"She hit you pretty hard, eh?"
"What?"
"The woman. The Sangaree woman. That Marya Strehltsweiter."
"What? How did you?... Mouse. Shooting off his mouth."
"He didn't exactly volunteer it. And he told Jarl, not me. I found out when I was looking through the files for something else."
"All right." His heart hammered for no reason he could justify to himself. So he had gotten involved with the woman. He had not known she was Sangaree then. "It's over."
"I know. I knew that a long time ago. Mouse wrote that report after you shot her. I guess he thought it was important for Jarl to understand what you were going through."
That did not sound like Mouse. "She would've killed all of us. Sooner or later. I had to do it. I never shot anybody before."
"Especially somebody you still halfway cared about, eh?"
"Yeah. Can we drop it?"
"Did Mouse really do that? Inject her children with stardust?"
"Yes. Mouse plays for keeps. He doesn't have trouble with his conscience. Not the way I do."
"You really think the Sangaree will be at the auction?"
"They'll be there. They hold a grudge the way Mouse does. Amy, I don't want to get involved in that. I'm happy where I'm at. I like linking. Chub is a good friend. I was just scared there at first. I've been getting to know the other members of the herd... Hell, sometimes I go in just to bullshit with Chub."
BenRabi could relax with the starfish as he could with no human. He did not feel naked when he let the starfish see what he really felt and thought. Chub made no value judgments. His values were not human. He had, in fact, helped Moyshe make some small peace within himself.
Parts of his mind remained inaccessible to the starfish. Whole sections were hidden behind rigid walls. Moyshe could not guess what might lie there. He could sense nothing missing from his past.
Seiner life was changing Mouse, too, he reflected. Storm was becoming even more sure of himself, more bigger-than-life than he had always been. BenRabi could not pin it down. One or two nights a week playing chess together was not the same as sharing a minute to minute life under fire.
Mouse was an operative born. He had changed allegiance, but not professions. He had become part of Jarl Kindervoort's staff.
Flying easy. That was what benRabi had been doing since his release from the hospital. The only pressure he faced was Amy's near-militance in hinting about their getting married. Under Chub's ministrations his neuroses were scaling away. He had come to the Seiners with a great many.
"Not much more to see," Amy told him. The rearmost cameras were inside the asteroid. The tugs were guiding the cork back toward the entrance.
"What? Oh. I'd better go say good-bye to Chub."
He reached Contact almost as quickly as he had the day of the last battle. "Clara. Where's Hans?"
"He's off. We don't have anything going."
"I want to go in. They're telling me I'm going to be transferred."
"You can't. We're closed down, Moyshe. They'll be cutting power in a minute. Heck, the herd should be out of range by now."
"Clara, I probably won't ever get another chance."
"Ah, Moyshe. It's silly. But all right. Get on the couch." She prepared his scalp and the hairnet device in seconds. The helmet devoured his head almost before he could catch his breath.
He shifted to TSD, then onward.
The colors of the nebula were incredible. It was a dreary place to the eye, completely dark unless illuminated artificially. In this internal universe Moyshe could reach out and touch all the specks of it, the clouds of luminescent dust, the glowing asteroids majestically circling the nebula's center in their million-year orbits. He could even sense the protostar down in the nebula's heart, lying patiently in its time-womb, gathering the sustenance it would need to blaze for eons.
"Chub!" his mind shouted into the color storm. "Are you there? Can you hear me?"
For a time he thought there would be no answer. The herd lay far off the bounds of the nebula, beyond the pain threshold of its diminutive gravitation.
Then, "Moyshe man-friend? What is happening?"
The link was tenuous. He could barely discern the starfish's thoughts. He could not locate the creature with his inner sight.
"I came to say good-bye, Chub. They say I'm not going to be a mindtech anymore. You were right. They want me to go back to being what I was."
"Ah. I am saddened, Moyshe man-friend. I am saddened because you are sad. We have been good friends. I am pleased that you thought it important to let me know. So many linkers just disappear. Perhaps this last time we can break through those barriers, Moyshe man-friend."
But those corners of benRabi's mind would not yield.
"Moyshe." Clara's voice seemed to come from kilometers away. "They're going to shut the power off. You've got to come out."
"Farewell, Moyshe man-friend." BenRabi could feel the sadness in the starfish.
"Go softly, golden dragon," he whispered. "My heart flies with you down the long dark journey."
Chub's sadness welled up. Moyshe could not stand it. He pounded the switch beneath his left hand.
There was very little pain. He had not been under long. "I don't need it, Clara." He pushed the needle away.
"Moyshe. You're crying."
"No."
"But... "
"No. Just leave me alone."
"All right."
He heard the hurt in her voice. He struggled off of the couch, pulled her to him. "I'm sorry. Clara, I haven't known you very long. But you've been a good friend. I'll miss you. And Hans, too. Tell him to behave."
"I see that he does. He's my grandson."
"Oh. I didn't know." What had he heard about Hans's sister? Or was it mother? She had been lost with Jariel. Clara had never let on.
"There're a lot of things you don't know, Moyshe benRabi. About people. Because you never get around to asking."
"Clara... Clara, come visit. Will you?"
"Yes."
"Promise? Amy would love to meet you."
"I promise. Now get out of here before somebody calls the boss and wants to know what the hell's going on up here."
"Thanks, Clara. Thanks a lot. For everything."
His return trip was less precipitous. He was not eager to get home. Amy was bound to be waiting with some unimaginative new approach to the subject of marriage.
Seven: 3049 AD
The Main Sequence
"What's the occasion?" benRabi asked. He had come home to find Amy clad only in a negligee. She had been playing body games all week. He supposed she was holding out in hopes lust would make him propose. She was going to be disappointed. He was not seventeen.
The tactic did not bode well for their relationship. There was no future in any relationship where one party practiced extortion upon the other. No one endured that for long. And benRabi had had his fill of it from Alyce, way back when.
Was this why he was so reluctant? Because Amy came on like a spoiled child?
Why did he resist it? If he was to make a life here he had to surrender to the culture. This one had scant tolerance for prolonged bachelorhoods.
Older singles tended to get shoved beyond the social fringes. He was out there now. And Mouse, for all the charm he exuded, was slipping too. The ladies were not buzzing round so much anymore. He had made it too clear that he was available for good times only, not for long times and old-style fidelity.
If Amy was the best available, why not?
Part of it was habit. He had been a loner for too long, caught up in a profession where responsibilities to anyone else made a deadly liability. That was why, through mission after mission, he had fought his growing friendship for Mouse.
He had failed at that, and Mouse had too. They saw so little of one another nowadays... That was a pity. Just when they had given in to it, life had taken a twist and spun them along separate paths.