“Many a married man has had his jilly,” Andy observed. To Tian he sounded almost smug.

“Not those who love their wives.” Tian shouldered the harness (he’d made it himself, there being a marked shortage of tack for human beings in most livery barns) and turned toward the home place. “And not farmers, in any case. Show me a farmer who can afford a jilly and I’ll kiss your shiny ass. Garn, Tia. Lift em up and put em down.”

“Home place?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“Lunch at home place?” She looked at him in a muddled, hopeful way. “Taters?” A pause. “Gravy?”

“Shore,” Tian said. “Why the hell not?”

Tia let out a whoop and began running toward the house. There was something almost awe-inspiring about her when she ran. As their father had once observed, not long before the fall that carried him off, “Bright or dim, that’s a lot of meat in motion.”

Tian walked slowly after her, head down, watching for the holes which his sister seemed to avoid without even looking, as if some deep part of her had mapped the location of each one. That strange new feeling kept growing and growing. He knew about anger—any farmer who’d ever lost cows to the milk-sick or watched a summer hailstorm beat his corn flat knew plenty about that—but this was deeper. This was rage, and it was a new thing. He walked slowly, head down, fists clenched. He wasn’t aware of Andy following along behind him until the robot said, “There’s other news, sai. Northwest of town, along the Path of the Beam, strangers from Out-World—”

“Bugger the Beam, bugger the strangers, and bugger your good self,” Tian said. “Let me be, Andy.”

Andy stood where he was for a moment, surrounded by the rocks and weeds and useless knobs of Son of a Bitch, that thankless tract of Jaffords land. Relays inside him clicked. His eyes flashed. And he decided to go and talk to the Old Fella. The Old Fella never told him to bugger his good self. The Old Fella was always willing to hear his horoscope.

And he was always interested in strangers.

Andy started toward town and Our Lady of Serenity.

Two