«Oh, yes, yes, let me up. I`ll hear you, my word on that.» The Flesh Tinker betrayed a horrible eagerness.

Gavagol blinked. He touched the stud that opened the Tower. Below, the blast doors groaned open, and at the same moment, a sudden certainty struck Gavagol, that he had committed a terribly foolish act.

Almost before he could turn away from the screen, he heard the Flesh Tinker behind him, and he had a flashing nightmare vision of the Flesh Tinker, like some swift feral beast, scrambling up the drop shaft. Gavagol shuddered.

The Flesh Tinker stepped lightly toward him, hands hooked into talons, teeth glittering in a smile o f anticipation, eyes fiery.

«Wait.» Gavagol gasped, terrified. «You said you would hear me.»

«And so I will, so I will. You’ll be a while dying, and I wouldn’t want you to pass away before you lift the shell.»

Before the Flesh Tinker could reach him, Gavagol held up his hand and said, in a voice small with terror, «Wait, deadman’s switch. Look.»

The Flesh Tinker drew back with a hiss of frustration.

Gavagol babbled. «I don’t want to do anything unfriendly, but if I let this go, your ship. the cyclone shell will invert and mash it flat. You understand?»

«I understand.» The cold voice had changed again; it held a great weariness. The Flesh Tinker was abruptly calm. He seated himself across the desk from Gavagol. «Pay no attention to my outbursts, Watcher. I’m an impulsive being.»

Gavagol was shaken. Some passing irritation — yes, he had expected that. But not that killing rage. It was fortunate he had taken precautions.

«So, Watcher. What exactly do you want from me? You know, none of this was necessary — I’d have fixed those piggy little eyes without this coercion. Didn’t I offer?»

Piggy little eyes? Gavagol lifted his chin. «As I said before, I’m satisfied with my face,» he said frostily. «I was only hoping you might spend a few more days here. I didn’t mean to make you angry. But I'm lonely, very, very lonely. I had to do something.»

The Flesh Tinker showed no sympathy. «Watcher, you’ve made an error. I f you tried to force me to remain here, I would run amok. My emotions are larger than I am — it’s one o f the drawbacks o f living to a great age. So, solve your problem in some other way.»

«But, your ship.»

«The ship is dear to me, my home for many centuries — still I would grow too angry.» The Flesh Tinker laughed. «I could eventually replace the starboat. Could you replace your life?»

Gavagol watched the Flesh Tinker. The old man sat quietly enough, but the magenta eyes were icy.

The Flesh Tinker spoke again. «Listen, I have an idea.»

The Flesh Tinker was persuasive. Gavagol found the idea irresistible, but he remembered the look on the Flesh Tinker’s face when he burst into the Tower.

He decided. «Yes» he said. «I’ll accept your offer, with thanks. But just so there’s no funny business, remember, the deadman’s switch is slaved to my cerebral carrier. Alter my mind, and. well, squash.»

The Flesh Tinker’s nostrils flared, and the hard mouth compressed into a straight line. «Don’t worry. I don’t like you well enough to fix your mind.»

Waking was strange, in darkness and stench. Gavagol flung out his arms, to find that he was confined in a space not much bigger than a coffin. His knuckles rang against metal. The smell was so strong as to be unclassifiable, ancient and organic, like a food locker left uncleaned a thousand years. Gavagol gagged on a scream.

His arms felt different. In the blackness, he clutched at his own hands. His fingers were too long and seemed to be hung with bags of flapping membrane, and his skin. slick, moist, utterly alien.

He opened his mouth to try another scream, but then the regentank’s hatch opened. Pressure popped off, and light flooded his eyes. Strong hands took him by the shoulders and slid him out onto a gurney.

He looked up at the Flesh Tinker. The hot magenta eyes were filled with a fierce proprietary pride.

«Just lie still for a bit,» the Flesh Tinker said, smiling that predatory smile.

At the first try, Gavagol’s voice would not obey him. He swallowed a nasty taste, then tried again. «I feel like death,» he croaked.

The Flesh Tinker’s face pinched together. «I’ve, done exactly what you asked: given you the sea. And, I remind you, without charge.»

Gavagol propped himself on his elbows and looked down his body in fascination.

His skin glistened, a slippery gunmetal gray. The membranes that draped his arms were echoed by those on his legs. His feet were twenty centimeters longer, and the slender toes were tipped by sharp, hooked claws. When he saw that his crotch was too smooth, he whimpered, then he reached down, probing.

The Flesh Tinker laughed, good humor restored. «Not to worry. Internal genitals. You don’t want anything vital dangling out in the sea where the wildlife can snap at it, eh? You’ll soon get used to it.» The Flesh Tinker winked, all his wrinkles bunching up.

Gavagol looked about. The cabin was a jungle of eccentric equipment. Everywhere touchboards and readout screens hung, glowing with numbers and words in a dozen unfamiliar alphabets. There, a Genchee DNA-synthesizer covered a bulkhead with a shining tangle of plasmapipe. Over there, a phalanx of antique microsurgeons lifted a glittering thicket of manipulators, all blades and hooks and laser barrels. The other womb chambers that lined the bulkheads had crude steel lockwheels welded to them, so human hands could manipulate the alien hatch dogs.

He’d been reborn from an alien womb, saturated with centuries of alien juices. He shuddered.

«What now?» The Flesh Tinker seemed irritated again. «If you didn’t want my help, you shouldn’t have asked for it.» A dangerous glitter filled the Flesh Tinker’s eyes. «Are you dissatisfied?» The deep cold voice had dropped half an octave, to a grinding rumble.

The Flesh Tinker loomed over Gavagol, magenta eyes narrow, twitching. Gavagol fell back on the gurney, heart hammering. The moment stretched out interminably.

The Flesh Tinker turned away with a jerk.

Gavagol spoke to the Flesh Tinker’s back. «I’m just surprised. But, I forgot to mention. I can’t swim.»

The Flesh tinker turned back to him, still bristling. «What? Now you have the gall to question my workmanship? Naturally, I grew you a custom synaptic linkage; you’ll swim like an eel. Do you think me a beginner at this? Who sent the City’s people into the Indivisible Ocean?»

The Flesh Tinker seized the gurney’s push bar and maneuvered Gavagol out of the womb room. Gavagol clutched at the rails, hampered by the unfamiliar length of his fingers, as the gurney flew along the ancient corridors. «Where do we go now?» Gavagol asked, in plaintive tones.

«I can stand no more of your whining!» the Flesh Tinker said. The gurney slammed to a stop at the lip of the air lock, but Gavagol continued on, flailing out into the open air.

With a huge splash, he dropped into the lagoon.

He struggled in a cloud of bubbles for a moment. Then the new linkage took over, and he shot through the water, quick as a fish.

He gloried in his effortless strength, his new agility, the cool touch of the water on his naked skin. He raced the lagoon from end to end, building enough speed to leap completely from the water. He found that his nostrils closed underwater, like a seal’s, and that his lung capacity had increased enough to permit him fifteen-minute dives in comfort.

But then the sun, shining down through the thick clear monomol of the cyclone shell, began to bum his tender new skin, and he slid under the shady lip of the quay.

Floating there, he watched the Flesh Tinker’s boat. The lock was shut tight; no movement showed at the row of small ports that lined the hull just above the sponsons.