against the stone. The beggars moved closer to her, seething like a tide of rats. Mischa was frightened, but not of the physical danger they represented. She tried not to look at their faces. One moved toward her from the edge of the semicircle. She slammed him on the chin with the heel of her hand. Her hand sank into boneless flesh. Next to the wall, she leaped over him; she pushed past another and jumped for the edge of the helix-ramp. She pulled herself by her fingernails and began to
climb, headlong.
Mischa left the door ajar behind her. The curtain of Chris's niche was torn a third of the way across the top and no lights showed beyond the gap. But Chris was there, she knew he was there: she stood very still and finally heard his shallow breathing, and felt him, almost silent in his mind. She pushed the curtain aside and saw him lying in his bed. She moved, and light from the doorway touched his hair. His eyes, half-closed, glinted beneath his long eyelashes.
'Chris?'
Some time later, he answered. 'Yeah?'
'Can I stay here for a little while?'
Again a pause. Chris pushed himself up on his elbow, barely raising his shoulders and head. His bones were prominent. 'Mischa?'
'Yes.'
'Sure.'
She slipped past the curtains. He squinted against the brief, bright illumination, gone before his translucent hand could cut the glare. Mischa glanced at the drab cloths hiding the far wall, relieved that anything on it was obscured.
'Hey,' Chris said. 'What's wrong?'
She sat on the floor next to him. 'I just went home.'
He touched her hand with fingers like a bat's wing, narrow and frail. 'Can I help?'
She shook her head. He was helping just by being there and being alive; he was helping because though his eyes were bloodshot and the pale skin below them shadowed with exhaustion, his gaze did not wander.
'What else?'
Mischa had somehow almost forgotten how calming and pleasant Chris's voice was when he was not whining. He sounded concerned, and very tired.
'He sold the kids.'
Chris tightened his hand on hers, slowly. 'Ah.'
'We—' She stopped. She could not put any of the blame for this on him. 'I never did anything for them. I should have taken them—'
'He would have made Gemmi make you bring them back.'
'I could have tried. I couldn't with Gemmi, I couldn't stand her so close
all the time, but maybe with them. like you did with me.'
Chris looked away. 'That was different, between you and me.it wasn't the same at all.'
'Why not?' She said it dully, not for an answer, because she did not think there was an answer.
Chris shrugged without speaking, still staring at the covered wall. After a while he turned his head and looked at her and pushed himself half up. 'Misch. Misch, you know if he really wanted to do it, there's nothing either of us could have done.' His voice was gentle.
'Nothing.'
He reached up, lifting a great burden, and touched the drying tears on her cheek. She wiped them on her sleeve, quickly, ashamed. Chris moved over. 'Come and sleep.'
Gratefully, she slid under the thin blanket beside him. Chris did not tell her that everything would be all right, and for that she was grateful too. He took her in his arms and held her; in her exhaustion she could imagine him to be the dependable and defiant person he had been when both of them were younger. Huddled against him, she felt him smooth the tangled hair back from her forehead with a gentle hand that trembled.
Chris seemed not to have moved at all when Mischa woke up, nor, she thought, had he slept. But he had felt her waking; he was not shutting out the world.
'How are you?'
'Better,' Mischa said. 'Okay.' She stretched, hands over her head, fists clenched. She sat up and looked around Chris's dim room. It was almost empty. The drab cloths hung across his work-wall like a shroud. She got up and wandered through the room; she was hungry, but there was no food.
'Chris, I'm leaving.'
He raised his eyebrows in a question; they did not ordinarily explain themselves to each other.
'I'm leaving Center, I mean. The Palace has new people in it. I'm leaving with them in the spring.'
'That's good, Mischa.' She could hear nothing in his voice, no envy, no regret, no joy.
'Will you come?'
His green eyes appeared black in the dimness; then, for a moment, they caught light and reflected it like an animal's. He looked away. 'No. hell, no.'
'They could help you out there.'
'Just go ahead and go.'
'I don't want to leave without you.'
'Yes you do.'
'You know what I mean.'
He closed his eyes and said nothing.
'Don't go sullen on me, Chris. Please.'
'It wouldn't work.'
'If you keep saying that maybe you'll believe it.'
With his eyes still closed, he nodded very faintly.
'It'd be interesting,' she said.
He shrugged and turned his head away.
Mischa began to get angry at him, and her voice rose. 'It isn't working here, so what difference does it make?'
Shallow lines of annoyance crossed his smooth forehead, but he did not open his eyes when he spoke. 'You were never like this before.'
'Neither were you!'
The tension rose between them in the silence.
Chris let his breath out in a long sigh. 'You don't owe me this.'
She knelt beside his bed, leaning forward. 'I owe you.'
'Then leave me alone. Just leave me alone for a change.'
Mischa sat back on her heels. The air felt cold. She stood up, crossed the room, and stood beside the shrouded wall with her fists clenched.
'Have you been working?'
He shoved himself up, abruptly, startled, attentive. His dirty hair fell across his eyes and he flung it back. 'Get away from there.' Chris never raised his voice. When he was most angry, his voice was this grating whisper.
Mischa grabbed the gray cloth. 'Is this all that's left of you?' she cried.
He crawled toward her, out of the bed, across the floor, trying to get to his feet. He stumbled and fell forward. Mischa tried to catch him, but his hands and elbows slammed into the floor. He lay in the dirt, panting; he hid his face in his hands.
Mischa touched his grimy hair and took his thin hand, gently pulling it away from his face. Tears streaked the dirt. 'Just come stay with me,' Mischa said. 'For a little while.'
'All right,' he said, without looking at her.
As Mischa approached the tall double doors of the pseudosibs' quarters, she could feel the emotionless passion of Subone flowing slowly around her, obscuring all but a tendril of intellectual involvement from Subtwo. She hesitated before knocking on the door, thinking that she could put this off, that she perhaps should not disturb him. She was already a day late. She knocked.
