“Find one.”

Johnny delayed long enough to mark the page in his book, and vanished.

Old Sam pointed at a stool. “You,” he said to Kate. “Sit.”

She sat. “What?” she said. She craned her neck to see Johnny hotfooting it down the float toward the harbormaster’s shack. Probably going to ask Gull what alien ships were moored in transient parking this week. Last time they were there, it had been Cetaceans. Or maybe a bureaucrat from the Council of Planets on a regular inspection, driving Gull nuts with demands for colder water to cool the drives. She kind of lost track of Gull’s hallucinations after a couple of trips into town.

“You’ve got to get a grip, Katya,” Old Sam said.

The lack of the usual bombast and profanity, plus the use of her family name, pulled her gaze back to the old man. Honestly bewildered, she said, “A grip on what, Uncle?”

“You’re gonna mother us to death, whether we want you to or not,” he said. “And mostly we don’t.”

“I-what?”

“So we built you a house,” he told her. “Ain’t nothing we wouldn’t have done for any of us in the same situation, specially if there was a kid involved. I know, I know,” he said, holding up a hand to ward off her protestations, “you always pay your debts. If’s one of the qualities that make you a marginally acceptable human being.”

Overwhelmed by this unaccustomed amount of praise heaped all at once upon her head, Kate remained silent.

“The thing you don’t get,” he said, fixing her with a stern and piercing eye, “is that you don’t owe us squat. Shut up.”

Kate closed her mouth.

“One of our own lost her home. We, her family, friends, and neighbors, replaced it with a couple days’ labor and, when it comes down to it very little cost to ourselves.”

“The house kit-the materials had to cost a lot,” she said immediately.

“Most of it was donated,” he said. He paused, the wrinkles on his face creasing and uncreasing as he fought an internal struggle. “The fact is, for whatever misguided reasons of their own, a lotta people in the state think they owe you, and most of ‘em were willing to kick in to get you under a roof again. Not to mention that it’s good politics for people who do business in the Bush to be nice to a Shugak from the Park.”