Pretty Faces, Foolish Hearts

"So," Capitaine Elienne Desorlay said, tapping a cigarette free from the pack she held. "I talked to your podder friend."

Lieutenant Charles Etay regarded her mildly. "Which one?"

Which one. Fortune fuck me, it's come to that, when my partner has to ask 'which one' about the podders he knows. "The fruit one."

"Amieta."

"Yeah." The lighter caught on the third click and Elienne busied herself with getting the end of her cigarette burning, not least to have a reason not to look at Etay right at that moment.  First name terms ... Somewhere in the back of her mind was a vague conviction that there were things it was better not to call by name.

In case they hear you.

And come.

 "Why were you talking to Amieta?" Etay asked.

Elienne glanced up at him, trying to read his expression. No luck. Whatever Etay was thinking was hidden behind an expression of such studied neutrality it could have done double-duty as the Yulai Accords. "I haven't had much luck talking to you, have I?"

A slight thinning of the lips, that got her, a downward glance. That was all. "Eli ..."

She flicked ash from the end of her cigarette. "Relax, farmboy.  I should've told her you've a string of girlfriends and a suspicious rash and to keep her sister out of your way, but I guess I'm going soft in my old age.  I told her you deserved better than to be some capsuleer's pretty plaything for a week, and she didn't argue."

Etay sighed. "Eli ..."

"She seems to like you, for some reason.  Said you were solid, which shows she's not a fool." Elienne exhaled smoke. "Thinks you're smart, too, so her judgement's not that good."

Etay blinked as the smoke drifted into his face.  "And what else did you two discuss?"

"This'n'that," Elienne said, and shrugged.  "She said she wanted her sister to be happy, closer to a normal  human emotion I ever would have thought a capsuleer would have, and I don't think she'd look kindly on anyone made her sister unhappy, so you watch yourself, farmboy. You hear?"

"Watch myself?"

Elienne dropped her cigarette to the ground and trod on it. "Yeah.  She thinks you might be good for the girl.  Something about her having a bad time." She snorted. "Guess all that murdering was rough on her."

"I think maybe it wasn't quite like you're thinking it was," Etay said, his slightly hoarse voice even quieter than usual.

"I think maybe it wasn't quite like you're thinking it was, farmboy, but that's beside the point," Elienne said. "The point is, much as you've made yourself an annoyance to this woman, she did her best to sell me on the idea that this girl you've got moon-eyes for, and don't insult me by pretending you don't, that this girl isn't a walking plasma-leak of trouble for a boy like you."

Etay looked at her sideways with his usual faint smile of wry amusement. At me, at the absurdity of a cop and a podder playing at matchmaking like two old ladies in one of Krenshaw's stories, at the Cluster, maybe. Or all of them.  "And?"


Elienne shrugged. "She wants you to get to know her sister, you want to get to know her sister, you're pretty enough not to need any more help than that. Just ... watch yourself, Charlie.  These pilots, they might seem like normal people, but ..."

He studied her. "She's just a girl, Eli."

"A pretty girl," Elienne corrected, and saw the faint color rise in Etay's cheeks, and sighed.

Pretty faces.


Foolish hearts.

That's where all the trouble starts. 

Podders or not.