It wasn't that way with the rest of the planet, of course. Bluefall was one of the most beautiful planets in the Verge, possibly one of the most beautiful worlds anywhere on which humans and their associate species lived. It had received its share of tragedies and difficulties over its history, but the friendly climatic range, the buoyant economy, and the fact that the place was at peace kept bringing more colonists to take advantage of the world's bounty.It had become a rather crowded place, of course. There were something like four hundred and thirty million people from all species here now, and every stellar nation had at least one island here. Beyond those, though, away from the big, long-settled islands like Hughes, maybe three thousand islands lay scattered in small chains or long ones, as accessible or inaccessible as their settlers chose to make them. Tisane, near Stricken, was one of the more accessible islands that nonetheless was known by almost no one but its immediate neighbors. This was emphatically one of the uncrowded places. There were a few other small ships and hoppers parked on the pad, but that was all.Pushing the memories aside for now, Gabriel walked down the single paved road that connected Tisane's landing pad to the rest of the island. He looked at the houses as he went. Almost all of them were the same, built and shingled in local woods and composites. Here and there a lot was empty, the house that had stood there most likely fallen victim to one of the vicious hurricanes that came through here every decade or so—the price you paid for living in a place so casual, so relatively unregulated. Stricken had been settled by Hatire people, and some of them had come over this way, but only a few of them remained here now. Most of the population was human, but there were a few fraal scattered here and there as well. The island had a school, to which Gabriel had gone until he hit the secondary level, and then he had to catch a hopper over to Stricken and back every day. Now he found himself wondering how many children were left here, or whether there were any at all.Gabriel walked through the shade of the big tropical alaith trees, which towered up on either side of the dusty main road with their pale peeling bark and big blue-green fronds edged with red. The place was very quiet. This was the hot part of the day, and many people rested or worked inside until the sun became a little more tolerable.Gabriel walked. He was shocked by how different everything seemed even though it was all the same. Everything looks. wrong somehow, he thought.When he had been here last, he had been young and innocent. Now it amazed him just how innocent he had been, and how certain that the world was going to go well for him now that he was a Concord Marine. None of that certainty clung to him now. The Marines had shaken him out as a criminal, and the world had proved more complex and nasty than he had ever suspected. Probably nastier than I suspect even now, Gabriel thought. The uncaring forces that moved people around like gaming pieces, him in particular, were doing it more aggressively than ever. His increased consciousness of being so moved had not improved matters. The world that once had been clean and cheerful and exciting now looked to him like just another beautiful untruth laid over a substrate of intricate motion and countermotion, interwoven plots, inadequately understood motivations, and endless traps set by those who were in on the secret for those who weren't.Gabriel stopped in the sunlight and took a few deep breaths to try to calm his nerves. He was at the top of the little rise that divided the island in two, the hump over which the road crossed. From here he could look down to see the little house, still all by itself down at the very end of their town's street, with more of the alaith trees all around it, and up in those trees the whitetails singing "beewee," "beewee," "beewee," interminably as always.Nothing had really changed. Nothing.I have, though, Gabriel thought. It was very strange to stand here, being where he had been and who he had been for the last year and more—and yet see everything else here exactly as it had been when he left, as if time had stood still. Down in the cove, the blue water glittered. The fronds and leaves of the trees moved gently in the wind, and everything was very quiet, but the disconnected feeling, as if everything was somehow out of joint, would not go away.Gabriel walked down to that little house with its broad roof and low eaves. He went up the front steps, carefully, and touched the door signal set into the wood of the shut door.He waited.No answer.He pressed the signal again, not wanting to seem too urgent. Then it occurred to him. Of course he's not going to be here, Gabriel thought, starting to become annoyed at himself and at his own obtuseness. It's the middle of the day. He's off at work.He turned away from the door, grimacing at his own stupidity. I can't believe I did this, he thought. Nice move, Connor. Just admit it to yourself, you don't want to see him, not really, and you set it up for yourself so that you wouldn't. You didn't even—The door opened.Rorke Connor, his father, stood there looking at him, looking hard, and with an expression of puzzlement—the look you give a stranger on your doorstep for the first time.He doesn't want me to be here; he's pretending not to know me, was the first thought to flash through Gabriel's mind, followed by another: he doesn't really know me. I'm too changed—Gabriel's insides squeezed painfully. He had been gutshot in his time, but to his shock, he found that this hurt worse.And then his father rushed at him. Oh, gods, he's really angry, Gabriel thought in desperation. He doesn't want me here—Gabriel actually backed away a step, but his father's arms were thrown around him in a fierce grip, and the old man was saying in a broken, ragged voice, "Where have you been, you idiot, where have you been?"His father was actually shaking him, whether more in rage or relief, Gabriel had trouble telling. "What have they done to you?" his father cried, holding Gabriel away from him and staring at him. "What did they.?"Gabriel could only blink and had to do it a lot for a few moments. "No," he said finally, "it's nothing they did, Papa, it's just. They didn't make the hair go white. That's not their fault."All around them, the whitetails were singing their two notes with insane conviction. His father was holding him away, looking at him. "You're older," he said, bemused, as if this should somehow be news."Not that much older," Gabriel said. "Papa, can we go in? The neighbors are going to stare.""Let them stare," his father said fiercely. "Had enough of them, this last year. Would have moved, except it would have given them something they wanted, the—" He shut his mouth on numerous things he plainly wanted to call them. "Come on, son, come in."They went in from the porch through the narrow front hallway and into the living room. It was all the same, except that somehow it looked bigger than it had when he'd left. I would have thought it'd be the other way around, Gabriel thought, but then he had been spending so much time in enclosed spaces over the last few years—first his Marine carrier, then jail on Phorcys, then Sunshine—that a normal house looked ridiculously roomy. His father pointed him at the big four-person lounger, which hadn't changed since he left. Everything—the artwork on the walls, the light fixtures, the place where the wall-surfacing was cracking a little over the door to the kitchen—looked almost too familiar, too prosaic, like a room where someone used to live, which is being kept for them just as it was when they were last there, against all hope that they might return.