But after being tabled there was little else at the baths that could appeal. Any more orgasms would hurt. She helped to table Estavan and Xerxes, and then a thin woman she didn’t know, all fun, but then she got bored. Flesh flesh flesh. Sometimes after being tabled one got further and further into it; other times it became just skin and hair and flesh, insides and outsides, who cared.

She went to the changing room and dressed, went outside. It was morning, the sun bright over the bare plains of Lunae. She flowed through the empty streets to her hostel, feeling relaxed and clean and sleepy. A big breakfast, fall into bed, delicious sleep.

But there in the hostel restaurant was Jackie. “If it isn’t our Zoya.” She had always hated the name, which Zo had chosen for herself.

Zo, surprised, said, “Did you follow me here?”

Jackie looked disgusted. “It’s my co-op too, you might recall. Why didn’t you check in when you got back?”

“I wanted to fly.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“I didn’t mean it as one.”

Zo went to the buffet table, piled a plate with scrambled eggs and muffins. She returned to Jackie’s table, kissed her mother on the top of the head. “You’re looking good.”

Actually she looked younger than Zo, who was often sun-burned and therefore wrinkled— younger but somehow pre-served, as if she were a twin sister of Zo’s who had been bottled for a time and only recently decanted. She wouldn’t tell Zo how often she had had the gerontological treatments, but Rachel had said that she was always trying new variants, which were coming out at the rate of two or three a year, and that she got the basic package every three years at the most. So although she was somewhere in her fifth m-decade, she looked almost like Zo’s contemporary, except for that preserved quality, which was not so much body as spirit— a look in the eye, a certain hardening, a tightness, a wariness or weariness. It was hard work being the alpha female year after year, a heroic struggle, it had worn visible tracks in her no matter how baby smooth her skin, no matter how much a beauty she remained— and she was still quite a beauty, no doubt about it. But she was getting old. Soon her young men would unwrap themselves from around her little fingers and drop away.

Meanwhile she still had a great deal of presence, and at the moment she appeared considerably put out. People averted their eyes as if her look might strike them dead, which made Zo laugh. Not the politest way to greet one’s beloved mother, but what else could one do? Zo was too relaxed to be irritated.

Probably a mistake to laugh at her, however. She stared coldly until Zo straightened up.

“Tell me what happened on Mercury.”