“Little dog’s scared.”

“Little dog’s just going home. Good night, good luck, and don’t get caught.”

“So kind.” Algol waved an arm, letting him pass. “Run home. Run home. No need for the police ever to arrest little dog. He arrests himself. Is thatthese huge sacks of groceries?”

“Hunger pangs,” he said, and escaped, with predatory eyes on his back.

Well, if you wanted the official line, read the newsboards. If you wanted to know the craziest rumor on the street, ask Callisto; but if you wanted the best and most accurate, you went to Michaelangelo’s and just sat and kept your ears open.

Which now the slinks had shut. A week’s shutdown, arrests, and the problem ship hadn’t even docked yet.

He arrests himself.Not quite, though it stung. And he didn’t like it that Algol came to himasking about Brazis. He’d put it out that he was what he’d applied to be, a computer tech, not admin; and damned sure not a slink for the government. The street apparently questioned his cover. And what the street questioned—God knew, it could be serious trouble for him and his residency here if the light stayed on him too long.

He wanted to get home and become less conspicuous. Out of sight, out of mind, and he planned to stay far out of that one’s mind.

Maybe, too, he should report in to the PO and say he’d been approached by a questionable source, but he didn’t want to target Algol to get arrested—Algol and others might make that connection with him, if that should happen. Algol might well be one of the prime police targets already, and he didn’t want word running the street that he’d ratted Algol—God, no. He liked living.

He headed into Grozny Close, where his own neighborhood security cameras checked him out, where the likes of Algol and his muscle didn’t dare come, if they were half-smart.

He began to realize he was holding his breath. It came short as he let it go. His grip on the packages was iron, threatening to crush the fragiles.

He reached his own door. Entered. Sam lit the hall and silently lifted him to the heart of his own safe, secure apartment.

He dumped the sacks on the kitchen counter, threw the few frozens into the chute and let Sam read all the labels and organize things in the freezer and the Synthomate. The off-program boxes needed more attention: he had to be coordinated enough to scan the labels through the hand reader and coordinate them with their data, a fussy job, but there shouldn’t be frozens in that lot. He decided he was too tired and too frazzled to tackle the other sack tonight, except to send the fragile berries—they had survived—into the vegetable storage unit. He left the rest of the sack sitting on the counter and flung himself down on the couch, to sit and stare blankly at the entertainment unit—not to turn it on, just to stare at the wall-sized screen, letting the past hour play in his memory.

He didn’t want music, he didn’t want images. He just wanted to let all input channels rest a moment before he even thought about hauling himself up to bed.

Damn, why did Algol come to him to ask about Brazis’s intentions? That chance word had thoroughly upset his stomach.

The message light abruptly started blinking, that unforgiving red eye on the center top of the entertainment unit. Something told him he really didn’t want to know what it was. Algol said there was a problem on the streets. It could be Ardath slipping him a warning about Algol. It could be some old friend with a completely unrelated query. He earnestly hoped it wasn’t Ardath with a problem.

Or—God, the parentals, extending their invitation to the deadly potluck.

On the other hand, he had posted the excuse to them by courier, right when he started shopping, and if they’d gotten it, the message courier having gotten there, they might be inquiring further. He was safe from such invitations, and had his excuse. He’d been called to work. He needn’t tremble at the mail-light, if that was what it was, and he bet that it was.

“Sam, give me the message.”

The entertainment unit came live, all that wall-spanning space to display, hanging in midair shadow: Look/eye official/important humans on station. 20900Kekellen. Hello.

Cold chill.

Kekellen, for God’s sake. Kekellen.

The cold chill went through him, a breath out of the dark. Everybodywas stirred up. He was stunned. Shocked, so that his heart renewed its thudding pace.

Well, it was somehow understandable that Kekellen passed inquiries. He’d never gotten one of these before, but other people in the department had, and in his case, he’d been prepared to have it happen: the ondat caredabout Marak, if one could assign a word like that to the ondat. They’d made inquiries of his predecessor. He’d been warned, seriously warned, that it could happen.

In this case it probably regarded the ship incoming. Maybe everybody in the Project had gotten the same message.

Still disturbing. He had no idea at all what it meant. It wasn’t for a PO tap, even one of Marak’s taps, to figure out on his own, that was sure. He had to trust the experts. The goal was to avoid a second, follow-up query from Kekellen. That, he understood from rumor, was where it could truly get spooky.

God, he hadn’t needed one more worry. He captured the message, relayed it to the head of his division, then, an attempt to settle his nerves, sank back on the self-adjusting couch, turned on the entertainment unit and rapid-scanned the news, finding what he had expected—absolutely nothing informative. The governor had made a statement. He searched it up.

It said exactly nothing.

Damn. The frozen cake was in the bottom of the bag. He hadn’t put it in the fridge.

He got up, rescued it. It hadn’t thawed yet. When the mart froze something, it was frozen metal-hard, no question.

“Sam. Fridge. Cake. Frozen.” He loaded it in and the fridge took it in, a little whirring, finding it a spot.

And, twice damn, the service light on the fridge freezer went orange, forewarning him the cake was the last straw. Within a day or two he was going to have to empty the thing, open the service door, and clean the system, a domestic nuisance he’d last performed—

Well, it had been last year, he recalled, when he hadn’t put a sauce bottle lid on straight. Something oversized he’d shoved in recently must have broken, jammed, or gotten knocked over, somewhere in the fridge works. Damn and damn. He didn’t dare call a cleaning service.

And he was tired of waiting for the shoe to drop. “Sam. Message to parents, conditional: if they call asking about a message I sent. Onquote: This is your loving son. I trust you got my note. I’m called into the office tomorrow early. I wish you both a happy anniversary, all the best. Wish I were there. Have a very nice time. Regards to all the aunts and uncles.Endquote.”

Chime. Sam had swallowed the message. If his parents called, following his note sent by courier, they’d get that as an answer, and give up calling him at home.

“Sam, turn off the set.”

Chime. Off it went.

He gathered the basic strength to climb the set of eight shallow steps, and slogged upstairs to bed.

“IT WAS FOUL,” Mignette said, lying on her bed, tears puddling in her eyes. “Foul.”

“Special you weren’t there, at least, Minnikins,”Noble’s voice said, on the phone Mignette had tucked in her ear.

“I wish I had been. I wish I’d been arrested along with Tink and Random and my dad had to get me out.”

“That’s why I called. Tink’s dad got a doctor to come and say he was on meds and he needed to get out and they still wouldn’t let him. You have to get your dad to get him out.”

It wasn’t good. Mignette didn’t want to talk to her dad and explain how stupid Tink had gotten himself canned and needed official help, because a store was going to file charges. Her dad would frown at herand maybe side with mum if he ever heard Tink had boosted a bracelet off a store—the fool was wearing it when they raided outside M’s, and there he was, in the can, and a parental anda genuine med excuse couldn’t get him out.