At the top of the elevator shaft, Laenea and Radu stepped out into the middle of the night. It was foggy and luminous, sky and sea blending into uniform gray beneath the brilliant moon. No wind revealed the surface of the sea or the limits of the fog, but the air was cold. Laenea swung the cloak around them both. A light rain, almost invisible, drifted down, beading mistily in tiny brilliant drops on the black velvet and on Radu’s hair. He was silver and gold in the artificial light.

“It’s like Twilight now,” he said. “It rains like this in the winter.” He stretched out his arm, with the black velvet draping down like quiescent wings, opened his palm to the rain, and watched the minuscule droplets touch his fingertips. Laenea could tell from the yearning in his voice, the wistfulness, that he was painfully, desperately homesick. She said nothing, for she knew from experience that nothing could be said to help. The pain faded only with time and fondness for other places. Earth as yet had given Radu no cause for fondness. But now he stood gazing into the fog, as though he could see continents, or stars. She slipped her arm around his shoulders in a gesture of comfort.

“Let’s walk to the point.” Laenea had been enclosed in testing and training rooms and hospitals as he had been confined in ships and quarantine: She, too, felt the need for fresh air and rain and the ocean’s silent words.

The sidewalk followed the edge of the port. A rail separated it from a drop of ten meters to the sea. Incipient waves caressed the metal cliff obliquely and slid away into the darkness. Laenea and Radu walked slowly along, matching strides. Every few paces their hips brushed together. Laenea glanced at Radu occasionally and wondered how she could have thought him anything but beautiful. Her heart circled slowly in her breast, low pitched, relaxing, and her perceptions faded from fever clarity to misty dark and soothing. A veil seemed to surround and protect her. She became aware that Radu was gazing at her, more than she watched him. The cold touched them through the cloak, and they moved closer together; it seemed only sensible for Radu to put his arm around her, too, and so they walked, clasped together.

“Real work,” Laenea said thoughtfully.

“Yes… hard work, with hands or mind.” He picked up the second possible branch of their previous conversation without hesitation. “We do the work ourselves. Twilight is too new for machines — they evolved here, and they aren’t as adaptable as people.”

Laenea, who had endured unpleasant situations in which machines did not perform as intended, understood what he meant. Methods older than automation were more economical on new worlds where the machines had to be designed from the beginning but people only had to learn. Evolution was as good an analogy as any.

“Crewing’s work. Maybe it doesn’t strain your muscles, but it is work.”

“One never gets tired. Physically or mentally. The job has no challenges.”

“Aren’t the risks enough for you?”

“Not random risks,” he said. “It’s like gambling.” His background made him a harsh judge, harshest with himself.

“It isn’t slave labor, you know. You could quit and go home.”

“I wanted to come —”  He cut off the protest. “I thought it would be different.”

“I know,” Laenea said. “You think it will always be exciting, but after a while all that’s left is a dull kind of danger.”

“I did want to visit other places. To be like — in that I was selfish.”

“Ahh, stop. Selfish? No one would do it otherwise.”

“Perhaps not. But I had a different vision. I remembered…” Again he stopped himself in midsentence.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.” All his edges hardened again. “We spend most of our time carrying trivial cargoes for trivial reasons to trivial people.”

“The trivial cargoes pay for the emergencies,” Laenea said.

“That isn’t true!” Radu said sharply, then, in a more moderate tone, “The transit authority allows its equipment to be used for emergencies, but they’re paid for it, never doubt that.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Laenea said. “But that’s the way it’s always been.”

“It isn’t right,” he said. “On Twilight…” He went no further.

“You’re drawn back,” Laenea said. “More than anyone I’ve known before. It must be a comfort to love a place so much.”

At first he tensed, as if he were afraid she would mock or chide him for weakness, or laugh at him. When, instead, she smiled, his wariness decreased. “I feel better, after flights when I dream about home.”

If Laenea had still been crew she would have envied him his dreams.

“Is it your family you miss?”

“I have no family — I still miss them sometimes, but they’re gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You couldn’t know,” he said quickly, almost too quickly, as though he might have hurt her rather than the other way around. “The epidemic killed them.”

Laenea tightened her arm around his shoulder in silent comfort. She regretted her thoughtless question. She should have expected that Radu had lost family and friends during Twilight’s plague.

“I don’t know what it is about Twilight that binds us all,” Radu said. “I suppose it must be the combination — the challenge and the result. Everything is new. We try to touch the world gently. So many things could go wrong.”

He glanced at her, the blue of his eyes deep as a mountain lake, his face solemn in its strength, asking without words a question Laenea did not understand.

They walked for a while in silence.

The cold air entered Laenea’s lungs and spread through her chest, her belly, arms, legs… she imagined that the machine was cold metal, sucking the heat from her as it circled in its silent patterns. She was tired.

“What’s that?”

She glanced up. They were near the midpoint of the port’s edge, approaching lights that shone vaguely through the fog. The amorphous pink glow resolved itself into separate globes and torches. Laenea noticed a high metallic hum. Within two paces the air cleared.

