In a way, that made it a lot easier here. They were responsible only for themselves and each other, not anybody else, and the future was pretty much now.

He went over to Queson and sat beside her. "You've been thinking again," he kidded her in a mock scolding tone.

She smiled. "It's an occupational hazard."

"We don't have occupations anymore. We're castaways on a desert island with no hope of rescue. Food, shelter, little more, and always afraid the sucker-faced pirates will find us."

"You had a broader education than most engineers," she noted.

He shrugged. "Broader interests, maybe, or maybe just broad-minded parents. My mother was a literary historian who made hand-colored pottery in her spare time. Dad was a mathematician with a passion for playing the piano in an age when few even knew the term except as a digital sound. Both throwbacks. I think they met somewhere in the old Combine, maybe even on or near Old Earth, when he was trying to find a robotic program that could tune a piano and she was working in the library that day on the restoration of ancient live performances. She was actually an expert on children's literature in an age when nobody had to be literate any more and few were or are, I guess, so she got drafted for all sorts of shit like that."

She looked over at him. "That's interesting. I never knew that. Maybe we haven't all talked ourselves out yet. At least we haven't started killing each other. Truth is, I never paid much attention to that sort of thing before, but what I'd give for books and recordings and complinks now. My god I'm bored!"

He sighed. "Yeah, well, there isn't much to do here, that's for sure. I've been thinking, though, that it might be time to see if there was anything at all that we could do." He looked up at the always bright sky, now dominated by the gas giant.