The rest of the day, the Jecc did just that. They pestered Ross and Eveleen constantly with questions, demanding to know if they were aware of the functions of various rail-skimmer parts.

The department, Ross discovered, was intended to repair salvaged parts of old rail-skimmers so that new ones could be a.s.sembled. The department was not comprised entirely of Jecc, but they were the majority, and they kept Ross and Eveleen away from the others.

Ross had to bite down hard on his temper at least twenty times that day. Each time some Jecc cruised by and pinched a part he was reaching for, or knocked into him from behind just as he was a.s.sembling a delicate piece, he was ready to haul off and smack the little beggars across the room.

But he looked over at Eveleen, who was getting the same treatment. Each time she calmly picked up her pieces-taking care that they stayed right on her, or under a knee-and continued as though nothing had interrupted her.

Parts salvaged from rail-skimmers deemed unusable were available to all, but for some reason the Jecc seemed to like to take parts already selected-by someone else. Ross's temper abated just slightly when he saw while walking across the floor to get more parts that they also did this to each other.

One Jecc snagged a connector, stashed it underneath the front flap of its coverall in a movement so quick it was almost a blur. Then the Jecc scuttled away noiselessly, just as the one who'd been robbed started groping around for the connector. That Jecc jerked its head this way and that in weird birdlike movements, whistling a high tweeting sound that Ross couldn't interpret.

At the day's end, Ross felt the grip of tension on his neck as he and Eveleen walked out of the building. Hard rain drummed on the ground and splashed in gouting falls at corners and overhangs. A rail-slammer whirred by, and Ross looked at it with regret; they had not worked enough, apparently, to earn credit for that kind of luxury. So far the futon, their lunches, and their housing took up their days' acc.u.mulated credit, according to the console on the wall of their cell.

Neither spoke until they were safely in their cell. Then Ross went to the wall console and touched the plate. Above it, the flat screen lit with several b.u.t.tons. Below that was a number, in Yilayil script: they had apparently moved into the black again, though just barely.

"Strange," Eveleen said, looking tiredly at the console as she swung her arms back and forth to work out kinks from her muscles. "We never agreed to a pay rate, or to rent for this place. How does anyone get ahead? Is everything at Virigu's discretion, or is there some big boss over Virigu who sets the prices on work and goods?"

"Maybe we'll find out," Ross said. "Me, I just wish we could kick back with a pot of fresh-brewed coffee, a newspaper-in English-and maybe a good action flick."

"While you're at it, let's have a Jacuzzi and a stereo," Eveleen added, laughing.

Tapping at the door caused them both to fall silent. It was the familiar pattern, and something about the quick sound made Ross think immediately of Gordon.

A moment later he saw he was right. "Saba?" Ross asked as soon as the door was closed.

Gordon shook his head, his blue eyes tired but alert. "Same. She's alive, has a room of her own, and her day is filled with deportment lessons. Nothing more yet-all we have are our codes." His hair was dotted with droplets, indicating he'd just come from outside.

"How's the delivery boy business?" Ross asked as Gordon hunkered down on the floor with his back to a wall.

Eveleen continued doing her kata warm-ups.

Ashe shrugged. "I'm not that high yet. Until I either come up with some prestigious favor I can do for someone, or some seniority, I'm still hauling trash to the recycler."

Ross jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the wall console. "Your pay rate as lousy as ours?"

"I have the same furniture," Gordon said, indicating the futon. "I calculate I owe another day's pay on it."

"How does anyone else without family or connections manage to eat?" Eveleen asked, her voice only slightly husky as her arms arced and snapped through a complicated exercise.

"Probably the same way we do: they scrounge, they get or make friends, they go into debt to someone a little higher," Gordon said. "The current society is not designed to easily accommodate newcomers."

"Conformity," Eveleen said, and finished up her kata with a "Whoosh! This humidity is tough to work in."

"Probably why the Yilayil built underground," Ashe commented. "Think of it-furred beings. Heavy fur like those creatures we saw up the timeline, anyway, would have evolved in cold weather, one would think." He got to his feet and moved to the console. "But you're right, Eveleen. This culture selects for conformity, and does its best to guarantee it. Yet the technical systems all over this city"-he tapped the little wall console with a finger-"are predicated on the fact that each individual is unique."

Ross grunted. "Hadn't thought about that, but of course you're right."

Ashe gave a nod. "Whether by finger, tentacle, tongue, or whatever means one wishes to be identified, apparently one of the few things these beings have in common with us is this one fact: we are all individuals, differing subtly from every other being, or this kind of measure would not work."

Ross looked up at the console, and nodded. It was true. He hadn't been asked his name, or age, or anything else; he was registered in some unknown computer somewhere just by his palm print. And wherever he went in the starport city, if he wished to buy something, or use a transport, or change his residence, he would have to press his hand on a similar silver plate.

"It's also a d.a.m.n good way to keep track of people," Ross pointed out, wondering if the system had some sinister use.

