Part 1 (2/2)

He had to be noncommittal, but could not walk away. Meanwhile Sakyo was having trouble meeting his captain's eyes. ”Pos, Captain. You and Kenowa are ... you go 'way back. She was with you before s.h.i.+g and me-uh, before s.h.i.+g and I were.

You two make us feel good and so Coronet has always felt good. Lovers and friends, I mean. Then we took the HRal onboard and you-they've come between you and Kenowa. And the s.h.i.+p is different. Feels different I mean.

Captain.” Jonuta was Jonuta, and he was captain. He had to put a good face on it, a captain's face. At last he said, ”s.p.a.cefarer Sakyo, you're so far out of line you're talking sideways. You have the con.” And the captain reds.h.i.+fted. He thought about it as he went along the s.h.i.+p's corridor called ”tunnel.” This one was tan with the hint of yellow. He considered what the other man had said, and not with anger. ”The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d's right on every count,” he muttered, and he was not a man given to muttering to himself.

There's nothing military about Coronet, but it's Kenowa and I who are out of line. We aren't being fair to s.h.i.+g and Sak. We gave him that black eye- I did, not some fight-happy s.p.a.cefarers in a bar! d.a.m.n til It's just that I've done it again. I've fallen into infatuation-again. So has Dem, and either Kenowa has or she's compensating very well for my . . . abandoning her, for HReenee. On the other hand, that's the way it is. I've done it many times before, just not on the s.h.i.+p. Fortunately. Thought I was iron disciplined, didn't you, ole loverboy Jone! But this is the way it is. I'm hot for HReenee right 34 now, and now at all interested in bedding down with Kenny. It's always been that way, and then I come back and it's over, with whoever-she-was, and it's better with Kenny and me. Do Sak and s.h.i.+g know that?

