"It was Jason's decision."

"It was not! He was in no condition to make decisions like that. And when that man did whatever it was that he did, they didn't have the sense to stop him. They just let him go."

"Shut up!" Hoku yelled. Mish looked at her, surprised. "You want to know why Jes thinks all of that? It's because he didn't listen any more than you are now. Do you want to know what happened, or would you rather go on hating everyone? Maybe you're enjoying all of this too much to give it up.

Maybe you like thinking you've raised murderers."

"How can you say that?"

"With my mouth. It's very easy. You make words with your tongue and lips and throat, and you just let them out."

"Don't play with me."

"Who's playing with whom? Do you think you're thinking at all? Or just making a lot of noisy garbage?"

"'Jason's dead!'" Mish spun around to face the window and put her head against the glass. Hoku watched her for a moment, feeling for her mind.

"Meya found Drake in Jason's room. She tried to stop him and he hit her, and while she was out he did something to the controls. She pulled herself together, picked up a bedrail, and bashed his head in. By then it was too late. Hart found her, reset the machines, and together they buried Drake and hid his stuff. They were afraid that if anyone found out Meya would be tried and put in stasis. They didn't realize how extensive the damage was.

Meya went to stay with the kasirene, and while she was gone the treatments ended and they tried to wake Jason up. When the rest realized what had happened, that Jason was mindless, they turned on Hart and accused him of killing Jason." Hoku paused. "I was there. I accused him just like the rest of them. We wouldn't listen to him, and he ran off -- caught the shuttle before we could catch him. Then Meya came back and made us listen. We dug up Drake.

He's planted west of here, just into the woods. But by then it was too late to find Hart and apologize."

"That's a very nice story," Mish said after a moment. "But Meya hasn't the guts to kill anyone, and Drake's name is on that passenger list."

"Hart was on that same shuttle two weeks later. We think Hart changed the lists."

"Why?"

"To protect Meya."

Mish looked at Hoku. "You can make up a better fairytale than that,"

she said.

"You want us to go dig Drake up again?"

"And what would that prove? That you've got a corpse in the woods? So what?"

Hoku reached for her bag. "You do believe me, you know. Somewhere in that mess, you believe me."

"Mind-reader," Mish said bitterly.

"Yes," Hoku said. "And shall I tell you something else? There's something floating around in there that you don't want to think about, that shames you. You're hiding it with a lot of hate and noise and shit, but it's not going away. Want to know what it is?"

"Tell me," Mish said. "The date of my birth? Statistics? My favorite dish? Tabor?"

Hoku shook her head. "He could have waited," she said. "He could have waited for me. He left without even saying good-bye."

Mish started crying. She stood, her arms at her sides, eyes open, her body shaking with great, silent, tearing sobs. Hoku guided her to the couch and sat beside her. Mish turned, and Hoku cradled her, rocking and murmuring into Mish's graying hair.

That afternoon Klein, the undertaker, brought Jason's body to the Tor and placed it in a coffin in the living room. He'd done a good job, Quilla thought. Putting gray in the hair, age lines on the face. Jason looked his age again. The people of Haven came to the door, bearing gifts of food and sorrow, and sat about the room, staring at the wooden box on its rough-hewn trestles.

Tabor sat in a corner. Occasionally he'd place the flute to his lips, then put it on his lap again without having played it. The kasirene came, Palen and her children, Teloret, Puti, old Altemet supported by his equally aged friends.

Cooks and field workers and laborers, shoulder to shoulder with the human builders and farmers and carpenters. Ved Hirem sat beside the coffin and refused to move. The lawyer dozed, his head resting on the coffin's side, then woke with a start, stared around the room with bleary eyes, and gazed at the coffin until his eyelids descended and he slept again. Simit, now the headmaster of Haven's two schools, brought his pupils and one by one they passed the coffin, pausing to stare at Jason's quiet face and folded hands, at the old quilt from his bed which covered him, at his long, brown fingers.

Quilla watched them filter through the room and realized, for the first time, that Jason was a hero to these people, had taken them in when their world no longer wanted them, had guided them, advised them, given them homes and land, crops to plant and a future to anticipate with eagerness rather than with dread. Most of the adults remembered Jason in the cold, bleak winter of Great Barrier, rushing the fences with them, leading them across the snowfields to Hetch's waiting shuttles. Remembered him carrying children and old people and the sick, remembered him waiting until the very last shuttle before leaving.

Jason Kennerin, savior and friend.

