He stayed away from Harper’s lecture room. But, after the first few days, he didn’t stay away from Barton Hall. Deja, he reasoned, had not said he had to stop going to lectures. And Martin loved Barton Hall. He loved its cases filled with rocks. He loved how any time of day that he went into the building, students and instructors would be talking – not always about rocks, but always about something interesting. Even when he had no idea what it meant, which was half the time, (in Barton, the conversations often had to do with math, and he didn’t know enough to follow holders talking math) still he couldn’t stay away. He caught up with the other lectures he had been following, the one in physics, the one in chemistry. These were both large sessions, sixty or seventy students in each, taught by lecturers who didn’t seem to care who was in the room, but he went back to his practice of listening from the corridor all the same. Though he couldn’t attend the labs that went with the lectures, he read the lab postings and tried to see what he was meant to be learning from the sessions. A few days into the week, he went by Deja’s office in Trenton Hall.

Guilt, mainly. He had been avoiding Deja on campus, which he realized as soon as he found himself thinking that visiting Deja might be a way to patch things up. As soon as he thought that, he saw why he had been staying away. He didn’t want to be Deja’s boy, not at the university. Walking along the flagstone path that crossed Trenton’s garden, he mocked himself for that – as if those hadn’t been the first words Harper had stuck to him: Strauss’s contract, aren’t you?

Trenton was a newer building, only two centuries old, its windows tall in the style the architects had been hot for then. No cases packed with dusty artifacts here: tidy holos, shiny etched displays. Deja’s door was open, which meant he was receiving. When Martin knocked on the jamb, he said, “Yes, what is it?” with just the right air of professorial impatience.

Martin smiled. “Just me,” he said, leaning in the door.

Deja brightened. “Hello, love. Come in, have some tea.”

The first kind words Deja had spoken to him in days. Martin entered, congratulating himself. This had been the right move.

Deja’s office, though not as large as Harper’s, had room for a worktable, a sofa, his own tea kit. Martin put the kettle on the hob and spooned the tea into its basket. Holders loved tea. Martin didn’t see its point, unless you planned to dump a bunch of rum in it.

Once the tea was brewed, Martin brought it to the fire. Deja asked what he had been doing that morning. Martin told him, leaving out the lectures – just told about the research he had done. “And I took Lila to the market this morning.”

Deja lifted his eyebrows. “She can’t take herself? What is it, three blocks?”

Martin shrugged. He got up to pour more tea.

“Well?” Deja asked, ill-temper returning to his voice.

“She’s not very old.” This wasn’t the reason. He wasn’t certain how much of the actual reason he could cover – how much Deja was going to understand.

“What does her age have to do with anything? She’s old enough to buy groceries.”

Martin sat down and looked across the tea table at Deja. Lila had been convicted for lack of parental control. Martin had no idea what that meant to Julian holders. Lila didn’t say. So far Lila didn’t say anything much.

“You don’t need to be doing her work as well as your own,” Deja said. “What’s the problem? If it’s too much for her to carry, I can get her a cart.”

“That’s not the deal.” Martin hesitated. It had taken him three days, and conversations with both Pia and Lila, to get even the slightest idea of the problem. “The market holders….”

Deja frowned. “What about them?”

Martin put his feet on the tea table. “She’s contract labor, Deja. She’s sixteen. She’s wandering around with no one at her back.” Martin glanced up. “She’s not exactly pretty, true, but she ain’t break mirrors, either.”

Deja frowned, affronted. This possibility had not occurred to him, Martin saw.

Martin shrugged. “If I go with her, they leave her alone. If Pia goes,” he added, “they do, a bit, but not so much, cause he’s old and kind of goofy looking, and also if he goes he can’t get breakfast out on time. If you ain’t mind, I’ll deal.”

Deja was scowling.

“It’s not every morning,” Martin said. “Maybe twice a week. If Pia plans right.”

Deja kept scowling. “They don’t harass you?”

This was actually a good question, better than he had expected out of Deja. Martin smiled at him. “They do, in fact. But I know what to do about it. Lila ain’t. Once she’s hung with me a couple months, she will. Then I can stop taking her.”

“Who are these holders? Do you want me to speak to them?”

“Deja, they’re dirt farmers. Please.” He drank his tea. “Let me handle it.”

Deja looked disgruntled. Martin changed the subject. “When are you going home?”

Deja checked his wall. “About an hour.”

“Can I lie up here? Walk home with you?”

This made Deja happy, as Martin had meant it should. “Yes,” Deja said. “Do.”

“You can work, I mean. I won’t bother you.”

“You never bother me, sweetness.” Deja ruffled his hair on his way back to his desk.