"And we're to be completely cut off for that long?" Jason demanded.

"That's impossible."

Hetch shrugged. "I can't afford to keep 'Folly' running. Don't have the capital for repairs, licenses, dock fees, salaries. Hell, I can't even afford crew gains. They know damned well there won't be any."

"But Tham's got family here," Jes said. "Merkit and Bakar, it's like another home to them. They won't desert us."

Hetch looked at Jes. "We're spacers, Jes. Without a job, how's Tham going to feed that brood of his? He doesn't know shit about farming. Besides, he's a spacer. He'd hate it. None of us can stay planetbound. We'd flip."

Quilla touched Jes' hand and looked at Hetch. "We won't be cut off for ten years. Parallax isn't going to let us slip by. The sap's worth too much to them. They'll send in a line by next year's harvest, or they're too stupid to stay in business."

"Sorry, Quilla. They'll do to Aerie what they did to Griffin, or Costa Azul. They'll wait until you're starving, then come in with an offer to buy you out. And you'll be so damned hungry you'll jump at the chance."

A brief silence descended.

"We made it through before," Jason said. "That first year, when the refugees came and Haven burned."

"We made it because of the kasirene first," Mish said, "then because of Hetch. By now we're too dependent on the trade to break it on our own. We need too many things we can't make here."

"It's insane!" Jason jumped up. "To have a million fremarks' worth of sap sitting in the barn, and the orchards going full speed, and then sit here and talk about starving!"

"Hetch?"

The captain turned to Quilla again. Long legs and long, cold glances, and a cold, quick mind. She made him feel stiff, wary, confused. But now she was looking past him, her eyes unfocused, and her fingers tapped on her arm as though she were counting. Meya turned her head, and Quilla put her hand on her sister's hair.

"What's your price for the sap?" she said.

"Last year, one ninety-three the kilo. Year before that, one ninety-two. The stuff's getting popular; the supply is scarce. If I could make it to market this year, it would fetch maybe two even, maybe a bit more."

"We've gotten tons of sap sitting in the barn," she said. "That's about two million fremarks, price at Shipwright. Yes?"

"About," Hetch said. "But -- "

She waved him to be quiet. "How much do you need to get 'Folly' back in shape?"

"Quarter of a million. Crew gains about fifty thou total for a run, dock fees and licenses another twenty-five or thirty, grab fees maybe ten, payments and taxes another hundred. Incidentals, provisions, about fifteen.

Fuel, seventy. And some for backup."

"That's still only about four hundred thousand. Barely cuts into the profit."

"Damn it, I don't have the money to buy the sap! I don't have the damned million capital to take it off Aerie."

"Can you make one more haul, present conditions?" she said.

"Probably. But don't you see -- "

"Run the sap on consignment. We'll pay the repairs and fees out of the gross profits, take care of your other expenses, and buy 'Folly' from you.

You'll get a salary for the first run, and if you want to stay on as captain you'll either get salary or gains, whichever you prefer. And take Jes along as an apprentice."

Jes gasped.

Hetch started to reply, then saw the look that Quilla and Mish exchanged. Quilla's face was calm, and Mish nodded once, unsmiling. For a moment it seemed to the captain that the room had shifted, that some subtle interchange had occurred and the currents in the room stabilized into a new pattern. Baffled, he turned to Jason and spread his hands.

"Sell the 'Folly?'" he said.

"Buy the 'Folly?'" Jason said. "Mish, I don't think Quilla understands..."

Mish glanced at Jason, then back to Quilla and nodded.

"I understand perfectly," Quilla said. "Either we buy the 'Folly' and have a chance to make it, or we don't, we're out of the Federation for a couple of years, and we sell out to Parallax whenever they snap their fingers.

And if Hetch doesn't sell us the ship, he loses her to scrap in two runs."

"But we're farmers," Jason said, "not shippers."

"Not now. If Hetch stays on, he takes care of the shipping for us. Jes learns the trade and can direct the company. The market's bound to increase.

It did for Hetch until he had a run of bum luck, and it will for us. Only we're going to be damned careful who we haul for, and where. If Parallax doesn't move in for a decade or so, we can have sub-five through -nine tight, and when they try to undercut us we'll have the sap to carry us through."

