"Yes?" she asked.

Jato swallowed, wondering if he had just set himself up for a rebuff. He tried to think of a clever opening that would put her at ease, perhaps intrigue or even charm her. What he ended up with was the scintillating, "I came to see you."

Incredibly, she stepped aside. "Come in."

Her room was pleasant, with gold curtains on the windows and a pretty rumpled bed that looked as if she had been sleeping in it.

Jato hesitated. "Did I wake you? I can come back later."

"No. Now is good." She motioned him to a small table gleaming with metal accents. Its fluted pedestal supported two disks, the upper joined to the lower along a slit that ran from its center to its rim, a style common in Nightingale. The only explanation Jato had ever extracted from a Dreamer was, "Riemann sheets." He had looked it up at the library and found an opaque treatise on complex variable theory that apparently described how the sheets made a multi-valued expression into a mathematical function.

After they sat down, he set his bundle in front of her and spoke the formal phrases. "You gave me a dream. I offer you my work in return."

She watched his face. "I don’t understand."

"A beautiful dream." He wondered if he sounded as awkward as he felt. "This is what I have to trade." Pulling away the wrapping, he showed her the bird. Giving it up was even harder than he had expected. But it was a matter of honor: he had a debt and this was the only payment he had to give.

As she sat there staring at his life’s creation, his face grew hot. He knew the wonders she had seen in Nightingale. The bird was pitiful in comparison.

"It makes music," he said. "I mean, it doesn’t make the music but it tells you how to make it."

She looked up at him. "Jato, I can’t accept this." An odd expression crossed her face, come and gone too fast to decipher. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought it was awe. Then she said, "Regulations don’t allow me to accept presents."

Through the sting of her refusal, he realized what she had said. "How did you know my name is Jato?"

"After we talked, I looked up your Ansatz records."

He stared at her. Those records were sealed. That was the deal; as long as he did what Crankenshaft wanted, his records remained secret and he had his relative freedom on Ansatz.

Somehow he kept his voice even. "How?"

"I asked," she said. "The authorities had to let me."

Like hell. They were supposed to say No. Had his presence become so offensive that they decided to get rid of him despite Crankenshaft? Or maybe Crankenshaft no longer needed him.

Then it hit Jato, what else she had said. Regulations didn’t allow her to accept gifts. Regulations.

Of course. He should have recognized it earlier. The gold bands on her jumpsuit were no decorations. They denoted rank.

"You’re an ISC soldier," he said.

She nodded. "An Imperial Messenger. Secondary Class."

Jato stared at her. Secondary was equivalent in rank to colonel and "Messenger" was a euphemism for intelligence officer. He had almost asked a high-ranking spy-buster to smuggle him off Ansatz.

ISC, or Imperial Space Command, was the sole defense in known space against the Traders, whose military made a practice of "inviting" the settled worlds to join their growing domain. All settled worlds. Whether they wanted to join or not. The Traders based their economy on what they called "a benevolent exchange of work contracts designed to benefit both workers and the governing fellowships that hold their labor contracts," one of the more creative, albeit frightening, euphemisms Jato had heard for slavery. The Imperialate had formed in response, an attempt by the free worlds to remain that way. That was why so many colonies, including Ansatz, had joined the Imperialate despite the loss of autonomy that came with ISC’s autocratic control.

He spoke with a calm he didn’t feel. "Are you going to turn me over to ISC?"

"Well, no," she said. "I just wondered about you after you followed me up those strange stairs."

Relief swept over him, followed by distrust, then resentment, then embarrassment. One of his few comforts on Ansatz had been his pleasure in creating the bird. Now every time he looked at it he would remember how she rejected it.

As he rose to his feet, an emotion leapt across her face. Regret? It was mixed with other things, shyness maybe, even a fear of rejection. It went by too fast for him to be sure.

She stood up. "May I request an alternate gift? Something that wouldn’t violate regulations?"

He had no alternate gifts. "What do you mean?"

"I’d like to see Nightingale." She hesitated. "Perhaps you would show it to me?"

She wanted a guide? True, he was the best candidate; the Dreamers would never deign to offer such services. But most people would prefer no guide at all to a convicted murderer.

Of course his records said he was "cured." Besides, rumor claimed Messengers had enhanced speed and strength. Perhaps she was confident enough in her abilities that she didn’t see him as a threat.

"All right," he said.

"Well. Good." It came again, her beguiling flash of shyness. "Shall we, uh, go?"

He smiled. "It would help if I had a name to call you."

"Oh. Yes. Of course." She actually reddened. "Soz."

"Soz." He gave her a bow from the waist. "My pleasure at your acquaintance."

Her face softened into a smile. "And mine at yours."

They walked down to the lobby in awkward silence. Outside, they strolled through the Inn’s rock garden, where tall lamps made shadows stretch out from human-sized mineral formations. The arrangement of rocks looked random, but it had an underlying order calculated from chaos theory.

As they followed a path toward the city proper, Jato tried to relax. Conversation had always been his stumbling block. In his adolescence, he had discussed it with is father while they were weeding a field.

"About girls," he had said.

"What about them?" his father asked.

"You know."

His father sat back on his heels. "Treat her right and she’ll treat you right."

"Can’t talk."

"Then listen."

"Don’t know what ‘treat her right’ means."

"The way you want to be treated."

Jato thought of having a girl treat him the way he wanted to be treated. "What if we get into trouble?"

His father scowled. "Don’t."

He had figured that his father, who became his father only a few tendays after he married Jato’s pregnant mother, would have had a more informative answer than that. "What if it happens anyway?"

"You see that it doesn’t." He pointed his trowel at Jato. "You go planting crops, boy, you better be ready to take responsibility if they grow." Lowering his arm, he looked across the field to where Jato’s mother was curing tubes by the water shack, her long hair brushing her arms, Jato’s five younger siblings helping her or playing in the dust. "Choose a place you value." His voice softened. "A place you can love."

Jato watched him closely. "Did you?"

He turned back, his face gentle now. "That I did."

That was the extent of his father’s advice on women, sex and love, but it had held up well over the years. On Nightingale, however, he barely ever had the chance to talk to a woman, let alone go walking with one. So being with Soz felt odd.

Eventually the path became a boulevard. They ended up at a plaza in front of Symphony Hall, near the tiled pool. A lamp came on, bathing the pool in rosy light, and a fountain shot out of the water in a rounded arch. A gold lamp switched on, followed by a fountain with two arches, then a green lamp and three arches, and so on, each fountain adding smaller refinements to the overall effect. Altogether, they combined to create a huge blurred square. Sparkles of water flew around Jato and Soz and mist blew in their faces.