“Love.” Anlyn reached over and ran her fingers through the fur on his arm. Suddenly, she didn’t want him to talk. She didn’t desire to hear, to know. She felt guilty for ever wanting to drag anything out of him before he was ready. “I didn’t mean to bring that up,” she said. “We don’t have to talk about your home—”

“No.” Edison shook his head. “Before that, before the EMP, my brother and I fought in a bunker. Cole and Molly were there and . . . and I killed a member of the council with my bare hands. Then I left my brother in there. I left him in that bunker to die, knowing what I was about to do.”

Edison turned and faced Anlyn, tears streaming across his fur.

“I hated him,” he said. “I hated my brother, but exterminating my  entire people was easy compared to that—” He stopped, too choked up to continue.

Anlyn reached for him; she wrapped both arms around his head and cooed softly. In the back of her neck, her heart stabbed with pain, hurting at having brought the subject up. Or maybe—at hearing him say the same things in her own language that she’d been used to puzzling through in his rigid English.

“I love you,” she said in the common, Drenard form.

“And I you,” Edison replied.

So they held each other, floating beyond the Great Rift on the Bern side of the universe, Edison with his head snuggled against her tunics, Anlyn with her cheek resting on his fur. They stayed like that for several minutes, precisely the length of time it took the Bern computer to crunch the hyperspace signatures.

And thereby destroy the mood.

20

Walter slapped his flightsuit, thumping the Wadi on its head, but the stupid thing just continued to squirm in his pocket. He reached the end of the alley and rounded the corner, having decided to try the building with the thick door first, mostly to stick to the same order as before. Unlike other Palans, he liked order.

As he reached the wooden sidewalk, he merged with a weaving stream of boisterous and drunk nighttime people. He stuck close to the side of the building, wincing at the sound of the traffic blaring in the street.

Just ahead, he spotted a wallet bulging in a back pocket, the badge of a tourist. He scooted forward, drying his hands on his flightsuit, before he remembered what he was supposed to be doing:

He was looking for Molly.

He shook his head, turned, and surveyed the building next to him.

It was lit up inside, but he didn’t see an open or closed sign. He cupped his hands around his face and leaned close, trying to look past the glare of light bouncing back and forth between the glass and his face. The interior seemed shallow, just a bit of standing room and a tall counter that ran the width of the building. Two large Humans worked behind the counter moving boxes and doing boring, officey stuff.