"Jason will give in," Hart said. "It's only been four days, after all.

But I can give him what he wants, and he knows it. Be patient, Drake."

"I'm patient with accomplishments, Kennerin. With progress. You haven't accomplished a thing."

"He's beginning to trust me. I think that's accomplishment enough." He bent forward to watch a small fish dart by his toes, then slid his hand into the water. After a moment, the fish moved between his fingers. He caressed the fish's round belly, then flicked its tail and it sped down the stream. Hart laughed and shook his hand. Drops of water flashed in the sunlight.

"I can't wait forever, you know," Drake said. "I've got things to do."

"They can wait a while longer." Hart wiped his feet dry on the grass and slipped into his sandals. Drake followed him down the bank of the stream.

"I used to have a hideout down here when I was a kid," Hart said. He poked through the rushes. "Had it provisioned, too. Cakes and water and fruit -- anything I could filch from the kitchen. I'd decide that everyone hated me, and I'd come down here. Tell myself I'd never go back, but by the time night came I'd get hungry for dinner and sneak back home. Or Quilla would come and sit by a tree and sing songs, just like she was all alone, but she knew I was here. I could never figure out how." Hart smiled. "It must have been around here somewhere. Things change so fast."

Drake snorted and moved away from the stream. Hart splashed through the water, then thrust his hands into the river willows and held a rusty jug to the sunlight.

"Drake!" he shouted. "Here, catch!"

Drake flinched and held his hands out, and the jug smacked against his palms and fell into the stream. Hart grabbed it as it floated by and crossed to Drake.

"It must have been over there," he said, turning the jug over in his hands. "I must have lifted this from the kitchen, it looks like the kind of thing Laur used to keep milk in." He frowned and tossed the jug into the underbrush.

"Come on," he said. They moved away from the stream.

"I can't spend all month here," Drake said. "If your thing doesn't work out, I have to get back to Kroeber and start the treatments. And you know what happens in that case."

"'I can't' is beginning to be repetitive, Drake. My treatment works.

You ought to know that."

"I know it works on lab animals. I know it works in theory. But I don't know how it works in practice."

"Then let me practice on you."

"Oh, no. You're not doing a thing to me until I know it's safe."

"Better I use my father as a lab animal than you, is that it?"

"Listen, Kennerin" -- Drake stopped under a tree and put his hands on his hips -- "don't forget who you are and who I am."

"You're a sick old man who's at least sixty years older than he looks, and most of you is spare parts. I'm the person who can give you a new, unused body, one that won't need replacement parts every few years. You're a transplant addict, Drake. You have to be. But I can give you a heart that doesn't wear out. You can buy a lot of things in this universe, but you can't buy that. Except from me."

Hart grinned at Drake's silence and strode out of the woods. He stopped and waved a hand at Haven.

"Look at that," he demanded. "When I left, there were two dirty streets, some shops, an open-air market, and maybe four hundred people. See that building over there? Meeting hall, and theater, and auditorium. That's the hospital at the far end of town, over behind that stand of trees. When I was a kid, school was a one-room shack. Now it's that monster. Paved streets.

Water pipes. Main sewage system. We had patchwork things back then, one methane converter per household. Now they've got an entire plant to do that.

And the kassies moving in, voting, running shops, just like any other bunch of lazy natives. Upwards of two thousand humans on To'an Cault, and most of them right here." He paused and glowered at the town. "Smothering the whole planet," he muttered. He turned away from Haven.

"Hart, listen. There's a shuttle coming in three days from now. Let's just get your father on it and get going. You can run his machines, by the time he wakes up we'll be back on Kroeber and halfway through his treatment.

That makes sense, doesn't it?"

Hart spun around.

"He's my father, Drake!" he shouted. "And he makes up his own mind, in his own good time. Understand?"

"You're crazy," Drake said. "I offer you a fat living for the rest of your life, and you're willing to chance it on an old man's dim mind."

"You can't buy a new heart, Drake," Hart said. "Just remember that."

"Maybe I can get one from the same place you seem to have bought yours," Drake said.

Hart grinned and strode back toward the Tor.

"Jason!"

"Surprise," Ozchan said, grinning. Jason, sitting in the six-legged chair, grinned too. Quilla came around the desk and pushed a chair out of his way.

"I thought you didn't want to use it," she said.

"Changed my mind," Jason said. Ozchan pushed him up to the desk. "The room was driving me crazy."

Quilla smiled. "It's good to see you downstairs. Do you want to go outside? I've smoothed the path around the house, and it's lovely weather out -- ".

"No, not yet. Later." Jason looked around the room. "Feeling useless.

Maybe I can help with the books?"

"Sure. I was just doing them. Hold on, I'll get some tea, all right?"

Jason nodded. Quilla went out of the room, and after a moment Ozchan followed. Jason could hear their voices in the hall, low murmurs. Talking about him. To be expected. The pain in his stomach swelled, and he grimaced.

Either pain or dimness, and today he preferred clarity of mind, even if he had to pay for it.

The room still looked as it had when Mish ran the finances of the plantation and the planet. Shelves piled with books and reels, sheets of figures scattered around the desk. The window curtains pulled open to let in the late afternoon sunlight. A softboard on the wall, bristling with pins and notes. He closed his eyes and felt the wave of longing moving in him again.

It's all right. She'll be home soon. It's just that some things bring her so close.

Quilla came in, carrying a tray of tea-things. She kicked the door closed behind her.

"Ozchan's off for an hour or so," she said. "I think he's gone soft on Meya."

"Sensible man," Jason said. He pushed the pain away and watched Quilla pour the tea. "Think he'll marry her?"

"Isn't that a little premature? He's only been here about fifteen days."

"Perhaps. How about you?"

