"You don't know much history, do you?" Florrie said.
"Not enough, I guess," Stephen Thomas said politely.
"You be careful. If you do anything they don't like, if you make trouble, they'll accuse you of using drugs and they'll ruin you. They take a real problem and they pervert the solution to it to increase their power over you. They'll take your job away. That happened to a friend of mine, and he didn't even use alcohol, much less something illegal. But he was a troublemaker! And they destroyed him for it!"
"I don't think you need to worry," Victoria said, keeping her voice gentle, neutral, almost as neutral as Griffith's expression. "We're all troublemakers up here, in one way or another. They can't get us all."
"Don't patronize me, young lady!" Florrie snapped, with a spark of real anger. "If you ignore me because you think I'm a senile old coot, you'll be sorry!"
"I don't think—it wasn't my intention—" Victoria's voice broke. She stopped. Her dark skin flushed, "—to patronize you."
Infinity suddenly shivered. He looked out the window at Griffith, wondering if Florrie was worried over the wrong details, but for the right reason.
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When he glanced back toward Florrie and the alien contact team, Victoria had disappeared.
Victoria hurried to the edge of the garden, out of the light.
She felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Not someone. Floris Brown.
"Victoria?"
J.D. crossed the shadows and stopped beside her.
"What's wrong?"
"1 don't know. It's just . . ." She fell silent. "She had a perfect right to react that way, 1 was being patronizing.''
"There's a difference between being patronizing and being reassuring. I thought her reaction was kind of extreme."
Victoria shrugged.
"Why did what she said hurt you so much?" J.D. asked.
Victoria told J.D. about her own great-grandmother.
"I tried to get Grangrana to apply to the expedition, but she wouldn't. She's older than Ms. Brown, quite a lot. She's frailer. She traveled all over when she was younger, and now . . . she's tired. I'm worried about her. I don't want to leave her behind. I miss her, J.D., I miss her so much." Victoria smiled. "Grangrana can give you what-for, but she wouldn't ever slap you down."
"You wanted Ms. Brown to like you, didn't you?"
"I did. I think she's admirable, to apply for the program and come all this way. I thought she did like me. On the transport. But tonight she didn't even remember me."
"I'm sorry."
"isn't it strange," Victoria said, "how somebody can say a couple of words to you, and make you feel like a four-year-old?"
"No," J.D. said. "Not strange at all. Especially when it's somebody you want to make a connection with."
Victoria squeezed J.D.'s hand. "Thanks. For talking. For . . . noticing." She still felt shaken, as much by surprise at the intensity of her reaction as by Ms. Brown's words. She made herself smile. "What did Cherenkov give you?"
"Hey, Victoria!" Satoshi joined them. He carried J.D.'s presents in the crook of his arm. "J.D., you forgot these."
"Oh. Sorry. Thank you." She took them from him. "Kolya invited me to lunch," she said to Victoria. "He offered
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to make piroshki. I don't know what piroshki is, but I'm looking forward to finding out."
"Piroshki are the Russian version of fried dumplings or pasties or ravioli," SatoshJ said.
Satoshi put his arm around Victoria's shoulders. His bare skin touched hers through the open lace of her shirt. She put her arm around his waist, glad of his warmth.
"He doesn't spend time with people very often," Victoria said. "He's given you a unique gift."
"What's wrong?" Satoshi asked her. "The way you rushed out ... "
"I'm okay now, but I'm going home." "Wait just a minute and we'll all go."
"There's no reason for you to leave, too—"
"Stephen Thomas is already making our excuses. It's getting late. There he is."
Stephen Thomas walked toward them, staring at the ground.
When he reached them he stopped and looked up. His fair skin was pale, his blue eyes dark-circled.
"Stephen Thomas—?"
"Let's go," he said shortly, and strode into the darkness.
People began drifting home soon after the light faded. Infinity was spared having to urge anyone to go, since everyone had to work the next day. Stephen Thomas surprised him by leaving so early—he could usually be counted on to close out any gathering, no matter how late it ran. He had bid good night to Florrie, then he had risen from his kneeling position as smoothly as if he had knelt at her feet only for a moment. Infinity wondered how he kept his feet from going to sleep.
The AS from the campus kitchen had already collected the bento boxes and taken them away. The housekeeper rolled about, looking for other things to do. As usual after parties on campus, no litter remained. Disposable eating utensils and suchlike did not exist out here. The AS carefully placed crumpled wrapping paper in a stack by Infinity's feet. Infinity smoothed the sheets out and folded them.
"You should keep this, too, Florrie," he said. "It's as much a gift as anything else you got tonight. Nobody manufactures wrapping paper out here."
She hardly heard him. She had not calmed down from her 156 vonda N. Mclntyre
Inaction to Griffith. Though she trembled with weariness, excitement and fear brightened her eyes.
"You will watch him, won't you?" she said. "Whatever he's about, you'll find out and make him stop."
"I can't do that," Infinity said. "How could I make him stop anything? He's a government representative, I'm a gardener. ''
"You've got to, that's all. You've got to."
"Please try to be easy. There's nothing I can do, and if there were I couldn't do it tonight. And, look, if he is some kind of spy or something, maybe you ought to be careful what you say about him, or anyway who you say it to. It might get back to him."
She glanced at Infinity, quickly, sidelong, and immediately fell silent.
"I don't mean me," Infinity said. "I don't like him either." He stopped, wishing he had kept that admission to himself. "FIorrie, do you need any help, or shall I leave you alone?"
"I don't need help."
"Okay, then, I just live over the next hill if you want to call me."
"But . . . you could brush my hair."
"All right," he said uncertainly. "Sure."
Except for the three long locks, she kept her hair cropped so close that he worried about scratching her scalp with the well-wom bristles of her brush. Her papery skin felt fragile.
The brush made a soft, whispery noise, like her voice. A bristle caught against one of the unshorn and braided patches.
He disentangled it. The shells and small pierced stones rattled together.
"Go ahead and take those out," she said.
Three diamond-shaped patches of hair lay in a diagonal line across the back of her head. There, her hair was heavy and thick. She had divided each section into two hanks and braided them with a soft leather thong from which dangled the shells and stones. He laid the thongs on the counter and brushed the long sections. She let herself relax into the chair;
she pushed her foot against the floor. Just once, then stopped trying to rock a chair that had no rockers.
Infinity found it pleasant to brush her hair. He had never
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done that for anyone before. After a while he thought FIorrie had gone to sleep. He stopped brushing. He would have to wake her—
"Thank you," she said. She opened her eyes. "Maybe I'll see you tomorrow."