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It was easy enough to arrange a vacation. Philippe’s parents
were delighted to have him visit the farm for as long as he wanted, and the
DiploCorps already had a back-up person ready: Arne Ljungqvist. Philippe had
worked with Arne in the Sudan, and he liked and respected him—Arne was
dedicated, he believed in what he was doing, and he worked hard.

Arne also made it clear in a
message that he would gladly drop everything to come to the station for as long
as Philippe needed him to stay. Within a few days, it was set: Arne would
arrive on the same ship as Baby, whose leave was up, and then Philippe and
whichever SFer won the draw would get on board and be gone.

Philippe made the rounds of the
station, ignoring the occasional glowing Host and telling the aliens that he
would be on leave for a while, but that his replacement would be there
immediately. Not unexpectedly, the only one who reacted to the news as though
it was anything out of the ordinary was Max, who said darkly, “You cannot avoid
what the universe has chosen as your destiny. You can only disappoint yourself
and those who rely upon you.”

As he was leaving that tense
meeting, Philippe was waylaid by the Host merchant, who asked to speak with
him. The merchant was still getting the hang of using the translator, and when
he was excited, he tended to use what Philippe thought must be colorful Host
expressions that utterly confounded the device.

He was
very
excited at the
moment, so his speech was pretty garbled: At one point Philippe heard, “cannot
translate disgraceful cannot translate barely hear cannot translate as though
the Snake Boys were cannot translate cannot translate historical period cannot
translate household object.”

But Philippe managed to get the
gist. Now that the merchant could actually talk to the Snake Boys whom he had
supplied with food for so long, he had become aware of their need for more
living space. He strongly believed that they should have more space, but he had
discovered that on the station, a merchant had virtually no influence with the
priests.

This merchant in particular had no
pull: The fact that he had gotten translation equipment was held against him by
many of the priests, who either were jealous of their privileges or genuinely
believed that he had gotten his translator as part of a dirty deal with
Ptuk-Ptik. Some of the priests had even accused the merchant of wanting the
Snake Boys to have more space so that they would reproduce at a faster rate and
need more food, boosting his business.

The merchant was apparently a
person of some standing back on the Host planet, and he was not accustomed to
taking no for an answer, much less no with a side helping of insult. Frustrated
by his dealings with his own people, he was now trying to round up support from
the aliens.

Philippe was sympathetic, of
course, but he had to point out that humans were a new arrival on the station
and therefore were highly reluctant to criticize the way it was run. Earth
would offer neither support for nor opposition to his crusade.

Philippe’s last day on the station
finally came. He had expected it to be quiet, but an incident that morning not
only put him through his paces but also led to the cancellation of the leave
draw.

Early that morning Patch had been
walking around the station, somewhat bored. A Swimmer drone had struck up a
conversation with him about his equipment, and the two realized that they both
were carrying laser sights—or at least, Patch was carrying a laser sight, and
the Swimmer had something that very much resembled one in its operation. The discovery
had led to a disastrous game of laser tag that had ranged across three floors.
It came to a sudden end when the drone collided with a Blobbo vehicle in the
café area outside the Hosts’ living quarters. Patch, distracted by that
accident, proceeded to have one of his own, falling off a dining platform.

Patch sprained his ankle.
Thankfully, he was the only one injured. In the course of the chase, however,
he had run across four Host dining platforms with his feet—feet that
had
touched the floor—
without having had what the Hosts considered the basic
decency to sterilize them first.

Philippe first had to make
extensive apologies to the Hosts for that gaffe and then interview Patch to
verify that he had stomped over only those four specific dining platforms with
his filthy, disease-ridden feet. Fortunately Patch was able to identify the
four platforms he had defiled, so the Hosts didn’t have to sterilize or perhaps
burn
all
the dining platforms in the station.

The distress and disgust of the
Hosts was nothing compared to the reaction from the Blobbos, however. Although
their person had been hit by a Swimmer drone and not by Patch, they were
apparently a sensitive species and had already begun to suspect that bad things
happened around the humans. The lethal response of the soldiers to the attack
on Philippe and the injury the SFers had caused the Snake Boy who had wanted to
walk on his hands had both greatly perturbed the Blobbos. They seemed to take
very much of a hard line where violence was concerned: Despite the fact that
the humans had maintained relations with the Cyclopes, the Blobbos had cut off
relations with them following the attack on Philippe. After Patch’s escapade,
they informed Philippe that the humans could expect the same if they were involved,
however tangentially, in any more such incidents.

Patch needed to stay off his ankle,
so it was decided that he would go on leave. The next day, Philippe found
himself standing next to a hobbled Patch as the door to the shuttle opened.

Arne stepped off—he had gained a
bit of weight since Sudan, so his tall frame looked less gangly than Philippe
remembered. They greeted each other happily.

Then a blond woman came into the
hallway.

“Philippe!” she said. “Hey! Thanks
so much for sending me that thing from Ptuk-Ptik! That was real nice to see!”

The blond woman sounded like Baby,
but she didn’t look at all like her. Her hair was cropped close in the normal
SFer style, but it was curly, and her skin was a deep honey color. Her eyes
looked different—they were dark, almost black, and there was something
different about their shape or maybe the shape of her eyebrows. Likewise her
lips were thicker and her top lip was slightly rounder than before.

But she was built like Baby and was
acting like Baby, so Philippe went along. “Yeah, he looked good,” he said. The
woman turned to Patch and started questioning him about his injury, and
Philippe took Arne to his quarters.

