Wunderly nodded with pleasure.

Suddenly aware, Holly blurted, “Kris, have you maxed out with Manny?”

Cardenas actually blushed. Nodding behind her teacup, she said in a small voice, “A couple of times. You said you didn’t mind, remember?”

“I don’t mind,” Holly insisted, knowing from the turmoil inside her that it wasn’t really true.

Wunderly’s owl eyes went even wider than usual. “You mean he’s slept with both of you?”

Cardenas put down her teacup. “Actually, we didn’t do all that much sleeping.”

Holly burst into laughter. The pain inside her dissolved. “He’s a flamer, all right.”

Wunderly looked hurt, though. “Both of you,” she whispered. It was no longer a question.

Cardenas reached across the table to touch Wunderly’s hand. “He’s just a man, Nadia. It doesn’t mean anything to him. Just fun and games. Recreational.”

“But I thought—”

“Don’t think. Just enjoy. He’ll be heading back to Earth soon. Have fun while you can.”

“ ‘Gather ye rosebuds’,” Holly quoted, wondering where she remembered the line from.

Forcing a halfhearted smile, Wunderly said, “I suppose you’re right. But still…”

“Just don’t get pregnant.”

“Oh, I’d never!”

Holly was thinking, though. “He slept with me when he needed help from the administration. And he slept with you, Kris, when he found out you could help him with nanobugs.”

“And now he’s sleeping with me,” Wunderly chimed in, “because I can help him with the rings.”

“That sonofabitch,” Cardenas said. But she was grinning widely.

“You know what they’d call a woman who did that,” Wunderly said.

Holly didn’t know if she should be angry, amused, or disgusted.

“It’s a good thing he’ll be leaving soon,” Cardenas said. “Otherwise he might get murdered.”

“He’s getting away with murder right now,” said Wunderly, with a tinge of anger.

“Well,” Cardenas said, “he’s good at it.”

Holly asked, “Nadia, are you going to keep on with him?”

“I couldn’t! Not now.”

“Why not?” Cardenas asked. “If you enjoy being with him, why not?”

“But he’s … it’s… it’s not right.”

With a shake of her head, Cardenas said, “Don’t let the New Morality spoil your fun. There’s nothing wrong with recreational sex, as long as you understand that it’s recreational and nothing more. And you protect yourself.”

Holly wondered, How do you protect your heart? How do you let a man make love to you and then just walk away and let him go do it with someone else? With your friends, for god’s sake.

Wunderly nodded slightly, but she looked just as unconvinced as Holly felt.

“It’s not like the old days,” Cardenas went on, “when you had to worry about AIDS and VD.”

“I read about AIDS in history class,” Wunderly said. “It must have been terrible.”

“Just don’t get yourself pregnant.”

“I won’t. I can’t. The habitat’s regulations won’t allow it.”

Cardenas was no longer grinning. “I can remember a time, back before either one of you were born, when religious fundamentalists were against abortion. Against any kind of family planning.”

“Really?” Holly was surprised.

“Yes. It wasn’t until they dropped their ‘right to life’ position that the New Morality began to gain real political power. Once the Catholics got an American Pope, even the Vatican caved in.”

For several moments all three of the women were silent. The cafeteria seemed to be waking up. There were more people coming in, more chatter and clatter as they lined up for their breakfasts before heading off to their jobs.

Wunderly pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. “I’ve got to make a progress report to Dr. Urbain.”

“And Manny?” Cardenas asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. He can be … well, attractive, you know.”

“Seductive,” said Cardenas.

“Charming,” Holly added. “Like a snake.”

Wunderly just shook her head and walked off, leaving her half-finished breakfast on the table.

“What do you think she’ll do?” Holly asked.

Cardenas chuckled. “She’ll go to bed with him but feel bad about it.”

“That’s brutal.”

“Yep.”

“Would you go to bed with him again?”

Cardenas gave her a guarded look. “Would you?”

Holly felt her lips curling upward into a rueful smile. “Only if he asks me.”

They both laughed.

“The sonofabitch is getting away with murder, all right,” Cardenas said.

Suddenly serious, Holly said softly, “I wonder if somebody else has gotten away with murder.”

“Huh? Who?”

“I don’t know. I just wonder about Don Diego.”

“You’re still gnawing on that?”

“They didn’t find anything wrong with him.”

“Except that he drowned.”

“But how could he drown?” Holly wondered. “How could a man fall into a few centimeters of water and drown himself?”

“He was pretty old,” Cardenas said.

“But his health was fine. They didn’t find any heart failure or any sign of a stroke.”

“You think someone pushed him into the water and deliberately drowned him?”

The scene appeared in Holly’s mind, every detail, just as she had seen it that day. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Who? Why?”

Holly shrugged. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

CAMPAIGN SPEECHES

The political debate was held in the habitat’s outdoor theater, a big concrete shell that curved gracefully to focus the sound waves produced on its stage out into the rows of seats set up on the grass.

It’s a fairly good crowd, Eberly thought as he looked out over the audience. Must be more than a thousand out there, and a lot more watching by vid. Seated on the stage three meters to his left was Edouard Urbain, looking stiffly elegant in an old-fashioned dove-gray suit over a sky-blue turtleneck. Next to him sat Timoshenko, sour and gruff; he wore gray coveralls as a symbol of pride in his profession. Eberly thought he looked like a janitor. Eberly himself wore a dark charcoal tunic and comfortable slacks of lighter gray, true to the dress code he had promulgated.

Wilmot stood at the podium in his usual tweed jacket and shapeless trousers, explaining the rules of the debate.

“…each candidate will begin with a five-minute summary of his position, to be followed by another five minutes apiece for rebuttal. Then the meeting will be opened to questions from the audience.”

Eberly kept himself from smiling. Vyborg and Kananga had “seeded” the audience with dozens of supporters, each of them armed with questions that would allow Eberly to dominate the Q A period. He had no intention of allowing Urbain or Timoshenko to say a single word more than absolutely necessary.

“So without further ado, allow me to introduce Dr. Edouard Urbain, head of our scientific section,” said Wilmot. He began reading Urbain’s curriculum vitae from the display on the podium.

What a bore, thought Eberly. Who cares what scientific honors he won in Quebec?

At last Urbain got up and went to the podium to the accompaniment of scattered applause. There are only a few scientists in the audience, Eberly realized. So much the better. He saw that Urbain limped, ever so slightly. Strange I’d never noticed that before, he said to himself. Is that something new, or has he always walked with a little limp? Looking out over the audience, Eberly recognized several of his own people, including Holly and the stuntman, Gaeta, sitting in the front row. Good. Just as I ordered.

Urbain cleared his throat and said, “As you know, I am not a politician. But I am a capable administrator. Managing more than one hundred highly individualistic scientists and their assistants has been compared to attempting to make a group of cats march in step.”

He stopped, waiting for laughter. A few titters rose from the audience.

Looking slightly nettled, Urbain went on: “Allow me to show you how I have managed the scientific programs of this habitat. In this first image we see …”