“I’m looking for Elsevier.” Ngenet moved into the light.

“Oh, yeah?” The woman put the mug down and squinted at him. “I guess you are at that. What took you so long?”

“Engine trouble. Did she wait?”

“She’s still in town, if that’s what you mean. But she’s out looking into — other arrangements, in case you decided not to show.” The woman’s buried eyes found Moon; she frowned.

Ngenet swore. “Damn her, she knows I’m dependable!”

“But she didn’t know if maybe you’d been permanently delayed, if you take my meaning. Who’s that?”

“A hitchhiker.” Moon felt Ngenet’s hand on her arm again, moved forward at his urging, reluctantly. “She won’t make any trouble,” cutting off the woman’s indignation. “Will you?”

Moon looked up into his expression. “Me?” She shook her head, caught a whisper of a smile.

“I’m going out again to look for my friend. You can wait here until I get back.” He pointed with his chin toward the room full of tables. “Then maybe we’ll talk about Carbuncle.”

“All right.” She chose a table near the fireplace, went to it and sat down. Ngenet turned back toward the door.

“You know where to look?” the fat woman called. “Ask around the Club.”

“I’ll do that.” He went out.

Moon sat in uncomfortable silence under the innkeeper’s dour gaze, running her fingers along the scars in the wooden tabletop. But at last the woman shrugged, wiping her own hands on her apron, picked up the glass of beer and brought it to the table. Moon flinched slightly as it came down in front of her, froth spilling out onto the ring-marked wood. The woman billowed away again without speaking, did something to a featureless black box behind the bar. Someone began to sing abruptly, in the middle of a song, the middle of a word, with pieces of the same rhythmic stridency Moon had heard in the streets as accompaniment.

Moon started, glanced back over her shoulder to find the room as empty as before. Emptier — she watched the innkeeper disappear up the stairs, taking another mug of beer with her. Moon’s eyes came back to the black box. She had a sudden smiling image of it stuffed full of sound, like a keg or a sack of meal. She took a swallow of her beer, grimaced: kelp beer, sour and badly brewed. Setting down the mug, she pulled off her slicker. In the fireplace a solitary chunk of metal glowed red hot like a bar of iron in a smithy’s forge. She twisted in her seat, her fingers exploring the animal faces capping the chair back while she absorbed the heat and the music. Her foot began to tap time as a kind of pleasant compulsion moved her body. The harmonies were complicated, the sound was loud and throbbing, the voice trilled meaningless noise. The effect was nothing like the music that Sparks made with his flute… but something in it was compelling, distantly akin to the secret song of the choosing place.

Moon closed her eyes, sipping beer; let her mind separate out the memory of all that had gone wrong from all that was right between herself and Sparks , as she listened to the music that he had always heard with a different ear. They would talk about Carbuncle, Ngenet had said. Would he take her there, then? Or would he only try to change her mind? No one would change her mind… but she thought she could change his. She could use his concern about her to make him take her there, she was sure of it. She could be there tomorrow… She began to smile.

But was it right? Some part of her mind stirred uneasily. How was it wrong? Ngenet wanted to help her; she knew he did. And she didn’t even know why Sparks needed her: She imagined him sick or hungry, moneyless, friendless, starving. A day, an hour, could make a difference… Lady, every minute that she could spare him any sorrow or pain was important, more important than anything else.

A noise at the back of the room made her open her eyes. She looked toward the doorway at the rear of the room, felt her eyes widen, and widen again, as her mind refused to accept the information they took in. It was alive, and moving. It stood on two legs like a human being, but it’s feet were broad and webbed, its motion was the fluid shifting of sea grass in the underwater swell. The gray green, sexless body, glistening with an oily film, was naked except for a woven belt hung with unidentifiable shapes; the thing’s arms split into half a dozen whiplike tendrils. Nacreous, pupil less eyes fixed on her like the eyes of a sea spirit.

Moon stood up, her mouth too dry for the sounds she was trying to make; she put the chair between herself and the nightmare thing as she reached for her knife. But at her motion the creature gave a guttural cough and darted back through the doorway, disappearing from her sight before she could really believe that it had ever been there.

Standing in its place was a man she had never seen before, half again her own age, with a stiff crest of blond hair falling over one eye. He was wearing a fisherman’s parka, but his pants were a lurid green in the flame less brightness of the room. “Don’t go for it, young mistress, I’ve got you marked.” He stretched out his arm, she saw something unidentifiable in his hand. “Toss it out onto the floor, now, gently does it.”

She finished drawing her knife, uncertain about the threat. He moved his hand impatiently, and she tossed the curved blade out. He came forward far enough to pick it up.

“What do you want?” The shrillness of it told her just how afraid she really was.

“Come on out, Silky.” The man glanced toward the doorway, in stead. Unintelligible hissing sounds were the response; the man smiled humorlessly. “Yes, precisely as delighted to meet you as you were to find her here. Come out and give her a better look.”

The creature came cautiously through into the room again; Moon’s hands tightened over the animal heads on the chair back. The thing made her think suddenly of a family crest come to life. “I — I don’t have any money.”

The man looked at her blankly, laughed. “Oh, I see. Then we’re all in the same boat, at the moment. But not for the same reason. So just stay calm, and you won’t get hurt.”

“Cress! What in the world is going on here?” A third stranger entered the room behind him, human again, but just as unexpected. Moon saw the small plump woman with blue-black skin and silvery hair stop, hands clasping in surprise. “My dear, you’ll never get a date by holding the girl at gunpoint,” not quite smiling as she studied Moon back.

The blond man didn’t laugh this time. “I don’t know what she knows, but she shouldn’t be here, Elsie.”

“Obviously. Who are you, girl? What are you doing here?” The words asked her to answer as a simple courtesy, but the voice was steel.

“Friend — I’m a friend of Ngenet Miroe. Are you Elsevier, are you the one he came to see?” Moon took the initiative as she saw the answers start to register. “He went to look for you. I can go find him-” She glanced toward the door.

“That won’t be necessary.” The woman waved her hand; the man lowered his weapon, pushed it into the pocket where her knife had gone. Both their faces eased a little. “We’ll wait with you.” The spirit-thing hissed an almost human-sounding question. “Silky would like to know what kept him.”

“Engine trouble,” Moon repeated mechanically, shifted her weight, still keeping the chair between them.

“Ah. That explains it.” But she thought something in the old woman’s voice was still not entirely satisfied. “Well, no need for us to stand up while we wait, is there? My old bones creak at the thought. Sit down, dear, we’ll all just sit by the fire and get acquainted until he comes back. Cress, bring us some beers too, won’t you?”

Moon watched in dismay as the woman and the nightmare came toward the table. But the creature crouched on the hearth just out of kicking range, looking down, its body glistening in the heater’s radiance. Its flat tentacles traced the patterns of the hearthstones with rhythmic, hypnotic motions; some of the tentacles were maimed, distorted by old scars. The woman pulled out a chair and sat down beside her with a smile of seeming encouragement. She unfastened a slicker several sizes too large, revealing a plain one-piece garment, its orange color as vivid as the green of the man’s pants. “You’ll have to excuse Silky if he doesn’t join us at the table; he’s not very fond of strangers, I’m afraid.”