Sherrine smiled to herself. "You like to read."

"Yes. Yes. Though much I do not understand. References. Shared assumptions of Downers. I read Austen one time; but her world is like alien planet. Still, I laugh and cry with her characters."

"I had a math teacher in college who had read Pride and Prejudice fifteen times, in fifteen different languages."

Gordon blinked. "Math professor?"

"Math professors read literature, Gordon. But it's not commutative. Lit profs never read math."

He laughed. "Russian literature is harder than maths. Do you smile, that I find Russian literature difficult? My matushka made me read Tolstoy, Gorki, Pushkin. It was so different from my father's Western literature. In the West, novel was biographical. About characters. About Lispeth or David Copperfield. In Russia, was writing about ideas. War and Peace. Crime and Punishment. Characters, even central characters like Karenina only illustrate the Idea. Very hard for each people to read the other kind. But my mnatushka said it was important I live in two worlds, the Rodina and the West. A new society is evolving in the habitats. Western optimism and Russian gloom.

Sherrine laughed. "It sounds… appropriate. It needs a new literature, then. A synthesis. Floater literature."

"Perhaps. Gloomy optimism. Optimistic gloom. I have tried… " Silence.

"Light-hearted pessimism. Mark Twain?" She turned on her headlights. Had Gordon said--"You've tried to write something?" Scratch any eager reader and you'll find a wannabee writer.

"Nichevo. Story fragments. A few poems. Such things are not survivalrelated activity. I must steal time to do them. So they are not very good. Nothing good enough for you to hear."

"Have you ever read a fanzine? No, really. I read some pretty awful stuff in my grandfather's old pulps. Go ahead. Recite one of your poems for me."

Next to him, Alex stirred shifted positions.

"No, I cannot," Gordon whispered.

She took a hand from the steering wheel and laid it on his arm. "Please?"

"I… If you will not laugh?"

"I won't laugh. I promise."

"I hold you to promise." Gordon coughed into his fist, straightened in the seat. He looked off into the black distance, not meeting her eyes, and spoke gently:

"Lying softly, white as snow is snow,

With delicate beauty, borne delightful to the eye,

Reflected in the silver, skydropped moon:

Her face, upturned and smiled on by the stars.

Asleep is she more lovely and at peace;

Her skin would glow a light unsnowlike warm.

She sleeps. Touched by the moon

And me.

He fell silent; still he would not look at her. Bashful. "Why, that's lovely, Gordon."

He turned at last. "You like it?"

"Certainly." Sherrine probed: "She must have been pretty."

"Who?"

"Your girlfriend. The one you wrote the poem to."

"She is. Very beautiful."

Aha! "Have you, ever recited for her?"

"Yeah-da. I did." Sherrine smiled broadly out the windshield. Gordon was caught on that cusp where he wanted to keep his love a deep, delicious secret and shout it to the world at the same time. She had been caught there once before. She and Jake. A long time ago, but she could remember the wonderful glow. With Bob it had been different fun, good times, a lot of laughs; but she had never glowed. "What did she say?"

"She said my poem was lovely."

"Well, that's a pretty tepid response to a love poem."

A long pause, then, "Ah. I had forgotten."

"Forgotten what?"

"You do not live in such close quarters as we do. You do not have to be so careful to avoid offense or to rub against your neighbor's feelings. So few of us, and still there has been murder, because we cannot escape from one another. One does not speak of love until one is sure."

"Then how can you ever be sure?"

He may have shrugged in the dark, but he did not answer. Sherrine returned her attention to the road. She kept it at thirty and slowed for every shadow in the road. Some shadows were hard and rigid. Approaching bridges, she crawled.

Ten minutes or an hour later, something went click in her head.

Oh, no. He means me!

It had been obvious for some time that both Angels lusted after her. Lord knew why. Tall and skinny was the Angel ideal, but… Lust she could deal with. A little recreational workout; fun for everyone and no hard feelings. It was impossible to sit between two horny males--three, counting Bob, who was in a perpetual state of rut without picking up the pheromones. She was more than a little horny herself.

But Gordon was not just horny. He was in love; and that she could not deal with; because…

Because Jake is still living there, somewhere in the back of my skull.

Oh, great. Now she had four men to deal with. Three live and present; one a ghost. An old rhyme capered through her thoughts. Its gude to be merry and wise. / It's gude to be honest and true; / It's gude to be off with the old love, / Before you are on with the new.

Was he asleep? Or studying her in the dark?

She said nothing; concentrated on her driving. He loves me? She craned her neck and looked in the large side-view mirror. A smaller Sherrine, distorted by the convex shape, stared back. He loves me? The truck had a lot of inertia; a lot of momentum.

Gordon said, "You are offended."

"No!" She paused; spoke again. "No, I'm not. I'm flattered. It has been a long time since anyone loved me."

Gordon seemed appalled. "Shto govorish? How can that be? There is Bob--"

"He only thinks he's in--"

"And Alex."

The cab was silent except for the older Angel's deep, regular breathing.

"Alex."

"Yeah-da. You do not see it? He is Earthborn American: more direct than most, but still a Floater. Still, even he may have been too oblique for you. Alex loves you; though he writes no poems. Is why I have hesitated so long to speak. He is my captain, and--and I wish to be fair." He shook his head again. "Life is complicated for my generation. If I was all Russian or all American, there would be no dilemma."

"Fair! And he treats you so badly. I mean, I like Alex, too; but he's so stern and unforgiving. Especially over the crash."

Gordon nodded slowly. "That is true."

"And it wasn't really your fault."

"My fault? Oh, no. It is himself he cannot forgive. He was hero once. Now he feels neglected. After the first missile we could have aborted to orbit. Alex chose not to. Because he wished again to be the hero, da? Now he feels shame. He feels he has failed Freedom; has failed Mary Hopkins; has failed me."

"How would you like some advice, Doctor Freud?" The voice was low and thick with sleep. Sherrine twisted her head to look past Gordon. Alex's eyes shone in the dim, reflected light. The cab fell silent. The tires hummed on the roadway.

"Mind your own business, Gordon." Alex twisted, punched the pillow into a shapeless lump, and lay back into it with his back to the rest of the cab.

After a while Gordon leaned over and spoke in a whisper. "I was wrong. This truck cab is as close quarters as anywhere in orbit."

Sherrine sucked on her lip. The Interstate was a pale ribbon under the rising moon. A single car distant in the northbound lanes was the only movement other than the wind-tossed trees. It would not do to laugh.

Arteria stared at the Alderman. The platoon of Air Police stood by waiting, their weapons held at a casual order arms. The Alderman's court cast wary eyes at their visitors and kept their hands away from their own motley collection of hunting rifles and bows. Bows! Outside, the shoop-shoop of helicopter blades interrupted the silence. "Well?" Arteria put an edge of menace into the question.