He watched her for a moment, then shut out the light, turned, and stood alone in the dark and quiet hallway. Out on the grass, he heard Kanazawa and Ram Kikura talking.

“I would be honored if you would share my bed with me this evening,” Kanazawa said.

“I’m not even mildly drunk now, Ser Kanazawa,” Ram Kikura said.

“Nor am I.”

Ram Kikura said nothing for a moment. Then, “I’d like that.”

Lanier contemplated his wife in bed, the quaint comfort of the guest room, and shook his head. Still too many walls between them. He walked to the front porch and lay down on the padded wicker sofa there, plumping an old tattered silk pillow under his head.

In the morning, Lanier walked along the beach before Karen awoke. A kilometer away, he spotted Ram Kikura, walking around a tongue of exhausted surf, tall and slender, surrounded by wheeling gulls. Without gesture, they walked toward each other, and Ram Kikura smiled at him as they closed.

“Am I a brazen hussy?” she asked, turning to match his pace and direction.

Lanier returned her smile. “As brazen as they come,” he said.

“In all my years as Earth’s advocate, I’ve never made love to an Old Native,” she said.

“Was it quaint?” Lanier asked. She scowled at him.

“Some things stay remarkably the same, in basics,” she said. They walked on in silence for a while, watching gulls prance on the wet sand ahead of them, avoiding the slick rising curves of water. “Ser Kanazawa is furious,” she finally said. “He’s angrier than I’ve seen any man in a very long time. He didn’t show it to all of us…He’s going to call a meeting of all of Earth’s senators and corpreps. Through me, they’ll challenge the mens publica vote. I can make a strong argument that the Recovery laws cannot apply in this case.”

“Will you win?” Lanier asked.

She bent down to pick up a glass Japanese float. “I wonder low long this has been here?” she asked. “Do they make these now?”

“I don’t know,” Lanier said. “I suppose they do. Will you win?”

“Probably not,” she said. “The Hexamon isn’t what it used to be.” She held the float up close, examining its tiny starlike bubbles floating in green glass. She returned the float to the sand.

“The president seems to be swinging with the tide,” Lanier said. “He claimed he violently opposes re-opening.”

“He does. But there’s not much he can do if the Nexus supports it. And I fear that like the captain of a troubled ship, he won’t hesitate to cut the Earth loose, if it’s necessary to save what’s left of the Hexamon.”

“But the Jarts—”

“We beat them back once, and we weren’t prepared for them,” Ram Kikura said.

“You sound proud, almost supportive,” Lanier said.