“Off work now, huh?” he inquired ingenuously, with a boyish smile. He was a bit old for boyish smiles.

“Yes, I’m going home.” Tej wished she could go home, really home. Yet how much of what she’d known as home still existed, even if she could be magically transported there in a blink? No, don’t think those thoughts. The tension headache, and heartache, were too exhausting to bear.

“I wish I could go home,” said the man, Vorpatril, in unconscious echo of her thought. “But I’m stuck here for a while. Say, can I buy you a drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“Dinner?”

“No.”

He waggled his eyebrows, cheerfully. “Ice cream? All women like ice cream, in my experience.”

“No!”

“Walk you home? Or in the park. Or somewhere. I think they have rowboats to rent in that lake park I passed. That’d make a nice place to talk.”

“Certainly not!” Ought she to invent a waiting spouse or lover? She linked arms with Dotte, pinching her in silent warning. “Let’s go to the bubble car stop now, Dotte.”

Dotte gave her a surprised look, knowing perfectly well that Tej-Nanja, as she knew her-always walked home to her nearby flat. But she obediently turned away and led off. Vorpatril followed, not giving up. He slipped around in front, grinned some more, and tried, “What about a puppy?”

Dotte snorted a laugh, which didn’t help.

“A kitten?”

They were far enough from Swift Shipping now that customer politeness rules no longer applied, Tej decided. She snarled at him, “Go away. Or I’ll find a street patroller.”

He opened his hands in apparent surrender, watching with a doleful expression as they marched past. “A pony…?” he called after them, as if in one last spasm of hope.

Dotte looked back over her shoulder as they approached the bubble-car station. Tej looked straight ahead.