Meaning people who knew real things about real substances.

Meaning a lot more plane flights, now that the barriers seemed down and the paidhi had, for the first time in history, permission to move around the map instead of sit receiving information in Shejidan, behind the walls of the Bu-javid.

It didn't bid to be a life that would let him go back to Mospheira that often. If he wasn't in Shejidan, he might need to be God knew where, looking at plant output figures and talking to plant managers and line workers.

He'd told Barb, dammit, he'd told her from the outset she couldn't make plans around his comings and goings; and now she expected him to fly in, run around with another man's wife, and flit out again while Barb went back to her suburbs and her husband — if Barb thought it was going to be sequins and satin and nightclubs every few months, if Barb had married dull, computer-fixed Paul, as the high-income guy who'd be so immersed in his little world he just wouldn't notice, or care —

No way in hell, Barb.

The upset came back. Anger crept up on him before he knew what he was feeling, and then decided it wasn't fair to feel it. Barb had given him years of waiting around — he'd not cared — well, not asked — who else she spent her time with; it hadn't been his business. And maybe it had been Paul, but he didn't think so. Maybe he ought rationally to ask, at this point, how long that had been going on.

But he sure as hell wasn't going to drop into town, sleep with Paul's wife, and leave again. Even if there weren't kids involved, there might be, someday; at very least it left Paul having to deal with the gossip, no illusions that people wouldn't find out or that Paul wouldn't, and Paul was a wounded sort, the way a human being got to be from too much intellect and not a soul to talk to on any regular basis —

God, didn't that sound familiar?

But he, thank God, wasn't Paul. Yet.

Maybe he didn't remotely want a real life with Barb. He wasn't sure, wasn't likely to find out — though he was missing the ideaof Barb enough to have a lump in his throat and evidently a lot — a lot— of anger; she'd told him at the outset that marriage and the settled life weren't ever going to be an issue for her, and if that had changed, dammit, the least she could have done was tell him.

Which left him running curious comparisons with what he thought human beings were supposed to feel about a breakup, and the cooler, more analytical emotions he felt when he wasn't actually on the phone with Barb.

Odd how the feelings had just beenthere, on the edge of out-of-control, as long as he was talking to her — emotion had gotten in the way of any sane communication; now that he'd had a moment to calm down, the atevi world closed in again, the sights, the smells, the sounds of his alternate reality. Barb's world grew fainter and farther again, safely fainter and farther.

He supposed part of it was that he'd made an investment in Barb, an investment of energy, and time — and youth. And innocence, in a way. In Malguri, a short week ago, when he'd found himself afraid he'd die, he'd found himself at such a remove from humanity he couldn't reach any regret for the human people he'd leave —

And he couldn't gather it up now. Then it had scared him. Now — now maybe his real fear was not having the free years left to connect with someone else, With all that investment, with no more sense of love, whatever that meant — he wasn't sure, on this interface of atevi and humans, what normal humans felt, who didn't have to analyze what they felt, thought, wanted, did and didn't do. But he did. He had to. He'd become a damn walking laboratory of emotions.

And maybe if you preserved it in acrylic and set it on a shelf, love didn't look quite as colorful or lively or attractive as it did flitting across mountain meadows. Maybe you killed it trying to understand it, attribute it, classify it.

Hell of a way human beings functioned. At least the ones he knew. His mother. Barb. Toby. One could say the paidhiin had generally had trouble with their personal lives. Wilson, God knew, had been a dried-up, tuned-out, turned-off personality, monofocused in his last years on the job. As good as dead when hisaiji died. Say good morning to the man and the face didn't react, the eyes didn't react. Not just atevi-like. Dead.

So what did you do when the human part of your life started atrophying from want of exercise? Hello, Mother, hello, Toby, sorry about the phone calls, sorry you can't go to the store without the chance of being accosted, sorry about all of that, nothing I can do from here — don't know what it's like to go to the store, buy a loaf of bread, catch the bus to the office. Can't imagine taking kids to school, family bike rides, family vacations.

Wish that Mother would move to the North Shore, to a far smaller, less political environment. But one never got Mother these days to do a damned thing she hadn't done before, and Toby'd moved up there, one suspected, to put a little distance between mom and wife.

The wind shifted, that had been carrying a spatter of rain against the glass. He stood in the dark with his drink, in the new quiet. Curtains billowed out at him, white gauze in the dark, touched him, all but wrapped around him.

Childhood memory. Himself in the living room. The wind from the sea. Mom and Dad in the bedroom. When Me was perfect.

He shut the doors, and the draperies deflated.

The air was still. The whole apartment was still, nothing but the soft footsteps of servants — he never needed a thing but that someone was there. Never made a request but that servants hurried to do it. But the silence — the hush about the place tonight oppressed him.

He went back to his room, found his traveling case to put in it what he needed for the run out to the observatory — had servants hovering to see if they could help with that, but he found no need.

It was the first time, the very first time since he'd landed in Shejidan, that he'd had a chance to sit down on the bed and open the medical folder and read it.

"Dammit!" he said. And called, none too moderately, for scissors.

"Nadi?" a servant asked, confused. But he couldn't deal with gentle faces and gentle confusion at the moment.

"Just get me the damn scissors, will you?"

Then he was mad at himself and the world in general, because he'd raised his voice to the servant, and he apologized when she came running back — apologized and worked the point under the thumb-hole in the cast and started working at the layers of bandage.

Gouged his wrist for good and proper.

"Nadi!" Jago said, from the doorway, and clearly meant to stop him; but he didn't mean to be stopped. Didn't want to discuss it. He kept sawing at the bandages, with the blade inserted, his wrist not cut, and with no inclination to give up the angle he'd gotten for Jago's damned well-meaning interference.

But Jago came and caught his hand as the servants hadn't dared do.

And really it ought to be hysterically funny, the misery he'd suffered, when just reading the damn instructions would have set him free — to protect the fusion during the flight, the note said, and then important to maintain good circulationand moderate exercise, by flexing and bending and moderate activity.

Jago tried to take the scissors away, as if she thought the paidhi had completely lost his mind. And maybe he had; but she didn't apply force enough to disengage his fingers and he couldn't half breathe, and didn't want to explain. The constriction around his ribs afflicted him with temperous, claustrophobic frustration — the paidhi wasn't damned well in possession of his faculties, he wasn't damned logical, he wasn't handling the interface well at all at the moment, and he didn't want Jago's damned reasonable calm trying to tell him wait and consult anybody.