Eveleen nodded. "I was thinking about that today. Misha and Viktor are existing outside this mysterious registry-but that's because they are not here in the city. How long would they make it in this city without having to sign in? Are some beings trying to exist outside the system in a similar way?"

"And for what reason?" Gordon asked. "We can't be the only ones here with plans of our own."

"Now that's a grim thought," Ross said, just as tapping sounded at the door again, and he went to let in the Russian women.

"News about Saba?" Irina asked, her dark eyes narrowed, as soon as she entered.

"No change," Ashe replied.

Irina grunted a response in Russian, which Ross had learned meant, more or less, Is good enough for now Is good enough for now. Then she said in English, "She is alive. This bodes well."

"Anything new to report?" Gordon asked them.

"The pollen count is way up," Vera said. "This despite the rain."

Irina sat down, graceful and neat as always. "Nothing new for me to report."

Ross said, "You two pick up anything about some feisty little guys called Jecc?"

Vera and Irina exchanged grimaces.

"Uh oh," Eveleen said, grinning wryly. "Bad news on the horizon, right?"

Vera snorted. "All we know is that they just love to surround a person and rob you blind, unless you can get to a group bigger and tougher than they are."

"They seem to think it a game," Irina added as she pa.s.sed around some fresh tubers and another dish that looked like chopped carrots, but tasted more like peppered zucchini. "Luckily they tweet these weird little songs when they run about in packs, so you can hear them coming. The first couple times, when we didn't know what the sound was, we got pretty much everything taken. Everything small-luckily none of our important equipment, which we keep zipped up."

"But now we hear that noise and we run like rabbits," Vera put in. "We asked one of the Moova about them, and found out their name-and that everyone avoids them. They don't like anyone-yet they seem to be pretending to learn deportment. I take it you have also encountered the Jecc?"

"They run the department we got a.s.signed to today," Eveleen said. "And if we want to get us a transport vehicle, we're going to have to figure out a way around them."

Gordon said musingly, "Pretending to learn deportment... Interesting. Interesting," he repeated, tapping absently at the side of his dish. "You'd think something would happen to them if they are that antisocial. That behavior pattern doesn't fit the conformity paradigm, does it?"

"Not the way I see it," Ross said, setting aside his dish. He felt full-and the food didn't taste bad-but the craving was so strong for a good cup of coffee and something normal normal to eat. He ignored it impatiently, focusing on the problem. "You know what this smells like? Politics. Of some sort. And I am here to tell you I really, really hate that stink." to eat. He ignored it impatiently, focusing on the problem. "You know what this smells like? Politics. Of some sort. And I am here to tell you I really, really hate that stink."

"Politics would be a problem," Gordon conceded. "At least insofar as we might cross some powermonger or other all unawares." He turned to the Russian women.

"Yes," Vera said. "I know what comes next: more listening. We are doing what we can."

Gordon said, "I know. But the more we can find out, the quicker we can act. I'm limited in what I have access to-but I feel I have to stay close to the House of Knowledge, until I know for certain that Saba is not in danger."

"Right," Eveleen said. "Well, we'll do our bit. We'll work like doggies, and see if those Jecc will back down. We simply have to get a rail-skimmer."

"I suppose there is no opportunity to conceal the parts, build one, and conceal that?" Irina asked. She smiled slightly. "This is what Mikhail Petrovich would do."

Ross hid his annoyance at the mention of the guy's name-and the implication that he wasn't as innovative, if not as smart. "Everything is registered, locked down, and otherwise accounted for-" he began, and then he frowned. "No, that's not really an option. We might manage to build one, but since they follow buried rails, it would have to be registered with the central dispatcher, or whatever the equivalent is, to avoid collisions. At least, that's what we were told. And what we thought. But the Jecc and their stealing..."

"Could they be building their own transports? For whatever purpose?" Eveleen asked, her gaze considering.

"And ought we to discuss this with Virigu and let them take their chances?" Ross added. "I have to say, much as I hate squealing in a general sense, after today's fun and games it would give me a h.e.l.l of a lot of satisfaction."

"It's too easy," Gordon said. "Unless your Virigu is a total fool, surely this has been noticed before."

Ross sighed. "Yeah, as usual you're right. I guess what I need to do is watch these Jecc and see if they actually remove the parts they steal, or if they all get put back again. Which would be crazy."

Gordon got to his feet. "What's crazy to one might be tradition to another. You know that. One of our first lessons as time agents. Meantime, I'm dead tired, and want some rest before another day of trash hauling. It'll be a week tomorrow, so I'm planning to put out the call to Misha and Viktor." He paused at the door, and turned to Vera. "Have either of you heard from them?"

"No," Vera said, looking down at her feet.

"No." Irina's voice was flat.

Ross wondered if it was true, then quashed the thought. Enough problems faced them with possible conspiracies among the Nurayil; he wasn't even going to entertain such thoughts about his fellow humans unless forced into it.

"I'll report on their response-if any-tomorrow. Good night, all."

Gordon nodded at them, and left.

Irina said quietly, "We shall endeavor to discover more about these Jecc, if we can."

