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the air cleared.
    The tall frames of fog-catchers reared up in concentric
circles that led inward to the lights. Touched by the wind, the long wires
vibrated. Touched by the wires, the fog condensed. Water dripped from
wires’ tips to the platform. The intermittent sound of heavy drops on metal,
like rain, provided irregular rhythm for the faint music.
    “Just a party,” Laenea said. The singing,
glistening wires formed a multilayered curtain, each layer transparent but in
combination translucent and shimmering. Laenea moved between them, but Radu,
hanging back, slowed her.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I don’t wish to go where I haven’t been
invited.”
    “You are invited. We’re all invited. Would you
stay away from a party at your own house?”
    “I don’t understand what you mean.”
    Laenea remembered her own days as a novice on the crew.
Becoming used to one’s new status took time.
    “They come to the port because of us,” Laenea
said. “They come hoping we’ll stop and talk to them, and eat their
food and drink their liquor.” She gestured — it was meant to be a
sweeping movement, but she stopped her hand before the apex of its arc,
flinching at the strain on her cracked ribs — toward the party, lights
and tables, a tasseled pavilion, the fog-catchers, the people in evening
costume, the servants and machines. “Why else come here? Why else bring
all this here? They could be on a tropical island or under the redwoods. They
could be on a mountaintop or on a desert at dawn. But this is where
they’ve chosen to be, and I assure you they’ll welcome us.”
    “You know the customs,” Radu said, if a little
doubtfully. When they passed the last ring of fog-catchers the temperature
began to rise. The warmth was a great relief. Laenea let the damp velvet cape
fall away from her shoulders, and Radu did the same. A very young man, still a
boy really, smoothcheeked and wide-eyed, approached and offered to take the
cloak. He saw the tip of the scar between Laenea’s breasts and stared at
her in curiosity and admiration. “Pilot…” he said.
“Welcome, pilot.”
    “Thank you. Whose gathering is this?”
    The boy, now speechless, glanced over his shoulder and
gestured.
    Kathell Stafford glided toward them, followed by her white
tiger.
    Gray streaked Kathell’s hair, like the silver thread
woven into her silk gown. Veins glowed blue beneath her light brown skin.
    “I’m flattered that you came,” she said.
“I heard you were in training.”
    Laenea heard in Kathell’s voice the same tone that had
been in the shopkeeper’s, a note of awe and deference. She grasped
Kathell’s hands.
    “I’m just the same,” she said. “I
haven’t changed.”
    Kathell’s tiny, fragile hands trembled in
Laenea’s strong grip.
    “But you have,” she said. “You’re a
pilot now.”
    Discomforted, Laenea let her go.
    The other guests, quick to sense novelty, drifted nearer as
if they had no particular direction in mind. Laenea had seen all the ways of
approaching crew or pilots: the shyness or bravado or undisguised awe of
children; the unctuous familiarity of some adults; the sophisticated
nonchalance of the rich.
    Laenea recognized few of the people clustering behind Kathell.
She stood looking out at them, down a bit on most, and she almost wished she
had led Radu around the fog- catchers instead of between them. She did not feel
ready for the effusive greetings offered pilots; they were, for Laenea, as yet
unearned. The guests outshone her in every way, in beauty, in dress, in
knowledge; yet they wanted her, they needed her, to touch what was denied them.
    She could see the passage of time, one second after another,
that quickly, in their faces. Quite suddenly she was overcome by pity.
    Kathell introduced them all to her. Laenea would not
remember one name in ten. Radu stood alone, slightly separated from her by the
crowd, half a head taller than any of the others. Someone handed Laenea a glass
of