Corporate Headquarters-his sleep-fuddled mind wondered idly why it was called “corporate". Was there a Spirit Headquarters somewhere? And the Heaveners called themselves a corporation-was that like a congregation? Did they worship the body? Their lives were luxurious enough to make such an idea possible.

It didn't matter. They strapped him into a seat aboard the airship, seated themselves all around, and ignored him for the few moments it took to fly back to the Citadel and set down on the fortress roof, chatting amongst themselves in a strange tongue.

Once the airship was down again he was dragged out of the craft and across a dozen feet of open roof, through a sliding door into a small room, where his guards simply stood, as if waiting for something. A moment later he felt a sudden odd lightening and realized that the room was sinking down into the building somehow.

When the door slid open again he faced a richly-upholstered chamber, only slightly larger than the movable one he was in, with a single door in its far wall. “This is as far as we go,” one of his captors announced. He was unceremoniously shoved forward into the chamber; the doors of the moving room slid shut behind him, and he was alone.

He paused to straighten his rumpled clothing, wishing that he had been allowed to put on his hat and boots and maybe his jacket; with the increasing cold he had kept on his shirt and trousers, so he was not completely unsuited to seeing people, but he would have preferred something more than woolen socks on his feet. He looked about.

The chamber was carpeted in very dark red; the walls were dusky orange, and padded, the padding covered by an unfamiliar fabric. There was no furniture whatsoever. The ceiling glowed, like most of the ceilings he had seen in the Earthers’ headquarters.

The inner door-which was dark red, a shade lighter than the carpet-slid open, and he faced another chamber, far larger. The floor was covered in the same carpeting, but the walls were an odd shade of light blue, and a row of windows made blocks of darkness along one side. This room was furnished, though he could not identify everything he saw; hanging just to one side of the room's center, for example, was a cloud of tiny glowing sparkles, arranged in a swirling helical pattern. He had no idea what they were or what they were for, or what supported them in mid-air. Cushions, in a dozen shades of red and dark blue, were scattered about. A single straightbacked chair, obviously made here on Godsworld, stood beside the sparkles, and facing it was a broad, gleaming reddish thing that he recognized only with effort as a desk.

The desk would have dominated the room, save for the woman sitting behind it; it was she who dominated. She was tall, even seated-and even for an Earther. Her hair was black and long, but pulled back over the top of her head in a way John had never seen before that seemed to thrust her face forward. Her eyes, too, looked black, but did not have the odd shape that so many of the Earthers’ eyes had. Her nose was small and straight; her jaw set firmly. She was wearing a yellow garment that covered her decently, but was cut tight, far too tight by Godsworlder standards, particularly over her breasts.

“Come in, Captain Mercy-of-Christ,” she said, her voice surprisingly smooth and pleasant, and revealing only a faint trace of accent. “I'm America Dawes."

Hesitantly, John took a few steps forward into the larger room. The door slid shut behind him. “I've heard of you,” he said. “Pardon me if I don't shake hands, but I reckon we're enemies. I won't make my hand a liar."

“That's fine,” she said. “I'm not fond of needless ceremony myself."

“Well, that's good, then."

“Sit down; we need to talk to each other.” She gestured at the Godsworlder chair. “I had that sent up, in case you don't like our unfamiliar furnishings."

Reluctantly, John seated himself.

“There are going to be two parts to this little talk, Captain. First I'm going to explain the situation and tell you what I want, and you're going to just listen; after that, I'll answer any questions you care to ask, and ask you a few in return, and maybe we can settle a few things and get to know each other a little better. Is that all right with you?"

“I reckon it is,” John replied cautiously.

“All right. Now, I'm the chief executive officer of the People of Heaven, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the New Bechtel-Rand Corporation; that's a company, a business, but one so big that no one person or group of partners could own it all or run it all. The New Bechtel-Rand Corporation has been given permission by the government back on Earth to trade with Godsworld and to maybe develop it a little-that is, to see if we can improve things here so as to make trade even more profitable for both sides. I know you're a soldier, not a merchant, but it's obvious that it's more profitable to sell to a rich man than a poor one, so Bechtel-Rand is trying to make Godsworld a little bit richer, so that Bechtel-Rand can be a little bit richer. You understand that?"

“No,” John said truthfully.

She frowned. “All right, it doesn't matter. My point is that we aren't trying to hurt Godsworld. We won't interfere with your beliefs; we aren't going to conquer anyone. We won't take anything we haven't paid for. We aren't criminals or invaders, we're just businesspeople. All we want is to trade with you people; you have things here on Godsworld that are precious back on Earth, and we have things that are precious here. All we want is trade."

She paused; John said nothing, simply looked at her.

“Look, if anyone from Earth wanted to conquer Godsworld, do you think you could stop them? You've seen our weapons. But we aren't allowed to conquer Godsworld, or anywhere else; Earth has laws and can enforce them, and anybody from Earth who broke those laws here on Godsworld would be punished severely. We can't do anything illegal-we don't dare. We can defend ourselves, as we did when you attacked us, but if we aren't attacked, we can't harm a single Godsworlder, or interfere with your religion, your customs, your rights in any way, or the authorities back on Earth would revoke our trade licenses and we'd be out of business. We'd have to leave Godsworld entirely, and let a competing corporation have a try at doing better. So you see, we aren't going to harm you, any of you."

John sat, looking at her.

“Now, you and your little band of marauders have been causing us trouble. You're interfering with business. You've attacked us. It's cost us money. However, we didn't want to stir things up too much-if we fought back it might cause bad feeling among the people we came to trade with. They might see it as a big strong bunch of bullies fighting dirty, turning Earthly weapons against your brave little company. With that in mind, we preferred to just wait and see if you and your compatriots might not get tired and give up. I think in time you would have-or else your fellow Godsworlders would have taken care of you, since after all, your more successful attacks have been against them, not us."

She paused again.

“That is, until today. This morning you killed one of our stockholders, one of the people who owns a part of Bechtel-Rand. The laws back on Earth say that we have to let anyone who owns more than one percent of one percent of our company come here and roam freely-it's supposed to help keep us honest. We're required to let these people come in, at our expense, and do as they please, and we're required to protect them. We try to protect them, but we can't be everywhere they might wander, so we don't always succeed. One of your men blew the face off a stockholder this morning, down in Withered Fig, and that could mean that we're in very big trouble. I think we'll come out of it all right-this is a barbaric planet, so they'll make allowances when they investigate-but we can't let it happen again. Ever. That means that your little band of guerrillas is going to be gone by noon tomorrow, one way or another. Do you understand?"