“You are a very successful bounty hunter. You have no need of money.”

“Everyone needs money.”

“A man like you must have another reason,” she persisted.

He stared at her, then shrugged. “It would mean something,” he said at last.

“Ah!” She smiled. “I knew you were different!” She walked back to the couch and sprawled on it. “Do you know that not a single murder I have committed has ever meant anything?”

“What about killing the governor of Alsatia Four?” he asked.

“One second later there was a new governor, and what had changed?” She shook her head. “No, the beauty of the assassin’s profession is that nothing ever means anything, and hence the perceived need for assassination never diminishes. Only you, of all the killers I know, want your actions to make a difference.”

“Tell me about some of the killers you know,” said Cain.

“Had you someone in mind?”

“Santiago.”

“I have never met him.”

“I think you have,” persisted Cain.

“Why?”

“Because you killed a man named Kastartos.”

“What has one to do with the other?” she asked.

“Kastartos planned to double-cross Santiago,” answered Cain. “He tried to get Jonathan Stern to help him. Stern didn’t think it was worth the risk, and sent word of Kastartos’s plans to Santiago. It stands to reason that Santiago commissioned his death.”

She stared at him pleasantly but made no comment.

“If the order came directly from him, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that you’ve met him and know where he is, would it?” he continued.

“He has never directly commissioned my services,” she replied. “He works only through intermediaries.”

“Who are they?”

“That is not your concern.”

“If you’re saying that from fear of reprisal, there’s no reason for Santiago to know that we ever met.”

“He already knows.”

“How?”

“Because he is Santiago.”

“You make him sound like some kind of superman,” said Cain.

“He is just a man, and he can be killed like any other man,” she replied. “You have much in common with him.”

“You mean because we can both be killed?” he asked sardonically.

“That, too,” she said with an enigmatic smile.

Suddenly there was a flurry of motion in one of the aquarium tanks, as a bright orange eyeless fish, slim as a dagger, burrowed into the soft sand at the bottom and emerged with a yellow-and-black-striped crustacean. The orange fish tossed the crustacean up above him and darted for its soft underbelly, guided unerringly to its most vulnerable parts by what Cain assumed was some form of sonar. The water around them turned pink with the fluid that coursed through the crustacean’s veins, and instantly half a hundred other marine forms of perhaps ten different species had gathered in a feeding frenzy.