They certainly know that Kenowa and I have an agreement, just as she and I both know I'm not the sort who possibly could remain either celibate or monogamous! Hmm-whether Sak and s.h.i.+g know that or not doesn't much matter. It doesn't help their bad case of swollen b.a.l.l.s, and it doesn't excuse me for breaking my own s.h.i.+pboard rules! He pa.s.sed a side tunnel, pale blue. Coronet was hardly enormous, but even a ”small” s.p.a.cer wasn't small. The engines worked on, stealing matter from s.p.a.ce and turning it into energy that kept the s.h.i.+p hurtling on at a velocity that not even Jonuta could grasp, with all his intelligence and after all his years on the s.p.a.ceways. Axial spin provided centrifugal force, which was gravity's twin brother. On Coronet it was maintained at .8 standard G. That was standard operating procedure in s.p.a.cecraft. Since their next stop would be Qalara and Qalara's gravity was .82, it was also perfect preparation for Jonuta's next homecoming. He walked easily. ”The trouble is,” he muttered, and broke off to keep his thoughts to himself, is Kenny only taking care of herself with the (very!) warm body at hand, that fobby Dem, or is she really interested in him? (Whatever ”interested in” means!) If that's the case, we could be in trouble, after all these years-and so could Coronet! Could we all survive it, if Kenowa and I parted? How about if we were onboard the same s.h.i.+p?! He paused at the blue door to his own cabin. Another thought had come skidding in on a tangential course. Can we all survive if Kenowa and I don't part, but try to continue this way? For all I know HReenee and Dem are inseparable. For 35 all I know they are even more fickle than I (am). There's more I don't know about her than about . . . bop-ball! And Jonuta, who had never played bop-ball or watched a game, entered his cabin. A reddish, gold-dotted plain ran out to lavender mountains that reared spikily under a pinkish sky. From behind the leftward peaks emanated a warm, coppery-gold glow. This was not a mural, or any sort of painting; it was the illusion of s.p.a.cious reality provided by the holoprojection that was a hobby and a love of Kislar Jonuta of Qalara. On the plain stretching away before him, red-and-tan animals, ruminants, fed peacefully. Across the sky away out there in the simulated distance a white cloud sprawled, like spilt b.u.t.termilk. By the time he walked in he had decided what he should do, like it or not. HReenee was disappointed, of course, but tried to understand when he said he had lots to do and thought she needed and would welcome some time on the con, anyhow. She straightened the clothing she had deliberately disarrayed for him, and went to join Sak. That accomplished little positive purpose save in Jonuta's mind. He felt Sak would appreciate it, too. It did little for Jonuta's mental state, or HReenee's, or of the h.o.r.n.y Terasak she sat beside in the con-cabin. 2 An exhaustive 1977-1981 [Old Style] study of twenty-seven women of widely varying ages showed the women superior to males in adapting to the physical and psychological rigors of those tests. A spokesman far N.A.S.A. [Homeworld], in response to the query why the U.S. had put no women into s.p.a.ce by 1980, said, ''A lot of reasons were tossed around, but the main one was that until the shuttle came along, there was no way to manage women's waste.” ”On the far lower right hand corner of a living room wall,” the wise-looking computer program told Janja of Aglaya, ”make a firm thumbprint and draw a circle around it. Call that Thebanis, only planet of the double star Janski. Basing distance on the same scale as Thebanis's size on the wall, take five paces to its left and, on tiptoe, make another thumbprint. Circle that and call it Jorinne, fourth planet of the double star Payne.” The program blinked at her from the screen and quirked his mouth into an expression that was not quite a smile. ”Now you have some concept of the size of just this central area of our galaxy, and the distance between its suns and their planets.” Janja nodded, sighing. She understood-in a way. It didn't seem so, whizzing along in a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p that 37 could also slip into that nonent.i.ty called ”subs.p.a.ce” purely for the sake of convenience, mental and linguistic- and cover distance even faster than whizzing. Hard enough to accept that the person she was looking at was not a person at all, but had been and was dead, and was now wholly an electronic simulation. ”Time is a distance,” it/he said, ”and distance must be measured by time. This remains so even with our ability to convert into tachyons and travel faster than light, seemingly in contravention of the ancient al-Einstein postulation and yet entirely in accord with it-when we include the few little adjustments made in arriving at the Grand Unified Theory. Time is a distance, and distance is vast, because the galaxy is vast.” ”Yes, yes,” Janja said, impatiently drumming her fingers. ”My question concerned Qalara, not catch-phrases and GUT and al-Einstein.” The highly sophisticated computer readjusted and responded without so much as a blip or a pause. ”Return to the representation of Thebanis at the far lower rightward corner of the wall of a good-sized living room. There is not s.p.a.ce enough on the wall to show Qalara as well as Thebanis. Both would have to be reduced to mere dots.” ”d.a.m.n,” Janja muttered uncharacteristically. ”I knew it, but d.a.m.n anyhow. It's been a year now. Will I never reach Qalara? I have gone from ignorant 'barbarian' and slave to captain of my own s.h.i.+p in a year-ess. Must I wait a lifetime to find Jonuta?” Presumably recognizing a rhetorical question when it ”heard” one, the computer made no reply. Janja stared at the waiting image and its carefully designed friendly, receptive face. She wore no such expression. She had never lost sight of her goal since her kidnap off her idyllic, non-technological and pre-industrial planet, Aglaya. The kidnappers were Captain Jonuta's men. Slav- 38 ers, off the slaver Jonuta's slaver-s.h.i.+p.

One of them had murdered her lover and affianced, Tarkij, without necessity.

