A bell tinkled inside, a tiny sound against the water slap in the wide Grand.

She pulled the cord again, and the gardeporte rattled. The devil's mouth and eyes flared and shadowed as a human face looked out behind it.

"Who?" a gruff voice asked through the devil-mouth, a voice like thunder itself—Boregy's gate-warder, called from whatever occupied him. "Who are you?"

"Name's Jones. I got to talk with the Boregy."

"You say. Go to hell. Honest business can wait till morning." The face withdrew, the devil's eyes flared gold lamplight and went out as the port thunked shut.

"Dammit!" She grabbed the cord again and jangled it over and over. The devil-face fleered light and the man reappeared behind its grimace.

"You want I call the law?"

"Mondragon," she said. " Mondragon!" And her knees shook when she had said it. She felt sick inside. Forget my name, he had said. I was crazy out there.

"What's your name?"

"It's Jones."

"You alone on that boat?"

"I'm alone."

"Pull into the Cut, up to the door."

Thunk. The tile shut again. The devil-face returned to dark. She drifted a moment away from the wall, then moved her aching arms and put the pole in again, pushing toward the solid iron gate,

Now's done it. Now you got yourself uptowner trouble, Jones. They know your name and his together. Was that smart at all?

But, Mama, Angel, I got to go there. I ain't got nowhere else.

Have I?

She turned the skip. The pole grated on stone below the water, the bow slewed about and bumped the iron gates. Chain took up suddenly, hand-cranked gears rattled and clanked as the big valves grated, groaning their way apart enough to admit a skip. She drove on the pole. Nothing but black lay beyond those jaws.

Retribution's ghost perched on the bow, mending a bit of rope. Looked up at her, all dimly sunlit in the dark.

The ghost said not a thing. It was just company.

You was always into things, mama. You never let nobody near me. Never let none of your dealings touch me. Never knew how that was. Never knew why we didn't have no friends and I had to be a boy.

Dammit, mama, you could've said why that was. Now you come back. Nowyou got no advice either.

You were a kid, the ghost said finally. What could you tell a kid?

Tears stung her eyes. She poled blind in the dark. The chains rattled behind her and the doors slowly clanked shut, cutting off the wholesome breeze. For a breath or two there was total dark and she glided.

Damn place, Altair, damnfool stunt, you're going to smack into a wall or a step—slow 'er down.

The ghost was gone. The dark was complete. Then light burst in a rectangle of an opening door, and scattered on the black water and the buff stone of the Cut walls.

She poled over to the porch-landing and blinked into the lamplight. The open door was invitation—from a place that had lately suffered murder and invasion.

Fool to go in there. Fool to come this far, Altair.

She bumped into the landing and caught a tie-ring with her bare hands, letting the pole-end fall in the well and the rest lie aslant across the deck-rim. Muscles strained, the way of the boat fighting back; sore joints protested. She braced bare feet, snatched the rope through and made fast.

Then she stepped across to that stone porch, climbed the single step and walked into the lighted stone hall.

The door swung to, kicked from behind it. She spun and staggered to a quick freeze, facing a man with a knife, as another door crashed open and poured armed men into the hall at her other side.

It was a climb up back stairs and into dim places, with men in front of her and behind. They had not taken her hook and her knife; and they had kept their hands off her, but they had their own weapons, and those were out, bare steel.

Up two turns of that inside stairs, with an electric here and there—she did not gawk; she had no mind for anything but the man in front of her and the men behind her and the haste in which they moved her along.

Then they opened a door onto a red stone hall that left her standing numb, mouth open until she realized it and shut it on a gulp of air,

Lord and my Ancestors.

Polished stone, white-veined red; columns, statues out of white and black stone. Light agleam as bright as day— the white light of electric, in a gold-and-glass lamp that broke up light and threw it everywhere. They had to shove her to get her moving again; and the cold red stone of the floor was like silk under her wounded feet.

More climbing, up a staircase wide as Moghi's whole front room. It dwarfed all her imaginations.

Money—O Lord, money enough to buy lives and souls. Money enough to drink down all the troubles in the world. Gallandry was nothingto this! O Mondragon, I see why ye backed up from me on that boat, belonging here. O Lord and Glory!

A great gilt table crowned the summit; a man in a blue and gilt bathrobe stood by it, a black-haired man with a fierce down-turning mustache and black eyes that burned her to ash even before she had climbed the last steps.

Get this man out of his bed, make 'em light all these electrics—This is a man don't talk to no canalrats, this man looks at me like something dead and floating—O Lord, I got to watch my mouth with this one, I got to talk uptown talk, make this m'ser believe I know Mondragon for sure or they'll take me downstairs and beat me. Is that The Boregy hisself, and him that young? No. Can'tbe. Boregy's old, ain't he? Got to be some son of his. I got to argue with himfirst and then Boregy.

O Lord, I'm all sweated, and them with all them baths.

She stopped and jerked her hat off and clutched it in both hands, there in front of this m'ser who was probably straight from his bed, whatever he was doing there, this m'ser with all these armed men standing around him.

"You mentioned a name," the Boregy said.

"Yessir," she murmured. If he was not going to say that name outright here, she reckoned she ought not to. She looked straight in those black eyes and felt like she was going underwater. Down in the dark of old Det.

"Well?"

"He's got trouble. I got to say its name?"

"You know its name?"

"They got 'im. they broke in where he was sleeping and they took 'im—I don't know where. You got to help. He said you was friends. He said—he had to get here. Now he can't. They got him."

"Who areyou?"

"Jones, ser, Altair Jones. You c'n ask anyone" No, fool. This man don't talkto the likes of us, this man don't ask his own questions.

'Cept now.

"It must be the girl from Gallandry," a man muttered.

"So he did get off that barge," the Boregy said.

"He got off," Altair said. "We jumped, him and me."

"Did you take him to your friends?"

"Only thing I could do—" O Lord, no, that ain't what he means, OLord, see his eyes, he's thinking about his basement right now. "Damn, I ain't turned him over to them, no, I didn't!"

The Boregy went on staring. Her knees went to jelly.

It's the basement, it's the basement sure. O Lord, save a fool! What do I say, do I tell him we was lovers, do I say anything at all until he wants to talk to me?

"Where is he now?" the Boregy asked.

"I dunno, I dunno where he is, I come to you to ask where they'd go."

"To me?"

"He give me your name. You got to go to the governor, get the law, get the hightown go find him—They didn't kill him, there wasn't any blood, it ain't killing him they want—not yet. You got to do something."