"As I see it, you've got two options. You can sink her in the deepest part of one of your oceans. That's the quickest method. Leave some ports open and she'll die fast. Only thing is, there's a fair chance in a few years you'll have a pollution problem; it'll clear up in a century or two, but you'd better make sure you keep people away from the place until then."

"No!" The word exploded out of her. "Not the ocean. Never." She drew her hand across her mouth, a quick nervous gesture, straightened her back with a jerk and stared at him, almost daring him to come out with something equally impossible.

"So, send her into the sun."

She thought that over. "How? Wouldn't someone have to stay with her? Only two minutes ago I read that the shipBrain is programmed to save her if all aboard are killed; if you aim her at the sun and leave her, she'll break away before she reaches it. And what happens then, do we have a runaway killing machine hitting back at the ones that tried to kill her?"

"Adelaar? That's your field."

Adelaar ran a hand over her hair, smoothing it down where the wind outside the shelter had teased it into spikes. "While I was inside the interface, I set a trap into the groundlink; it hasn't been found and it won't be. Since then I've been using odd moments to explore the shipBrain through it. That Brain is big, it's powerful, and oh my, it's dumb. It's old. We've learned considerable since that ship was built. Some of us. I kept away from the defense areas, but I don't expect trouble when I go after them, though I'd rather handle that up there. Working through a tap is too . . . um . . . limiting. As soon as we lift off . . . hmm, that's something we haven't arranged yet, Hanifa. Where do you want us to pick up you and your people? I think it's best we come to you, rather than you to us. It'll be easier and faster."

Aslan looked from her mother's intent face to Elmas Ofka; one expression mirrored the other; it was like a glimpse into the future, maybe a year or two after this night. Read the changes, where the world goes when the Outside wanders in.

"I can't say without knowing a lot more about who's coming and what the Council thinks. Perhaps you could supply some way of communicating that the Huvved couldn't tap into? If so, we can settle arrangements without having to find time for another meeting."

Quale tapped on the table. Both women started, swung round to face him. "I've got some handcoms in the skip," he said, "they're linked to the satellites I inserted when we got here, should have no trouble bridging the distance between our Base and yours." He turned his head. "Pels, bring in a couple of those handsets, will you?"

"Wait," Elmas Ofka said.

"Hang on a minute, Pels, huh?"

"When we talked before, you needed to know where to find locations inside cities. I didn't forget that, I brought you a small gift," she glanced past him, met Aslan's ironic gaze, "another small gift to help you with that problem. Har cousin, take the Hunter down to the boats and bring back our pa.s.senger."

Aslan watched the chunky isya valve out after Pels. What's going on here, she thought, there wasn't anything about this in the report she made or in any of the hours of records I plowed through. She rubbed at her eyes, remembering with regret the watersac she'd left hanging on the yizzy pole. Her mouth was dry and she was wrung out, sleepy, her head ached. She wasn't interested in these games Adelaar and Elmas were playing with each other, she'd left home years ago to get the smell of greed off her skin. She gazed at the back ofQuale's head; his hair brushed his collar, black, soft, fine, curling a little; she wanted to touch it, let it bend over her fingers. d.a.m.n, oh d.a.m.n.

The valve hummed. Pels came in; his black lips were curled into an odd grin, his ears were standing straight up and twitching a little. He was humming, she could hear a rumbling brumbrum as he trotted to the table, dumped the comsets onto the memplas and swung around to watch the exit.

Harli Tanggar ducked through, stepped to her place beside the valve as the man following her straightened and looked around.

Parnalee, Aslan thought, good G.o.d, what's she think she's doing? How'd she get hold of him?

"Parnalee Tanmairo Proggerd," Elmas Ofka said. "In the course of his work, he has visited most of the cities of the Littorals. When he joined us two days ago, I saw him as the answer to your need."

Maybe, Aslan thought, but that's not the whole story. What are you up to, Dalliss? Smiling, urbane, wearing his public face, Parnalee walked to the table, touched hands with Quale. He wants this, she thought, why? He looked over his shoulder at her and she saw the beast in his black eyes, hungry beast promising her silently what he'd promised in words. Undercut me and you're dead. She shivered and made up her mind she was going to be very very sure she was never alone with him any time anywhere.

Quale got to his feet. "That's it, then. Call us when you're ready, Hanifa.

