Gignomai laughed. "All right, I'm sorry, I'll rephrase that. I do trust you, as much as I can trust anybody. I guess it's not in my nature." Something had changed. For a moment, Furio didn't know what it was. Then he realised that the hammer had stopped. "It's how I grew up," Gignomai went on, "always having to hide stuff, or have it taken away from me. After a bit it turned into a sort of game, I suppose: how long could I keep something hidden from those two? And it was always something really stupid, like a bird's nest or some rusty iron I'd found, or a book, or a toy sword made out of bits of shingle. But as I got older, there was a bit more of an edge to it, if you see what I mean. I was supposed to have grown out of all that, and I hadn't." He made a vague conciliatory gesture, all hands and shoulders. "So I don't tell anybody anything. It's not just you. I don't expect you to like me for it, it's just how I am."

It was a pretty good performance, Furio had to concede. The question was, to what extent was he supposed to believe it? Of course, Gignomai had a special way of lying, which involved mostly telling the truth.

"The hammer's stopped," Gignomai said.

"I'd noticed."

"I didn't. Shows I've been here too long." he stood up. "If it's stopped, it must mean something's bust. You'll have to excuse me. I've told them how to fix most things, but they pretend they don't understand."

"I'd best be getting back," Furio said. "Good luck with your furnace."

"Thanks. You won't tell anyone, will you? About the other thing. You can tell them about the furnace all you like."

The dozen or so leading citizens-the criteria for inclusion were vague and mostly consisted of being affluent enough to be able to spare the time to sit in the back room of the store during the day, when everybody else was working-gathered to discuss the forthcoming met'Oc wedding.

They hadn't warned Marzo that they were coming, and so they found him in his shirtsleeves, looking disreputable and smelling worse. He'd been digging a new soakaway for the outhouse, a job so fearsome that money couldn't persuade anybody else to do it for him. He'd been tempted to beg leave to go and wash and change, but they'd a.s.sured him they'd only take a minute or so. Two hours later, the meeting was deadlocked.

"It's about keeping the peace," said Ra.s.so from the livery. His choice of words made Marzo want to smile. Ra.s.so had borrowed the phrase from him and, like any man in the colony who borrowed anything, he seemed determined to use it till it fell apart before he was called on to give it back. "Ever since the mayor here had his big meeting with the met'Oc boys, there's been no trouble."

"Not yet," grunted Gimao the chandler. "Wasn't any trouble at all before the youngest met'Oc boy ran away from home. Not for a long time, anyhow."

Marzo turned his head and scowled at him. "Meaning?"

"Meaning," Gimao replied aggressively, "we get trouble when we interfere in their business, or the other way about. Long as they stay up there and we stay down here and we don't have anything to do with each other, things stay nice and quiet. Soon as they remember we exist, there's trouble."

Marzo couldn't have asked for a more succinct statement of his own deeply held belief. Unfortunately, for some reason, he was in the process of trying to argue the opposing case. That, apparently, was the sort of thing mayors did. "In the past, yes," he said. "And you know why? Because we never talked to them before."

"Whose fault was that?" interrupted Stenora the horse doctor.

"Let's not talk about whose fault things were in the past," Marzo said firmly. "Let's be practical. Lusomai met'Oc is prepared to talk to me. He even listens to what I have to say. Sometimes," he added, with a faint grin. "Take this latest thing. Someone goes poaching on the Tabletop and tries to stab one of their guards."

"So they say," Gimao muttered. "Only got their word for it."

Marzo ignored him. "Not so long ago," he went on, "there'd have been burnt hayricks and run off cattle and maybe worse. Instead, what happens? The two met'Oc boys come down here, they sit right where you're sitting now, and we talk. That's got to be progress, hasn't it?"

"Oh sure." Stenora folded his arms and glowered behind them, like the defenders of a besieged city. "That's after Luso'd been charging round the place firing off his gun and terrorising innocent folk. And what did we do about it?"

"Lusomai gave me his word he had nothing to do with that stuff."

"And you take his word," Gimao said bitterly, "over ours. And now you want to send the b.a.s.t.a.r.d a wedding present. Strikes me we've heard rather a lot out of you lately about what a fine man Luso met'Oc is, and you won't hear a word against him. Ever since you went into business with his brother, seems to me."

"That's garbage," Marzo snapped, so fiercely that the others stared at him. "For a start, young Gignomai's not exactly popular up there, or hadn't you heard? They chucked him out, remember. Luso came burning and stealing just because we took the boy in. So don't you try and make out I'm siding with the met'Oc just because of that."

Gimao shrugged, like a man walking through a waterfall. "That's not what I'm saying," he said, with a magnificently blank face. "What I'm saying is, you're the mayor of this town; you ought to be on our side. I'm not sure you are, any more."

