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littered the house with his mess: piles of papers, scattered pens, gouged-out shavings from wood blocks curling pathetically in corners. Leiko prowled around the house as if it had grown bars. She was irritable. "When are you going to be done with it?"
    He looked up. "When I am."
    She glared at him. "I'm going out." Out to Rin's, or, perhaps, out to Port. He looked at the picture on his desk. It was good—it was really good. Leiko looked out of it at him, turning back in midstride, naked against the background of a bare room. Out of the empty room her skin, her hair, her eyes all glowed. He had used colored chalks on this, and it had given him the texture he wanted. After they made love, her skin seemed to change, till it seemed almost gorged, denser, and somehow, furry. It was this feel he had worked for in the portrait, and he had achieved it. When he looked at the picture he felt as if there were firecrackers bursting inside his head.
    There were two other pieces he felt that way about.
    One had grown out of an incident at Rin's. It had been a soupy, foggy night, not a night for tourists to be out. Jimson was surprised when they came in: three women, two men, and behind them four more men, following at a little distance, eyes watchful, clearly in formation. He leaned to Leiko. "Who are they?"
    "Roman De Vala—and friends."
    "Who'she?"
    "He lives here. He buys bodyguards, and brings his rich friends to Hyper bars. He's an art collector. He says he's a Terran. But a lot of people say that."
    "Which is he?"
    "The little one, with the black hair." Jimson observed him covertly. It was rude to stare, and fights had started for less—unless, of course, you were Ysao, or Chi, lounging with alien elegance. No one picked fights with Chi. De Vala was studying Jimson's pictures. Suddenly he turned and walked back to the table Chora had found for the group, bending to talk to one of the women. Jimson had never seen anyone wear a mask before, though he had seen a lot of Hypers use glitterstick like a mask. Hers was blue, and the face carved on it was Japanese: stylized and delicate, with feathery arching brows. The eyes were outlined with black and not painted in, and Jimson realized that there were no eyeholes. Why go out, he wondered, if you could neither see nor be seen?
    The noise level went slowly up to normal, as people turned to other interests. Jimson could hear Denny muttering insults from the safe perch of his bar stool, but Chora was standing near him, ready to reach out an inexorable, restraining hand.
    All would have remained fine, had Ysao not chosen that moment to shamble through the door. There was glitter in his beard, and he wore turquoise studs in his ears and a turquoise ring in his nose. He was hairy and scary and nearly two and a half meters tall. One of the tourist women went "Eep!" and pointed. One of the men laughed. The bar grew acutely, dangerously, silent. Ysao looked down his nose at the interlopers and said two sentences, both hideously contemptuous, audible throughout the front room and possibly into the back. De Vala turned pale. The other man turned red, and then started to shout. Denny edged around Chora, and glass began to fly.
    The ink drawing that had come out of that fracas was jagged and jarring, like the glass mirror over the bar that Ysao had brought smashing down. Jimson was a little nervous about it, it was so unlike most of his work. But it was good, he was sure of that.
    The third piece was a portrait of Ysao, a woodcut. A front face portrait: the giant was sitting on an old wooden chair that was too small, acromegalic hands in bitter prominence in his lap. His face was lumpy, distorted by its own bones. But a mind shone out through his eyes—calm, potent, and unhampered.
    Sammy set up a show for him on a planet called Enchanter. Jimson packed them, and he and Leiko went to the Port together to watch the ship for Enchanter leave. Leiko danced unhesitatingly along the intricate movalong