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suggested that others from her milieu stayed here occasionally. The floor was luxuriously carpeted. Although the walls were plain white, a viewscreen beneath the ventilator showed palms and jasmine around a pool. She couldn’t tell whether the scene was real or synthesized. It seemed too pretty to be true, but tightly managed nature tracts did exist. The bed—the bed was wide enough that two could lie well apart.
    Not that she expected anything carnal, under these circumstances. Certainly she felt no such urge. As tension ebbed, weariness flooded up through her marrow.
    Lee saw. “Me too,” he said, “and I didn’t travel through six time zones before this chase began.”
    “Should we take Sr. Guthrie out?”
    “You bloody well better,” rasped from the pack.
    Lee drew the case forth and placed it on the table. The eyestalks emerged and swung to position. Kyra thought of aimed guns. Warmth took her by surprise: “You done fine, you two. Now relax, why don’t you? No booze handy, I guess, but a hot shower could work wonders.”
    A tingle ran the length of Kyra’s spine. She groped for something commonplace to say. “Aren’t you pretty high-wired too, sir?” After lying helpless in the blackness of a sack while his fate played itself out.
    A wolf might have laughed. “What’s a spook got to be scared with? No glands, remember?” Softly: “Do slack off, lass. You’re bushed, as well you might be. We’ll talk later.”
    “I—” A sense of how thirsty she was overran everything else. “Bueno, gracias, sir.”
    In the bath cubicle she swallowed three tumblers of deliciously cold water and splashed more on her face. Besides towels, she noticed, toothbrushes were provided, manual but new in their plastic cases. Yes, and a comb, a shaver, mouthwash, mild stimulants and painkillers. She’d found a good dock. Refreshed by the knowledge, she postponed showering and returned to perch on a chair. Lee followed her example.
    “We’ve lucked out, haven’t we?” Kyra said. “For the time being, anyhow.”
    “Luck’s not a function just of chance,” Guthrie replied.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean there hadn’t been intelligence.” Kyra straightened where she sat. By all accounts, the jefe máximo despised sycophants. “But we are lucky in having Tahir on our side. He’s quite a man, isn’t he?”
    “A leo,” Guthrie agreed. “I’ve considered Islam to be one of the human race’s bigger mistakes, but he might change my mind for me.”
    “He doesn’t seem like a, a Low World leader.”
    “He isn’t, really,” Lee said. “Besides being a councillor and judge in this community, he’s the purchasing agent for whatever supplies that its industries need from outsidesources. That involves him with high as well as low tech, and everything it implies.”
    Kyra hesitated. “I don’t rightly understand,” she confessed. “That is, I know a little about the economics. People, the majority on Earth, those who haven’t the skills or abilities that the forefront of the world wants—of course most of them don’t struggle along in some kind of primitive self-sufficiency. It isn’t that simple. But I’m not sure how it does work.”
    “No reason why you should be,” Guthrie said. “If you’re a space pilot, you’ve had plenty else to occupy you. And you spend your Earthside time in High World enclaves, don’t you?”
    “Bueno, I—”
    “Judas priest, woman, don’t feel guilty about doing what’s sensible!”
    Lee brought Kyra back to her question. “It doesn’t work in any single fashion,” he said. “It’s as varied and variable as the groups involved. In fact, ‘High World’ and ‘Low World’ are a false dichotomy. They not only interact in countless ways, they shade into each other.”
    She frowned. “Can’t you give me some specific data, though? For instance, Tahir’s society. If it needs something more than basic citizens’ allowance, it has to pay. That means it has to