-Choose one, Al. One. You only need one for our first exercises. Then stare at it fixedly.

Okay. Now what?

-Describe your physical posture.

Hm? I'm just standing on the track staring at this rock and waiting for- -Althea...

Okay, okay! I'm upright but relaxed, facing the river. My hands are on my hips. My feet are spread about twenty-four inches apart, toes pointing toward the river. My center of gravity is right above the midpoint of my stance.

-Very good. Are you still staring at your selected rock?

(growl) Yes, Grandpere, just as you commanded.

-Be polite, young lady. You're about to do something brand new. It's likely to shock you a bit. Now, without altering your posture in any way, fix the image of that rock in your mind's eye, but let your body's eyes close.

She complied, feeling only moderately silly.

-Now, without moving an inch, approach that rock.

What?

-Extend your viewpoint toward it, until it seems as if you could reach down and pick it off the riverbank.

Hm. Give me a moment, okay?

-Take your time. Just don't move physically.

It was an exercise of mind she'd never previously attempted. It took some time to convince her "viewpoint," whatever that was, to move toward the bit of feldspar she'd chosen. She imagined it growing larger, as if she were approaching it physically, and stopped when it appeared to rest directly before her feet.

Okay, Grandpere, now what?

-Now pick it up.

Huh?

-Reach down and pick it up, Al. I can't make it any simpler than that. You can do it!

It was pointless to argue with him. She shrugged, imagined herself bending, reaching toward the rock, closing her fingers on it and lifting it to about eye level.

Check, Grandpere. I've picked up the Spooner-be-damned rock. Now what?

-(humor) Now open your eyes.

She did, and immediately grew faint.

The rock hung suspended in the air, about five feet off the ground. Defying gravity.

She gasped, and the rock fell to the ground.

Uh, Grandpere? Was I hallucinating? That's not possible, after all.

-No hallucination, Al. You just lifted a rock of about two pounds' weight via telekinesis.

Rothbard, Rand, and Ringer!

-They had no part in it, dear. It's an aspect of your gift. One that would be very useful in space, don't you think?

But the conservation laws! Where did the energy come from? And what about the momentum?

-Don't ask me to explain it, Al. I can't. All I can say is that intelligence apparently has power over that which is not intelligent. Far more power than is usually supposed.

Then anyone could do this?

-(humor) No, dear. Not quite. At this time and on this world, only you. As far as I know, anyway.

This is going to take some getting used to.

-Because it upsets your assumptions about physical law?

Well, yeah!

-That's one of the reasons for your gift. One of the larger ones. Are you ready for a little more practice? I'd like for you to be able to do it with your eyes open before the end of the lesson.

Uh, give me a minute, okay?

-(humor) Take your time, dear. We have plenty.

Patrice Kramnik ambled irregularly back and forth across the width of the modest bedroom Charisse Morelon had assigned to her and Alvah.

"Do you still want to go back to Kramnik House without him?" she said.

Alvah sat a little straighter and shook his head. "I'd rather not as long as Douglas is patriarch. The other elders are sheep. With Barton out of the picture, they'll depose Douglas only if one of us is willing to accept the premiership. I'm not. Are you?"

"I don't want it." She continued to roam. "But why not? Do you really think we have to have the power seat to be safe there?"

Alvah regarded her sardonically. "Do you want to remain an insignificant fish in an insignificant pond, cousin? The patriarchy is our only hope of attaining any sort of stature in this community. As for 'safe,' we're perfectly safe here, aren't we?" He waved a hand around the little bedroom they'd been allocated. "We're sheltered and protected by the richest and strongest clan on Alta, probably for as long as we care to stay. We're also nobodies: no function, no stature, and no influence." His tone sharpened. "Charisse will probably even agree to pay for Hallanson-Albermayer treatments for us, so we can go on being nobodies for centuries. Living trophies to the generosity and nobility of Clan Morelon. Would you be satisfied with that?"

Patrice ceased to pace and stared at him. He remained seated at the edge of their bed, apparently impassive.