Yet Quilla remembered him, through her guilt, as the parent in whose love she had spent her childhood, as the father who, when she was older and needed him more, disappeared for far too long, far too often, into his other concerns. As the man she rarely saw, and whose life rarely touched her own, save for the occasional flash of wisdom, of compassion, coming always too late. Possibly he had given up the one family in order to help the other, larger, one, perhaps he had done the right and proper thing. Yet a small, ingrained resentment persisted, and she would pause beside him as she moved from room to room, lean in to touch his fingers or his eyelids, trying to read an answer from his still forehead and calm lips. People came and went, spoke quiet words, and she moved through the house, accepting condolences and gifts, giving thanks in her mother's name, and coming back to the coffin to touch her dead father again, and again to wonder.

Jes and Ozchan stood facing each other over the dining room table.

Quilla stopped at the door and watched them. They didn't notice her.

"If not for you, 'Doctor', my father would be alive," Jes said with quiet viciousness.

"Perhaps you'd better learn the truth before you go making accusations."

"I don't think you're capable of telling the truth," Jes said. "I don't think you want to."

"Big spaceship captain," Ozchan mocked. "Knows what's going on all the time. Knows best."

"Listen, off-worlder," Jes said, reaching across the table toward Ozchan's throat.

"That's enough," Quilla said. They turned toward her. "Do you want everyone in Haven to hear you?"

"Maybe everyone in Haven should," Jes said.

Quilla closed the door behind her. "Remember a pair of green pants and a shirt, Jes, for the tenth Beginning-Day? Remember the teasing you used to get about Taine?"

"So what?"

"Remember?"

"Sure I remember. Meya did those things. But what the hell difference does it make?"

"Go get yourself a drink and catch your temper, and talk to Meya."

"Quilla..." Ozchan said.

She waved him away. "Go on," she said to her brother. "And listen to her. She'll tell you."

"She's married to this snake," Jes said.

"Makes no difference. If you won't listen to the rest of us, at least listen to her. You don't have to believe it, but at least listen."

Jes looked from Quilla's face to Ozchan's, and back to her.

"All right," he said. "Where is she?"

"At the tubhouse. Bring her back with you when you're done."

Jes went out.

"He'll kill her," Ozchan said, and moved toward the door. Quilla blocked him.

"No he won't."

"Let me out, I want to be there. She'll need help."

"No she won't. Go take care of Mish."

"And if he does hurt her?"

"Then it's my fault, isn't it? Go watch my mother. She needs you more than Meya does."

Ozchan made a gesture both frustrated and angry, and went into the living room. Mish sat at the head of the coffin, her eyes open and dry; except for the small rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed, she could have been a statue, or a corpse. Ozchan put his fingers to her neck, as though feeling for her pulse, and looked into the coffin. Quilla turned away.

Mim put a large scarf over her face and refused to take it off. She looked ghostly and startled quite a few of the Aerans who came to the kitchen door with their gifts of cakes and ale. Quilla stood beside her for a time, looking into the crowded living room. Light poured from the open hall door through the scarf and illuminated Mim's face. She was weeping, shoulders proudly back; an invisible sorrow betrayed by a shaft of light. Mim had stumbled toward Hetch's shuttle, her arms full of holocubes which fell scattered on the snow; family, friends, lovers left dead or missing in Great Barrier's winter camps. Jason had stuffed the cubes in his pockets and half-carried her across the snow. To Mim, also, Jason was a hero.

The next morning they buried Jason in the small cemetery on the hill east of Haven. The grave site overlooked the town, Tor Kennerin, and beyond it, southward, to the barn and the rolling fields of crops and 'Zimania'

orchards. Kayman Olet, the town's only preacher, said a few words which were blown away on the rising wind, they bowed their heads, some wept, dirt covered the coffin, and it was over. Jes stood holding Meya's arm, and he looked at Quilla with mute apology. She nodded, but noticed that Jes kept his back turned to Ozchan, and when, on the way home, Ozchan took Meya's hand, Jes moved away from them.

Mish stopped in the yard in front of the house and looked south. The gray clouds stretched unbroken out of sight, but no rain fell.

"It's almost spring," Mish said.

Quilla put her arm around her mother, and together they went inside the house.

Quilla pulled her hair back from her face and glanced out at the rain.

Mish's spring had not yet presented itself; for all the weather showed, it could still be Eiret Tapan, with spring three months away. According to the kasirene calendar, it was now Tov Pel ke'Biant, and the skies should have been warm and clearing. That they weren't was one more misery to add to Quilla's accumulating list.

