Attractive enough. Were this any other world, any other port, he would have smiled, touched, followed her upstairs or out back or wherever, spent a pleasant half hour, and never seen her again. But this was Aerie, Haven, and Meya's friend. He frowned into his beer. Either bangs or merry domesticity, and neither one satisfied him.

Shouting arose in the market. The dray had shied, overturning the fish cart. The fishmonger shouted at the kasir greengrocer, while children gathered and gleefully tossed fish about. Some of them landed back in the cart. The monger turned from the greengrocer and began yelling at the children. Jes watched, almost smiling, then saw Taine standing near the vegetable bin. She carried a baby in her arms, and a small child clung to the edge of her raincape. Jes pushed his seat into the shadows and watched her, expressionless.

She was, if possible, even more beautiful than before. Maternity had smoothed the angles of her face, had softened the rigidity of her back and brought a glow to her face quite different from the icy gleams of her youth.

Yet her mouth was tight at the corners, and her fingers, he knew, were ragged at the tips from biting. She had put those fingers on his chest the last time he was on Aerie. Meeting him alone on one of Haven's quiet, night-time streets; accidentally, she had said. It had been a long time. She had missed him.

"You have a family now," he told her. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

She smiled. "It's what I thought I wanted."

He smiled back, cautiously, reaching for friendship.

"And perhaps you've decided you want something different?" he said.

"Not 'different'. More, maybe, but not different." She put her hand on his chest. "I've missed you, Jes.. I think about you. Think about being with you."

His chest felt tight. The darkness seemed to close around them.

Separate them from the rest of the world, from reality. He clenched his hands, fighting the urge to hold her.

"Jes?" She moved closer to him. "I want you."

He pulled back. "You're Kayman Olet's wife," he said. "Do you have that kind of marriage?"

"Does it matter?"

"My God, of course it matters! It -- it wouldn't be honest, Taine. It wouldn't be right."

"You are a romantic," she said. "I thought you'd have outgrown that, left it between the legs of some spaceport whore somewhere."

"Is that what you're trying to be yourself?" he demanded. "Which one was I to be, fifteen? Number thirty? How many since you married, every male on Aerie?"

She hit him hard on his jaw, cried out, then cradled her hand against her breast. "You bastard," she said with quiet venom. "You shitty, immaculate bastard. You're so goddamned pure you can't be bothered to see other people at all, can you?"

"Pure!"

"I just hope that someday you grow up enough to see shades of things, that you learn that some things can't be only right or only wrong because they're stuck somewhere in the middle. And I hope to God that, when you do, it'll hurt so much you'll die of it!"

She had run from him, holding her injured hand, leaving him furious, baffled, jaw and cock aching equally. He had not seen her from then until the day of Jason's funeral, when she stood beside her husband, eyes downcast, the perfect preacher's wife. Look at me now, he had wanted to shout at her. Look at all the gray places, Taine. Look, I'm hurting, just like you wanted me to.

But she had avoided glancing at him, had tendered her condolences to his mother, his sisters, and left him alone.

He clenched the stein and sat unmoving until Taine and her children left the marketplace and disappeared down Schoolhouse Road. Then he pushed back his chair, dropped a fistful of change on the table, and left the beer hall.

Meya stood surrounded by meters of cloth, wearing only her shirt. She turned when Jes entered and waved at the material.

"Five more minutes," she said.

He went back outside and leaned against the porch railing. Soon Meya joined him. She pulled her raincape closed and touched his arm.

"Want to go home?" she said.

"I don't care. Let's get out of Haven."

At the Tor end of Schoolhouse Road, though, he turned east toward the landing pad. Meya followed. He heard her footsteps in the mud and paused until she was beside him, then took her hand and tucked it into his pocket.

The pad was deserted, save for the covered form of Hetch's shuttle, parked to the side of the enlarged pad. The com hut was locked. Jes produced a magkey and opened the door, and they went inside. Cold, damp air filled the hut, bearing the scent of metals and the musty odor of wet clothing. Jes closed the door and lit a lamp, and Meya looked down at the committer.

"So many places to talk to," she said, putting her finger on the unlit directory. "So many places I've never seen."

"It's no loss. The universe is full of ugly, uninteresting places and ugly, uninteresting people. You're better off here."

"You only see the ports, Jes."

"True. I only see the ports." He opened his raincape. "Are you warm enough?"

"I'm fine," she said, but she left her cape closed. Jes looked out the window at the shuttle.

