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  The thought bothered me for a while. Then, as if he'd read my mind, Piet put down his whittling and, smiling, reached out a hand to me. "Congratulations," he said as we shook. "You've got excellent taste in women. And she's got excellent taste in men. I hope you have lots of years together."

  A woman. That's what she was, a sixteen-year-old woman. And that 'lots of years" would begin today. Tonight. If there was anything I wanted, it was to make her happy. It would help that my parents had been the kind of role models they'd been: considerate, sharing, affectionate, willing to talk things out and to let each other be themselves.

  I felt confident, both for the long run and about tonight. In lower middle school I'd heard a couple of guys describe their dads telling them the facts of life. It had amounted to a short biology lecture. But when dad had told me the facts of life, he'd included discussion of rights, comparative emotions, courtesy and consideration, tenderness, and two-way communication, so I couldn't imagine things working out any other way than fine. Maybe-maybe Jenoor and I would even settle down on some world and spend our whole lives there, maybe operating a training camp in hand-foot art.

  I spent the next hour building daydreams on that theme, until Deneen and Tarel got back with a string of fish. The fork-tailed streakers had been feeding. They were small, but about the tastiest species we ever caught there. Even Bubba preferred them.

  A little later Jenoor came back too. She'd not only cut jongas, she'd taken the time and trouble to pick about three cups of tiny pink thrimberries-the closest thing to delicious that Lizard Island had to offer. Thrimberries were so small and so sparse, and the bushes so prickly, that none of us had tried to pick any quantity of them before. It hadn't seemed worth the trouble. When she arrived, we stood together in front of the others and announced our engagement-the shortest engagement I'd ever heard of.

  It was Deneen who did the whooping-old cool-headed Deneen, who'd always seemed to take everything calmly. She whooped and squealed and jumped around like an enthused eight-year-old, and kissed us both while Tarel stood there watching without saying anything. Then she said she was going to bake the fish they'd brought back-that we'd just have to put up with heat damage to vitamins and amino acids for the sake of festivity. And anyway the thrimberries would make up for the vitamin loss.

  It was Piet's and my turn to clean the fish, while Jenoor and Tarel took clubs and started hammering the jongas on a flat place I'd cut once on a large log.

  Deneen went to the debris of dead branches and twigs where I'd cut the three trees that first day, and brought back pieces that were dry enough to burn. Then she dug in her pack and took out her tinder box and spark wheel. We'd only had fire once or twice before on Lizard Island; fire made smoke and light, which theoretically might be seen if anyone was flying past. Besides which, until yesterday's rain, the island had been dry and dangerously flammable. But this day was special, and before long she'd built a small fire, piled tall.

  When Piet and I had the fish cleaned, he got up and moved the floater off between the trees to a place some hundred and fifty feet from camp.

  Finally the fish, wrapped in large wet leaves, were buried beneath coals. Then Piet looked at Jenoor and me. "Are you ready?" he asked.

  I nodded, my face sober, my heart starting to thud. I heard Jenoor say "yes" in a small voice.

  "All right," Piet said, and stood up. "We'll do this without rehearsing. The two of you stand in front of me."

  We did.

  "Tarel, you stand beside Larn. And Deneen beside Jenoor." He watched while we lined up. Then he looked us over and nodded.

  "Good," he said. "Start of a wedding. Larn, Jenoor, a marriage is a lifetime commitment-a commitment to love and help and care for each other. It is a two-way arrangement that becomes unethical if it is allowed to get lopsided-if it becomes too much take on one side and too much give on the other. Marriage is also a commitment to trust, and to be worthy of trust. Larn, you must know what a marriage should be; you've seen how your parents treat each other. Jenoor, I don't know your parents, but I've seen the kind of people you and your brother are. I'm confident that you too know what a marriage should be. A marriage resembles any close friendship, but in addition it has special responsibilities, and it should have special love. Now. Larn, bearing all this in mind, do you promise to be a good husband to Jenoor forever?"

