Nothing earthshaking, just what was in port and what was in drydock and what was building on the slipways. Confirming what Intelligence got out of its contacts among die Protege" workers in die shipyard. That was how you built up a picture of capabilities, bit by bit. He'd been here diree years now, he'd done a pretty good job-gotten die specs on die steam-turbine experiments-and it was time to go home.

For more reasons than one. He dropped his eyes to die man and woman talking not far away.

What did I ever see in him? Sally Hosten thought.

Her husband-soon to be ex-husband-stood at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back. Karl Hosten was a tall man even for one of die Chosen, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, as trim at durty-five as he had been twelve years ago when they married. His face was square and so deeply tanned diat die turquoise-blue eyes glowed like jewels by contrast; his cropped hair was white-blond. He wore undress uniform: gray shorts and short-sleeved tunic and gunbelt.

"This parting is not of my will," he said in crisp Chosen-accented Landisch.

"No, it's mine," Sally agreed, in English.

She'd spoken Landisch for a long time, her voice had been a little rusty when she went to die Santander embassy to see about getting her Republican citizenship back. She'd met Maurice mere. And she didn't intend to speak Karl's language again, if she could help it. "Will you not reconsider?" he said.

Twelve years together had made it easy for her to read the emotions behind a Chosen mask-face. The sorrow she sensed put a bubble of anger at the back of her mouth, hard and bitter.

"Will you give John back his children?" she said.

A brief glance aside showed that her son John wasn't nearby anymore. Where… twenty feet or so, bending over a cargo net with another boy of about the same twelve years. Jeffrey Fair, Maurice's son.