The tall frames of fog-catchers reared up in concentric circles that led inward to the lights. Touched by the wind, the long wires vibrated. Touched by the wires, the fog condensed. Water dripped from wires’ tips to the platform. The intermittent sound of heavy drops on metal, like rain, provided irregular rhythm for the faint music.

“Just a party,” Laenea said. The singing, glistening wires formed a multilayered curtain, each layer transparent but in combination translucent and shimmering. Laenea moved between them, but Radu, hanging back, slowed her.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t wish to go where I haven’t been invited.”

“You are invited. We’re all invited. Would you stay away from a party at your own house?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

Laenea remembered her own days as a novice on the crew. Becoming used to one’s new status took time.

“They come to the port because of us,” Laenea said. “They come hoping we’ll stop and talk to them, and eat their food and drink their liquor.” She gestured — it was meant to be a sweeping movement, but she stopped her hand before the apex of its arc, flinching at the strain on her cracked ribs — toward the party, lights and tables, a tasseled pavilion, the fog-catchers, the people in evening costume, the servants and machines. “Why else come here? Why else bring all this here? They could be on a tropical island or under the redwoods. They could be on a mountaintop or on a desert at dawn. But this is where they’ve chosen to be, and I assure you they’ll welcome us.”

“You know the customs,” Radu said, if a little doubtfully. When they passed the last ring of fog-catchers the temperature began to rise. The warmth was a great relief. Laenea let the damp velvet cape fall away from her shoulders, and Radu did the same. A very young man, still a boy really, smoothcheeked and wide-eyed, approached and offered to take the cloak. He saw the tip of the scar between Laenea’s breasts and stared at her in curiosity and admiration. “Pilot…” he said. “Welcome, pilot.”

“Thank you. Whose gathering is this?”

The boy, now speechless, glanced over his shoulder and gestured.

Kathell Stafford glided toward them, followed by her white tiger.

Gray streaked Kathell’s hair, like the silver thread woven into her silk gown. Veins glowed blue beneath her light brown skin.

“I’m flattered that you came,” she said. “I heard you were in training.”

Laenea heard in Kathell’s voice the same tone that had been in the shopkeeper’s, a note of awe and deference. She grasped Kathell’s hands.

“I’m just the same,” she said. “I haven’t changed.”

Kathell’s tiny, fragile hands trembled in Laenea’s strong grip.

“But you have,” she said. “You’re a pilot now.”

Discomforted, Laenea let her go.

The other guests, quick to sense novelty, drifted nearer as if they had no particular direction in mind. Laenea had seen all the ways of approaching crew or pilots: the shyness or bravado or undisguised awe of children; the unctuous familiarity of some adults; the sophisticated nonchalance of the rich.

Laenea recognized few of the people clustering behind Kathell. She stood looking out at them, down a bit on most, and she almost wished she had led Radu around the fog- catchers instead of between them. She did not feel ready for the effusive greetings offered pilots; they were, for Laenea, as yet unearned. The guests outshone her in every way, in beauty, in dress, in knowledge; yet they wanted her, they needed her, to touch what was denied them.

She could see the passage of time, one second after another, that quickly, in their faces. Quite suddenly she was overcome by pity.

Kathell introduced them all to her. Laenea would not remember one name in ten. Radu stood alone, slightly separated from her by the crowd, half a head taller than any of the others. Someone handed Laenea a glass of champagne. People clustered around her, waiting for her to talk. She found that she had no more to say to them than to those she left behind in the crew. She smiled, doubting that the expression masked her unease.

A man came up to her and shook her hand. “I’ve always wanted to meet an Aztec…”

His voice trailed off at Laenea’s frown. She did not want to be churlish, so she put aside her annoyance. “Just ‘pilot,’ please.”

“But Aztecs —”

“The Aztecs sacrificed their captives’ hearts,” Laenea said. “We aren’t captives, and we certainly don’t feel we’ve made a sacrifice.”

She turned away, ending the conversation before he could press forward with a witty comment. Laenea shivered and wished away the dense crowd of rich, free, trapped human beings. She wanted quiet and solitude.

Suddenly Radu was near. Laenea grasped his outstretched hand. He said something to Kathell, which the ringing in Laenea’s ears blocked out. Kathell nodded and led the way through the crowd. The guests parted like water for Kathell. For Kathell and her tiger, but Kathell was in front. Laenea and Radu followed in her wake. They moved through regions of fragrances: mint, carnation, pine, musk, orange blossom. The boundaries were sharp between the odors.

They entered the pavilion. Radu pulled the front flap closed before anyone else could follow. Laenea immediately felt warmer. The temperature was probably the same outside in the open party, but the luminous tent walls made her feel enclosed and protected from the cold vast currents of the sea.

She sat gratefully in a soft chair. The white tiger laid his chin on her knee and she stroked his huge head.

Kathell took the empty champagne glass and gave Laenea a different drink. Laenea sipped it: warm milk punch. A hint that she should be in bed.