  My throat felt as if a whole jonga was stuck in it. I could hardly believe how normally the words came out when I said, "Yes, I do."

  "And Jenoor, bearing all this in mind, do you promise to be a good wife to Larn forever?"

  My eyes moved to her as she answered. "Yes, I do."

  Piet nodded as if in approval. "Then I pronounce you man and wife." His serious expression changed; he grinned. "You may kiss each other."

  We did. Softly and not too long. When we stepped apart, I looked at Tarel. He looked more serious than ever. And Deneen? She was grinning a foot wide, even though her eyes were watery.

  Then Piet reached into his pocket and handed us what he'd spent much of the day making: Two pairs of hearts, perfectly carved, the hearts in each pair joined at the edge. And on them, engraved with a straightened, filed-down fishhook point, were our names. He was still grinning at us as we made sincerely appreciative noises.

  We wrapped our gifts together in an old undershirt, and while Jenoor stashed them in a corner of the shelter, I turned to Tarel again. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

  "Tarel," I said, holding out my hand, "I want you to know I'll be the best husband to Jenoor that I know how to be, and that I'm glad to have you as my brother-in-law."

  He nodded without smiling. "I know you will. And I'm glad to have you as my brother-in-law. You're the best brother-in-law I can imagine."

  I think I must have blushed; no one mentioned it, but that's how it felt. He'd surprised me, and I felt like he must have gotten me mixed up with someone else, I mean, I generally think I'm pretty good, but the best brother-in-law he could imagine? That was more than I was ready for. I didn't know what to say back, so I gave his hand a couple of extra shakes and hoped someone would say something to get me off the hook.

  It was Bubba who did. Tail waving slowly, he'd been standing behind Piet watching, as if making sure everything was done right. "I think you guys make good family," he said to me now. "When Lady and pups find us, I tell pups one of them should adopt you."

  Deneen applauded that, and Piet and Tarel joined her. Then, with a stick, Deneen dug the fish out of the coals and we ate. It had started to get dark when we finished, so I went and hung Jenoor's and my hammocks on the other side of the floater, then set up the second repellent field. Afterward the five of us kept the fire going for a while and sat around it, talking without saying much. I was feeling a little nervous; nothing serious.

  Finally Deneen stood up and stretched. "I don't know about anyone else," she said, "but I'm going to bed."

  "Sounds like a good idea," said Piet. He too got up, and with him Tarel.

  "Yeah," I said, and standing, turned to Jenoor. "Time to go, while it's still light enough to find our way."

  I helped her up, her hand small but strong in mine. Actually, it wasn't going to be a really dark night. Donia, the major moon, was close to full, and the forest roof was less than solid. Hand in hand we walked toward the floater. The lump did not return to my throat. This evening the world felt right to me, even in a sector ruled by the Empire.

  FIVE

  It wasn't one of Evdash's traditional ten-day newlyweds' trips to Paradise Valley and Sky Falls, or Lake Indigo, Cloud Island, and Ocean City-anything like that. We had four days on Lizard Island, with duties as usual, such as they were. But they were the happiest four days of a life that had already been happier than most. I couldn't believe how lucky I was.

  Lucky in spite of daily rainstorms, one of them as violent as the one that almost killed Jenoor and me. Whoever was fishing kept part of their attention on the weather. And where before everything had been re
ally dry, now everything was dank. The fresh smell of the first days with rain changed to mold. Even our clothes began to smell of mildew.

  No one was really surprised that our parents hadn't shown. A cutter flying in the atmosphere would be detected in minutes, maybe seconds, and one in Evdashian space probably almost as quickly. So if they tried moving around in the cutter, the odds were they'd be picked up or blown up in a hurry.

  To casual eyeball observation, they might go unnoticed for a while in heavy traffic, especially if there was a mixture of cargo carriers and public transport-units much bigger than personal and family-size floaters. But the police would notice fast. Even floater traffic had to be way down; the radio talked about tough travel restrictions and a limited curfew. And judging from the newscasts and the general Glondis way of doing things, they wouldn't be relaxed soon.