"Hoku asked me if I wanted to know its sex," she said. Jes looked at her. She smiled and put her hand on her stomach. "I told her I'd rather not."

"Why doesn't Ozchan take care of you? Why do you have to see Hoku?"

"Because he's my husband. It's not good doctoring to take care of your own family."

"Nice excuse." He turned to the window again.

Meya put her hand on his arm.

"Jessie. Come on. There's been enough trouble. We don't need more of it."

"I'm not making trouble," he said. "Have they gotten to you, too?"

"Who?"

"The rest of them. Quilla tried to grill me two days ago, and last night Tabor did the same thing. Why can't they all just leave me alone?"

"Because you've been acting different. Oddly. They care about you."

"And you?"

"You know that already."

He made a gesture of disbelief, shaking her hand from his arm. She stood behind him and put her arms around his waist, tucking her hands into his front pockets.

"Don't bite me, Jes."'

He felt her head resting against his shoulder blades. He put his hands in his pockets on top of hers.

"This was such a magical place," he murmured, "when I was a kid. Such adventures waited here -- so many things to do, so much excitement. I think I knew from the beginning where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do with my time. Who I wanted to be. And I tried hard enough, and I did it."

"Yes."

"You know what's really there? Long, boring runs that are all alike, that begin to blend together because there's no difference between them. Ports and bars and whorehouses that could be anywhere. Same people, same smells, same conversations. When something gets exciting, it means that something's wrong. And that's not enjoyment, it's fear."

"Then why do it?"

He closed his eyes. "It's quiet there, Meya. Dark and silent and clean.

Infinite possibilities. Look at the screens and you know that anything can exist, anything can happen. All that darkness and silence is potential, growing, changing. Space is alive, Meya. More alive than anything I've ever known." He paused, and she moved her head. Listening. "It's easy to feel like God there. Cut off from everyone, riding the entire universe. Riding 'with'

the entire universe. Being God because everything is godlike. I can't explain it very well. It makes my head feel clean."

"Do we bother that? Is the change too great?"

"No." He opened his eyes and looked out at the gray rain, the covered shuttle, the dark hills stretching out of sight in the mist "There's a change, yes. Different. Not on all planets, just here. Just Aerie. There's no love in space, Meya. There's bigness, and density, and void, and, well, transcendence.

Satori. It makes your blood hot and your heart beat faster and your lungs grab for air, it makes your skin tingle. But then the watch is over, and there's something missing. Like making love with ghosts. Like making love with whores in the ports. Nothing there. All by yourself again. Feeling used."

He felt her shiver, and turned around. She stepped toward him and he wrapped his cape around her, closing her in with him.

"The love was here, at home," he said. "Jason, Mish, Quilla, the twins.

You. I'd come home and eat the love, stuff it in, grab for it. Greedy. And after a while there would be something missing here, too. I'd miss the quiet.

I'd miss the ecstasy. Home would bounce me into space again, and after a few runs space would bounce me back home. I thought it would be that way forever, and then you changed that, too."

"Jessie..."

"I know. All right. I won't talk about it. But it's what I expected when I came home this time, and instead I found nothing at all. Quilla busy with Tabor. Mish gone. You and that off-worlder. And everyone worshipping a breathing corpse."

"Hush." She put her fingers on his lips. "Don't. If we were wrong, it was wrong on the side of hope. I couldn't help thinking that I'd walk in there one morning and he'd sit up and ask for breakfast. That Hoku or Ozchan would discover something that would make him whole again. We were foolish, Jes, but it was a love-foolishness. It was so hard to lose him again."

"So you used up all your love on a corpse, and there was none left for me."

"Don't be stupid." She pulled away from him and crossed to the committer. Jes stared at her belly.

"Why?" he said. "You did it deliberately. Why?"

"I needed Ozchan. I needed a baby. There was so much life ending, I needed something to start. And I love him, Jes."

"But not me."

"Don't. Not again."

He ignored the pleading in her voice. "Well, go love him, then. Fill yourself up with brats, until there's nothing left of you but babies."

She lifted her head and stared at him.

"Do you think," she said, "that if I didn't love you, I'd be here listening? I'd have spent all this time with you? Hearing you hating people? I kept hoping that you'd get over it, but you don't, you just get further away.

If there's no love left for you anymore, maybe it's because you don't feel any of it yourself."

"That's not true!" he cried, but she had opened the door and disappeared into the rain. He froze, staring at the door, and counted. When he reached five hundred, he walked out of the com hut and locked the door behind him.

