A black shoe with a sharply pointed toe tapped impatiently on the polyp. “Joshua Calvert, you have spent over eleven months gallivanting around the universe, without, I might point out, sending me a single memory flek to say how you were getting on.”

“Yes. Sorry. Busy, you see.” Jesus, but he wanted to rip that dress off. She looked ten times more sexy than she did when he replayed the neural nanonic memories. And everywhere he went people were talking about the new young Lord of Ruin. Their fantasy figure was his girl. It just made her all the more desirable.

“So where’s my present?”

He almost did it, he almost said: “I’m your present.” But even as he started grinning he felt that little spike of anxiety inside. He didn’t want anything to foul up this reunion. Besides, she was only a kid, she needed him. So best to leave off the crappy jokes. “Oh, that,” he murmured.

Sea-blue eyes hardened. “Joshua!”

He twisted the catch on his shoulder-bag. She pulled it open eagerly. The sailu blinked at the light, looking up at her with eyes that were completely black and stupendously appealing.

They were described as living gnomes by the first people to see them, thirty centimetres fully grown, with black and white fur remarkably similar to a terrestrial panda. On their home world, Oshanko, they were so rare they were kept exclusively in an imperial reserve. Only the Emperor’s children were allowed to have them as pets. Cloning and breeding programmes were an anathema to the imperial court, they lived by natural selection alone. No official numbers of their population were given, but strong rumour suggested there were less than two thousand of them left.

Despite the bipedal shape, they had a very different skeleton and musculature to terrestrial anthropoids. There were no elbows or knees, their limbs bent along their whole length, making their movements incredibly ponderous. They were herbivores, and, if official AV recordings of the Emperor’s family were to be believed, clingingly affectionate.

Ione covered her mouth with one hand, eyes alight with incredulity. The creature was about twenty centimetres high. “It’s a sailu,” she said dumbly.

“Yes.”

She put a hand into the bag, extending one finger. The sailu reached for it in a graceful slow motion, deliciously silky fur stroked against her knuckle. “But only the Emperor’s children are supposed to have these.”

“Emperor, Lord—what’s the difference? I got it because I thought you’d like it.”

The sailu had clambered upright, still holding itself against her finger. Its flat wet nose sniffed her. “How?” she asked.

Joshua gave her a precocious smile.

“No. I don’t want to know.” She heard a soft crooning, and looked down, only to lose herself in the adoring gaze. “It’s very wicked of you, Joshua. But he’s quite lovely. Thank you.”

“Not sure about the ‘him’. I think there are three or four sexes. There’s not much on them in any reference library. But it does eat lettuce and strawberries.”

“I’ll remember.” She eased her finger from the sailu’s grip.

“So what about my present?” Joshua asked.

Ione struck a pose, tongue licking her lips. “I’m your present.”

They didn’t make it to the bedroom. Joshua got her dress off just inside the door, and in return Ione tugged at his ship-suit seal so hard it broke. The first time was on one of the alcove tables, after that they used the ornate iron stair railings for support, then it was rolling around on the apricot moss carpet.

The bed did get used eventually, after a shower and a bottle of champagne. Hours later, Joshua knew he’d missed the party in Harkey’s Bar, and didn’t much care. Outside the window the light filtering through the water had faded to a dusky green, small orange and yellow fish were looking in at him.

Ione was sitting cross-legged on the rubbery transparent sheet with her back resting against some of the silk cushions. The sailu was snuggled up in her hand as she fed it with the crinkled red and green leaves of a lollo lettuce. It munched them daintily, gazing up at her.

Isn’t he adorable?she said happily.

The sailu genus exhibit a great many anthropomorphic traits which endear them to humans.

I bet you’d be nicer if it wasn’t Joshua who brought him.

Removing the sailu from its home planet is not only in complete contravention of the planetary statutes, it is also a direct personal insult to the Emperor himself. Joshua has put you in an invidious position. A typically thoughtless action on his part.

I won’t tell the Emperor if you won’t.

I was not proposing to tell the Emperor, nor even the Japanese Imperium’s ambassador.

That old fart.

Ione, please, Ambassador Ng is a very senior diplomat. His appointment here is a mark of the Emperor’s respect towards you.

I know.she tickled the sailu under its tiny chin. face and body were both flattish ovals, joined by a short neck. Its legs curved slowly, pressing the torso against her finger.

“I’m going to call him Augustine,” she announced. “That’s a noble name.”

“Great,” Joshua said. He leant over to the side of the bed and pulled the champagne bottle out of its ice bucket. “Flat,” he said, after he tipped some into his glass.

“Proves you have staying power,” she said coyly.

He reached for her left breast, smiling.

“No, don’t,” she moved out of the way. “Augustine’s still feeding. You’ll upset him.”

He lay back, disgruntled.

“Joshua, how long are you staying this time?”

“Couple of weeks. I need to get a contract with Roland Frampton sorted out. Distribution, not a charter. We’re going for a Norfolk run, Ione. We raised a lot of capital on some of our contracts; put that together with what I had left over from scavenging, and we’ll have enough for a cargo of Norfolk Tears. Imagine that! A hold full of the stuff.”

“Really? That’s wonderful, Joshua.”

“Yeah, if I can swing it. Distribution isn’t the problem. Acquisition is. I’ve been talking to some of the other captains. Those Norfolk roseyard-association merchants are tough nuts to crack. They won’t allow a futures market, which is pretty smart of them actually. It would be dominated by offworld finance houses. You have to show up with a ship and the cash, and even then it’s not a certainty you’ll get any bottles. You need a pretty reliable contact in the trade.”

“But you’ve never been there, you don’t have any contacts.”

“I know. First-time captains need a cargo to sell, a part-exchange deal. You’ve got to have something the merchants can’t do without, that way you can get a foot in the door.”

“What sort of cargo?”

“Ah, now that’s the real problem. Norfolk is constitutionally a pastoral world, there’s hardly any high technology they’ll allow you to import. Most captains take cordon bleu food, or works of antique art, fancy fabrics, stuff like that.”

Ione put Augustine down carefully on the other side of the silk pillows, and rolled onto her side facing him. “But you’ve got something else, haven’t you? I know that tone, Joshua Calvert. You’re feeling smug.”

He smiled up at the ceiling. “I was thinking about it: something essential, and new, but not synthetic. Something all those Stone Age towns and farms are going to want.”

“Which is?”

“Wood.”

“You’re kidding? Wood as in timber?”

“Yeah.”

“But they have wood on Norfolk. It’s heavily forested.”

“I know. That’s the beauty of it, they use it for everything. I’ve studied some sensevise recordings of the place; they make their buildings with it, their bridges, their boats, Jesus they even make carts out of it. Carpentry is a major industry there. But what I’m going to take them is a hard wood, and I mean really hard, like metal. They can use it in their furniture, or for their tool handles, their windmill cogs even, anything that’s used every day, or rots or wears out. It’s not high technology, yet it’ll be a real cost-effective upgrade. That ought to get me in with the merchants.”