"What do you mean, 'Not that it mattered'?"

"You saw them, their condition. The best of them were starving. Leather on bone. They looked like furniture."

"Then we should feed them," Panille said. "Ryan Wang didn't develop the largest food distribution in history just to let people starve."

"Feeding them's a lot easier than hauling them in dead," she said.

"These are people!" Panille snapped.

Ale's quick eyes flicked from Panille, around the room to the surgical and trauma teams, then back. Her lips were trembling, and he saw with surprise that she was only barely under control.

"That patient may have been a Mute, but he was no fool," Panille insisted. "He reported what he observed, and he did it clearly."

"I don't want to believe him," Ale said.

"But you do." Panille put an arm around her shoulders.

Ale trembled at his touch. "We must talk," she said. "Would you go back to my quarters with me?"

They rode the tubes, Ale's head lolling on his shoulder. She snored a little, caught herself and settled closer against him. He liked the feeling of her warmth soaking into him. When their car started into a curve he held her shoulder a little tighter to keep the movement from waking her, giving himself time to think. Kareen wanted to talk. Did she want to persuade? How would she argue? With her body?

Panille decided this thought was unworthy of him. He rejected it.

Twenty-six hours in surgery, he thought. Soon Ale would face the difficult politics that the surgery represented. He had noticed the deepening circles of sleepless nights settling under Ale's beautiful eyes. Panille was glad for one aspect of the surgery - it brought out the doctor in Ale, a part of her personality that had become more ghostlike during her brief association with Ryan Wang. Though she'd been alert and awake during the whole frustrating business with the Guemes Islanders, Ale had fallen asleep almost before the transport hatch closed on them. As the Islanders died under the knife one by one, he had watched her blue eyes darken over her mask.

"They're so frail," she had said. "So poor!"

The replacement blood had run out in two hours. Plasma and oxygen were gone in sixteen. Surgical supervisors suggested sterilizing sea water and using that for plasma, but Ale refused.

"Stick with what we know," she said. "This is not the time for experimentation."

In her sleep, Ale's hand reached around Panille's waist and pulled him closer. Her hair smelled of antiseptics and perspiration, but he found the mixture comforting because it was her. He liked the brush of her hair against his bare neck. The hours of sweat in his own hair made him glad he'd kept it braided. He ached for a shower even more than he ached for a bed. Panille caught himself dozing off just as they jerked to a stop. The panel above their heads flashed the message: Organization and Distribution.

"Kareen," he said, "we're here."

She sighed and squeezed his waist tighter. He pressed the hold button on the panel with his free hand.

"Kareen?"

Another sigh. "I heard you, Shadow. I'm so tired."

"We've arrived," he said. "You'll be more comfortable inside."

She looked up at him but didn't move away. Her eyes were red and puffy from lack of sleep but she managed a smile. "I just got acquainted with you," she said. "I thought I knew you, but now I'm not letting you out of my sight."

He placed a finger against her lips. "I'll just take you to your quarters. We can talk later."

"What makes this mysterious Shadow Panille tick?" she asked in a whisper. Then she kissed him. It was a brief kiss, but warm and powerful. "You don't mind, do you?" she asked.

"What about Gallow?"

"Well," she said, "the sooner we get out of here the sooner life goes on."

They uncurled themselves from each other. He liked the way the warm spots lingered and tingled on his skin. Ale stepped out of the hatch onto the docking bay and reached back a slender hand to pull him through.

"You're beautiful," he said, and her strong grip pulled him right up to her, then she hugged him close. Again, he put down his doubts about her.

"You have a way with words," she said.

"Runs in my family."

"You could've been a surgeon," she said. "You have good hands. I'd like to spend more time studying your hands."

"I'd like that," he murmured against her hair. "I've always wanted to know you better. You know that."

"I have to warn you, I snore."

"I noticed," he said. They held each other and swayed on the docking bay. "You drool, too," he said.

"Don't be crude." She pinched him in the ribs. "Ladies don't drool."

"What's this wet spot on my shoulder?"

"How embarrassing," she said. Then she took his hand and guided him up the walkway toward her building. She glanced back at him and said, "Nobody lives long enough for dillydallying. Let's get to it."

Panille realized right then that the pace of his life had just turned itself up a full notch. Tired as he had been, he sparked with the measure of energy that she injected into the air around them. There was a new bounce to her step that he hadn't noticed in surgery. Her body moved smoothly, quickly across the black-tiled foyer and he matched her step-for-step. When they walked into the ambassadorial quarters they were still holding hands.

***

Both suns stood high in the dark sky, raising heat shimmers off the water. Brett's sensitive eyes, shielded by dark glasses Scudi had found in the foil's lockers, scanned the sea. The foil cut through the waves with an ease that thrilled him. He marveled at how quickly his senses had adapted to speed. A feeling of freedom, of escape soothed him. Pursuit could not move this fast. Danger could only lie ahead, where heat shimmers distorted the horizon. Or, as Twisp called it, "the Future."

When Brett had been quite young, standing with his mother at Vashon's edge for the first time, the heat-dazzled air had been inhabited by coils of long-whiskered dragons. Today's sun felt new on his arms and face, glistening through the canopy onto the instruments. The suns ignited golden glints in Scudi's black hair. There were no dragons.

Scudi bent intently over the controls, watching the sea, the dials, the guidance screen above her head. Her mouth was set in a grim line, which softened only when she looked at Brett.

A wide stretch of kelp drew a dark shadow on the water off to his right. Scudi steered them into the lee of the kelp, finding smoother water there. Brett stared out at an ovoid green mat within the kelp. At the very center of the oval, this particular green was a vivid reflector of the sunlight. The green darkened away from the center until the kelp patch became yellowed and brown at the edges.

Seeing where he was looking, Scudi said, "The outer edges die off, curl under and fortify the rest of the patch."

They rode without speaking for a time.

Abruptly, Scudi shocked him by shutting down the foil's engines. The big craft dropped off the step with a rocking lurch.

Brett looked wildly at Scudi, but she appeared calm.

"You start us," Scudi said.

"What?"

"Start us up." Her voice was calmly insistent. "What if I were injured?"

Brett sank into his seat and looked down at the control panel. Below the screen near the center of the cockpit lay four switches and a sticker labeled "Starting Procedure."

He read the instructions and depressed the switch marked "Ignition." The hot hiss of the hydrogen ram came from the rear of the foil.

Scudi smiled.

As the instructions told him, Brett glanced up at the guidance screen. A miniature line-drawing of a foil appeared around a green dot on the screen. A red line speared outward from the green dot. He touched the button marked forward and pushed the throttle gently ahead, gripping the wheel tightly with his free hand. He could feel sweat under his palms. The craft began to lift, tipping on the flank of a wave.