"That is true," Emmanuel said. "If you are seized and taken down into the prison she will go with you. She will never leave you." An unhappy expression crossed his face; suddenly he was, again, a ten-year-old boy. "But-"

"What is it?" Elias said.

"I will not say now," Emmanuel said, speaking with diffi- culty. Herb Asher, to his disbelief, saw tears in the boy's eyes. "Perhaps I will never say it. She knows what I mean."

"Yes," Zina said, and she smiled. Mischief lay in her smile, or so it seemed to Herb Asher. It puzzled him. He did not under- stand the invisible transaction taking place between Rybys's son and the girl. It troubled him, and his fear became greater. His sense of deep unease.

--------------------

The four of them had dinner together that night.

"Where do you live?" Herb Asher asked the girl. "Do you have a family? Parents?"

"Technically I'm a ward of the government school we go to," Zina said. "But for all intents and purposes I'm in Elias's custody now. He's in the process of becoming my guardian."

Elias, eating, paying attention to his plate of food, said, "We are a family, the three of us. And now you also, Herb."

"I may go back to my dome," Herb said. "In the CY3O- CY3OB system."

Staring at him, Elias halted in his eating, forkful of food raised. "Why?"

"I'm uncomfortable here," Herb said. He had not worked it out; his feelings remained vague. But they were intense feelings. "It's oppressive here. There's more of a sense of freedom out there."

"Freedom to lie in your bunk listening to Linda Fox?" Elias said.

"No." He shook his head.

Zina said, "Emmanuel, you scare nim with your talk about afflicting the Earth with fire. He remembers the plagues in the Bible. What happened with Egypt."

"I want to go home," Herb said, simply.