“I just got out of the hospital,” she said. “I guess I overdid it a little. I’m not used to —” She gestured with her free hand, meaning: everything. My new body, being outside and free again, Radu. Her vision began to blur, so she closed her eyes.

“Stay awhile,” Kathell said.

Laenea did not try to answer; she was too comfortable, too sleepy. She slowed her heart and relaxed the arterial constricting muscles. Blood flowing through the dilated capillaries made her blush, and she felt warmer.

Laenea thought Kathell said more, but the words drowned in the murmur of muffled voices, wind, and sea. She felt only the softness of the cushions beneath her, the warm fragrant air, and the fur of the white tiger.

Time passed, how much or at what rate Laenea had no idea. She slept gratefully and unafraid, deeply, dreaming, and hardly roused when she was moved. She muttered something and was reassured, but never remembered the words, only the tone. Wind and cold touched her and were shut out. She felt a slight acceleration. Then she slept again.

oOo

Orca felt tired after the long swim from Harmony to the spaceport. She swam into the ferry dock, pausing where water and air and the metal ramp intersected. The air world began to come back to her. Her metabolism slowed and she felt chilly. She never noticed the cold, deep in the sea.

She stood and shook the water from her short, pale hair. She had arrived just ahead of a ferry. Its sails furled softly and its hull sighed as it settled lower in the water. Orca hurried toward the deck. Swimmers, even divers, were not supposed to come on board this way, but her people used the pier as if it had been built for them. They stayed out of the way of arriving and departing ferries, but that was only common sense.

Whenever the port authorities roused themselves to complain, the divers’ council renewed its application to build an underwater hatchway in their quarters in the stabilizer shaft. The fight over the permits had been going on for years. For herself, Orca ignored the dispute and came on board whatever way was most convenient at the time, whether it was ferry dock or access ladder or a fishing pier’s elevator.

The afternoon breeze slapped small waves against the sides of the port and dried the droplets of water clinging to the fine hair on Orca’s arms and legs. She stretched, spreading her webbed hands to the sun.

She was well clear of the ramp by the time the ferry eased away. Naked and barefoot she padded into the blockhouse and pushed the button for the elevator. It was midafternoon, so quite a few people were around. Port workers and other crew members found the sight of an unclothed diver unremarkable, but some of the tourists stopped and stared. Orca ignored them. The only way to get from the surface of the port to divers’ quarters was to use the elevator, and the only way to get to the elevator was to cross areas frequented by the public. Orca was not about to wear a wet suit, or anything else, on a long-distance swim. For a diver, the idea was ridiculous.

Sometimes a tourist complained to the port authority, and the port authority complained to the divers’ council. The council considered the objection gravely — and renewed the application for the underwater entrance. By this time, the sequence was practically a game.

Public nudity never bothered Orca. She knew some people objected, but she found their reasons absurd. She had worn nothing more concealing than a knife belt until she was thirteen years old and taking her first trip into the human world. It had taken her years to get used to clothing. Even now she wore clothes more as decoration than as covering.

The elevator arrived and Orca entered the cage. She was anxious to get to divers’ quarters. She was famished. She wanted half a kilo of broiled salmon and some French pastries. Coming across from the mainland, the fishing had been terrible. She had heard reports of several shoals of fish, but they were all well off a direct course to the port.

Now that her metabolism had slowed to surface normal, Orca felt chilly in the air conditioning. Gooseflesh hardened her nipples. She folded her arms across her small breasts.

Ever since she had left the water, her message signal had been glowing, a pinpoint of light just behind her eyes. Granting acceptance, she received the messages through her internal communicator. They scrolled across a screen she imagined in her mind, and she scanned each one quickly.

A note from a friend pleased her; junk announcements broadcast to everyone on the port irritated her. She killed each one as soon as she had read far enough to identify it. The people who wrote them got cleverer and cleverer. Orca’s message bank contained a strong filter that was meant to discard most advertising and other solicitations. Some of the circulars had confused the program enough to make it let them through. Orca would have to rewrite it and strengthen its criteria. The escalation never ended.

One message made her angry: “The pilot selection committee has scheduled an appointment… ”

Oh, leave me alone, she thought without transmitting. She signaled the message bank to kill that note, too. The administrators thought she would make a good pilot. She was tired of declining their invitations; now she simply ignored them. She wished she could filter them, but refusing messages from one’s employer was not the most politic thing to do.

She was tired of being tempted. And she was tempted, she never denied that.

Orca could be on the crew and remain a diver. She doubted, though, that a pilot would still be capable of withstanding the physical stress a diver needed to take. Since no diver had ever become a pilot, the administrators could only offer Orca guesses and simulations about whether a mechanical heart would tolerate deep dives. Their guess was that it would fail, and Orca’s guess was that they were right. She chose to remain as she was, and she wished they would stop trying to change her mind for her.

