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machines to tug out the tiny veins of timonium in their
matrix of junk rock and near uranics.
    Below, the suddenly tempting vista of scrag
rock, rubble, sand, and several twisty, barren streams of water.
The colors of the lip of land he trembled on were the scrawny green
and yellow of the local ground-grass, a touch of thatch, the dark
flutter of a blowing leaf. Below was shadowed rock and water the
color of the cliff walls and … nothing else, a scar a century and
more unhealed.
    He'd stopped, sweating, barely able to catch his breath,
barely thinking, starting to think that maybe this time, this would
be the time -- but no, not now, he couldn't. The nuts would need
harvest, and the -- and -- but what would he
do
? Rollie'd always taken the stuff down road once Mom had
gone away. Rollie'd always --
    Dead. Rollie was dead. He'd took all their
money and used it -- used it at the whorehouse without telling him!
-- and now he was dead and dust!
    Rage then. A black leaf spun past into the
gorge, and he'd kicked a rock unsteadily at the abyss, and almost
slipped in his breathless weakness, and the fear rose in him again,
and now he was afraid of World's End, and of himself.
    He'd run, as best he could then, in the back of his mind
recalling that kid game where they'd counted, "four thousand big
steps from the stoop to the end of the world!" His run was
sometimes no more than a heedless willful stumble in the right
direction, gathering scratches and bruises, feeling afraid of the
sky, feeling afraid of the road, feeling like he couldn't find
breath,
knowing
that he couldn't find breath. He'd skinned his
shins crossing the stoop, falling into house, and barely shouldered
the door shut, locking it three times behind him.
    It was three days before he'd managed to get
outdoors again, two of them spent huddled in the threadbare bed,
staring, thinking, letting impossible things and small noises
frighten him into stiff, senseless panic, closed eyes worse than
open. That first night, only Nugget, the frail very skinny cat, had
come to sleep with him, and then not really sleep, but sit at the
bottom of the bed with big eyes, worried and unpurring. On the
third day, Yulie managed to eat, and then to remember that the
crops would need in, real soon.
    Some days he kept track of time, some days
he didn't. The crops and the cats and the auto-calendar helped him
keep up, mostly. Almost a year to the day since Rollie was gone,
and things still needed doing.
    Today . . . today he'd actually contemplated
walking all the way down to the first tollgate, but then the
searchers had showed up while he was in the field, and he'd
fled.
    Stretching, finally, letting the leaf-fall
and rough browning grass comfort him, Yulie curled his head on his
arms against a wind-breaking rock.
    * * *
    Mr. pel'Tolian's note, franked as it was
with a pristine Korval seal, looked out of place amid the piles of
local paper, envelopes, and mismatched inks. He'd moved it aside
several times, knowing that it could wait, knowing that the
business of Boss Conrad of Surebleak was far more pressing than the
business of a Pat Rin yos'Phelium, man about town on the distant
and increasingly inhospitable world of Liad. The note had arrived
on the overnight, likely brought in by a scout ship or a Juntavas
courier; possibly it had arrived via Korval's own packet vessels.
Surely it was not more than a day or two out of Solcintra Port,
unlike many of the items in these piles which had taken days to
travel up from the port or down Blair Road, hand to tollbooth to
hand to end up here, with him, in a pile. A pile which had waited
patiently while he was away to Liad, but which demanded attention
now that he was returned and despite that he'd rather be walking
arm in arm with his lady to his casino, or even just having lunch
with his planning committee.
    Piles -- piles were his bane. Back home --
on Liad -- his mail came in neat bundles, a few paper newsletters
and such, invitations more