Me, I would have gladly joined Miranda in a glass of something, but when I'm "on duty," playing a role, I never step out of it.

As Mrs. Mayard-Tate fluttered away to unknown regions of her palatial warren, I stood and looked at her parlor closely for the first time. What had caught my eye was a wood and glass display case housing dozens of yellow-white carvings, none much larger than a golf ball. Of all the fabulous riches in that room, the loot of generations, these are what drew me.

I was still studying them when Miranda returned carrying a small canvas bag emblazoned with the name and logo of the Bank of Hell. "You like them?" she asked, handing the bag to me.

"I was wondering what they were, ma'am," I said.

"They're called netsuke. I've never cared for them, myself. I keep wondering if I ought to sell them. I'm told they'd bring a good price."

She probably had no idea. Any pre-Invasion artifact is worth something, but there is earthcraft, and then there is Earthcraft! There are societies that collect mass-produced paper clips and pencils from the twentieth century. These people keep their treasures in glassine envelopes and handle them only with tongs, but they are not the same crowd that traffics in netsuke.

"I think they were some sort of hair clip," she was saying, shoving vaguely at her great mass of chocolate hair. "Kind of a barrette. I never could get any of them to work. There was probably some trick to it. I guess I'm missing something."

How about several billion brain cells, darling? Netsuke... hair clips? I was tempted to tell her the cunning little wooden-and-ivory objects had been used to suspend items from the ceremonial sashes, or obis, of the gentlemen of Japan, as depicted on many a vase and jar, many a screen and fan, three or four hundred years ago. But Friday wouldn't have known that. For that matter, Sparky Valentine wouldn't have known it but for the fact I'd worn one many years before during a production of the Noh opera Yurigi at the Straits of Awa ("...a not entirely successful attempt at mating Akira Kurosawa with Victor Herbert, enlivened considerably by the puckish performance of K. C. Valentine in the role of Yasuhiro."—Neptune Trident).

"You seem to be staring at that one."

"Was I? I hadn't realized." But it was obvious which one she was talking about. It was a frog, perched on a human skull. The skull had a thick brow ridge, and the long, bulb-tipped fingers of the frog wrapped around it and into the eye sockets. Somehow, the artist had portrayed a coiled power in the little beast, and had given it a predator's lazy eyes. They looked at you without fear or mercy, and you just knew you couldn't show them anything they hadn't seen many times already.

"Would you like a closer look?" Without waiting for a reply she reached behind the cabinet and produced an oddly shaped piece of metal—copper or brass, it looked like—which I soon realized was an antique key. She opened the case, took the frog and skull, and handed it to me.

It was cool at first, but quickly warmed, seemed almost to soften in my hand. My thumb automatically caressed the frog's back. I looked up at her and smiled.

"Maybe I will have that drink, ma'am," I said.

Elwood was waiting for me at the edge of the big park that marked the boundary of Miranda Mayard-Tate's upper-upper-class neighborhood. He was seated on a bench, his hands jammed into the pockets of his baggy trousers, his long legs stretched out before him, the gray fedora pushed forward to almost cover his eyes. Toby sat on the bench beside him. Behind them, people in red jackets and white riding breeches and black riding boots sat atop their magnificent steeds and cantered grandly back and forth in a ritual as old as money itself. And the funds of these equestrian dandies were ancient indeed, so old that their primordial corruption served as its own fertilizer, so old that the sweet whiff of its decay overpowered the honest stink of the piles of horseshit that was all most of these people ever produced. And true to the breeding habits of the very, very rich, some of these people made my Sweet Miranda seem a mental giant.

Perhaps those thoughts seem unworthy. I knew where they came from: I was psyching myself up for Elwood, who didn't much approve of my recent activities.

Toby spotted me first, and came scampering in my direction. Elwood followed in his relaxed, shambling gait. "You get what you came for?" he asked.

"Don't I always?"

When Toby realized I was talking to Elwood and not to him, he started to growl and bark. You don't know what terror is until you've heard a Bichon growling. After you've heard it, you still don't have a clue. Back in the park, I'm sure all the squirrels in earshot were helpless with laughter.

It made me sad. The fact is, Toby really can't stand Elwood. Elwood hadn't been around much since our arrival at Pluto. Now he was back, and Toby didn't like it a bit. I had to speak to him sharply, which made his head hang and his tail droop. He fell behind us and trudged along under a dark cloud of gloom, his every movement calculated to wring the last drop of guilt from his pitiless master. The awful thing was, it worked. But it wouldn't do to let Toby know that, so I shrugged my shoulders and tried to ignore him. "I just don't think that robbing from one of the most powerful families in Pluto is the smartest thing you ever did," Elwood went on.

"Godfrey Daniel!" I exploded. "Getting somebody to hand you money is not robbery. It's a short con. They're two different things. And the fact that the Mayard-Tates are rich and powerful isn't why you object; it's that you object to thieving of any kind, from anyone, including these rich old screwish families who wouldn't miss a billion if I lifted it from them, much less the paltry and entirely reasonable sum in question."

"That's your father talking," Elwood drawled. "The last of the Wobblies."

"Here's another line from my father, while we're at it," I said. " 'Never give a sucker an even break, nor smarten up a chump.' "

"That has a familiar ring. Could it be he stole it?"

"Of course he stole it! What do you think actors do?" "Always remember, son," he had told me many times. "Authors write. Producers produce. Directors interfere. Angels write checks. And it's all for us. We make the art, and if you need to borrow something to make it work, then borrow it!" Borrow was a euphemism my father used frequently, steal being a word he disliked. But he was an anarchist, didn't believe in property or laws.

That's how I was raised, and if it gives you a liberal comfort you can use that fact to explain or forgive my admittedly piratical attitude toward other people's possessions. Or you can think of me as a goddamn thief; I don't mind. I do believe in property, and in laws, though as few of them as needed to curb our animal tendencies. I own the things in my trunk, for instance, and would be peeved if they were taken from me. My father never owned anything he wouldn't have cheerfully given away if you asked him for it. Of course, he seldom owned anything worth giving away.

But take the screws. Does it make sense to you that they should have access to these almost infinite amounts of money simply because their grandparents excelled in brutality, bribery, chicanery, sadism, and the nearest thing to chattel slavery humanity has known since the American Civil War? Not far from where we were walking human beings had been traded on a computerized auction block—though they used the polite fiction that it was the prisoners' labor contracts that were being bought and sold. That's what the old fortunes on Pluto were founded on: cheap and plentiful labor.

My father was capable of going on for hours on the subject.