Carnival

“Kill or be killed,” Vincent said, next best thing to a mantra. Kusanagi-Jones squeezed his fingers and let their hands fall apart, but it didn’t sever the connection. It was too practiced, too reflexive. Vincent’s gift, the empathy, the sympathythat turned them from men into a team. Vincent’s particular gift, complement of Kusanagi-Jones’s.

Vincent stared at him, tawny eyes bright. Kusanagi-Jones shrugged and turned his back, running his fingers across the rainbow lights of his subdermal watch to order another martini, codes flickering across neuro-morphed retinas. He stared out the bubble again, waiting while the drink was mixed, and retrieved it from the dispensall less than a meter away.

“Oh, good.” Vincent’s Earth patois—his com-pat—was accentless. “Nothing makes a first impression like turning up shitfaced.”

“They think we’re animals anyway.” Kusanagi-Jones gestured to a crescent world resolving as Kaiwo Maruentered the plane of the ecliptic and began changing to give her passengers the best view. “Not like we had a chance to make them like us. Look, crew’s modulating the ship.”

“Seen one reconfig, seen them all.” Nevertheless, Vincent came up to him and they waited, silent, while Kaiwo Marureworked from a compact shape optimized for travel to something spidery and elegant, designed to dock with the station and transfer cargo—alive and material—as efficiently as possible.

“Behold,” Vincent teased. “New Amazonia.”

Kusanagi-Jones took a sip of his martini, rolling the welcome rawness over his tongue. “Stupid name for a planet.” He didn’t mind when Vincent didn’t answer.

Bravado aside, Michelangelo did stop drinking with the one in his hand, and Vincent pretended not to notice that he checked his watch and adjusted his blood chemistry. Meanwhile, Kaiwo Marudocked without a shiver. Vincent didn’t even have to put his hand out to steady himself. He pretended, also, that he was looking at the towering curve of the station beyond the bubble, but really, he was watching Michelangelo’s reflection.

There had been times in the last decade and a half when Vincent had been convinced he’d never exactly remember that face. And there had been times when he’d been just as convinced he’d never get it out of his head. That he could feel Michelangelo standing beside him, glowering as he was glowering now.

One wouldn’t discern it casually; Angelo wouldn’t permit that much emotion revealed. His features were broad and solemn, his eyes stern except when bright. He seemed stolid, wary, unassuming—a blocky muscular man whose coloring facilitated his tendency to fade into the shadows. But Vincent felthim glowering, his displeasure like the weight of an angry hand.

Michelangelo glanced at his watch as if contemplating the colored lights. Vincent knew Michelangelo had a heads-up; he wasn’t checking the time. He was fidgeting.

Fidgeting was new.

“I don’t love you anymore.” Michelangelo pressed his hand to the bubble and then raised it to his mouth.

“I know. I canstill read your mind.”

Michelangelo snorted against the back of his fingers. “I’m a Liar, Vincent. You’ll believe what I want you to believe.”

“How generous.”

“Just true.” Then the irony of his own statement seemed to strike him. He dropped his head and stared at the tips of his shoes as if hypnotized by the rainbows reflected across them. When he glanced back up, Vincent could read laughter in the way the crinkles at the corners of his eyes had deepened.

Vincent chuckled. He touched his watch, keying his wardrobe to something more formal, and stilled momentarily while the program spread and the wardrobe rearranged itself. “Do you wantme, at least? That would make things easier.”

Michelangelo shrugged, impassive. Vincent turned, now watching him frankly, and wondered how much of the attraction was—had always been—that Michelangelo was one of the few people he’d met that he couldn’tread like a fiche.

“They offered me a choice. Therapy or forced retirement.”

Michelangelo’s coloring was too dark for his face to pale, but the blood draining made him ashen. “You took therapy.”

Vincent stifled a vindictive impulse. “I took retirement. I don’t consider my sexuality something that needs to be fixed.”

“Sign of persistent pathology,” Michelangelo said lightly, but his hands trembled.

“So I’ve been told. The funny thing is, they couldn’t make it stick. I didn’t even make it home before I was recalled. Apparently I’m indispensable.”

Michelangelo’s thumb moved across his inner wrist, giving Vincent a sympathetic shiver at the imagined texture of the skin. Another glass appeared in the dispensall, but from the smell, this one was fruit juice.

He sipped the juice and made a face. “I heard.”

Vincent wondered if the license was off. “And you?”