And…How’s the job? His father would ask at some point in the evening, as his father asked every time they met, and he’d smile and say the job was fine, then change the topic.

His parents were good and devoted sorts—not that he was sure they still loved each other, but they’d stuck together for thirty years, being good religious people and the descendants and relatives of generations of good religious people. Children were the one achievement that they were instructed by God to create with their lives. His father, after whom he was named, Jeremy Lee Stafford, was a station mechanic, which was right next to a tech, as his mother would always say.

Good pay, his dad would say, looking askance at a son who lived at a very, very fancy address, who didn’t tell his father what he made per year, or explain exactly what he did, beyond that he worked in computers for the government. Key-pushing wasn’t his father’s idea of a high-paying job.

Then his mother would convert the question back into how Arden was getting along, and whether she’d found a job, completely oblivious to how Arden was really getting along, and unaccepting of the fact that Arden was never, ever going to get a job.

Your sister could have had a nicejob, their mother would say (he had the conversation memorized), meaning a job in the plastics shaping factory where their mother was a line supervisor. Their mother had virtually assured his sister an entry level position in household furnishings, with a clear track to good promotions in design if she took the company study program. Arden had run away to the streets the day of the scheduled interview, a fact to which their mother never quite alluded, but his father did, if he ever got into the discussion. She should get a job,his mother would say sadly. Followed by, with that honeyed sweetness usually reserved to herald a new baby: We’re so proud of you.

All because, yes, he clearly had a job of some kind, and he sent them presents, hand-thrown pots and all, and occasionally showed up at the family gatherings wearing a nice suit and talking computer games with his cousins’ rotten kids, who believed, like the aunts and uncles, that he was some kind of computer expert—afterall, he’d gotten a technical scholarship to university and actually graduated, while his missing sister had set her heart on fashion design, which the aunts and uncles all agreed was frivolous.

Live in the real world,the parents would tell them both, and they both got the lecture at every mention of fashion design. So he’d graduated with a technical certificate in communications systems, and his younger sister hadn’t gotten any certificate at all, after her three years in fashion design.

Compared to his sister’s, his relations with the parentals had been sterling. Then, last unavoidable paternal birthday, he’d made the great faux pas. No, he’d let slip when pressed, he didn’t go into the office every day. He did wear a suit when he did. But he usually worked at home.

That entirely upset his parents’ image of him. Last he heard from the cousins, his anguished mother had told the aunts he was doing part-timework for the government. His father acted odd when the topic came up, which his mother finally confided to him was worry about the money he had and the address he had.

I have enough, he’d assured her. I’m doing all right. It’s a scarce specialty. And his mother had said, two months ago, We’re sure you do, and then confessed his father worried he was involved in organized crime.

God. From one crisis to the next. He wished he could actually breach security and tell them in strictest confidence what he did, that he was day watcher over the whole reason for Concord Station existing.

Then his father would look him straight in the eye and ask, with undefeatable logic, So if you’re so damn important, why don’t you do it in an office?

And his mother would decide “strictest confidence” naturally included her sister.

He increasingly didn’t want to go to the anniversary dinner. Other thirty-years-married people of his parents’ generation might think of going out to a romantic dinner for their anniversary and even make love afterward. No chance of that. His parents invited all the relatives and their kids to an enormous supper, to sit in the cramped living room for hours discussing sports and even more remote relatives, most of them deceased.

Worse, at some time in the evening, particularly if he once spoke his mind to his young cousins, the talk would get around to religion, that other great divide; and if he ever expressed an honest opinion violating their notions on that, his mother might ask again, in a hushed voice, if, working for the government, he was modified.

And if he ever answered that question with the truth, he’d have her praying for him daily.

If she saw Arden these days, they’d all be on tranquilizers.

He took 11th Street back down, a walk past two-story apartments. Cleaner-bots scuttled, small half domes moving busily wherever walkers were scarce, gathering up here and there a discarded wrapper, a little accumulation of dust. A handful of giggling, overfunded pre-pubes from upstairs, whose responsible parties probably hadn’t given a damn in years, taunted the bots, slyly tossing small bits of trash to attract them and trying in vain to tip them over. The teens were police bait, oblivious to the watch-cameras.

He left them to their folly, strolled back onto Grozny Street at the busiest intersection on restaurant row.

La Lune Noir. He was in a mood for the pastries. Best desserts in the Trend.

Nowhe was in a good mood.

2

AN ANOLE LOUNGED IN PLAIN SIGHT, belly down on a rock. Setha Reaux, having missed lunch, had a cup of caff, a muffin, and tried to steady his mind as he contemplated his bubble world. The lizard contemplated him from the other side of the glass.

The incoming ship had answered his queries, finally. Special Ambassador Andreas Gide to Setha Reaux, Governor of Concord. We will remain here five days for consultations. We look forward to a brief and productive conference.

Consultations. Business. Special Ambassador. An official, this Mr. Gide, with an unstated mission.

His first relieved thought was that there was no indication, at least, of an audit, and no summary request for records. After an all-night scramble, and all morning going through files, he had all the tax records accessible and immaculately clean if there should be a question. All the Council meeting logs. All the communications with the various business interests, on-station and off-. He had gotten it all organized in thirty-six hours, in the face of that oncoming, silent ship. He’d gotten the arena records in careful context, along with the time line of phone calls and conference agendas, which proved his case on the construction of the new station, in case there was a question on that front, locally or otherwise.

But nothing about this arrival looked like an operations audit after all, as that message indicated. He couldn’t say he was exactly disappointed to hear there was a Mr. Gide with some sort of consultations in mind—mortally relieved, was more the point—but after a night and a day in the office, he was frayed, underinformed, and most of all frustrated.

A flood of inquiries had hit his desk early when this ship had turned up, local agencies wanting to know what everybody on the station wanted to know: what was going on and why an Earth ship was here off schedule. The price-fixing board had immediately swung into action, of course, and the securities and exchange people had put in a night of overtime trying to scotch speculation on ordinary goods and luxury items. Everybody was discommoded. The fashion shops likewise were probably organizing flood sales on their newest items. When the regular Earth freighter touched the station in its annual visit, information on the mother world’s fashions came with it, and things changed rapidly in the haut tonshops.