I had not conceived of how much it was possible to love someone. It astounded me, this strange emotion that I felt while watching him playing in the garden, watching him sleeping in the bed beside my own. Had Mish or Jason felt this love for me? Had I known it existed a year back, I would have said no, without hesitation, without doubt. Now I no longer knew, was no longer sure. It seemed so much a thing entirely of my child and myself, of such particularity, that I could not expand it, could not imagine its existence apart from us. Yet it remained such a basic emotion -- as all-encompassing as hatred, anger, or desire -- that I could not believe it to be true only of myself. I prodded it, poked it, tried to catch it sleeping, attempted to dissect it, and eventually learned to leave it be.

Much as my son filled my life, though, I was forced to consider the rest of the world. Our invisible hosts seemed willing to provide infinite hospitality, but I could not stay on Anselm. There was nothing for me to do, as I discovered after certain discreet inquiries. Anselm was well provided with biophysicians, who worked legally and openly. There were some hints of clandestine work, but I discovered that I had lost my taste for it.

Eventually, I was sure, the absent Ortegas would tire of supporting us, and I did not wish to deplete my capital on the simple necessities of life. We would have to leave Anselm, and the prospect pleased me.

Anselm and Gregory 4 had no extradition treaty, that much was true. But there are ways of removing a person which have no connection with laws, treaties, governments. I wished to take no chances -- not with myself, especially not with my son. I chose a day to visit the port's transport office when, according to the Benetan news service, there would be no Gregorian ships on planet. Indeed, the port was almost deserted that morning, and the man behind the transport desk seemed peeved that I had disturbed his half-slumber.

He pushed the logs across the counter to me, and I flipped through them, paging through lists of ships, fares, and destinations. They seemed alike to me.

Spider asked for a glass of water. The man leaned over his counter and looked at my son.

"Sure," he said, and brought the water in a small cup. Spider thanked him.

"What's your name?" the man said, hunkering down to Spider's level. I smiled, pleased at a stranger's seeming acknowledgment of my son's worth.

"Spider."

"Spider, and what else? Only one name?"

"Spider Kennerin." Spider handed the cup back.

"That's a good-sounding name." The man looked at me, and straightened up. "Seems familiar, somehow."

I smiled and reached for Spider's hand.

"It's not an uncommon name," I said.

"Here it is." He went back around the counter and poked through a binder. "Seem to remember someone looking: I should have it here somewhere.

Fellow named Kennerin. Heath? Harl? Something like that."

"Don't know him," I said. I closed the directory. "I think I'll have to think about this," I said. "I'll be back."

He was still flipping through the binder. "Wait, here it is. Some guy logged in, looking for a Hart Kennerin. About a year ago."

I shook my head and walked toward the door.

"Sorry," I said.

"Fellow name of Jes. Can't make out the last name."

I stopped, then came back.

"A year ago?"

"Year and three months, standard. Take a look."

The log page showed a Jes Kennerin, Captain, logged in on port call, stayed three days, left again. Business: looking for a brother. Looking for me.

Spider tugged at my hand and said that he wanted to look out the window. I let him go and turned to directory again.

Anselm to Gregory/Acanthus Main Grab. Two berths open on the 'Scathe'

from Main Grab to Althing Green. Two berths from Althing Green to West Wing Terminus on the ship 'Pollux'. And the freighter 'Absalom' to Haven Port, To'an Cault, Aerie. The trip would take three weeks.

I booked passage and the next day sold all my jewels, save one, in the markets of Benetan. The one I left as a guest-gift for my hosts, and four days later Spider and I went home.

Why?

I didn't know, not then, as I bought tickets, sold jewels, packed.

Meya's remembered whisper, perhaps, on the darkened porch of Tor Kennerin.

"I believe you."

Did she? At first I thought that she didn't. Later I was less sure. Was I going home to answer a question?

Spider filled my heart, my mind, my sight. Why? Because he was Spider -- and also because he was mine. I could not conceive of not loving him, of ceasing to love him; could not believe anyone capable of not loving my son.

Had I, too, been loved that much? Had Mish bent over my bed at midnight, fixing covers, watching me? Would she remember? Was there any love remaining for Hart, Spider's father, Jason's son?