She had been sold-by Jonuta-and had suffered and fought and killed and tricked her way to freedom, and had been tricked by Corundum, and had joined h.e.l.lfire almost on a whim, and with h.e.l.lfire she had been enslaved again, on Knor. Still she knew that she was no slave and still she did not feel truly a part of this culture. Their culture, these arrogant colonizers and enslavers she called them because they were not her people, these Thingmakers. They were humans who arrogantly called themselves Galactics, the race of the galaxy, as if they were alone in it or other races were of no importance. They looked upon Jarps and Aglayans and others as inferior peoples and enslaved them. Janja knew better. She possessed an ability they did not, and thus could not be called a human. Not inhuman or subhuman, but more than human. They devoted much attention to their physical selves and appearance and they made Things. They had done very very little to get to know themselves, to improve their inner selves (save in the cases of a few individuals), for millenia. She was among them, because they had dragged her off Aglaya and thrown her among them. Still, she was not of them; merely among them. As a person named Byron had put it, time out of mind, she was often wrapped ”In a shroud of thoughts which were not/Their thoughts.” And for a year she had sustained herself by holding one goal, by never forgetting the one driving intent that gave her purpose. It had a name, and the name was Jonuta. She would remove Jonuta from the s.p.a.ceways his presence soiled. That was her vow. She was worthy of Sunmother and worthy of Aglii and Aglaya. She would be worthy of the s.p.a.ceways and thought that she was. She would kill Jonuta, who was not. 39 For a year now she had considered herself as being on a quest. In quest of Qalara. And still I cannot rush there, to find and confront and slay Jonuta! Instead, she must go to Thebanis. To go to Thebanis she must avoid one of the largest collapstars-a dead star or ”black hole in s.p.a.ce”-in the galaxy. The Demonhole. It was an inconceivably huge magnet that once had been a star. Now it lurked invisibly in s.p.a.ce, emitting absolutely no light and doing its best to suck in anything that pa.s.sed. Should anything, whether a mote of interstellar dust or a s.p.a.ceborne pebble or stone or a s.h.i.+p or even a comet, dare pa.s.s too close-the Demonhole succeeded. It made that object part of itself and increased its own power by a tiny fraction. Its newly captured component it tucked away out of sight, forever. For the gravity of any collapstar was greater than the escape velocity even of light, and nothing could be seen of the Demonhole or its prey beyond its suction perimeter, its Blue Event Horizon. Not until s.p.a.cer Satana had pursued a course- ”swerved”- to avoid that horrid lurking eater of matter and energy could the s.h.i.+p and all onboard be converted to the faster-than-light particles called tachyons. Only after Satana avoided becoming a part of the Demonhole could it defeat Einstein and jump in close to the Janski system and Thebanis. Janja wanted to go to Qalara; was compelled to go to Qalara. And first she had to go to Thebanis. Qalara* was still months away. But I am on my way, Janja thought, and her teeth were compressed with purpose. A small blond, paler than any Galactic, slave no longer and full of purpose and confi- *No letter exists to represent the soft-k sound of Qalara's first letter, in the alphabet of Erts.

The easiest course is to think Khalara and say ”Kuh-LAIR-uh.” 40 dence and the ancient desire for what she considered justice: revenge. For this is my s.h.i.+p now, and soon, oh soon on Thebanis I will trade it for a better one! And then . . . outbound, outbound to Qalara and Jonuta!-as Captain Janjaglaya, by Aglii and Sunmother! She rose then from the superb ”s.p.a.cefarers' Aide” on Soljer, docking station of planet Jorinne, and hurried to where the s.h.i.+p-her s.h.i.+p, Satana-awaited. Captain Janja, on her way. Graborn and Laleemis were gone, down onto Jorinne with Mehdi-daktari for tests and learning and, the ”Satana Coalition” hoped, happiness. h.e.l.lfire, Cinnabar, and Quindy were onboard and waiting. Quindy lounged at con with seeming calm and patience, a jet black woman with hair the color of sunflowers (both colors by choice) who wore an extremely revealing, extremely pale blue bandeau-with-cutouts above and a pair of pale, hotly pink pants below. Soon after Janja was...o...b..ard, here came their companion who was not quite part of the crew and yet who was friend and advisor and savior and . . . definitely part of what they had dubbed the Satana Coalition. Das.h.i.+ng Trafalgar Cuw, das.h.i.+ng now to join them, in his rainbow clothing and big broad-brimmed hat. They zipped up the s.h.i.+p, breaking contact with Soljer-station's umbilical. h.e.l.lfire grinned. ”Let's blow this joint!” Cinnabar looked around all huge-eyed and pursed the lips of its small roundish mouth. ”The whole d.a.m.ned joint?” it asked with exaggerated interest, and h.e.l.lfire swatted the Jarp. ”The whole furbaggin' planet, by Shaitan's b.a.l.l.s!” h.e.l.lfire snapped. ”Let's just get me to someplace where I can start practicing being rich!” She clapped her hands together, a tall, angularly lean woman with tan skin and hair the color of pra.s.s-by choice. ”It will have to be yours and Quindy's authority, Janja,” 41 Trafalgar Cuw of Outreach said. He gave h.e.l.lfire a big blandly innocent look-one of his best affectations.

