The silence stretched out thinner and thinner.

“You have never told the story,” he guessed. That worry-line of his had faded in between his eyes.

Against her will, she nodded. “I did. At the trial.”

“How did you begin?”

She closed her eyes, started to cover them, and Tagen took hold of her wrists and forced them gently to the tabletop.

“How did you begin?” he asked again and would not let her look away from him.

“I was working at Kruegar and Lauder,” she said at last, because she could not think of any other way to start. “Shipping company. I was an export sales representative.” She started to try and find some way to explain these words to him, but realized that it made no difference to either of them. She went on. “I was living with a man, someone I worked with. His name was Dan Fiennes. We were talking about getting married, maybe. Maybe having kids. He said he loved me.”

She fell silent, trying to remember that, how that felt. It was funny how time and trauma combined to sponge out the best moments of a person’s life. She knew those days had once been real to her, but was unable now to recall any of the warmth and hope he’d inspired in her. What she remembered best in this moment was that Dan had hated the commute from her house, a forty-minute drive in the morning that could easily turn into two hours coming home in the right strain of rush hour. He wanted to move. She wanted to stay. He liked the city. She liked the woods. All those strings of little half-fights that so easily turned into make-up sex and simmering exasperation. But he’d said he loved her. She only wished she could still remember that.

Tagen let her be for several minutes, but as her gaze began to drift unhappily back to her hands, he squeezed her wrists to bring her back to him. “You worked at Kruegar and Lauder,” he pressed.

“And they hired someone,” she continued, and sighed. “A man named Traynor Polidori. When they asked him if he’d ever been arrested, he said yes. When they asked what for, he said stealing from a clothing store. I guess they were so impressed with his honesty that they never bothered to check and see if he was actually telling the truth.”

Tagen nodded and leaned back, his hands slipping from hers to fold together. He had never looked more like a cop to her than he did right then. It was as though he already knew everything she was about to tell him, and everything she wouldn’t. “What was the truth?”

“That he killed a woman ten years earlier. Tortured and raped and then killed her.”

Tagen nodded once, slowly, almost to himself. “His crime was not discovered?”

“Sure it was. He was even sent to prison. For about three years.”

Tagen’s brows knotted with the same hesitance he showed when he suspected his English wasn’t keeping up with hers. But when he spoke, he astonished her by saying, “Not guilty…by reason of insanity?”

Daria gaped at him, and then laughed a little. “I forget, you watch Law & Order all day. But you’re right, that’s what they said.” She started to pick up the thread of her monologue, but dropped it to ask, “What would have happened to him on your planet?”

Tagen’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment she didn’t think he would let her escape from her story. But in the end, he said, “Our doctors have ways of determining whether or not mental defect is present, and our people are tested routinely in their youth. It is unlikely Traynor Polidori could have escaped detection for so long, but it does happen…although never more than once. Traynor Polidori would have been chemically corrected and fit with a monitoring device for a probationary period after his first victim. If no such mental defect were found, he would have been imprisoned.”

“Forever?” she asked.

“For a crime of such violence, yes. There is an option given for self-termination at any time.” Tagen shrugged. “Seldom employed at first, but I am told it becomes popular after forty years or so.”

“No one ever comes out of jail?” Daria asked. “No time off for good behavior? Ever?”

“It is the behavior prior to prisoning that our judges concern themselves with.” Tagen shifted in his chair. “We do not permit what you call appeal. Trials are swift and exacting. Prisons are constructed around lifeless worlds which provide the prison’s only heat and light. The prisoners are responsible for maintaining the growth of their own food, and unmanned supply ships are sent on a regular schedule to make up for any inadequacies. The supply ships irradiate their interior upon leaving the prison, making escape by that route impossible. Sentry-satellites monitor the prisons at all times for disturbances and wardens stationed in synchronous orbit keep watch over the readings. Their main function is to implement repairs when necessary, but they are all well-armored and armed. Our policy is that any prison forced to lock down by riot must be destroyed immediately. We have never needed to do so, I think, because it is so well-known, but there stands the sum and substance of our attitude toward violent criminals.”

Now it was Tagen’s turn to drop his eyes. He looked away toward the window, but not through it. His claws tapped lightly over the table. “I have heard a thing said on this video program you so despise. It was said, ‘Our system is based on the principle that it is better that twenty criminals go free than send one innocent man to prison.’” His voice softened as he recited, but strengthened, as though he paid tribute to the words with the speaking of them.

“I admire that,” he said, and turned back to her, his eyes burning with emotion. “I would like to make these words my own. I feel the power of them, the virtue. It is a good, honorable thing to take for principle. It has given you a world of freedom and liberty…and Traynor Polidori. And so I admire those words, but I will not take them back with me to Jota. In our prisons, there must be many innocent men…but there are few criminals on our streets.”

“E’Var and his crew excepted, of course,” she said, almost smiling.

He almost smiled back at her. “I did say ‘few’, did I not? Not none, but few. And it is perhaps worth observing that E’Var did not operate his crimes on-world.”

“Have you ever had a jailbreak?”

Tagen paused again before answering, and this time, the pause was longer. Finally, he said, “I think I take your meaning, and the answer is no. There are no…what your media call escape pods on prisons, and no tools for the building of one. There have been many escapes by the condemned, such as E’Var, and like E’Var’s, all occurred in transit. Transport of prisoners is a dangerous, unstable business, especially when the use of a Gate is required. And for lesser crimes,” he added, looking thoughtful, “certain behavior modification and monitoring, although less effective at preventing repeat offenders, has sufficed. There is crime on Jota. There are killings and there are many chemists and smugglers who deal in violence as part of off-world trade, but there are none on Jota like this Traynor Polidori, who kill and are imprisoned and released to kill again.”

Mechanically, Daria said, “Polidori didn’t kill me.”

Tagen looked at her, his eyes tinged for the first time with pity. “You think not?” he said.

She could not look at him, or think of any way to answer.

She heard him sigh. “Daria…”

She didn’t want to hear anything that came after that. “He started to follow me,” she said loudly. “Polidori. He found out where I lived and what I did, where I went and on what days. He got ready, and on the day Dan and I used to go to dinner, he followed us. I had clams that night,” she remembered suddenly, and sat back, surprised at herself. “They tasted like they came from a can. I tasted it all night. I’ve never been able to eat them since.”

They really had been terrible clams, tinny and rubbery, made bitter by too much wine in the sauce. She’d eaten all the breadsticks and most of Dan’s pilaf, trying to make light of it, teasing each other about picking up some burgers on the way home, and the whole time, Polidori had sat in his car in the parking lot, watching through the tinted window.