You want to leave first, or shall we?"

Elmas Ofka closed the lid on the case, snapped the latches home. "We'll go.

Don't get yourself killed."

About ten days after the meeting on Gerbek. Karrel Goza in Ayla gul Inci: Waiting for the Lift-Off Karrel Goza forked slimy rotten leaves from the second stage vat into a tiltcart. The stench that eddied around him crept through his stained overall and nestled against his skin, oozed through the overage filter on his mask.

The stink was the least of his problems, the mist that stank would open ulcers in his skin and rot his lungs if he stayed in it long enough. The Huvved Kabrik who owned this shed had the patronage of the Fehdaz and the manager was under orders to squeeze the last thread of use from the gear. And more, if he could get away with it. The manager before him had been fired for being too easy on the workers; she was local, some of her employees were cousins and affiliates, others belonged to the Families of friends and a.s.sociates. Herk's crony didn't make that mistake twice. The new manager came from a Guneywhiyker Daz, he had no family in Inci, no pressures on him to look to the safety of the workers. Karrel Goza didn't bother complaining; it wouldn't do any good and there were a hundred more desperate and thus more docile workers to take his place. He had too many small accidents, had called in sick too often in his need to cover absences when he was flying for Elmas Ofka, he was growing more marginal a worker as the weeks pa.s.sed, a complaint was all the manager needed to boot him out. His Family was one of the poorer septs, small business folk living on the edge of failing, clerks and such; they needed twice what their earners were pulling in to pay the fees and taxes and all that Herk was squeezing from folk like them. A few years ago his pilot's pay t.i.thed had brought them comfort and a degree of security they'd seldom known.

He'd sponsored and paid Guildbond (Pilot) for his cousin Geres Duvvar, he'd sponsored and paid Guildbond (Skilled Trades) for three score other cousins, sisters, brothers, affiliates. That was finished now.

Drive, talent and a large dose of luck gave him a chance at a profession not usually open to boys from his cla.s.s. Bondfees in the Pilot's Guild were far too great for a Family with the income his had; even stretching they couldn't afford such an expense, nor could they afford to tie up so much coin so long in a single member. When he was a middler near the end of his schooling, he earned his first coin flying soarwings on the Garrip sands in the semiformal races sponsored by a coalition of merchants and Sea Farmers. The purses were big, the entry fees small; he and an uncle who was a carpenter built hiswingframe and an aunt who was a weaver made the fabric cover. He'd found his talent the moment he got his first kite up and when he was old enough to enter the races he made it pay. Time after time he won. There was danger in this racing; fliers crashed-misread aircurrents, were crowded offlift, showed bad judgment in their turns or were victims of sabotage. Men and women came from a dozen Dazzes to watch and wager on the fliers, there was a great deal of money floating about and the temptation to goose the odds was strong and seldom resisted. Orska Falyan of Sirgun-Falyan was a devotee of those contests; he began betting on the agile boy who seemed to feel the air with every sweaty inch of naked skin, who slid again and again from traps meant to break him; he was elated when the boy continued to win, sometimes by huge leads. The old man more or less adopted Karrel Goza; he sponsored him to the Pilot's Guild, paid his Guildbond, and when he gained his pilot's rating, hired him on at Sirgun Bol. Orska Falyan continued to take an interest in Karrel Goza, had him teach some Sirgun and Falyan youngers how to soar, left the boy a small legacy when he died ten years later.

Karrel Goza finished filling the cart, wishing as he'd wished so many times before that the slave techs would finally come up with a machine capable of that noxious work; the fibers were tough, slippery, treacherous and finer than a woman's hair; every mechanical forker they'd tried jammed after an hour or two. It took a man's dexterity to manage the transfer. He kicked the gong to let the handler know and the cart purred off, a new one clanking into its place. Around him other forkers were working with steady minimal swings; another gong clanged, and a third after a silence so short that it seemed more like an echo than a sound in itself.

He coughed, felt a burning in his throat and lungs. The fumes from the vat were beginning to get to him-He looked around. The overseer was out of the room. That figured. The lazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d spent most of the day in his office, a gla.s.s-walled room raised fifty meters off the floor. He could sit in comfort and watch the forkers sweat. Karrel coughed again, cursed under his breath and climbed oft the platform. There was a naked faucet waist-high on the wall near the only door. He turned the faucet on full so the water beat into the catch basin. Holding his breath, he slipped the mask off and slid the filterpack from its slot. He looked at the discolorations on both surfaces, swore again; he held the pack in the stream of water until some of the overload was soaked out of it. That only took care of the grosser particles, the absorption of the wad was a joke; he shook it, wondering what he was putting into his lungs. He swished it back and forth in the water, shook it again and clicked it home.

