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with people on other planets, halfway across the galaxy.
    No constant hum of commercials in the back of your brain. No hacked perceptions, showing you a woman in a red dress and heels when she was wearing a pantsuit and thongs, and weighed fifteen pounds worth of muscle less than the image projected into your brain.
    No connex. Alone with the silence inside your own brain.
    Not too long ago, of course, it would have been alien to Lucienne, too. But she’d adapted, as Jean had expected she would. If nothing else, it gave you time to think.
    “You’ll answer questions under a lie sensor, if necessary?”
    Lucienne smiled. “If you subpoena my cooperation. I know my rights, Officer.”
    The answering tip of his head was tight. “Are you certain you don’t wish to call your solicitor now?”
    “Why should I?” she said. “I’ve nothing to hide.”

2
    JEAN LIKED THAT CRICKET STAYED ON AFTER THE RIMMERS departed, all three together. The one who’d waited on the stoop had left his untouched lemonade on the corner of the plascrete, all the ice melted and condensation rolling down the sides.
    “As if you’d poison a Rimmer,” Lucienne said disdainfully, while Cricket was bringing the remains of dinner out to her beloved compost pile. Lucienne dumped the glass in the sink and scrubbed it out by hand. She racked it and dried her hands on a towel, while Jean pressed his palms to her shoulders to feel her muscles slide. She leaned on the touch, letting him support her.
    “He bugged the chair,” Jean murmured against the black hawser of her braid. “Want to give him an earful after your friend leaves?”
    She tossed the towel across the edge of the sink. “As if you haven’t already disabled it.”
    He couldn’t shrug and rub her shoulders at the same time, so he settled for a kiss on the nape of her neck. Still brown, this skin, but paler, and vulnerable-seeming, nonetheless. “He can’t prove a thing. Breathe out.”
    She obeyed, and breathed in, too, then repeated the process more slowly, with concentrated care. “If he could, he’d have us both in custody. It might be time to step back for a bit. We’re not outraged doomsayers, and I refuse to be herded. Either by Rimmer visits, or by Closs’s threats to assay settled wetlands for mining potential, and hang the treaty. We’re not doing the froggies any good if we wind up inmates at a seaweed farm.”
    “We’re not doing ourselves any good either.” He stepped back and let his hands fall away. “There’s always legal challenges.”
    “If we could afford better lawyers.”
    He nibbled his thumb, turning away from the window, through which the setting sun glared, flashing off spectacles that always drew a double-take when he was introduced to someone new. “I’ll see what I can do. About Cricket—”
    “Yes. We can trust her.”
    He licked his lips, put his shadow between them so he could see her expression when she turned. The line between her eyebrows was deeper, but the curl of her lips was wry.
    “She doesn’t want to be a part of our revolution, Luce,” he said.
    “But where she goes, Deschênes follows.”
    He didn’t have a ready answer, so Lucienne continued, shading her eyes so
she
could look straight at
him.
“I’ll take her to see the ranids tonight. If that doesn’t shift her, nothing will.”
             
    André walked home two hours later than he usually did. The traffic in the streets had fallen off; his meeting had stretched through the afternoon rush. A face-to-face meeting. One of the reasons André kept office hours—kept an office at all—was that his business wasn’t always best handled via connex.
    Cricket still hadn’t answered his call about Jean Kroc, which was for the best. He’d have more work for her if she did call. Cricket charged high, even as archinformists went, but she was worth every demark. And if she didn’t call, André would just have to get a head start on the information himself. Because