Bat-Levi replaced her cup very carefully, not because she was afraid of spilling but she wanted to frame her words well. “Ani seemed to find him worth caring about.”

Castillo’s eyes shuttered, and Bat-Levi saw the color edge over the ensign’s collar. Even Bulast shot her a quick glance and frowned. Her heart sank. God, she was an idiot. She’d heard the scuttlebutt about Castillo and Batra, and the interesting triangle Halak’s arrival had made. Bat-Levi wanted to kick herself. Just like her to put her foot in her mouth. She compressed her lips into a single thin line. What was she thinking? Better to just do her job and leave the social commentary to somebody else, someone polished, like Glemoor.

“Castillo,” she began.

“It’s okay.” Castillo held up a hand. He cleared his throat and gave her a tight smile that did not show his teeth. “Point taken. It’s just, well, he sure as hell picked a funny way of showing he cared, didn’t he? About Ani, I mean.”

“He couldn’t have known what would happen.”

Castillo’s chin jutted. “Why not? Farius Prime’s a rough place.”

“The way I heard it, she just showed up,” Bat-Levi said, even as her mind screamed at her to be quiet. What was she thinking? “He couldn’t control that. Ani was a grown woman, an officer. You can’t treat every situation like the military.”

“Maybe. But if it had been me?” Castillo snapped his fingers then hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Off the planet, like that. Ten seconds flat. You protect the people you love, period.”

A painful lump swelled in Bat-Levi’s throat. Oh, Joshua.“That’s not always possible, Castillo. No matter how hard you try, sometimes you have to let the people you love take their own risks. You can’t control everything, even when you want to. It’s like having children.”

(Where that came from, she had no idea. She knew as much about raising kids as she did about herding Catabrian warthogs.)

“Eventually, you have to step aside and let kids make mistakes. You just hope that you’ve taught them well enough they don’t do anything terribly foolish, or dangerous. Even then,” she gestured with her bad hand without realizing it, “there’s nothing you can do but pray for the best.”

“Wrong,” said Castillo, stubbornly. “No. Absolutely not. We’re not talking kids. We’re talking relationship. Totally different. The woman I love? Won’t happen. Officer, no officer; rank, no rank: The minute I think she’s in danger, she’s out.”

“I think you underestimate most women.”

“This isn’t about women.”

“Then what?” Bat-Levi persisted, wondering why she was going after Castillo. He was young, brash and, yes, a tad chauvinistic. He reminded her of Joshua.

She could almost hear Tyvan’s voice: Maybe that’s why you’re fighting to change his mind.

Go away, Tyvan.She clamped down on the psychiatrist’s voice. Just you go away.

Castillo looked exasperated. “Look, this isn’t about what women can, or can’t do. I’d expect someone I care about to do the same for me.”

“But would you do what she said?”

“Depends.”

“But don’t you see,” Glemoor interrupted, “that’s what Bat-Levi is saying. You have a, what you call it, double standard.”

Bat-Levi turned to the Naxeran, almost grateful that he’d intervened and yet a little angry, too. She was doing just fine on her own, thanks. Relax. He’s just trying to help. That’s what friends do.Tyvan’s thoughts? Her own? Bat-Levi couldn’t tell, and that made her mad. That Tyvan was like an infection.

“From what I heard, Batra protected Halak as much as Halak tried to protect her,” Glemoor continued. “Anyway, what went on between the two of them is both private, andpast. There is nothing we can gain by, how do you call it? That game, played with a stuffed skin, players ran around hitting one another and tumbling to the ground. A most puzzling sport.”

“Football,” said Castillo. “You mean Monday morning quarterbacking.”

“Exactly. Yes, thank you.”

“Sure, I can agree with that.” Castillo pushed his plate away with the flat of one thumb. His fork rattled against porcelain. “My original point was that we don’t know Halak very well. We didn’t know him then, and we don’t know him now. And then we find out he’s not who he said he was.”

Glemoor stabbed at a slice of pear, nibbled at the port-wine colored flesh. “You are being naïve, Richard. What I don’t know is whether your attitude is willful, or calculated to, how do you say it?” Glemoor stared off into space a moment then returned his golden-yellow gaze to Castillo. “Pull my chain?”

“Glemoor, you don’t believe SI?” asked Bat-Levi. Privately, she thought the image of the Naxeran eating greens and fruit almost comical. With his long frills and golden eyes, Glemoor looked a little bit like a panther.

“I don’t know enough to believe or disbelieve. I doknow that this would not be the first time an intelligence agency fabricated data to support a hypothesis they were wedded to. Earth history is rife with such examples, from your J. Edgar Hoover to Mars governor Benton Hubbard. And this is not relegated to Earth, you understand. Naxeran history, too—any number of individuals in my own G’Dok clan. Our society is quite stratified. You’d say the Haves, those with less but who still have power, and then the Have-Nots. The G’Dok, the Haves,” Glemoor held his hands as if balancing melons, “and the Leahru, those with less, and then at the very, very bottom, off the scale, the Efram. Either you are born to privilege, or you are not, or you are less than someone with none.”

“A caste system,” said Bat-Levi, who didn’t know much about Naxera.

Glemoor nodded, using the knuckles of his right hand to smooth down his frills the way a fastidious man grooms a moustache after taking a sip of tea. Again, Bat-Levi was reminded, involuntarily, of a panther—or a very large, very black cat. “It is that simple, and not simple at all. The Haves, in any society, want to maintain their position. This may include manipulation, or invention.”

Castillo gave a fake laugh. “You saying SI’s making this up?”

Glemoor’s ebony brow creased in a frown. “No, no, not at all. I just find the timing interesting. Things are happening too quickly, no? Usually, things that are quite complex go slowly, one step by one step.”

“You mean, a step at a time,” Bat-Levi offered.

Glemoor blinked. “I believe I said that. Anyway, my point: If they knew all this before, why not apprehend Halak while he was on Farius Prime, or before? And they’re finding computer records that just happen to corroborate their theories they could not have uncovered before? Everything falls into place so neatly, so quickly? You are telling me that no one looked through his private files before now?”

“Maybe they were waiting to see who his contact was. Or maybe they just didn’t put two and two together,” said Castillo.

Glemoor’s frills shivered with surprise. “They implicated Commander Halak in murder but merely bided their time, waiting to gather evidence, yet placing that same commander in a position where, potentially, more deaths would follow? How does that strike you as a strategy?”

“I’m sure Idon’t know,” said Castillo. He scooped his hair back in a short, irritated gesture. “You’re the tactician, you tell me.”

“Well, and I willtell you. It makes no sense, tactically or otherwise. You do not leave an enemy behind the front lines and hope you catch him in the act.”

“What about when there are spies whom you know are spies? You know, diplomats, stuff like that?”

“The enemy you know,” said Glemoor, his long slender fingers inscribing an imaginary box in the air, “you hem them in, that is the expression, correct? You give them the illusion of freedom while keeping a close watch. What does not follow is to let the enemy inflict more damage before exposing, or eliminating him.”