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  She supposed she should be grateful that Gerald wanted to talk to her at all. Since she had shocked conservative Goshe n with her eye-witness report of the prostie scandal, more than one old friend and neighbor had stopped speaking to her. Even Aunt Minnie had disowned her after hearing where she had been and what she had been up to for the two and a half months she'd been gone. Sadie had never been really close to her aunt but the old lady was the nearest thing Sadie had to a parent and her rejection hurt more than she cared to think about. Hurt even more than the snide remarks and half-heard whispers behind her back when she walked down the streets of her old neighborhood.

  It did no good whatsoever to explain that she had only gone undercover to get the story and had not actually serviced any clients in her role as a prostie-borg. People in Goshen were narrow-minded and disposed to believe the worst. Everywhere she went, Sadie felt like she ought to be wearing a scarlet letter tattooed on her forehead. It was funny, actually, that her fellow Goshenites were condemning her just for doing her job when she had done much worse things on her 'two and a half month mission of depravity', as Aunt Minnie had called it, than wear the skimpy prostie-outfits and spend time in a brothel. If only they knew what I really did, I'd probably be run right out of the colony, she thought more than once.

  But despite rejection at home, her career was really taking off. As Holt had promised, she had the only eye-witness account of the whole scandal and the news-vids had fallen all over each other to buy her story. It seemed like a dream but she actually had been nominated for a Solar Pulitzer in journalism. Sadie had found out only the week before and she had wanted to tell someone. Calling Gerald, however, had turned out to be a bad mistake. He had somehow gotten it into his head that she wanted to get back together and all his talk of 'old friends' aside, Sadie knew he was really angling for a date. In the past she might have gone out with him and given the relationship another shot but not now. Not after all that had happened to her while she had been away.

  It was ironic, Sadie thought, that all her professional dreams were coming true while her personal life crumbled away. She even had a job offer on the table to be a correspondent for the New New York Times. Since the NNYT was the most prestigious and respected news vid-mag in the System, Sadie felt extremely lucky. Accepting the job would mean leaving Io and relocating to Old Earth, of course, but she had decided to take it anyway. After all, what did she have to hold her to this narrow-minded, Goddess-forsaken moon anymore? Nothing, not a thing, Sadie told herself. And Old Earth was where all the power and money and opportunity was. That was where her future was now. Of course her decision had nothing to do with the fact that Blakely and Holt were stationed there. Nothing at all. In fact, she barely ever thought of them anymore and she was sure they never thought of her since they never bothered to call…

  Don't think about it, she commanded herself. It was months ago and now it's over— completely, irrevocably over. The bond was gone, she was sure of that. She no longer felt any emotions but her own inside her head, no one else's pain hurt her, no one else's need filled her with longing, no one else's love surrounded her and made her feel safe and wanted … Sadie sighed and dragged herself out of the chair to finish packing her things. She had never thought she could be so damn lonely inside her own skin. Had never thought she could miss feeling someone else's emotions in the back of her mind.

  She didn't have any romantic notions that she would 'run into' Blakely or Holt when she moved to Old Earth. After all, it was a huge place, not a little backwater nothing of a colony like Goshen. She could probably live there in the big, dirty city of New New York and never see them once for the rest of her life. If one or both of them had called her, even once, she might have at least let them know she was coming. But she had heard nothing from them in six months, not since they had dropped her off on Io with a final hug from each and Sadie was forced to conclude that they considered the brief love affair to be over too.

  Of course, she had made no move to contact them either but then, it was the man's, or in this case, the men's job to make contact; at least to her way of thinking. The ball was in their court and they had done nothing with it. It hurt her pride to admit it but Sadie had begun to think that maybe she was just one of many. Maybe they picked up women everywhere they went. Maybe the whole story about having to have the right brain chemistry was just that—just a big story to make her feel special so she'd agree to be with them the way they wanted her to.

  Sadie sighed again as she threw clothing haphazardly into a standard sized compression cube which gobbled up whatever she gave it and compressed the article into a square-inch sized parcel that could be easily packed. The cube had been expensive to rent but it would save her money on transport fares in the long run. Sadie figured she could probably bring her entire wardrobe along in one small suit-pack. Her pictures and other personal items would be shipped on a carrier which was cheaper than taking them along on the expensive star-freighter she herself was riding. The NNYT was paying for her passage but her relocation costs were up to her.

  Sure wish I had somebody to meet me at the port … Sadie nipped that thought in the bud. Despite their failure to call her, she had considered calling Blakely and Holt on the vid-screen and just letting them know that she would be in town. Seeing if they wanted to remain friends at least. A hundred times in the last six months she had punched in their number and then hit the cancel button. Because what if she placed the call and a woman answered the phone? What if they had only been using her to get what they wanted and now they had moved on? Sadie couldn't bear the thought.

  Besides, even if there is no new girl and they did agree to be friends, I could never be just friends with those two. Not while she remembered so well the warm, electrical current, the golden fire that had flowed between the three of them. How could she ever be around Blakely and Holt and not long for that? Not wish for the utter total completion that had been so close each time she made love to one of them? There was no way she could withstand the temptation to form a Life-bond with them if they spent any significant amount of time together. And that would be so bad why? She quashed the thought firmly as she did whenever it occurred to her but it had been coming back more and more lately.

  Once upon a time she had thought she was too moral, too purely Goshen to think of the kind of lifestyle a Life-bond with Blakely and Holt would involve. It wasn't like she'd ever be able to take them home and show them off as her husbands, after all. If she tried a thing like that … well, they still had Stoning laws on the books in Goshen for extreme cases of immorality. Sadie had a feeling that flaunting a polygamous marriage might fall under that heading pretty easily. At the very least she knew they wouldn't be welcome in Aunt Minnie's house, the house where she had grown up from the age of twelve.

  But she was already a social outcast in Goshen. Aunt Minnie already wasn't talking to her. And Sadie was having a harder and harder time remembering why she had felt so shocked and horrified at what Blakely and Holt had proposed to her in the first place. Because I'm not that kind of girl. The little voice mocked her now. Obviously she was that kind of girl or she wouldn't keep thinking about it.

  It's been six months and you're moving to Old Earth to start an exciting new career, Sadie told herself sternly. It's time to put the past behind you and move onwards and upwards. She threw the last article of clothing into the compression cube and watched it shrink into an impossibly small shape. New life, here I come! And she was almost happy.

  Chapter 21

  “Yes, dahling, your first assignment will be the trial. You've missed most of it I'm afraid, but the sentencing is today so you won't miss that at least.”

  Sadie looked at her new Senior Editor. Prissy De Tangelen was a wasp-waisted fortyish bleached blond with an old-fashioned pair of real glass spectacles perched on her knife-blade of a nose. She was wearing a tight, flesh-colored dress that became completely see-through at some angles. The daring dress made Sadie feel frumpy in her brand new cob