Meya woke and reached for Quilla's shoulders. Quilla pulled her onto her lap and kissed her hair.

"Seems obvious to me," Quilla said. She rose and carried Meya to the door while the others watched in silence.

"It's almost ai'l," she said over her shoulder. "I suggest we all get some sleep."

"She's crazy," Jason murmured as Quilla closed the door.

Mish shook her head. "I think she's right, Jase. I think she's come up with the only possible answer."

"But sell 'Folly?'" Hetch demanded. "I'd sooner sell my soul."

Two weeks later the last of the 'Zimania' sap was loaded onto the shuttle. Merkit and Bakar had gone up to the 'Folly' with the first load, and now Hetch, Tham, and Jes stood by the shuttle's ramp. The entire population of Haven had come to see them off.

Jes was almost bouncing with eagerness, striving at the same time to look as dignified as possible. Quilla grinned, then saw Taine watching her brother. She stood apart from the crowd and looked both sad and troubled.

Quilla felt an urge to go to her, say something of comfort. Then Jason touched her arm and said something about the cargo, and she forgot Taine in the excitement. Tham stood holding his latest child, making loud promises to return as soon as his slave-driver of a captain pointed the ship toward Aerie again, and Hetch went the rounds of the people, shaking hands. He would transport the sap to Shipwright, have the 'Folly' made spaceworthy again, and stop at Althing Green to record the change of ownership and register the new planetary company of Aerie-Kennerin, growers and shippers, fair-shared by every Aeran over the age of sixteen and directed by the family Kennerin, with Captain Manuel Hetch as sole head of the shipping division. He rather liked the ring of that, Director of Shipping Division; it sounded better than Freewaster, he claimed.

Quilla thought that he was trying to make it easier to give up ownership of the 'Folly', and when he shook her hand she pulled him close and kissed his cheek. He blushed, grinned, and patted her hand. Quilla laughed.

Tham's wife gathered her children and marched them away. Jes almost pulled Manny Hetch up the ramp, and within moments the shuttle slanted into the clouded sky.

Quilla pulled the straps of her pack over her shoulders. Mish and Jason kissed her, Laur handed her a heavy sack of provisions and admonished her to be careful, and Palen stood at the edge of the clearing, crossing and uncrossing her arms. The Aerans straggled back toward Haven, and soon the Kennerins followed them. Quilla watched them go, and turned to Tabor.

"You could have waited until the spring," he said. "We could have walked south together."

Quilla shook her head. "This I want to do alone."

"You won't change your mind? About us?"

"No. I'm sorry." She touched his arm. "I don't want to change the way we are together, I told you that. But I don't want to get married. I don't think it's necessary."

"To me it is."

She looked at him. Tabor walked away and climbed out of sight. Quilla watched him for a moment, then walked to Palen.

"All finished?" Palen said. "Said good-bye to everyone on the damned island? Forgotten anyone?"

Quilla laughed. "It's all go, kassie. Come on."

That night, eighteen kilometers south of Haven, Palen heaved the cloak over her shoulders, cursed the small, light rain, and peered at Quilla over the dying fire.

"You've been grinning all day," Palen said. "What's on your mind?

Making trouble?"

"No." Quilla pulled her hood over her head and patted her flat stomach.

"Just making life, Palen. Changing."

Palen snorted. "That I know about. Are you coming?"

Quilla came around the fire. They wrapped their cloaks together and lay down. Quilla put her head on Palen's shoulder, and the kasir wrapped four arms around the human. In a few moments they were both asleep.

*Hart*

I SIT AND WATCH THEM ALL DURING DINNER, as they eat and talk and giggle at each other's jokes. As usual, they don't seem to notice my silence; as usual, I don't care. Meya has discovered puns, and is busy punning in Standard. Stupid, infantile twisting of words, over which Jes would chortle were he not off hopping through the Wing, playing at being a spacer. Frivolous people, both of them.

