Axis

are you busy?'

'Do I look busy?'

'Looks like you have work to do, anyhow.' She was fairly certain he would be willing to put aside anything nonessential for a chance to see her: a chance she hadn't offered him in a long time. He came around the desk and hugged her, chastely but sincerely. She was briefly flustered by the smell of him in close proximity. Turk was thirty-five years old, eight years older than Lise, and a foot taller. She tried not to let that be intimidating. 'Paperwork,' he said. 'Give me an excuse to ignore it. Please.'

'Well,' she said.

'At least tell me if it's business or pleasure.'

'Business.'

He nodded. 'Okay. Sure. Name a destination.'

'No, I mean—my business, not your business. There's something I'd like to talk to you about, if you're willing. Maybe over dinner? My treat?'

'I'd be happy to go to dinner, but it's on me. I can't imagine how I can help you write your book.'

She was pleased that he remembered what she had told him about her book. Even though there was no book. An aircraft taxied up to a hangar some yards away and the noise came through the thin walls of Turk's office as if through an open door. Lise looked at the ceramic cup on Turk's desk and saw the oily surface of what must have been hours-old coffee break into concentric ripples. When the roar faded she said, 'Actually you can help a lot, especially if we can go somewhere quieter…'

'Sure thing. I'll leave my keys with Paul.'

'Just like that?' She never ceased to marvel at the way people on the frontier did business. 'You're not afraid of missing a customer?'

'Customer can leave a message. I'll get back sooner or later. Anyhow, it's been slow this week. You came at the right time. What do you say to Harley's?'

Harley's was one of the more upscale American-style restaurants in the Port. 'You can't afford Harley's.'

'Business expense. I have a question for you, come to think of it. Call it quid pro quo.'

Whatever that meant. All she could say was, 'Okay.' Dinner at Harley's was both more and less than she had expected. She had driven out to Arundjis on the assumption that a personal appearance would be more meaningful than a phone call, after the time that had elapsed since their last conversation. A sort of unspoken apology. But if he resented the gap in their relationship (and it wasn't even a 'relationship' anymore, perhaps not even a friendship), he showed no sign of it. She reminded herself to focus on the work. On the real reason she was here. The unexplained loss that had opened a chasm in her life twelve years ago.

* * * * *

Turk had a car of his own at the airfield, so they arranged to meet at the restaurant in three hours, about dusk.

Traffic permitting. Prosperity in Port Magellan had meant more cars, and not just the little South Asian utility vehicles or scooters everyone used to drive. Traffic was thick through the docklands—she was sandwiched between a pair of eighteen-wheelers much of the way—but she made it to the restaurant on time. The parking lot at Harley's was crowded, unusually for a Wednesday night. The food here was reasonably good, but what people paid a premium for was the view: the restaurant occupied a hilltop overlooking Port Magellan. The Port had been established for obvious reasons on what was the largest natural harbor on the coast, close to the Arch that joined this planet to Earth. But its easy lowlands had been overbuilt and the city had expanded up the terraced hillsides. Much of it had been constructed hastily, without reference to whatever building codes the Provisional Government was attempting to enforce. Harley's, all native wood and glass panels, was an exception.

She left her name and waited in the bar for half an hour until Turk's elderly car chugged into the lot. She watched through the window as he locked the vehicle and strode toward the entrance through a deepening dusk. He was clearly not as well-dressed as the average customer at Harley's, but the staff recognized and welcomed him: he often met clients here, Lise knew, and as soon as he joined her, the waiter escorted them to a U-shaped booth with a window view. All the other window tables were occupied. 'Popular place,' she said.

'Tonight, yeah,' he said, and when Lise stared at him blankly he added, 'The meteor shower.'

Oh. Right. She had forgotten. Lise had been in Port Magellan less than eleven months local time, which meant she had missed last year's meteor shower. She knew it was a big deal, that a kind of informal Mardi Gras had evolved around the occasion, and she remembered the event from the part of her childhood she had spent here—a spectacular celestial display that happened with clockwork regularity, a perfect excuse for a party. But the shower didn't peak until the third night. Tonight was just the beginning.

'But we're at the right place to see it start,' Turk said. 'In a couple of hours, when it's full dark, they'll turn down the lights and open those big patio doors so everybody gets an unobstructed view.'

The sky was a radiant indigo, clear as glacial water, no sign of meteors yet, and the city was arrayed below the restaurant in a gracefully concealing sunset glow. She could see the fires flaring from the refinery stacks in the industrial sector, the silhouettes of mosques and churches, the illuminated billboards along the Rue de Madagascar advertising Hindi movies, herbal toothpaste (in Farsi), and chain hotels. Cruise ships in the harbor began to light up for the night. It was, if you squinted and thought nice thoughts, pretty. She might once have said exotic, but it no longer struck her that way.

She asked Turk how his business was doing.

He shrugged. 'I pay the rent. I fly. I meet people. There's not much more to it than that, Lise. I don't have a mission in life.'

Unlike you, he seemed to imply. Which led directly to the reason she had gotten in touch with him. She was reaching for her bag when the waiter showed up with ice water. She had barely glanced at the menu, but she ordered paella made with local seafood and seasoned with imported saffron. Turk asked for a steak, medium-well. Until fifteen years ago the most common terrestrial animal on Equatoria had been the water buffalo. Now you could buy fresh beef.

The waiter sauntered away and Turk said, 'You could have called, you know.'

Since the last time they had been together—since her expedition into the mountains, and a few uneasy arranged meetings afterward—he had phoned her a few times. Lise had returned his calls eagerly at first, then perfunctorily; then, when the guilt set in, not at all. 'I know, and I'm sorry, but the last couple of months have been busy for me—'

'I mean today. You didn't have to drive all the way out to Arundji's just to make a date for dinner. You could have called.'

'I thought if I called it might be too, you know, impersonal.' He said nothing. She added, more honestly, 'I guess I wanted to see you first. Make sure things were still okay.'

'Different rules out there in the wilderness. I know that, Lise. There are home things and there are away things. I figured we must have been…'

'An away thing?'

'Well, I figured that's how you wanted it.'

'There's a difference between what you want and what's practical.'

'Tell me about it.' He smiled ruefully. 'How are things with you and Brian?'

'Over.'

'Really?'

'Officially. Finally.'

'And that book you're working on?'

'It's the research that's slow, not the writing.' She hadn't written a word, never would write a word.

'But it's why you decided to stay.'

In the New World, he meant. She nodded.

'And what happens when you're done? You go back to the States?'

'Possibly.'

'It's funny,' he said. 'People come to the Port for all kinds of reasons. Some of them find reasons to stay, some don't. I think people just cross a certain line. You get off the boat for the first time and you realize you're