None of your concern at all! Suddenly, the hair drifted away from the face completely, the eyes flashed, and pain lanced through Gianni's head from temple to temple. Agony held him paralyzed for a moment, a long moment, whole seconds that seemed to stretch into hours.

At last the eyes closed, hair swirled across to veil them, and the pain was gone as suddenly as it had come, leaving Gianni stubbornly staring, but quaking inside.

Hear! the voice commanded. A troop of Gypsies comes your way! They'll pa.s.s near in the morning! Throw yourselves on their mercy, beseech their aid if you must-but join with them, so that you may live, and come to a safe refuge!

Some well of stubbornness within Gianni suddenly brimmed over. And if I don't?

Then you will die, the face said, simply and severely, at the hands of the condotierri, or from cold and hunger-but be sure, you will die! It began to dwindle, hair and beard swirling about it wilder and wilder, hiding it completely as the voice, too, faded, still saying, Be sure ... be sure ...

Wait! Gianni cried in his dream. Who are you, to command me so?

But the face dwindled to a tiny dot, still bidding him, Be sure . . . be sure ...

beware ... and winked out.

Gianni cried out in anger and frustration-and saw a small fire, not a swirl of hair, and the giant half-wit staring at him in alarm. Gianni realized that his own shout had waked him, and tried to cover his gaffe by saying, "It's my watch now. Go to sleep, Gar."

"Sleep?" The giant frowned, puzzled.

"Sleep," Gianni confirmed, and rolled up on his knees. Every ache in his body protested, and his head began to throb again-but he hitched himself close to the fire, took up a stick of kindling from Gar's heap, and said, "Sleep. I'll tend the fire."

Gar gazed at him for a moment, then lay down right where he was and closed his eyes. They flew open again, and he demanded, "Giorgio not sleep?"

Half-wit or not, he still had his exaggerated sense of responsibility. "Giorgio not sleep," Gianni confirmed. He doubted that he could, even if he had wanted to-not after that dream.

Gar closed his eyes instantly, rea.s.sured. Five seconds later, he exhaled in the quick hiss of sleep followed by the long, slow, measured inhalation, and Gianni knew he slept indeed.

So. He was alone with his thoughts-a nightmare reseeing of that daunting face.

But for some reason, Medallia's face seemed to merge with it, overlay it, supersede it. For a moment, Gianni wondered whybut only a moment. Then he gave himself over, with vast relief, to contemplating the memory of that beautiful face, feeling himself relax, unwind, grow gradually calm ...

But not sleepy. He had been right about that.

Sure enough, the Gypsy train came into sight in midmorning, just as the face had predicted-and Gianni staggered under the sudden realization that the dream was no mere spiderweb spun from the sandman's dust. Somehow, some genuine man of mystic power had thrust his way into Gianni's slumberssome man, and perhaps some woman, too ...

The mere thought made his pulse quicken. Could there really be such a dancer as he had dreamed of, real and alive, and in this world? Could he find her, touch her, kiss her? Would she let him?

He wrenched his attention back to the Gypsies and began to wave and call to them. "Hola! Holay! Over here, good people! Aid us! A rescue!" He hobbled forward, leaning on Gar as much as he pulled himthen suddenly stopped, realizing how they must look to the Gypsies. What could the travelers see, but a couple of filthy, unkempt men, naked save for loincloths-one huge, dark, and glowering, but clearly obeying the other ...

The Gypsies had stopped, though, and were staring at them doubtfully. Gianni realized he must find some way to rea.s.sure them, so he came no closer, but called out again, "Help us, good folk! We're travelers like yourselves, waylaid and brought low by condotierri! Bandits have sacked us and beaten us, so badly that they have addled my companion's wits! He is as simple as a child now! Please, we beg you! Help the child!"

A woman with a bright kerchief leaned forward from the little door at the front of the lead caravan and called something to the men who walked beside.

They looked up at her, glanced at one another, then beckoned Gar and Gianni to come closer. Gianni's heart leaped with relief, and he hobbled toward them as quickly as his bruised legs would take him, towing Gar in his wake.

