“I hear a speech coming on,” came from someone at the foot of the table. “If I don’t hear a real question soon, I’m going to show you what us independent miners can do on our own.”

“Let the man ask a question,” Grace said. Like every independent miner, Grace had her own opinion about how much the majors helped or hindered the little guy. Still, Alkalurops was in enough trouble without alienating a big chunk of its economy.

“My question is this,” Chizhenzki said. “Things have changed a lot since the last time Alkalurops set up its own government. I’m not against trying anything. God knows when we’ll hear from The Republic again. But shouldn’t businesses that employ more men and women than any entity you represent also be included in this council?”

As he finished, the room broke into an uproar.

A short, round man in a waist-length jacket bearing the emblem of the Bakers’ Guild was on his feet shouting along with half a dozen other Guild Masters, across the table from the mining reps. On the fifth try, Grace made out his words. “We represent Alkalurops businesspeople and workers, not—” Grace provided “someone off-planet.” The new deposits opened up in the west had all ended up in the hands of conglomerates, which a lot of the old families attributed to having a Governor appointed from off-planet. Then again, maybe the new deposits did need the concentrated extraction techniques available only to the big companies. That was a good argument for several cold winter nights.

Garry McGuire leaned past Dev to say, “You’ll want to yield the floor just now, Gracie. Looks to me like we’ve got a long talk about who fits in this room and how we’re going to do our business before we get back to voting.”

Grace didn’t want to establish any precedent, but at least on this one point, she was prepared to let Garry carry the fire. “You take it. But I want the floor back before we move to any boss-type votes around here.”

“You’ll get it,” Garry said. Grace didn’t like the look he gave Dev, but when Garry started hammering away with his gavel, the noise in the room did go down to a dull roar.

Garry stood, which brought the racket down a few more decibels. “The kind lady from up north has agreed to yield the floor while we get around to organizing ourselves. From the looks of things, we really don’t know who should be included in our discussions and how we should operate. Kind of hard to put somebody in charge when we don’t know what he’s in charge of or supposed to do,” he said, grinning at a couple of his associates. They dutifully laughed as if he was a vid comic and that got the room laughing with him.

Grace didn’t hear anything to laugh about for the rest of the day. The only relief came from the front of the hall, where a couple of the sidewalk hawkers from the square brought their food carts inside and set up shop. Grace was the only one in her trio with stones, so she went for drinks and found a lot of other folks doing the same.

“You did a real fine job there. What’s your name again, young lady?” an elderly woman asked. Grace told her, and found herself sharing her thoughts with the woman. Then a couple of men joined in. In whispers they reached a fairly quick conclusion on how they’d run things. Grace delivered drinks to Jobe and Chato, filled them in on her conversations, and left them at the table to keep an eye on that circus while she circulated around the hall, feeling people out, taking her own reading of what these people wanted. The gathering wasn’t that different from a town meeting, just bigger, noisier and under someone else’s control. An hour’s lunch lasted three. Grace had no complaint; she was one of the last back, just ahead of Garry, Dev, and the two mining managers. As the sun fell below the rim of the canyon, Garry gaveled the meeting into an early recess, and Grace found herself juggling multiple dinner meetings.

Over suppers, consensus built among the small towns that everyone should vote, even the representatives of off-planet corporations. But every member of the council had to have the same single vote, and decisions should be by at least seventy-five percent of the vote.

It was well past midnight before Grace got to sleep, but she felt good. Alkalurops had some mighty fine inhabitants.

The next morning Grace, Jobe and Chato were approaching the Guild Hall when the roar of a DropShip coming in shook the quiet day. Grace wasn’t the only one who did a frantic Net check. The ship docking was the regular one the raider had pretended to be. It was late but real. At her elbow, Jobe frowned. “You’d think the raiders would have stripped the port bare. Used landing radars and radios have to be easy to sell. Sloppy, if you ask me.”

“Well, unless a lot of people rethought what we talked about last night, we ought to get a lot done today,” Grace said, opening the Guild Hall door for the men.

But when enough people are gathered together, nothing comes quickly. Saying “everyone votes” didn’t seem to cover all the possibilities. Hank Pintagras, mayor of Calgeron, was first on his feet that morning. “Do the Guild representatives in Allabad speak for all the Guilds?” he asked in a high, shrill voice. “Or do we require the Guilds to establish an election process so each Guild can make sure the speaker represents them?”

Grace tried to suppress a groan. The master of Calgeron’s ’Mech Sales and Service Guild was notorious for disagreeing with anyone and everyone at the drop of a welding torch. For the next hour the discussion rambled, with Allabad’s Master Baker unwilling to grant anything at all to the “sticks.” Grace leaned back and studied the ceiling.

“We can’t let this bunch stampede in circles,” Chato said. “I’ll keep an eye on the table yammering. Could you get me a cup of tea, Grace, and talk to folks? Patch up what we did last night.” Grace went, but how often on the drive home from a meeting had she thought of a good reason not to vote the way she had.

She was buying a mug of tea for Chato while Jobe bought himself a cup of coffee, so they were in a good position to see the man who walked into the Guild Hall at ten sharp.

He was taller than most, and his expensive-looking dark suit accentuated the lines of his thin frame. White hair combed straight back gave him a regal bearing, heightened by his aquiline nose. His feet didn’t so much walk as move him smoothly along. Grace saw that she wasn’t the only one whose eyes were drawn to the stranger as his head moved slowly from side to side, taking in everything, missing nothing, acknowledging no one.

“I think our schedule for today just changed,” Grace whispered to Jobe.

“I don’t like the looks of that man,” he answered.

“Neither do I, but he looks like a player.”

“But for whom? Whatever he wants, we will not be able to ignore him.” Jobe followed Grace back to their seats.

The stranger walked straight to the mining company managers; they exchanged formal introductions. The hall had been floating on a bubble of talk that almost drowned out the person who had the floor. Now it settled slowly into silence as more and more heads turned toward the new arrival. The speaker who had been shouting to be heard suddenly realized he was bellowing into a silent hall. “That pretty much says it all,” he muttered lamely, and sank into his chair.

Garry McGuire nodded, then turned to the standing man. “I don’t think we know you.”

“I suspected as much. However, I am prepared to correct that oversight.” The stranger seemed to toy with words the way a cat might toy with a cornered mouse.

“Would you please introduce yourself?” Garry asked.

“It would be my pleasure. I would also like to present a solution to the problems that appear to plague you, if I may?” The words hardly sounded like a question, but Garry nodded and the man continued. “I am Alfred Santorini, at your service,” he said with a tiny nod. “I see this planet also has been hit by raiders.”