“Go slow,” Kanazawa recommended. “If that’s too strong, I have some wine…”

Ram Kikura waved away their attentions, embarrassed by her ineptitude. She wiped away tears and lifted the glass again. “What were the toasts?” she asked, still slightly hoarse.

“Down the hatch,” Lanier suggested.

Ram Kikura sipped more moderately. “Makes my throat close up.”

“I don’t understand,” Kanazawa said. “It’s very good rum, Oahu’s best.”

“At least three hours old,” Lanier said. Kanazawa gave him a twinkling look of senatorial disapproval.

“From my district,” he said.

“This half of the world is your district. Surely you don’t drink everything bottled by your constituents!” Karen said.

Ram Kikura sat quiet for a moment, contemplating the effect. “I don’t think I’ll become drunk,” she said. “My implant metabolizers are converting the alcohol to sugars faster than I can drink.”

“What a pity,” Kanazawa said.

“I could fine-tune them…if I will fit into the occasion less sober…”

Kanazawa glanced meaningfully at Lanier. Karen sighed. “You are not a natural party girl, my dear,” she said.

The night sky of Hawaii was a cold blaze, reminding Lanier of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Kanazawa brought a low-powered red laser pointer onto the back lawn. They sat on the grass, eating Brazilian chocolates and sipping aperitifs.

“This is my private planetarium,” the senator said, crouching carefully, kicking out one foot, almost falling over, then settling back on his butt and crossing his legs. “Nothing comparable to actually being up in space, I suppose…. But I’m happy with it.”

He switched on the laser and lifted it. In the moist sea air, the beam cut a straight glowing path hundreds of feet up to the stars, seeming to touch them individually. “I know all the constellations,” he said, “the Japanese and Chinese and the Western. Even some of the Babylonian.”

“It’s beautiful,” Ram Kikura said. She had allowed more than a little of the alcohol to have an effect on her; her eyes were half-lidded and she seemed relaxed, almost sleepy. “The sky is more…human down here. More friendly.”

“Yes, I see that,” Karen said. She and Lanier sat back to back on the grass, heads touching. “But when I was a girl, it still seemed immense. Frightening.”

“Yes, I see that,” Ram Kikura said, imitating Karen’s tone and smiling broadly. “I really do.”

“My own planetarium,” Kanazawa repeated. “I can just point the laser and move the beam and watch and nobody knows or cares. Their problems—” He flicked the beam across the entire sky, from cloud-darkened horizon to clear open sea, “—are not my problems.” He sighed overdramatically. “It is good to see you again, Garry, Karen. And it is good to meet someone from the precincts on less than formal terms. We have such distance between us, for being parents and children…”

“Who are the parents,” Karen asked, “and who the children?”

“You are the parents,” Ram Kikura said.