Something happened today, and I don’t know what I to make of it ... except that I want to make it mean something. This morning I heard Spadrin’s voice at the edge of the scrapyard. I looked out of the rover’s cab, afraid that he was coming to harass me again. But he was talking with someone else—I saw two figures swim in the heated air. The other person was a woman. I watched him push her away suddenly, so hard that she fell. He disappeared into the yellow-green jungle. I crossed the field of rusting metal and fleshy weeds to help the woman up. As I saw her face I realized I’d seen her before Last night she came to the door of Ang’s place in the Quarter, while we were going over supply lists. Ang had sent her away angrily, and without bothering to explain anything to us. “I’m all right ... thank you,” she said, obviously shaken. She wasn’t what I expected at all—a small, neat woman in the usual loose white Company coveralls. Her face was bare, and her dark, graying hair was cut short.
