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heavy ticks, and the bureaucrat thought, surely Hell must be like this. Finally Linogre prevailed, and her sister looked away. From the shadows Esme said timidly, “Would you like another glass of beer?”
    The bureaucrat held up his glass, all but untasted. “No, thank you.” Esme reminded him of a mouse, small and nervous, hovering at the edges of light in hopes of some small crumb. And yet on Miranda the mice were dimorphic, like everything else. At the end of the great year they would swim out into the ocean and drown in great numbers, and the few survivors would transform into—he tried to remember—little amphibious creatures, like vest-pocket seals. He wondered would she change too, come the tides?
    “Don’t think I can’t see how you suck up to her,” Ambrym snapped angrily. “Miss Meek-and-Harmless. I saw you hiding away the silver gravy boat.”
    “I was cleaning it!”
    “In your room, uh-huh, sure.”
    Panicky little eyes. “Anyway, she said it was mine.”
    “ When ?” both sisters cried in outraged unison.
    “Just yesterday. You can ask her.”
    “You remember—” Linogre glanced at the bureaucrat and lowered her voice, half-turning her back to him. “You remember that Mother said we were to divide the silver evenly, share and share alike. She’s always said that.”
    “Is that why you took the sugar tongs?” Ambrym asked innocently.
    “I never!”
    “You did.”
    Listening intently, the bureaucrat put his glass down beside him. It landed a trifle harder than he’d intended, and he heard a faint crack of breaking china.
    Sharp-eared Esme was the only sister to notice. With a quick warning shake of her head, she whisked away the broken fragments of saucer, and replaced them with another before anyone else had realized what had happened.
    “The moment Mother’s estate is settled,” Ambrym was saying, “I intend to leave the house and never return. As far as I’m concerned, without Mother there is no family, and I am not related to either of you.”
    “Ambrym!” Esme squeaked, horrified.
    “This is a shameful way to talk, with Mother dying just above us!” her elder sister cried.
    “She won’t die, not when she knows how happy that would make us. Spite will keep her alive,” Ambrym said. Her siblings turned disapproving frowns on her, but did not disagree.
    They came to an abrupt halt then, and there was about the group a satisfied air of fulfillment, as if they had just enacted a private drama for his benefit and were awaiting applause so they could link hands and take their bows. There, their collective attitude seemed to be saying, now you know all about us. It was a well-rehearsed scene, and he could tell that no one who entered the house would be allowed to escape without witnessing some variant of it.
    At that moment the doctor descended the stairs, and all three looked up expectantly. He solemnly shook his head at the sisters, and departed. It was an ambiguous gesture at best.
    “Come.” Linogre started up the stairs.
    In a somber mood, he followed.
    *   *   *
     
    She led him into a chamber so dimly lit he was not sure of its exact dimensions. An enormous bed dominated the room. Bed-curtains hung from brass hooks set into the ceiling, a tapestry of some bright land where satyrs and astronauts, nymphs and goats, frolicked. The edges were bordered with the constellations of Old Earth, wands and orchids, and other symbols of generative magic. Age had faded the colors, and the browned fabric was torn by its own weary weight.
    Within the bed, propped up on a billowing throne of pillows, lay a grotesquely fat woman. He was reminded inevitably of a termite queen, she was so vast and passively immobile. Her face was doughy white, her mouth a tiny gasp of pain. A ringed hand hovered over a board floating atop her swollen belly, on which was arranged a circle of solitaire cards: stars, cups, queens, and knaves in solemn procession. A silent television flickered at her