Mish talks about kasiri. You can't make a pun in kasiri she says. She leans back and pats her stomach, exaggerating the amount she has eaten. Flat stomach, flat woman. My mother. Mish. My father serves himself again and again, putting heaps of food into his own flat body, pushing hair from his forehead, eyeing my mother over his cups of wine. Lechery. Lechery! Quilla, my older sister, my beloved Quilla, dear Quilla, with a belly like an inflated bladder pressed against the table's edge; Quilla with her unborn get, sipping at her wine and smiling. Secretive. Quiet. As though she carries the answer to the mystery of the universe tucked in her belly. She talks with Jason about this and that, the farm, the shipping company, the people. She reaches for the jug of wine. She nibbles cheese. Pregnancy has made her sensuous, slow, filled the planes and angles of her face, softened her eyes. Self-sufficient bitch.

She'd taken maggot seed and brewed it into maggot life, parroted about love and meaning and change and death, and spat Tabor from her life, having emptied him of what she wanted. She won't marry him. My sister the bitch is brewing a bastard. And Tabor doesn't realize how thoroughly he's been used. He comes back, of course; he'll always come back, and she'll always take from him and give nothing in return. (She used to give. She used to give to me. Love and bandages. Quilla?) They're all like that, my dear family. Takers. Eaters.

Self-sufficient, self-contained people. The maggots have turned them into vampires, and they're too blind to know it. Too blind to know how well I know them.

And I do know them. How could I not know them? I know myself, and I am like them. Seed and spawn. Blood of my blood, frivolity of my frivolity. Lust of my lust.

Mim comes in from the kitchen behind me, walks along the side of the room, puts a plate before my father, walks back. Avoiding my chair. Mim doesn't like me and I don't like her. Mim the maggot. Alien. Short-spoken woman. She's trying to turn Laur against me, but it won't work. Laur hasn't the brains to turn against me, and for this I love her.

I'm fifteen years old. I keep my head. I balance my life. I go my way.

Tonight I will go my way again, pack my bags and move from them, tonight I can afford to look at them calmly, dispassionately, coldly, thoroughly.

"Dessert, Hart?"

That's Quilla, leaning toward me, smiling, holding a bowl of cream and sweets.

Quilla.

Sweet, brackish Laur, black stick, old woman, supervises while Mim clears the table. Laur brings her cup of tea and sits near me, eyes my plate, shakes her head. Mim sits beside my distant, pregnant sister, they bend their heads and speak, I presume, of the repulsive. What else does one discuss with a pregnant woman? Placentas. Contractions. Lactation. Baby shit. Vomit. I could tell her more about any of these subjects than she could guess or want to know. Shall I tell you how life is made, fecund Quilla? Not the grunting of body against body and a spurt of slime, not a shiver in the loins and emotional masturbation. Chemicals and atoms, Quilla. Cells and changes.

Purity, biological cleanliness, surrounded by so much corruption, so unhappily embedded in so much human flesh. Secrets of the flesh. Flesh of my flesh.

Quilla. Does your baby have two heads?

I push away from the table and leave the room. They notice, of course, but say nothing. My head hurts.

My room is small and cramped and heavy with stale air and stale objects. The window through which I used to crawl to meet with Gren.

Terrifying Gren. How could that broken, scared old man have terrified me?

A child, that's all. A small child. I grew. I learned. Am learning still, while the rest of them sit at the table and exchange information as old and battered and worthless as their lives.

My family.

My bags are already packed; there is little here I wish to take.

Clothing. Some journals. A few tools. I've moved most of my books and chips out already. What remains?

A blanket Mish made for me, long ago. All the knotted, colored yarn, pattern on pattern. Made it with her hands, her fingers, sitting one winter before the fire. Before the maggots.

Drums my father made me. Jason. Hollowed wood and kelva pods, painted with the figures of birds.

Jes' old whistle, battered and shrill.

A puppet made from one of Quilla's shirts.

A wooden ship.

The windowsill comes to my thighs; I remember when it came to my shoulders. I lean against the glass, looking out over the kitchen roof, over the tall, bending tree. My eyes sting.

"Hart?"

I turn and things spill from my arms. Blanket, drums, whistle, toys.

Muffle and clatter on the floor -- I thought they had said my name.

Quilla stands leaning at the doorway, puzzled. She should have moved more loudly, this double-personed person, and here she has come to startle me.

When she says my name, she plays with the "r," drawing it out, softening it.

"What do you want?"

Has she noticed my eyes? I don't dare lift my hand to wipe at my cheeks. The light is behind me on the bedside table; she won't notice my eyes.