back to the mainland and that he couldn't leave the ship. He said he'd give them real money, and even got it out of his pocket. But they started to take him away. That's when I ran out of line and jumped the fence. I didn't know everyone else would run too."

"Probably half their papers were out of order, too. Or forged. That's why they ran."

"You're a cynic, Aunt Rara."

"I'm a practical woman."

As they turned another corner, the boy's green eyes jumped at the blue-hazed towers of the palace, distant behind the wealthy roofs of merchants' mansions, themselves behind the hive houses and the spreading ruin of tenements. He tried to memorize the twisting street they followed. He couldn't.

There were two general, contradictory impressions in his mind: first, of being enclosed in these tiny alleys, some so small that two could not pass through them with arms held out; the second, of the spreading, immense endlessness of the city. He tried to tell Alter what he felt, but after a minute of broken sentences, she smiled at him and shook her head. "No, I don't understand. What do you mean?"

And a sudden picture of the seaside leapt into his head. The yellow length of the beach lashed across his mind so that it stung. He could see the salt-and-pepper rocks, shoaling away and knobbed with periwinkle shells. He could see the brown and green fingers of seaweed clutching the sand when the waves went out. He blinked the gray city back into his eyes. Tears washed the broken curb, the cracked walls, washed the rusted metal window jamb sharp and clean again.

"He means he's homesick," Rara interpreted. "No, boy," she said. "It'll never go away. But it'll get less."

The street turned sharply twice, then widened.

"Well," said Alter. "Here we are."

A red, circular plaque hung over the door of the only stone building on the block. It was two stories, twice the height of the other structures. They entered.

Beams of real wood were set into the low ceiling. By one wall was a counter. There was a large table in the middle, and coming down into the room in a large V was a stairway.

Of the men and women sitting around the room, one caught Tel's eye immediately. He was perhaps seven feet and a handful of inches 

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