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and front yards of her neigh-bors going twilight-shadowed, some of their lawn sprinklers spitting
rhythmically along now that night was coming on. Faintly, from down nearer the Boulevard, came shouts
and laughter of children from the Belleclaires' back yard, fol-lowed by a splash: a pool party running late.
Lee took a few long breaths and tried to recover some kind of feeling that this was the real world—that
indeed most of the world was like this, at peace with itself, running not too badly, all things considered. It
was too easy to forget the peace in the face of the work she did every day, where most of her attention
was bent on the aftereffects of rage, cruelty, violence. Re-grounding herself in a world that wasn't all
about the less positive side of the many humani-ties was never easy, but she had to make sure she did it
every day, or at least tried.
Now Lee made her way slowly up her front walk, re-solving yet again to do something about the lawn,
which had been coming down with brown patches, and also to call somebody about the cracked third
slab from the front porch, which someday would at least trip her, if not the milkman, thus causing her an
unwanted expedition into accident/injury law. Lee paused by the porch steps to bend down and examine
one of the two skinny, scrawny rosebushes that stood to either side of the end of the walk. One of them
had a single, wizened pink rose on it, half-open. This was some-thing of an event, for in spite of Lee
spending recent months trying every kind of pruning, and every kind of fertilizer, until now the rosebushes
had refused to do anything but pro-duce leaves and an abundance of thorns.
"Hey, good for you," she said, touching the outermost petals of the opening flower. Several of the petals
had al-ready had a hole chewed in them by some kind of bug, but Lee still had to smile at this small
triumph. She bent down, sniffed, found no fragrance there. "Never mind," she said, "you're just getting
started..."
As she walked up the steps with Mikki's report under her arm, the house unlatched the front door for
her. It was old, wood with three small glass windows, more trouble to take care of than a door made of
one of the more modern armored laminates. But Lee liked it: it was of a piece with the rest of the
bungalow, dating back to the middle of the last cen-tury—solid, a little clunky. The shades in the front
and side windows rotated themselves into evening configuration as she stepped into the bookshelf-lined
living room, and the lights came on for her, gleaming off the polished floorboards that had cost her so
much time and sweat to strip, sand, and finish. Lee closed the door, slipped her jacket off and tossed it
onto the brown leather sofa, and headed into the kitchen. There she paused for a moment, considering
what she wanted for dinner. She briefly thought of making some pasta from scratch, orecchielle or
something of the kind, but then dismissed the idea—it would take too much fiddly kneading for her
present mood. Lee spoke open the sliding doors that led out onto the deck and started work on dinner.
She spread Mikki's report out on the breakfast bar be-tween her kitchen and dining area, glancing down
at its pages while moving back and forth between the cooker and the fridge. Outside, the warm colors of
the western sky cooled down to evening blues as Lee sauteed some mush-rooms in olive oil, fished
ground beef out of the freezer, stuck it into the fridge's "active" compartment, and told the fridge to
defrost it. She spent a while paging through the re-port, then went for the hamburger and crumbled it into
the pan. While stirring it, Lee turned a page of the report, then went to get herself a glass of wine and
came back to that page. It featured no graphs, but the word "recidivism" in a section heading caught her
eye.
—numerous repeat offenses by Alfen individuals whom evidence indicates have committed similar
offenses in other jurisdictions. Additionally some repeat offenders have been assisted in escaping
custody by persons unknown and have reappeared in jurisdictions, especially in Xaihon, where
ex-tradition is either problematic or impossible due to lack of local planetary political recognition
of such "umbrella" structures as the Five-Geneva Pact. The conclusion that or-ganized crime is
involved in such escapes is supported only by circumstantial evidence, but cannot be discarded...
Lee turned away and went looking for some garlic. The same people, she thought, finding the garlic safe
empty: she sighed and went rooting in the spice rack on the counter for some garlic powder. But who
are they? She dosed the pan with the powdered garlic and stirred for a few moments more, then found a
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