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before, many times? This isn't sudden, Sma; I felt like this my first day here, but I waited for months before I said anything, so I'd be sure. It's what I've been looking for all my life, what I've always wanted. I always knew I'd know it when I found it, and I have.' He shook his head; sadly, I thought. 'I'm staying, Sma.'
    I shut up. I suspected that despite what he'd just said he hadn't thought about how much the planet would change during his long likely lifetime, and there were still other things to be said, but I didn't want to press too hard too quickly. I made myself relax on the couch and shrugged. 'Anyway, we don't know for sure what the ship's going to do; what they'll decide.'
    He nodded, picked up a paperweight from the granite table and turned it over and over in his hand. The music shimmered through the room, like the sun on water reflected; points producing lines, dancing quietly. 'I know,' he said, still gazing at the heavy globe of twisted glass, 'this must seem like a mad idea ... but I just ... just want the place.' He looked at me - for the first time, I thought - without a challenging scowl or stern coolness.
    'I know what you mean,' I said. 'But I can't understand it perfectly ... maybe I'm more suspicious than you are; it's just you tend to be more concerned for other people than for yourself sometimes ... you assume they haven't thought things through the way you would have yourself.' I sighed, almost laughed. 'I guess I'm assuming you'll ... hoping you'll change your mind.'
    Linter was silent for a while, still studying the hemisphere of coloured glass. 'Maybe I will.' He shrugged massively. 'Maybe I will,' he said, looking at me speculatively. He coughed. 'Did the ship tell you I've been to India?'
    'India? No; no, it didn't.'
    'I went there for a couple of weeks. I didn't tell the Arbitrary I was going, though it found out, of course.'
    'Why? I mean why did you want to go?'
    'I wanted to see the place,' Linter said, sitting forward in the seat, rubbing the paperweight, then replacing it on the granite table and rubbing his palms together. 'It was beautiful ... beautiful. If I'd had any second thoughts, they vanished there.' He looked at me, face suddenly open, intent, his hands outstretched, fingers wide. 'It's the contrast, the ... ' he looked away, apparently made less articulate by the vividness of the impression. ' ... the highlights, the light and shade of it all. The squalor and the muck, the cripples and the swollen bellies; the whole poverty of it makes the beauty stand out ... a single pretty girl in the crowds of Calcutta seems like an impossibly fragile bloom, like a ... I mean you can't believe that the filth and the poverty hasn't somehow contaminated her ... it's like a miracle ... a revelation. Then you realize that she'll only be like that for a few years, that she'll only live a few decades, then she'll wear and have six kids and wither ... The feeling, the realization, the staggering ... ' his voice trailed off and he looked, slightly helplessly, almost vulnerably, at me. It was just the point at which to make my most telling, cutting comment. But also just the point at which I could do no such thing.
    So I sat still, saying nothing, and Linter said, 'I don't know how to explain it. It's alive. I'm alive. If I did die tomorrow it would have been worth it just for these last few months. I know I'm taking a risk in staying, but that's the whole point. I know I might feel lonely and afraid. I expect that's going to happen, now and again, but it'll be worth it. The loneliness will make the rest worth it. We expect everything to be set up just as we like it, but these people don't; they're used to having good and bad mixed in together. And that gives them an interest in living, it makes them appreciate opportunities ... these people know what tragedy is, Sma. They live it. We're just an audience.'
    He sat there, looking away from me, while I stared at him. The big-city noise grumbled