"Has your brother ever killed anybody?" Leet whispered.

"Of course not," Flutterby said. She smoothed out the wrinkles in their cloth without meeting the other girl's eyes.

"He's not like that. You've met him."

"Yeah," Leet said. Her brown eyes brightened and she giggled.

"He's so cute."

Flutterby found that she got her banner lettered with less than half a tube of green. It was dark green and would be nearly as visible as black. The large block letters read, "WE'RE HUNGRY NOW!" It had become the rallying cry of the refugees, but she'd heard it mumbled everywhere lately. As scarcity spread and rations declined, Flutterby had even heard it whispered in The Line.

The Line, where everyone stood for hours to get into the food distribution centers, was where she chose to hang her banner. Leet's would go over their school, which faced the concrete-and-plasteel offices of Merman Mercantile. Jaka wanted to smuggle his into Merman Hyperconductor, and Dana said she'd hang hers from the ferry dock, within easy view of Holovision's offices on the pier.

Dana ran up and down the scales a few times, then she and Jaka played a fast, lilting dance piece they'd practiced at school. Flutterby thought it the best her friend had ever played. Jaka struggled, as usual, but diligently played on.

"Do you think the Shadows kidnapped Crista Galli?" Leet asked.

The bulky tube was difficult for her to handle, and she was going over her letters twice to make them bold enough to be read at a distance.

"I don't know," Flutterby said. "I don't know what to believe anymore. My mother grew up on Vashon, and she says that Crista Galli is some kind of god or something. My dad says she's just another freak."

"Your mother?"

"No," Flutterby giggled, "Crista Galli, you stoop. He says that the only way to feed the world is to keep control of the currents, and that if Crista Galli helps control the kelp then the Director is right to make sure she doesn't get away, or turn it against us. What do your parents think?"

Leet frowned.

"They don't say much of anything, anymore," she said. "They're both working all the time, every day. Mom says she's too tired to hear herself think. My dad won't even watch the news anymore. He doesn't say anything, just bites his lip and goes to bed. I think they're afrai..."

An explosion in the harbor startled them both. Dana set her caracol on the deck with a thump.

"That was close," she said. Dana had a lisp that came out when she was nervous, and it slipped out now.

The four of them crowded the tiny plaz porthole at the far end of the attic. A smudge of black smoke blotted the sky to their right at the end of the street. Looking up the street to the left, Flutterby watched the giant cup on the Ace of Cups sign swing to and fro from the concussion. The street was packed with morning commuters and vendors at their little tables. Flutterby heard a gasp from Dana, and looked where she pointed, straight beneath them.

"Security!" she whispered. "He's covering the hatch. They must already be inside!"

"We've got to hide this stuff," Jaka said, his whisper cracking into its high range. "If they find this, they'll kill us."

"Or worse," Dana muttered.

They scrambled to gather up the paints and to roll up the two wet banners, but it was too late.

The flimsy hatch burst aside as a fat, no-neck security kicked it in. Another, nearly identical to him, slipped inside and waited with his back to the wall.

"Look here," he said, straightening the banners with the muzzle of his weapon. "A little nest of flatwings, no?"

Without waiting for a reply he snapped two bursts from his lasgun. Jaka and Leet dropped to the deck, dead.

Flutterby wanted to scream, but she couldn't catch her breath.

"They're wots," his partner said. "What did yo... ?"

"Maggots make flies," the other said. "We have orders." The muzzle came up again and Flutterby didn't even see the flash that killed her.

Ben undogged the hatch and Rico LaPush rushed inside. Rico nodded once to the girl, who looked ghastly pale, and handed Ben the pocket messenger. Most of the briefing on it was already outdated, but Ben would want to hear it, anyway. Rico was careful to keep from touching the girl.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," Ben said.

"Yes," said the girl.

Rico scratched his chin stubble and adjusted the lasgun in the back of his pants. He had been with Ben since Guemes island was sunk, more years than Crista Galli had been alive. His mistrust of people had kept them alive more than once, and he did not intend to let his guard down with Her Holiness.

"Deja vu," he said to Ben, nodding at her Islander dress. "She reminds me of the old days, when things were simply tough. The streets are crawling with security, she'll need a good ac..."

"You can speak to me," Crista interrupted, her cheeks flushed with a run of anger. "I have ears to hear, mouth to answer. This sister is not a chairdog, nor a glass of water on her brother's table."

Rico had to muster a smile. Her Islander accent was perfect, her phrasing perfect. She was a very quick study - of course, she had more intimate ways of getting inside people's head...

"Thank you for the lesson, sister," he said. "You are most cheerfully dressed, my compliments."

Rico noted Ben's smile, and the fact that his partner's gaze never wavered from Crista Galli's perfect face.

Rico's cameras had taped the faces of many beautiful women for Holovision and he had to admit that everything he'd heard about Crista Galli was true. When Ben became a reporter, Rico LaPush signed on as a field triangulator with the holography crew. A well-placed lie got him the job, but his facility for learning kept it. He had filmed more pomp and more horror in any given year than most cameramen witnessed in a lifetime.

She's pale, but beautiful, he thought. Maybe the sun will give her some color.

Operations said to keep her out of the sun, but Rico thought that, given their recent bad luck, this would be impossible. Operations, whoever they were, didn't have their butts on the line.

"We'll be walking for a while," Rico told them. "Don't hurry."

He nodded at the messenger in Ben's hand.

"Don't bother," he said. "You might as well shitcan that thing. They tell us we're going by air but the airstrip's already locked up by Flattery's boys. We'll have to do it by water."

"But they sai..."

"I know what they said," Rico snapped. "They said the airstrip would be secure. They said keep her away from water. Let's move."

Crista Galli carried a sadness about her that Rico didn't like. He could take fear, or anger, or even hysteria but sadness felt too much like bad luck. They'd started out with that. When she reached out a tentative hand toward Ben, Rico stopped her with a word.

"No," he said. "I'm sorry. I can't let you touch him."

"Your fear?" she shot back, "or this 'Operations'? He is clothed."

"My fear."

She was hurt when Ben remained silent.

Crista shrank back from him, and Rico slipped into the Guemes dialect that he'd set aside years ago.

"Among Islanders, I am merely advising one of my sisters that she needs to recognize the depth of trust and love that the people have for her," he said, with a curt nod of his head. "They speak out to her when the speaking is painful."

"And the fear?"

Good! Rico thought. She won't be bullied.

He continued to speak to her in the manner of the Guemes Islanders.

"This sister apprises the brother well. Let the brother remind the sister that only the unknown is feared. Perhaps the sister will set this brother at ease, in time. Shall we begin?"