'All the name I have is 'Mischa.' '
'I don't understand.'
'Only people in the Families have a last name, and only people in the Families have a school.'
'Ah, the Families. Surely you can read?'
'Yes.'
'But how did you learn?'
She shrugged. She could no more remember learning to read than learning to pick locks. Chris had, perhaps, taught her that too, but she had no idea where he had learned. 'I don't know.'
'What do you want to do?'
'Leave Center. Leave earth. Go to the Sphere.'
He leaned back. 'You don't like earth?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'Because.' She did not know how to tell him, and she did not want to talk about her relatives. 'It's dying, it's stopped. It—' But Subtwo was nodding, and Mischa fell silent.
'What do you do, in the city?'
She was unsure exactly what he was asking. His expression was impossible to read and his emotions were clamped tight. But she looked directly into his eyes and said, 'I'm a thief.'
His features tensed in a quick and automatic grin, a response to what he seemed to think was a joke, but Mischa remained serious. Subtwo's expression sobered. 'Are you good?'
'I'm good at anything I do.'
'Don't you think it's wrong to steal?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'Have you seen the beggars?'
He glanced at her sharply. 'Yes—?'
'That's my other choice. To sell myself—'
'I see.' He cut her off; Mischa could see that he did not want to hear any more. 'What if you're caught?'
Mischa shrugged. 'They punish you.'
'Have you been punished?'
'Not for stealing.'
He looked at her so long without speaking that she grew nervous. Finally sick of the tension, she asked, 'What's the matter?'
'I am trying to decide what to do with you.'
'Teach me to fly ships.'
He raised his eyebrows and forced out a deep laugh. 'My time is worth more than that. You'll need several years of preparation first.'
Mischa flushed, resenting the laughter. She hunched her shoulders and let her hair slide across her eyes, but still watched him.
He touched buttons in quick succession on the console intercom behind him. After a few moments, Mischa heard a voice from the speaker, but the volume was too low for her to make out the words.
'I have a task for you,' Subtwo said. 'I do not think it will conflict with your ethics.' The statement could have been sarcastic, but was not.
The response sounded tired, but not sleepy; not bored, but affirmative. Subtwo shut off the intercom. 'You should have come during the day,' he said.
'I didn't think I'd get in.'
'Hm.' His expression seemed slightly amused. 'Would you have come if you had known I was watching?'
'I don't know. I guess so. You'd've had to see me sooner or later.'
They waited in silence until a barefoot young man came in. He wore black pants and a black robe with a green and gold embroidered dragon crawling up the shoulder. He glanced at Mischa and faced Subtwo with something of a defiant air.
Physically, he resembled a few other offworld people Mischa had seen: pale tan skin, very dark eyes that appeared slanted because of the structure of the eyelids. But his uncombed hair, instead of being black, was bright gold.
'Yes?' If he had been awakened, he did not seem annoyed by it, but he looked very tired.
'I have a new crew member. I would appreciate your teaching her as much mathematics as you can. Start her in xenobiology. And the other basic subjects—her education has been neglected.'
'All right.'
'Very good.'
Subtwo turned to his console, and they were obviously dismissed. The young man gestured toward the doorway with his head, not peremptorily but pleasantly, without taking his hands from his pockets. They left Subtwo's quarters and walked together down the hall to the foyer.
'I'm Jan Hikaru,' the young man said, sitting on the edge of the fountain. The light-fibers brushed his shoulder and shimmered into orange.
'My name's Mischa.'
He took his hands from his pockets and rested his forearms on his knees. His hands were narrow and bony, and, like his movements, graceful and strong. Mischa admired the lines of his body.
'What do you want to learn?'
'Everything.'
He smiled, pleasantly enough but superficially, preoccupied. 'Calculus, then, to give you the feel of things. Number theory and machine communication and enough astronomy to get you around. And the xeno. Do you know any of those?'
'No.' If he had not been so serious, she would have believed he was mocking her and she would have grown angry; even so, her tone was sharp.
He glanced up, paying real attention for the first time. 'I'm not fit to be a teacher,' he said. 'I know too little. But I will do the best I can.'
Mischa followed Jan Hikaru; he took her to a room across the hall from his own. It was less garish than most of those she had seen, for which she was grateful. The tapestries were blue and the thick rug a deep dark green. Jan showed her around briefly and left her alone to sleep. She found herself prepared to like him.
Mischa could not sleep under the ornate blankets or on top of them or even on the floor. She lay in darkness for long slow minutes that seemed more like hours. The silence was alien after the echoing exchanges in the corridors where she had lived. Half-awake, half-dreaming, she imagined herself already on another world, one peopled by figures from the drapes in the Palace, clothed in precious gems and metals or in more precious furs and leather, passing like silent spirits between the curiously substantial ghosts of trees that had not been seen on Mischa's part of earth in centuries. She walked toward them, but they receded, beckoning, smiling. Leaves brushed dew against her face. The sky was purple-black; stars crowned one horizon while the clear streaks of dawn cleansed the other.
A feeling like terror, a cold draft in a wave from her face to her stomach, drove her out of her fantasy. She sat up with her fingers clenched in the
carpet. The visions disappeared.
So had ended all her dreams, real or construct. She feared for the one she lived in now, for if it shattered, it would be the last.
Mischa rose and looked into the hall through a narrow gap in the curtains. She could detect no one, so she crept out to explore. The corridor into which her room opened continued for a short distance, then, after a short purposeless curve, stopped. For a moment she thought she would ask for a different room, one not on a dead-end hall, then she shrugged. If Subtwo neglected to keep his word and she had to flee again, she did not think she would care if she had escape routes or not. There was nowhere to escape to.
At the open end of the hallway the light-fountain was dimmer, as though it, like people, needed rest. It glowed softly. Mischa walked across the softly lit central node and brushed her fingertips against the strands. They