The elevator stopped at the divers’ floor, the doors opened, and Orca stepped out into the foyer. The carpet was soft against her bare toes. She fetched some clothes from the locker room, left the clothing and her knife in an empty bedroom, and wandered down to the kitchen. A friend of hers, a member of another diving family, sat at the table munching on a sandwich and watching TV, an old flat-screen rerun.

“Hi, Gray.”

“Hi,” he said with his mouth full.

Orca liked Gray. He was quite beautiful, too. He was taller than average for a diver. His eyes were pale green, and he wore his sunstreaked brown hair unfashionably long, tied at the nape of his neck with a silver ribbon. Orca felt a familiar and pleasant surge of sexual desire. Whenever two families of divers met, it was the custom for the young adults to go off in a group and play. The custom continued out here, when divers from different families visited the spaceport.

Orca could imagine Gray’s hair fanned out against a pillow, or drifting loose in the water.

She pulled a couple of salmon steaks out of the refrigerator, slapped them on the grill, opened a bottle of champagne, poured herself a mugful, and sat down. “Can I have a bite?”

Gray grinned and handed her half his sandwich. “Anybody who would drink champagne out of a mug ought to have peanut butter and jelly as an appetizer.”

She took a bite of his sandwich and a sip of the champagne. “Not bad.” She offered him the mug. “Want to try it?”

He shook his head. “Man from Atlantis is on in a minute.”

“Oh yeah? Which one is it?”

“The one with the giant flying octopus.”

Orca refilled her mug, flipped the salmon to grill on the other side, and settled down to watch the ancient show. It had been filmed before any divers existed, and it had everything wrong. Orca loved it. She had never met a diver who did not enjoy it, except her father, who considered watching it to be insufficiently dignified and politically incorrect. When they projected it underwater the cousins sometimes joined in watching, but their reaction was one of bemusement.

“He is pretty,” she said during a pause in the dialogue, when Mark Harris, the hero, was persuading the giant flying octopus not to help Mr. Schubert, the villain, take over the world, and the giant flying octopus was sending small squeaky noises of affection toward Mark Harris.

Orca liked the episodes in which Mr. Schubert appeared much better than those in which the Navy demanded that Mark Harris perform some military task, and he unquestioningly obeyed. When they were little, Orca and her brother had made up stories in which Mark Harris told the military what it could do with its silly plots, then swam away and conducted guerrilla warfare against the landers until he had freed all the imprisoned cetaceans, scuttled all the whaling ships, and mobilized public opinion to ban propeller-driven craft so the sea regained its peace. That matched her people’s history more closely. But even as a child she had forgiven Mark Harris for failing to accomplish all those tasks. Unlike the real divers, he was all alone.

Orca slid her salmon off the grill onto a plate and settled down to eat in front of the TV. She took a sip of champagne, savoring the bubbles that sent the alcohol straight to her head. The Man from Atlantis was best watched slightly drunk.

“Want to sleep in my room tonight?” she said to Gray.

“Sure,” he said, and speared a bite of her fish.

oOo

Laenea half woke, warm, warm to her center. A recent dream swam into her consciousness and out again, leaving no trace but the memory of its passing. She closed her eyes and relaxed, to remember it if it would come, but she could recall only that it was a dream of piloting a ship in transit. The details she could not perceive. Not yet. She was left with a comfortless excitement that upset her drowsiness. Her heart purred fast and seemed to give off heat, though that was as impossible as that it might chill her blood.

The room around her was dim. All she could tell about it was that it was outside the hospital. The smells were neither astringent antiseptics nor cloying drugs, but faint perfume. Silky cotton rather than coarse synthetics surrounded her. Between her eyelashes reflections glinted from the ceiling. She must be in Kathell’s apartment in the point stabilizer.

She pushed herself up on her elbows. Her ribs creaked like old parquet floors, and deep muscle aches spread from the center of her body to her shoulders, her arms, her legs. She made a sharp sound, more surprise than pain. She had driven herself too hard; she needed rest, not activity. She let herself sink slowly down into the big red bed, closing her eyes and drifting back toward sleep. She heard the rustling of two different fabrics sliding one against the other.

“Are you all right?”

The voice would have startled her if she had not been so nearly asleep again. She opened her eyes and found Radu standing near, his jacket unbuttoned, a faint sheen of sweat on his bare chest and forehead. The concern on his face matched the worry in his voice.

Laenea smiled. “You’re still here.” She had assumed without thinking that he had gone on his way, to see and do all the interesting things that attracted visitors on their first trip to earth.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

“You could have gone…” But she wanted him to stay.

His hand on her forehead felt cool and soothing. “I think you have a fever. Is there someone I should call?”

Laenea thought about her body for a moment, lying still and making herself receptive to its signals. Her heart was spinning much too fast. She calmed and slowed it, wondering again what adventure had occurred in her dream. Nothing else was amiss. Her lungs were clear, her hearing sharp. She slid her hand between her breasts to touch the scar: smooth and body temperature, no infection.

“I overtired myself,” she said. “That’s all… ” Sleep was overtaking her again, but she said, drowsily and curiously, “Why did you stay?”

