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subsistence distributed to them by the companies. Yet without apparent effort, d Layo shortly became so popular with the young Chesters that he influenced their private status structure.
    Officially, work-points determined a company’s subsistence portion every five-year, and game-points converted into individual shares of spending cash for the Juniors. But among themselves young men vied for standing on the basis of scars. This system had begun as a defiant glorification of the marks of corporal punishment. By the time the Board had substituted more subtle forms of discipline, the Holdfast Juniors had established an underground hierarchy based not only on verbal contests but on scars gotten in fights. It was rare for a young man not to be marked up, even if he had to inflict wounds on himself.
    To Kelmz’ surprise, the DarkDreamer had very little to show under his shirt other than the pallid discolorations of an acid-bleached
rank-tattoo on his shoulder and a few faded wound-weals that he did nothing to enlarge or freshen up. Smooth skin should have worked against d Layo; but something in his manner and his impressive showing in the ferrymen’s games converted it into an asset. Within a few days of leaving Lammintown, it became the fashion on the ferry to modestly cover one’s scars with a shirt. The theory was that a man who stood ready to prove his courage in action had no need to show off evidence of past bravery.
    Similarly, because d Layo wore no jewelry but his manna-bracelet, the younger ferrymen soon put away their own highly prized ceramic earrings, pendants, anklets and studded belts. D Layo mockingly ascribed these changes to Kelmz’ influence, not his own.
    By professional habit the captain sported no ornaments. He continued to wear his patched and threadbare suit of blanks, saving his uniform. It was not a Rover’s way to display his body like a boastful boy. Kelmz was hoping the anonymity of blanks would help him spend the voyage in quiet obscurity.
    However, on the first morning out he woke from a fretful doze to find a ribby, freckle-skinned lad, ostentatiously scarred on chest and arms, waiting silently by his hammock. This Junior politely requested that Captain Kelmz come join a group at the story-box. Once Kelmz accepted out of courtesy, he found himself trapped into a pattern that repeated itself daily, to his intense embarrassment.
    The young men would begin complimenting him. By reputation, it seemed, Kelmz was strong, skillful, efficient, loyal, brave, honest, and on and on until he couldn’t tell whether they were describing some mythical paragon of the manly virtues or trying to make a fool of him. He would sit among them with a flush in his seamed cheeks and his big hands clenched, until he could bear no more of their bright-faced praise. When he finally started to rise and leave them, someone would say, ‘Will the Captain tell about the time two Rovers went rogue on him on the river-road near Oldtown?’ Or about the skirmish with Birj Company at the City breweries, or a fight in a Lammintown Street of Honor, or even the time he had carried his friend Danzer, fatally injured, five miles on his own back?
    These lads knew Kelmz’ life better than he did himself, and they pressed him unabashedly about events that he would have preferred
to forget. By convention, a man could not refuse to tell a story that he knew or to come back next time and finish one that had been interrupted. Kelmz’ stories were always interrupted.
    D Layo claimed that some of the regular Chester story-boxers were angry because Kelmz was stealing their audience. Kelmz said he didn’t understand how the young men knew so much about him.
    The DarkDreamer laughed at that. ‘Kelmz, you are an innocent. Haven’t you ever looked past your Rover-brutes at anything? Man, you’re a walking legend, and for once there are no Seniors around to check the lads’ demonstration of their feelings. How would you expect youngsters to