"I didn't know you played the flute," Ozchan said.

"Tabor taught me, years ago."

"It's a pity he didn't teach you manners, too."

"Did you take Beginning Sarcasm in medical school, Doctor, or did you pick it up on your own?"

"I'm getting a bit tired of this," Ozchan said. He moved onto the platform around the tub and stood at the far side, facing Jes. Jes squinted to see him through the steam. He put his flute under the ledge. "Just why are you mad at me? Because I took care of your father? I did the best any doctor could be expected to do. Ask Hoku. I didn't kill him, and you ought to have enough sense to know that."

"You all killed him," Jes said, "just by allowing him to make that decision. I don't know how you acted around him before. You could have made life so miserable for him that he had to decide that way. But I don't blame you for that, not in particular. Meya tells me that it was Jason's choice.

That people were as kind as they could be. No, Doctor, I don't blame you for my father's death."

"I'm sincerely grateful," Ozchan said. "Then what in hell is your complaint?"

"Why should I have a specific complaint? Maybe I just don't like you. I don't like the shape of your mouth."

"That's shit. You came bullying in and started throwing hatred around as though you had a surplus. Maybe you do. Maybe every male Kennerin in the universe is a bastard, and there's no help for it. But I just wish that you'd leave me and my life the hell alone."

"Including Meya?"

"Especially Meya. What kind of hold do you have over her, anyway? What are you trying to do to her? She hasn't said more than ten words to me since you got here. Listen, I don't mind if you hate me; you can hate whoever you want. But don't start fucking up my wife's head, understand?"

Jes pulled himself out of the water. "My sister, Doctor. Long before she was your wife."

"What the hell difference does that make? You don't own her."

"Any more than you do."

They crouched at either side of the tub, staring through the steam.

"I don't want to own Meya," Ozchan said. "All I want to do is live my life with her in peace. I don't think that's an unreasonable request. Things are hard enough here without that kind of trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"You want to know, Kennerin? I think you got here and for some insane reason decided to hate me. I think you've been working on Meya ever since. I think Meya had someone here before I came, and you're trying to send her back to him. For all I know, you've succeeded."

Jes put his feet in the hot tub and laughed. Ozchan cursed and ran around the side of the tub toward him, and Jes slid into the tub and away.

"Someone before you got here, Doctor? Oh, yes, indeed. And try to send her back to him? Positively. You're very astute, Ozchan. Was that your last course in medical school -- Advanced Perception?"

"Can't you understand, Jes? I came to your world. I didn't know where the hell it was, or who was on it, and I liked it here. I liked your family, I liked Haven, I liked your people. And I fell in love with your sister. I think she loves me, too. She was willing to put other people behind her, she wouldn't have married me otherwise. Why in hell did you have to come and fuck it up?"

"Maybe the spurned party feels strongly about all of this. Have you thought of that? Maybe this other person has some interest in the matter.

Maybe, Doctor, you're not all alone on paradise."

"She made the choice by herself!"

"I don't think she did. I think the other party never had a say in the matter at all."

"All right." Ozchan stood back from the tub's rim and put his hands down. "Tell me who this other party is, we'll work it out. We'll talk to him.

But let's stop this ... this sabotage."

Jes came out of the tub again. "You want to know?"

"Yes. Who is he?"

"Me," Jes said.

"Shit. I should have known you wouldn't be serious." Ozchan turned as if to go, and Jes came around the side of the tub and grabbed his arm.

"You listen to me, Doctor, because I'm being damned serious. You want to know about your wife? Two years ago I came home for leave, and we walked south, she and I. I was miserable, I'd discovered things about myself and what I was doing that disturbed me. I needed room, and she made room for me. So we walked for two weeks, and we talked, and we saw things, and we even managed to laugh after a while. We see things the same way, she and I. We know the same things, we share history. We feel alike. And one night it started to rain. It does that down in the Cault. Summer rains -- we weren't expecting them. We made a small shelter and crawled into it, and when it got cold we piled all our bedding together and crawled in. And we did feel alike, Doctor. We felt almost identical." Jes shook Ozchan. "Think about that, Doctor. Think of what it's like to make love to someone who's so much like you that it seems you're in her mind and she's in yours. Think of what it's like to make a joke by nodding your head at something. No words at all, just sharing, Doctor. Going to sleep and feeling that you're having the same dream. Knowing all the movements, first time. And it was her first time. Two weeks, and we were alone in paradise." Jes flung Ozchan's arm to the side. "That's what you came in and screwed up, Doctor. Do you want to try to compete with that?"

