"Yes, Hali?"

"Where are you?"

Ahhh, she had not found him. A search program had found him.

"I'm studying," he said.

"Can you walk with me for a while? I'm really wound up."

"Where?"

"How about the arboretum near the cedars?"

"Give me a few minutes to finish up here and meet you."

"I'm not bothering you, am I?"

He noted the diffidence in her tone.

"No, I need a break."

"See you outside of Records."

He heard the click of her signoff and stood a blink staring at the console.

How did she know I was studying in the Records section?

A search program keyed to his person would not report his location.

Am I that predictable?

He picked up his notecase and recorder and stepped through the concealed hatch. He sealed it and slipped down through the software storage area to the nearest passage. Hali Ekel stood in the passageway beside the hatch waiting for him. She waved a hand, all nonchalance.

"Hi."

Most of his mind was still back in the study. He blinked at her foolishly, mindful as usual of the sheer beauty of Hali Ekel. At times like this - meeting suddenly, unexpectedly in some passage - she often stunned him.

The clinical sterility of the ever-present pribox at her hip never distanced them. She was a med-tech, full time, and he understood that life and survival were her business.

The secret darkness of her eyes, her thick black hair, the lustrous brown warmth of her skin always made him lean toward her slightly or face her way in a crowded room. They were from the same bloodlines, the Nesian Nations, selected for strength, survival sense and their easy affinity with the highways of the stars. Many mistook them for brother and sister, a mistake amplified by the fact that true siblings had not existed shipside in living memory. Some siblings slept on in hyb, but none walked together.

Notes toward a poem flashed behind his eyes, another of the many she brought to his mind, that he kept to himself.

Oh dark and magnificent star

What little light I have, take.

Weave those supple fingers into mine.

Feel the flow!

Before he could think of putting this into his recorder, it occurred to him that she should not be here so fast. There were no nearby call stations.

"Where were you when you called me?"

"Medical."

He glanced up the passage. Medical was at least ten minutes away.

"But how did yo...."

"Keyed the whole conversation on a ten-minute delay."

"Bu...."

"See how standard you are on com? I can tape my whole side of a conversation, with you and get it right down the line."

"But th...." He nodded at the hatch into software storage.

"Oh, that's where you always are when nobody can find you - somewhere in there." She pointed to the storage area.

"Hmmm." He took her hand and they headed out toward the west shell.

"Why so thoughtful?" she asked. "I thought you'd be amused, surprise.... laugh, or something."

"I'm sorry. Lately it's bothered me when I do that. Never take time for people, never seem to have the flair fo.... the right word at the right time."

"A pretty strong self-indictment for a poet."

"It's much easier to order characters on a page or a holo than it is to order one's life. 'One's life'! Why do I talk that way?"

She slipped an arm around his waist and hugged him as they walked. He smiled. Presently, they emerged into the Dome of Trees. It was dayside, the sunglow of Rega muted through the screening filters. All the greens came with soothing blue undertones. Kerro took a deep breath of the oxygenated air. He heard birds twittering behind a sonabarrier off in heavier bushes to the left. Other couples could be seen far down through the trees. This was a favorite trysting place.

Hali slipped off her pribox strap and pulled him down beside her under a cover of cedar. The needle duff was warm and soft, the air thick with moisture and sun dazzled through the branches. They stretched out on their backs, shoulder to shoulder.

"Mmmmmm." Hali stretched and arched her back. "It smells so nice here."

"It? What's the smell of an it?"

"Oh, stop that." She turned toward him. "You know what I mean - the air, the moss, the food in your beard." She brushed at his whiskers, wove her fingers in and out of the coarse hairs. "You're the only Shipman with a beard."

"So I'm told."

"Do you like it?"

"I don't know." He reached out and traced the curve of the small wire ring which pierced her left nostril. "Traditions are strange. Where did you get this ring?"

"A robox dropped it."

"Dropped it?" He was surprised.

"I know - they don't miss much. This one was repairing a sensor outside that little medical study next to Behavioral. I saw the wire drop and picked it up.

"It was like finding a rare treasure. They leave so little around. Ship only knows what they do with all the scraps they carry off."

She slipped her arm around his neck and kissed him. Presently, she pulled back.

He pulled away from her and sat up. "Thanks, bu...."

"It's always, 'Thanks, bu....'" She was angry, fighting the physical evidence of her own passion.

"I'm not ready." He felt apologetic. "I don't know why and I'm not playing with you. I just have this compulsion toward timing, for the feeling of rightness in things."

"What could be more right? We were selected as a breeding pair after knowing each other all this time. It's not like we were strangers."

He could not bring himself to look at her. "I kno.... anyone shipside can partner with anyone else, bu...."

"But!" She whirled away and stared at the base of the sheltering tree. "We could be a breeding pair! One pair i.... what? Two thousand? We could actually make a child."

"It isn't that. It'...."

"And you're always so damned historical, traditional, quoting social patterns this and language patterns that. Why can't you see wha...."

He reached across her, put his fingers over her mouth to silence her and gently kissed her cheek.

"Dear Hali, because I can't. For me partnership will have to be a giving so deep that I lose myself in the giving."

She rolled away and lifted her head to stare at him, her eyes glistening. "Where do you get such ideas?"

"They come out of my living and from what I learn."

"Ship teaches you these things?"

"Ship does not deny me what I want to know."

She stared morosely at the ground under her feet. "Ship won't even talk to me."

Her voice was barely audible.

"When you ask in the right way, Ship always answers," he said. Then, an afterthought as he sensed it between them: "And you have to listen."

"You've said that before but you never tell me how."

There was no evading the jealousy in her voice. He found that he could only answer in one way.

"I will give you a poem," he said. He cleared his throat.

"Blue itself

teaches us blue."

She scowled, concentrating on his words. Presently, she shook her head. "I'll never understand you any more than I understand Ship. I go to WorShip; I pray; I do what Ship direct...." She stared at him. "I never see you at WorShip."

"Ship is my friend," he said.

Curiosity overcame her resentments.

"What does Ship teach you?"

"Too many things to tell here."

"Just give me one thing, just one!"

He nodded. "Very well. There have been many planets and many people. Their languages and the chronicle of their years weave a magic tangle. Their words sing to me. You don't even have to understand the words to hear them sing."

She felt an odd sense of wonder at this.

"Ship gives you words and you don't understand?"

"When I ask for the original."

"But why do you want words that you don't understand?"

"To make those people live, to make them mine. Not to own them, but to become them, at least for a blink or two."