"Yes," Jeanette said.

"I'd like you to make arrangements," Hans said to her.

They don't want to know who killed her, Martin realized. They aren't looking. He alone was examining the room closely. He wished they would all leave so he could talk with the mom in private.

"Martin, you and Jeanette clean her up," Hans said. "Wipe her down, dress her in her best… What should she wear?" Hans asked Jeanette.

"I don't know," Jeanette said. "I don't…" She finished with a sob.

"Gown," Hans said. He looked at the faces one by one. "She was my lover," he said, eyes hooded, lips downturned. "We'll find out who did this."

The others left. Martin and Jeanette silently, grimly stripped Rosa and washed her with water. Martin used his wand surreptitiously to record the body's condition, and swept the room for more details as Jeanette reverently dressed her, weeping. "She's a martyr," she said. "Rosa died for us." Martin nodded. That was probably all too true. The moms didn't stop this. But they had learned this very hard fact many months, many centuries before: the crew of a Ship of the Law was free.

Free to die, and now free to kill.

The human crew took the news much as Martin had expected. Some wept, some cried out in anger, others held on to each other; still others listened in stunned silence as Hans revealed the details.

Only Twice Grown had been invited to join the humans as Hans spoke. Coiled, without scent, he listened to Hans and to Paola's quiet re-Englishing.

Hans finished by saying, "Rosa was murdered. That much is known. We know nothing about who murdered her, and we will not have time to find out before the ship splits and we move on to the next part of the Job. I wish our partners, our Brothers, to know…"He seemed to search for the right words, the diplomatic expression, but shook his head. "This was an aberration—"

"The failure of a broken individual," Paola said softly to Twice Grown.

"A hideous wrong." Hans shook his head again, lips pressed tight. "Rosa is going to be recycled by the moms in a few hours. Her family and associates will wait in her quarters to receive those who wish to grieve."

Martin stood before the mom alone as it entered his room. "Do you know now who killed Rosa Sequoia?" he asked after the door had closed.

"Hans has asked me the same question," it answered.

"Do you?"

"We do not track or survey individuals."

"You keep medical records—"

"We monitor health of individuals when they are in public places."

Martin knew that, but he would not let his questions go. One by one, he would ask them, and that would be his peculiar grief; for he had in a sense been relievedby Rosa's death, and he was sure Hans had been relieved as well, and a kind of guilt drove him now.

"Could you detect who had been in her room?"

"It is possible to identify numbers of presences in a room, after the fact, but we lack the means to identify individuals."

"How many people were in her room before she died, before she was found?"

"One person was in her room with her," the mom said.

"Male or female?"

"Male."

"What else can you tell me?"

"There had been sexual activity," the mom said.

Martin had noticed dried fluid around Rosa's vulva and spots still damp on her pad. "Was she raped?"

"No."

He took a shuddering breath, stomach twisting and his neck hard as rock, head aching intensely. "But you don't know who was with her."

"We are aware of sixty people who were not with her," the mom said. "Four others were in private quarters, not their own, including the one with Rosa, and were not tracked."

"Can you list their names?"

"Their names are in your wand now."

"Thank you," Martin said.

The mom departed and Martin examined the list. One or more of the four could have killed her, and Martin noted that Rex was among them. Giacomo, Rex, Ariel, Carl Phoenix; he could not help returning to Rex Live Oak's glowing name.

Hans insisted Martin attend the service. Jeanette Snap Dragon delivered a brief and surprisingly cool talk, and there was no mention of Rosa's supernatural interactions, no mention as well of Rosa's disciples.

Jeanette spoke instead of Rosa the storyteller, of the early awkward Rosa who had blossomed into her own kind of maturity late in the voyage.

Before Jeanette was finished, Martin's eyes filled with tears. We've lost our final illusions.

After the service, Jeanette and Rex Live Oak were the last to leave. Rex glanced at Martin in the corridor outside Rosa's quarters, his eyes red and swollen, his mouth a broken curve.

Rex had never been a very good actor. He was not acting now. "Too much," he said, edging past Martin in the corridor. "Too slicking much."

Rosa's room was sealed, her body still inside. Out of sight, the ship did its work silently and quickly, and the last of Rosa vanished.

Jeanette approached Hans and Martin when the others had dispersed. "We're still agreed," she told him. "None of Rosa's people will fight. We're standing down."

"I understand," Hans said.

"We won't vote on judgment, we won't go on the Trojan Horse, we won't engage in support services."

"That's all been planned for," Hans said. Jeanette looked between them, her unlined features appearing much older than before. She turned slowly, eyes lingering on Hans, and walked inboard.

Hans's hair stood up in spikes from constant pushes of his hand and his eyes were dark and puffy. "It's over," he murmured to Martin. "Let it go."

There wasn't much else Martin could do.

Separation was less than six hours away.

Martin walked beside Hans into the schoolroom. Hans carried the list of the names of the ten humans who would accompany ten Brothers aboard the Trojan Horseas it dipped into Leviathan's system. The crew assembled in the center before the star sphere, all but Rosa's party, who stood to one side in ranks of five.

Hakim and Giacomo had arranged for the most recent results of the search team to be projected within the sphere: the best images of the worlds, like God's marbles dropped carelessly on velvet, beautiful and alive.

Hans called out the names without referring to the list.

Those chosen smiled and shook fists high in the air. Others looked disappointed until Jimmy Satsuma said, "Into the valley of death rode the ten… The rest of us will just have to wait outside to kick ass."

The crew cheered. Martin thought, Remarkable how little the rhetoric of war changes, as if it's built into our genes.

"Twenty," Hans said. "Don't forget the Brothers." But word of possible doubts among the Brothers had circulated with unfortunate speed, and Hans had done nothing to cool their anger.

"Yeah," Satsuma said, without enthusiasm.

"The ship will split in one hour," Hans said. "I will ride Greyhound. Martin will ride the Trojan Horse. For the time being, all is in the hands of the moms. But we'll get our chance soon enough."

He paused, looking at the floor. "I have an intuition." The crew kept a tense silence. "I think we'll find what we came for. We'll find it here. We share this with the Brothers, whatever our physical differences: we share the need to see justice done.