"You weren't like this before..."

"Before Eunice died?" Alvah's smirk lacked any trace of amusement. "Perhaps not. Does that matter? Here, we're safe, but we have nothing else. We're objects of charity, useless to the clan that shelters us. There, we'd be persons of influence, living refutations to Douglas's fantasy of unbridled power. When he falls or is toppled, we'd become gray eminences. People the clan's enemies would need to conciliate...or fear."

She studied him in silence.

Alvah had married into Clan Kramnik. It cost him nothing but a change of residence and name. His birth clan, the Freitags, were no more significant in Valhalla than the Kramniks were in Jacksonville. Eunice had been just one more Kramnik maiden, distinguished neither in appearance nor in intelligence. Yet she had possessed a sweetness that won the hearts of all who knew her. Despite the difference in their ages, she captured Alvah's heart without even trying, and became at once the center of his existence. But they'd had less than two decades together before a raging osteosarcoma, diagnosed far too late for treatment, took her from him.

Except for our little liaison, he's been alone these past four years. I forgot how fresh that wound is. The Hallanson-Albermayer series might have kept them together. She didn't have it. But Douglas did.

"Alvah," she said, "I'm an old woman-"

"I know how old you are," he rasped.

"Please! I don't have any aspirations left. I was surprised, even a bit reluctant, when you and the others asked me to participate in the elders' council. The only thing I sought was a measure of comfort. The idea of participating in clan management seemed a little threatening to that aim.

"It seems from what's followed that I was right about that. I doubt Douglas would have expelled me otherwise. But you know," she said with an embarrassed laugh, "I doubt he would have expelled you if not for our...relationship. Together we must have looked like too much of a threat.

"I don't want any more of that, Alvah. Now that I've had a little while to mull it over, I think Bart has the right of it. This is a better environment. If Charisse is willing to have us for the long term, I think I'll stay. I could be happy here, if I could just find some way to contribute."

She descended somewhat creakily to her knees before him. His eyes widened as she took his hands in hers.

"I think you could, too, if you could accept just being a member of a wholesome clan rather than a mover and shaker. But that's for you to decide. I can only say that...I'd miss you, Alvah. I know I'm not Eunice, but I value what we have...whatever it is."

She looked directly into his eyes.

"Would you stay here with me a little longer, please? To rest and heal? To see if we can nurture what we've begun into something full and lasting? Test these waters for a month or two, to see if they might just suit you better than you think?"

She strained to express the all-important subtext with her eyes and hands.

And given time to think and plan, we might yet be able to satisfy your need to revenge yourself...and Eunice...on Douglas. Even from here.

Alvah looked away. His face worked in that way that speaks of a man sternly repressing tears.

"I'd like more room for our things," he said.

She nodded. "I thought I might speak to Charisse about that."

"And her cooking is awful."

She grinned and nodded. "That, too."

With that Alvah stood, pulled her upright, and gathered her into his arms.

"I would have hauled stakes," Adam Grenier said. He checked the reading on his torque wrench, nodded, put it back on its rack, and slammed shut the cowling of the ultralight. "I was already considering it before all of this. Now I'm not sure. Doug," he said, "what if we've been wrong all this time?"

Douglas Kramnik scowled. "Not possible. The damned Morelons run this community like a royal house, whether they intend it or not. Either we break them, or we resign ourselves to being their vassals in perpetuity."

"That's what you want to do? Break them?" Grenier wiped the grease from his hands on a nearby rag and stuffed it into a pocket of his coveralls. He bent to pull the chock out from under the little plane's nosewheel and tossed it aside. "Give me a hand with this, Doug?"

Kramnik frowned, shrugged, and moved to the other side of the ultralight. Between them they rolled it smoothly out of Grenier Air's maintenance hangar and thence to the parking area. Several other similar craft were tied down there, awaiting their owners' return.