The wetting was weakening it, he could see pulls and a small rip. He'd been asking for a replacement for three weeks now. Oversoul alone knew when he'd get it. Likely he'd have to buy a pack on the black market. If he could find one. Elli might be able to do it for him, get a filter from her Family. He splashed water on his face, coughed again, felt like he was trying to rip the lining from his throat. He pulled the mask back on; as bad as it was, breathing that miasma over the vats without any protection at all was a thousand times worse. He went back to work. Not much longer, he told himself. Hang on, Kar; twenty days. Twenty days and Elli will get her chance at Herk. Ah, to see him dangling head down in that vat.

"What?" Karrel Goza set his cup down, blinked wearily at his Ommar.

The Parlor was small and by intention intimate; the wallposts, the ceiling and its beams were carved and painted in jewel colors, small angular flower patterns on an angular emerald ground; a fire crackled cheerfully behind a semi-transparent sh.e.l.l guard; ancient tapestries hung from ceiling to floor, colors muted by time, still dark and rich. The Ommar sat in a plump chair, its ancient leather dyed a deep scarlet and mottled by decades of saddlesoap and elbowgrease, its arms and ornaments and swooping clawfooted legs carved from a brown wood age-darkened to almost-black. She was a small woman with a halo of fine white hair about a face dominated by huge black eyes, ageless eyes. She wore a simple white blouse, an old black skirt smoothed neatly about her shortlegs, legs too large for her size. She'd been a diver before she married into the Goza family, not one of the premiere Dallisses though she shared their arrogance; even now he could see the merm marks on the backs of her hands. She sniffed impatiently, repeated what she'd said.

"Youngers and middlers from Goza House have been running with the inklins.

Gensi, Kivin, Kaynas, it's an isya, I think, one just forming with Gensi as the Pole. Zaraiz, Bulun and half a dozen boys, they call themselves ..." her weary wrinkled face lifted suddenly, lighted by the grin that made him and everyone else adore her when they weren't afraid of her, "the Green Slimes, or something like that. They were in that hoohaw last night, dropping sludge bombs on the guard barracks. At least it wasn't fire, they haven't gone that far, both sets, it's mischief still, but the inklins they're mixing with aren't playing, Kar. Nor are the bitbits. Streetgangs, tchah! what nonsense. You weren't like that, much more sensible."

Karrel Goza thought about a few of his exploits when he was a younger (which he fervently hoped she'd never find out about) and didn't think he'd been all that sensible. He wasn't too old to remember the feeling that he and his agemates were alone against a stodgy disapproving world, how they built up a powerful secret world of their own that no adult had access to. He couldn't see this crop of pre-adults welcoming interference, but the world was infinitely more dangerous these days and the Ommar was right. Something had to be done. "Yizzies? Homemade or borrowed or what?"

"Gensi boasted she made her own; I suppose they all did, which means they've been stealing, there's no other way they could have got the materials, you know very well no adult in this family has coin to throw away on idiocy like that."

"Where are they keeping them?"

"Not in the House. I'd have the obscenities smashed if I could lay my hands on them."

"The boys, do you know which is the leader?"

"Zaraiz Memeli, as much as any. That clutch of shoks, it's not even an imitation isya and as for being a gang, tchah!" She leaned forward, urgent and more upset than he could remember seeing her, her tangled white brows squeezing against the deep cleft between them. "I am afraid of them, Kar. I know their faces, but not what they're thinking, if they're thinking at all; I look into those shallow animal eyes and I wonder if there's anything but animal behind them." She straightened her back. "In any case, they have to be stopped. Bad enough to have those street-sweepings making trouble. Tchah! Do you know what Herkken Daz will do to us if Sech Gorak finds one of our boys dead on the street or shoots one of them out of the sky? Goza House will be translated to Ta.s.salga brick by brick. What's left of it. I'm talking to you, do you know why? Because everyone here knows what you're doing and I have this faint hope the boys will listen to you. If they don't, I don't know what to do. The girls . . ." she brushed a hand across her eyes, "the girls, ahh! Kar, they look at me . . . animal eyes, nothing there. I thought I knew girls, I don't know these. Talk to them, Kar. If you think it would help, can you get that Indiz Dalliss to see them? You know who I mean."

