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plate.
    They ate in silence; through the open door, they could hear the distant sounds of the First Landing festivities. The night was becoming cool, so Allegra shut the door, then put some wood in the stove and started a fire. Sissy never looked up from her meal; she ate with total concentration, never speaking while she cleaned her plate and beckoned for seconds. Allegra wondered how long it had been since she had eaten anything except chicken and eggs. She made a note to herself to start bringing home leftovers from the kitchen; malnutrition might have something to do with Sissy’s mental condition. . . .
    “Why are you here?” Sissy asked.
    The question was abrupt, without preamble . . . and, Allegra realized, it was the very same one she’d posed the night they first met. But they were no longer strangers, rather two friends enjoying a quiet dinner together. How much had changed since then.
    “You mean, why did I come here?” Allegra shrugged. “Like I told you . . . I couldn’t find anywhere else in town, so I pitched my . . .”
    “That’s not what I mean.”
    Allegra didn’t say anything for a moment. She put her knife and forktogether on her plate, folded her hands, to and turned her gaze toward the window. Far away across the fields, she could see the house lights of Liberty; in that instant, they resembled the lights of cities she had left behind, the places she had visited. Atlanta, Dallas, Brasilia, Mexico City . . .
    “A long time ago,” she began, “I was . . . well, I wasn’t rich, nor was I famous, but I had a lot of money and I was quite well known. For what I do, I mean.”
    “For making music.”
    “For making music, yes.” She absently played with her fork, stirring some gravy left on her plate. “I traveled a great deal and was constantly in demand as a composer. All the people I knew were artists who were also rich and famous.” As rich as social collectivism would allow, at least; she’d learned how to stash her overseas royalties quietly in trust funds maintained by European banks, as many people did to avoid the domestic salary caps imposed by the Union. But it was complicated, and there was no reason why Sissy should have to know that. “And for a while I was satisfied with my life, but then . . . I don’t know. At some point, I stopped enjoying life. It seemed as if everyone I knew was a stranger, that the only things they wanted were more fame, more money, and all I wanted was to practice my art. And then one day, I found that I couldn’t even do that anymore. . . .”
    “You couldn’t make music?”
    Allegra didn’t look up. “No. Oh, I could still play”—she picked up her flute from where she had placed it on the table—“but nothing new came to me, just variations of things I’d done before. And when it became obvious to everyone that I was blocked, all the people I thought were my friends went away, and I was alone.”
    “What about your family?”
    She felt wetness at the corners of her eyes. “No family. I never made time for that. Too busy. There was once someone I loved, but . . .” She took a deep breath that rattled in her throat. “Well, it wasn’t long before he was gone, too.”
    Allegra picked up the napkin from her lap, daubed her eyes. “So I decided to leave everything behind, go as far away as I could. The Union Astronautica had started the public lottery for people who wanted tocome here. The selection was supposed to be totally random, but I met someone who knew how to rig the system. I gave him everything I owned so that I’d get a winning number, then took only what I could carry in my bag. And . . . well, anyway, here I am.”
    “So why are you here?”
    Allegra gazed across the table at Sissy. Hadn’t she heard anything she had just said? Just as on Earth, everything she did was pointless—another exercise in self-indulgence. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to scold her neighbor. It wasn’t Sissy’s