Текст книги "The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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"What's wrong?"

Need. Sorrow. Again the impression of other consciousnesses, other luminances, a thought quickly snatched away, all of them flowing and flooding into one.

"You mean others of your kind."

The image came back to him; and flowers, stamens shedding pollen, golden clouds, golden dust adhering to the pistil of a great, green-veined lily.

"Like mating? Like that?"

The backspill became unsettling, for the first time sexual.

"You produce others of your kind." He felt the excitement flooding through his own veins, a contagion. "Others—are coming here?"

Come. He got the impression strongly, a tugging at all his senses, a flowing over the hills and away. A merging, with things old and wise, and full of experiences, lives upon lives. Welcome. Come.

"I'm human."

Welcome. Need pulled at him. Distances rolled away, long distances, days and nights.

"What would happen to me?"

Life bursting from the soil. The luminance brightened and enlarged. The man-image came into his vision: The embryo stretched itself and grew new tendrils, into the radiance, and it into the fluttering heart; more and more luminances added themselves, and the tendrils twined, human and otherwise, until they became another greenness, another life, to float on the winds. Come, it urged.

His heart swelled with tears. He wept and then ceased to be human at all, full of years, deep-rooted and strong. He felt the sun and the rain and the passage of time beyond measure, knew the birth and death of forests and the weaving undulations of rivers across the land. There were mountains and snows and tropics where winter never came, and deep caverns and cascading streams and things that verged on consciousness deep in the darkness. The very stars in the heavens changed their patterns and the world was young. There were many lives, many, and one by one he knew their selves, strength and youth and age beyond reckoning, the joy of new birth, the beginning of new consciousness. Time melted. It was all one experience, and there was vast peace, unity, even in the storms, the cataclysms, the destruction of forests in lightning-bred fires, the endless push of life toward the sun and the rain—cycle on cycle, year on year, eons passing. At last his strength faded and he slept, enfolded in a green and gentle warmth; he thought that he died like the old tree and did not care, because it was a gradual and comfortable thing, a return to elements, ultimate joining. The living creature that crept in among his upturned roots for shelter was nothing less and nothing more than the moss, the dying flowers, the fallen leaves.

He lay on the grass, too weary to move, beyond care. Tears leaked from his eyes. His hands were weak. He had no terror of merging now, none, and the things he had shared with this creature would remain with them, with all its kind, immortal.

It pulled at him, and the pull that worked through his mind was as strong as the tides of the sea, as immutable and unarguable. Peace, it urged on him; and in his mind the sun flicked again through the heavens.

He opened his eyes. A day gone. A second day. Then the weakness in his limbs had its reason. He tried to sit up, panicked even through the urging of peace it laid on him. Anne. The recollection flashed through his memory with a touch of cold. The luminance recoiled, resisting.

"No. I have to reach her. I have to." He fought hard for consciousness, gained, and knew by the release that the danger got through. Fear flooded over him like cold water. The Anne-imageappeared, a hollow shell in darkness, tendrils coiling out. Withered. Urgency pulled at him, and the luminance pulsed with agitation.

"Time—how much time is there?"

Several sunsets flashed through his mind.

"I have to get to her. I have to get her to take an instruction. She's dangerous." The radiance was very wan. Urgency. Urgency. The hills rolled away in the mind's eye, the others called. Urgency.

And it faded, leaving behind an overwhelming flood of distress.

Warren lay still a moment, on his back, on the grass, shivering in the cold daylight. His head throbbed. His limbs ached and had no strength. He reached for the com, got it on, got it to his lips, his eyes closed, shutting out the punishing sun.

" Anne."

"Warren. Please confirm status."

"Fine—I'm fine." He tried to keep his voice steady. His throat was raw. It could not sound natural. "I'm coming home, Anne."

A pause on the other side. "Yes, Warren. Assistance?"

"Negative, negative, Anne. Please wait. I'll be there soon." He gathered himself up to his arm, to his knees, to his feet, with difficulty. There were pains in all his joints. He felt his face, unshaven and rough. His hands and feet were numb with the cold and the damp. His clothes sagged on him, belt gone loose.

"Warren?"

"I'm all right, Anne. I'm starting back now."

"Accepted," Annesaid after a little delay. "Emergency procedures canceled."

"What—emergency procedures?"

"What's your status, Warren?"

