda said, correcting her own similar misapprehension aloud.

"What's happening?" Ran demanded of an old man wearing a horizontally-striped shirt and a straw hat squeezed shapeless by long use. The fellow had been watching the news when Ran and Wanda passed the first time.

"The Grantholm-Nevasa war's over!" the local said. "It was going to be terrible for trade, just terrible. I'm in shipping, and I know that."

The old man's eyes were bright with memories of the time when he had a life that required more than watching the news in a public place. That must have been years past.

"Lin Van Thiet, formerly the Minister of Culture and now Interim President of Nevasa," the newsreader said, "urges all Nevasan citizens to cease hostilities and actions which might be seen as hostile by the government of Grantholm. The situation on Nevasa is difficult. Attempts to prolong the conflict can only lead to untold suffering for the survivors."

"The Minister of Culture is running the planet?" Wanda murmured. "What on earth . . . ?"

The image of the Brasil was blurred. That had the effect of making the picture more real to those watching. This was real data from a vessel accompanying the starliner, not a computer simulation.

"Tblisi received a communications torpedo with the news," Ran said. "From Nevasa, it must be. Lin must be really serious about ending the war if he's sent direct messages to colonies this distant."

"It's Nevasa, that's for sure," Wanda said. "Look at the sky."

The Nevasan atmosphere fluoresced in dazzling sheets to swaddle the plunging starliner. The lenses recording the scene couldn't penetrate the fog of light, except to record the yellow-white glow of the .Brass's dense hull.

"Casualty figures are still being assembled," the newsreader said in the tones of someone who can't really believe what he's seeing, "but it appears that damage to Nevasa City and the region around it has been extensive."

"Christ!" said Ran Colville. "If she hit Nevasa City at orbital velocity, there isn't any fucking Nevasa City any more!"

"Grantholm hijacked the Brazil and used her as a missile," Wanda said. She gripped her companion's left hand and squeezed till blood started from where her fingernails cut into the skin. "Ran, they killed—tens of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of people!"

"No," Ran whispered. "Grantholm didn't do that."

The newsreader vanished. The image from Nevasa expanded to fill the display. The starliner's track was a cone of roiling pastels reaching toward the ground until it merged with the distance-softened sprawl of Nevasa City.

"If Grantholm had taken the Brasil," Ran continued, "the Nevasans would never have let her get into planetary orbit. She had to be in Nevasan hands when she—dropped."

The hologram image shuddered from atmospheric distortion. The display flashed indigo verging on ultraviolet, then white, and finally all colors as a lightning-shot bubble swelled across the surface of the planet. The impact of hundreds of thousands of tonnes hitting Nevasa at astronomical speed converted the contact surfaces to plasma and a huge additional volume to gas.

"They were bringing the Brasil to Nevasa to be converted into a troopship," Ran said. He lifted Wanda's hand to his lips and kissed it gently to remind her of her grip on him. "As they would have done the Empress, if we hadn't dumped the hijack team—the Nevasan team—on Tellichery."

"They lost control?" Wanda said. The bubble continued to swell on the display. Its rim was picked out by black specks, fragments weighing hundreds of tonnes splashing out of the impact zone. Many of them would reach escape velocity.

"Yes," said Ran. "And I think I know how." He swallowed. "I want to get back to the Empress," he added.

Wanda kissed the back of Ran's hand. Her tongue tasted his blood. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Yes, let's

go-"

"The war's over!" the local man beside them repeated gleefully.

* * *

The walls of Commander Kneale's suite were set to show holographic scenes of Nevasa. The ceiling was a view (downward, disconcertingly) of the Empress of Earth descending onto Con Ron Landing, haloed by her squadron of tugs and the fluorescing atmosphere.

The city nestled into the hills about the spaceport Large swatches of green interspersed the built-up areas.

"Sit down, Ran," the commander offered from behind his big desk. He looked weary but composed.

"No, I don't think I'll do that," Ran said harshly. "I heard what happened on Nevasa. To Nevasa."

"Yes," Kneale said, "so did I."

He stretched. "Do you have any suggestions about who could fill a rating's slot on my watch? One of my people—Blavatsky—she's leaving the company here to marry a passenger."

He grimaced and shook his head.

"Do you know how many people died down there, Commander?" Ran shouted, pointing up toward the image of Nevasa City. "How many died?"

"Fewer than would have died if the war had gone on another ten years," Kneale said calmly, "as it might have done. But that's none of my business."

Ran twisted his eyes away from the commander's face. On the right-hand bulkhead, images of Nevasan children gamboled on the floor of a narrow gorge while their parents watched indulgently. The whip-trunked native trees grew up both walls of the gorge and wove together at the top, filtering the sunlight to soft green without glare or shadows.