  Piet talked with us about the prospects of getting our hands on a cutter. The resistance movement in the old Federation had long predicted a Glondis takeover of the colonies, of which Evdash was one of the most prosperous. Of course, Evdash had had its own branch of the Party-a very minor party here then-and the resistance had infiltrated both the Party and the Evdashian military, just to keep track of what was going on.

  Piet had actually been a regional chairman of the Glondis Party on Evdash! Until he'd made a slip that was sure to get him uncovered before long. So he'd arranged an "accident," and disappeared.

  Some of that was new to us, especially the part about Piet. The point was that he had resistance contacts, or he had had, in the Party, the Evdashian military, and the public at large. But he didn't know who was still alive and in place, or whether any of them was in a position to help.

  On the fifth night after the wedding, we all got up at first dawnlight. After a breakfast of jongas and raw fish, we loaded everything we wanted to take with us into the floater. There wasn't very much. By the time we lifted through the forest roof, the sun sat red and swollen on the watery horizon. The treetops were spotted with flowers now-white, pink, yellow, violet-brought out by the rains. Piet stopped for a minute while we took in the view. Then he punched in a navigation sequence that would take us to a point near Delta City, a seaport. There he'd slip us into the general traffic corridors. If nothing went wrong, we'd head up the Jarf Valley from there, for Jarfoss, the town where Evdash's main naval station was located. He hoped to contact friends there, and get enough information to plan with.

  "Who knows," he said. "Maybe we'll even get a line on Klentis and Aven there." I didn't allow my hopes to build, but it did make me feel a little better.

  It seemed to me, when I let myself look at the situation, that we had almost no prospects of getting a space cutter. But then, our chances had looked even bleaker when Deneen and I had been on Fanglith. Now we had two and a half years' additional experience. The Fanglith experience was worth about ten years all by itself, not in data so much as in getting grooved in on operating in dangerous situations without much information. Doing the right thing-or a right thing-at the right time; or at least not doing something fatally wrong.

  To cut down the risk of detection, Piet ran just above the water the whole 423 miles to the coast. There he joined the sparse early morning traffic-mostly cargo carriers but with a mixture of public transports and private vehicles. We were a pretty scruffy bunch. Piet and I had beards, something rare on Evdash, and Tarel's was starting to show too. The only clothes we had, dirty and mildewed, hadn't been properly washed since we'd put them on more than fourteen weeks earlier. To prepare ourselves for civilization, we'd used the hairbrushes Deneen and Jenoor had carried when we'd left home, but that was it.

  There weren't as many police floaters in traffic as I'd expected to see though, and none paid any attention to us.

  Finally, near the naval station, Piet turned into an approach pattern to an outlying officers' housing area, set in a matrix of dark forest and light green meadows, of recreation grounds and parking lots and shopping centers, of streets lined with houses whose roofs were red and green and cobalt, of emerald yards with pale blue swimming pools.

  It was very nice. I wondered what Imperial troops thought of it-troops from the paved and crowded high-rise population centers of the central worlds. Presumably the people stationed here were still Evdashians.

  Piet had said the top command positions, with their personal staifs, would be filled by Imperials now, and there'd probably be a garrison of Imperial Marines here for intimidation purposes. But the principal forces, such as they were, would be Evdashian-the same people as before, acting under new commands and policies. There'd have been some changes, of course. Officers thought of as especially hard-nosed Evdashian patriots would have been shot or imprisoned as examples. Their replacements would be people who seemed willing to carry out Imperial intentions. And a few would be eager to prove how loyal they were to the Empire,

  Of course, some of them-people who seemed to just be trying to adjust and get along-would actually be resistance people, or potential resistance people. And so would some of the apparent turncoats who were singing the Imperial song and giving the Imperial salute. That's where our hopes lay.

