"A man by the name of Brad. A blacksmith. He works at a stable in the New Atlantis Clave, taking care of horses."

"I know him well," the Constable said. "I'd be glad to ring him for you. You're a . . . friend of his, then?"

"We should like to think that he remembers us favorably," Nell said. Harv turned around and made a face at her for talking this way, but the Constable was eating it up.

"It's a brisk morning," the Constable said. "Why don't you join me inside the gatehouse, where it's nice and cozy, and I'll get you some tea."

On either side of the main gate, the fence terminated in a small stone tower with narrow diamond-paned windows set deeply into its walls. The Constable entered one of these from his side of the fence and then opened a heavy wooden door with huge wrought-iron hinges, letting Nell and Harv in from their side. The tiny octagonal room was cluttered with fine furniture made of dark wood, a shelf of old books, and a small cast-iron stove with a red enamel kettle on top, pocked like an asteroid from ancient impacts, piping out a tenuous column of steam. The Constable directed them into a pair of wooden chairs. Trying to scoot them back from the table, they discovered that each was ten times the weight of any other chair they'd seen, being made of actual wood, and thick pieces of it too.

They were not especially comfortable, but Nell liked sitting in hers nevertheless, as something about its size and weight gave her a feeling of security. The windows on the Dovetail side of the gatehouse were larger, and she could see the two corgi dogs outside, peering in through the lead latticework, flabbergasted that they had, through some enormous lacuna in procedure, been left on the outside, wagging their tails somewhat uncertainly, as if, in a world that allowed such mistakes, nothing could be counted on.

The Constable found a wooden tray and carried it about the room, cautiously assembling a collection of cups, saucers, spoons, tongs, and other tea-related armaments. When all the necessary tools were properly laid out, he manufactured the beverage, hewing closely to the ancient procedure, and set it before them.

Resting on a counter by the window was an outlandishly shaped black object that Nell recognized as a telephone, only because she had seen them on the old passives that her mother liked to watch– where they seemed to take on a talismanic significance out of proportion to what they actually did. The Constable picked up a piece of paper on which many names and strings and digits had been hand-written. He turned his back to the nearest window, then leaned backward over the counter so as to bring most of him closer to its illumination. He tilted the paper into the light and then adjusted the elevation of his own chin through a rather sweeping arc, converging on a position that placed the lenses of his reading spectacles between pupil and page. Having maneuvered all of these elements into the optimal geometry, he let out a little sigh, as though the arrangement suited him, and peered up over his glasses at Nell and Harv for a moment, as if to suggest that they could learn some valuable tricks by keeping a sharp eye on him. Nell watched him, fascinated not least because she rarely saw people in spectacles.

The Constable returned his attention to the piece of paper and scanned it with a furrowed brow for a few minutes before suddenly calling out a series of several numbers, which sounded random to his visitors but seemed both deeply significant and perfectly obvious to the Constable.

The black telephone sported a metal disk with finger-size holes bored around its edge. The Constable hooked the phone's handset over his epaulet and then began to insert his finger into various of these holes, using them to torque the disk around against the countervailing force of a spring. A brief but exceedingly cheerful conversation ensued. Then he hung up the telephone and clasped his hands over his belly, as if he had accomplished his assigned tasks so completely that said extremities were now superfluous decorations.

"It'll be a minute," he said. "Please take your time, and don't scald yourselves on that tea. Care for some shortbread?"

Nell was not familiar with this delight. "No thank you, sir," she said, but Harv, ever pragmatic, allowed as he might enjoy some.

Suddenly the Constable's hands found a new reason for existence and began to busy themselves exploring the darker corners of old wooden cupboards here and there around the little room. "By the way," he said absent-mindedly, as he pursued this quest, "if you had in mind actually passing through the gate, that is to say, if you wanted to visit Dovetail, as you would be abundantly welcome to do, then you should know a few things about our rules. He stood up and turned toward them, displaying a tin box labeled SHORTBREAD.

"To be specific, the young gentleman's chocky sticks and switchblade will have to come out of his trousers and lodge here, in the loving care of me and my colleagues, and I will have to have a good long look at that monstrous chunk of rod logic, batteries, sensor arrays, and what-haveyou that the young lady is carrying in her little knapsack, concealed, unless I am mistaken, in the guise of a book. Hmmm?" And the Constable turned toward them with his eyebrows raised very high on his forehead, shaking the plaid box.

Constable Moore, as he introduced himself, examined Harv's weapons with more care than really seemed warranted, as if they were relics freshly exhumed from a pyramid. He took care to compliment Harv on their presumed effectiveness, and to meditate aloud on the grave foolishness of anyone's messing about with a young fellow like Harv. The weapons went into one of the cupboards, which Constable Moore locked by talking to it. "And now the book, young lady," he said to Nell, pleasantly enough.

She didn't want to let the Primer out of her hands, but she remembered the kids at the playroom who had tried to take it from her and been shocked, or something, for their trouble. So she handed it over. Constable Moore took it very carefully in both hands, and a tiny little moan of appreciation escaped his lips. "I should inform you that sometimes it does rather nasty things to people who, as it supposes, are trying to steal it from me," Nell said, then bit her lip, hoping she hadn't implied that Constable Moore was a thief.

"Young lady, I should be crestfallen if it didn't."

After Constable Moore had turned the book over in his hands a few times, complimenting Nell on the binding, the gold script, the feel of the paper, be set it down gingerly on the table, first rubbing his hand over the wood to ensure no tea or sugar had earlier been spilled there. He wandered away from the table and seemed to stumble at random upon an oak-and-brass copier that sat in one of the obtuse corners of the octagonal room. He happened upon a few pages in its output tray and went through them for a bit, from time to time chuckling ruefully. At one point he looked up at Nell and shook his head wordlessly before finally saying, "Do you have any idea . . ." but then he just chuckled again, shook his head, and went back to the papers.

"Right," he finally said, "right." He fed the papers back into the copier and told it to destroy them. He thrust his fists into his trouser pockets and walked up and down the length of the room twice, then sat down again, looking not at Nell and Harv and not at the book, but somewhere off into the distance. "Right," he said. "I will not confiscate the book during your stay in Dovetail, if you follow certain conditions. First of all, you will not under any circumstances make use of a matter compiler. Secondly, the book is for your use, and your use only. Third, you will not copy or reproduce any of the information contained in the book. Fourth, you will not show the book to anyone here or make anyone aware of its existence. Violation of any of these conditions will lead to your immediate expulsion from Dovetail and the confiscation and probable destruction of the book. Do I make myself clear?"