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about the stripes? Do they change too?”
    “No,” I replied. “They, like the mark on my face that you referred to earlier, are essential elements of the Pattern of the House of Crsthionn.”
    “You mean they're some kind of tattoo?”
    “Yes,” I lied. After all, how does one explain the hereditary Pattern to a man who finds all colors and patterns inferior to his own?
    “How old were you when you got your Pattern?” he asked with a show of curiosity.
    “Very young,” I answered truthfully.
    “They gave it to you after you joined the House of Crsthionn?”
    “No, Mr. Abercrombie,” I said, trying to keep my answer simple and relatively truthful. “I became a member of the House of Crsthionn after I had my Pattern.”
    “Kind of like an initiation ceremony?” he asked.
    “Not really,” I said.
    He decided to attack a parallel subject. “What about your wife? Does she have a Pattern, too?”
    “Yes.”
    “What does her Pattern look like?”
    “Very much like mine, I suppose,” I responded. “I have never seen her.”
    He blinked. “You've never seen your own wife?”
    “No, Mr. Abercrombie.”
    “Will you ever see her?”
    “Of course,” I said. “How else would we propagate?”
    “Beats the hell out of me,” he said. “Who knows how you aliens propagate?”
    “I could explain it to you,” I offered.
    “Spare me the details,” he said, distorting his facial features into a grimace.
    “If you wish,” I replied. “I meant no offense. To a Bjornn, the act of propagation is a natural function, just like ingestion and excretion.”
    “That's enough!” he snapped. “I didn't bring you here to tell me about your toilet habits.”
    “Yes, Mr. Abercrombie.”
    “It's disgusting and perverted.”
    “I am sorry that you should think so,” I said. “Doubtless I have chosen the wrong mode of expression.”
    He stared at me for a long moment.
    “You haven't got a hell of a lot of spunk, have you?”
    “I do not understand you, Mr. Abercrombie.”
    “I wouldn't let anyone talk to me the way I've been talking to you. I'd spit in his eye and leave.”
    “You have offered to pay the Claiborne Galleries for my services,” I explained. “I would bring shame to my House if I did not honor my commitment.”
    “But you'd like to take a poke at me, wouldn't you?” he continued.
    “No, Mr. Abercrombie. I do not believe I would enjoy it at all.”
    “Jesus!” he muttered contemptuously. “At least the Canphorites went down fighting. What's the matter with you Bjornns?”
    “Perhaps the answer is that, unlike Man and the inhabitants of Canphor VI and VII, the Bjornn do not descend from carnivores, and therefore lack your aggressive traits.”
    He stared at me for a moment, then shrugged.
    “All right,” he said. “Let's get down to business.”
    “Then my answers have satisfied you?”
    “Not especially. But they've convinced me that you haven't got the guts to rob me.” He got to his feet. “Follow me.”
    “At what distance?” I asked, recalling his stricture about not approaching him.
    “Just shut up and do it,” he growled, walking to a door. He opened it just as I reached him, and I followed him into a large, well-lit gallery, perhaps seventy feet long and twenty wide. Some fifty paintings and holograms hung on the dark wood walls, each by an acknowledged master.
    “Exquisite!” I exclaimed, examining a Ramotti landscape from her Late Purple Period. “Such elegant brushwork!”
    “Are you familiar with all the paintings?” he asked.
    “No,” I admitted. “A number of them are unfamiliar to me.”
    “But you know the artists?”
    I looked again. “Yes.”
    “Three of them are phony. Tell me which ones.”
    “How much time have I?” I asked.
    “As long as you want.” He paused. “You're glowing again.”
    “I enjoy a challenge,” I said— and the intensity of my color vanished an instant later as I realized what a self-centered statement I had uttered.
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