Dvali turned up his cup and emptied the last of his coffee on the ground. "Isaac was never an innocent child. Isaac has never been anything other than what he is now. And I would trade places with him, Miss Adams, if I could. Eagerly."

* * * * *

She came across the campground to the circle of light in which Turk was sitting, fiddling with a pocket telecom receiver. Turk, her avatar of disappearances: Turk, who had vanished from many lives. "Radio broken?"

"Nothing coming in over the aerostats. Nothing from Port Magellan. Last I heard they were talking about another tremor out west." Oil revenue, of course, being the Port's perennial obsession. In the Trusts we trust. Turk gave her a second look. "Are you all right?"

"Just tired," she said.

* * * * *

She brewed another pot of coffee and drank enough to keep her alert, even as the others began to settle in for the night. At last—as she had hoped—there was no one up and moving except herself and the Martian woman, Sulean Moi.

Lise was intimidated by Sulean Moi, even though she looked like the kind of elderly woman you might help across the street at a stoplight. She wore her age and the distance she had traveled as a kind of invisible aura. It took a certain amount of courage to join her at the guttering campfire, where the logs had worn down to radiant hollows and red chambers.

"Don't be afraid," the old woman said.

Lise was startled. "Are you reading my mind?"

"Reading your face."

"I'm not really afraid." Not much.

Sulean smiled, exposing her small white teeth. "I think I would be, in your position—given what you must have heard about me. I know the stories they tell. The grim elder Martian, victim of a childhood injury."

She tapped her skull. "My supposed moral authority. My unusual history."

"Is that how you see yourself?"

"No, but I recognize the caricature. You spent a good deal of time and energy looking for me, Miss Adams."

"Call me Lise."

"Lise, then. Do you still have that photograph you've been showing around?"

"No." She had destroyed it back in the Minang village, at Diane's urging.

"Just as well. So here we are. No one to overhear us. We can talk."

"When I started looking for you I had no idea—"

"That it would inconvenience me? Or that it would attract the attention of Genomic Security? Don't apologize. You knew what you knew, and what you didn't know could hardly enter into your calculations. You want to ask me about Robert Adams and how and why he died."

"Do you know for a fact that he's dead?"

"I didn't witness the killing, but I've spoken with people who saw him abducted and I can't imagine any other outcome. If he had been able to come home he would have done so. I'm sorry if that seems blunt."