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soon.
    Sure enough, the entire storm lasted less than fifteen minutes from the time it unloaded its first drops until the sky cleared and the sun reappeared. Making a face, he swung his pack around in front of him and jiggled it firmly, shaking off as much of the clinging liquid as possible. Ingrid did her best to put a good face on their situation.
    “Look at us, wasting water in the Namib. I can think of at least half a dozen public and private environmental organizations back home that would condemn us out of hand.”
    Her efforts failed to amuse her companion. “I don’t care if we are in a desert—I don’t like being
wet
. Ever since I locked up with you on this madman’s outing it seems like I’ve spent half the time being wet. In Savannah, in Miavana, in Sanbona, and now even in the middle of the world’s oldest farking desert!” He glared across at her as he slipped the self-cushioning pack around onto his back. “Despite the chance to make some serious subsist out of all this there are times since I wish I’d just given you the damn thread and walked out of your neat and tidy little office.” He turned wistful. “Icould be back in Savannah sharing stim with my friends instead of out here hiking from nowhere to Nowhere.”
    So much for trying to lighten the atmosphere, she thought. Her tone hardened. “I got the impression you didn’t have many friends.”
    He looked at her sharply. “Hey, I knew plenty of people! Lots of people.”
    “There’s a world of difference between acquaintances and friends.”
    “That so? I thought you were a doctor of medicine, not philosophy.” His voice turned challenging. “How many ‘friends’ you got, doc? Not professional colleagues. Not grateful patients. Real friends.”
    She bridled. “I’ve got plenty! There’s Suzanne, and Leora.…”
    Whispr’s angular face screwed up in a rictus of dismay as he interrupted. “What the hell kind of name is Leora?”
    “It’s a perfectly good name!” she snapped back at him. “She’s a probe specialist who works in my tower, a fine technician and a true friend and … why are you nodding and smiling like that? Are
you
patronizing
me
?”
    He looked away. “How could I do that, Ingrid? I’m just a lowly subsist-scrabbling street Meld and you’re a respectable uptown doctor. Why, just look at how respectable you are! Entering another country under a false name, maniping your body and face to conceal your identity, flaunting your beauty to distract attention and questions from what you’re doing here.…”
    “That has nothing to do with the number and quality of friends that I …!” She paused and her tone changed abruptly. “Flaunting my what?”
    “Your beauty.” He continued without hesitating but with his gaze fixed firmly on the next bend in the ravine that was leading them northward. “It dazzles men, and probably some women. Naturals and Melds alike. I know: I can bear witness to its effects. Andthat was
before
the hair and boob manip. Maybe you’re unaware of it, but you stun people quietly.”
    She gaped at him. Then she shook her head and irritably kicked aside a small rock in her path. “You have the most peculiar way of pissing people off, Whispr.”
    Now he did turn to look at her, his reply floating on his characteristic sardonicism. “Riffling isn’t my only talent.”
    She drew herself up. “You’re just trying to flatter me, to win the argument.”
    He scowled. “Whenever a woman says to a man ‘you’re just trying to flatter’ me, what she’s really saying is ‘flatter me some more.’ ”
    They strode onward in silence for several minutes. Off to his left a lizard vanished into a crack in the ravine wall, its black-and-gray striped tail a swift shrinking, highly agitated punctuation mark.
    When she finally spoke again it was to say something that shook him to the core, affecting him even more powerfully than had Napun Molé’s attempt on their lives in Florida or the