"And anything else," Vera added, getting up slowly and stretching. A huge yawn seized her, then she grinned. "A difficult business, this collecting of gossip. If only it were so arduous at home!"

Everyone laughed, and the women departed.

Ross's mind was full of conflicting thoughts-and from the look of Eveleen, who rubbed her thumbnail absently back and forth over her lower lip, she felt the same.

If only he could get out and- "Come on," he said. "Let's call it a day."

CHAPTER 16.

"FOR AN ARCHAEOLOGIST," Gordon Ashe said to himself as he finished loading the recycler-bound wagon, "being a trash man is a golden opportunity."

His tone was somewhat grim, and certainly ironic, but he did believe there was a great deal of truth in what he'd said just the same.

The grimness came of the fact that the recycle transport system had obviously been breaking down for many years, and it was apparently easier to get some unfortunate Nurayil to see to it than to bother with replacement parts or a new system.

The wagon worked, like the rail-skimmers, on the maglev principle: super-conductive magnets floating above buried rails. But it was obviously much older, slow, and it was up to Gordon to pick out the little plants that insisted on taking root all along the track. His unknown predecessor had not bothered.

The loader system had long since ceased to function, leaving the trash to be loaded by hand.

This way, at least, Gordon got a good look at the House of Knowledge's castoffs-everything they did not run through the plumbing recycler. Even if he had had an automated loader, he still would have sorted the trash, partly to examine it, and partly in case there was some way that Saba could get a message to him.

Paper and pen seemed to be out. But he knew she had at least one data disk in her laptop; if her machine had not been confiscated, perhaps she would slip a disk into the waste, which he could then read in his own machine.

Except how to get it back to her? Well, no need to think that out. She probably had already dismissed the idea; at least no disk had appeared. He hoped because there was no need yet for such a drastic move.

As he grunted a bulky, heavy lump of metal into the wagon, he distracted himself momentarily with speculating what it might have been used for. Nothing came to mind. It looked like an old internal combustion engine block crushed by a four-dimensional waffle iron.

And it weighed a ton.

Clang! Klunk! He paused, breathing heavily, thinking over what really concerned him: the code messages he'd received the night before.

They were all repeats: "searching."

"deportment lessons."

"well-being."

"no danger."

Frustrating. He wanted a real status report-he also wanted to find out what she was learning, and to learn it as well.

He sighed, and stared at the jumble of material on the loading platform. What were these things, and what had they been used for? Among the detritus were what looked like a steel umbrella, half inside-out; an exploded plastic xylophone; and a half-dozen foamed alloy shoe trees made for someone twenty-five feet tall with feet that had toes at both ends. Alien trash.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," he muttered. If Arthur C. Clarke had had this job, Gordon thought, he might well have added that such a technology's discards are indistinguishable from art. Well, bad art, anyway. Most of the discards looked like the kind of incomprehensible sculptures that often showed up in public places back home on Earth.

He wondered what the other Nurayil thought of it, or how much awareness they had of the technology that sustained this odd civilization. One thing seemed sure: it was slowly winding down, for down the timeline, the civilization definitely had crumbled.

How long, he wondered, could the ancient Inca, for instance, have kept a twentieth-century city running? Would they have mastered the technology, destroyed themselves with it, or merely ridden it down into ruin as the machines decayed for lack of knowledge? Was that what had happened here?

He sighed as the last of the stuff slid into the wagon.

Already he was wet from the misting rain that never seemed to stop, but at least it kept him somewhat cool. Shaking the rain from his eyes, he slid onto the control seat and activated the wagon.

It shuddered, whining on an excruciating note, then slid forward at a snail's pace. Once he was well out of sight of any of the guardians, he slid up his sleeve and glanced at his watch. Good. He'd calculated well; he'd arrive at the recycle building in plenty of time, then.

The wagon lumbered shudderingly along its route. Occasionally it lurched and almost stopped. Gordon jumped out each time and used a flat tool he'd found to wedge up growing plants whose roots were already fouling the rails. The wagon moved so slowly that he'd only have to run a few steps to catch up.

Back to communication-and the next problem. From Saba there was not enough, but from the Russians there was too much.

He thought over what he'd say to the two Russian men, and how he'd say it. He'd decided against taking the women to task. He wouldn't need to, if Misha was cooperative.

And he did believe the women when they'd said they hadn't communicated with Misha or Viktor. For Vera, though, it wasn't for lack of trying, for she'd been pulsing Misha just about every night. Was she trying to get him to talk real-time? Apparently he hadn't responded-but he'd been pulsing Irina in turn. And she'd been obeying the command to keep silence.

Gordon did not want to have to say anything to Vera. The mission was too important. He did not want to risk bad blood with any of the Russians. Perhaps she didn't intend to talk to Misha, only to get that return pulse-just as Gordon himself did each evening with Saba-but still, he needed to make sure that the orders were kept, at least until they knew they were safe. And it was always easier to remonstrate with men.

He grimaced at the thought, and shook his head.

Slowly the wagon trundled through a tunnel of green growth. He'd be at the recycling building very soon.