"I knew some of that, thanks to Cathy and Daddy, even before Web and Jeremy got hold of me," Berry said. "So you got citizenship?"

"Yep. On the other hand, OFS isn't especially fond of Beowulf, either. It didn't exactly fall all over itself to cooperate with any expatriation requests. Even with the Anti-Slavery League pushing our case, Frontier Security was dragging its heels for all it was worth. Matter of fact, although Jeremy's never admitted it, I've always suspected that the mysterious demise of at least one Sector Commissioner had something to do with finally breaking that particular log jam." He shook his head. "Either way, though, it took six T-years to get it done, and I was already eleven, standard, before Beowulf managed to pry us back lose from Frontier Security."

"Oh. Why does that name, when you say it, seem to rhyme with Wicked Cesspool Demons of the Universe?"

Hugh smiled. "It's probably best to stay away from my opinion of the OFS. Or all the ice cream in this parlor might suddenly melt. Let's just say that growing up in an OFS relocation center—call it refugee camp, which is blunter but a lot more accurate—is not an ideal environment for a child. If Jeremy—excuse me, I meant to say if whoever my anonymous guardian angel was—hadn't been able to . . . expedite things in the end, I'm afraid to think what might have become of me."

The smile stayed on his face, but there wasn't much good humor left in it. "By the time I was eleven, I was a real thug. With an eleven-year-old's view of the world, but a body as big as that of most adult males. And I'm stronger than I look, too."

"Than you look?" Berry started to giggle, and covered her mouth with her hand. "Uh . . . Hugh. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but it's not actually an accident that my Amazons"—she nodded at the two ex-Scrags sitting at the next table—"call you either 'the gorilla' or 'the cave man.' "

"Well, yeah. That's been pretty much a constant my whole life. By now, I'm used to it. But to get back to the point, by the time Jeremy—personally—turned up to tell me Beowulf was finally going to haul us out of there, I had a bright career ahead of me as a criminal. I wasn't actually that happy to leave, to tell you the truth."

"I take it you changed your mind, eventually?"

Hugh laughed. "Took about three months. Trust me on this one, Berry. The surest and fastest way known to humanity I can think of to get gangster attitudes nipped in the bud is to have Jeremy X as a godfather. That man makes any gang boss or criminal mastermind in the universe look wishy-washy and sentimental, if he sets his mind to a project. Which, in my case, was what you might call 'the Reformation and Re-Education of Hugh Arai.' "

Berry laughed also. "I can believe that!" She reached across the table and gave Hugh's hand a squeeze. "I'm certainly glad he did."

Her voice got a little huskier, with that last sentence. And the touch of her hand—it was the first time they'd had any physical contact—sent a spike down his spine.

This is SUCH a bad idea. But he brushed aside that shrilling inner voice of caution much as a moose might brush aside slender spruce branches. In rutting season. He probably had a sappy grin on his face, too.

There was a little commotion at the door. Turning his head, Hugh saw that one of the Ballroom militants—ex-Ballroom, officially, although Hugh had his doubts—was trying to push his way into the parlor. He was having a tough time of it, but not because of any opposition being put up by Berry's Amazons.

Rather to the contrary. Lara rose from her seat, arms spread wide. "Saburo, honey! I wasn't expecting to see you until next week!"

No, the real problem was simply the population density in the outer and larger public room of the ice cream parlor. Every seat at every table was taken, and every square foot in between was jammed tight with people.

That had happened within five minutes of their arrival at the parlor. Hugh had commented on it, at the time. "You weren't kidding when you said this place was popular, were you?"

Berry had looked uncomfortable. At the next table, Yana had laughed and said: "It's popular, all right. But it's only thispopular when she comes in."

As a former security expert, Hugh was simultaneously pleased and appalled. On the one hand—what you might call, the strategic hand—the quite-evident immense public approval that Torch's queen enjoyed was her greatest protection. It was no accident, after all, that for a public figure to be unpopular was the single most important factor in assessing his or her risk of being assassinated.

On a tactical level, however, this expression of public approval was something of a nightmare. Hugh found himself automatically falling into old habits, continually scanning the crowd on the lookout for weapons or any sort of threatening moves.

"Hugh!" Berry had exclaimed irritably, after a little while. "Do you always have the habit of not looking at the person you're talking to?"

Guiltily, he'd remembered he was officially on a date with the queen, not her bodyguard. Thereafter, he'd managed to keep his eyes and attention on Berry, for the most part—something which grew easier as the evening wore on. Still, there remained some part of him always on alert and periodically shrilling warnings.

Saburo finally gave up trying to force his way through the mob. "Forget it!" he said, exasperated. "Lara, tell Her Way Too Popular Majesty that something's come up. We need her at the palace. ASAP. That means 'as soon as possible,' not 'as soon as Her Diet Unconscious Majesty gets around to finishing her' . . . what is that thing, anyway? A banana split on steroids?"

The whole parlor erupted in laughter. As densely packed as the place was, the sound was almost deafening. Berry made a face and looked down at her ice cream confection. It did look something like a banana split on steroids, in fact, even though whatever that fruit was it certainly wasn't a banana. Hugh knew, because he'd had a real Earth banana once, when he visited the planet. Truth to tell, he hadn't much liked the thing. Too squishy. Like almost anyone brought up on Berstuk, he was accustomed to fruit that was dense, hard and not too sweet—more like what Earth's own inhabitants would have called nuts than fruit.

"I guess we'd better go," she said reluctantly.

Hugh studied the confection at issue. There was still more than half of it left. The ice cream dish he'd ordered had vanished within three minutes. Manpower's genetic engineers had designed his somatic type to be unusually strong even for his size. Although not to the same extreme as Thandi Palane, his metabolism was something of a furnace.

"We might be able to take the rest of it back," he said. Sounding dubious even to himself.

"In this heat?" said Berry, smiling skeptically. "Not without portable refrigeration equipment. Which we don't have, even if there are any such units on the planet at all."

Yana had come up to the table. "Sure, there are plenty of them. But they're all out at the pharmaceutical sites. Why would anyone want the things here? A little stroll through the tropics is good for you." She studied the half-finished confection disapprovingly. "And why do you always order that dish, anyway? You never finish it."

"Because they won't make it half-sized for me, even though I've asked over and over. They claim if they don't serve me what they call a 'queen-sized' order, they'll look bad."

She gave Hugh a plaintive look. "Does that seem as silly to you as it does to me? Of course, most of this royal stuff is silly, in my opinion."

How to answer that? Hugh was cautious, even though on Torch lèse majesté couldn't be any worse than a misdemeanor.

"Well . . ."

"Of course it's not silly," said Yana. "They must sell half again as much ice cream here as they would otherwise. What is silly are customers who let themselves get swindled like that."