**** They remain in conversation through another round of drinks, but Dorianna becomes restless. It is obvious that she’s interested in the pilot-swimmers here. “I’m intrigued,” she’d said at the finish of her last beer, “by what you are becoming.” “We’re so different to you?” Ilya challenged, and the taste of those words lingers now. “We’re not human?” She’d dismissed his question with a shake of her head and a sip of her second beer. She’d skewered him with a look of smug understanding, and from the cast of her expression, Ilya saw what she thought. --After so many years, boy and girl are reunited, and they sit in conversation at a shadowed table in an underground bar, confused with themselves…confused with one another.-- Now, the music has shifted. Now, larger crowds cluster at the tables and the central bar. There are pilot-swimmers here, in prodigious numbers. There are common spacers here as well: men and women in undress uniforms: gray overalls emblazoned on breast and arm with the ensigns of various long range starships. They are Nemaean, all of them, but they speak an aggregate of dialects that confuse even the most astute ears. “I’d like a chance to speak with them,” Dorianna says, making a point to direct her words at Aleo. “They may not be willing to speak back,” Aleo says in response. “I’ll take that chance.” --Which is when she steps to her feet, grabbing her drink. She shoulders her way to the main bar, moving through clouds of tabak, shadows, and indistinct--smoke hazed--holograms that shift in color and complexity in time with the most subtle changes in the music. Ilya watches her, relaxed in the knowledge that this is all a part of the plan. Her first drink has been dosed, and the constant, dissonant throb of drift bleeding from the sound system, will leave her open to the most subtle, controlling influences, whispered either from himself or from Aleo. The longer she remains here--even as the drug in her system burns itself out--the easier it will be to draw information from her, and plant manipulative seeds in place of the facts she seeks. “We’re leaving her to them, unattended?” Aleo asks. “Not for long,” Ilya answers. Aleo nods. “Baiting her…” and there is laughter in his voice. His dark eyes spark with an impish light, as he smiles through the neat definition of his meticulously-trimmed goatee. He raises his drink in mock salute, touches his glass to Ilya’s, and then shifts to watch Dorianna’s progress at the bar. Ilya watches as she angles into a dead spot between pilot-triads locked in their own conversations. They are clad in black singleskins. Their eyes and ears are covered in sense-obscuring goggles and muffs. By pilot reckoning, they are blind and deaf in this way, but even in such condition, they are more intimately aware of the surroundings than any Centralist. Their feet--as pale as orchids--are naked to the floor. From their posture alone, Ilya can see that they’ve taken notice of Dorianna. From the way that one, another, and a third leans towards her, he can see that she has engaged them in conversation. They shake their heads and shrug…proof that she’s spoken to them in Centralist Standard. She shrugs and says something else, most assuredly rifling through the limited Rus she learned in childhood. But something shifts. In the span of a heartbeat, he can sense the change in atmosphere--like some strange skew in barometrics. Dorianna has engaged an obvious bonded triad in conversation. Two of them are dark-skins, like Aleo, though the lines of their bodies mark their origins as Mala-Dahomey, or some such world, close to the hinder regions of Nemaea. The third in their company is muscular and stocky, orchid pale and with buzz-clipped hair the color of half-bleached sand. His posture speaks of trouble. Of combat. And in an instant, time blurs, as the taller, dark pilot reaches forward--smiling--and clasps Dorianna’s hands. His fingertips find her wrists and close around them. He leans in close. Closer. His smile never wavers. His motion is fast. But as a Cloistered Brother, Ilya can move in the same range of speeds. He is on his feet, shouldering through the crowd. At Dorianna’s side now, he grabs the pilot-swimmer’s hands, and firmly pries his fingers from her wrists. Aleo, having followed at speed, has positioned himself defensively between Ilya and the pilot’s companions. He takes firm hold of Dorianna, supporting her as she recovers from the heavy daze masked across her features. Her hands twitch; she looks as if she is shivering. (Aleo, Ilya can see, is tensed for a fight. His gaze darts here, there and there, marking faces, assessing strengths and weaknesses. But no one else moves.) “She is your friend,” the taller, black pilot asks; his voice is a rolling, sonorous baritone. His smile is one of insane benevolence. His accent is soft and clipped…difficult to place. “She is a guest of the State.” Ilya does not release the pilot’s hands. “Do you think…Cloister-boy…that she is impertinent in her questions?” “I think many things…Pilot…but they are not always important. What is important is that Dorianna Eiker is a guest of the State. If her presence here is a compromise, then it is the Cloister that deals with it.” He speaks slowly, pitching his voice at the dark pilot alone. Pale fingers stroke darker flesh. His fingertips dig in, relax, and dig again in scrupulous rhythm. The pilot’s expression never changes, and Ilya recognizes the source of that smile. “The Cloister accepts interrogation?” He and his compatriots have only recently separated from their starships and time remains before they are fully acclimated to the native limits of human flesh. In these moments--in this bar--they are locked in the final throes of pilot’s delirium. Ilya continues to massage the nerve junctions budded through the pilot’s wrists, imparting ecstasy and threat in equal measure. “The Cloister makes use of what it must.” And now--only just now--the pilot’s expression changes. His smile fades and though all but nose and mouth are obscured, Ilya can sense the fullest shift in countenance. He knows that the pilot has just closed his eyes, as he waggles his head from side to side in an oddly serpentine motion…as if the bones in his neck have just dissolved, as if the flesh of his neck is little more than sun-warmed jelly. “You speak in Authority.” It might have been a question, and Ilya interprets it as such. “Yes.” “The Brotherhood of Pilots complies with Cloister Authority then.” Ilya nods. “You have our gratitude.” Compliance comes with a price, however, and Ilya is sure that there will be words between Brother Superior Makindé, and his counterparts among the pilot-swimmers, and perhaps the Frontier Guard as well. There may be recriminations and threats, tussles for a new position, and perhaps nominations for newer, clearer voices on the floor of the Interworld Senate. With words behind him now, he turns to Aleo. “She’s all right?” “She‘s been hit with a full-on sensory interrogation. She’ll be fine. But we should get her to a doctor, just to be sure.” ****