“She always does,” said Patch,
nodding. “They won’t let her get bodywork done, because you know, it affects your
strength and shit. But whatever she can get done, she gets done often.”

Philippe was baffled. Baby was
perhaps a bit stocky for his tastes, but she certainly had been an attractive
woman before. “Why?”

Patch laughed. “I dunno, she just
does. A lot of times she’s the only gal on the roster, so there’s that. You
know Baby: She likes to be liked. Awesome! Look at Saturn!”

Philippe leaned forward to look out
the front window. They were through the portal.

The next two days were spent in
quarantine on Titan, with Philippe and Patch kept in separate quarters.
Philippe spent his time answering queries from Arne, dealing with the backlog
of his less-important mail, and catching up on his passive entertainment.

He never once saw a golden alien.

The enforced leisure and absence of
hallucinations were relaxing, and Philippe’s sense of humor seemed to return.
He was definitely less irritable—even Hoopen, who dropped by, seemed pleasant
enough with his small talk, if still the insipid antithesis of all Philippe held
dear.

Philippe spoke with the SF
debriefers as a courtesy—a member of the DiploCorps was by no means obligated
to answer questions from the Special Forces. Even in his mellow mood, Philippe
felt a mild, perverse pleasure as one of the interrogators struggled with the
concept that he couldn’t actually make Philippe do anything.

The best part of it, however, was
the sleep. Philippe slept gloriously, dropping off without the least effort and
waking up ten hours later with no memory of what had happened in between—no
dreams, no nightmares, no screaming, no waking up with his head pounding and
his arms waving about. The cut on his hand finally began to close, and his
rashes started to clear. He had cut back on the caffeine and stimulants during
his last few days on the station, and he continued with George’s tapering-off
program on Titan—it worked well, and Philippe had not the least twinge of a
headache.

When he got on the ship back to
Beijing two days later, he felt ten years younger. He sat next to Patch, who
also looked refreshed, if a bit antsy. Philippe couldn’t imagine that someone
like Patch would deal well with the idleness of quarantine, but Patch said that
his ankle had benefited from the rest and was feeling much better.

They discussed Patch’s plans for
leave as the ship slammed backward and took off. The soldier apparently faced a
quandary. Some friends of friends were currently in the midst of an “aerial
tour” of Shanghai—apparently there were enough koffie shops in that city to
keep a dedicated “flyer” aloft for months. But the Union Police was discarding
explosive ordinance in the wastelands of northern Korea. Some SF buddies of
Patch’s had wrangled an invitation, and they had asked him to come along.

“They blow it up?” Philippe asked,
as the ship shuddered into alpha drive.

“Yeah!” said Patch. “It’s supposed
to be a really good blow. It’s not just the regular outdated stuff, it’s a lot
of treaty stuff that got surrendered. So that means it’s not all the normal
Union stuff. It’s weird, homemade shit—you know what I mean? People get
creative.”

“Sounds neat!” chirped Philippe. He
was being a little insincere, but he felt an obligation to steer Patch away
from a two-week koffie-shop bender. “And it’s not like you ever get to blow
things up on the station.”

“Yeah,” said Patch. “On the other
hand, this aerial tour is supposed to be
epic.
”

“Aren’t there koffie shops in
Korea?”

“Oh, yeah, but you know,” said
Patch. “For one thing, we’re going to be in the wastelands, and it’s pretty far
even to Pyongyang. And the other thing is, these are guys I know through the
SF, and I don’t know if they’d be into flying.”

Philippe shrugged. “You could
always go by yourself if you had to—it’s not like you actually know these
Shanghai people.”

“That’s true—you make friends pretty
quick in a koffie shop.” Patch smiled and nodded. “So that shuddering
earlier—that was the alpha drive, right?”

“Yes, you can hear the whine now.”

Patch gave a little laugh. “Yeah,
alpha D,” he said.

The SFer looked out the window for
a while, and then said, “You know, I wonder why, if we’re going so fast,
everyone isn’t all old when we get there.”

“They’ll be a few minutes older
than us, that’s all,” said Philippe, delighted to actually know the answer.
“And when we travel, we get a little shorter than normal, but we grow back up
when we stop.”

Patch looked astounded. “Guy!” he
exclaimed. “You, like, know everything! I wish I was half as smart as you are.”

“Oh, I don’t know anything about
this,
”
said Philippe, laughing. “I sat next to an astrophysicist on my first trip to
Titan, and I asked the same question you just did.”

“An astrophysicist!” said Patch,
looking no less amazed. “And you, like, had a conversation with him! Guy, I
would never be brave enough to do that.”

“Her,” said Philippe. “The astrophysicist
was a woman.”

Patch nodded and grinned. “
Awesome.
”

Philippe left Patch in Beijing. The SFer was checking the
schedule to Pyongyang, and Philippe mentally crossed his fingers that there was
a flight soon—going to Shanghai from Beijing was, of course, extremely easy,
and Philippe strongly suspected that Patch would wind up there if the trip to
Korea proved in any way inconvenient.

He himself flew to Calgary,
live-messaging his parents from the plane to find out if they were planning to
pick him up. They were, and he embraced them at the airport. They were looking
well—a little grayer, maybe, but they moved easily and looked fit.

“Oh, my goodness!” said his mother.
“Philippe, what have they done to your
ear!
”

They went to the car, which
Philippe was surprised to see was on auto-drive.