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"Are you all right?"
She felt his breath like the breeze of a beloved garden and felt safe, felt at home. "You looked for me."
"Novinha, I came as soon as I could. Mother's finally asleep. Pipinho, my older brother, he's with her now, and the Arbiter has things under control, and I--"
"You should have known I could take care of myself," she said.
A moment's silence, and then his voice again, angry this time, angry and desperate and weary, weary as age and entropy and the death of the stars. "As God sees me, Ivanova, I didn't come to take care of you."
Something closed inside her; she had not noticed the hope she felt until she lost it.
"You told me that Father discovered something in a simulation of yours. That he expected me to be able to figure it out myself. I thought you had left the simulation on the terminal, but when I went back to the station it was off."
"Was it?"
"You know it was, Nova, nobody but you could cancel the program. I have to see it."
"Why?"
He looked at her in disbelief. "I know you're sleepy, Novinha, but surely you've realized that whatever Father discovered in your simulation, that was what the piggies killed him for."
She looked at him steadily, saying nothing. He had seen her look of cold resolve before.
"Why aren't you going to show me? I'm the Zenador now, I have a right to know."
"You have a right to see all of your father's files and records. You have a right to see anything I've made public."
"Then make this public."
Again she said nothing.
"How can we ever understand the piggies if we don't know what it was that Father discovered about them?" She did not answer. "You have a responsibility to the Hundred Worlds, to our ability to comprehend the only alien race still alive. How can you sit there and--what is it, do you want to figure it out yourself? Do you want to be first? Fine, be first, I'll put your name on it, Ivanova Santa Catarina von Hesse--"
"I don't care about my name."
"I can play this game, too. You can't figure it out without what I know, either--I'll withhold my files from you, too!"
"I don't care about your files."
It was too much for him. "What do you care about then? What are you trying to do to me?" He took her by the shoulders, lifted her out of her chair, shook her, screamed in her face. "It's my father they killed out there, and you have the answer to why they killed him, you know what the simulation was! Now tell me, show me!"
"Never," she whispered.
His face was twisted in agony. "Why not!" he cried.
"Because I don't want you to die."
She saw comprehension come into his eyes. Yes, that's right, Libo, it's because I love you, because if you know the secret, then the piggies will kill you, too. I don't care about science, I don't care about the Hundred Worlds or relations between humanity and an alien race. I don't care about anything at all as long as you're alive.
The tears finally leapt from his eyes, tumbled down his cheeks. "I want to die," he said.
"You comfort everybody else," she whispered. "Who comforts you?"
"You have to tell me so I can die."
And suddenly his hands no longer held her up; now he clung to her so she was supporting him. "You're tired," she whispered, "but you can rest."
"I don't want to rest," he murmured. But still he let her hold him, let her draw him away from the terminal.