"You bastard," Ozchan said and swung at him. The blow caught Jes by surprise and knocked him into the water, and before he could surface Ozchan had leaped in beside him and was pummeling his head. Jes caught Ozchan's arms and pushed him away, then grabbed him around the waist and pushed him underwater. Ozchan flipped around and bit his shoulder, and Jes backed away, cursing. The doctor surfaced and came at him again. Their bodies slid together and apart as they grappled; hot water rushed against Jes, adding to the heat of the fight. His body tingled. Ozchan's skin slid against his own. He reached dizzily to block the other's weak blow, slipped, grabbed, and slumped onto the tub's inner bench, with Ozchan sprawled on his lap. They froze, staring at each other, their faces inches apart, arms and legs tangled together. The heat in Jes' body centered between his legs. Ozchan's body was half-turned, one leg under Jes' knees. He felt Ozchan's erection graze his thigh.

Ozchan put his hand on Jes' forehead.

"I cut you," he said, and Jes felt the words on his lips. He turned his head. Ozchan moved his hand back until it tangled in Jes' hair, and pulled him down. Their lips met.

"Jes?"

"I didn't mean to do that."

They had floated apart in the tub. Ozchan turned, feeling the edge of the bench against his hip.

"Did I hurt you?"

"No." Jes made a small, amused noise. "Only some of my ego."

The smaller moon was up, casting a dim light into the tubhouse. Jes lay with his head against the ledge, eyes closed. Ozchan watched him.

"Have you always -- "he said.

"What?"

"With men?"

Jes shrugged. "I haven't always with anyone. In space it makes no difference. Small crew, long runs. Whoever's handy."

"Sounds cold."

"It isn't." Jes opened his eyes and looked at Ozchan. "You're my first knocker, though. That way."

"Knocker?"

"Civilian. Non-spacer."

"Does it make a difference?"

"Yes." Jes paused. "This is Aerie. Home. Everything here makes a difference."

"You're not my first spacer," Ozchan said.

"Tell me."

Ozchan was silent. Jes touched his foot.

"Come on. Tell."

"Hogarth's is a Third Reformation world," Ozchan said. "You know what that is?"

"I've seen a couple. Fundamentalist, aren't they? Religious group."

"With a vengeance. Good word for them. Vengeance. Rigid and small-minded. Fanatics. It seemed, when I was a kid, that everything I did was against either God's laws or Hogarth's customs. No games, games are sinful. No singing, singing's sinful. The only books in the house were religious tracts and one battered first-aid text. I knew them all by heart. The port was way out of town, off limits."

"They always are, on those worlds."

"Be grateful for it. I took to hanging around there, watching the ships, talking to spacers. Dreaming about running away. One day a spacer picked me up, fed me dinner, took me to his room. I stayed the night."

"Poor backwash innocent, corrupted by the vile spacer," Jes said.

Ozchan looked at him, but Jes didn't smile.

"No. I was sixteen. I knew what he wanted. I wouldn't have gone if I hadn't wanted it, too." Ozchan shrugged. "It felt better than anything I'd ever done on Hogarth's. I left before daybreak and went home, but my parents heard me coming in. I wouldn't tell them where I'd been or what I'd been doing, so they hauled me off to the prayer house and locked me up for five days. Shouting and praying over me, exorcizing demons. Beating me to beat the devils. They said if I told them where I'd been that night, it would be a sign that the devil had released my soul."

"This?" Jes leaned over and ran his fingertip along Ozchan's side. The scar was almost invisible; Ozchan was surprised that Jes had noticed it.

