“I can’t!”

“Katherine Callendish-Reaux, you will. You can and you will. Listen to me.” He set her back sternly, hands on her shoulders. “I have a headache. I have a backache. I had a cold supper last night, damned little sleep in my office chair, and interviews all day with every power broker on Concord, from Station Security to the Outsider Chairman. I’ve had an absolutely hellacious two days, I’ve got an ambassador from Earth arriving tomorrow, and he could conceivably decide I’m not to be governor anymore, and you’re not to have a nice apartment or any nice clothes, or any father for that matter, do you understand that? That’s how serious it is. So if you’ll do me the moderate favor of giving me five days of tranquillity in this household, no matter what you have to say or do with your mother, I’ll be so deep in your debt I’ll buy you a shop full of whatever your heart desires and let you dye your hair blue if you like. Just hold the lid on for five days. Please, baby.”

“Mignette!”

“Mignette.” In calm, perfect earnest. Hormones were raging, no question. Not a word he said got through. Or would, until the adrenaline ebbed. “Come on. Tuck it in and come down to dinner. Your mother will be vastly relieved.”

“I don’t want her relieved about anything.”

“Come on.” He knew his timing. He set a hand on his daughter’s back, steered her out the door. “Shirttail.”

She made a one-handed, halfhearted shove at it, and slouched ahead of him down the stairs barefoot.

Judy had the table set. Table, yet. It was a once-a-year occasion, table-setting, never mind the fancy inherited import china. Judy looked sidelong at her daughter and forbore a comment.

Good, he thought. He pulled back a chair for his daughter at the side of the table, pulled back Judy’s, at the end, and they sat down to a still-passable grilled fish.

They were a family tonight.

Maybe it was auspicious for tomorrow that, within the household, his diplomacy had prevailed.

GROCERIES. The essentials. A frozen cake, imported chocolate. Heavy synth packets that he had to have for pasta and cheese…well, and some fancy bread, which looked good. He could have called it in and had it all delivered, but deliveries had a way of showing up when he was locked away downstairs in an office Brazis didn’t want advertised to local merchants; and if he didn’t get the delivery when it came, he’d have a message requesting a time for redelivery, which wouldn’t work out any better. There were a lot of conveniences on Grozny that just weren’t convenient, if you lived only a block from the store and didn’t rule your own communications on the common tap.

A little déclassé to be lugging one’s own groceries, his sister would say. But she wasn’t here to be embarrassed.

And in-person shopping always turned out to be more complicated than phoning in. He wasn’t good at resisting nicely displayed treats. Last-moment packet of custard cups. Patent really grown berries from Momus at 29.95 the box. He was feeling sorry for himself.

His bills were paid up, his messages were all answered, every day. It was going to be just him, the kitchen synthesizer, and the echannels for the next several days of enforced solitude, no questions asked. Grim.

He ran his items down the track, stuck his card and his hand under the reader to pay out, then hefted the heavy green bags, careful not to crush the delicate berries, and headed out.

Straight into public view—public suddenly meaning a handful of faces he’d ever so rather not see.

Algol was an old Stylist, verging on a grotesque. The left side of his face was black, the right side red. The designs that ran between were very nicely done. That effect was what saved him and made it art…but there were whispers of an illicit gone way wrong twenty years back that had had to be covered up very expensively, and that had left certain sexual side effects.

Not so Algol couldn’t muster a coterie of hangers-on—tough sorts, the sort you’d shy away from during the odd hours on Blunt, which was where they usually hung out.

He didn’t want this encounter. But he clearly had it.

“Little dog.” That was Procyon’s namesake star in vulgar terms, lesser Dog Star after the Hunter, as Earth saw the ancient sky. Algol was very educated, a walking encyclopedia of bits and tags. But the split defined his personality, too, bi in every department. “Hunting what, little dog?”

“Box of milk.”

One of the hangers-on stepped into his path. A second and third blocked him in, little punks trying to prove their usefulness to the center of their universe.

“Procyon. Procyon who works for the big dog. What does Brazissay about this ship?”

“Somehow I don’t get that information.” If the punks started a fight, he supposed he just had to take it and hope the store called the cops to save him. Brazis didn’t like government employees, especially taps, throwing punches or getting arrested, and he’d now been way too many hours awake and had his nerves too jangled to put up with this. “There’s a ship. That’s all I know, demon prince, and I got it off the reader-boards. What have you heard?”

“Not a thing. Not a thing, little dog.” Cheap theatrics, Algol moved a hand and the flunkies opened out.

He didn’t bolt. His life was secrecy. He was appalled to hear Brazis linked to him—but maybe Algol meant it only in the general sense, in that he worked for the government, hence the Chairman. He tried for information. “Come on. You’ve heard something. Think it’s the governor’s problem? That arena business?”

“Not a sure word on the street,” Algol said. “Brazis’s snoops raided Michaelangelo’s this evening, just walked in and threw everybody out. Does that possibly say something to those in the know? Those who work in government offices?”

Michaelangelo’s was the chief Freethinker digs. Hisold digs. And Algol’s. God, did Algol think his job was with the slinks? That he was an informer?

“Somebody in Michaelangelo’s wasn’t what they wanted, after all, that’s what it says to me, and they went elsewhere. I wouldn’t know. Go home, why don’t you?”

“Word is Reaux’s dogs and Brazis’s slinks are out together in plain clothes, and they’ve ordered the untidy questioners of authority out of sight, out of mind. Callisto’sdisappeared.”

“Oh, well. They’re just picking up fools, then. I wouldn’t worry. I wouldn’t stand on the docks with a placard saying Freethinkertonight. I wouldn’t and you wouldn’t, and I’m sure they’ll let Callisto out someday.”

“Michaelangelo’s is closed to nonresidents for a week.”

That was unprecedented. “Interesting.”

“There’s a sign in the window. Somebody’s already flung paint on it.”

“Then it’s probably a good place to stay away from. Paint clings.”

“No sympathy at all from you for your old friends, little dog?”

“None for fools. I don’t intend to go down to the docks to protest Earth rule. If some do, they can look to spend a few nights behind locked doors, and I’m not going to protest that, either, when it happens. I like my own bed.”

“Your own lonelybed, little dog.”

“My nice safe bed, demon prince.” The sacks were heavy. He shifted them in his arms, a defense, a weapon, if it came to it. “My loss, I’m sure, but I’m happy enough. I wish I knew what was going on down on Blunt, too, but I don’t.”

“What’s going to go on, little dog, is a protest. The Chairman thinks he can shut down Michaelangelo’s, and shut down businesses he doesn’t like. The people are going to rise.”

“The people are going to get their cards ticked, if they get caught. Here’s a piece of my advice, for free. Stay out of trouble.”

“Never.”

“Well, at least I wish you luck. I hope the cops miss you—unlikely as that seems.”

“Coward. Slink.”

“Not a slink. Prudent, demon prince. Innocent, and planning to stay that way.”