The cloud cover had lifted at dusk, just in time to reveal a flaming sunset which colored the bottoms of the retreating clouds and turned the distant woods into silhouettes of bare kaedo trees. The family gathered on the front porch to watch, and Jes stood off to one side, watching them. Meya stood apart from Ozchan, and turned to go inside. Ozchan, watching her go, saw Jes and glared at him. Jes ignored him. In a moment Meya came back with Mish. Mish put her hands on the railing and stared westward. The sun flashed and vanished, and colors leached from the sky.

"Jason should have seen that," Mish said. Meya touched her shoulder, and Mish looked at her youngest daughter and smiled uncomfortably. Mish moved away, then turned back and patted Meya's arm, and went inside again. Quilla and Tabor turned to go.

"I missed it," Hetch said, coming onto the porch.

"It'll happen again," Ozchan said, and took Meya inside. Hetch came over to stand beside Jes.

"Spring?" Hetch said, nodding toward the clearing sky. A few stars appeared to the east.

"Almost. Might have a few more drizzles first. Nothing much."

"Then we can start planning to leave. Mish said she wanted to go as soon as winter ended."

Jes nodded and walked down the porch steps.

"No dinner?" Hetch said, surprised.

"I had a late lunch in Haven," Jes said. Hetch accepted the lie and went inside.

Jes walked around the side of the house and looked in the dining room window. Mim passed through the room carrying table linen, and the twins followed her, carrying plates and cups. They put the crockery down on a sideboard and helped Mim lay the cloth. Mish came in, said something, and went out toward the kitchen. Quilla and Tabor moved from the kitchen to the table, carrying pots of food. When Meya and Ozchan entered, talking with Hetch, Jes moved away from the window and down the hill. Happy family, he thought. Ozchan hadn't looked very happy.

The barn was dim and quiet, and smelled of hay and drays. Jes walked between the stalls, listening to the cattle settle in. The lofts above were lined with bales of hay or boxes of goods; rows of curing pots for the 'Zimania' sap took up one end of the large building. A corner was filled with equipment and machines. He wondered if the twins played in the barn, as he and Quilla and Hart had played, wondered if there was room left for playing anymore. He grabbed a rope and tugged at it experimentally, then swung up it to a lower loft, then higher. The farther up he moved, the more the barn seemed familiar, until, at the highest loft, he sat with his feet dangling over the drop and closed his eyes, and could feel no change at all.

Jes and Quilla and Hart. He lay back along the loft's wooden floor and thought of what it must have been like the day Hart unplugged Jason and found out he had died. Younger brother. Had he come home with thoughts of redemption? Of trying to make whole that which he had broken? If it had been anyone other than Hart, if it had been Ozchan, they would have listened before striking, would have tried to understand. The benefit of the doubt.

It could be argued that it was Hart's own fault, that what he had done seven years before dictated the reaction he had found in that hushed, violent room. It would be a silly argument, though. How had he felt, when his father lay there and breathed and didn't waken? Or when his family chased him to the shuttle? What did he feel like now? Jes thought of confusion, possible hatred, a terrible loss, but the emotions didn't tie in, didn't solidify. Of one thing Jes was certain; Hart had thought of Meya. One thing there in common. At least.

I should find Hart, he thought as he sat up. Tell him to come home. Try to trace him. Look for him. He swung down a rope, down another, and reached the barn floor. The drays mooed as he left the barn.

The Spiral sat high in the night, out again for the first time since autumn. Jes walked up the hill. The dining room window was dark now; upstairs all the windows were dark, save that of the room Meya shared with Ozchan. Jes stared at it, then turned away from the house.

The tubhouse, too, was dark. Jes took his clothes off and piled them in a locker, showered , and climbed into the tub. He put his flute on the ledge beside him and soaked, trying to shut out the voices in his mind. They pestered him -- Meya's voice, Quilla's, Tabor's, saying uncomfortable things to him. He reached for the flute and blew a few notes, then wiped his mouth on a towel and tried again. The music came more clearly now, rising through the tendrils of steam from the water. He concentrated on the melody, trying for an absolute purity of tone. The tone muddied and he stopped and dried the flute with the towel, but did not leave the tub.

"Tabor? Mind if I join you?"

Jes moved the flute from his lips and turned. Indistinct form on the steps, but he recognized the voice.

"Sure, Ozchan," he said with sarcastic pleasantry. "Come right on in."

A lightstick flared and went out, leaving an afterimage of Ozchan's dark body against the dark night.