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hate to have to move it.
    A woman hurried into the room. “Is that the appraiser? Have him look at the crystal, I—” She stopped.
    Tock. A metronome wedged between dusty specimen bells reached the end of its swing and began the long, slow return, ponderously counting out the slow seconds of mortality. Trophy beasts peered down at him from the tin ceiling with eyes of green and gray and orange glass. Now that he noticed, the room was full of faces. Heavy-lidded, openmouthed and disapproving, they were carved into the legs, sides, and bases of the escritoires, tables, sideboards, and china cabinets that jostled one another, competing for space. Even the blond mahogany pieces had been extravagantly carved. He wondered where the shavings were now; they would not have been discarded. It was an enormously valuable room, and would have been twice as comfortable with half as much furniture. Tock. The metronome reasserted itself, and still the women studied him, as if they would never speak again.
    “Honestly, Ambrym, must I wait forever for you to introduce your friend?”
    “He’s not mine, he’s Mother’s.”
    “All the more reason to show a little common courtesy.” She thrust forward a hand, and he stood so they could shake. “I’m Linogre Gregorian,” she said. “Esme! Where are you?”
    A third woman, dressed in mousy brown, appeared, drying her hands with a cloth towel. “If that’s the appraiser, be sure he knows that Ambrym broke the—” She stopped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had a caller.” She didn’t leave, but stood there, watching.
    “Don’t be stupid, Esme, this gentleman is here to see Mama. Fetch him a glass of beer.”
    “You don’t have to—”
    “The Gregorians have always kept a decent house,” she said firmly. “Please, sit. The doctor is with Mother now. But if you’ll wait, I’m sure she’ll want to see you, if only briefly. You must take care, however, not to excite Mother, for she is extremely ill.”
    “She’s dying,” Ambrym said. “She won’t let us take her to the Piedmont, where the good hospitals are. She’s taken a notion into her head to stay in this decaying hovel to the bitter end. I think she’s expecting to be washed away with the tides. Not that the evacuation authorities would allow that.” A faraway look came into her eyes. “That will be the final indignity, to be removed as paupers.”
    “If you don’t mind, Ambrym, I’m sure our visitor is not interested in our private sorrows.” The bureaucrat did not miss the way Ambrym stepped back from her sister, nor the defiance with which she did so. “May I ask your business with our mother?”
    “Yes, certainly.” Esme placed a delicate crystal beerglass in his hand. “Thank you.” She set a saucer by his elbow, lacy porcelain that was faintly translucent even in the evening light. It was a fairy mist of crockery, delicate beyond belief. “I’m from the Division of Technology Transfer within the System government. We’d like to talk with your brother, but unfortunately when he left our employ, he didn’t leave his forwarding address. Perhaps you…?” He let his voice trail off, and took a sip from his glass. It was lager, thin and almost tasteless.
    “I’m sure we wouldn’t know,” Linogre began coolly.
    But Ambrym snapped, “Are you his agent? He left home when he was a child. He’s not entitled! We’ve worked all our lives, we’ve slaved—”
    “Ambrym,” her sister said meaningfully.
    “I don’t care. When I think of the years of work, the suffering, the shit she’s put me through…!” She appealed directly to the bureaucrat. “Every morning I polish her riding boots, every morning for the last five years! I have to kneel on the floor before her, while she tells me she’s thinking of leaving the best things to Linogre. It’s not as if she were ever getting out of that bed again.”
    “Ambrym!”
    They fell silent, eyeing one another. The metronome doled out six