"Yes. A year before they'd caught two kids committing abominations.

They didn't say which ones, but it was a boy and girl, so I guess they were fucking. They beat the devils out of them, too, then tied them to the altar in the prayer house and prayed over them, until they starved to death. I could guess what they'd do to me, and to the spacer, if they caught him. But I was more worried about myself, so I kept quiet and they kept beating me. The fifth night I got free; they didn't have me tied down, just locked in. I broke the lock and ran for the port. Found the spacer. He hid me in the infirmary, wrapped in bandages until I looked like a white sausage. When he left three days later, he took me with him."

"And you became a spacer?"

"No. I was in bad shape. They took me to Solon and left me there, and when I recovered some people took an interest in me. I was bright, so they got me into the school on a Strays and Needful scholarship."

"And you lived happily ever after."

"Don't be sarcastic, Jes. When you grow up twisted, it takes a long time to untwist again. I'd only had one woman before Meya, and it wasn't a good experience. I get along fine with women until they take their clothes off; and it's downhill from there."

"And you're using my sister to untwist, is that it?"

"We've already done our fight, Jes. Let's not do it again. Let me finish."

Jes leaned back, keeping his eyes on Ozchan. The doctor nodded a quick thanks and took a deep breath.

"When they asked me to come here with your father, it scared me. I put on a pretty good front, sure, but I was frightened anyway. I hadn't left Solon since getting there. For all I knew, I'd be coming to another Third Reformation planet, or worse. There's almost nothing about Aerie in the main references. But I talked with Mish on the comlines and met Hetch a couple of times. They didn't seem to be monsters, and I couldn't spend the rest of my life on Solon. So I did a Restructuring and took the job."

"How extensive?"

"Not very. Nothing new added, nothing taken away. Loosening a few structures. Making things a bit more open. It helped. I liked it here, I liked the people. Quilla told me about The Law, that you can't, what, hurt or injure..."

"No person shall harm or defraud, or cause to be harmed or defrauded, any other person."

"That. And that's it, isn't it? It made so damned much sense. Almost everything here makes sense."

"We're not Utopia, Doctor."

"I know that. I was here with Jason, remember? Anyway, I started spending time with Meya, and it felt good. So I spent more time with her, and it felt better. And the night she came to my room, it felt so good that it wasn't until the next morning that I realized what I'd done, how much I'd changed. I fell in love with her. I'm still in love with her."

Jes looked at him.

"All right," Ozchan said, "I don't give a damn if you don't believe me."

He started to climb out of the tub. Jes caught his ankle.

"Come back in," Jes said. "We're not finished yet. I believe you." He released the ankle. Ozchan stepped back into the tub and looked at him.

"But it's a pretty odd way of loving someone," Jes said, "going crazy every time the person you love needs to be away for a while."

"I'm jealous. I was afraid that she was seeing someone else, and whoever he was, he'd, well, be better than I am." Ozchan looked down at the water. "Were you?"

"Not this time. She wouldn't."

Ozchan looked up, but now Jes was staring at the water.

"She said it was over -- that part of it. Said that now she had you, and the baby. That she needed someone all the time, not just two or three times a year. That she didn't want to spend her life hiding the most important parts. If it weren't for you, I knew she wouldn't have changed. Wouldn't have done that. I think I was wrong. She said she loved you, too, but I didn't pay too much attention to that."

"Going crazy every time the person you love needs to be away for a while," Ozchan quoted back at him.

"I didn't say I was sane. I knew it was crazy, and I did it anyway."

"Crazier than I am?"

"I think we're even on that. But I'm one up on you when it comes to abominations," Jes said.

"I don't pay much attention to that anymore. When fucking lizards and eating white bread on the Sabbath are both abominations, the idea gets shabby pretty fast."

Ozchan climbed out of the tub. After a moment Jes followed. They dried and dressed in silence, and Jes knelt to search for his flute. When he stood again, Ozchan put a hand on his chest.

"Peace?"

Jes looked at him, and covered Ozchan's hand with his own.