As they came close, though, the Gypsies backed away, eyeing Gar warily. For the first time, Gianni noticed that they were wearing swords, noticed it because they had their hands on their hilts-long straight swords, with daggers thrust through their sashes. Gianni stopped and said, "Don't worry-he's harmless."

"Unless you tell him to be dangerous," the oldest Gypsy said. His gray mustache drooped below his chin, and gray tufts of eyebrows shaded eyes that glared a challenge at Gianni, who was in no shape to launch into a glib explanation that might both pacify and satisfy. He gathered himself to try, though.

Gar chose just that moment to say, "Tell me about the rabbits, Giorgio."

The Gypsies stared, and Gianni could cheerfully have brained the man. Out of the corner of his mouth, he whispered, "Be still, Gar!" He nearly said "Lenni," but remembered that the newly made halfwit didn't know the false name.

The Gypsies seemed intrigued, though. "Rabbits?" the old one said. "Why does he ask about rabbits?" A memory of their last pretense must have surfaced in Gar's brain, brought on by similar circ.u.mstances-either that, or the giant was really pretending, but Gianni doubted that. "Because when he becomes frightened or anxious, I lull him by promising we shall someday have a little farm of our own, with a garden to give us food, and small furry creatures for him to pet and play with."

The Gypsies exchanged a glance of sympathy that said, as clearly as though they had spoken aloud, A simpleton. Then the older one turned back. "It's a good dream, that, and a good way to calm him. Does he become upset often?"

"Not so often at all," Gianni improvised, "but we were set upon by a gang of bandits a mile or so back; they beat us harshly and took all that we had, even our clothes, so he is wary of strangers just now."

"The poor lad," said the woman, still looking out of the little door.

The older Gypsy nodded. "We saw churned and muddy earth, and wondered." He stepped toward Gar, and the giant drew back in alarm. The Gypsy stopped. "We won't hurt you, poor lad. Indeed, we're travelers like yourself, and have learned to be wary of the bandits, too-quite wary. Nay, we won't hurt you, but we will bandage your wounds and give you warm food-soup-and clothing. Will you have them?"

Gar seemed to relax a little. The Gypsy held out a hand, and Gar started, but didn't run. Gianni took a chance and Gar's arm, to tug him forward gently.

"Come, my friend. They won't hurt you. They'll help us, give us shelter for a little while."

"Shelter, yes." The Gypsy nodded. "Under the caravan, it's true, but it's better than no roof at all."

"Under?" Gar said hopefully, and took a step forward.

Gianni's heart leaped at the sign of memory. He explained to the older man, "We took shelter with a Gypsy woman in that way, not long ago. He remembers."

"A Gypsy woman?" All the Gypsies suddenly looked up, suddenly alert. "Traveling alone?"

"Alone, yes." Gianni remembered that it had seemed odd at the time. "Her name was Medallia." The Gypsies exchanged a cryptic glance. "Yes, we know of Medallia. Well, if she gave you shelter and was none the worse for it, we will, too.

Come join us."

"I thank you with all my heart!" Gianni came forward, pulling Gar with him. The giant came, still cautious, but moving.

As they neared, Gianni looked at the Gypsies more closely. Their hair was hidden by bright-colored kerchiefs, but their beards were of every color-yellow, brown, black, red, and several different shades in between. Their eyes, too, varied-blue, brown, green, hazel, gray ... Gianni couldn't help but think how much they looked like everyone else he had ever known, at home in Pirogia. Change their clothes and you could never tell the difference.

Those clothes were gaudy, bright greens and blues and reds and yellows, with here and there broad stripes. Shirts and trousers alike were loose, even voluminous, the shirts open at the throats, showing a broad expanse of chest, the trousers tucked into high boots. They wore sashes of contrasting colors, and men and women alike wore earrings and bracelets.

The merchant in Gianni wondered if they were of real gold.

"Women" because, now that the train had stopped, many more Gypsies had emerged to come cl.u.s.tering around the newcomers. It was the women who took Gar and Gianni in hand, coming forward to say, "Come, poor lads, you must be half dead from cold and hunger."

