He walked with collaborators of his own, looking like he’d gone through a spin cycle with a few pairs of boots in the drum. When Sohrab spotted Nash from across the aisle of ships, he hung back from his mixed Iolite and Human group and joined her in the trek to the hangar’s exit. Only Vito noticed he had fallen out but turned back forward when he remembered he had seen her before at the club.

  “I wish you’d run into me any other time,” Sohrab sighed, his voice hoarse. He looked at the ground ahead of him, refusing to meet her eyes. Wearing sunglasses indoors wasn’t the custom in this city, but perhaps he’d picked it up in some zestier locale.

  “How’d you get them to land here,” Nash wondered. “Aren’t most of your ‘dealings’ up north?”

  “It didn’t take long for them to realize the broader… ‘commercial opportunities’ down this way, I didn’t have to coax much at all. And besides, it’s for the best. It’s humid like you wouldn’t believe up in Laronting, especially now that we’re heading into the warmer months.”

  “Not great if you’re trying to avoid frizz, I imagine” she teased, tossing her own long, violet waves over her shoulder.

  Sohrab ignored the insult out of sheer exhaustion. “Listen, I need to peel myself away from you and get back to them, but come and see me this evening, we’ll talk more then.”

  “Where do you live again? Nowhere near the Hex I hope.”

  “You wouldn’t catch me dead there. I try to avoid cults these days,” he groaned. “I’m in the Dawnwool Tower, across from the station, twenty-first floor, number nine. Now, wait here until I’ve left.”

  She did as he said and let him go on without another word, confident in her ability to follow directions the first time. “It’ll be nice to have someone else around who can do the same,” she presumed.

  #

  Later that day the sunny afternoon surrendered to the peachy evening light. Kory lingered on the apartment’s balcony, taking in the lush, springtime air spiraling through the overgrown garden at the center of the Hex. She was relieved beyond expression when Nash walked through the door not even an hour after they landed, and elated further, when her roommate suggested they reunite downtown for dinner and shopping after her debrief with her uncle. Kory asked if she wanted company for the meeting, or rather, support in the face of what had been an overwhelming failure. But Nash insisted it would be better if she went alone, and “besides,” she proffered, there was no reason for Kory to run into her mother unless it was absolutely necessary. They both laughed in agreement on that one.

  After Nash left again, Kory lounged about in a satin robe, letting her wet hair drip down her shoulders, while sampling a glass of the red Greg insisted she take from his crate. Loafing for at least an hour after the getting-ready shower was a crucial step in the process, and one that she hated to skip, especially on an evening this beautiful. There was something so serene about sitting on a balcony, whether it overlooked a garden or the city lights. She wished everyone in all of space could have a balcony.

  #

  Elsewhere in the city, Nash boarded the elevator of an angular, futuristic building she must have passed a hundred times before. She noticed the stark décor and lack of greenery while making a mental judgement that she could never live somewhere so inorganic and cold as this. But she supposed it would suit Sohrab, who presumably needed the furthest thing from off-grid he could find after returning from his home planet. When she reached the ninth door on the twenty-first floor, she knocked, and waited, then knocked, and waited again.

  Frustrated over the lack of response, but unwilling to make a scene, she thought very loudly: “You know it’s me. Open up!” A muffled curse followed by the sound of tripping heralded her victory, before unsettling her with the implications of what had just happened. The door slid open with a faint hiss, nothing like the heirloom-quality wood and hinge she preferred. Her host greeted her in a less-than-decent state, dripping all over the floor and robe half open.

  “Did you forget I was coming?” she asked, diverting her eyes to his feet.

  “Of course not,” he lied, beating a wide-tooth comb through his hair. She noticed it only reached his elbows now, as opposed to his waist like before. “But what I failed to realize…” he continued, striding across the modern, open floor plan to the kitchen counter. “…is that you lot are punctual to a fault. So, when I said ‘evening,’ you took that to mean ‘the beginning of’ as opposed to halfway through like a more decent person.”

  “You’re living on this world, buddy. Not a ‘more decent’ one,” She scoffed, still standing by the entrance. “You going to start publishing your wash day schedule in advance?”

  “And just look at you, all dressed up to go… who knows where. Certainly not here.” he ridiculed, unable to process her insult as he poured himself another vodka.

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  “How long before he’s all the way gone?” she mused, moving further into the apartment.

  “Judge me some more. You could be too before you know it,” Sohrab said aloud.

  “Please,” she sneered. “You’re hardly clairvoyant.”

  “That’s what I keep trying to tell people,” He sighed, offering Nash a glass of her own which she accepted reluctantly.

