“Can a man who lies, cheats, steals, and sometimes does violence to other people be a man of honor?”

Kolabati looked into his eyes. “He can if he lies to liars, cheats cheaters, steals from thieves, and limits his violence to those who are violent.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

An honorable man. He liked the sound of that. He liked the meaning that went with it. As Repairman Jack he had taken an honorable course without consciously setting out to do so. Autonomy had been his driving motive—to reduce to the barest minimum all external restraints upon his life. But honor… honor was an internal restraint. He hadn’t recognized the role it had played all along in guiding him.

Kolabati’s hand started moving again and thoughts of honor sank in the waves of pleasure washing over him. It was good to be aroused again.

He had led a monkish life since Gia had left him. Not that he had consciously avoided sex—he had simply stopped thinking about it. A number of weeks had gone by before he even realized what had happened to him. He had read that that was a sign of depression. Maybe. Whatever the cause, tonight made up for any period of abstention, no matter how long.

Her hand was gently working at him now, drawing responses from what he had thought was an empty well. He was rolling toward her when he caught the first whiff of the odor.

What the hell is that?

It smelled like a pigeon had got into the air conditioner and laid a rotten egg. Or died.

Kolabati stiffened beside him. He didn’t know whether she had smelled it, too, or whether something had frightened her. He thought he heard her say something that sounded like “Rakosh!” in a tense whisper. She rolled on top of him and clung like a drowning sailor to a floating spar.

An aura of nameless fear enveloped Jack. Something was terribly wrong, but he could not say what. He listened for a foreign sound, but all that came to him were the low hums, each in a different key, of the air conditioners in each of the three rooms. He reached for the .38 S&W Chief Special he always kept under the mattress, but Kolabati hugged him tighter.

“Don’t move,” she whispered in a voice he could barely hear. “Just lie here under me and don’t say a word.”

Jack opened his mouth to speak but she covered his lips with her own. The pressure of her bare breasts against his chest, her hips on his, the tingle of her necklace as it dangled from her neck against his throat, the caresses of her hands—all worked toward blotting out the odor.

Yet there was a desperation about her that prevented Jack from completely releasing himself to the sensations. His eyes kept opening and straying to the window, to the door, to the hall that led past the tv room to the darkened front room, then back to the window. There was no good reason for it, but a small part of him expected someone or something—a person, an animal—to come through the door. He knew it was impossible—the front door was locked, the windows were three stories up. Crazy. Yet the feeling persisted.