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area, he got a glimpse of one of the latest relocation reservations for humans that was under construction, with cranes towering overhead. He looked back as the site vanished from view, uncertain of the name of that one. Joss thought it was a good idea to keep people on such reservations and prevent them from going out of bounds and harming the environment. There had been too many millennia of rampant ecological abuses committed by human beings, with their filthy industries, endless wars, and outright neglect of anything beyond their small circles of self-interest.
    The fellow anarchist at Kupi’s table said something to her in a low tone that Joss couldn’t make out. He was a soft-spoken, effeminate man.
    â€œI’ll always care about Rahma,” she replied, “but I could never live with him again. He has so many … eccentricities!”
    Joss shook his head, hoped she didn’t finally say something that would be the proverbial last straw. He knew she had been forced out of a leadership position shortly after the AOE defeated the Corporates, because of her outspoken criticisms of powerful progressive leaders surrounding the Chairman. A number of her shocking comments from years ago were still remembered, including her accusation that many of the GSA leaders were “living for the wrong kind of green—the money kind.”
    So far she had never questioned the honesty or integrity of the Chairman himself, and that must have been her saving grace, because he continued to watch out for her welfare. And as for those she had spoken against, some had tumbled from power under the withering, disapproving eye of Rahma Popal and Greenpol. But others remained, and new green profiteers kept cropping up, like noxious weeds.
    Across the aisle, the anarchist rose and staggered away, unsteady on his feet. He’d consumed a lot of wine at this sitting, and Joss had seen him drinking earlier as well.
    â€œYou’re unusually quiet today,” Kupi said to Joss, scooting into a place across the table from him and stubbing out her juana stick in an ashtray. “You’re not jealous of me talking to another man, are you?”
    He watched the man go through a door between cars, said, “With a gay guy? Hardly. But I am jealous of you. You’re a better person than I’ll ever be, Kupi, the most honest person I’ve ever met, unafraid of the consequences of truth.” He smiled gently. “Unlike me, you have the full courage of your convictions.”
    â€œOr I have the stupidity of them.” Her brown eyes glistened with fire. “Sometimes I don’t know what you see in me. I’m a lot older than you are, more than fifteen years.”
    â€œI never noticed.” He leaned across the table, kissed her tenderly.
    â€œShall we find a private place?” she asked.
    â€œWe should wait,” he said. “We’re almost to Quebec Territory.”
    Even without a sleeping compartment, there were still places on the train for them to make love; they’d done it before. But he pulled away and looked at her, knowing that the two of them cared about each other, but he was coming to realize that the physical side of their relationship was most of it—and without that, they would have little in common. She was mysterious, which he would normally find intriguing, but she kept too many secrets to herself for his liking, saying he wouldn’t want to hear them anyway. It had become a barrier between them.
    Joss had slept with a number of other women in his adulthood, to see what it was like before settling down. Now he longed to be with one person, and though he was only thirty he felt a mounting urgency to find her. By any measure, his relationship with Kupi Landau was unusual; she was one of a kind, and that was interesting to him, even alluring. But he couldn’t feel really close to her.
    Whenever Kupi made love to Joss it was a raw, primal thing, from a