"Fine," Marzo spat. "In that case, I resign. I won't be mayor, and one of you b.u.g.g.e.rs can go up there and be blindfolded and s.h.i.t yourself for terror next time there's trouble. No, really, I mean it. I never wanted the stupid job. I'm d.a.m.ned if I can remember anybody asking me if I wanted to do it. I'm d.a.m.ned if I know how I got stuck with it in the first place. It's been nothing but misery, and I don't want to do it any more."

"Yes, all right," Stenora said briskly, "you've made your point, and Gimao's sorry he made it sound like-"

"No," Marzo said firmly, "I mean it, I really do. I say we should do it properly and have an election and choose a real mayor. And I won't be standing."

There was an awkward silence. Then Ra.s.so said, "Pull yourself together, Marzo, n.o.body's saying we don't want you to be mayor any more. And we all appreciate everything you've done, and by and large you've done a good job. That's not what we're here to talk about. We're here because you want the town to send a wedding present to the met'Oc. And we're not convinced, is all. But if we all hold our water and talk about this like sensible people-"

"It wasn't my idea," Marzo broke in. "I heard people talking about it in the store."

"You said you thought it'd be a good idea."

"I do." Marzo stopped. He'd only said that because the people he'd talked to in the store had all seemed so certain about it, and he'd agreed to put it to the town council, that entirely non-existent body. "It's a gesture of goodwill," he said. "It's polite. It's good manners. And if it'll stop the Tabletop mob coming down here in the middle of the night and shooting at people, I say it's worth doing."

"If," Gimao repeated. "Who's to say it'll have any effect at all?"

Eventually, they thrashed out a compromise. Marzo would send Lusomai met'Oc a wedding present, at his own expense, with a covering note ambiguously phrased so that it could be taken to be on behalf of the town or not, depending on what anybody wanted it to say. In return, the council wouldn't try to stop him.

"What'll it be?" Furio asked later.

Marzo shook his head. "No idea," he said. "What the h.e.l.l do we have that somebody like that could possibly want?"

Teucer looked blank. "There must be something," she said.

"There isn't," Marzo replied. "I know that for a fact. Because if there was something down here that Luso wanted, he'd have ridden in with his boys and stolen it years ago."

Furio grinned. "I can think of something," he said.

"What?"

"Ten pounds of lead pipe," Furio replied. "For casting into bullets. Gig told me, they're desperately short of the stuff. Every time Luso shoots at something in the woods and misses, he sends his men to find the tree where the bullet landed and dig it out so he can melt it down and use it again. He'd be really grateful if you gave him that."

Marzo decided that Furio was probably joking. "Any sensible suggestions?"

Furio shrugged. "All right," he said, "what about ten pounds of nails? I don't know if Luso'd be pleased, but Stheno'd be absolutely thrilled. Apparently the nails they've got up there have been pulled out and straightened so many times they're starting to break. You could give him some of the ones Gignomai's started making. They're not bad, actually. I can hardly tell them apart from the ones we get from Home."

"Not nails," Marzo said, "and not lead pipe. Come on, there's got to be something."

In the end they settled on an eighteen-month pedigree steer, because, as Marzo said, n.o.body can ever have too much beef. He paid for it with two buckets of Gignomai's nails. It was an unpopular choice in the town, where people were saying that the met'Oc had had far too much of other people's beef already and furthermore, sending up a steer of their own free will might not be such a good precedent. As it happened, Marzo had thought precisely the same thing, but he couldn't think of anything else.

"Not very tactful, is it?" was Teucer's verdict. "If I was them, I'd be offended."

Maybe Teucer was right. The steer was returned, with a letter from Luso saying that he was deeply touched by the gesture, but the met'Oc were doing their best to get along without beef these days, and it was hardly fair to remind them of what they were missing. Marzo, stuck with a bullock he had nowhere to keep, traded it to Desio Heddo for two barrels of barley flour which, when opened, proved to be damp.

The hammer broke down. A pinion had broken in the primary drive, which meant taking the whole thing apart. Gignomai sent the partners out to collect iron ore, and did the job himself. It was a morning's work, but he didn't seem unduly dejected. As he told one of the men, it was a genuine pleasure to be able to hear himself think.

He'd got most of the job done when he came up against a seized bolt. Damp had got into the mechanism, and the nut was rusted on solid. He tried heating it with a blowpipe and a lamp, but that didn't work, and there wasn't enough room to get in there with a hacksaw. He wriggled into a gap between the frames that was rather too small for him, and set about cutting off the nut with a hammer and cold chisel.

"You've been busy."

He looked up so fast he banged the top of his head on a cross-beam. He felt a strong pulse in his scalp, and something wet dribbled down over his forehead.

"Scalp wound," said the voice. "They bleed like the devil."

As quickly as he could, Gignomai unwound himself from the machine and peered out. "Luso," he said, "what the h.e.l.l are you doing here?"

"Thought I'd come and see what you've been up to."

"You can't," Gignomai replied. "I don't exist, remember?"

Luso laughed. He was wearing a magnificent hunting outfit that Gignomai hadn't seen before, but recognised instantly. "Present from our cousins?"

