What is that? she’d asked, and, A market, I’d told her. And an ocean is a large body of water, and hearts pump blood. The subtleties are lost.

What the Night Fair had been before I knew it, I couldn’t say. Now it was ten blocks of the City, in various states of repair. There were places where buildings had been knocked down or burnt away, and in those cavities and in the streets were the market and carnival places, the booths, the games of skill and chance, the food and drink vendors, the rides, the freak shows. For less easily granted wishes, one had to look to the buildings. There was no directory, no skyway map, no Guide to Retailers. If one wanted something in the buildings, one had to want it enough to go looking. I was as confident of the Night Fair as any of its patrons, but I went carefully when I left the streets.

I was so hungry I felt transparent, so thirsty that my own saliva rasped in my throat. But that was a state I could change, with a little currency. I could trudge to the other side of the Fair — but that was a long trudge. Besides, I wanted to feel the Deal in action. I had enough concentration left to do a little magic, if I could spot someone who’d shell out for it.

The Fair was half-asleep, so early in the evening; some of the stands were empty, and the ones that weren’t were gaudy islands without their proper context. The smell of cooking-oil lamps seemed strong without the stronger smells of food and fuel and humanity to bury it. But in a courtyard I found the kind of thing I was looking for, or in this case, listening for. A fat Oriental kid was running a duckshoot, and trying to catch custom with the City-run all-dance broadcast channel playing through an old Carvin PA speaker. Every bass note had the crunchy sound of a ripped speaker cone.

He looked hopeful when I approached, less so when I pointed to the speaker and said, “Sounds bad.”

His mouth turned down at the corners. “Sounds okay to me.”

“Ah. I guess you won’t want it fixed if there’s nothing wrong with it.” I half turned away.

“Why do you say it sounds bad?” he asked quickly, and I knew it was going to be all right. The passage of arms was begun.

“Well, last time I heard that jam, the guy playing the giant piece of cellophane wasn’t with them.”

“You mean that little noise?” He shrugged, and rather well, too. “It ain’t much. Nobody but an audiofreak’d notice.”

“Must be an audiofreak convention in town. People are crossing to the other side of the street.”

He scowled. No patience. With more patience, he could have been good at this. “What would it take to fix a little thing like that?”

“The right person, and twenty hard bucks.” The kid spit to his left. A ward against liars. “Hell, I could get another whole speaker for twenty.”