Jes came home the day before Meya had her baby. It was an easy enough labor, an easy enough delivery. She lay in her room, amid husband, midwife, brother, sister, mother, people bustling in and out doing things, holding her, talking. Music. It seemed a madhouse, but between contractions she smiled, requested things. When the contractions came, it seemed that everybody in the room breathed with her.

The baby was born at sunset, a chubby, dark-skinned boy with the intense, colorless eyes of infancy. Meya put him to her breast, refused to name him, and fell asleep.

Jason. Mish. Quilla. Jes. Hart. Meya. Decca. Jared.

Tabor. Ozchan. Laur. Mim.

Hoku. Hetch. Tham. Merkit. Bakar.

Palen. Altemet. Drel. Teloret. Cumbe. Kabit.

Ved. Taine. Mertika. Medi. Ped. Wim. Dane. Haley. The hundreds of names in Haven, on To'an Cault, on Aerie.

She called him Jason Hart M'Kale Kennerin.

What could we do but approve?

*Part Seven*

*1235*

*New Time*

*Spider*

'"Things are seldom what they seem,'

'Skim milk masquerades as cream."'

'-Sir W. S. Gilbert'

THICK STONE WALLS MUTED THE ROAR OF Saltena. The cries of street vendors, like the heat and Saltena's strong, shaded light, entered dimly through the recessed window, and even these traces disappeared as Hart drew the shutters closed. The cool obscurity of the room increased. He returned to the desk and sat, placing his hands palms down on the wood. They bracketed the neat pile of papers and chips.

Across the desk, the man and woman glanced from the pile to Hart's face and back again. They held hands, the man's fingers dancing over the woman's.

Hart slapped his hands down on the pile, and they jerked back.

"I can't help you," Hart said. "I don't know what made you think I could."

"But you examined our daughter," the man protested. "You tested her, we were told that you could -- "

"You helped our friend," the woman said.

"Different," Hart said. The woman folded her hands on her lap and stared at him. "'In utero'," he said. "Detection and correction well before birth. But your daughter is seven years old. Perhaps a transplant surgeon could help her, but I can't."

"Then why did you keep her here?" the man said. "Why didn't you tell us first thing, instead of getting our hopes up?"

Hart shuffled the papers, glancing over them. "I was curious. And perhaps what I learned from her will help me to help others." He did not bother to disguise the cynicism in his voice. He stood. "Take your daughter and go home. And next time, come to me before the birth. Possibly I can help you then."

"But that's illegal," the woman whispered.

"So is this."

Hart ushered them to the door. A child sat on the tiled floor of the courtyard, watching the fountain. She turned as her parents entered. Dark hair, pale skin, eyes as blue as Hart's own. Her parents thought her eyes deformed. All aristocratic girl children had green eyes; her blue ones cast doubt on her paternity and were a source of embarrassment. Hart smiled at her over her parents' shoulders, and she stared at him without expression. She, too, thought herself deformed.

She took her father's hand. Hart watched as the family passed through the opened gate and into the baking street. They disappeared beyond a twist of buildings. The houses shouldered against each other, presenting high, white faces to the dust and cobblestones. Narrow windows, set well above the street, appeared black against the sun-washed walls, and the decorative ironwork over them and over the door filigreed an even darker blackness across the openings.

A scrawny, black-eyed child bearing a tray of iced fruit jellies edged close and whined his supplication. Hart pushed him away and closed the ironwork gates, then the wooden doors. He pushed his straight black hair from his face as he walked through the corridor to the courtyard and climbed the open stairs to his bedroom. Melthone, his manservant, argued with the cook, their voices falling and rising; even more distantly the washer complained over his steaming tubs. Hart walked into the bedroom and closed the door.

"Hart?"

The woman sat up, bracing herself on her elbows. Bars of light from the shuttered window slipped over her nakedness.

"What took you so long?" she said. "I began to think you'd left."

"Business."

Her skin was pale, smooth, aristocratic, and flushed under his gaze.

Dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, framing her slim face and narrow green eyes.

"Hart?"

She elongated the "a" and purred the "r." Hart thought of the feel of her skin, the whiteness of her legs against his own dark hips. His body tightened.

"Is anything wrong?" she said.

"No."

"Come to bed, then." She leaned back against the pillows.

"No." He crossed to the windows and opened the shutters.

"Close it!" she cried, scooting across the bed away from the sunlit rectangle.

"Your husband's out of town. Relax."

"Please. It makes me nervous."

The house across the street faced them, its own windows dark and secret.

"I like it this way. Come here, Tara. Let me see you in sunlight."

She knelt on the bed, more puzzled than angry.

"You've lost your mind. Close that window before we're both in trouble."

"Afraid of novelty?" he said. He crossed the room and with one hand grabbed her arms, pulling them above her until she gasped. "Amazing how many virginities a well-raised Saltena wife has, isn't it?" He spoke with clinical detachment while his fingers probed her body. "Here, and here, and here." His hand looked almost black against her skin. "Modest married lady, naked in the room of an out-worlder. And you like it, don't you? Like this, and this. Oh, yes, and this, Tara, this best of all."

He released her and returned to the window, wiping his fingers on a hand cloth.

"You're a hypocritical and frivolous woman, from a society of hypocritical and frivolous people. You're predictable, lady. The predictable bores me."

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for her skirt.

"Be careful, Hart," she said. "Consider our positions. I don't think you can afford to insult me."

Hart smiled. "A woman caught in adultery is stoned, lady. Consider our positions."

She paused, surrounded by billowing material, and stared at him. "That makes you safe?"

"I'm a citizen of the Federation and of my home planet. You can't touch me. You'd have to extradite me, lady, provided you could claw your way from under a pile of rocks."