The scene was a famous park, near Nevasa City. Probably too near Nevasa City.

"Commander," Ran said as he sat/collapsed into the cushioned armchair on his side of the desk. "They were innocent people. Most of them were innocent."

"If you want innocent, Colville," Commander Kneale snarled, "then think about the five passengers killed when those bastards tried to hijack the Empress! D'ye think it was any different aboard the Brazil?"

Kneale stood up, clenching his hands together as though he was trying to crush something between his palms. His face distorted with anger and self-loathing. "Those five passengers were our business, yours and mine. And we failed them, Ran Colville."

Ran gestured toward the bulkhead where he'd seen the crew of strangers installing equipment before the Empress undocked from Earth. "What's back there, Hiram?" he asked quietly. "Behind the kids playing and the false panel."

"An autopilot," Kneale said. He sat down, looking surprised at having found himself standing. "With an override that takes precedence over the ordinary systems on the bridge. As you already guessed."

Ran nodded. "And you would have done the same thing," he said. "Hidden behind the false wall of your suite and programmed the Empress of Earth to crash into Sonderburg on Grantholm. Or Nevasa City, whichever."

"Not exactly," Kneale said emotionlessly. "I was told that when the ship had a full load of the troops from the hijacking planet, it would enter sponge space and never return. If that's really what the autopilot was programmed to achieve, then something went wrong."

He licked his tight lips. "It's possible," he added bleakly, "that government officials lied to me."

He raised his eyes to the vision of the Empress lowering herself onto Nevasa in all her unique splendor. "There were provisions for the—officer in charge of operation to escape by lifeboat. I doubt Commander Cunha left the Brazil. I certainly would have ridden the Empress down if a similar—error—had occurred. If it hadn't been for you, Ran, and Ms. Holly; and some few others."

"Sir," Ran whispered, "it could be a million people died. There were better ways. Earth could have sent a fleet to Nevasa. This was a government problem, not the company's."

"Who do you think installed this equipment?" the commander snarled, thrusting an angry thumb toward the bulkhead's false innocence. "You know Federated Earth can't play galactic cop openly. The voters would never stand on it, and every ex-colony from here to the Rim would be up in arms at the idea."

"They hijacked—"Ran offered.

"Prove it!" Kneale retorted. "The Brasil is gone, the Empress of Earth would have been gone—prove which of the warring parties hijacked her. Or either of them!"

"It'd have come out," Ran said. He rose and turned so that he didn't face the commander's fierceness. "They couldn't hide her—either ship—once they used her to ferry troops for an invasion."

Holographic farmers worked terraced fields in the area of Bu Dop, across the planet from the steaming crater that was now Nevasa City. The embassy official he'd met . . . Susan. She was going to Bu Dop, she'd said.

"And the guilty party would pay an indemnity to Trident or Consolidated, whichever," the commander rejoined. "And they'd release the passengers, probably, from some detention camp on a planet nobody ever heard of, where they'd have enough food and most of them would have survived. For years! And Federated Earth wouldn't take military action, because the villains had apologized, hadn't they? And it was all the former government anyhow. And—"

Ran turned to face him. Kneale too was standing.

"—they'd do the same goddamned thing again, and other people would, and star travel would never be safe for any peaceful purpose ever! Isn't that true, Ran Colville?"

Ran licked his dry lips. "Yes," he said. "I suppose it is."

He drew in a deep breath. "Who knew about this?" he asked.

"I did," said the commander. "And you've guessed. One or two members of the Company's board of directors. A few people—very few—in the bureaucracy of Federated Earth. None of the elected officials."

Kneale looked up at his ceiling image again. His tone softened. "The installers wouldn't have known what they were doing, though it's possible that some of them have guessed by now also. What I'm quite sure of . . ."

He locked his eyes with Ran's again, and his voice rasped like the tongue of a lion. "What I'm sure of is. That as a result of Nevasa. Everybody in the galaxy knows or will know. That if you hijack a Terran ship, your planet will be gutted. And the government of Federated Earth will smile and go its wholly deniable way."

"Oh, God, Hiram," Ran said softly as he kneaded his brows with his fingertips. "And Grantholm goes on, and . . . ?"

"Nobody picked Nevasa City," Kneale said. "The Nevasans picked it, and—if the crash wasn't an autopilot error—it would have been Sonderburg except for what you managed to do. But there won't be a next time. That's what makes it worthwhile."

Ran shivered. "I . . ." he said. His lips quirked in a smile. "There isn't really anything to say, is there? It's done. I guess I'll go now."

