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the poor as much as possible. They tire me.”
    “We don’t only preach to the poor—” Shoulders lifted. “Sorry. No more speeches! You’re Michael Connelly, aren’t you. The son of the park-keeper Michael Connelly, who manages everybody’s virtual wilderness experiences. I know about you. But I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of Maitri’s parties—?”
    Misha laughed. “So young, and already having memory-problems. No, I’ve never been here before. My father gave me an Aleutian education, but he doesn’t like the kind of young man who hangs around aliens. I would have defied him of course,” he added gallantly, “if I had known what I was missing. And you are Lord Maitri’s ward, the young lady who is really an Aleutian in disguise. Everybody’s heard of you: nobody seems to know exactly what that means.”
    Catherine leant her head against the stone. How strange. He had called her, which no human should be able to do, and for a moment she’d felt that Michael Connelly knew everything; he’d seemed to feel the same pain, to bear the same terrible burden of guilt. The hallucination she’d suffered at the police station had flashed into her mind: a human girl whose flesh bore the marks of a deadly industrial disease, unknown on Earth… (she understood that illusion’s message very well: I am corrupted, they are doomed). Now he was just another of the rich young men who clustered around, whenever she made an appearance. She wondered if she could recapture that flash, that positively Aleutian meeting of minds, and was afraid to try.
    Misha had never been alone with a young woman in the flesh, except for Helen. And Helen, he had to accept, was always chaperoned now. She had closed her eyes. She opened them suddenly. They’d given her level brows, long lashes, and left her the black on black Aleutian effect. The alien eyes were very human in structure, but so dark there was no visible distinction between pupil and iris. It was more startling in the frame of white, without their pronounced epicanthic fold. She looked away, frowning.
    “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to pester you about the Departure, which I assure you is the major topic indoors. One day, a few hundred years ago, we woke up and you were here. One day soon we’ll wake up and you’ll be gone. I don’t care. You people can leave whenever and however you like, it’s all the same to me.”
    She laughed, human style, with teeth bared and a full-throated sound.
    “Do you believe in reincarnation, Michael?”
    “Misha, Mish. Or you can call me ‘Junior,’ but I’d prefer you didn’t. No.”
    “Nor do I.”
    “But you are ‘an Aleutian in a human body,’ however that works. Doesn’t that mean you’re an immortal yourself?”
    “You think I’m confused? So would you be. This person beside you will live and die a human. Yet I’m an Aleutian, that’s the truth, I feel it: and the Aleutian I am, who chose to be human, will be born again, not wearing this disguise. But does serial immortality mean that the same person lives on, exactly? Some of us don’t think so.’ She moved restlessly, as if struggling against invisible bonds. “You’re right. The Departure doesn’t matter. What matters is what’s going to happen on Earth, afterwards.”
    She rose to her feet, in a single movement that had no trace of ladylike helplessness. Misha’s prey had decided to escape.
    “We should go in. I’m supposed to be circulating.”
     
     said Maitri.
    The apology was so brazenly insincere that Sattva could only pass over it in Silence. He reverted to formal speech, to keep things polite. Lord Maitri, though out of office, was a respected veteran of the Expedition. “How is ‘Catherine,’ anyway? Such a shame about the psychosis. Sad for our friend, and awkward for the Expedition.”
    “She is not crazy.”
    Catherine’s