She had spent the past two weeks with Mish in the office, going over Aerie-Kennerin's accounts, unearthing papers, while Mish worked her way through them with fierce determination. Now that they had full licensing, were there enough profits to add a fifth ship to the line? Why the need for source, didn't they have enough already? The com charges were far too high; they should consider adding a comsystem of their own, something between Aerie, the ships, and possibly Althing Green. And what about Albion-Drake? With Drake gone, perhaps they could buy into it. Good to have all ends of the sap line in their control. Quilla had argued and exampled and searched and traced accounts until her head seemed filled with numbers, and today, finally, it looked as though the job was over. Mish had announced that she was satisfied with Quilla's management of the planet, and decreed that Quilla remain in charge while she herself returned to the spaceways -- to help Hetch, she said. There was too much to do, and Jes, although slated for eventual control, needed more experience. Quilla thought Jes had most of the experience he needed, that Mish's desire to return to space was simply a desire to be away from the place where Jason had died, but she kept silent. Jes accepted his mother's dictum and spent most of his time with Meya in the kasirene village. Quilla envied them, and wished that she, too, were down in the village, gathered around a fire with the kasirene and exchanging elaborate lies.

Hetch had arrived that morning and, after eating, had gone into the rain to visit Jason's grave. Now he returned and Quilla heard him in the hallway, stamping his boots on the mat and fumbling with his heavy water clothes. She called to him and he came into the office, looking far thinner than before, but still round, still bald. His face looked older. He kissed her cheek and sighed as he lowered himself into a chair.

"Mish isn't down yet? Good. Last time I was late she gave me hell."

"You're safe this time. The tea's still hot, you want some?"

"Do you have to ask?"

She handed him a cup, and he wrapped his pudgy fingers around it and looked at her through the steam.

"I'm sorry about your father," he said. She gestured. "I've known him and worked with him for, what, twenty-seven, twenty-eight years now. He was a good man." He paused. "I feel as though it were my fault."

"It wasn't, Hetch." Quilla picked up her own cup and blew at the hot tea. "The commission's investigation pinned the refitters on that one. There's no way it could have been your fault, and no way you could have prevented it."

Hetch nodded and sipped at his tea.

Quilla gathered the last stack of papers and reels together and layered them into a box, clearing the desk for Mish's conference with Hetch.

"Mish'll probably have some lunch sent in here," she said. "I don't think she'll want to lose any time."

"I know she won't," Hetch said. He seemed to shift gears in his mind, and his face relaxed. "I've worked with some tough people before, but she takes it. She's got a mind like a computer and the energy to match. I think that if she wasn't as damned good at the job as she is, I'd resent it."

"Umm," Quilla said. She sealed the box and carried it to a storage shelf.

"She's quite an operator, that Mish," Hetch continued. "One hell of an operator."

"I know. She used to be my mother."

Hetch looked at her, surprised, then rose and crossed the room to her.

He put his hand on her cheek.

"You know your mother's been through a rough time," he said. "Be more charitable, Quilla."

"Charitable, hell. I haven't seen my children in two weeks, I'm beginning to forget what Tabor looks like, and I'm tired." She smiled. "So tired I'm about to fall over my tongue. I didn't mean it, Hetch. Forget it."

He patted her cheek and Quilla smiled again, reflecting that of all the people on Aerie, only Hetch could get away with this avuncular treatment, and only Hetch would try. Then Mish swooped into the room and Mim followed, carrying lunch for two on a large tray. Quilla slipped out of the room.

First, she decided, beer and a long, hot soak in the wooden tub. Then lunch, then a nap, then the children would be home. She felt as though they had been away for months; the longing for them surprised her with its intensity. She took a beer from the kitchen, a rain cape from the hall, and crossed the damp ground toward the tubhouse.

She piled her clothes in a locker and climbed the steps to the tub, then saw that it was already in use. Ozchan lounged in it, his hands clasped around the edges of the tub, and his body half-floating. Beyond his steaming figure, water dripped over the edge of the roof, obscuring the stand of kaedos. He saw her and edged over, and after a small hesitation she dropped into place beside him, wincing at the heat of the water.

"It's only fifty centigrade," Ozchan said. "Nowhere near the boiling point."

She slid down until her chin hit the surface of the water, and closed her eyes. Ozchan shifted beside her, creating small eddies of heat against her skin. She stretched her legs until they rested on the bench at the far side of the tub, and felt her muscles relaxing.

"So what have you been up to these past two weeks?" she said.

"This and that. Setting up schedules with Hoku, learning the practice.

I think Ved Hirem's really got arthritis."

"No one else does. Think that, I mean. When he wants to, he can out-sprint anyone in Haven."

"But the symptoms -- "