"Rosa's weak?"

"I don't want to get her into trouble."

"Ariel, she's having real problems."

"I know that."

"Can she do her work?"

"She's been doing pretty well, hasn't she?"

"Will she keep it up?" Martin asked.

"I think she will. But the children need to accept her."

"I get the impression she isn't accepting the children."

"Whatever," Ariel said.

"You're her friend. Can you bring her in?"

"We talk. She doesn't tell me everything. I don't think she's anybody's friend. I just make it a point to talk to her. You don't. Nobody else does."

Martin could not deny that. "I'm talking to her next."

Ariel lifted her chin back. "Are you going to be her friend?"

You are a bloody-minded bitch. "I'll try," he said.

Ariel left. Rosa Sequoia came into his quarters a few minutes later, face set like stone, eyes wide with fear and that ever-present defiance, an expression that made Martin want to kick her.

"Tell me what you think you saw. Just me," Martin said.

She shook her head. "You don't believe any of us."

"I'm listening."

"The others… they saw something different. Why should you believe any of us?"

Martin lifted his hand and crooked his finger encouragingly: Come on.

"You think I started it," Rosa said.

"I don't think that. Do you think you started it?"

"I saw it first." Under her breath. "It's mine."

"If it belongs to you, can you control it?" The conversation was getting looser and loonier. How far would he go to bring her in? Rosa was too sharp to be deceived. "Do you claim it?"

"I don't have it. I don't have anything." She hung her head. "I don't know what I've been doing."

This reversal caught him by surprise. He opened and closed his mouth, then folded his legs beneath him. "Jesus, Rosa."

"I'm not saying I… I'm not saying that we haven't seen anything."

"No… Sit. Please. Just talk."

Rosa looked to one side and shook her head. "I don't want to go against the Job. I'm afraid this might hurt us. Hurt the Job."

"What is it? Do you know?"

She sobbed and held her head back to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling. "I didn't make it up. I swear to Earth, Martin. I wouldn't do that. I don't know about the others."

"Is it real?"

"It is, to me. I've only seen it once, though. It was more real than I am. It was more real than the Job. It scared me, but it was beautiful. Should I be ashamed of that?"

"I don't know. Talk."

"I do my work," Rosa said, "I try to be competent, but I don't belong here any more than I belonged on the Ark. Or on the Earth. You don't think much of me because I'm causing trouble… But nobody thought anythingof me when I was nothing at all."

"You can't own a… Whatever it is. It can't be yours alone."

"If it was important, it would make me useful. People wouldn't look through me."

Martin asked her to relax and again she refused. "I want to go back. I want this forgotten."

"What about Alexis? What she saw?"

"I don't know what she saw. It sounds like what I saw, but it may not be."

"You didn't make this up, I know that. But is it real?"

Rosa shook her head. "Alexis thinks it is."

"Then maybe it is," Martin said. "I'm not going to doubt what my fellows see. You and Alexis. You'll continue to do your duties and attend all the drills. When you're off-duty, you can keep a look out. Look through the ship. Until partition. If it doesn't show up any more after that, we forget it. All right?"

"Jeanette and Nancy?"

"Jeanette saw her mother," Martin said. "Nancy saw… a man. They didn't see what you saw."

"Maybe it can take different shapes… read our minds."

Martin controlled his shudder. This was a real risk. Lancing the boil—acknowledging its existence—might do more than just drain the infection; it might spread it.

"You're a part of us, and whatever happens to you is important."

"I'm a large… thing," Rosa said, holding out her arms, fingers clutched into fists. "I was large when I was a child. Everybody stared at me and avoided me. I thought by coming here, doing the Job, I could be important to the girls and boys who ignored me and who died on Earth."

Martin took one of her fists and tried to massage it into openness. She stared at his hands, her fist, as if they were-disembodied. Her voice rose.

"I wanted to be important to them. When I got on the Dawn Treader, nothing much changed. I knew there wasn't anything I could do to make anybody think I was important. "

"You're part of us," Martin said. He reached out and brought her to him, wrapped his arms around her, felt her hard, thick—fleshed shoulders, broad ribcage, small breasts against his chest, the strength and tension and the damp warm skin of her neck. He hugged her, chin on her shoulder, smelling her, sharp like a large, frightened animal. "We don't want to lose you, or anybody. Do what I ask, and we'll see if it comes to anything."

She pushed him back with strong, large hands and blinked at him. "I will," she said. She smiled like a little girl. Possibly no one had hugged her in years. How could all the children have so ignored one of their own? Seeing the pain and hope in her eyes—a forlorn, lost hope—Martin wondered if he had done the right thing, used the right kind of influence.

So little time.

Rosa left, subdued to her old quietness, and Alexis Baikal came in, and then Jeanette and Nancy. They did not say much, and he did not push the issue. Somehow he felt he had broken the chain of events, that everything would go more smoothly now; but had he sacrificed the last of Rosa?

Only hours. Time flying by more swiftly, more in tune with the outside universe. Another partition drill; equally successful. One last brief external drill, also successful. The children seemed as prepared as they would ever be.

Hour by hour, Hakim's search team produced more and more information.

The time of judgment had arrived.

In the schoolroom, in the presence of the War Mother, Martin set up the rules for the judgment. In the first year, Stephanie Wing Feather and Harpal Timechaser had prepared the rules, trying to catch the resonances of the justice systems established on the Ark, based on human laws back to the tablets of Hammurabi…

A jury of twelve children was chosen by lots. Each child could refuse the assignment; none did. With more qualms than satisfaction, Martin saw Rosa inducted as a juror, taking the oath Stephanie herself had written:

I will truly judge based on the evidence, and what I will judge is whether the evidence is sufficient, and whether it proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I will not allow prejudice or hate or fear to cloud my judgment, nor will I be swayed by any emotion or rhetoric from my fellows, so help me, in the name of truth, God, the memory of Earth, my family, and whatever I hold most dear, against the eternal guilt of my soul should I err…

The choosing and swearing-in lasted a precious hour. A defense advocate was appointed by Martin; to Hakim's dismay, Martin chose him. "No one knows the weakness of your evidence more than you do," Martin said. He was acutely aware of the roughness and arbitrariness of this system they had chosen; they could do no better.