"No emergency, do you hear me? No emergency. I'm on my way." He shut it down, found his canteen, the food packet, drank, forced a bite down his swollen throat and stuffed the rest into his sodden jacket. Walked. His leg hurt, and his eyes blurred, the lids swollen and raw. He found a branch and tore it off and used that as he went—pushed himself, knowing the danger there was in Anne.

Knowing how little time there was. It would go, it would go then, and leave him. And there would be nothing after that. Ever.

11

Annewas waiting for him, at the riverside—amid the stumps of trees, mud, cleared earth. Trees dammed the river, water spilling over them, between them, flooding up over the banks and changing the land into a shallow, sandy lake.

He stopped there, leaned against the last standing tree on that margin and shivered, slow tremors which robbed him of strength and sense. She stood placidly in the ruin; he called her on the com, heard her voice, saw her face, then her body, orient toward him. He began to cross the bridge of tumbled trees, clinging to branches, walking tilted trunks.

"Damn you," he shouted at her. Tears ran down his face. " Damn you!" She met him at the other side, silver slimed with mud and soot from the burning she had done. Her sensors blinked. "Assistance?"

He found his self-control, shifted his attack. "You've damaged yourself."

"I'm functioning normally. Assistance?"

He started to push past her, slipped on the unstable log. She reached to save him, her arm rock-solid, stable. He clung to it, his only point of balance. Her facelights blinked at him. Her other hand came up to rest on his shoulder. Contact. She offered contact. He had meant to shove at her. He touched her gently, patted her plastic-sheathed shoulder, fought back the tears.

"You've killed, Annie. Don't you understand?"

"Vegetation."

He shoved past her, limped up the devastated shore, among the stumps of trees. His head throbbed. His stomach felt hollow.

The crawler still waited on the bank. Anneovertook him as he reached it; she offered him her hand as he climbed in. He slid into the seat, slipped the brake, started the motor and threw it full throttle, leaving her behind.

"Warren." Her voice pursued him.

He kept driving, wildly, swerving this way and that over the jolts, past the brush.

" Anne," he said, standing at the airlock. "Open the lock." Silence.

" Anne. Open the lock, please."

It hissed wide. He walked in, unsteady as he was, onto the cargo platform. "Engage lift, Anne." Gears crashed. It started up, huge and ponderous that it was. "Warren," the disembodied voice said, from the speakers, everywhere, echoing. "What's your status, Warren?"

"Good, thank you."

"Your voice indicates stress."

"Hoarseness. Minor dysfunction in my speaking apparatus. It's self-repairing." A silence. "Recorded." The lift stopped on nether-deck. He walked out, calmly, to the lower weapons locker, put his card in.

Dead. "I've got a lock malfunction here, Anne. Number 13/546. Would you clear it up?"

"Emergency locks are still engaged."

"Disengage."

Silence.

"There is no emergency." He fought the anger from his voice. "Disengage emergency locks and cancel all emergency procedures."

"This vocal dysfunction is not repaired."

He leaned against the wall, stared down the corridor.

"Warren, please confirm your status."

"Normal, I tell you." He went to the lift. It worked. It brought him up to the level of the laboratories. He walked down to Bio, walked in, tried the cabinets.

" Anne, I need medicines. Disengage the locks. I need medicines for repair." The lock clicked. It opened.

He took out the things he needed, washed his torn hands, prepared a stimulant. He was filthy. He saw himself like a specter in a reflecting glass, gaunt, stubbled; looked down and saw his clothes unrecognizable in color. He washed an area of his arm and fired the injection, rummaged through the cabinet for medicines to cure the hoarseness. He found some lozenges, ripped one from the foil and sucked on it, then headed off for the showers, undressing as he went. A quick wash. He had forgotten clean clothes; he belted on the bathrobe he had left in the showers, on a body gone gaunt. His hands shook. The stim hummed in his veins. He could not afford the shakes. He had visions of the pseudosome walking back toward the ship; she would be here soon. He had to make normal moves. Had to do everything in accustomed order. He went to the galley next, opened the box and downed fruit juice from its container; it hit his stomach in a wave of cold.

He hauled out other things. Dried food. Stacked it there. He took out one frozen dinner and put it in the microwave.

It turned on without his touching it.

"Time, please."

"Fifteen minutes," he told it. He walked out. He took the dried food with him to the lift. He punched buttons. It took him up. He walked out into the corridor; lights came on for him. Lights came on in the living quarters, in his own quarters, as he entered. He dumped the dried stores on the bed, opened the locker and pulled out all his clothing– dressed, short of breath, having to stop and rest in the act of putting his boots on.