“Because,” he said slowly, sounding very far away, “I wanted to stay with you. I remember you…”

She wished she knew what he was talking about, but at last sleep was the stronger lure.

oOo

Radu sat on the edge of the bed and brushed a lock of Laenea’s hair from her forehead. She remained soundly asleep. He was glad she had wakened, though, however briefly, for he had been getting worried. Since Kathell’s aide brought them here, Laenea had barely moved.

Radu had barely moved, himself, since putting her to bed. Now that he knew she would be all right, he stood and stretched. The enormous bedroom was more than spacious enough to walk around in, but Radu wanted to let Laenea sleep undisturbed. He opened the door. The hallway was deserted.

The apartment was so large he had to be careful to keep his bearings. He paused before a wall of photographs: Kathell’s crippled white tiger, signed portraits, a small airship. Her blimp’s envelope was gold, its gondola black. It was a far cry from the patched and ancient craft Radu used to fly on Twilight, but the picture brought back pleasant memories. That summer, the year before the plague, had been the happiest of his life. At fifteen he had had the responsibility for the airship for a whole season. He had traveled all over the western continent, freer than he had ever been before or since, even on the starship crew. He wondered if Laenea liked blimps.

He looked around the apartment for a while longer, but found no one to talk to. Surrounded by unrelenting luxury, he felt uncomfortable. He returned to Laenea’s room, sat near her bed, and waited.

oOo

When Laenea woke again, she woke completely. The aches and pains had faded in the night — or in the day, for she had no idea how long she had slept, or even how late at night or early in the morning she had visited Kathell’s party.

She was in her favorite room in Kathell’s apartment, one gaudier than the others. Though Laenea did not indulge in much personal adornment, she liked the scarlet and gold of the room, its intrusive energy, its Dionysian flavor. Even the aquaria set in the walls were inhabited by fish gilt with scales and jeweled with luminescence. Laenea felt the honest glee of compelling shapes and colors. She sat up and threw off the blankets, stretching and yawning in pure animal pleasure. Then, seeing Radu asleep, sprawled in the red velvet pillow chair, she fell silent, surprised, not wishing to wake him. She slipped quietly out of bed, pulled a robe from the closet, and padded into the bathroom.

After she had bathed, she felt comfortable and able to breathe properly for the first time since her operation. She had removed the strapping in order to shower, and as her cracked ribs hurt no more free than bandaged, she did not bother to replace the tape.

Back in the bedroom, Radu was awake.

“Good morning.”

“It’s not quite midnight,” he said, smiling.

“Of what day?”

“You slept what was left of last night and all today.”

“Where’s Kathell?”

“I don’t know. Her party was being packed up to go somewhere else. She said you were to stay here as long as you liked.”

Laenea knew people who would have done almost anything for Kathell, yet she knew no one of whom Kathell had ever asked a favor. This puzzled her.

“How in the world did you get me here? Did I walk?”

“We didn’t want to wake you. We cleared one of the large serving carts and lifted you onto it and pushed you here.”

Laenea laughed. “You should have folded a flower in my hands and pretended you were at a wake.”

“Someone did make that suggestion.”

“I wish I hadn’t been asleep — I would have liked to see the expressions of the grounders when we passed.”

“Your being awake would have spoiled the illusion,” Radu said.

Laenea laughed again, and this time he joined her.

As usual, clothes of all styles and sizes hung in the large closets. Laenea ran her hand across a row of garments, stopping when she touched a pleasurable texture. The first shirt she found near her size was deep green velvet with bloused sleeves. She slipped it on and buttoned it up to her breastbone.

“I still owe you a restaurant meal,” she said to Radu.

“You owe me nothing at all,” he said, much too seriously.

She buckled her belt with a jerk and shoved her feet into her boots, annoyed. “You don’t even know me, but you stayed with me and took care of me for the whole first day of your first trip to earth. Don’t you think I should — don’t you think it would be friendly for me to give you a meal?” She glared at him. “Willingly?”

He hesitated, startled by her anger. “I would find great pleasure,” he said slowly, “in accepting that gift.” He met Laenea’s gaze, and when it softened he smiled again. Laenea’s exasperation melted and flowed away.

“Come along, then,” she said to him for the second time. He rose from the pillow chair, quickly and awkwardly. None of Kathell’s furniture was designed for a person his height or Laenea’s. She reached to help him; they joined hands.

oOo

The point stabilizer was itself a complete city in two parts: one, a blatant tourist world, the second, a discrete permanent supporting society. Laenea often experimented with restaurants here, but this time she went to one she knew well. Experiments in the point were not always successful. Quality spanned as wide a spectrum as culture.

Marc’s had been fashionable a few years before, and now was not, but its proprietor remained unaffected by cycles of fashion. Pilots or princes, crew members or diplomats could come and go; if Marc minded, he never said so. Laenea led Radu into the dim foyer of the restaurant and touched the signal button. In a few moments an area before them brightened into a pattern like oil paint on water.