Maddeningly, disgustingly boyish. ”Cap-I mean h.e.l.lf, I regret to say that you died, down on Jorinne.” She stared at him. She was less volatile now than she had been before some particularly unpleasant experiences,* but still a woman who had been s.h.i.+p's master for several years, and a pirate besides. ”I did what?” He flipped his fingers. ”You died. The pirate h.e.l.lfire is dead. We will have a doc.u.ment recording her transferring owners.h.i.+p of her Satana to one Janjaglaya Jee, of Outreach. Sorry, Janja-you had to be from somewhere, and you don't have any official ID or numbers yet. We'll worry about your new ID once we reach Thebanis, uh, whatever-your-name-is, ma'am.” ”Oh, Tra-Fal-garr!

And to think that I once hated your guts and called you Trafalgar Pew.” He shrugged. ”Ah, that was only because I'm a man, bigot.” The Satana Coalition laughed, including the (former) captain. True, she no longer quite hated all men, and Trafalgar was partly responsible, along with her experiences on Knor and Jorinne. On the other hand, she was still strictly lesbian. Abruptly, as she stared smiling at him, seemingly poised, Trafalgar raised both hands in a fending-off gesture and backed a step. ”No no, don't even think of hugging me-people will talk!” ”Oh G.o.d,” h.e.l.lfire cried, and broke up again. ”I think I'm going to throw up,” Quindy observed, in her quiet voice. ”Not till we've reds.h.i.+fted station Soljer and the whole *s.p.a.cEWAYS #4, Escape from Macho and #8, Under Twin Suns. 42 Payne-Humason system, pleasel” Janja said, smiling.

Yes, she could smile and enjoy their camaraderie, she who had not laughed or smiled for the better part of a year, and then only wanly, as if it were an effort. ”Trafalgar-you really did that?” He flipped five and tried to look self-denigrating. ”Oh, I had some help. We have a couple of friends or ten on Jorinne, you know. It is officially registered, though. The wanted pirate Captain h.e.l.lfire was slain on Jorinne- by other outlaws, not policers-and transferred her s.h.i.+p, with witnesses, just before she died.” He clapped a hand over his heart and rolled his eyes upward. ”Who-who were the witnesses?” ”Oh, no less than the renowned Caldera-clan Mehdidaktari, respected all along the s.p.a.ceways, and the Director of Station Soljer Security, Cosi-Prefect Cosi.” He rolled his eyes. They knew about his and Cosi's . . . coziness. ”I'll be d.a.m.ned,” h.e.l.lfire said, shaking her head, leaning against the closed airlock hatch and looking very serious. ”Oh, without doubt,” Cinnabar told her, and ducked a flying elbow. ”h.e.l.lfire,” Trafalgar said, noting her very serious expression and becoming just as sober, ”you are wanted on more planets than you've ever visited. We are your friends, and we've been through more than one h.e.l.l together. We can't possibly see you step off onto Thebanis and be arrested and hauled away, or knocked off by some TGO a.s.sas-uh, eliminator. We know you've changed, partly because of mental scar tissue or something like.