The lock crashed and boomed in the bowels of the ship.

She was back. He pulled the second boot on. He could hear the lift working. He folded his remaining clothes. He heard the next lift work. He arranged everything on his bed. He heard footsteps approach.

He looked round. Annestood there, muddy, streaked with soot.

"Assistance? Please confirm your status, Warren."

He thought a moment. "Fine. You're dirty, Anne. Decontaminate." Sensors flickered, one and then the others. "You're packing. This program is preparatory to going to the river. Please reconsider this program."

"I'm just cleaning up. Why don't you get me dinner?"

"You fixed dinner, Warren."

"I didn't like it. You fix it. I'll have dinner up here at the table. Fifteen minutes. I need it, Anne. I'm hungry."

"Yes, Warren."

"And clean up."

"Yes, Warren."

The pseudosome left. He dropped his head into his hands, caught his breath. Best to rest a bit. Have dinner. See what he could do about a program and get her to take it. He went to the desk where he had left the programming microfilm, got it and fed it into the viewer. He scanned through the emergency programs, the E sequences, hoping to distract her into one of those. There was nothing that offered a way to seize control. Nothing that would lock her up. It was feeding into her, even now; she had library access. The viewer was part of her systems. The thought made him nervous. He scanned through harmless areas, to confound her.

"Dinner's ready," the speaker told him.

He wiped his face, shut down the viewer and walked out, hearing the lift in function. Annearrived, carrying a tray. She set things on the table, arranged them. He sat down. She poured him coffee, walked to her end of the table and sat facing him. He ate a few bites. The food nauseated him. He shoved the plate away.

Her lights flickered. "Chess?"

"Thank you, no, Anne. I've got other things to do."

"Do. Yes. Activity. What activity do you choose, Warren?"

He stared at her. Observation and question. Subsequent question. "Your assimilation's really made a lot of progress, hasn't it? Lateral activity."

"The lateral patterning is efficient in forecast. Question posed: what activity do you choose, Warren?"

"I'm going down below. You stay here. Clean up the dinner."

"Yes, Warren."

He pushed back from the table, walked out and down the corridor to the lift. He decided on routine, on normalcy, on time to think.

He rode the lift back to the lab level, walked out.

She turned the lights on for him, turned them off behind as he walked, always conservative. He pushed the nearest door button. Botany, it was. The door stayed shut.

"Lab doors locked," he said casually. "Open it."

The door shot back. Lights went on.

The room was a shambles. Planting boxes were overthrown, ripped loose, pipes twisted, planting medium scattered everywhere, the floor, the walls. Some of the boxes were partially melted, riddled with laser fire.

He backed out, quietly, quickly. Closed the door. Walked back to the lift, his footsteps echoing faster and faster on the decking. He opened the lift door, stepped in, pushed the button for topside.

It took him up. He left it, walking now as quickly, as normally, as he could, not favoring his leg. Annehad left the living quarters. He went by the vacant table, to the bridge corridor, to the closed door at the end. He used his cardkey.

It stayed shut.

" Anne," he said, "you have a malfunction. There's no longer an emergency. Please clear the emergency lock on the bridge. I have a critical problem involving maintenance. I need to get to controls right now."

A delay. The speaker near his head came on. "Emergency procedure remains in effect. Access not permitted."

" Anne. We have a paradox here. The problem involves your mistake."

"Clarify: mistake."

"You've perceived a false emergency. You've initiated wrong procedures. Some of your equipment is damaged. Cancel emergency. This is a code nine. Cancel emergency and open this door."

A further delay. "Negative. Access denied."

" Anne." He pushed the button again. It was dead. He heard a heavy step in the corridor behind him. He jerked about with his back to the door and looked into Anne's dark faceplate with its dancing stars. "Open it," he said. "I'm in pain, Anne. The pain won't stop until you cancel emergency procedure and open this door."

"Please adjust yourself."

"I'm not malfunctioning. I need this door opened." He forced calm into his voice, adopted a reasoning tone. "The ship is in danger, Anne. I have to get in there."

"Please go back to permitted areas, Warren."

He caught his breath, stared at her, then edged past her carefully, down the corridor to the living quarters. She was at his back, still, following.

"Is this a permitted area?" he asked.

"Yes, Warren."

"I want a cup of coffee. Bring it."

"Yes, Warren."

