Now, having thoroughly inspected the two, she pronounced judgement.

"You are altogether too appetising, both of you. You've got to disguise yourselves a bit."

Mara knew she was in danger: she felt her aptitude for fertility strong in her body, and had seen that her black shining hair and her new soft breasts had invited stares. And Dann was a handsome youth and, with all his scars and weals well hidden, looked like a sleek and well fed member of the Kin.

"Runaway slaves," said Felice. "That's what you are and that's what you look like. You're an invitation to any slave trader. And don't imagine that all slavers are sweet and kind like me."

"Tell me," said Mara, "if you had sold me and Dann to the Hadrons, what would you have got for us?"

"Not much. You were in such a terrible state. In good condition, the equivalent of one of your gold coins. Yes, you are right — it was easy to let you go because I wouldn't have got anything for you anyway."

Mara smiled: this exchange was without ill-feeling.

"So I can see I'm not going to make you believe in my kind heart."

"Have you got a lot saved?" asked Dann.

"I'm glad to say, yes. A profitable business, buying and selling people."

Now she went to her machine, and took from it one of her working uniforms, faded blue, top and trousers and belt, and said, "I'll charge you as little as I can." Dann counted small coins into her hand till she said it was enough. "You wear it," she said to him. "You are in even worse danger than your sister is."

"I know I am," said Dann, and this acknowledgement eased Mara's anxiety, for she had seen how he had been looked at recently, in Chelops. He stripped off his robe, put it into his sack and for a moment stood almost naked. He had on a small loin cloth. Felice laughed and said that she could fancy him herself, but unfortunately fate would soon separate them. Dann responded to Felice's flirting, and that cheered Mara too. For she secretly feared Dann's returning to drugs, and being used by men again.

He put on the tunic and trousers, slipped his knife into a pocket, and again the two stood side by side.

"Better," said Felice. "You could pass for a workman and his slave." She fetched water and bread from the skimmer, and the three sat on the earth and ate and drank. Around them stretched the yellow, beaten-down grasses of the dry season, and under them was the soft detritus of last year's wet season, for there had been rain here, if not enough. The sky was tall, and so blue, and there was only a little dust in the air.

"We have a long flight," said Felice. "And when we get to the next town you must go straight to the river and make sure of your places in tomorrow's boat. Then go for the night to an address I will give you. Pretend you are a couple, it will be safer. Don't go into the town, they don't like travellers. If I can refuel I'll leave straight away for the East. I'm going to sell the skimmer. It's too hard to get sugar-oil and spare parts." "And then?" asked Dann.

"Then I'll take what turns up." They could see that the idea of throwing herself on the chances of luck invigorated her. "I might buy a boat with the skimmer money and run a river service instead."

"And I suppose I won't see you again," said Mara.

"Well, that's how we live now: we meet people, we become friends, and then that's it. Perhaps we'll run across each other somewhere or other."

Dann was drawing a shape in the dust. It was Ifrik. He put a bit of straw down for Rustam, a little stone for the Rock Village, a leaf for Chelops, and then handed Felice a pebble and said, "Where will we be tonight?"

Felice put down the stone half a hand's span from Chelops. Now it took the span of Dann's hand, his long fingers at full stretch, to reach between Rustam and where they were going. He said to Mara, "See how far we've gone already?"

Felice watched this, not smiling: Mara could see she did not believe they would get much farther.

Mara said, "We did well in Chelops, and you didn't think we would."

"True," said Felice. "And, anyway, good luck. I don't know why I like you two, but I do."

"Luck?" said Dann. "It's knowing that matters." He pointed to the place where Felice had said they were going, and said, "On the globe this area was all green, and it was full of rivers."

"What globe?" said Felice.

"Of how the world was long ago."

Felice shrugged. "I don't know anything about that."

"On the map that has the Ice all over the north of the world, the north part of Ifrik is not brown, the way it is on the globe, because before the Ice it was all desert — all the north of Ifrik was a desert. But it isn't now. And on the globe the only part that is green is where we are going: rivers and a lot of green."

"Rivers, yes," said Felice. "But not much green, you'll find." Then, "But I don't know what you are talking about, not really." She was offended. "And let me give you a word of advice. Not all the tall tales you hear in the Mahondi quarter are true. They go in for a lot of mystification, you know, to impress people."

And they were off, the sun standing above them, and beneath them the scrubby plain; and then the sun was on their left, shining hot and clear, not dulled by dust; and then it was low; and below them was a river and a small town that as they came down seemed full of people. They landed. The people were what Mara was now used to: a mix of every kind of person, with every shade of skin, and hair sometimes straight and sometimes frizzed, and of every colour. There were no Mahondis, no Hadrons, and none of the kind who looked all the same.

Already there was a small crowd around the machine. Felice told Mara and Dann an address, pointed where they should go, said, "See you some time, somewhere," and flew off, this time to the East.

Mara and Dann were surrounded by staring, curious eyes. Not hostile, or at least not yet. They walked quickly to where they had been directed, followed by stares. It was hot, the wet heat, and they could feel the sweat trickling, and the air going into their lungs was like steam.

The houses were of wood, a few of mud bricks. The roofs were of grass. It looked a prosperous enough place, certainly not threatened with emptying, as Felice had said these River Towns were.

They found a little house in a lane. They walked into a room where a big, homely woman was cutting up roots. She looked them up and down, heard that Felice had recommended them, nodded, and said, "Sit down." They sat at a big, wooden table, laid with bowls and spoons for supper. She put questions to them, which they answered guardedly, saying that they had come from Chelops. She nodded and said, "Yes, refugees from Chelops have become rather more than we can manage."

Dann asked where the landing stage was, and she said that she would send her son to book them places. Her advice was to stay indoors until they had to go to the boat. "A lot of refugees have been robbed," she said. "You don't look as if you've got much to steal, but one never knows. And there have been a couple of slavers around, too." Here she examined Mara's slave dress, but said nothing.

She fed them the kind of supper that Mara had not eaten for a long time, of stewed roots, and bread: this was hardly the fare that the Mahondis were used to.

She did not ask what their relationship was, but showed them a room at the back, with barred windows. The room had several beds in it. Mara lay where she could watch the window, and Dann squatted on a bed, and counted out the small money Candace had given them, then dividing it and putting it into little leather bags. He gave her half. He counted the nine gold coins he had left, and tried various places to put them, an inner pocket, his shoes, but ended by choosing one of the little leather bags, where they could seem only another purse of cheap coins. They checked their store of bread, and decided they should try to buy more from their landlady.