"Sometimes quick ruthlessness is the gentlest course in the long run," Kneale said. His voice fell into a whisper. "Governments have to think about the long run."

Ran reached for the latch plate. As he did so, his eyes strayed to the left, toward the image of children playing on the outskirts of Nevasa City.

* * *

"Want a drink?" Ran asked.

Wanda was drawing figure-8 patterns with her index finger across the face of the autobar at their table. "Not here," she said.

They were alone in the starliner's Darwin Lounge. On the walls, cartoon figures capered through skits illustrating evolution: the evolution of drinks, from rancid grape juice to the incredibly-complex cocktails in which the lounge's autobar specialized; the evolution of transport, from log float to the Empress of Earth herself; the evolution of living spaces, from cave to the Darwin Lounge. . . .

The scenes were so funny, and so obviously non-serious, that "nobody could take offense at them"; though of course people did, several on every voyage, for reasons as diverse as they were uniformly absurd. For that matter, passengers had been known to complain about the rest rooms off the Social Hall, because the crossing patterns of the plaid decorative scheme "suggested Christian motives."

A pair of stewards entered the lounge, noticed the two officers, and lowered their voices as they walked on through to the Carthage Salon beyond.

"What I'd like to do," Wanda resumed, looking across at Ran and smiling fixedly, "seeing that we'll be laid over on Tblisi for an extra forty-eight hours so the home office can decide how to modify our schedule . . . ."

She took a deep breath. "Is for us to rent one of the fishing cottages out at the head of Bluewater Bay. And spend the next while getting to know each other better."

Wanda forced her smile broader. The tip of her index finger was white from the force with which she pressed at the autobar. "Is that clear enough for you, Ran?" she said.

He spread his right hand flat on the table and pushed. "Didn't you hear what I said?" he demanded, "They deliberately crashed—"

"Listen to me!" Wanda said as she covered his hand with her own. "I was there when they were installing the autopilot in the commander's cabin, remember? When we watched the Brasil—you didn't have to tell me what was going on, Ran."

Ran shuddered. He wouldn't meet her eyes, but he turned his hand palm-up to clasp Wanda's. "And it doesn't matter?" he asked.

"It's done," she said. "Whether it was a good idea or a bad one . . . and yeah, I think it probably was a good idea, the same as the commander does and you do. I'm just glad that it wasn't me who had to—do what was done."

She clasped Ran's hand between both of hers. "Look at me, Ran," she whispered.

He obeyed, giving her a wan smile. "I dunno, Ms. Lieutenant Holly," he said. "I'm not sure I'm tough enough for this business."

Wanda laughed. "You're tough enough for anything you have to do," she said. "I'm paraphrasing somebody I trust on that. But our job is to get the Empress in on schedule, with happy passengers. Not to worry about—other people's jobs, that they've already done and we can't undo if we wanted to."

She cleared her throat "And because we've done our jobs to the satisfaction of our superiors, we've got some time for ourselves. Which I want to spend with you."

Ran lifted their knotted hands and kissed the woman's knuckles. "Wanda," he murmured, "look, it wouldn't . . ."

"Look at me, Ran," she insisted.

He met her eyes. "I've known my share of women—" he said.

"Yes, I've noticed that," Wanda said drily.

"—but they didn't mean anything, any more than I did to them. I—"

"Are you really that naive?" Wanda asked. "That they were just having a bit of fun, because you were?"

Ran shrugged angrily. "Look, that's my business. What's your business is that you—for pity's sake, Wanda, you're a friend of mine. And I don't fuck my friends."

"Then who does that leave, Ran?" she responded softly.

He straightened as though he'd been slapped. "Wanda," he said. "I don't want anybody to get hurt."

She shook her head. "You can't control that," she said. "You're hurting people now with what you do. And you're smart, so you know that, whether you admit it or not And you're right, it's none of my business, except—"

She squeezed fiercely at his hand. "Except that it doesn't have to be like that. You care about people or you wouldn't be so upset about what happened on, t-to Nevasa City. You can care about a person too, Ran."

He chuckled. "I wouldn't bet on that," he said.

"I am betting on it, Ran," she replied. She got to her feet and drew him with her. "Come on," she added. "It's an hour by ferry to Bluewater Bay, and that's longer than I want to wait."

Ran slipped his hand around her waist as they walked out of the lounge. "I'm not much of a hand for fishing," he said in a neutral voice.

Wanda laughed. "To be really honest," she said, "I wasn't planning to rent fishing tackle."

The stewards, completing the post-landing check of the Carthage Salon, could hear the officers' laughter carol all the way down the corridor to the Embarkation Hall.

THE END

 

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