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    As always, when the Porrinyards surprised me by seizing the initiative, my cheeks burned. “Now?”
    “Your path is a difficult one, Andrea. You’ll never have a perfect moment, unless you stop from time to time to make one. I see no hypocrisy in suggesting a little wine, a little music, and some time putting that big bed in our suite to some fine recreational use. After all, our next venue might not be even remotely as nice.”
    I remembered my first glimpse of them. They’d been as beautiful as anybody I’d ever seen. Sometimes, faced with pressing problems, I forget. Sometimes they take the time to remind me. Oscin’s smile became broad and challenging, while Skye’s became more sly, implying secrets that she and I could find some way to hide from him. This was a transparent fraud, as Skye could no sooner keep secrets from Oscin than I could decide, on a whim, to keep secrets from the right half of my brain. But the pretense had its intended effect. The two of them—dammit, the one of them—had mastered all the skills they needed on me.
    “There’s a shower in there,” Skye said. “Big enough for three.”
    “Water,” said Oscin. “Not sonics.”
    Skye: “I noticed a handy menu of expensive topical euphorics.”
    Oscin: “Some I’ve tried and some I’ve always wanted to try.”
    “Together,” suggested Skye, “and in combination.”
    Oscin said: “We have plenty of time.”
    And then the two of them, together, rising as one: “Why not?”
    There was no point in further resistance.
    “God damn it,” I said, and went to them, lowering my head against the cleft formed by the place where their shoulders met.
    I think I came within a heartbeat of calm, before I felt the sudden tension in their postures. “Andrea,”
    they said.
    I took a step back and glanced at their faces. Both wore looks equal parts astonishment, alarm, and anger. Oscin was staring over the top of my head at something behind me; Skye had seized my forearm with a grip that prevented me from turning around right away. I gave her a questioning look. She nodded, then gave my arm an extra squeeze, just strong enough to approach but not cross the threshold of pain. This could only be a warning to be careful how I reacted when I turned around and saw what they saw. I nodded to let her know that I understood.
    She loosened her grip on my arm.
    I turned around and did not overreact at all.
    “Son of abitch .”
    3

THE KHAAJIIR
    The Bocaian licked the edges of his lipless mouth.
    “Andrea Cort. I hope I may take that as an expression of surprise, and not as an appraisal of my character.”
    Bocaians don’t suffer the same problems with worn-out skin elasticity that causes wrinkles in untreated humans of advanced years, and therefore don’t need regular rejuvenation to remain smooth-faced until their advanced dotage. But I had an experienced eye and had no trouble spotting the signs betraying this one’s extreme antiquity, from the paler cast to his skin, to the bent posture that betrayed the traditional complaints of any upright spine suffering from too many years spent arguing with gravity. He rested much of his weight on a staff, taller than himself, that seemed to have been carved from a glassy transparent wood I had seen many times in my childhood; it had been polished to a high sheen, and reflected the overhead lights in a manner that made it look almost as bejeweled as the garish furnishings around us. He wore a loose-fitting hooded tunic with a ruffled ankle-length hem, and a gold medallion bearing a shiny embossed symbol of some kind. There was noROM disk affixed to the center of his high, hairless forehead: a rarity for the few Bocaians who travel, given that the absence testified to unassisted fluency in Mercantile and the other common languages.
    Damned if he didn’t seem to be smiling. Bocaian evolution hadn’t produced that expression as a way to communicate warmth or amusement, but they knew what it meant to