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Pzora’s secretions, and your daughter’s swift action, hauling him from that foul swamp.”
    The traeki pharmacist then spoke, turning its jewel-like sense organs, its voice wavering like an untuned metal harp.
    “i/we help gladly, though our synthesis rings near-swoon from the effort. Unguents of rare potency were needed. Yet it seems difficult to please.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Only here, up high where germs are scarce, might the work be done. Miss Sara’s abode is ideal, and she will let no other take the patient. Yet she complains so! Aggrieved, she speaks longingly of an end to her work-disruption. Toward getting us all out of her hair.”
    “It’s just a metaphor,” Lorrek explained.
    “As i/we assumed. Its paradoxical dissonance we/i esteem highly. May her selves understand that.”
    “I’ll see that she does,” Nelo told Pzora, smiling.
    “Thank you all, excellent Nelos,” the young traeki responded, slipping into plural form, “i/we hope for serene work, when we return this evening.”
    Lorrek wrapped his eyestalks, and Nelo needed no rewq to read the old g’Kek’s silent laughter. “Serenity is good,” he agreed dryly, coughing behind a hand.
    He braced the elevator cage, first for the heavy traeki to shuffle aboard. Then Lorrek rolled in, his left wheel wobbling from untreatable degenerative axle disease. Nelo pulled the signal rope, calling an operator far below to start the weight-driven winch.
    “Has anything been learned about the Stranger’s identity?” Lorrek asked while waiting.
    “Not that I heard. Though I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.”
    So far, even merchant traders had failed to recognize the unconscious man, implying he came quite a distance, perhaps from the coast settlements or even The Vale. No one in Dolo knew Melina, either, when she arrived long ago, with a letter of introduction and a baby on her hip. The Slope is a bigger place than we’re used to thinking.
    The g’Kek sighed. “We must resolve soon whether it will better serve the patient to send him on, now that he’s stabilized, to be examined in-“
    The cage shuddered, then dropped swiftly, cutting Lorrek off midsentence.
    Ah well, Nelo thought, watching the car vanish steadily below moss-heavy branches. That’d explain the shouting. Sara wouldn’t want her pet sent to specialists in Tarek Town-even if she does complain about disrupted work.
    Would she ever learn? The last time Sara’s nurturing instincts took over-succoring a convalescing bookbinder, in Biblos-it led to a love affair that ended in tragedy, scandal, and alienation from her guild. Nelo hoped the cycle wasn’t repeating.
    Even now she could win it all back-both her position and marriage to a respected sage. True, I never liked that sour-pussed Taine, but he offers a more secure life than she’d have had with that frail lover of hers.
    Anyway, she can still do math while making me some grandkids.
    The little chimp plunged into the house first. Sara’s voice called from shadows, “Is that you, Prity? It’s been nothing but interruptions, but I think I finally whipped that integral. Why don’t you look it ov-“
    There was a flat sound. A large bundle, landing on a table.
    “Ah, the paper. Wonderful. Let’s see what the old man sent us this time.”
    “Whatever the old man sends is good enough for one who don’t pay for it,” Nelo groused, shuffling while his eyes adapted. Through the gloom, he saw his daughter rise from a desk covered with notebooks and obscure symbols. Sara’s round face spread with a smile he always thought beautiful, though it might have helped if she’d taken more after her mother.
    My looks and Melina’s wild brains. Not a blend I’d wish on a sweet lass.
    “Father!” She hurried over to embrace him. “You gave me a start.”
    Her black hair, cut like a boy’s, smelled of pencil dust and Pzora’s unguents.
    “No doubt.” He frowned at the shambles of her quarters, worse now with a