That’s the sort of companionship that brings people out; even the quiet ones talk, given this kind of silence. And suddenly Tash is talking about Erica. He’s worried. As Erica rises ever higher in the management of Hewes Mall, her complaints about her layabout ally and his eccentric life-style become sharper. And no one can get sharper than Erica Palme when she wants to be.

Sandy questions Tash about it. What does she want? A businessman partner, kids, a respectable alliance in the condomundos of south OC?

Tash can only blink into an eyedropper and declare “I don’t know.”

Sandy doubts this; he suspects Tash knows but doesn’t want to know. If Sandy’s guesses are correct, then Tash’ll have to make changes he doesn’t want to make, to keep the ally he wants to keep. Classic problem.

Sandy has the solidest of allies in Angela; she’s biochemically optimistic, as he’s joked more than once, she appears to have equal amounts of Funny Bone, Apprehension of Beauty, the Buzz, and California Mello running in her veins. If he could get his clients to Angela’s ordinary everyday mental state, he’d be rich. Sandy treasuresher, in fact they’re really old-fashioned that way; they’re in love, they’ve been allies for almost ten years. Some kind of miracle, for sure. And the more Sandy hears from all his friends, the more he sees of their shaky, patched-up, provisional alliances, the luckier he feels.

So he can only sympathize with Tash concerning his problem; he can’t really claim to offer any help out of his own experience. It’s a difficult situation, no doubt about it; it is, in fact, a dilemma. Choosing either course of action means painful consequences. Change to suit Erica, remain the same and lose her; what will Tash do?

As night falls they talk less and less. Events from their childhood, events from the world news. Among the blurry stars overhead the swift satellites and the big mirrors slowly move, north, south, east, west, like stars cast loose and spinning off on crazy courses of their own. “Death From the Stars.” “No lie.” Sandy shivers in the wind, watching them. He pulls out soggy Togo’s sandwiches and they eat. Afterward Sandy feels a bit queasy. “Marijuana reduces nausea, right?”

“So they say.”

“Time to test it out.”

It works only indifferently.

To their left OC bounces up and down.

The coast an unbroken bar of light.

The hills behind bumpy loafs of light.

Lights stationary, lights crawling about.

A flat hive of light, squashed between black sea and black sky.

The living body of light.

A galaxy seen edge-on.

Sandy retires to the cabin in the left hull, leaving the first watch to Tashi. He wakes to find Tashi drowsing over the tiller in gray predawn.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Fell asleep.”

“I take it they didn’t show.”

“That’s right.”