He sipped at the tea to cover his hesitation. After a minute, he said, "That might be difficult. The Huvved put a price on her head and the Jerk has doubled it."

"Try." Her voice was iron, her eyes pinned him.

"This is not a good time," he said, "she won't come."

"What use are you Kar, if you can't do this small thing for your Family? What do I say to your mother? We have protected him and lied for him, covered his shivery a.s.s, and when we ask a small, a minute thing for us, his Family, what does he say? I can't, he says."

"Let it lay, Ommar. Please." His hand shook, tea splashed onto his knees.

"Why should I? What is more important that the moral discipline of yoursisters, your nieces, your cousins?"

"I can't tell you that. Please. I can't."

She relaxed, her back curving into the cushions. "I see. How long will you need cover this time?"

"I don't know, maybe four, five days."

"When?"

"When I'm called. I can't say more."

"Hmm. It will be better if we prepare for this." She smiled, no glow to her this time, just a tight bitter twist of the lips. "You've been doing too much, Kar. You look like a walking ghost; no one will be surprised if you go down seriously sick. If I pull in some markers, I can set your cousin Tamshan in your place, so we don't lose the earnings."

"Gorak watches all pilots; we don't want that; the job takes me off his list."

"As long as you're supposed to be coughing your lungs out, he won't bother his head over you."

"If he believes it."

"You think he's going to push his way in here and time your spasms?"

"If he wants to, he will." He rubbed at his eyes; he'd been noticing a haze-effect for several weeks. Eyes, lungs, his whole body was breaking down.

He was averaging four hours' sleep a night. It was weeks since he'd had any appet.i.te, he hadn't seen Lirrit for . . . how long? Gray day melted into gray day. He didn't know how long. Too long. He hadn't even thought about her for days. He closed his eyes, shivered as he realized he couldn't bring her face to mind. No time for thinking, less for contemplating marriage; he and Lirrit would wed when times were easier, but in the miasma of weariness, fear, horror that usurped his day and dreamtime lately, it was impossible even to dream of such things. Maybe it was just as well he got out, he was running on autopilot, abdicating his responsibility to himself, depending on Elmas Ofka for direction and impetus. Some time to himself . . . he savored the thought, then put it aside. It wouldn't happen this month or the next; there was too much to do. After then? Who knew, not he. "Zaraiz," he said. "I don't know him. How old is he? You told me his line name, but I don't remember it."

"Memeli. He's a first year middler, no discipline, he's insolent, a bad influence on everyone." She slapped her hands on the chair arms. "Memeli, tchah! Had I been Ommar that generation, we wouldn't have the problem, we never would have affiliated that collection of losers."

Karrel Goza lowered his eyes, played with his cup. The intolerance of a Dalliss, her inability to see worth in folk who didn't conform to her personal standards, it was the ugly side of their Ommar. He tilted the cup, gazed at the rocking tawny fluid as if he saw Elmas Ofka's face there; that intolerance, that ignorance, that inflexibility were her faults too, they'd bothered him from the first. He'd forgotten that ... no, not forgotten, he'd stopped thinking. With the end so close, yes, take the time, yes, go back to thinking, yes, be there to stand against her when the need arises, yes. . . .

Hands heavy with weariness, he rubbed the crackling from his eyes. "All right," he said, "I'll talk with the boy. Maybe it'll do some good." He coughed, gulped down a mouthful of the lukewarm tea.

"In the morning," he said, "locate Zaraiz Memeli for me; don't bother him, just let me know where he is, I'll collect him myself."

"I will do that, yes." She lifted the teapot, beckoned him over and refilled his cup with the aromatic liquid; she had expensive taste in teas and indulged it more than she should in times like this; sitting here, savoring the flavor, he resented it, his sweat and pain bought her these luxuries and she took them as her right when there were children of the House-not Goza, no, but of the House as much as any Goza child--who needed food, clothing, medicine. This can't keep on, he thought, it has to change, we've got to make it change. He thought of the teacher at the Mines and what she'd been telling her students; it was not happy hearing; We'll be different, he told himself, we'll make this work. When he was seated again, she said, "Ommars tell me that slaves are disappearing, not one or two but whole chains of them.""Oh?"