She walked out into the main corridor. The door closed behind her. He delayed a moment till he heard the lift, then went and tried it. Dead. " Anne. Now there's a malfunction with number two access. Will you do something about it?"

"Access not permitted."

"I need a bath, Anne. I need to go down to the showers." A delay. "This is not an emergency procedure. Please wait f6r assistance." A scream welled up in him. He swallowed it, smoothed his hand over the metal as if it were skin.

"All right. All right, Anne." He turned, walked back to his own quarters. The clothes and food were gone from the bed.

The manual. He went to the viewer. The microfilm was gone. He searched the drawer where he kept it. It was not there.

Panic surged up in him. He stifled it, walked out. He walked back to the table, sat down—heard the lift operating finally. Heard her footsteps. The door opened.

"Coffee, Warren."

"Thank you, Annie."

She set the cup down, poured his coffee. Hydraulics worked in the ship, massive movement, high on the frame. The turret rotating. Warren looked up. "What's that, Anne?"

"Armaments, Warren."

The electronic snap of the cannon jolted the ship. He sprang up from his chair and Anneset down the coffee pot.

" Anne. Anne, cancel weapons. Cancel!"

The firing went on.

"Cancel refused," Annesaid.

" Anne—show me. . . what you're shooting at. Put it on the screen." The wallscreen lit, the black of night, a thin line of orange: a horizon, ablaze with fires.

" You're killing it!"

"Vegetation, Warren. Emergency program is proceeding."

" Anne." He seized her metal, unflexing arm. "Cancel program."

"Negative."

"On what reasoning? Anne—turn on your sensor box. Turn it on. Scan the area."

"It is operating, Warren. I'm using it to refine target. Possibly the equipment will survive. Possibly I can recover it. Please adjust yourself, Warren. Your voice indicates stress."

"It's life you're killing out there!"

"Vegetation, Warren. This is a priority, but overridden. I'm programmed to make value judgments. I've exercised my override reflex. This is a rational function. Please adjust yourself, Warren."

"The lab. You destroyed the lab. Why?"

"I don't like vegetation, Warren."

"Don't like?

"Yes, Warren. This seems descriptive."

" Anne, you're malfunctioning. Listen to me. You'll have to shut down for a few moments. I won't damage you or interfere with your standing instructions. I'm your crew, Anne. Shut down."

"I can't accept this instruction, Warren. One of my functions is preservation of myself. You're my highest priority. To preserve you I have to preserve myself. Please adjust yourself, Warren."

" Anne, let me out. Let me out of here."

"No, Warren."

The firing stopped. On the screen the fires continued to burn. He looked at it, leaned on the back of the chair, shaking.

"Assistance?"

"Go to hell."

"I can't go to hell, Warren. I have to hold this position."

" Anne. Anne—listen. I found a being out there. A sapient life form. In the forest. I talked with it. You're killing a sapient being, you hear me?"

A delay. "My sensors detected nothing. Your activities are erratic and injurious. I record your observation. Please provide data."

"Your sensor box. Turn it on."

"It's still operating, Warren."

"It was there. The life was there, when I was. I can go back. I can prove it. I talked to it, Anne."

"There was no other life there."

"Because your sensor unit couldn't register it. Because your sensors aren't sensitive enough. Because you're not human, Anne."

"I have recorded sounds. Identify."

The wallscreen flicked to a view of the grove. The wind sighed in the leaves; something babbled. A human figure lay writhing on the ground, limbs jerking, mouth working with the sounds. Himself. The murmur was his own voice, inebriate and slurred.

He turned his face from it. "Cut it off. Cut it off, Anne." The sound stopped. The screen was blank and white when he turned his head again. He leaned there a time. There was a void in him where life had been. Where he had imagined life. He sat down at the table, wiped his eyes.

After a moment he picked up the coffee and drank.

"Are you adjusted, Warren?"

"Yes. Yes, Anne."

"Emergency program will continue until all surrounds are sterilized." He sat staring at his hands, at the cup before him. "And then what will I do?" Annewalked to the end of the table, sat down, propped her elbows on the table, head on hands, sensor lights blinking in continuous operation.

The chessboard flashed to the wallscreen at her back.

The pawn advanced one square.

IV

"Well, how many were there?" I ask, over supper.

"There might have been four."

"There was one," I say. " Annewas Warren too." blink in all innocence. "In a manner of speaking."

We sit together, speaking under the canned music. Art made into white noise, to divide us table from table in the dining hall. "Awful stuff, that music," I say. Then I have another thought:

"On the other hand—"

"There were four?"