We all heard you give-well, almost-Satana to Janja, now that you're rich-” ”Now that we are all rich!” Cinnabar practically shouted. ”-and of course now there's the business arrangement with those people down on Jorinne, and the banker on Thebanis.” Trafalgar paused to shake his head. ”Knorese gemstone jewelry, Jorinne 'cataract' pearls, and s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps, 43 too! What a complicated trade! I will tell you this, though, citizen!” He leveled a finger at her. ”I am charging you an obligation, a service rendered should ever I need one and call on you. And right now I am saying that everyone else onboard-the Satana Coalition, no less-should demand the same.” ”Not me!” Janja said. ”I have Satana and I will have . . . whatever the name of the new s.h.i.+p is!” ”You've got it,” h.e.l.lfire said, her glance sweeping them all, and they saw something they had never seen before, any of them-the liquid glint of tears in the eyes of the vicious pirate h.e.l.lfire. ”And come to think, I am thinking Tarkij as the name for my s.h.i.+p, and you others had probably better try talking me out of it,” Janja was continuing. ”I've got an ob on you, Cap'n-I-mean-citizen,” Cinnabar said, and poked a long, thin, orange finger into h.e.l.lfire's breast-or the place where one would have been if she had b.r.e.a.s.t.s, at any rate. ”And I'll take it. You'll never be free of me, you s.e.xy Galactic!-ouch!” Trafalgar had casually swatted Cinnabar in one rounded breast; at almost the same instant h.e.l.lfire gave the Jarp a finger-flick in the crotch, where its p.e.n.i.s nestled in a pair of horribly blue trunks. Quindy came to h.e.l.lfire and set both hands on her shoulders. She looked into those moist mahogany-colored eyes. ”I take no favor and demand no obligation, h.e.l.lfire. Just that if ever I set down on a planet where you are, I want you, and you know how.” h.e.l.lfire nodded, and tears spilled down her cheeks bright and glistening as rolling pearls. She knew. She and Quindy had long been lovers, and their relations.h.i.+p was master and slave-the consummately competent s.h.i.+p-handler and computrician Quindy as slave. There was no masochism 44 gene for bioengineering to remove, and Quindaridi of Ghanji was most definitely m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic. There followed some hugging, which was followed by an awkward silence. ”All right Quindy,” Janja said at last, ”let's go get ourselves s.p.a.ceborne!” 3 ”An ancient writer, I understand, once asked 'What's in a name?' He wouldn't have asked that if he'd been called 60640329aO!” -Trafalgar Cuw Cinnabar suggested ”Ellfira” or ”Elphira,” but Helifire turned up her nose and besides Trafalgar said it sounded too much like ”Helifire” anyhow. Janja suggested her nickname for Helifire: ”Pra.s.stop” could be used as a name. No it couldn't, Helifire said; ”Pra.s.stop” wasn't any sort of name and besides the color of her hair really should be changed. As a matter of fact she was wondering if raggedy-pixieish black bangs mightn't soften the long angular lines of her face. He would come up with a name she could not resist, Trafalgar told her, and have it registered into reality on Outreach before they reached Thebanis. As a matter of fact they could easily stop off at the Outreach docking station, at least; it was a mere four light-years from Thebanis's star, Janski. (The s.h.i.+p was falling through starlit indigo and gray, past Bleak now and rus.h.i.+ng on, on. s.p.a.cedust caressed them, fitfully lit by starfire in blue and yellow, ruddy orange and greenwhite as they hurtled faster than meteors through a domain never meant for their kind.) 45 46 h.e.l.lfire said, ”Outreach?” Trafalgar Cuw nodded. He was positively scintillant in a prismatically colored Joser robe that made him look like the priest of some chromohedonistic cult. He wore his ingenuous boy expression, which he did well. ”Pos. I can arrange ident.i.ties, you see, on Outreach. I have a lot of influence, on Outreach.” Suddenly he jerked his head toward Janja and his eyes were bright with the excitement of discovery. ”Janjaglaya Wye! W-Y-E.” Janja looked at him. Eyebrows up, head on one side as she considered, briefly. ”I ... can live with that.” ”Thought you could,” he said, beaming. ”I love it,” Cinnabar said or rather its translation helmet did.

