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his meeting had been with Timothy Closs, a Rim Company VP who reported directly to Jefferson Greene, the titular head of the Greene’s World Charter Trade Corporation.
    And Charter Trade had contacted André because it was looking for a speedy resolution.
    André wasn’t a nice man, and he didn’t do a nice job. But he also understood that it wasn’t that different from jobs that had been necessary, spurned, and not very nice since the first web-footed amphibian crawled from the primal ooze and set up shop to sell dirt to other amphibians from farther downriver. It was a living, and he didn’t play politics, and he didn’t execute grudges. He stuck to what passed for the ethical rules of his profession, and Charter Trade left him alone except for when it needed him.
    And on Colonial Charter steadings like Greene’s World, the Rimmers were the law—and had been for the last 250 years, since A.G. 75 or so, though Greene’s World itself was not that old. And the only court of appeals was the Earth-centered, teeming worlds of the Core. Which relied on trade from the ever-expanding halo of the Rim to keep it fed and housed and enjoying an increasing standard of living. A lot of people came to the Rim because they couldn’t live in the Core anymore, for one reason or another.
    Frontiers had always been a sort of social pressure valve.
    Really, in the end, André just saved Charter Trade the money it would have spent documenting a kangaroo trial. And as for the family of the accused, he saved them some embarrassment.
    The sort of people he needed to talk to tonight didn’t do business over connex either. They also weren’t the sort to hang out in pool halls, Italian restaurants, or drinking establishments, adding a little stereotypical color to the place. But Nouel Huc did have an affection for a particular raucous dinner theater on Seagrove—West Seagrove, a much more upscale neighborhood than André’s. Not that that would be a problem, since André was dressed for the office.
    He strolled past tall, white-faced, balconied cruisers that smiled around their storm shutters. The air was cooling as the red sun sank, the breeze lifting the day’s last sweat from his neck. The barges here were more solidly lashed, partially because people took more trouble with it and partially because Bayside was the windward edge of Novo Haven, and caught the storms blowing in off the gulf, most of which were not nearly bad enough to scatter the city for. But they could pitch and rub the barges, and the worst damage didn’t come from the wind, under those circumstances, but from the hulls crushing the sidewalks. Bumpers and braces could only do so much.
    The awnings were rolled in for afternoon, letting the last light of day reach the blue and green and goldenrod doors, filter in the parlor windows. If André hadn’t known where he was going, he could have picked out the Zheleznyj Tigr from the residences on either side. It was on the 8100 barge, and the velvet ropes leading to the door set it apart, as did the attendant standing by. She was shapely and very pale, her white-blond hair clubbed at the nape of her neck, and she wore a red velvet tailcoat and a tall black hat. She smiled at André as she opened the door, plated heels clicking cheerfully. He answered her crisp bow with a playful one of his own, just to see her pale skin blush.
    She must spend a fortune on sunblock.
    Inside, candles and wall sconces flickered, dusting dark wood and more red velvet with erratic light. Somebody was playing a neono, not loudly enough to be heard in the street. Not yet. André cocked his head at the music and glanced slowly around. Empty booths, a few occupied, the glossy tabletops mostly innocent yet of glasses.
    Nouel Huc sat alone. That was by no means uncommon, but neither was it de rigueur. He was a broad Asian-looking man whose frown lines made him seem brooding, and a little cruel, though he was neither of those things. Women, André