Chu didn’t pretend not to understand. “Oh, I have plans for that young man. He’s going to have a few beers now, and try to forget what happened, but of course his friends won’t let him. By the time I’ve checked into my room, sent for my baggage, and freshened up, he’ll be a little drunk. I’ll go look him up then. He sees me, and he’s going to feel a little hot and a little uncertain and a little embarrassed. He’ll look at me, and he won’t know what he feels.

“Then I’ll give him the opportunity to sort his feelings out.”

“Your method strikes me as being a little, um, uncertain. As far as effectiveness goes.”

“Trust me,” Chu said. “I’ve done this before.”

“Aha,” the bureaucrat said vaguely. Then, “Why don’t you go ahead and book us rooms, while I see about Gregorian’s mother?”

“I thought you weren’t going to interview her until morning.”

“Wasn’t I?” The bureaucrat detoured around a rotting pile of truck tires. He had very deliberately dropped that scrap of information in front of Bergier. He didn’t trust the man. He thought it all too possible that Bergier might arrange for a messenger sometime in the night to warn the mother against speaking to him.

It was part and parcel of a more serious puzzle, the question of where the false Chu had gotten his information. He’d known not only what name to give, but to leave the airship just before the real Chu boarded. More significantly, he knew that the bureaucrat hadn’t been told his liaison was a woman.

Someone in his chain of command, either within the planetary government or Technology Transfer itself, was working with Gregorian. And while it need not be Bergier, the commander was as good a suspect as any.

“I changed my mind,” he said.

Sunset. Bold Prospero was a pirate galleon sailing toward the night. It touched the horizon, flattening into an oval as it set continents of clouds afire. Under the trees the shadows were fading into blue air. The bureaucrat trudged down the river road, passing his briefcase from hand to hand as its weight made his palms and fingers ache.

At the edge of the village, three ragged men had built a fire in the road and were roasting yams in its coals. A dark giant sat soaking broadleaves in a bowl of water, and wrapping them about the tubers. A gray, lank man stuck them in the fire, and their aged companion raked the coals back. Two television sets were wedged in the sand, one with the sound off, and the other turned away, queasily imaging at empty trail. “Soft evening,” the bureaucrat said.

“Same to you,” the lank, colorless man said. Bony knees showed through holes in his trousers. “Have a sit-down.” He hitched slightly to the side, and the bureaucrat hunkered down beside him, resting on the balls of his feet, careful not to soil his white trousers. On the pale screen, a young man stared moodily out a window at the crashing sea. A woman stood at his back, hands on his shoulders. “Old man doesn’t believe he’s seeing a mermaid,” the lank man said.

“Well, that’s the way fathers are.” Soft blue smoke wisped into the darkening sky, smelling of driftwood and cedarbloom. “You lads out hunting?”

“In a manner of speaking,” the lank one said. The giant snorted.

“We’re scavengers,” the old man said harshly. “If that’s not good enough for you, then say so now and fuck off.” They all stared at him, unblinking.

In the sudden silence, the bureaucrat could hear the show he’d interrupted. Byron, come away from that window. There’s nothing out there but cold and changing Ocean. Go into the air. Your father thinks—

My father thinks of nothing but money.

“I’ve got a bottle of vacuum-distilled brandy in my briefcase.” He fetched the bottle, took a swig, held it out. “If I could convince you…”

“Well, that is hospitable.” The flask went around twice, and then Lank said, “You must be heading into the village.”

“Yes, to see Mother Gregorian. Perhaps you know her house.”

The three exchanged glances. “You won’t get anything out of her,” Lank said. “The villagers tell stories about her, you know. She’s a type.” He nodded toward the television. “Ought to be on the show.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Naw, I don’t think so.” He raised a sticklike arm, pointed. “The road dead-ends into the first street to the waterfront. Go down to the river, to the fifth—”

“Sixth,” the old man said.

“Sixth street after that. Go up by the kirk and past the boneyard to the end, right by the marshes. Can’t miss it. Big fucking castle of a place.”

“Thanks.” He stood.

They were no longer looking at him. On the screen, an albino girlchild was standing alone in the middle of a raging argument. She was an island of serene calm, her eyes vacant and autistic. “That’s Eden, she’s the boy’s sister. Hasn’t spoken since it happened,” Lank remarked.

“What happened?”

“She saw a unicorn,” the giant said.

From the air the village had looked like a very simple antique printed circuit, of the sort Galileo might have used to build his first radio telescope, if he wasn’t confusing two different eras, a comb of crooked lines leading inward from the water, too small for there to be any need of cross-streets. The houses were small and shabby, but warm light spilled from the windows, and voices murmured within. An occasional dog stridently warned him away from boat or yard. Other than an innkeeper who nodded lazily from the door of the watermen’s hotel, he met no one by the riverfront. He turned onto the marsh road, the river cold and silver at his back. He went past a walled-in ground where skeletons hung from the trees, the bones bleached and painted and wired together so that they clacked gently in an almost unnoticeable breeze.

Beyond the boneyard the ground rose gently. He passed several large dark houses, still unscavenged, newly abandoned by their wealthy owners. Probably gone to the Piedmont to participate in the economic boom. Last on the road, just before the land wearily eased itself down into marsh, was his destination.

The house was blistered and barnacled, and it was meager light indeed that escaped the thickly curtained windows into the wider world. But under its mottling of chrysalids the wood plank ing was gracefully carved and fitted. He stood before the massive entranceway and touched the doorplate. Within, a voice gonged, “Callers, mistresses.” Then, to him, the door said, ” Please wait.”

A moment later the door opened on a pale, thin face. On seeing him, it opened in startlement, revealing an instant’s fear before tightening again into wariness. The woman lifted her chin defiantly, so that her eyes seemed simultaneously to flinch away from him. “I thought you were the appraiser.”

The bureaucrat smiled. “Mother Gregorian?”

“Oh, her.” She turned away. “I suppose you’d best come inside.” He followed her down the gullet of a hallway flocked with a floral print gone dead brown into the crowded belly of a sitting room. She seated him in a dark lionfooted chair. It was a massy thing, shag-maned atop and fringed beneath, with padded armrests. He’d hate to have to move it.

A woman hurried into the room. “Is that the appraiser? Have him look at the crystal, I—” She stopped.

Took. A metronome wedged between dusty specimen bells reached the end of its swing and began the long, slow return, ponderously counting out the slow seconds of mortality. Trophy beasts peered down at him from the tin ceiling with eyes of green and gray and orange glass. Now that he noticed, the room was full of faces. Heavy-lidded, openmouthed and disapproving, they were carved into the legs, sides and bases of the escritoires, tables, sideboards, and china cabinets that jostled one another, competing for space. Even the blond mahogany pieces had been extravagantly carved. He wondered where the shavings were now; they would not have been discarded. It was an enormously valuable room, and would have been twice as comfortable with half as much furniture. Tock. The metronome reasserted itself, and still the women studied him, as if they would never speak again.