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flavored with mockery.
    Just another mission, just another foreign land. Just another alien culture to be navigated with tact. He smiled at Vincent past Miss Pretoria’s shoulder and bowed deeper before he straightened. “An Old Earth animal. Beautiful. Very clever.”
    “Like what we call a fexa, then? A hunting omnivore?” she continued as he nodded. “All gone now, I suppose?”
    “Not at all. Seven hundred and fourteen genotypes preserved, of four species or subspecies. Breeding nicely on reintroduction.” He gave her a substandard copy of Vincent’s smile number seven, charming but not sexually threatening. “Featured in legends of Asia, Europe, and North America.”
    “Fascinating,” she said, but she obviously had absolutely no idea where those places were, and less interest in their history. “Those are nations?”
    “Continents,” he said, and left it at that, before Vincent’s mirth could bubble the hide off his bones like lye. He stepped back, and Miss Pretoria moved to fill the space as smoothly as if he’d gestured her into it—no hesitation, no double-checking. They fell into step, Vincent flanking Pretoria and himself flanking Vincent, her security detail a weighty absence on either side: alert, dangerous, and imperturbable. Pretoria ignored them like her breath.
    Kusanagi-Jones caught Vincent’s eye as they headed for the reception line. Your reputation precedes you, Vincent. She’s like you. Neither an empath nor a telepath; nothing so esoteric. Just somebody born with a greater than usual gift for interpreting body language, spotting a lie, a misdirection, an unexpected truth.
    A superperceiver: that was the technical term used in the programs they’d been selected for as students, where Michelangelo was classified as controlled kinesthetic, but the few with the clearance to know his gift called him a Liar .
    He almost heard Vincent sigh in answer. Irritation: do something, Angelo. Not words, of course—just knowing what Vincent would have said.
    Kusanagi-Jones took his cue as they entered the receiving line and tried for a conversation with Miss Pretoria between the archaic handshakes and watch-assisted memorization of each name and rank. He knew as soon as he thought it that he shouldn’t say it, but it was his job to be the brash one, Vincent’s to play the diplomat.
    He leaned over and murmured in Miss Pretoria’s ear, “How does a planet come to be called New Amazonia?”
    Her lip curled off a smile more wolf than fox. “Miss Kusanagi-Jones,” she said, the dryness informing her voice the first evidence of personality she’d shown, “surely you don’t think we’re entirely without a sense of humor.”
    He shook another stranger’s hand over murmured pleasantries. There was a rhythm to it, and it wasn’t unpleasant, once you got the hang of it. The New Amazonians had firm grips, sweaty with the scorching heat. He wished he’d worn a hat, as most of the women had.
    He decided to risk it. “I admit to having worried—”
    She didn’t laugh, but her lip flickered up at the corner, as if she almost thought it was funny. “You’ll be pleasantly surprised, I think. You’re just in time for Carnival.”

    3
    THEY HAD NOT BEEN LIED TO. THE MEN WERE GENTLE; when one leaned, moved, spoke, the other one mirrored. She sensed it in the energy between them, their calm failure to react on any visceral level to her smile, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips—or to the more youthful charms of her security detail. She knew it as surely as she would have known fear or hunger. Not only were they gentle, they were together .
    She’d been afraid the Coalition would try to send stud males, to pass them off—even to replace Katherinessen with an impostor. These weren’t quite like the gentle males of her acquaintance, though. They were wary, feral, watching the rooflines, eyes flickering to her honor and to the weapons of the other women. She shouldn’t have been