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you cut too far down, you hit the blood supply-and maybe the nerve. The quill would bleed most certainly. Might never grow back properly. And it’d hurt like hell, I’m sure-like gouging the base of your thumbnail.”
    She sat forward suddenly. “Marianne, you’re shaking. What is it?”
    Marianne took a deep breath but couldn’t stop shaking. “What would happen if somebody did that to all of Ta”-she found she couldn’t get the name out-”all of a Rejoicer’s quills?”
    “He’d bleed to death, Marianne.” Esperanza took her hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “Now, I’m going to get you a good stiff drink and you are going to tell me all about it.”
    Fighting nausea, Marianne nodded. “Yes,” she said with enormous effort. “Yes.”

    ###
“Who the hell told the Pincushions about ‘human rights’?” Clarence roared. Furious, he glowered down at Marianne and waited for her response.
    Esperanza drew herself up to her full height and stepped between the two of them. “Martin Luther King told the Rejoicers about human rights. You were there when he did it. Though you seem to have forgotten your dream, obviously the Rejoicers haven’t forgotten theirs.”
    “There’s a goddamned revolution going on out there!” Clarence waved a hand vaguely in the direction of center of town.
    “That is certainly what it looks like,” Juliet said mildly. “So why are we here instead of out there observing?”
    “You’re here because I’m responsible for your safety.”
    “Bull,” said Matsimoto. “Halemtat isn’t interested in clipping us.”
    “Besides,” said Esperanza. “The supply ship will be landing in about five minutes. Somebody’s got to go pick up the supplies-and Nick. Otherwise, he’s going to step right into the thick of it.
    The last mail went out two months ago. Nick’s had no warning that the situation has”-she frowned slightly, then brightened as she found the proper phrase-”changed radically.”
    Clarence glared again at Marianne. “As a member of the embassy staff, you are assigned the job.
    You will pick up the supplies and Nick.”
    Marianne, who’d been about to volunteer to do just that, suppressed the urge to say, “Thank you!” and said instead, “Yes, sir.”
    Once out of Clarence’s sight, Marianne let herself breath a sigh of relief. The supply transport was built like a tank. While Marianne wasn’t any more afraid of Halemtat’s wrath than the ethnologists, she was well aware that innocent Dirt bystanders might easily find themselves stuck-all too literally-in a mob of Rejoicers. When the Rejoicers fought, as she understood it, they used teeth and quills. She had no desire to get too close to a lashing tail-full. An unclipped quill was needle-sharp.
    Belatedly, she caught the significance of the clipping Halemtat had instituted as punishment.
    Slapping a snout with a tail full of glass beads was not nearly as effective as slapping a snout with a morning-star made of spines.
    She radioed the supply ship to tell them they’d all have to wait for transport before they came out. Captain’s gonna love that, I’m sure, she thought, until she got a response from Captain Page 15

    Tertain. By reputation he’d never set foot on a world other than Dirt and certainly didn’t intend to do so now. So she simply told Nick to stay put until she came for him.
    Nick’s cheery voice over the radio said only, “It’s going to be a very special Christmas this year.”
    “Nick,” she said, “you don’t know the half of it.”
    She took a slight detour along the way, passing the narrow street that led to Tatep’s house. She didn’t dare to stop, but she could see from the awning that he wasn’t home. In fact, nobody seemed to be home...even the bazaar was deserted.
    The supply truck rolled on, and Marianne took a second slight detour. What Esperanza had dubbed “the Grande Allez” led directly to Halemtat’s imperial residence. The courtyard was filled