”Captain Janjaglaya Wye.” Rather plaintively Janja said, ”I don't know anything about Outreach.” ”SIPAc.u.m does. So study.” ”I don't either, dammit,”

h.e.l.lfire said. ”So study,” Trafalgar repeated, in the same bland tone. ”What was your name before? I mean, you weren't named h.e.l.lfire at birth, were you?'' ”None of your business. I hate that name. How do you have influence, on Outreach?” ”Oh-” (He gestured, robe's polychromatic sleeve streaming, flapping so that its colors flowed in a beautiful blur.)”-family. You know. It's not important. A person gains influence. Consider-we all have some on Jorinne now, for instance. Anyhow, would you rather whisper your old name to me, let me see if I can make anything out of it? Another name, I mean.'' He evades questions better than anyone in the Galaxy, Janja mused. Now there's something I want to learn to do! h.e.l.lfire made a face. She sat on the edge of her bed in her cabin-the captain's cabin of s.p.a.cer Satana. ”No.” She was looking down at her tight blue s.h.i.+mmerfabric pants, idly scratching at the metallic glint on her thigh with 47 a close-trimmed fingernail. ”Oh, Tao's b.a.l.l.s, all right! My birth-name was Aljareh. And a string of numbers. I really believe I've managed to forget them.” ”That's not so terrible,” Janja said. She was already tap-tapping the cabin's SIPAc.u.m link, initiating a computer scan for planet Outreach. ”It is to me,” h.e.l.lfire said petulantly. ”I never liked it and besides you don't have my memories, Cloud-top. Besides, it won't do, anyhow.

It's known too, that name. I mean-more than one policer organization's records have my real name in the banks. And description.” ”And all of them have the names h.e.l.lfire and Satana on file,” Trafalgar said rather quietly, feeling her morose-ness. She shot him only the briefest of dark glances. Those almost-black eyes were hardly soft, but they were a lot less hard and mean, these days. In a way h.e.l.lfire really was dead. ”h.e.l.lfire's real name, not yours,” Cinnabar corrected her lightly with a pretense at solemnity, but h.e.l.lfire didn't smile. She sat on the edge of the luxurious bed she had caused to be installed on Satana for her comfort and her s.e.xuality, and she stared at her hand at its idle work on her thigh. Her friends were trying to help. Her friends!. Friends were new to her, and the acceptance of them. So were the concepts of wealth, and retirement, and ident.i.ty-change with disguise. Her pensive dolor was an aura that stretched out to darken the thoughts and faces of her companions. Her friends. A vicious s.p.a.ce pirate, with friends! Cinnabar bit its lip. With its orange skin and carmiana-red hair, the Jarp knew how good it looked in the skin-hugging red jumpsuit Janja had bought for it, back in Komodi on Jorinne. It matched the one Janja wore, sitting hunched forward toward the little terminal. The viewscreen, small but 48 equipped with a holomagnifier, was full of a beautiful big swirl of luminous blue and indigo and lavender all traced through with ribbons of true black. The remnants of a long-dead star, richly decorative. Now that it was dead, it could be looked at and enjoyed as natural art. Gas and dust, sprawling majestically off to their ”left.” Way off to their left. Janja wondered idly what color the nebula had been when it was aflame, a living hydrogen furnace among billions, but she was not sufficiently interested to ask SIPAc.u.m for readings and a.n.a.lysis. (SIPAc.u.m was running the s.h.i.+p as well as monitoring constantly, inside and out in s.p.a.ce, close to hand and long range. For it to detach a portion of its microcircuitry to access every Outreach reference it held was less trouble than for Janja to scratch her nose while reading.) Janja was calling up peripheral/ancillary refs to Outreach and Outies, before bringing up the main entry onto the screen. ”Rich,” Cinnabar murmured for the nth time, nervous in the silence laden with dark thoughts. It stared at nothing at all with its great big round, soft eyes. SHONDEKAYAN EPH, SIPAc.u.m printed, ”first Insarch of reunified Outreach,” and followed with a date two hundred years old.

