She had been reluctant to leave because, she said, “All the best gossip will come after I’ve gone! Let me know the instant you hear anything about Aliria. Corzehia has promised to write, but she’s so unfaithful, and I must know everything that happens.”

“You could stay another few days,” Nolan offered. “I’d be more than happy to keep you.”

She laughed. “No, I’ve been gone too long as it is. Mother will be completely disorganized without me. But you can come in-country anytime to visit me. The spring holidays, maybe. That would be nice.”

“That would be nice,” Nolan agreed, thinking with a moment’s longing of the unbroken green vistas of his mother’s land. It had been months and months since he’d been back, and the sound of Leesa’s voice had the uncanny ability to make him, briefly at least, fiercely homesick. “I’ll check with Pakt. Maybe I can get some time off.”

“I hope so,” she said, and kissed him good-bye once more. They were standing on the street outside his apartment, and her mother’s traveling car waited. The driver was an ancient blue-skin, schooled in patience. They could kiss as long as they liked. “I miss you, and I’m not even out of the city. Good-bye. Take care of yourself.”

“I miss you more,” he said. “Travel safely.”

And she had left, and he had taken the Centrifuge to work, and all his perceptions were off. He had to drive slowly, in the bottom lane, for most of the trip, because he did not trust his reflexes in the upper levels. He had not piloted a ringcar since Leesa arrived in town five days ago; he was out of practice. But it was more than that. It had something to do with the fact that Analeesa Corova did not like the ringcars, considered them dirty and noisy and probably dangerous, so that this morning Nolan could not be comfortable and skillful in the Centrifuge as he usually was. He exited at the North Zero gate and ran for the trolley, then looked around and realized that he shared its seats and aisles with albinos, gulden, and indigo of every caste, and this made his skin prickle and his bones attempt to retract into the cavities of his skeleton. He walked the final short distance from the trolley stop to the Complex and felt a marveling, incredulous distaste at the fact that he brushed shoulders with men and women of every race, purchased goods from the same vendors, breathed from the same compressed cubic feet of air. How could this be? They were foreign and inferior; how had he come to overlook, even tolerate, their presence for so long?