Gar pulled back at first, frightened, and Gianni had to rea.s.sure him. "Nice ladies, Gar! See? Nice!" He shook hands with one young woman, then realized how pretty she was and wished he could do more. Inspiration struck, and he held a hand up to her hairauburn, with no kerchief to hide it. "May I?"

The woman looked startled and drew back a pace, then gave him a coquettish smile and stepped forward again. Gianni caressed her hair, then turned to Gar and said, "Soft. Warm."

The woman stared, startled, and drew back quickly as Gar raised his hand. "He won't hurt you," Gianni promised.

Warily, the woman stepped forward again, saying, "Just one."

Gar's hand lowered; he stroked her hair, then broke into a beatific smile. "Little, warm! Rabbit!"

The whole troop howled with laughter, the "rabbit" foremost among them as she caught Gar's wrist and held his hand.

"Ho, rabbit!" one of the young men called. Another cried, "Rabbit, may I pet you, too?"

But one of the girls snapped, "Rabbit indeed! Tell him it's mink or nothing, Esmeralda!"

"Aye!" cried an older woman. "And don't let him dare try to hold you!"

So, laughing and chatting, they took a bemused Gar by the elbows and led him to a nearby brook, where they washed him, dried him, and put Gypsy clothes on his back-though, like Medallia, they had to improvise considerably. Gar was near panic the whole time, white showing all around his eyes, darting frantic looks at Gianni-but between Gianni's soothing and the fact that he was so obviously enjoying the same attentions being heaped upon him, Gar managed to stay on the sane side of hysteria. Finally, with bread and soup in their bellies and the worst of their hurts bandaged, they set off beside the caravans, following the Gypsy men and with Gianni, at least, chatting up at the young women, who leaned out the windows of the caravans to trade banter with him. It was a nuisance to have them calling him "Giorgio" instead of "Gianni," but only a nuisance, and if it helped the poor addle-brained giant to stay calm, Gianni decided, Giorgio he would be, until Gar's wits came back to him.

They did indeed sleep under the wagons that night, but this time, they each had a blanket to shield them from the chill. The day's events swirled through Gianni's brain, the laughter and talk, the banter over the meals and the dancing afterward- he regretted deeply that he had been too bruised and weary to join in, for the girls had indeed looked very pretty as they swayed and whirled. Now, though, the caravans were drawn into a circle, and the whole tribe sat up chatting around the fire-but he and Gar, dog-tired, had crept away to sleep, the more so because the Gypsies had begun to talk in their own language, which Gianni couldn't understand. But the sound of the low voices, the musicality of the women's, lulled him, and he felt sleep coming even as he closed his eyes, felt the warm darkness closing around him once more, though his weary brain found energy for one last thought, one last burst of curiosity as to what the Gypsies were saying to one another ...

Would you really like to know? asked a voice that he knew all too well, and a hand reached out of the darkness with a wand, a long slender stick with a k.n.o.b on the end, a k.n.o.b that reached above his view and touched lightly, must have touched his halfdreaming head, for Gianni found himself suddenly able to understand the Gypsies' words.

"Yes, Medallia," one of them was saying. "Surely coincidence, that! She wouldn't set a spy upon us, would she?"

"What need, Giles?" a woman retorted. "She already knows all our plans."

"Well, yes, Patty," Giles said, "but she might be afraid we'd try to arrest her, or even to-"

"Stuff and nonsense!" Patty said. "AEGIS agents move against one of our own, just because she disagrees with us? Never!"

"Not just disagreeing," another man said darkly. "There's always the chance that she might try to undermine our efforts."

"No, surely not, Morgan!" an older woman said, shocked. "She left because she can no longer be party to our efforts, as she said-not because she intends to fight them!"

"How can we be sure?" Morgan answered. "More to the point, how can she be sure that we wouldn't try to stop her from trying to stop us? No, Rosalie, if I were her, I would definitely try to place a spy among us."

"Well, yes," Rosalie said, "but you always have been a little paranoid, Morgan.

The point is that Medallia isn't."

Gianni wondered what "paranoid" meant.