"Don't start that again, Jason. I'll get married when I want to, and I don't want to."

"You might as well be married," Jason said. "Tabor lives here all the time, doesn't he?"

Quilla put her cup down. "Yes. But we can't talk to each other, Jason.

We don't have anything to talk about. He's sweet, he works hard, he loves the children. We never argue. But we never do anything else, either. Can you imagine being married to someone you can't talk with?"

"No," he said, thinking of Mish. "But you live together. Sleep, eat, work, raise the kids together."

"Then why bother with the ceremony? It wouldn't change things, and if things did change, then being married would just complicate matters. Why is it so important to you?"

"I don't know." He touched the hot cup with his fingertips. "I guess I like things stable, Quil. I like knowing what things are, and how they relate to each other. Marriage makes things stable, you know it's not going to disappear when you're not looking."

"Neither am I, Jase."

"I'd like to be sure of that."

She shook her head and reached for the papers. "Why don't I just give you a general rundown now, all right? We can get into the details later, but some things have changed in the past year. Our price at Shipwright, for example, is up twenty percent, but shipping's up twelve. Jes tells me that sub-five's wide open now, if we can get the ships in there to service them.

And we will, when Mish gets the license. Anyway, we needed twenty kilos of source last winter, and..."

He tried to listen, but the pain rose and fell within him, and figures had always bored him, anyway. He wanted to be outside, hauling buckets of sap from the orchards, tossing hay in the barn, shouting in the meeting hall with Ved Hirem. Working. Active. He couldn't touch the land, and its loss pained him with an almost physical intensity. But to go to the fields now, like this -- unable to run, to stride, to bend, to stretch -- was unbearable. Hell. He closed his eyes, unable to fight the feeling of loss. Mish. Aerie. Mish.

"Jason, what's wrong?" Quilla knelt by his chair, her expression anxious. She touched his shoulder.

"Too tired, I guess," he whispered. "Not as strong as I thought I was."

"Do you want to go back to bed?"

He almost nodded, then remembered the room, the bed he and Mish had shared, the view through the bare halaea limbs, the smell of antiseptics overriding the distant scent of Mish's perfumes.

"No. Living room. By the window."

She pushed him out of the room. The walls of the hall moved by, then a sharp turn into the living room. Chairs and couches, rugs and curtains. The fireplace. The low tables. The cupboard. He turned his face away from his reflection. Quilla pushed his chair to the window.

"The yellow knob," he said. "Two clicks."

The analgesics slid into his system, and he felt his mind slowing again. Helpless. Useless. How could he spend a life this way, tied to chair or bed, living in a world of pain or a world of fog? No change.

"Quilla?"

She put her head close to his. "What is it?"

"Find out," he whispered. "Find out what Hart wants to do."

"About what? Jason? What do you mean?"

Her voice slid away. He turned his face toward the light and welcomed the deadening fog.

Ozchan was upstairs, taking care of her father. He had tired himself out during the day, and Ozchan said that it would take a couple of hours to get him back in balance. Meya thought about that, kicking her feet against the porch step. Ozchan taking care of things. She thought about his long, competent fingers. Wondered what they would feel like on her skin, and shivered. From far away, knowing worlds of which she'd never heard, languages she couldn't begin to speak. Making people well. Making people laugh. He'd tried to play Caraem that afternoon, and had made a fool of himself. Startled by the kasirene every time he looked around. Laughing at himself, and inviting the rest of the team to laugh with him. But he was quick, too, and seemed to see the entire field with one glance, always knowing where everyone was. If he stayed long enough, perhaps he'd play with the team next season.

She hoped he'd stay long enough.

The twins were asleep already. Quilla and Tabor were in Haven with friends. Mim was reading in her room. Tev Drake was down at the port, making expensive off-planet calls. Meya had made very sure that he wasn't around before sitting on the porch alone, waiting for Ozchan to finish. Hart frightened her, in a distant, uncomfortable way, but Drake seemed to take pleasure in terrorizing her. That evening, before dinner, he had waited outside the washroom until she was finished, and she'd had to squeeze by him to escape. Yesterday he'd put his hand on her crotch, and when she tried to push him away, he'd laughed and hurt her. The night before she'd locked her door for the first time in her life. He'd stood outside rattling the knob and whispering to her until she threatened to wake up the family. When she was sure he'd gone, she'd slid into bed with the twins again. They wanted to know why she did that so often now, and she didn't know what to tell them. She wished, fiercely, that he and Hart would leave, or that he'd fall off something or under something and kill himself. Anything to keep him out of her life.

"Damn!"

She gasped and leaped away from the steps, far back on the porch.

"Who is that?"

"Me," she said. "Who are you?"

"Hart." Her brother limped onto the porch, holding to the railing. "I hit my shin against something." He sat and began removing his boot.

"Serves you right, sneaking around at night."

"I wasn't sneaking around." He pulled the boot off and inspected his shin. "Shit."

"What is it?"

"I think I've broken the skin. I can't see."

She reached inside and unhooked the hall lamp, then lit it and placed it beside Hart. She stood well away from him and leaned down to look.

"You didn't break anything," she said, "just a bunk, is all."

"Well, it's my bunk, not yours, and it hurts like hell."

"Put some cold water on it."

"Wonderful. And how am I supposed to get to the cold water?"

"Oh, just wait here." She went to the kitchen and filled a bowl with water, then brought it out to him.

"You didn't bring a towel," he said.

"Too bad. Use your socks."

Hart frowned at her, then stuck his tongue out. She laughed, surprised.

"Not that way," she said. "Can't you do anything right?"

She came around the lamp and knelt beside him. His skin looked a bit scraped, but nothing other than that. She wrung the sock in the water and laid it across the shin.