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reluctant Pizzle along the upper gallery of Liamoge to the receiving hall. “She'll be here any moment.”
    “It won't be the same,” complained Pizzle in his nasal whine. “I'd rather not go if I can't be with you.”
    “You'd miss a good concert—they're doing the Naravell tonight. You said you wanted to learn all about our ways, and I promised to introduce you to people who could teach you. My friend is much more knowledgeable about music than I am, and she'd be disappointed if she couldn't meet you.”
    “She would?” Pizzle asked suspiciously, not at all certain he wanted to meet anyone who wanted to meet him. That, in his experience, always betokened disaster at the hands of someone even less socially acceptable than he was.
    They came to the wide, curving stairway and descended. “She's here!” said Jaire, giving Pizzle's arm a squeeze. They were only halfway down the stairs, and Pizzle didn't see anyone in the hall. Jaire propelled him down the stairs and out the doors to the curving drive outside. A sleek blue two-passenger evee was just pulling up to the entrance.
    Pizzle saw only the single occupant sitting in the center of the passenger seat and purposefully turned his head away so that he didn't see her clearly. He heard the evee door open and, eyes on the ground now, saw two buff-booted feet come to stand in front of him. Jaire embraced her friend and they exchanged greetings, which Pizzle ignored.
    Jaire said, “Asquith, I want you to meet my friend Starla.”
    Pizzle sighed and looked up. He'd heard of people claiming they'd been shot by Cupid's arrow. For him, it was as if he'd been impaled on the pudgy little love cherub's spear. He stared, transfixed by the vision before him: a young woman clothed all in white with buff-colored accents, her fine, platinum hair swept back by the light evening breeze, looking at him with pleasure and excitement mingled in her large, dark, oak-brown eyes. She was half-a-head shorter than he was and wore a silver bracelet on each wrist; her arms, bare in a sleeveless jacket, were tanned and smooth, as was her elegant, graceful neck.
    An impartial observer might have said that her eyes were too big and perhaps too wide set, her chin too small and her nose a little thin. Certainly, her lower lip protruded when she was not smiling. But in Pizzle's eyes, she was, if possible, even more beautiful than Jaire—his fantasies made flesh.
    “Starla,” he said, repeating her name. And again, “Starla.”
    “I'm pleased to meet you—” She hesitated.
    “Pizzy,” he said, and embarrassed himself when he realized he'd just given her the least favorite of his many objectionable diminutives. “Just call me ... Pizzy. Everyone does.”
    Starla laughed lightly. Pizzle reconciled himself to the name in that instant; it was worth all the years of misery and embarrassment if that name could evoke such a sound from one so lovely. “I'm pleased to meet you, Pizzy. Jaire told me you liked music ...” She paused again because Pizzle was staring at her. Glancing at Jaire, who nodded toward the vehicle, she said, “Mmm, shall we go?”
    Jaire took Pizzle by the arm and pushed him forward, saying, “Yes, you'd better hurry or you'll miss the best seats. I'm sure you'll both have a wonderful time.” She took Starla's hand, placed it in Pizzle's, and bundled them both into the evee. Starla leaned forward and pressed their destination into the console; the car rolled silently away. Pizzle did not look back to see Jaire smiling in smug satisfaction.
    Stepping into the forest was like stepping into a cathedral. Enormous trees with smooth trunks stood like huge pillars, holding up a dense, blue-green layer of leaves, a vaulted roof a hundred meters above the forest floor. In fact, there were, Crocker noticed at once, two forests: the older, taller forest formed a towering leaf roof over a younger forest of slender trees and squat, fleshy shrubs all sewn together with innumerable vines