from him.
Kneeling, Pamir again grabbed the dead arm. Emergency genes and muscle memory began to fight against him, the strength of a giant forcing him to grunt as he pushed the hand to where it was set beside the trigger. Then he threw all of his weight on the hand, forcing it to stay in place. For a moment, he panted. Then he grabbed the heavy plate with his left hand, and with a gasping voice, he said, 'One last chance to explain.'
The biped was beginning to aim.
'Bye-bye, then.'
Pamir flipped the plate, aiming at a target barely three meters away. And in the same instant, he let the dead hand fall onto the trigger. A slab of hyperfiber slid from the ceiling, and the final door was shut. It could withstand two or three blasts from a plasma gun, but eventually it would be gnawed away. Which was why he flipped the plate onto the floor where it skipped and rolled, clipping the edge of the shaped charge of explosives that capped his own gun.
There was a sudden sharp thunder.
The door was left jammed shut by the blast. Pamir spent the next twenty minutes using a dead hand and every override to lift the door far enough to crawl underneath. But a perfectly symmetrical blast had left his own weapon where it lay, untouched beneath a bowl of mirror-bright hyperfiber.
His enemy would have been blown back up the hallway.
Killed briefly, or maybe just scared away.
Pamir lingered for a few minutes, searching the dead man's home for clues that refused to be found, and then he slipped back out into the public avenue -still vacant and safe to the eye, but possessing a palpable menace that he could now feel for himself.
A ninety-second tube ride placed him beside Sorrel's front door. The apartment addressed him by the only name it knew, observing, 'You are injured, sir.' Performing its own rapid examination, a distinct alarm entered into an otherwise officious voice. 'Do you know how badly you are injured, sir?'
'I've got a fair guess,' Pamir allowed, an assortment of shrapnel still buried inside his leg and belly, giving him a rolling limp. 'Where's the lady?'
'Where you left her, sir. On the patio.'
Everyone was terrified, it seemed, except for her. But why should she worry? Sorrel had only been knifed by a quick-and-dirty thief, which on the scale of crimes was practically nothing.
'Have her come to her bedroom.'
'Sir?'
'I'm not talking to her in the open. Tell her.'
'What about her friend -?'
'Another husband is dead.'
Silence.
'Will you tell her-?' Pamir began.
'She is already on her way, sir. As you have requested.' Then after a pause, the apartment suggested, 'About Gallium, please… I think you should deliver that sorry news…'
He told it.
She was dressed now in slacks and a silk blouse made by the communal spiders of the Kolochon district, and her bare feet wore black rings on every toe, and while she sat on one of the dozens of self-shaping chairs, listening to his recount of the last brutal hour, her expression managed to grow even more sad as well as increasingly detached. Sorrel made no sound, but always there was a sense that she was about to speak. The sorry and pained and very pretty face would betray a new thought, or the pale eyes would recognize something meaningful. But the mouth never quite made noise. When she finally uttered a few words, Pamir nearly forgot to listen.
'Who are you?'
Did he hear the question correctly?
Again, she asked, 'Who are you?' Then she leaned forward, the blouse dipping in front. 'You aren't like any environmental technician I've known, and I don't think you're a security specialist either.'
'No?'
'You wouldn't have survived the fight, if you were just a fix-it man.' She almost laughed, a little dimple showing high on the left cheek. 'And even if you had lived, you would still be running now.'
'I just want you to point me in the safest direction,' he replied.
She didn't respond, watching him for what seemed like an age. Then sitting back in the deep wide chair, she asked, 'Who pays you?'
'You do.'
'That's not what I mean.'
'But I'm not pushing too hard for my wages,' he offered.
'You won't tell me who?'
'Confess a few things to me first,' he replied.
She had long hands, graceful and quick. For a little while, the hands danced in her lap, and when they finally settled, she asked, 'What can I tell you?'
'Everything you know about your dead husbands, and about those who just happen to be alive still.' Pamir leaned forward, adding, 'In particular, I want to hear about your first husband. And if you can, explain why the Faith of the Many Joinings seemed like such a reasonable idea.'
She had seen him earlier on the voyage and spoken with him on occasion-a tall and slender and distinguished J'Jal man with a fondness for human clothes, particularly red woolen suits and elaborately knotted white silk ties. Cre'llan seemed handsome, although not exceptionally so. He was obviously bright and engaging. Once, when their boat was exploring the luddite islands in the middle of the Gone-A-Long Sea, he asked if he might join her, sitting on the long chaise lounge beside hers. For the next little while -an hour, or perhaps the entire day-they chatted amiably about the most ordinary of things. There was gossip to share, mostly about their fellow passengers and the boat's tiny crew. There were several attempts to list the oceans that they had crossed to date, ranking them according to beauty and then history and finally by their inhabitants. Which was the most intriguing port? Which was the most ordinary? What aliens had each met for the first time? What were their first impressions? Second impressions? And if they had to live for the next thousand years in one of these little places, which would they choose?
Sorrel would have eventually forgotten the day. But a week later, she agreed to a side trip to explore Greenland.
'Do you know the island?'
'Not at all,' Pamir lied.
'I never made sense of that name,' Sorrel admitted, eyes narrowing as if to reex-amine the entire question. 'Except for some fringes of moss and the like, the climate is pure glacial. The island has to be cold, I was told. It has to do with the upwellings in the ocean and the sea's general health. Anyway, there is a warm current upwind from it, which brings the moisture, and the atmosphere is a hundred kilometers tall and braced with demon-doors. The snows are endless and fabulous, and you can't sail across the Gone-A-Long Sea without visiting Greenland once. At least that's what my friends told me.'
'Was Cre'llan in your group?' 'No.' Somehow that amused her. She gave a little laugh, adding, 'Everybody was human, except for the guide, who was an AI with a human-facsimile body.'
Pamir nodded.
'We power-skied up onto the ice during an incredibly hard snowfall. But then our guide turned to us, mentioning that it was a clear day, as they went. And we should be thankful we could see so much.'
At most, they could see twenty meters in any direction. She was with a good friend-a child of the Great Ship like Sorrel, but a thousand years older. Sorrel had known the woman her entire life. They had shared endless