“Hello, Marc,” Laenea said.

Only the imperturbable perfection of Marc’s voice revealed its artificial nature. At first Laenea had found it discomforting to speak with someone so articulate, but now she unconsciously thought of Marc simply as someone slightly over-concerned with precision.

The display brightened into yellow. “Laenea!” Marc said. “It’s good to see you, after so long. And a pilot, now.”

“It’s good to be here.” She drew Radu forward a step. “This is Radu Dracul, of Twilight, on his first earth landing.”

“Hello, Radu Dracul. I hope you find us neither too depraved nor too dull.”

“Neither one at all,” Radu said.

The headwaiter appeared to take them to their table.

“Welcome,” Marc said, instead of good-bye, and from drifting blues and greens the image faded to nothingness.

Their table was lit by the reflected blue glow of light diffused into the sea, and the fish groaked at the window like curious hungry urchins.

“Marc has… an unusual way of presenting himself,” Radu said.

“Yes,” Laenea said. “He never comes out, no one ever goes in. I don’t know why. Some say he was disfigured, some that he has an incurable disease and can never be with anyone again. There are always new rumors. But he never talks about himself and no one would invade his privacy by asking.”

“People must have a higher regard for privacy on earth than elsewhere,” Radu said drily, as though he had had considerable experience with prying questions.

Now that Laenea thought about it, Marc had never spoken to her until the third or fourth time she had come.

“It’s nothing about the people. He protects himself,” she said, knowing it must be true.

She handed Radu a menu and opened her own. “What would you like to eat?”

“I’m to choose from this list?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“And then someone cooks it, then someone else brings it to you.”

Radu glanced down at the menu, shaking his head slightly, but he made no comment.

Laenea ordered for them both, for Radu was unfamiliar with the dishes offered.

Laenea tasted the wine. It was excellent; she put down her glass and allowed the waiter to fill it. Radu watched scarlet liquid rise in crystal, staring deep.

“I should have asked if you drink wine,” Laenea said. “But do at least try it.”

He looked up quickly, his eyes focusing; he had not, perhaps, been staring at the wine, but at nothing, absently. He picked up the glass, held it, sniffed it, sipped from it.

“I see now why we use wine so infrequently at home.”

Laenea drank again, and again could find no fault. “Never mind, if you don’t like it —”

But he was smiling. “Twilight is renowned for making the worst wine in the settled worlds. I’ll have to stop being offended when someone says so, now that I’ve tasted this.”

Laenea smiled and raised her glass to him. She was so hungry that the wine was already making her feel lightheaded. Radu, too, was very hungry, or sensitive to alcohol, for his defenses began to ease. He relaxed; no longer did he seem ready to leap up, grab the waiter by the arm, and ask him why he stayed here, performing trivial services for trivial reasons and trivial people. And though he still glanced frequently at Laenea — watched her, almost — he no longer looked away when their gazes met. She did not find his attention annoying, only inexplicable. She had been attracted to men and men to her many times, and often the attractions coincided. Radu was extremely attractive. But what he felt toward her was obviously something much stronger; whatever he wanted went far beyond sex. Laenea ate in silence, finding nothing, no answers, in the depths of her own wine. The tension rose until she noticed it, peripherally at first, then clearly, sharply, a point separating her from Radu. He sat feigning ease, one arm resting on the table, but his soup was untouched and his hand was clenched into a fist.

“You —” she said finally.

“I —” he began simultaneously.

They both stopped. Radu looked relieved. After a moment Laenea continued.

“You came to see earth. But you haven’t even left the port. Surely you had more interesting plans than to watch someone sleep.”

He glanced away, glanced back, slowly opened his fist, touched the edge of the glass with a fingertip.

“It’s a prying question but I think I have the right to ask it of you.”

“I wanted to stay with you,” he said slowly, and Laenea remembered those words, in his voice, from her half-dream awakening.

“ ‘I remember you,’ you said.”

He blushed, spots of high color on his cheekbones. “I hoped you wouldn’t remember that.”

“Tell me what you meant.”

“It all sounds foolish and childish and romantic.”

She raised one eyebrow, questioning.

“For the last day I’ve felt I’ve been living in some kind of unbelievable dream…”

“Dream rather than nightmare, I hope.”

“You gave me a gift I wished for for years.”

“A gift? What?”

“Your hand. Your smile. Your time…” His voice had grown very soft and hesitant again. “When the plague came, on Twilight, all my clan died, eight adults and four other children. I almost died, too…” His fingers brushed his scarred cheek. Laenea thought he was unaware of the habit. “But the medical team came, isolated the cryptovirus, and synthesized a vaccine. I was already sick, but I recovered. The crew of the mercy mission —”

“We stayed several weeks,” Laenea said. More details of her single visit to Twilight returned: the settlements near collapse, the desperately ill trying to attend the dying.

“You were the first crew member I ever saw. The first off-worlder. You saved my people, my life —”

“Radu, it wasn’t only me.”

