21
As the night wore on, there was starlight in the large window and most of the tables had been cleared by serving bots. Candlelight now provided a relaxing atmosphere with most other sources of illumination having been dimmed.
“You can't be serious.”
That came from Tellin, a young man in a gray, high-collared shirt who sat hunched over with his arms folded on the table. All Anna could see was the top of his black-haired head. “You gave her a name?”
He looked up at them, bleary-eyed and trying to fight off the haze that came from imbibing too much alcohol. “You gave your symbiont a name,” he slurred. “I thought that Keepers didn'…do that.”
Jack was smiling into a glass filled with fizzy blue liquid, a Stellar Cascade unless she missed her guess. “Why wouldn't I give her a name?” he a
