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kept talking, kept lying, feeding them little bits and pieces, half-truths, until they had poked enough holes in his story that he felt he had no choice but to fall silent, to not say anything at all. But he held out, he felt. He didn’t reveal that the intruder had been his brother, didn’t give the police a name. And that was, he felt, an act of loyalty on his part, and should be considered by Istvan a redeeming gesture. He hadn’t exactly stood by his brother, but then again he hadn’t betrayed him, either.
    But four or five hours into the questioning, the officer had smiled and placed his hands flat on the table.
    “Istvan the name was,” he said.
    Jensi felt his heart begin to beat harder. “Are you sure?” he said. “Maybe my foster mother heard it wrong.”
    “Oh, we didn’t get it from her,” said the officer. “We got it elsewhere. From your friend Henry. Maybe he’s not as much of a friend to you as you want him to be. Istvan Sato,” he said. He pretended to read from a piece of paper in front of him. “Hey,” he said, “isn’t Sato your last name, too?”
    He kept his mouth closed.
    “Not talking, eh?” said the officer. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve already gotten everything we need to know to identify him from your friend. Shall I read off what I know?”
    Jensi shook his head.
    “I’ll take that as a yes,” said the officer. “But before I do, there’s just one question I want to ask.” He leaned forward. “How could you have ever hoped to hide from us the fact that the so-called home invader was your brother?”
    *   *   *
    He wanted to hate Henry for telling. At first he thought he did, but then gradually he began to take stock of all that Henry hadn’t said as well. It became clear as the officer continued to talk that Henry hadn’t told them where Istvan had been living or that they’d been seeing him regularly. Henry, as he discovered later, after the interrogation was over, had given very little away beyond the fact of Istvan being his brother. And Jensi had to admit they probably would have come across that fact on their own eventually.
    Later, once the police were gone and Jensi was left to have to sort out things with his foster mother, Henry stood by him, told her that yes, Istvan had approached them, that they had met him, but that they had had no idea either how disturbed he was or that he had followed them. It was largely Henry and his arguments that calmed her, that kept her from sending him back to the agency to be placed in another family. He had Henry to thank for being able to continue on with his new life.
    As for Istvan, it was as if he had disappeared. It would be a mistake, Henry convinced him, to try to make contact again. Istvan was unstable. If he came back, then that would be the end of Jensi’s new life—he’d be sent to a new family, maybe even sent off planet where Henry would never see him again. Henry was right, but still Jensi felt guilty. He felt he was abandoning his brother, and who did his brother have but him? He couldn’t stand the thought of his brother entirely and completely alone, living more in the warped world within his head than in the real world.
    And so even though he knew it was the wrong thing, he found himself one day after parting from Henry after school, walking not toward his home but back toward the valve that led to the Mariner Valley compound.
    *   *   *
    The valve operator recognized him as the boy who had visited earlier, nodded once, and let him through without question. The compound looked the same as it had looked the last time he’d been there: same crumbling buildings, same dirty streets.
    This time, the door was locked. The slit police tape was still there, but had been covered over with more police tape, this set intact.
    He knocked and then waited, but heard nothing from inside. He knocked again and waited. Still nothing.
    After a while he went out and walked around the building, trying to figure out