  Our first contact was going to be critical. We had to find a friendly who could help us clean up and get civilized looking, because the way we looked now, we were ripe for stopping and questioning. If we were stopped, we'd say we were just getting back from a hiking vacation, but that would hardly be convincing. We had no useful identification, and at least fourteen weeks' wild growth of hair to explain.

  The streets here were grass, neatly trimmed. Piet dropped down low over one of them, then skimmed along as if he knew exactly where he was going. After a few hundred feet he turned smoothly, pulled into an attached garage as if he parked there every day, and put us down on the concrete, leaving the floater-field generator on. I didn't know whether he'd picked this place just because the garage door was open, or whether he knew the people who lived here.

  "Larn," he said, "take the controls. If anything happens to me, you're in command."

  "Right," I said.

  He got out and I moved into the pilot's seat. Looking like something washed up on the beach, he walked casually to the connecting door, but before he could knock, it opened. Behind it was a woman in a summer house suit, with a blast pistol in her hands.

  For just a moment she stared at Piet, then without saying a word, lowered the gun. He thumbed toward us. She shook her head and murmured something too quietly for us to hear, then reached to one side and the garage door closed behind us. If anything went wrong now, we couldn't make a quick getaway, but that didn't seem to bother Piet. She disappeared, closing the door behind her, and Piet stepped back over to the floater.

  "She has company," he said softly.

  "What's she going to do?" I asked.

  "Knowing Dansee, she'll think of something."

  The situation felt about as uncomfortable as it could get. Knowing almost nothing about what was happening inside, I hadn't the foggiest idea what to do, so I just sat there while Piet stood next to the floater door. From beside me, I could feel Jenoor's hand on my forearm, resting lightly, not gripping. Looking behind me I saw Tarel, his hands fisted. Beside him, Deneen watched intently the door the woman had closed behind her. Bubba probably knew what was going on, but whispering wasn't one of his abilities.

  Nothing happened for the slowest several minutes on record. Then we heard voices outside the garage door- women talking and laughing. It sounded as if they'd just come out of the house. One of them seemed to stay in place while two others became more distant. Then the talking stopped, and we heard a house door close. A minute later the woman appeared in the door again, grinning this time and without her blaster.

  "Get in here," she said, not trying to be quiet now, and held the door for us. Piet went first, the rest of us trooping after. As we passed, she looked us over, then closed the door behind us. She came across as a nice-looking middle-aged lady who still did something or other athleti
c. She herded us down a hall and into a kitchen, where we stopped. "Piet," she said, "I'd hug you if you looked a little more sanitary." She indicated the living room with a head motion. "I'm reasonably sure my visitors didn't suspect anything. They were sitting with their backs to the window; I was the only one who saw you float in."

  "What did you tell them?"

  She chuckled. "That Jom had told me not to leave the garage door open again. Which was true, as far as it went."

  "How did you explain the blaster?"

  "They never saw it. It's my kitchen gun. Who are your young friends? Or can't you tell me?"

  He hesitated a second. "Why not? Dansee Jomber, this is Mr. and Mrs. Larn kel Deroop-Larn and Jenoor. These are Deneen kel Deroop, and Tarel Sentner. And Bubba. Bubba's a kel Deroop too. Those are their real names incidentally."

  She was studying Bubba. "Is Bubba an espwolf?"

  "Right."

  "Well, that's got to be a big plus-point." She sized us all up. "I can see what you need first, unless you're famished. There's a shower in the basement and a complete cleaning facility upstairs. Just choose up who uses what. When you're done I'll have something edible for you and start cutting hair.

  "Best you hustle now. I'm not expecting anyone else till Jom comes home about half past fifteen, but then, I wasn't expecting any earlier guests either. Where are your other clothes?"

  "M'dam," said Piet, "there are no other clothes. These are it."

  "Mmh! All right, get at it. Throw what you've got on into the hall I'll dig up something temporary and put your old things in the cleaning drum as soon as I have a chance."