"I reviewed my books a few days ago," Grenier said as they secured the little plane to an unoccupied set of anchors. "The cargo business has been profitable, but it's also a lot of work and responsibility. I have three big-belly planes and a courier craft to maintain, five employees to look after, a landing strip to keep groomed, and all the recordkeeping that goes along with it. I put in between thirty and forty hours a week just doing that stuff-and then there's the repair and maintenance business." He gestured at the ultralight he'd just repaired.

"It occurred to me that I could sell the cargo planes, dissolve that side of my business, keep occupied and well fed on repair and maintenance jobs, and be perfectly happy. So why do I do it?"

Kramnik merely waited.

"I do it," Grenier said, "because it's what I do. What my father did before me. Because it's there to be done. Because other people value it and are willing to pay me for it. Because they appreciate it, and sometimes they say so with more than a fistful of deka notes.

"Yeah, Morelon corn is about sixty percent of my cargo business. Yeah, that means they could force me out of business if they ever decided to do so. And yeah, when Althea came over here with Bart in tow, and told me her clan would no longer be shipping through me, I was ready to kill myself...for about ten seconds. Then I remembered that financially, it doesn't matter that much, and I calmed down."

Kramnik folded his arms over his chest. "So you're happy to be a flunky to the Morelons, letting them do as they please, dictate terms to the rest of Jacksonville, and generally taking whatever crap they dish out? That's quite a change in attitude from a week or two ago, Adam."

Grenier nodded. "I know."

"Well?" Kramnik cocked an eyebrow. "Do I get an explanation?"

Grenier grinned. "Tell me about the shuttles, Doug."

"Hm?"

"The new shuttles Althea engineered for your looms. Bart tells me your production is up by over a third since she installed them."

"Yes, it is. So?"

"What was the price? Did she charge you anything for her work? Did Charisse?"

Kramnik said nothing.

"I thought as much," Grenier said. "Charisse signed a long-term contract with you that very day, didn't she? For items you couldn't even dream of making before Althea and her husband retuned your looms. And I'll bet she gave you generous terms, at that."

"Exactly how," Kramnik grated, "does any of this compensate for the invasion of my property by their scion, or for losing your cargo contract with them?"

Grenier chuckled. "It doesn't. How could it? Althea's raid on Kramnik House and her little visit with me came after those things." He circled the ultralight and squatted to check the knots Kramnik had tied on the anchor rings.

"Wrong sort of knot for this work, Doug." He tugged gently at one end of a tie-down cord, and it unraveled at once. "For this sort of thing you want a knot that's proof against single-point stresses." He wove the cord into an elaborate double-reef knot through the anchor ring and finished off the ends with a square knot. "Something that will hold for as long as the owner wants it to."

He rose and stuck his hands in his coverall pockets.

"Charisse was here barely two hours after Althea," he said. "Brought Forrestal with her. Awfully impressive guy, Doug, but you probably knew that already. He explained that Althea was very upset about our little deal. I assured them that nothing of the sort was going to happen, and Charisse reinstituted the clan's haulage contracts at once, same as before. She even threw in a sweetener: Clan Morelon will share the expense of maintaining the landing strip from now on, if they can build a hangar and have takeoff and landing privileges here."

"And so," Kramnik said, "Althea Morelon can point a gun at you, threaten to beat you to an agonizing pulp, unilaterally cancel her clan's contracts with you, and get away with it? Because Charisse came by afterward and said sorry, didn't really mean it?"

"Don't you think conspiring to destroy her cargo and strand her in Thule-"

"Where my clan spent a millennium of exile!" Kramnik shouted.

"-after agreeing to take her money might be some justification for her tantrum, Doug?"

Kramnik fell silent. Grenier gazed to the southeast.

"Yonder sits a great house," he said, "where there lives a great family. Home to a goodly fraction of the population of Jacksonville. Been there for thirteen hundred years, I'm told. If we're going to have a local royalty, and it looks like we are, I'd rather it be them than anyone else in the region. And I'm going to let my grudge over Althea go, now that I've gotten to know her husband."

Kramnik smirked. "Because he could crush you like a worm?"