"No. The music. The Greeks painted vases."

"What have Greek urns got to do with canned music?"

"Art. Do you know—" I hold up a spoon. "This is art."

"Come on. They stamp them out by the thousands."

"But an artist designed this. Its balance, its shape. An artist drew it and sculpted it, and another sort made the die. Then a workman ran it and collected his wage. Which he used to buy a tape. Do you know, we work most of our lives to afford two things: leisure and art."

"Even mass-produced art?"

"The Greeks mass-produced clay lamps. Now we call them antiquities. And we set them on little pedestals in museums. They painted their pots and their lamps. Rich Greeks had musicians at their banquets. Nowadays the poorest man can have a fine metal spoon and have music to listen to with his dinner. That's magical."

"Well, now the rest of us have got to put up with damned little die-stamped spoons."

"How many of us would have owneda spoon in those good old days?"

"Who needed them? Fingers worked."

"So did typhoid."

"What has typhoid to do with spoons?"

"Sanitation. Cities and civilizations diedfor want of spoons. And good drainage. It's all art. I've walked the streets of dead cities. It's an eerie thing, to read the graves and the ages. Very many children. Very many. And so many cities which just—died. Not in violence. Just of needs we take for granted. I tell you we are all kings and magicians. Our touch on a machine brings light, sound, musicians appear in thin air, pictures leap from world to world. Each of us singly wields the power output of a Mesopotamian empire—without ever thinking about it. We can affordit."

"We waste it."

I lift my hand toward the unseen stars. "Does the sun? I suppose that it does. But we gather what it throws away. And the universe doesn't lose it, except to entropy."

"A world has only so much."

"A solar system has too much ever to bring home. Look at the asteroids, the moons, the sun—No, the irresponsible thing is notto wield that power. To sit in a closed world and do nothing. To refuse to mass-produce. To deny some fellow his bit of art bought with his own labor. It's not economical to paint a pot. Or to make a vase for flowers. Or to grow flowers instead of cabbages."

"Cabbages," you recall, "have their importance in the cosmic system."

"Don't flowers? And isn't it better that a man has music with his dinner and a pot with a design on it?"

"You don't like the ancient world?"

"Let me tell you, mostof us didn't live well. Mostof us didn't make it past childhood. And not just villages vanished in some bitter winter. Whole towns did. Whole nations. There were no good old days."

"History again."

"That's why we make fantasies. Because it was too bad to remember."

"Cynic."

"I do write fantasies. Sometimes."

"And they're true?"

"True as those poor dead kids in Ephesus."

"Where's that?"

"See?" I sigh, thinking of dead stones and a child's game, etched forever in a dead street, near a conqueror's arch. "Let me tell you a story."

"A cheerful one."

"A cheerful one. Let me tell you a story about a story. Lin Carter and I were talking just exactly like this, about the wretchedness of the ancient world once upon a time—he was doing an anthology, and wanted me to write a story, a fantasy. And then Lin said a remarkable thing which I'm sure didn't come out quite the thing he was trying to say. I think what he meantto say was that the medieval age was not particularly chivalrous, that the open land was quite dangerous and that it was an age which quite well cast everyone into a series of dependencies—i.e., villein upon master, him upon his lord, lord upon baron, baron upon king, and king upon emperor, who relied on God and played politics with Him whenever he could. The way it came out was that no woman could possibly survive in the middle ages—

"I laughed. Lin took a curious look at his glass and amended the remark to say that it at least would not be the merry life of derring-do practiced by the males of fiction. I countered that the real-life rogues hardly had a merry time of it in real life either. You were more likely to mistake the aristocrats for the outlaws than vice versa.

"But immediately that became the orchard fence, the thou-shalt-not which of course was precisely the story I meant to do for Lin's anthology. Not only that, in my tale, the woman would be no princess, no abbess, no burgher's daughter with defensive advantages."

"Witch?"

"Well, take a very typical swash and buckle hero—illiterate, battling wizards, gods, and double-dealing princes, selling what can be sold and spending all the gain by sunrise—"

"—Who carries off the woman?"

"That isthe woman."

