The legislator eyed him mistrustfully, but she’d intended to back him into this corner. She’d corralled him through every step of this conversation, and Tennal hadn’t even been in good enough condition to give her an interesting fight. She nodded.

Tennal levered himself out of the chair. “Think I’m going to drop in on Zin,” he said. “Seeing as I’m going to be disappearing on her again. Any objections?” He didn’t have the energy to spin defiance into his voice. It was pointless anyway; she’d already anticipated a parting shot, and he didn’t want to read off her script.

“I can give you an hour.”

“That’ll do.” Tennal walked past her without further word. He could feel her gaze on him as he stepped out the door.

His escort was already waiting in the cooling dusk outside: a low-grade ranker obviously more curious than they were allowed to let on. They wore some kind of ship insignia—Tennal had never bothered to memorize the different shapes—so they must be from a spacer division in dock. It proved easier than Tennal had thought to get them on his side. Tennal struck an upbeat, last-night-before-deployment note, leaving out any mention of his reader abilities or conscription, and within a few minutes they’d agreed to a quick present-shopping diversion on the way to Tennal’s residential enclave.

The apartment was still keyed to accept Tennal’s retina print. He stood in the dark entranceway, balancing two chain-store gift boxes, and saw light coming from under the door of Zin’s room.

When he opened the door she had four screens going, all covered with schoolwork, and two tiny chat projections of friends Tennal didn’t recognize. She didn’t immediately hear the door. One of the tiny head-and-shoulder projections pointed behind her, and she spun in her chair, flinched, and said, “Guidance Lights.”

“Hey,” Tennal said. “Yup. It’s me. Large as life and twice as great. You don’t have to kill the chat,” he added, as Zin frantically slapped the tiny projections into nonexistence. “I’m highly respectable now.”

“I’m sorry, Tenn,” Zin said, whirling back to him once her friends’ heads had winked out. “I didn’t know they had a flag on my comm, or I would have warned you, I promise! She never said—”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Tennal put the boxes on her desk carefully and squashed the part of him that had expected this to be uncomplicated. “It’s okay, really. How’s my favorite relative? How was commencement?”

“Oh Lights,” Zin said, and hugged him.

Tennal swallowed. “Missed you too, pipsqueak.”