"Wonderful! You must be traveling to see your family? Where are you from, London or the south?"

"London," said Miriam, tensing. As soon as the waiter was past her she picked up her spoon and started on her bowl. The onion soup might have tasted good if she hadn't burned her mouth on the first sip, but it was either tuck in now or put up with Mrs. Crosby's curiosity all the way to Dunedin. As it was, she had to remain alert for the entire meal, because little Marissa's every tic and twitch seemed to attract Eleanor's loud and very vocal ire. Her place setting was a battlefield, and Mrs. Crosby seemed unable to grasp the possibility that Miriam might not want to be induced to spill her life's story before a stranger. Which was doubly frustrating because right then Miriam would have been immensely grateful for someone to share her conundrum with-had it not been both a secret and a matter of life and death.

After the ordeal of dinner, Miriam returned to her compartment to discover that someone had been there while she'd been eating. One of the bench seats had been converted into a compact bunk bed. For a moment her pulse raced and she came close to panic: but the carpetbag was untouched, still innocently stuffed into the luggage rack above the door. She bolted the door and carefully lifted the bag down, intending to continue her search.

When she'd opened it before dinner, carefully checking the lock first, she'd discovered the bag didn't contain the cargo she'd expected: no neatly taped bags of white powder here. Instead, there was a layer of clothing-her clothing, a skirt and blouse and a change of underwear from her house in the Boston of this world. Bastards! She'd felt faint for a moment as she stared at it. They set me up! Then she calmed down slightly. What if the Constabulary pulled her in for questioning and looked in her bag? What would they find? Miriam puzzled for a while. Surely they wouldn't waste a precious cargo run just to test a cover identity? she asked herself. Which meant-ah. This is meant to survive a search, isn't it?

There were more items that smacked of misdirection in the bag: a small pouch of gold coin muffled inside the newssheet wrapping of an antique vase. That would buy her a hefty fine or a month in prison if they found it (they being the hypothetical police agents, searching everybody as they came off the train) and it would more than suffice to explain her nervousness. What's going on here? Miriam puzzled. Then she'd come to the bottom of the bag and found the battered manila envelope with its puzzling contents, which she'd just had time to glance through before the cabin attendant knocked to tell her it was time for dinner.

Now she sat on the bunk, reopened the bag, and pulled out the envelope. It contained a manuscript, printed in blurry purplish ink on cheap paper in very small type, the pages torn and yellowed at the edges from too many fingers: The Tyranny of Reason by Jean-Paul Mavrides, whoever he was. It looked to her eyes like something smuggled out of the old Soviet Union-battered and beaten but blazingly angry, a condemnation of the divine right of kings and an assertion that only in a perfect democracy based on the common will of humanity could the common man free himself from his oppressors. "Well, I wanted something to read," she told herself mordantly, "even if I wasn't looking at a seven-year stretch for possession…"

She began to flick through it rapidly, pausing when she came to the real meat, which was embedded in it in neatly laser-printed sheets interleaved every ten pages or so. Purloined letter. She could see the setup now, in her mind's eye, and it was less obviously a setup. They wouldn't be planning to shop her-not with a bunch of destroy before reading Clan security correspondence on her person. Even though it was likely that the arresting constables would simply log it as an item from the Banned List and pitch it straight into the station fireplace. So it was just a routine precaution, multiple layers of concealment for the letters. Which didn't help her much: with a few eye-catching exceptions they were mostly incomprehensible. She kept coming back to the letter from Dr. Darling to Angbard. What the hell is a W* heterozygote? she wondered. This is significant. What is Angbard doing, messing around with a fertility clinic? She could think of a number of explanations, none of them good-

There was a knock at the door.

Sudden panic gripped her. She shuddered and shoved the incriminating samizdat into the bag, her palms slippery with sweat. Oh shit! The train was moving. If I have to try to get away-

Another knock, this time quieter. Miriam paused, then let go of her left sleeve cuff with her right hand. The panic faded, but the adrenaline shock was still with her. She forced herself to take a deep breath and stand up, then shot the bolt back on the door. "Yes?" she demanded.

"Are you a constabule?" asked the girl Marissa, staring up at her with wide eyes. "Coz if so, I wants to know, when's you going to arrest my mam?"

"I am not-" Miriam stopped. "Come in here." The little girl moved as if to step back, but Miriam caught her wrist and tugged lightly. She didn't resist but came quietly, as if sleepwalking. She didn't seem to weigh anything. "Sit down," Miriam said, pointing at the bench seat opposite her bunk. She slid the door shut. "Why do you think I'm going to arrest your mam?" Her mother? Miriam thought, aghast: she'd taken Mrs. Crosby for sixty, but she couldn't be much older than Miriam herself. She suddenly realized she was looming over the kid. This can't be good. She sat down on the bunk and tried to compose her features. "I'm not going to arrest anyone, Marissa. Why, did you think I was a constable?"

Marissa nodded at her, looking slightly less frightened. "You's look like the one as nicked my nuncle? You talk all posh-like, an' dress like a rozzer. An' you got that way of looking aroun' at people, like you's sizing them for a cage."

Jesus, am I frightening the little children now? Miriam laughed nervously. "I'm not a, a rozzer, girl." And what's her mother afraid of? Is that why she was grilling me over dinner? "But listen, it's not safe to go asking people if they're Polis. I mean, if they aren't it's rude, and if they are, you're telling them you're afraid. If you tell them you're frightened they'll ask why you're frightened, understand? So you don't do that, you just ignore them. Besides, if I was with the Polis, why would I tell you the truth?"

Miriam paused, suddenly realizing she'd sawn off the logical branch her argument was sitting on: Hope she doesn't spot it. She stared at Marissa. Marissa had long, stringy hair lying heavy down her back and wore a smock that hadn't been laundered too recently. When she was older she'd probably have cheekbones to kill for, but right now she just looked starved and frightened. She's about the age Rita would be-stop that. Miriam hadn't seen Rita, her daughter, since she gave her up for adoption at the age of two days: Rita had been a minor personal disaster, an unplanned intrusion while Miriam was in med school, and the less remembered the better. "Listen. I think you should go back to your mother-you didn't tell her you were coming here, did you?" A vigorously shaken head. "Good. You don't tell her you came to see me because she'll worry. And she's got enough to worry about already, hasn't she?" Traveling first-class, but her kid hasn't eaten much recently and her brother's been arrested? Similarly vigorous nodding confirmed Miriam's suspicions. "What did they arrest your uncle for?"

"Sedition," Marissa said shyly.

Miriam felt light-headed with anger. "Well." She reached down into the bag and fumbled around, finding the vase and its decoy contents. She fumbled in it with clumsy fingers then brought out a small coin. "Here, do you have somewhere to hide this?"