Oh, I had left them in fury, betrayed again, robbed again, and come to a different planet. Cocky. Aggressive. Superior. Hart, maker and changer, above and beyond. And I had been led as a puppy is led, entangled like a clumsy arachnid in a larger creature's web -- entangled myself, blind and stupid. I had learned bitter, unexpected truths, on a world where truth seemed another layer of the game.

I had thought them evil. Mish, Quilla, Hoku, Ozchan. Thought them cruel and witless, and understood, now, that they were no more evil than I -- less.

Oh, certainly less. I didn't know them, now. Not the people I had wanted them to be, and not the people I had thought them to be. And how could I know myself until I knew them?

The scent of airflowers on an autumn night.

Why go home? I didn't know. Perhaps I'll never know. But in that moment in Benetan's transport shed, hearing my brother's name, I knew I was going home as surely as I knew I breathed. The reasons didn't seem to matter.

The closer we came to Aerie, however, the less sure I was of my decision. Save for the fact that Jes had looked for me, I knew nothing of what had happened to my family, had little idea what to expect from them. Chaos and hatred, perhaps. Quilla's stretched and screaming face. Or cool, unwelcome welcome -- oh, those dreary conversations, those nights of empty boredom.

Petty people and their petty wants, petty voices, petty vices. Hoku's wrinkled grimness, Mim's frozen contempt. I wondered whether Spider would understand if we were refused entrance, if our family turned us away. What would my mother say to me?

I almost stopped the journey there, but I remembered Meya, and the uncertainty returned. Perhaps, I thought, we don't change; we simply unlayer ourselves, or find ourselves looking more deeply into others. Moving beyond the surfaces. I held tickets in my hand that would take me to a home I did not know, people I did not know any more than I knew myself. Mish, Quilla, Meya, Jes. Tabor, Ozchan. I could not let myself stop without some clear knowledge of what was waiting for me in the house on the Tor above Haven. And I could only learn this by going home.

Yet when we arrived, I held back at the ship's hatch, still within the shadows, looking over the port. It had changed in the past two and a half years. More buildings. The old com hut replaced with something shiny and bristling with equipment. The road to Haven paved. But kaedos still lined the distant hills, and the scent of the sea and airflowers mingled with the acrid smells of the port. I took Spider's hand in mine and stepped out of the shuttle.

The transport office, where we picked up our luggage, was almost empty.

The woman behind the counter barely looked at me as she rented me a dray.

"Just leave it at Kohl's, center of town, can't miss it. Put it in the stable, there'll be no one there now to do it for you."

"Why?" I said, but she had turned back to her invoices and didn't hear me. Spider helped me lug the bags to the port's stable, and a spacer helped us load the dray.

"Might have to wait a while to get a room in Haven," he said, seaming the pouches on the dray's broad back. "Town's pretty much closed."

My chest tightened. "Why?"

"Big celebration of some sort. Everyone's up the hill."

I ran through my mental calendar of Aerie's holidays, but nothing fit.

"Know what they're celebrating?"

"Someone said they bought a mining farm. Big event hereabouts." The man shrugged. "Some birthday, too."

"Birthday?"

"Yeah. Smallest one, looks a bit like your kid. He's two years old today. I guess they just decided to celebrate everything at once."

I must have looked baffled. He grinned and picked up his own bags.

"Whole flock of them up that hill. This one, the kid, I think he belongs to the youngest -- Meya, Mara, something like that. Meya, that's it."

He started to leave the stable.

"Wait," I said. "Is there some place to stay here? At the port? If there's no one in Haven -- "

"Kohl always leaves his door open," the spacer said. "All we've got here's the stable, and I don't think it'd be too comfortable."

I looked around the stable. Celebration. The entire population. My family. I'd had no idea, no image, of what a homecoming would be like, but this bothered me. Appearing like a ghost at the feast. Spider looked at me, came over, and took my hand.

"Listen," the spacer said, "go take your kid to the party. They won't mind. You want to make yourself popular, just grab a beer, stick it in the air, and say, 'Here's to Jason Hart, many more,' and drink."

I looked at him.

"That's the kid's name," he said, as though explaining something to a moron. Then he slung his bags over his shoulder and went up the road toward Haven.

I stood holding my son's hand and the dray's harness. A couple of fourbirds flapped by overhead, and the sun touched the tops of the kaedos.

Evening, and night coming fast.

"I'm tired," Spider said.

I put him on the dray, amid the bumps and hummocks of our luggage, and started up the road toward home.

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