Not a good idea to go straight at him. He had reach on her, muscle enough to overwhelm her speed. The body she had now was strong for its size, quick and sure; she'd trained it to fight and was satisfied with the results, but there was no way she could face him without some sort of edge.

She looked over her shoulder, he was just standing there, watching her. A sudden attack might do it; get him set up, take him in a rush and flip him over the rail, then run for the Gate. Some hope. And if I had my stunner… even more futile, I can't fight the whole damn guard force…

She pulled her hand nervously across her mouth. That was the real trouble, it wasn't just him, it was the rest of the guard force, the us-against-them bonding of the guards; she'd seen it in their faces as she passed them, sometimes mixed with distaste, sometimes with pleasure, mostly with indifference. She was the outsider, the stranger, the predestined victim. He could play with her, then clean up after himself by tossing what was left of her down the nearest garbage chute and they wouldn't do anything. But if she beat the odds and it was him went down the chute, they'd forget indifference and come for her.

A table with a semi-blanked privacy shield drifted past her, following dozens of others that floated like dandelion fluff in wide slow spirals down and around the immense atrium, in and out of the shimmering holoas, down and down and down until they came to rest for a few minutes in the park below. She'd seen them, but hadn't really noticed them until now; like the loas they were so much a part of the background they were invisible.

With a pot of tea and a pile of lacy honeywafers, the privacy shield tucked tight about her and tension dropping away for a while, she rode her table away from the platform and the guard who stood lounging against the aerie'staurant's facewall, grinning as if he got pleasure from her temporary success in evading him.