"Hey," she yelled from the porch, "you back out all right, you want me back my skip?"

"Ney, we got room."

It was tight. The poleboats began to move out, one and the other. More boatmen came out from Moghi's, talking the day's business.

Damn. Never figured to be tied up that long.

"I move 'er," she muttered, and climbed down the ladder, walked across half a dozen tightly-packed poleboats and the length of one, stepped into her own bow and slipped the jury-tie. Boats backed, taking their own time about it. She kept the skip still with the pole, worked into a developing gap at the porch edge and racked the pole, moved fast to grab the bow-rope and tied on in the last ebb of poleboatmen outward bound and the retreating clogs-onboard thunder of shoresiders on their way to their shops.

She retreated to the stern and sat down on the halfdeck-rim, got the bluestone out of its storage by her foot, took out her thin-bladed knife and set to sharpening it since yesterday's use on a bit of line.

Damn hightowner sense of time.

I give 'im another hour.

Then I got to think of something. I got to get to Rimmon, that's what I got to do.

No. I find where Kalugin is. He's slippery. Could be in Nikolaev. Could be back to Kalugin. I don't do nothing stupid, just real slow and calm.

I give 'em a little present like I give that slaver-boat, they got to come running out. And me and this is waiting.

The blade blurred.

I give 'im an hour, then I got to go somewhere they don't find me so easy.

Water fell onto the steel. She wiped her eyes with the back of the knife-hand and kept to polishing.

Leather-shod steps came up onto the porch, reached porch-edge and stopped. She looked up at a blurred outline of a man in uptorn clothes standing there above. Blinked and saw the daylight catch the hair and hover there.

M'God.

M'God. She sheathed the knife, dropped the stone and got to her feet in the well, staring up at the elegant man on the porch, the man who took the ladder-rail and came down it to step off onto the slats of her well.

He looked all right. He stood there as if he no longer knew his balance on a skip. Pretty sword at his side. Nice clothes.

You get along with Kalugin all right, then, Mondragon?

"Jones—"

All pretty again. You got an eel's turns, sure enough. Woman breaks her heart over you and you come back smelling like an uptowner, and no mark on you.

"Got room for a passenger?"

"Hey, I ain't loaded. You going somewhere's in particular, dressed like that?"

"Jones, dammit."

She pushed her cap back and resettled it, wiped her fingers on her sweater. "You're looking all right."

"I'm all right."

"You leaving town?"

"No, I—" He gestured vaguely toward uptown, motion of a lace-cuffed hand. "I'm staying in Boregy. Till I can find somewhere else. Moved late last night. Boregy's boat delivered me down at the corner—" His voice trailed off. "I'm late, aren't I?"

"Hell, not much." Her eyelashes prickled with damp when she blinked. Damnfool man. Can he tell I was crying? Did he see me? "You look real nice."

"You too." He came close to her, all perfume-smelling, all clean and fancy lace-front and wool coat, and she backed and held her knife-blacked hands out of the way as her leg hit the half-deck. "Jones, let's go somewhere."

She stared at him. "You in hire to Kalugin, are you?"

A little tautness came to his mouth. "I have a patron. That's the way a foreigner lives in this town."

"Damn, you trust that—"

"He's very likely to be governor someday. I know his kind. They often win."

"Yey. They do."

"I haven't got a choice, Jones."

She drew several quick, short breaths. "Huh." She wiped her hands again. "Well, that's another thing, ain't it?"

"You want me to untie?"

She blinked, flung up a bewildered gesture. "Hell, uptowner don't do the work." She edged past him, went her barefoot way forward and jerked the tie. Looked up at Ali standing there on the porch rim. At Jep behind him. "Dammit, ye looking for gossip?" She waved a go-away at them. "Tell Moghi I got 'im!"

"Where you going, Jones?" Moghi's voice bellowed out.

"I dunno. Ware, aft!" She unracked the pole and pushed off. "We'll know it when we get there." Pole down. The bow came about into Fishmarket shadow, for up-Grand.

"And don't you dare open them letters, Moghi! I know how I tied them knots!"

APPENDIX

Of Union, Alliance, and Merovin A Concise History of Merovin

THE history of Merovin is a history of mistake. There was from early in Alliance and Union history (2530 AD) a proclamation colloquially known as the Gehenna Doctrine: it declared as a matter of policy that no Terran genetic material should be introduced into any compatible alien ecology; and that humanity should not contact any alien species onworld, and should not land on any planet unless invited by a dominant sapient species. The practical sense of it was this: that humanity would keep to space and leave developing worlds free to develop without contamination traveling in either direction; and that humanity would contact no species that had not advanced into spaceflight. The theory behind this was that such a species had (1) avoided blowing itself up with advanced power systems and (2) learned enough about its own planetary ecology to devise protections against contamination at critical levels. The Gehenna Doctrine guided humanity in the twenty sixth century; by the twenty seventh, it was suffering some erosion. Humanity spread out not in a coherent sphere from Earth, but outward from Tau Ceti and in the general direction of Vega and Sinus in thin threads of lanes along routes ships could use, to stars humankind could use; and the lack of centralization spelled lack of central control.

Of the two human superpowers, Alliance (near the center of human space) was more nearly a coherent territory and actually had a coherent government. Union spread outward in a series of threads that more resembled a network of corridors of diminishing cohesiveness; Union realized early on that it was never going to bea coherent, compact government, that it was doomed to sprawl. It had taken certain educational measures with its citizens to assure an underlying conformity (Alliance called it mind-washing) and simply shrugged as the lines of colonization extended outward beyond its reach or understanding. Union asked peace of its component parts; and violated the Gehenna Doctrine not as collective policy (it had none) but locally. In effect Union applied the Gehenna Doctrine to humanity more than to alien contacts: it cared very little what went on within a local unit, down an isolate star lane, or on a particular world—as long as what exited that unit and came into another unit's space left its neighbors alone and generally obeyed Union law.

Merovingen was an example of the kind of accident Union was prone to: a wildcat colony launched in 2608 by someone far from Union's capital at Cyteen, at a little G-class star with an earthlike planet—just too attractive for certain economic interests to resist. It was a general period of expansion, and in the confidence of new science, worlds were no longer exempt.

The expedition moved in haste at all levels, worried about attracting attention from upper levels of the Union super-government (under the general apprehension that the Government tended to take interest in anything that went on too long and with too much local disruption). This haste had a foreseeable consequence: hasty geologic reports, hasty climatological studies, objections from field officers stifled by superiors whose superiors might be distressed if schedules were not met. Hasty zonal survey.