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equanimity completely restored. “I have a great deal to do to arrange for
the party. There are the caterers to contact, the menu to consider. I am
certain that the house needs cleaning—”
    “Just get Darlene
off this planet quickly and safely, will you, Loti?” Xris said grimly.
    “Of course.” Raoul’s
lashes half closed. He glided over, wrapped a hand around Xris’s arm, his
flesh-and-blood arm, squeezed it gently. “Have no fear for Darlene, my friend.
We will take excellent care of her. And perhaps she may learn some things about
herself at the same time. She has been shut up inside a prison for the last
several years—”
    “She’s been shut
up inside a secret military spacebase—”
    “I don’t mean
that, Xris Cyborg.” Raoul’s voice was soft, low. “I mean a prison of her own
design. It is not her death you should be most concerned about, but her life.”
    “What do you mean?
What about her life?”
    “She doesn’t have
one,” Raoul said calmly. “Goodbye. Kiss, kiss.” He started to glide away,
turned back. The purple-drenched eyes were misty, shimmering, glazed. “Oh, and
you will not permit Harry Luck to accompany Darlene to Adonia, will you?
To think of him sprawled on my white velvet couch, in those dreadful T-shirts
he wears, drinking beer, belching, and munching potato chips.”
    “ ‘The horror, the
horror,’ “ Xris said sympathetically.
    Raoul swayed
slightly on his feet, put his hand to his head. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? Pardon,
Xris Cyborg. That last image has been too much. I feel faint. I believe I shall
go sit down a moment.”
    “Xris, I—” Harry
was looming on the horizon.
    “Wait a sec.”
    The Little One,
instead of attending to his distraught friend, as would have been usual, was
standing in front of Xris.
    “What is it?” Xris
asked gently. He had a real fondness for the small empath. “Is something wrong?”
    The fedora nodded.
    “What? Tell me.”
    The Little One
raised his small hands, palms out.
    “Something’s
wrong, but you don’t know what,” Xris guessed—correctly, it seemed. “Is it me?”
    The Little One
nodded his head once, then shook it again and waved his hands, indicating that
yes, he knew Xris had problems, but that this wasn’t what was bothering him.
    “Is it about
Darlene?” Xris tried again.
    The Little One
thought a moment, then shook his head emphatically.
    “What, then? The job?
The museum? Sakuta?”
    The Little One
considered this. He nodded, but only tentatively.
    “Something’s wrong
with this job? What’s wrong? Can you tell me? Can Raoul tell me?”
    The Little One
shook his head, pulled the fedora down around his ears in a gesture of
frustration. Stamping his feet, he lifted his hands into the air, turned, and
stomped off, tripping over the hem of the raincoat as he went.
    Xris, too, was
frustrated, considered going after the empath and trying to pin him down, then
decided against it. The Little One was obviously as upset with himself as Xris
was with him. Nagging at him wouldn’t help, might further upset him.
    “As if we didn’t
have enough trouble,” Xris muttered. He thought over what might go wrong with
the job and, other than the obvious, like being arrested for impersonating an
officer, couldn’t think of a thing.
    Paranoia must be
catching.
    Xris turned to the
next problem, to tell Harry that he couldn’t go to Adonia because he’d never
make it through customs.
    He just wasn’t
pretty enough.
     

Chapter 7
    I always say that
beauty is only sin deep.
    Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), Reginald
     
    The only part of
the passport which Adonian customs officers inspect is the photo. On Adonia,
they don’t particularly care where you are from, where you are going, or how
you intend to get there. They’re not overly interested in what you are bringing
on-world, what you are intending to take off-world, or why you’re on their
world at all. They only want to know what you look like.
    Eons ago, when
genetic