Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End by Glen Cook

She had been playing body games all week. He supposed she was holding out in hopes lust would make him propose. She was going to be disappointed. He was not seventeen.
    The tactic did not bode well for their relationship. There was no future in any relationship where one party practiced extortion upon the other. No one endured that for long. And benRabi had had his fill of it from Alyce, way back when.
    Was this why he was so reluctant? Because Amy came on like a spoiled child?
    Why did he resist it? If he was to make a life here he had to surrender to the culture. This one had scant tolerance for prolonged bachelorhoods.
    Older singles tended to get shoved beyond the social fringes. He was out there now. And Mouse, for all the charm he exuded, was slipping too. The ladies were not buzzing round so much anymore. He had made it too clear that he was available for good times only, not for long times and old-style fidelity.
    If Amy was the best available, why not?
    Part of it was habit. He had been a loner for too long, caught up in a profession where responsibilities to anyone else made a deadly liability. That was why, through mission after mission, he had fought his growing friendship for Mouse.
    He had failed at that, and Mouse had too. They saw so little of one another nowadays . . . That was a pity. Just when they had given in to it, life had taken a twist and spun them along separate paths.
    That would end with his transfer to Security, wouldn’t it?
    “There’s a bright side to everything, I guess,” he murmured.
    Thinking about Mouse, he remembered their last evening together. He could have sworn Mouse had been hinting that he should do something about Amy. It was a damned conspiracy!
    Why the hell would Mouse want him married? Mouse did not believe in the institution.
    He should take the plunge. But not too soon. He could not let Amy get the idea that she could manipulate him.
    He sat with his head in his hands, scurrying around the slot-tracks of an uncertain mind. The tracks did not always follow sane routes. There were moments when he did not know who or where he was. Sometimes he did not understand what was happening, or why. Sometimes he woke up thinking he was back on The Broken Wings, or in Luna Command. There had been a night when he had called Amy Max while they were making love . . . And a time when he had thought she was Greta . . . Frightening though they were, those had been isolated incidents. So far.
    He and Amy made love fiercely, desperately.
    She started getting dressed immediately afterward. “What’s going on?” he asked.
    “You forgot? We’re supposed to have supper with the Sheik and his harem.”
    “One thing I’m going to tell you right now, woman. And you better understand it. That man’s my friend. Learn to fly with it.” He had forgotten the dinner. Completely. There wasn’t a ghost of memory to be found anywhere in his head.
    They joined Mouse and his shrinking clutch of dollies an hour later. BenRabi found his eye roving. Mouse had several honeys he would not mind topping himself. He dared not let Amy notice him looking. Any woman who got that jealous of a male friend . . . 
    This affair is headed for trouble, he thought.
    Kindervoort appeared suddenly.
    Jarl Kindervoort was a tall, lean man who reminded benRabi of Don Quixote, or the Pale Imperator in Czyzewski’s novel, His Banners Bright And Golden. Like Amy, and most Danion Seiners, he was pale, blond, and blue-eyed. BenRabi liked him as a person and found him physically repulsive. It was a combination he did not comprehend.
    He did not quite understand Kindervoort’s position in the Danion scheme either. Kindervoort was, apparently, Amy’s immediate superior. Amy was only a Lieutenant, a low-grade officer, yet her boss seemed to speak for Danion’s whole Security force. The ship had a population matching that of a fair-sized city. Could the police force be that small?
    Kindervoort had high cheekbones