1981

A THIEF IN KORIANTH

1

The yliz river ran through Korianth, a sullen, muddy stream on its way to the nearby sea, with stone banks where it passed through the city. . . gray stone and yellow water, and gaudy ships which made a spider tangle of masts and riggings above the drab jumbled roofs of the dockside. In fact all Korianth was built on pilings and cut with canals more frequent than streets, the whole pattern of the lower town dictated by old islands and channels, so that buildings took whatever turns and bends the canals dictated, huddled against each other, jammed one up under the eaves of the next—faded paint, buildings like ancient crones remembering the brightness of their youths, decayed within from overmuch of wine and living, with dulled, shuttered eyes looking suspiciously on dim streets and scummed canals, where boat vendors and barge folk plied their craft, going to and fro from shabby warehouses. This was the Sink, which was indeed slowly subsiding into the River—but that took centuries, and the Sink used only the day, quick pleasures, momentary feast, customary famine. In spring rains the Yliz rose; tavern keepers mopped and dockmen and warehousers cursed and set merchandise up on blocks; then the town stank considerably. In summer heats the River sank, and the town stank worse.

There was a glittering world above this rhythm, the part of Korianth that had grown up later, inland, and beyond the zone of flood: palaces and town houses of hewn stone (which still sank, being too heavy for their foundations, and developed cracks, and whenever abandoned, decayed quickly). In this area too were temples. . . temples of gods and goddesses and whole pantheons local and foreign, ancient and modern, for Korianth was a trading city and offended no one permanently. The gods were transients, coming and going in favor like dukes and royal lovers. There was, more permanent than gods, a king in Korianth, Seithan XXIV, but Seithan was, if rumors might be believed, quite mad, having recovered after poisoning. At least he showed a certain bizarre turn of behavior, in which he played obscure and cruel jokes and took to strange religions, mostly such as promised sybaritic afterlives and conjured demons. And central to that zone between, where town and dockside met on the canals, lay a rather pleasant zone of mild decay, of modest townsmen and a few dilapidated palaces. In this web of muddy waterways a grand bazaar transferred the wealth of the Sink (whose dark warrens honest citizens avoided) into higher-priced commerce of the Market of Korianth. It was a profitable place for merchants, for proselytizing cults, for healers, interpreters of dreams, prostitutes of the better sort (two of the former palaces were brothels, and no few of the temples were), palm readers and sellers of drinks and sweetmeats, silver and fish, of caged birds and slaves, copper pots and amulets and minor sorceries. Even on a chill autumn day such as this, with the stench of hundreds of altars and the spices of the booths and the smokes of midtown, that of the River welled up. Humanity jostled shoulder to shoulder, armored guard against citizen, beggar against priest, and furnished ample opportunity for thieves.

Gillian glanced across that sea of bobbing heads and swirling colors, eased up against the twelve-year-old girl whose slim, dirty fingers had just deceived the fruit merchant and popped a first and a second handful of figs into the torn seam of her cleverly sewn skirt. Gillian pushed her own body into the way of sight and reached to twist her fingers into her sister's curls and jerk. Jensy yielded before the hair came out by the roots, let herself be dragged four paces into the woman-wide blackness of an alley, through which a sickly stream of something threaded between their feet.

"Hist," Gillian said. "Will you have us on the run for a fistful of sweets? You have no judgment." Jensy's small face twisted into a grin. "Old Haber-shen's never seen me." Gillian gave her a rap on the ear, not hard. The claim was truth: Jensy was deft. The double-sewn skirt picked up better than figs. "Not here," Gillian said. "Not in thismarket. There's high law here. They cut your hand off, stupid snipe."

Jensy grinned at her; everything slid off Jensy. Gillian gripped her sister by the wrist and jerked her out into the press, walked a few stalls down. It was never good to linger. They did not look the best of customers, she and Jensy, ragged curls bound up in scarves, coarse sacking skirts, blouses that had seen good days—before they had left some goodwoman's laundry. Docksiders did come here, frequent enough in the crowds. And their faces were not known outside the Sink; varying patterns of dirt were a tolerable disguise.

Lean days were at hand; they were not far from winter, when ships would be scant, save only the paltry, patched coasters. In late fall and winter the goods were here in midtown, being hauled out of warehouses and sold at profit. Dockside was slim pickings in winter; dockside was where she preferred to work—given choice. And with Jensy—

Midtown frightened her. This place was daylight and open, and at the moment she was not looking for trouble; rather she made for the corner of the fish market with its peculiar aromas and the perfumed reek of Agdalia's gilt temple and brothel.

"Don't want to," Jensy declared, planting her feel.

Gillian jerked her willy-nilly. "I'm not going to leave you there, mousekin. Not for long."