Fiona vaulted out of the boat before it even touched the deck of the ship 
and vanished. She had repatterned her dress, ditching the chintzy flowered 
pattern for basic white, and skipped off into the darkness, her integral tiara 
glowing like a halo. Hackworth took a slow turn around the deck, watching his 
fellow-tribesmen trying to solve the following problem: get close enough to 
another couple to recognize them without getting so close that they can 
recognize you. From time to time, couples recognized each other simultaneously 
and had to say something: the women tittered wickedly, and the
men laughed from their bellies and called each other scoundrels, the words 
glancing off the deckplates and burying themselves in the fog like arrows fired 
into a bale of cotton.