"It's a bit small for me," Luso replied. "I had Spetta take it out as far as she could, but sometimes when I move I hear tearing noises. What do you mean, you don't exist?"

Spetta. Always so good with a needle. "Father cancelled me," Gignomai said. "Didn't he copy you in?"

"Oh, that." Luso frowned. "All right, then, you'll have to be my imaginary friend. I didn't have one when I was a kid, so I reckon I'm ent.i.tled."

"You didn't have one because none of the imaginary people wanted to know you."

Luso's big laugh sounded like a bull roaring. "Well, you've made up for that," he said. "All your friends these days are pretend people. What the h.e.l.l is this contraption in aid of?"

"It's a flower press," Gignomai said. "Don't touch that."

Too late. A worm drive component skittered off the platform and into the gra.s.s. "Sorry," Luso said. "Was that important?"

"Forget it," Gignomai said. "Get off the platform before you do any more damage. I'll come out."

Luso backed away with exaggerated delicacy, like someone miming a cat. "Presumably it's this thing that makes that unholy racket," Luso said. "You do realise, you can hear it from the Doorstep."

"Scaring the deer away? My heart bleeds."

Luso sat down on a log. He looked like he owned the place. "Yes," he said, "for which I'm much obliged to you. They've moved up from the Doorstep to Upper Room, and we've been taking them out by the dozen. We've got enough smoked venison laid up to see us right through till new year."

"Thrilled to have been of service." Gignomai looked around for something to sit on, then gave up and squatted on the ground. "Why are you here?"

Luso was examining him. "What've you been doing to yourself?" he asked. "You look like you've been in a fight every day for a week."

"Odd, that," Gignomai replied, "since we don't do fencing practice any more. No, it's just usual wear and tear, I guess."

"I hardly recognised you. You're not getting enough sleep."

"Yes, Mother."

Luso nodded. "She sends her love. I didn't tell Stheno I was coming, or he'd have done the same."

"I doubt it." Gignomai stretched out his legs. Cramp wouldn't help matters. "Why are you here?"

"To ask you to come to the wedding," Luso replied. "It wouldn't be right if you weren't there."

"Sorry," Gignomai said quickly, "can't. Too busy."

"b.a.l.l.s." Luso lifted his head. He was surveying the site, as though he intended to buy it. "What's that big shed over there?"

"That's for making cheese."

"Of course. Look," he said, leaning forward a little, "I know I should've stopped Father from sending you that ridiculous letter. I didn't; I'm sorry. But when you come to the wedding-"

"He'll set the dogs on me."

"No he won't." Luso scowled at something. "You have my word. I'll make sure there's no trouble. I've made it a condition of the marriage."

Gignomai stared at him, then laughed. "You've done what?"

"I told him," Luso said. "You forgive Gig, or the wedding's off. He wasn't happy about it, but he's agreed. So..."

"Forgive me," Gignomai said. "I see."

"That's how he sees it," Luso said. "You've got to talk to him on his own terms or he simply refuses to listen. You and I both know-"

"I don't have to talk to him at all. It's been wonderful, not talking to him. It's probably my greatest pleasure in life right now."

"In that case, I'm sorry for you. Listen, Gig, we've got to be realistic."

"And practical?"

"Yes, and practical. You know what this wedding means?"

Gignomai shrugged. "I'll have a psychopath for a sister-in-law. Big deal. She'll fit in well."

"It means," Luso said, "that we're going Home. Things are changing. The Revisionists are in real trouble, the economy's a mess, the Optimate tendency's on its knees and the KKA are poised and ready to jump in. The met'Ousa are right there on the front lines, it's only a matter of time. And when the KKA get in-"

"I have no idea," Gignomai said, "what you're talking about."

Luso sighed. "Yes, you do," he said. "It means Boulo and Pasi will be going Home very soon now, and we'll be going with them. The exile is nearly over, Gig. We've done our time and soon we'll be back where we belong. It's in the bag. And you're coming with us."

"Am I really?"

"You bet your life," Luso snapped. "You think I'm going to let our family go home and leave my brother behind with these savages? It's not happening. Look, I know you haven't been happy here. Understandable. There just isn't a place for you here. Back Home, it'll be completely different. A man of your energy and intelligence-"

"Thank you so much."

"Well, it's true. I always knew you were the best of us. Stheno's been squashed by his responsibilities, keeping us all fed and clothed. He's just a farmer now. Father-well, what sort of a life has he had? Back home, he'd have been First Citizen. Out here, it was just a waste."

"And you?"

"Me?" Luso grinned. "I'm your stereotypical second son, all I care about is hunting and having a good time. And keeping the peace. It's what I'm for. But you've got all the good things in our family, and you're still young enough to make something of yourself."

Gignomai was looking for something in his pockets. "You reckon?" he said.

"Fact," Luso replied. "I'll tell you something, Gig. Ever since I can remember, I've envied you. You're smart and you're brave and you don't give in. It's amazing what you've done here with nothing. G.o.d only knows what you're up to."

"I told you. Pressing flowers."