  “How hospitable,” she said, sniffing the bitter contents.

  “It smells like what it is,” he muttered as he lurched past her into the spacious sunken living room just beyond the kitchen’s edge. With the push of a button, the suspended fireplace in the midst of the place roared to life, serving as the only light in the apartment save for the dreamy surface of Geponnta outside the glass balcony doors. For a moment he sat slack jawed and bow-legged on the sofa, unable to pry his eyes from the fire. His cold complexion looked almost alive in the light of the orange flames. Nash stood just behind him, at the top of the conversation-pit steps, half-joining his reverie and half-observing him too. At last, he spoke again. “I have…um, some lemon up there if you want, for the vodka. I haven’t cut it yet, so you’ll have to do that I suppose.”

  She glanced behind her to see there were indeed lemons scattered upon the countertop. Nash summoned the fruit through the air, sliced, and juiced it into her glass, and then deposited it back onto the counter, seeds, and all. When again she faced the fire, she noticed Sohrab had been spying on her. “He made me swear not to tell a soul, but my employer’s daughter is like you.”

  “Oh really,” Nash replied, descending the steps to sit beside him.

  “I spent the night on his couch once and woke up to the little girl braiding my hair without using her hands.”

  “Well,” Nash sighed. “She has a difficult way ahead if that’s true.”

  “Haven’t we all,” he said, lowering his head for a moment before bringing the glass back to his lips.

  “I meant that you have more hair than a child has patience,” she said, but seeing he was in no joking mood she changed course. She placed a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Did something happen to you in… wherever you were?”

  “…wherever I was,” he repeated.

  “Right, it’s just that when I saw you earlier –”

  Sohrab raised a finger to silence her, then began rifling through the breast pocket of his robe. Once he found the cigarette he’d been looking for, he lit it, leaned back, and took a long, weary drag. “The man I was with, you met him before, he claimed I’d ruined the whole thing, the meet-up, as it were…” he said as he politely exhaled the smoke above his head as opposed to directly into Nash’s face. “…he told me, on the flight back home of course, that I’d come into the situation speaking all kinds of nonsense… And that before the conversation could even start, I’d run out of the premises and into the streets. He said he had to abandon the negotiation and follow me. According to him, he found me in the ocean, this was the middle of the night mind you, and I was waist deep in the water, tearing my hair and clothes and screaming.”

  “That sounds horrible,” she whispered, doubting herself all of a sudden more than him.

  “He said he covered for me, and that word of this alleged ‘episode’ wouldn’t make it back to our boss…this time. I don’t know whether to hate him or be thankful, because I don’t remember it the way he described it, and yet the dreams I’ve had surrounding this trip make me wonder if it’s true. Night after night… echoes of the silent screams far off, yet so near assail me. Sometimes it’s one voice, sometimes two, with vile whispered thoughts swirling all around.”

  “Have you felt this way before?”

  “I had some idea, perhaps, in the hours before…” he paused, uncertain of the details himself. He placed his drink on the floor between his feet, so that he could take her left hand in his right. “Do you remember when you came alone to get me, from my home planet? And what of it I told you once we’d gone?”

  “Vaguely, it was all so hazy,” she said, feeling the warmth draining from her through the cold embrace of his fingers.

  “I smoothed it over, to be sure, for both our sakes. The sinking, desperate feeling of it all has only emboldened me to join you as soon as you’ll let me. I’ve lost my way for a bit, but whatever it is that cries out to me from the darkness might have something to say to you too… to all of us.”

  “I’m not sure I understand where you’re going with this…” she spoke, feeling his grip tighten around her fingers. His brown eyes seemed to flash copper in the light of the flames. “…but I think I can begin to see your point.”

  “I hope we both will.” He said bluntly as he released her hand, picked his glass back up, and emptied it in one swift motion. He rose from the couch and tossed what remained of his cigarette into the fire, before returning to the kitchen for a refill.

  Nash looked down at her own glass of vodka and lemon juice, still not yet sampled, much less drunk. She knew it was going to be bad. “Sohrab.”

  “Huh?” He mumbled, having all but forgotten the severity of the previous moment.

  “Are you going to be okay for all of this? What we have going on is… well, it’s intense, it’s a lot.”

  “A lot less once I’m in the mix. And besides, you said it yourself, I want to get out there more than I want this life I’m living now. So, these grating little ditties will have to finance the real ballads… at least until the audience knows what’s good for them.” He rejoined her and raised his glass, prompting her to do the same. After the clink, she took her first bitter gulp of vodka lemon. It was exactly as astringent as she imagined.

  “Looks like we’re in agreement.” She winced.

  “The race is on.”