"Is that all you're going to say?"

"Yes."

The Ommar leaned forward again, her eyes fixed on him, trying to get past the face he presented to her. After a minute she sucked at her teeth, shook her head. "This can't go on," she said.

He looked up, startled by the echo of what he'd been thinking; then he realized that she meant something far different.

"Inci is better off than most from what I hear, but give her another few months and she'll be burning down around us. Before Herk lets that happen, he'll call on the stingers and blast those lunatic children out of the air and he won't care what else he levels. I'm telling you, Kar, you tell her and the rest of them. Do something. If her lot won't or can't, then we crawl to Herk and lick his toes. We've got no time left for playing hero games."

He got heavily to his feet; it was more difficult than he'd expected. The comfort of that chair, the warmth of the room, the soothing fragrance of the chamwood burning on the hearth, these things were like chains on his arms and legs. At the door he turned. "I will pa.s.s your message on, Hanifa Ommar, but I will say this, though I probably am talking too much, this is not a good time to insult her." He went out.

Zaraiz Memeli was a small youth, black hair curling tightly about a face sharp enough to cut wood. He was digging without enthusiasm at a tuber bed, leaning on his spading fork whenever the hara.s.sed middler girl turned her back on him to deal with some especially egregrious idiocy of another of her punishment detail. She had to keep watch on the garden, the laundry room and a workshed where three girls were sorting rags and stripping discards of reusable parts.

Usually there would be several middlers acting as overseers. Karrel Goza found this lone harried girl even more disturbing than the aberration he was supposed to deal with this morning. Why was she alone? Was the Ommar losing her grip, letting work details fall apart? Was she letting favorites play on pride and refuse such work? He didn't know his home any longer. His fault. The Ommar was right that far. So busy saving the world he forgot about his Family; he was almost a stranger here. For the past year anyway. Up at dawn, hasty breakfast, toast and a cup of tea, maybe a sausage if he could force it down, then the retting shed, work there till the second shift came on, midafternoon, scrub the chemical stink off his body, try to get the taint of it out of his lungs, eat if he could, tumble into bed for a restless nightmare-ridden nap; dark come down, off to the taverns for carousing or conspiring or out to the Mines to fly for Elmas Ofka, his attention turned outward always, the House too familiar for him to see it; he simply a.s.sumed that it continued to exist as it existed in his memory. By the time he reached the tuber patch off the Memeli Court, he was in no mood to put up with sa.s.s from a know-nothing bebek who was setting the House in danger with no purpose except to tickle his urges.

"Zaraiz Memeli."

The boy looked up after a deliberate pause, his face guarded. Custom and courtesy required a response; he leaned on his fork in a silence more insolent than words.

Karrel Goza swallowed bile and kept his temper. "Come," he said. This wasn't starting out well and he didn't see how he could improve things, but he slogged stubbornly on. The young overseer came at a quick trot, questions on her lips. He silenced her with the Ommar's order, took the fork from Zaraiz Memeli and gave it to her. He tapped Zaraiz on the shoulder and pointed toward the Memeli court. "We'll talk there."

Eyes like obsidian, wrapped in a resistant silence, the boy strolled along, refusing to recognize the compulsion put on him. A sly scornful smile sneaked onto his face as Karrel pushed through the wicket and stopped, the noise and clutter of the busy enclosure breaking around him. Crawlers and pre-youngers littered the flags, crying, yelling, playing slap-and-punch games; older preeschased each other around the baby herds and their mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins who were working, singing, cross-talking in endless antiphon, a tapestry of sound.

Karrel Goza glanced at the boy, watched his bony unfinished face go wooden and unresponsive. For a moment he felt like strangling the pest, then, abruptly, he didn't know why then or later, the absurdity of the whole thing hit him and he laughed. "Not here, obviously," he said and backed out. He frowned at Zaraiz. There was always the Ommar's garden, but instinct and intellect told him that would be a very bad idea; the peace and lushness of that pocket paradise was too stark a contrast to the Memeli Court, it would exacerbate the boy's disaffection. He thought about leaving the House and walking out to the wharves, but he was supposed to be down sick and it would be stupid to confirm the Sech's suspicions. Problem was, except for the Ommar's quarters, there wasn't much privacy, Gozas and Duvvars and Memelis working everywhere, even the oldest doing handcraft and repair, and those who weren't working were talking and watching, gossiping and prying into other folk's business. He dug deep into memory for the places he went when he was a younger and wanted to get away from the soup of life simmering inside the Housewalls. He didn't feel like climbing a tree or burrowing into a dust-saturated attic; he smiled, didn't suit the dignity of the moment. It was a gray day with rain threatening; yes, the clotheslines on the roof of the weaving shed, there wouldn't be anyone hanging out clothes today.

