The birthmarked woman laughed. "You are watching the beginning of the transformation. Fear, hunger, a little more fear, no work, more fear, and every last one of these poor souls will be a first class, grade-A citizen of the Devil's Pot. How much did you sell?"

"Just a couple of units worth," the girl answered. She was perhaps sixteen, with a strange combination of white hair, blue eyes, and skin that had tanned richly and quickly, giving her the large-eyed look of an exotic snow-maned animal. "Why are they running?"

"Some boy started a panic. The fence gave way and the rest followed him." A second surge of people rounded the corner. "Welcome to the New Land, the Island of Opportunity," Rara called out. Then she laughed.

"Where are they all going to go?" Alter asked.

"Into the holes in the ground, into the cracks in the street. The lucky men will get into the army. But even that won't absorb them all. The women, the children...?" She shrugged.

Just then a boy's voice came from halfway down the block. "Hey!"

They turned.

"Why that's the boy that broke the fence down," exclaimed Rara.

"What does he want?"

"I don't know. Before this afternoon I'd never seen him in my life."

He was dark, with black hair; but as he approached, they saw that his eyes were water-green. "You're the woman who was selling things, huh?"

Rara nodded. "What do you want to buy?"

"I don't want to buy anything," he said. "I want to sell something to you." He was barefoot; his pants frayed into nothing at mid-calf, and his sleeveless shirt had no fastenings.

"What do you want to sell?" she asked, her voice deepening with skepticism.

He reached into his pocket, and brought out a rag of green flannel, which he unwrapped now in his hand.

They had been polished to a milky hue, some streaked with gold and red, others run through with warm browns and yellows. Two had been rubbed down to pure mother-of-pearl, rubbed until their muted 

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