9
IT TOOK MELATI a long time to go to sleep.
She lay staring at the ceiling, listening for sounds of fighting from elsewhere in the B sector, listening for Ari to open the door and tell her that Rina was home and asleep.
Ari was right, Rina wasn’t stupid, and she was much too old to be a prime target for the smugglers. Susanti and the other sixteen-year-olds were the ones they were after. The ones for whom white, foreign men still held allure.
Still, what had Rina been doing with a man in istel uniform? Was it necessarily bad that she seemed fascinated with pilots? Rina had never shown a sign of wanting to leave the station, either alone or as a bought wife.
She tossed and turned, heard the hum of the tethers reconfiguring during the BC shift cycle, and wondered if she should give up