"Oh, Medallia has her touches of paranoia, too," said a third woman, "or she wouldn't have seen menace in our plans, when we're only trying to help these poor benighted natives."

Poor benighted natives! Gianni felt a surge of indignation and hoped she wasn't talking about himself and his fellow Pirogians. Besides, who were mere Gypsies to call city people "benighted"?

"The Gypsy disguise works well enough for us," Morgan argued. "It allows us to go anywhere we want on Talipon, and we can always split off an agent to a.s.sume the costume of any city we want to infiltrate-let him go in to try to change their ways. Why should it be any less effective for Medallia?"

Disguise! They were not real Gypsies, then? Suddenly Gianni realized that he had never heard of Gypsies until he was eleven-only ten years ago. Were there any real Gypsies? Or were they all false?

"Medallia only wondered whether we were right at all, to try to lift this whole planet out of the Dark Ages," Patty said stubbornly. "She could understand the benefits of the Renaissance that's beginning here on Talipon, but she had real doubts about trying to bring these people into the modern world, with high technology and secular ideologies."

Esmeralda nodded. "After all, their ancestors came here to escape all that."

"No," Morgan said, "she thought we were wrong to try to persuade the lords to band together-but how else are we ever going to talk them into stopping this constant internecine warfare?"

"That's a worthy goal, yes," Rosalie countered, "but isn't it going to make even more bloodshed, persuading them to believe they have a common enemy?"

"How else can we ever get them to unite?" Morgan argued. "Oh, I know, Llewellyn-you still think we should try to quell them with a religious revival. But aristocrats see religion and life as being separate things, not all one!"

"You see? We can't even agree among ourselves," Rosalie sighed. "I mean, we can, but we keep developing doubts. Is it any surprise Medallia became fed up with the lot of us and just went her own way?"

"Not 'just,' " Patty said darkly. "She thinks we're wrong to try to make the lords see the merchants as their common enemy."

Cold fear ran through Gianni's entrails. Tell the lords that the merchants were their common enemy, so that they would all band together against the mercantile cities? It would be a bloodbath! No wonder they'd hired the Stilettos to "chastise"

Pirogia!

"But she said that if we did that, we'd have to warn the merchants in time for them to disband and hide," Morgan went on. "Or worse yet, to fight back! I tell you, I see her hand in this Pirogian merchant Braccalese, who came up with the idea of trying to persuade the merchant cities to band together!"

Suddenly, Gianni was very glad they knew him only as "Giorgio." But how had they learned of Gar's idea? And how had they come to think of it as Papa Braccalese's inspiration? Worse-what would they do to Papa to stop him!

Suddenly, Gianni was very intent on the rest of the conversation.

CHAPTER 8.

"A merchant's league would undo everything we're trying to accomplish,"

Llewellyn agreed. "Worse-with the island divided into two power blocs, it might cause civil war!"

Oh, that was very nice. They didn't want a civil war, they just wanted a ma.s.sacre of merchants. Didn't the fools realize that would be the fruit of their plans?

Apparently not. "We must not forget our goal," Morgan counseled, "to bring peace to this whole strife-ridden planet, where tribal anarchy prevails in the North and warlord anarchy prevails in the South and East. Talipon with its merchant fleet can spread the idea of centralized government and bring the peace of abundance ..."

"Or the peace of an empire," Giles said darkly.

"Any peace is better than none," Rosalie reminded him.

"True," said Esmeralda. "Peace will allow justice to prevail and education and the arts to flourish."

"But there will never be any peace if we don't establish it on Talipon first,"

Morgan reminded her. "Malthus's Law will see to that."

"Yes, the fundamental principle of preindustrial economics," a young man sighed, "that population increases geometrically, but food production only increases arithmetically."

"Yes, Jorge, we all know," a middle-aged woman said sourly. "Four people times four people equals sixteen people, but four bushels of grain plus four bushels of grain only equals eight bushels. Without industrial techniques, there will always be more people than there is food, until . . ."

"Plague, starvation, or war kills off so many of them that there's enough food for everyone," Rosalie sighed.

Gianni listened in horror, wanting to cry out, to scream, but held bound by sleep.