Scene 3
Kate Ukrainka, a woman in her sixties with grey curls in a knitted cardigan, at a small wooden table with both hands round a mug, half-smiling toward the window. A closed notebook and a pen lie by her hand, a potted plant stands on the sill, bookshelves crowd the wall, and the wide window looks onto the green curving interior of an orbital habitat.

Kate Ukrainka (Human)

Time
2827 UCSD, Early Summer
Location
Eden Space Habitat, Deck 7 Galley, Detective Bureau and the transfer dock

The boy came past her table on the way home with the cat over his shoulder, and the cat looked at her with the unrepentant face of an animal who has been found and does not consider this to have been in doubt.

He did not stop. He raised a hand, spare as a much older person, and she raised hers.

Behind him, at a distance a child would not notice and an author could not help noticing, came the rabbit, going back to her tray, looking at nobody. Kate watched her the whole length of the galley. Then she opened the notebook she had closed an hour before and did not write anything in it, and was aware, for the first time in some years, of the difference between not writing a thing down and not having anything to write.

There is a cat in her quarters. It still has no name. She went home the long way and did not decide anything, and knew the difference between that and last week, too.

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