She laced her bodice. Her anger seemed to have melted. "It's not that simple..." she began.

"I'm not interested."

"Very well." She scooped her cloak from the clothes stool. "I'll give you some gratuitous advice, anyway, out-worlder. Because you amuse me. You only see the surfaces of this planet. Surfaces are deceptive."

"Madam, I am forever thankful. Now get out."

She threw a crystal goblet at him. Hart moved, and the goblet flew past him through the window to shatter in the street below. Someone yelled. Tara clattered down the stairs and through the courtyard to the servants' entrance.

Hart waited until he saw her hooded figure pass along the street below, then closed the shutters and fastidiously straightened the bed. The pillows smelled of her perfume. He stripped the cases and carried them downstairs to the washer. The old man looked at him with quick suspicion as he bent over his tubs again.

Hart lay in a hammock in the shaded courtyard and closed his eyes. He thought about children with blue eyes.

The city of Saltena, the planet Gregory 4, provided Hart Kennerin with profit and pleasure in equal measure, and in abundance. The white spires of the cathedrals soared above his plots and assignations, the tolling of bells accompanied his casual, continual ruttings and orchestrated the deft manipulations of his hands. The strong light of Gregory's primary, the cream-colored haze of Saltena's sea mists, the perennial dance of rainbows in the moist heavens combined to create an atmosphere of sultry, sensuous luxury through which Saltena's citizens moved slowly and warily, burdened by their laws and by their fears. And Hart, in counterpoint, swaggered through the city, golden-skinned Mongol with deep blue eyes, shaping its airs and expectations to the movement of his will.

The laws of the planet forbade birth control; Hart provided his clients with subtle devices, clandestine snippings of fallopian tube or vas deferens, sub-rosa abortions. The laws of the planet proscribed genetic manipulation; Hart provided his clients with green-eyed daughters and golden-eyed sons, trimmed the hereditary deficiency here, removed the unsightly gene there, poking and prying in fertilized ova, disturbing the laws of Gregory, and the laws of God.

To the rest of the Federation, Gregory 4 was a joke, an orbiting asylum for lunatics who forbade what the remainder of the Federation accepted without question, as it accepted air, or coils, or fremarks, or food. But to Hart, Gregory 4 was a treasure house, and he slipped and sipped and skipped through its unhappy aristocrats and unhappy laws, accumulating riches as he went.

Tonight, as always, Jem Stonesh dressed in black. The crowds parted for him as he crossed the party toward Hart; he bowed, smiled, paused to exchange a brief pleasantry, his dark robes highlighted by the gleaming cloth and sparkling jewels around him. Heads bent, polite laughter followed his words.

But this was a sophisticated crowd; there were no demonstrations toward his badge of office. No one kissed his ring.

"Menet Kennerin."

Hart, glass in hand, sketched a bow. "Your Eminence."

Stonesh peered up at him and smiled, creasing the rounded fullness of his cheeks.

"I don't believe I've had the pleasure of meeting you before, Menet, although I'm told that you've lived here a year now."

"We haven't moved in the same circles, Your Eminence." Hart returned the smile. Two abortions, a gene pruning, and an affair had paved his way to this gathering, and he wondered how many of the graceful, black-haired aristocrats suffered agonies at seeing him converse with the short, fat archbishop of Saltena. His smile broadened.

"I trust that this will not be the case in the future," the archbishop said. "You come from Kroeber?"

"Yes. I'm told that Your Eminence also schooled there."

"Years ago, Menet Kennerin. Well before all of this." His gestures included the elegant room, its occupants, and the gaudy red ring on his finger. "I'm sure the school has changed considerably in the interim."

"Perhaps."

"Come. I'll exercise the prerogative of an old man and drag you away to some privacy, and you may tell me of Kroeber. It seems, as I grow older, that I live even my own youth vicariously."

Hart laughed and followed Stonesh from the room. People loitered in the hallway; they paused to watch Hart and the archbishop pass, and once Hart thought he heard someone gasp.

Stonesh ushered him through a doorway into a small library. Rows ofchips lined the walls, and chip readers littered the many delicate tables.

Along one wall stood a closed, glass-fronted case; Hart crossed to it and read the titles while the archbishop pressed a call button by the windows.

"Brandy, Menet?"

"With pleasure. Is this your collection? It's excellent, and extensive."

"Thank you. It's mine only in that the archbishopric keeps it, and adds to it on occasion. The Descartes is my contribution."

The door opened and a servant pushed a cart into the room. Stonesh dismissed him and poured the brandy himself.

"I think you'll agree that it's far more peaceful in here. Besides" -- the archbishop smiled -- "I believe I've generated a sufficiency of coronaries among your clients already. Am I correct, Menet?"

Hart rolled the snifter between his palms. His stomach felt cold and tight. "And if you are, Your Eminence?"

"Then I am a very observant man, am I not? Do sit down, the brandy is as excellent as the collection, though not as old."

Hart sat, uneasy behind his calm expression. The archbishop settled into an easy chair and stretched his legs.

"To be truthful, Menet Kennerin, I am not an observant man, not in that sense, although my colleagues are. I'm a fat old cleric, more weary than wary, a little short of breath and increasingly short of time."

Hart expressed polite disagreement, and the archbishop nodded.

"As one ages," he continued, "one's world becomes more interior. Yet one cannot spend all one's time locked in one's own skull. Stagnation sets in quickly. I am in constant search of information, Menet Kennerin. I am endlessly, and of necessity, curious. Talk to me."

"Of Kroeber, Your Eminence?"

Stonesh laughed, delighted. "I did school there, almost forty years ago. And you?"

"I left eighteen months ago, standard."

"With diplomas, I expect."