“Frank,” Marina said scornfully. “If he hadn’t killed John none of this would have happened.”“What?” she shouted, without thinking. Across the pond the little figures jerked and looked at her. She detached herself from the railing one hand at a time, and half ran around the pond, stumbling twice.

Maya blinked. The railing was holding her up.

“What do you mean?” she shouted at Marina as she neared them, the words bursting from her without volition.

Vlad and Ursula met her a few steps from the benches. Marina remained seated, looking away sullenly. Vlad had his hands out and Maya tore right through them to get at Marina. “What do you mean saying such foul things?” she shouted, her voice painful in her own throat. “Why? Why? It was Arabs who killed John, everyone knows that!”

Marina grimaced and shook her head, looking down.

“Well?” Maya cried.

“It was a manner of speaking,” Vlad said from behind. “Frank did a lot to undermine John in those years, you know that’s true. Some say he inflamed the Moslem Brotherhood against John, that’s all.”

“Pah!” Maya said. “We have all argued with each other, it means nothing!”

Then she noticed that Sax was looking right at her— finally, now that she was furious— staring at her with a peculiar expression, cold and impossible to read— a glare of accusation, of revenge, of what? She had shouted in Russian and the others had replied in kind, and she didn’t think Sax spoke it. Perhaps he was just curious about what had upset them so. But the antipathy in that steady stare— as if he were confirming what Marina had said— hammering it into her like a nail!

Maya turned and fled.

• • •

She found herself in front of the door to her room with no memory of crossing Sabishii, and threw herself inside as if into her mother’s arms; but in the beautiful spare wooden chamber she drew up short of the bed, shocked by the memory of some other room that had turned from womb to trap on her, in some other moment of shock and fear . . . no answers, no distraction, no escape. . . . Over the little sink she caught sight of her face as if in a framed portrait— haggard, ancient, eyes bright red around the rims, like the eyes of a lizard. A nauseating image. That was it— the time she had caught sight of her stowaway on the Ares, the face seen through an algae jar. Coyote: a shock which had proved not hallucination, but reality.

And so it might be with this news of Frank and John.