“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Father William, holding his hands out from his laser pistols.

“Do you plan to be here when I get back?” asked Cain.

“If you get back,” the preacher corrected him.

“I’ll see you then,” said Cain. He paused. “Aren’t you going to wish me luck?” he added ironically.

“God be with you, my son,” said Father William sincerely.

Then Cain was following Moonripple down the street, half expecting to feel the searing pain of a laser in the small of his back. He was mildly surprised when he turned the corner intact and unharmed, with Father William’s parting words still echoing in his mind.

21.

Silent Annie never speaks,

Never murmurs, never shrieks,

Doesn’t whisper, doesn’t call—

But someday, someday, she’ll tell all.

Orpheus had a feeling about her.

There was an indefinable something—a look, an attitude, a way of carrying herself—that made him think she carried some enormous secret within her.

He had no idea how right he was.

Her name was Silent Annie. She wasn’t mute, but she might as well have been.

All anyone knew about her was that something pretty bad had happened when she was eleven or twelve and living on Raxar II. She spent two years in the hospital, and when she emerged she was physically recovered—but she never spoke again. She was capable of speech, her doctors said; but the experience she had undergone had traumatized her, possibly forever.

She turned up in some mighty odd places over the years—Altair III, Goldenrod, Kalami II—but she never stayed for long. Nobody knew what she did on those worlds, and very few people knew that she called Safe Harbor home.

“Silent Annie?” repeated Cain when Moonripple told him where she was taking him. “She’s here, too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It seems like half the people Black Orpheus ever wrote about are on Safe Harbor,” he said.

“Not really, sir,” replied Moonripple. “There’s just you, and me, and your ship, and Father William, and Silent Annie.”

“Didn’t Orpheus say that she was a deaf-mute?”

“She doesn’t talk, but she can hear everything you say.”

“What’s her link to Santiago?”

“She works for him, sir,” said Moonripple.

“You’re sure?”

Moonripple nodded her head. “Yes, sir.”

“By the way,” said Cain, “you can stop calling me sir. My name’s Sebastian.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s a very pretty name.”

“You think so?” he asked dubiously.

“Yes, I do. Don’t you?”

“I suppose it’s better than Songbird,” he said. He looked around. “Does Silent Annie live in the middle of a cornfield?” he asked.

“Of course not,” laughed Moonripple.

“Well, that’s just where we’re headed,” he noted. “We’re almost a mile out of town.”

“She has a little house about half a mile up the road, sir.”

“Sebastian,” he corrected her.

“Sebastian.”

“How did you meet her?”