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giant snorted.
    “We’re scavengers,” the old man said harshly. “If that’s not good enough for you, then say so now and fuck off.” They all stared at him, unblinking.
    In the sudden silence, the bureaucrat could hear the show he’d interrupted. Byron, come away from that window. There’s nothing out there but cold and changing Ocean. Go into the air. Your father thinks—
    My father thinks of nothing but money.
    “I’ve got a bottle of vacuum-distilled brandy in my briefcase.” He fetched the bottle, took a swig, held it out. “If I could convince you…”
    “Well, that is hospitable.” The flask went around twice, and then Lank said, “You must be heading into the village.”
    “Yes, to see Mother Gregorian. Perhaps you know her house.”
    The three exchanged glances. “You won’t get anything out of her,” Lank said. “The villagers tell stories about her, you know. She’s a type.” He nodded toward the television. “Ought to be on the show.”
    “Tell me about her.”
    “Naw, I don’t think so.” He raised a sticklike arm, pointed. “The road dead-ends into the first street to the waterfront. Go down to the river, to the fifth—”
    “Sixth,” the old man said.
    “Sixth street after that. Go up by the kirk and past the boneyard to the end, right by the marshes. Can’t miss it. Big fucking castle of a place.”
    “Thanks.” He stood.
    They were no longer looking at him. On the screen, an albino girlchild was standing alone in the middle of a raging argument. She was an island of serene calm, her eyes vacant and autistic. “That’s Eden, she’s the boy’s sister. Hasn’t spoken since it happened,” Lank remarked.
    “What happened?”
    “She saw a unicorn,” the giant said.
    *   *   *
     
    From the air the village had looked like a very simple antique printed circuit, of the sort Galileo might have used to build his first radio telescope, if he wasn’t confusing two different eras, a comb of crooked lines leading inward from the water, too small for there to be any need of cross-streets. The houses were small and shabby, but warm light spilled from the windows, and voices murmured within. An occasional dog stridently warned him away from boat or yard. Other than an innkeeper who nodded lazily from the door of the watermen’s hotel, he met no one by the riverfront. He turned onto the marsh road, the river cold and silver at his back. He went past a walled-in ground where skeletons hung from the trees, the bones bleached and painted and wired together so that they clacked gently in an almost unnoticeable breeze.
    Beyond the boneyard the ground rose gently. He passed several large dark houses, still unscavenged, newly abandoned by their wealthy owners. Probably gone to the Piedmont to participate in the economic boom. Last on the road, just before the land wearily eased itself down into marsh, was his destination.
    The house was blistered and barnacled, and it was meager light indeed that escaped the thickly curtained windows into the wider world. But under its mottling of chrysalids the wood planking was gracefully carved and fitted. He stood before the massive entranceway and touched the doorplate. Within, a voice gonged, “Callers, mistresses.” Then, to him, the door said, “Please wait.”
    A moment later the door opened on a pale, thin face. On seeing him, it opened in startlement, revealing an instant’s fear before tightening again into wariness. The woman lifted her chin defiantly, so that her eyes seemed simultaneously to flinch away from him. “I thought you were the appraiser.”
    The bureaucrat smiled. “Mother Gregorian?”
    “Oh, her.” She turned away. “I suppose you’d best come inside.” He followed her down the gullet of a hallway flocked with a floral print gone dead brown into the crowded belly of a sitting room. She seated him in a dark lionfooted chair. It was a massy thing, shag-maned atop and fringed beneath, with padded armrests. He’d