Part 4 (2/2)

”How old are you?” she said.

”Twenty-four,” he answered.

Surprise crossed her face. ”Young to be a Starcaptain. How long have you had your medallion?”

The phrase hurt. ”Eight months Standard,” he said. And added, ”I trained to be a pilot first.”

”How long is your contract for?”

”Ten years,” he said, What had Zed told her about him?

She glanced toward the swinging door. Dana looked, too. A shadowy figure stood there. ”Amri -- if Binkie's awake, ask him to come here.” The figure disappeared. Dana wondered who Binkie was, and if she/he were a slave, and if so, why Rhani Yago said ”ask” of a slave. She had brought the food for him herself, too.

The door swung aside for a slender, fair-haired man. He looked curiously at Dana Ikoro.

”Binkie's my secretary. I couldn't do a thing without him. Bink, this is Dana. Zed brought him from the Net. Find him a bed and some clothes, and take some time tomorrow to show him the house.”

”Yes, Rhani-ka,” said Binkie. He beckoned to Dana. ”Come with me.” Dana stood up. His legs felt leaden. He bowed to Rhani Yago again. They went through the swinging door, into a metal-and-wood kitchen, and into a hall flanked with paneled doors. Dana was reminded of the Net.

”Cara,” said Binkie. ”Immeld. Me. Amri. Timithos sleeps in the garden.

You.” He opened the fifth door.

Behind it was a room, small and warm, wood-paneled, lit by a line of soft paper lanterns strung across the ceiling. There was a narrow bed in a wooden frame, and a round mirror on the wall. Dana stared at himself. He looked older than his memory of himself, thinner, with lines on his face that he did not recall, and wary eyes.

Binkie said, ”You sleep here. Amri will wake you in the morning. I'll tell her to call you late.” He turned to leave.

”Wait -- please,” said Dana. He felt lost. Binkie turned around. He gazed at Dana with sympathy mixed with a strange, tight defensiveness. ”I don't -- are you a slave?”

Wordlessly Binkie pushed up his sleeve to exhibit the tattooed crest, the blue ”Y,” on his left upper arm.

”What did you do?”

Binkie said, ”We don't ask. Slaves don't have pasts, or homes, or property. Or even their proper names.”

”They say that, but you don't have to.”

”What difference does it make? I could be an arsonist or an axe-murderer.

I'm here. I don't want to know what you are.” He turned again to leave. Dana's legs would no longer keep him up. He sat on the bed. ”Good night,” said Binkie.

”Good night,” Dana said to the other man's back.

He was alone.

He kicked off his shoes and pulled his feet up under him. The bed creaked as he s.h.i.+fted on it. He caught himself listening for footsteps.

_It's over. It's all right_. He leaned into the softness of the pillow and stroked his hand on the rich glowing grain of the headboard. He felt the soft fabric of the blanket. The hall outside was silent. He got off the bed and explored the room. It had a closet, empty, and a bathroom with a shower. He opened the door and looked out into the empty hall.

Night was the safe time, and Rhani had said he could sleep. He closed the door. He started to pull off his s.h.i.+rt, and stopped. He did not want to sleep naked. He took the blanket in both hands and wrapped it like a coc.o.o.n around him. The light control was on the headboard. He thumbed it. He curled on his side in the gracious darkness, listening to the steady music of his breath.

He waited for sleep.

Zed Yago spent his usual dreamless, untroubled night.

Waking, he lay motionless in the warm bed, watching the bright bands of sunlight climb the walls. The first few days off the Net everything on Chabad seemed transient, as if it might disappear when he took his eyes off it. He found himself staring at things and people, willing them to stay there. This room had been his place since childhood. His booktapes lined one wall. One closet held his clothes, and the other his ice climbing equipment: suit, hammers, axes, pitons. In one corner of the room was the wired human skeleton that he had used in medical school on Nexus; its skull was twisted to look sightlessly over one shoulder in a grotesque and impossible position. Zed guessed Amri had been cleaning it. His medic's case sat at its dangling, bony feet.

He swung out of bed and went naked to the doors of the terrace. He could see the blooming garden, misty with water arcing over it in hissing rainbows of spray. A dragoncat loped across a creeper. By a flower bed, Timithos coiled a hose. Zed pulled the gla.s.s door open. Heat poured through at him. The air was molten. Sweat p.r.i.c.kled on his shoulders and down his sides. After three months away from it, even for someone born and bred on Chabad, the heat took getting used to. Zed breathed deeply. He wondered if it would be a waste of time to mention the threatening letters to Rhani yet again. Perhaps he was being an alarmist. She would laugh at him. Finally, stepping back into the cool, quiet house, he slid the terrace doors closed. It was an hour after dawn.

He dressed. He could hear voices downstairs: Cara and Immeld, chatting in the kitchen. He started down the stairs and met Amri on her way up, tray with breakfast fruits in hand. ”I'll take it,” he said. Balancing it on one palm, he returned up the stairway and tapped at Rhani's door. ”It's me,” he said.

”Come in!”

She sat in the wing chair. He put the tray on the footstool. She wore a jumpsuit of deep metallic blue, the Yago crest color, the color of Chabad's sky.

It darkened the amber of her eyes to hazel. ”Good morning, Rhani-ka.”

She lifted her face up for his kiss. ”Good morning, Zed-ka.”

There were three printout sheets, covered with figures, at her feet.

”What are you working on?”

She took a piece of fruit from the tray. ”Dorazine. Binkie computed for me this morning our storage figures and our demand figures: what we will need to supply the Net, the prisons of Sector Sardonyx, and our own workers at the kerit farm for one more year. We do not have enough. Look.” Zed took the sheet she handed him. ”I wrote to Sherrix days ago, the same day I sent you the communigram. I offered to pay double the current market price for dorazine, hoping to loosen the market.”

”You told me that when I called you from the moon,” said Zed. ”That was also days ago.”

”And I expected to have an answer from Sherrix by this time.”

”You haven't.”

She shook her head. ”She's never not answered me before.” Her shoulders hunched. ”Write again,” said Zed.

”Yes,” she said almost absently. ”I can do that.”

Zed said, ”What else is happening on Chabad besides a dorazine shortage?”

”Huh?”

”Marriages, births, deaths?”

She focused on him. ”I'm sorry, Zed-ka. I was thinking ... and no matter how badly I've missed you, an hour after you come back from the Net, it feels as if you'd never been away. Deaths -- Domna Sam. And one of Imre and Aliza Kyneth's children almost married, but it didn't come off. I forget which one.

Imre was re-elected head of the Council. He suggested I do it but I said I wouldn't if it meant I had to live in Abanat. Imre and I had a fight about water rates. I won. Tuli opened a second shop.” Zed nodded. Tuli had been cook on the Yago estate for three years: a silent, clever woman. When her contract expired, she took her money and bought a shop in Abanat.

”Were things well for you?” Zed asked.

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