3 x T

"I trust you so far," Gazar agreed.

"Now I must go back to my ship, while there is still some light." Je

Gazar scurried around to open the door for her, a courtesy she'd read of but one long obsolete on civilized worlds, where doors were smart enough to open themselves. "Until tomorrow," the Atheter merchant said.

"Yes." Je

Gazar peered anxiously after her. "Be careful down there," he called. "The omphoth may be gone, but there are all ma

"I have my weapon that throws sleep," she reminded him. He smiled a big-toothed, reassured smile, then started screaming at the top of his lungs for customers. His shrieks were just a tiny part of the din; living as they did in an environment where they could rarely see far, Atheters advertised with noise.

Je

Being under those trees, Je

But, she saw, it was only one of the big, knobby, hard-ski

"A stupid seed," she muttered. Then she shivered. Stupid the seed certainly was, but had it fallen in a spot half a meter different, it would have smashed her skull. As she walked on, she cocked her head to look up every so often. Not just seeds fell from the Atheters' tree, but also rubbish the locals threw out.

After a few hundred meters, she emerged from the forest into a large clearing, almost big enough to be an independent patch of plain. In the middle of it, sunset gleamed off the metallic bulk of Pacific Overtures. Je

She hurried toward it. Less than a hundred meters away, she stumbled over something and nearly fell. As she caught herself, she saw she'd tripped on a stump completely overgrown by grass and low bushes. It had been a big tree once; now it was just a menace to navigation.

She sighed with animal pleasure the moment she got inside Pacific Overtures. After the humid heat of the jungle, conditioned air was a blessing. She shook back her long, blond hair, frowned at how heavy and limp with sweat it was. As she had before, she thought about cutting it short. But it helped the Atheters tell her apart from the other humans on Pacific Overtures, so she supposed it was worth the bother.

She was into the common room before she realized how much like a trader she was starting to think. A

The scuffing noise made Sam Watson look up from the spice cones he was grading. His eyes lingered. That a

The once-over ended soon enough not to be offensive. "How'd you do?" Watson asked. "Get anything interesting?"

"As a matter of fact, I did." She took the ivory figurine from her beltpouch and set it on the table in front of him. "Have you ever seen anything like this before?"

He reached for it, then paused. "May I?" At her nod, he picked it up. He was a medium-sized, medium-brown man in his mid-thirties, five or six years older than Je

The caterpillar twitched as he pursed his lips. "Can't say as I have," he said slowly. "That's an old, old style of carving."

"I thought so, too, though I hadn't seen it before," she nodded. "Gazar?the merchant I got it from?says the animal whose ivory it comes from is a thousand years extinct."

"I wouldn't be surprised, though I've never met a merchant, human or otherwise, who wouldn't stretch things for the sake of profit. Still, it's a pretty piece." He handed it back to her. "If it really is as old and rare as all that, it might even be museum quality."

"Do you think so?" Je

"Might be, I said." Watson jabbed a rueful thumb at his spice cones. "One thing certain?none of these is. Some will help make prime Athet brandy, some good brandy, and the rest rotgut. They'll all turn a profit, but no big deal."

"I suppose not." Je

Watson scratched his head. "The which? For what?"

"Never mind, Sam." Je

"All right." Watson shrugged. He was a pragmatic type who did not waste his time worrying about what was of no immediate use to him. That made him narrow, but within his limits acute. "Now that we know your ivory exists, we'll have to see if we can get more. Don't forget to tell Master Rodriguez about it."

"I won't. When do you suppose she'll be back?"

Watson shrugged again. "She's got some sort of complicated deal brewing with the treelords, so she may be gone days yet. Who can say?" He gave a wry chuckle. "Whatever she's up to, it's a lot bigger than the trinket exchange level we humble journeymen operate at."

"I suppose so." Je

Watson, she knew, would have told her it was much too late to worry about such things now. He would have been right, too. That didn't stop her.

Now he glanced longingly back toward his spice cones. "I'd better finish these, so I can see exactly what I've got. Congratulations on the ivory. I'm most sincerely jealous."