'Sure. Fine. Whatever.'
She lobbed the ball at him, which he just managed to catch. 'Were we interrupting anything?' She gestured at the mirrorshades and bracelet.
'No. Not at all. I was just going through an i-media, that's all. It's stored.'
'Fine.' She turned and started back to the pool. 'Got him!' she yelled at her friends. The harem of boys greeted the news with unwelcoming smiles.
'Uh, I'm, er, Lawrence.'
'Roselyn.' She dived cleanly into the water.
It was almost the last he saw of her for the next twenty minutes. Water polo was every bit as bad as he imagined it would be. Twenty minutes in water five centimeters too deep to stand comfortably, while people powerslammed the heavy, wet ball at him. Chlorine spray got in his eyes. He swallowed liters. His breath was hauled down painfully, feeling wretchedly exhausted.
The game finally dissolved into some kind of ending, which was mainly an argument about the score. Twenty, thirty, probably. A lot of shots had got past him. He wheezed up out of the chrome steps with a shaky hold on the rails.
'Are you all right?'
Roselyn was in front of him, squeezing water from her hair.
'Yeah, I'm good.' He was too puffed to pull his belly in anymore.
'I fancy a drink.' Her expression was mildly expectant.
Lawrence couldn't believe this was happening. 'Me too,' he blurted.
He received a barrage of evil-eye stares from the harem as he walked with her over to the open-air bar. Several of the boys called out at her to join in with their latest game. She just waved and told them maybe later.
'I need a break,' she told Lawrence. 'Jeez, where do they get their energy from?'
'I know what you mean. I'm here to chill out.'
She sat on the stool right at the end of the wooden bar, which meant nobody but Lawrence could sit next to her. He held back on a smirk as he sat down.
'You here by yourself?' she asked.
'No, with my father. He's at the conference.'
'Right.' She asked the waiter for a Coke.
'Me too,' Lawrence said. It would look like he was showing off if he went for a margarita. 'Where's your accent from? I haven't heard anything quite like it before. It's very nice,' he added hurriedly. It didn't look like she'd taken offense, and he couldn't think of anything else to say.
'Dublin.'
'Where's that?'
She burst out laughing.
He grinned bravely, knowing he'd been stupid again.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Dublin's in Ireland, on Earth. We arrived three days ago.'
'Earth?' he said, amazed. 'You came from Earth? What was the flight like? What did you see?' It seemed wholly unreasonable that girls as young as her two sisters had experienced a real live starflight while here he was, forever trapped in protective domes under an opaque sky.
Her small nose wrinkled up. 'I didn't see anything.
There's no window. And I had motion sickness the whole way. Not as bad as Mary, mind. Urrrgh, we must have used up the whole ship's supply of paper towels.'
'Mary?'
'My sister.' She pointed at the elder of the two sporting in the water. 'The other one's Jenny, there.'
'They look like they're okay kids.'
'Really?'
'Oh yeah. I've got five younger brothers and sisters myself. I know what it's like.'
'Five. Wow. Your parents must be pretty devout Catholics.'
'Ah. I know that's a religion, right? There's not much religion on Amethi. People here all tend to know the universe is natural.'
'Do you now?'
'Yeah.' He got the feeling he was being teased, somehow. 'So why did you come here?'
'My father died.'
'Oh shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, well...'
'That's all right. It was over a year ago now. It was a car accident. Very quick. All the people at the hospital said he wouldn't have felt anything. I've got used to it. Still miss him tons, though. But we were stakeholders in McArthur, and there was a lot of insurance, so Mother decided to cash it all in and make the proverbial new start. I'm glad she did. Leaving Dublin took me away from the bad memories, and Earth's pretty crappy these days. This place is just fabulous.'
'Er, yeah.'
'What's the matter with it?'
'Nothing. You're right. It's just that nowhere you live can be exotic. That's only ever somewhere else.'
Her smile lingered for a long time. 'Very profound, there, Lawrence. I'd never thought of that before. So do you think I'm going to be bored with Amethi in a