The lines were humming softly as the chill wind swept over the roof; it wasn't the most comfortable place for a prolonged chat, but it was private. Karrel Goza kicked a basket of clothespegs out of a fairly sheltered corner and settled himself with his back against the waist-high wall. "Sit."

Zaraiz Memeli dropped with the boneless awkward grace of his age, drew his thin legs up and wrapped thin arms about them. He said nothing. His att.i.tude proclaimed he intended to keep on saying nothing.

"You don't have to tell me why," Karrel Goza said. "I know why." He smiled with satisfaction as he saw the boy's rage flare, then vanish behind the shutters he'd had too much practice raising between himself and the rest of the world. He did not want to be understood, Karrel Goza's words were both a challenge and an insult. "Dalliss," Karrel said. "The Ommar; arrogant, bigoted, makes you want to kick her face in, but she's good at her job." He pushed aside his unease; this was no time for doubt. "Within her limits there's no one big enough to take her place. Not you, my little friend, no matter what you think. She's got her toadies, yes. Gozas, all of them. You think I like that? I'd drop the lot in Saader's Cleft if it was up to me. They stand in her shadow and steal her authority and tramp on the rest of us and she's blind to it. Yes. I know. I'm Goza and I'm here, running errands for her, so you think I'm one of them, tongu-ing her toes and begging her to walk on me." He shrugged, his shoulders sc.r.a.ping against the whitened roughcast. "I had it easier than you. I got out. When I was a few years older than you, I got out.

Not divorced, just out. They tried bullocking me, sure they did, but most of the time I wasn't here and when I was I had the clout to tell them to go suck.

As long as I was flying." He felt the jolt again, the whole-body ache that came when he was grounded, the loss he couldn't put behind him except when he was flying for Elmas Ofka. An obsession can be a gift, giving point to an otherwise pointless life; it can be a torment when there's a wall in the way.

He glanced at Zaraiz. The boy was blank as an empty page, refusing to hear any of this. What do you want, Zaraiz Memeli, do you know? He tried feeling his way back to that time around p.u.b.erty when all his certainties melted like taffy left in the sun. No. He knew too much about surviving now. The years had made him intimately acquainted with gray, the middler world of crisp unchanging black-and-white wasn't available to him any longer. Those were shifts so fundamental that it was impossible to recapture the angst of that world. It also made it difficult to judge what the boy was thinking, what he was feeling. "Do you extend your loathing to your parents? Your brothers andsisters?"

The boy lifted his eyes, flicker of molten obsidian, then he looked away.

"I went to see the Ommar Istib Memeli last night. We talked about you. Your father is on the Duzzulkas right now, bush-peddling black-market medicines, your mother works at the k.u.mmas Kabrikon in the Fix room setting dyes, your two older sisters work there also, handling half a dozen spinners each; Hayati Memeli, the older of them, has first signs of the coughing disease. Your third sister is only a few months old. Your two brothers are mid-youngers, still with their tutors; neither of them shows much promise with his letters, but Aygil Memeli the youngest is good with his hands, he might be a carpenter or a mechanic if the Bondfees can be found. Do they mean nothing to you?" Karrel Goza stared at the boy, trying to see past the blankness. "Ommar Istib says you're bright enough but lazy. That could be because you haven't found anything you think worth doing, or it could be because there's nothing to you but flash and foolishness. Ommar Istib says you've shown no special tal-ents, that you're not interested in anything, all you seem to know is what you don't want which is everything inside these walls." A muscle twitched beside the boy's mouth, but he would not look at Karrel. "You think that matters to anyone? To me? Let me tell you, I'm not particularly interested in who you are or what you think." Another molten black gaze. Karrel Goza nodded. "Right. I'm like all the rest. That's the way the world wags, cousin. Let me make something clear.

