He looked at her, not daring to believe, but feeling more desire than he had known since he was a teenager.

"Why? Do you find me attractive, or are you just curious?"

"I'm curious," she admitted. "I'm not sure about the other yet. There is something there. Cirocco said that what I have been told is raping can be a lot like making love. She said a woman can get pleasure from it. I'm dubious." She raised one eyebrow. A few weeks ago Chris would not have seen the gesture behind the elaborate facial tattoos, but now he felt more in tune with her. He threw off his sleeping bag and took her in his arms.

She seemed surprised that he did not simply enter her and get to work. When she understood that they could make love in the same way two women would, she showed no hesitation in the matter. In fact, she did things that Trini would certainly have charged extra for. There was nothing shy about her. She told him what she wanted and when she wanted it, talking as though she assumed he had never done this before. In a way, she was right. Though he had been with his share of women, he had never met one as certain of her own needs or as assured in expressing them.

She learned rapidly. At first she was full of questions and observations, wanting to know what he felt when she did this or that, surprised at the taste and feel of things. None of the surprises seemed unpleasant, and by the time he felt ready to move on she had developed an obvious enthusiasm for the project.

Her skepticism returned when he entered her. She admitted it had not been painful, even that it was a pleasant sensation, but observed pointedly that the arrangement seemed unnatural in that it failed to provide for her needs. He tried to assure her that it would work out all right and then realized with dismay that it was not going to because he was already too close and it was too late to stop.

He had time to hope that Robin would be willing to wait until he was ready for a second time before he was seized by the shoulder and pulled roughly away.

"You idiot, get away from her!" It was Cirocco. Chris did not have time to understand anything beyond that because too much was happening at once. He rolled on the ground, curling into a foetal position, and spasming into violent ejaculation. In a feverish confusion he did not know whether to be embarrassed, angry, or hurt. In a moment it was over and Chris came up off the floor, swinging at Cirocco. With a perfect roundhouse he hit her squarely on the chin. For a moment, reeling back, she looked almost as surprised as he felt. But his triumph lasted only a second. As Cirocco folded like a puppet with her strings cut, his hand began to throb, and Gaby appeared from nowhere, flying at him as though she'd dropped from the sky. The next thing he knew she was kneeling on his chest and about to drive her stiff fingers right through his face.

Instead, she hesitated, and the fire went out of her eyes. She hit the ground with her fist, rolled off him, and patted his cheek.

"Never hit the bones with your fist," she counseled. "That's what sticks and stones were made for."

She helped him to his feet, where he saw Robin still on her back and looking baffled. Hornpipe had squeezed into the tent and was seeing to Cirocco, who was working her jaw cautiously.

Chris's fury was obviously still mounting, but with Gaby and a couple of Titanides stationed between him and Cirocco he was forced to voice his anger.

"You had no right to do that," he raved. "Damn it, I can't even think why you would. But this is it! You're getting out or I am."

"Shut up," Cirocco said coldly, waving Hornpipe away and sitting up. "There's a small chance I did something terrible. If that's true, I'll stand still while you both beat the daylights out of me. But hear me out first. Robin, what kind of birth control are you using?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Right. What about you, Chris?"

Chris felt a distinct chill but shrugged it off. She couldn't possibly be right.

"I take pills, but it doesn't-"

"I remember you telling me that. When was the-"

"-but she can't have children! She told me so, and if you had-"

"Stop. Hear me out." Cirocco held her hand up until she was sure everyone would listen to her.

"I think you misunderstood her. She said 'can't', and you thought she meant she was unable to. What she really meant was, because her children would have her condition, she will not impregnate herself. What's the use of sterilization when the act of conception is so complicated?" She looked at Robin, who was shaking her head in exasperation.

"But we were only making love," she said.

Cirocco went to her, took her shoulders, and shook her. "How do you think babies get made, damn it? Everywhere but in the Coven it's just like it was for-"

"But I trust him, can't you see that?" Robin shouted back. "We were just making love, not making a baby. He wouldn't have..... She wound down and for the first time looked uncertainly at Chris. He had to look away.

As Cirocco explained the true situation, the color slowly drained from Robin's face. Chris had never seen her look frightened, but it was clear she was terrified in retrospect, as well she might have been. The whole bizarre misunderstanding had arisen from Robin's failure to realize that the male orgasm involved ejaculation, and that it was not under his control, and from the impression Chris had formed that Robin was sterilized. She was not, and he was fertile, as the production of the egg with Valiha had established. The fact was that his pills had been lost during his episode in quarantine, and he had been unable to replace them.

Robin was reduced almost to tears. She sat with her head in her hands, shaking, saying, "I didn't know, I didn't know, I really didn't know."

Chris did not know what long-term effects there would be between himself and Robin, but there was one thing that was clear. "I owe you an apology," he said to Cirocco.

She grinned at him. "No, you don't. I'd have done the same thing. It's not a situation where you hang around for explanations."

She rubbed her jaw. "Actually, it's my own fault for not getting out of the way quicker. I think I'm slowing down."

"Maybe I'm speeding up."

"That's a possibility."

As though by mutual accord the others turned back to their tents, leaving Robin and Chris alone. The moment hung awkwardly in the air and Chris felt frightened. If Rocky had realized the score why hadn't he? Maybe because he'd been too eager for sex. Robin seemed to have some of the same feeling. He could tell she was thinking of their earlier conversation and perhaps reassessing it. She turned away from him briefly to collect her thoughts and then very carefully said she was sorry. In a few words she professed not to blame him any more than she blamed herself. It had been a simple misunderstanding, fortunately averted in time. She said she was no more afraid of him now than she had ever been.

But she moved back into her own tent that night

Cirocco came reeling in after the last day of Carnival, singing loudly. Gaby put her to bed and in the morning loaded her into a canoe and once more covered her with a blanket. They shoved off and soon left the diminishing gaity of Inglesina Island behind them. Ophion was again quiet, undisturbed, as the party, much subdued, paddled steadily toward the Twilight Sea.