“I know. I even knew then. It didn’t matter. I was sick for so long, and when I came to and knew I would live, it hardly mattered. I was frightened and full of grief and lost and alone. I needed… someone… to admire. And you were there. You were the only stability in my chaos, a hero…”

His voice trailed off in uncertainty at Laenea’s smile. “This isn’t easy for me to say.”

Reaching across the table, Laenea grasped his wrist. The beat of his pulse was as alien as flame. She could think of nothing to tell him that would not sound patronizing or parental, and she did not care to speak to him in either guise.

He raised his head and looked at her, searching her face. “I joined the crew because it was what I always wanted to do, after… I hoped I would meet you, but I don’t think I ever believed I would. And then I saw you again, and I realized I wanted… to be someone in your life. A friend, at best, I hoped. A shipmate, if nothing else. But — you’d become a pilot, and everyone knows pilots and crew stay apart.”

“The first ones take pride in their solitude,” Laenea said, for Ramona-Teresa’s rejection still stung. Then she relented, for she might never have met Radu Dracul if the pilots had accepted her completely. “Maybe they needed it.”

Radu looked at her hand on his, and touched his scarred cheek again, as if he could brush the marks away. “I think I’ve loved you since the day you came to Twilight.” He stood abruptly, but withdrew his hand gently. “I should never —”

She rose too. “Why not?”

“I have no right to…”

“To what?”

“To ask anything of you. To expect —” Flinching, he cut off the word. “To burden you with my hopes.”

“What about my hopes?”

He was silent with incomprehension. Laenea stroked his rough cheek, once when he winced like a nervous colt, and again: The lines of strain across his forehead eased almost imperceptibly. She brushed back the errant lock of dark blond hair. “I’ve had less time to think of you than you of me,” she said, “but I think you’re beautiful, and an admirable man.”

Radu smiled with little humor. “I’m not thought beautiful on Twilight.”

“Then Twilight has as many fools as any other human world.”

“You… want me to stay?”

“Yes.”

He sat down again like a man in a dream.

“Have you contracted for transit again?”

“Not yet,” Radu said.

“I have a month before my proving flight.” She thought of places she could take him, sights she could show him. “I thought I’d just have to endure the time —” She fell silent, for Ramona-Teresa was standing in the entrance of the restaurant, scanning the room. She saw Laenea and came toward her. Laenea waited, frowning; Radu turned and froze, struck by Ramona’s compelling presence: serenity, power, determination. Laenea wondered if the older pilot had relented, but she was no longer so eager to be presented with mysteries, rather than to discover them herself.

Ramona-Teresa stopped at their table, ignoring Radu, or, rather, glancing at him, dismissing him in the same instant, and speaking to Laenea. “They want you to go back.”

Laenea had almost forgotten the doctors and administrators, who could hardly take her departure as calmly as did the other pilots. “Did you tell them where I was?” She knew immediately that she had asked an unworthy question. “I’m sorry.”

“They always want to teach us that they’re in control. Sometimes it’s easiest to let them believe they are.”

“Thanks,” Laenea said, “but I’ve had enough tests and plastic tubes.” She felt very free, for whatever she did she would not be grounded: She was worth too much. No one would even censure her for irresponsibility, for everyone knew pilots were quite perfectly mad.

“Be careful using your credit key.”

“All right…” One was supposed to be able to keep one’s files private, but enough power and money could, without doubt, overcome the safeguards. Laenea wished she had not got out of the habit of carrying cash. “Ramona, do you have any cash? Can you lend me some?”

Now Ramona did look at Radu, critically. “It would be better if you stopped being so willful and came with me.”

Radu flushed. She was, all too obviously, not speaking to him.

“No, it wouldn’t.” Laenea’s tone was chill.

The dim blue light glinted silver from the gray in Ramona’s hair as she turned back to Laenea and reached into an inner pocket. She handed her a folded sheaf of bills. “You young ones never plan.” Ramona-Teresa hesitated, shook her head, and left.

Laenea shoved the money into her pants pocket, annoyed more because Ramona-Teresa had brought it, assuming she would need it, than because she had had to ask for it.

“She may be right,” Radu said slowly. “Pilots, and crew —” 

She touched his hand again, rubbing its back, following the strong fine bones to his wrist. “She shouldn’t have been so snobbish. We’re none of her business.”

“She was… I never met anyone like her before. I felt as if I were in the presence of someone so different from me — so far beyond — that we couldn’t speak together.” He grinned, quick flash of strong white teeth behind his shaggy mustache, deep smile lines in his cheeks. “Even if she’d cared to.” With his free hand he stroked Laenea’s green velvet sleeve. She could feel the beat of his pulse, rapid and upset. As if he had closed an electrical circuit a pleasurable chill spread up Laenea’s arm.

“Radu, did you ever meet a pilot, or a crew member, who wasn’t different from anyone you had ever met before? I haven’t. We all start out that way. Transit didn’t change Ramona.”

He acquiesced with silence only, no more certain of the validity of her assurance than she was.