While you live within these walls, you will show some loyalty to the others here; which means you will stop your yizzy raids as long as you are a.s.sociated with this House. If you want the freedom of the streets, you can have it; the convocation of ommars will pro-Bounce a divorcement. They will not let you endanger the rest of Goza-Duvvar-Memeli."

Zaraiz Memeli paled, flushed, clamped his lips together, struggling to control the emotions surging in him. A moment later he lost the fight. "Hypocrite!"

The word exploded out of him in an angry whisper. "You . . . you're doing worse."

"I'm not a child." Karrel Goza fixed a quelling eye on the working, angry face; inside, he writhed as he listened to what was coming out of his mouth; he wasn't the pompous idiot he heard himself being, but somehow he couldn't shake loose from . . . from this stinking parody of all he'd kicked against since he was Zaraiz Memeli's age. The face of authority, he thought, as his mouth went on uttering fatuities. "I'm not recklessly endangering the House for the sake of a transient thrill." He held up his hand to silence the boy until he was finished speaking. "There is a purpose to "Purpose!" Zaraiz Memeli's voice cracked which made him angrier than before; he tried to say more, started to stammer and clamped his teeth on his lower bp. Karrel Goza waited, giving the boy time to collect himself. "Y . . . y . .

. YOU!" Zaraiz got out finally, "Purpose, yunks.h.i.t. Playing stupid games. Going nowhere." He jerked a long trembling thumb at the sky. "That! that . . . that thing up there says you're full of s.h.i.t and hot air."

"Maybe so." Karrel Goza sighed. "This isn't about me, Zaraiz Memeli. The inklins haven't much to lose, so they can afford their rashness. As long as you are connected to Goza House, you drag us down with you." He rubbed wearily at his eyes. "Don't tell me it isn't fair. I know it isn't fair. The Ommar and her convocation have the power, you have none. Your nearkin will back her, so will we." He hesitated. "The time will come, Zaraiz Memeli, when you'll have a chance to change the balance of power. If you're here to fight, if you have the will to fight. All I ask is that you think about it."

Zaraiz Memeli shuddered, shut his eyes and dropped his face onto his knees.

Karrel Goza rubbed at his arms, clamped his cold, chapped hands in his armpits, hunting some warmth. Weariness from the abruptly interrupted drive of the past months was dropping like a fog over him, the day's damp chill was boring into his bones. He scowled at the boy; he might feel a certain kinship with him, but that embryonic brother-sense was drowning in impatience. Comeon, he thought, come on, young fool; give in or get out. There's nothing I can do for you. Look at me. Nothing I can do for me. Not now. You're supposed to be intelligent, I can't see it, show me. He pinched his nose, killing a sneeze, tucked his hand back under his arm.

Zaraiz Memeli lifted his head. "How?"

Karrel Goza blinked. "How do you usually think?"

"No." He jerked his thumb at the sky, the tremble gone out of his hand. "That.

There's whispers. I didn't believe them before. It is true? Have you and her figured a way to get at it?"

Oversoul's empty navel, Karrel Goza thought, I talk too much. "Nonsense," he said aloud. "How could we? I was talking about Family matters."

Zaraiz grinned. His black eyes glittering, he bounced to his feet, so much energy in him, if someone touched a match to him, he'd explode. "Right," he said. "All right. I'll make a deal.

The Slimes'll park our yizzies for now, if so you make us part of it." He folded his thin arms, hugged himself as if those arms had strength enough to control what burned in him. The wind blew strands of curly hair across his eyes, his mouth; he ignored that and stood there, frozen fire, dangerous to his enemies, nearly as dangerous to his kin. When Karrel Goza failed to answer at once, his excitement Mew out and the suspicion and resentment that smoldered under his skin burned hotter in its place. "Or aren't Memeli worthy? Aren't we good enough for you?"

Karrel Goza closed his eyes. I do not need this he thought, Prophet touch my lips or no, anything I say will be wrong. If there was just some way I could drop him in a hole somewhere until. . . hole? Why not. He smiled. He couldn't help smiling though he knew Zaraiz Memeli would see and misinterpret it. He opened his got wearily to his feet. "How much weight will your yizzy lift?"

t'You?" Zaraiz was still suspicious but beginning to radiate a tentative triumph. He's quick, Karrel Goza thought, good, he might even be useful.