“I just heard from Tashi what happened the other night. We’ve been up in the mountains since then or I would’ve been by sooner. I’m really, really sorry—”

Angela puts a hand on his arm to stop him. “Don’t worry about it, Jim. It wasn’t your fault. Tash told me what you did, and to tell you the truth, I’m glad you did it. In fact I’m proud of you. Sandy’s all right, after all. And he’ll be back in a few days and everything will be back to normal.”

“But I heard he got arrested?”

“It doesn’t matter. They can’t make any of the charges stick. Arrests by security cops don’t mean much to the courts. Sandy and Bob said they were just boating out there, and there was nothing to indicate they weren’t. Really, don’t worry about it.”

“Well…”

Angela sits him down, comforts him in typical Angela style: “Sandy wasn’t even to shore when they caught him. It was pretty scary, he said, because they fired a warning shot to stop him, and then they had submachine guns aimed at him and all. And he spent a couple days in jail. But nothing’s going to come of it, we hope. Sandy may have to quit dealing for a while. Maybe for good. That’s my opinion.” She smiles a little.

Jim asks about Arthur.

“He’s disappeared. No one knows where he’s gone or what’s happened to him. I’m not sure I care, either.” Apparently she blames Arthur for getting all of them involved with the sabotage/ drug rescue attempt at LSR; although, Jim thinks, that’s not exactly right. For a moment she looks bleak, and all of a sudden Jim sees that her cheerfulness is forced. Optimism is not a biochemical accident, he thinks; it’s a policy, you have to work at it. “That was damned stupid, what he was doing,” she says, “and he was using you, too. You should have known better.”

“I guess.” They were being used to cover a drug run, after all; what can he say? And in the earlier attacks … was that all there was to it? “But … no, I think Arthur believed in what we were doing. I don’t think he was doing it for money or whatever—he really wanted to make a change. I mean, we have to resist somehow! We can’t just give in to the way things are, can we?”

“I don’t know.” Angela shrugs. “I mean we should try to change things, sure. But there must be ways that are less dangerous, less harmful.”

Jim isn’t so sure. And after they sit in silence for a while, thinking about it, he leaves.