Staring, Janja was thinking about the patterned oddness of Outreacher names when she heard the voice of one called Trafalgar Cuw: ”Once, on Outreach, I had a friend named Varnalgeran Yuw. We . . . went to school together. And I have a cousin named Calcutta Kay, did you know that? We don't get much on Outreach, but we Outies get good names. Varnalgeran Yuw, and Calcutta Kay, and Trafalgar Cuw and Janjaglaya Wye. And”-abruptly, happy-faced and triumphant, he pointed at h.e.l.lfire-”not Aljerah, but Kalahari Kay I” ”That's beautiful,”

Cinnabar said, whose Jarp name was of course unp.r.o.nounceable by any but Jarps and who 49 had been Raunchy before it decided that was no proper name at all, and Janja had come up with ”Cinnabar.” h.e.l.lfire had twitched her head up to stare at the Outie just as Janja had done. She glanced at the blond. Janja had looked around; she smiled. ”I like it, Pra.s.s-top.” ” 'Kalahari Kay,' ”

h.e.l.lfire said, tasting the sound of it, testing the feel of it on her lips.

”Kalahari. Pretty enough, I guess. Does it mean something?'' Trafalgar shook his head. ”A very ancient word, we're sure of that.” ”Kalahari,” she said again. ”What about 'Kalahari Cuw'?” ”Merciless Theba! You want to be my relative!” Cinnabar and Janja laughed. Oddly h.e.l.lfire, who had once scornfully called him ”Trafalgar Pew,” did not. ”I could do worse, Traf. Could you?” ”Oh, I might have to think about that a little!” Trafalgar said. ”Particularly with Corundum gone. But-” He made an extravagant gesture-a Trafalgarish gesture-smiling ingenuously. h.e.l.lfire s.n.a.t.c.hed up an empty drinking pla.s.s and threw it at him. It was both empty and lightweight. Its lip caught air and it drifted for a moment, then fell leisurely. Trafalgar's smile became a grin. ”I'll go to con and get us patched through to Outreach,” he said. ”My cousin Saratoga Jee.” ”To Outreach! That'll cost a fortune!” ”We have a fortune, my dears! So-Janjaglaya Wye and Kalahari Cuw?” h.e.l.lfire smiled a little. ”I like it. Unless . . . Janjy wants to be sisters.” The orange non-human looked from short, pale-skinned blond with bluegray eyes to tall, lean, deeply tan h.e.l.lfire with the mahogany-hued eyes. 50 ”I don't think you'd pa.s.s,” Cinnabar said, and both Janjaglaya and Kalahari broke up. Trafalgar grinned, made a sleeve-flutteringly deep bow, and headed for the con. He moved like a breeze; like lazily trickling water. Easily, unself-consciously. That was Trafalgar Cuw of Outreach, who was both enigma and hero and who blithely denied both. The others gazed after him, each wondering, none voicing its thoughts and emotions about him. ”Trafalgar,” Janja called when he was in the hatchway called doorway, ”the head of government on Outreach is called an 'Insarch.' Why Insarch?” He looked back at her, eyebrows up. He blinked, then spread both hands. ”Who wants to be governed by an Outsarch?” And he left. ”Fascinating,” Janja said in an unfascinated voice. ”Logical, too,”

Cinnabar said, and they exchanged a glance and chuckled. ”Well,” h.e.l.lfire a.k.a. Kalahari said, ”I guess that's that. Please to try to call me by my new name. And . . . with Traf and Quindy in the con-cabin, let's be kind and leave them alone for an hour.” ”Shall we synchronize chrons for this operation?”

Cinnabar asked, and they chuckled, all three. Maybe it was a giggle. The s.h.i.+p fled past a triad of stars that took no note. A family of suns, sullen ruby and flaring golden topaz and tired old slate-blue, strung all about with their litt

<script>