“For now it doesn’t make any difference anyway,” Laenea said.

The unhappiness slipped from Radu’s expression, the joy came back, but the uncertainty remained.

They finished their dinner quickly, in expectation, anticipation, paying insufficient attention to the excellent food. Though annoyed that she had to worry about the subject at all, Laenea considered available ways of preserving her freedom.

But the situation was hardly serious; evading the administrators as long as possible was a matter of pride and personal pleasure. “Fools… ” she muttered.

“They may have a special reason for wanting you to go back,” Radu said. Anticipation of the next month flowed through both their minds. “Some problem — some danger.”

“They’d’ve said so.”

“Then what do they want?”

“Ramona said it — they want to prove they control us.” She drank the last few drops of her brandy; Radu followed suit. They rose and walked together toward the foyer. “They want to keep me packed in foam like an expensive machine until I can take my ship.”

At the front of the restaurant, Laenea reached for Ramona-Teresa’s money.

Marc’s image glowed into existence.

“Your dinner’s my gift,” he said. “In celebration.”

She wondered if Ramona had told him of her problem. He could as easily know from his own sources, or the free meal might be an example of his frequent generosity. “I wonder how you ever make a profit, my friend,” she said, “but thank you.”

“I overcharge tourists,” Marc said, the artificial voice so smooth that it was impossible to know if he spoke cynically or sardonically or if he were simply joking.

“I don’t know where I’m going next,” Laenea told him, “but are you looking for anything?”

“Nothing in particular,” he said. “Pretty things…” Silver swirled across the air, like a miniature snowstorm falling from a cloudless sky.

“I know.”

The corridors dazzled Laenea after the dim restaurant; she wished for a gentle evening and moonlight. Between cold metal walls, she and Radu walked close together, warm, arms around each other. “Marc collects,” Laenea said. “We all bring him things.”

“ ‘Pretty things.’ ”

“Yes… I think he tries to bring the nicest bits of all the worlds inside with him. I think he creates his own reality.”

“One that has nothing to do with ours.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s what they’d do at the hospital,” Radu said. “Isolate you, and you disagree that that would be valuable.”

“Not for me. For Marc, perhaps.”

He nodded. “And… now?”

“Back to Kathell’s, for a while at least.” She reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. His hair tickled her hand. “The rule I disagreed with most was the one that forbade any sex while I was in training.”

The smile lines appeared again, bracketing his mouth parallel to his drooping mustache, crinkling the skin around his eyes. “I understand entirely,” he said, “why you aren’t anxious to go back.”

oOo

Entering her room in Kathell’s suite, Laenea turned on the lights. Mirrors reflected the glow, bright niches among red plush and gold trim. She and Radu stood together on the silver surfaces, hands clasped, for a moment as hesitant as children. Then Laenea turned to Radu, and he to her; they ignored the actions of the mirror figures. Laenea’s hands on the sides of Radu’s face touched his scarred cheeks; she kissed him once, lightly, again, harder. His mustache was soft and bristly against her lips and her tongue. His hands tightened over her shoulder blades, and moved down. He held her gently. She slipped one hand between their bodies, beneath his jacket, stroking his bare skin, tracing the taut muscles of his back, his waist, his hip. His breathing quickened.

At the beginning nothing was different — but nothing was the same. The change was more important than motions, position, endearments; Laenea had experienced those in all their combinations, content with involvement for a few moments’ pleasure. That had always been satisfying and sufficient; she had never suspected the potential for evolution that depended on the partners. Leaning over Radu, with her hair curling down around their faces, looking into his smiling blue eyes, she felt close enough to him to absorb his thoughts and sense his soul. They caressed each other leisurely. Laenea’s nipples hardened, but instead of throbbing they tingled. Radu moved against her and her excitement heightened suddenly, irrationally, grasping her, shaking her. She gasped but could not force the breath back out. Radu kissed her shoulder, the base of her throat, stroked her stomach, drew his hand up her side, cupped her breasts.

“Radu —”

Her climax was sudden and violent, a wave contracting all through her as her single thrust pushed Radu’s hips down against the mattress. He was startled into a climax of his own as Laenea shuddered involuntarily, straining against him, clasping him to her, unable to catch his rhythm. But neither of them cared.

They lay together, panting and sweaty.

“Is that part of it?” His voice was unsteady.

“I guess so.” Her voice, too, showed the effects of surprise. “No wonder they’re so quiet about it.”

“Does it — is your pleasure decreased?” He was ready to be angry for her.

“No, that isn’t it, it’s —” She started to say that the pleasure was tenfold greater, but remembered the start of their loveplay, before she had been made aware of just how many of her rhythms were rearranged. The beginning had nothing to do with the fact that she was a pilot. “It was fine.” A lame adjective. “Just unexpected. And you?”

He smiled. “As you say — unexpected. Surprising. A little… frightening.”

“Frightening?”

“All new experiences are a little frightening. Even the very enjoyable ones. Or maybe those most of all.”

Laenea laughed softly.