City Nereus drove slowly to the east, over the planetary sea of Cholder.

Diam Gavagol sat at the top of the windward wave wall. Far below his dangling feet, the swell rose and fell, bursting into glowing foam. Countless creatures swam the deep, and a streak of cold fire marked each passage.

He thought again about slipping off into the midnight waters.

Gavagol dropped his head into his hands and rubbed at his eyes.

Later, a pod of mariform humans passed in close formation, sleek bodies touching. He watched, envious, as they capered and leaped, those descendants of the City. A thread of wet laughter drifted up to him.

«A joke!» he shouted down, in his rusty voice. «Tell me the joke.»

They paid him no heed, and soon the glimmer of their passage was lost around the curve of the City’s vast flank.

He sighed, then reeled in the stickyshock lines he had set, hoping to snare a mermaid. The glittering jelly bangles were the wrong bait, it seemed. The trouble was he didn’t have any idea of what the ocean people liked.

Tomorrow night he would try again, with a different bait; he might get lucky.

He meant the merfolk no harm. He had a spacious tank all ready for his visitor. But he just had to have someone to talk to. The isolation of the City was driving him mad.

If only they would talk to him, not laugh and swim away. They would learn to like him. He knew it, he just knew it.

Morning brought him an hour or two of rest, though his sleep was troubled by the dream. He would find himself floating on a sterile sea, drifting under a motionless sun, too weak to swim. Or he would be frozen helpless to a vast empty sheet of ice, under a cold, starless night. Or he would see himself trekking across an endless plain o f dry gravel, too tired to take another step, but unable to stop.

When he woke, conscience drove him to his desk in the Tower. From the windows that swept the perimeter of the Status Room, Gavagol could see all the City’s vast body. A heavy cross-swell, driven by one of the faraway equatorial cyclones, raised spray against the southeast wave wall. In response, the City undulated, a motion just barely perceptible, as the linkages allowed the great blocks of monomol to slip against each other.

The Tower swayed ever so slightly. Down in the City, he knew, the empty halls would be filled with the muffled grinding of the ancient linkages.

He preferred the sounds of the City under strain to the silence of calm weather. It made the City seem almost alive.

On the main board, his fingers danced on the firefly lights. Countless sensors, in every part of the City, gave up their data, and they flowed to the Tower for his tired eyes.

He saw everything.

He observed a decline in the army of barnacle scrubbers that roamed the articulated hull of the City. The City had already opened the autofac that built the scrubbers.

He observed that the stocks of certain metals were below minimum. The City had already opened the vents that led seawater into the extraction facilities.

He observed that a cyclone had wandered north into the temperate belt. The City had already altered course.

The City was a self-regulating mechanism that never really required his intervention, and that was part of the problem. Perhaps a more meaningful job would have lifted some of the burden of loneliness.

It jolted him when he saw the readout from the Maremma. The Spanglewine, a small guesthouse in that ancient quarter, was signaling a tenant. Wine was running from the taps, food from the autocuiz.

Who could it be? In the two of Cholder’s long years that he had been aboard the City, no one had come.

Was the visitor a criminal? A slaver?

Of the City’s several quarters, the Maremma was Gavagol’s least favorite. He hurried through the narrow passages, his hand gripping the stunner in his pocket. Unsettling murals, still bright after a thousand years, writhed on every wall. Bizarre facades dissolved into tiny gardens and once-intimate courtyards, in a riotous jumble that offended Gavagol’s sense of order.

The inn ringed one of the City’s many yacht basins. Gavagol stopped to stare, astonished. A starboat lay at the quay, moored to the griffin-headed bollards.

Her black hull pitted by unimaginable years, she rolled gently in the lagoon’s small surge. The boat was an alien design; no human eye had crafted that faceted cylinder.

He gathered his courage, then he stepped resolutely through the iris into

the Spanglewine’s taproom.

His hand sweated on the stunner, but he kept it concealed in his pocket. For a moment nothing moved in the pleasant gloom of the room. Then Gavagol heard a scuffling noise coming from behind the pearlstone bar.

«Who’s there?» Gavagol asked, eyes straining.

The only reply was a further thrashing, then the sound of shattering glassware.

Gavagol stepped closer. «Here, now,» he said, «what are you doing? This is a Trust property. You’re not authorized.»

An impossibly tall shape slowly rose behind the bar, and Gavagol took an involuntary step back.

«Authorized?» The tall shape had a deep, cold voice. «Authorized? I’ve been coming here since before the ocean took the Nerians. And who might you be?» The shape wobbled, though there was no trace of drunkenness in the voice.

Gavagol swallowed. «I’m the Watcher here, duly appointed by the Trustees.»

The mysterious visitor made a sound remarkably like a senile giggle. Then he came around the end of the bar into the light, walking with a careful, loose-kneed stride.

Gavagol had never seen a human that gave such an ambiguous impression of age. The man carried some o f the stigmata of years, a clean-shaven face lined with a million fine wrinkles, a mane of tangled white hair under an antique hat of flame velvet, eyes sunk deep beneath heavy brows. But the man exhibited a flamboyant vitality. His clothes had an archaic style, but a dandyish cut. His hands were long and sheathed with smooth muscle. His lips were full, red, and he laughed to reveal strong white teeth.

«Stare! I know I’m an apparition!»

Gavagol’s eyes were wide. «I mean no offense.»

«Croakery! You burst in here, interrupt my sentimental voyage among the dusty bottles of yestercentury, demand my bona fides, and stare, as if I were a rare menagerie beast. But no matter. Have a drink with me!»

The visitor lifted a square bottle into the light. He shook it with a look of glee. «Come,» he said, turning toward a booth in the corner, where a window admitted a beam of pale sunlight.

The man’s movements were so certain, so purposeful, that Gavagol was swept along, as if in an eddy of dark water. He settled carefully into the booth, his hand still holding the stunner. The deep-set eyes peered at him, glittering, and Gavagol saw that they were a most unusual magenta.

«You can release the death-grip you have on that weapon,» the visitor said pleasantly, flourishing two smeary tumblers. He splashed them half-full of a cloudy celadon liquor and pushed one toward Gavagol. «First, I have no reason to harm you. Second, I’m Shielded. Your health, Watcher!» He drank with a practiced flourish.

Gavagol drank more cautiously. «I would,» he said, «drink to yours if I knew who you were.»

The ancient slammed his heavy fist to the table, and the bottle jumped. «What?» he roared in that potent voice. «You pretend not to know me? I, the Flesh Tinker, notorious on every pangalac world?»

Gavagol’s mouth dropped open. Did legend sit glaring across the table? He had always dismissed the Flesh Tinker as a traveler’s tale. Well, perhaps a colorful delusion gripped this unusual person.