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sure.
    Could some remnant of that desire still be alive inside of me? Or did I feel guilty for having left her? Or did I just now feel sorry for her, for whatever ragged shell she had become of the terrorist and entertainer I had known?
    "These?" Pheff returned from the storeroom.
    "Yes." For an instant I almost told Pheff to put the shears away
    and considered the idea of not helping her, of not trying to find the impossible and illegal Xi and of doing nothing. I didn't need some foolish and dangerous journey. I didn't need any more associations with the outlaws of the world.
    The problem was, as I started to form some sentence like, I'm sorry, Pheff… I'm not going after all, let's put this all away… or a simple and mysterious Never mind , I hesitated. Why not spend a day searching for Xi? If I found some, I would make her a death coat; if not, it would only be twenty-four hours of my life. "Get the carbonate case for those shears," I told my assistant.
    "I brought the leather one."
    "Carbonate," I insisted. The shears could, with the gritty cycling supply of water, easily cut through a thousand yarns of fabric or steel plate. While the leather one was fine around the office, I was going to have them in my jacket and didn't want to accidentally cut off an arm. As he headed to the storeroom, I called after him. "Bring a Mini-Air-Juki and a selection of yarn pulls!"
    Pheff stopped, turned, and looked at me quizzically. "Yarn pulls? What do you need those for?"
    "They often come in handy. And I might as well take a titanium crochet hook, a pair of snips, and a few needles."
    He returned with the carbonate case, a silvery hook, a tiny pair of scissors, a card of sewing needles, and a dozen yarn pulls in a jar. Tapping my mouth with my right index, I considered what I had so far and what else I might need. "You know what?" I asked, as I imagined myself in some polluted and reeking corner of the slubs. "Add a swatch of 4M biofilter strata inside the right sleeve of my jacket."
    Pheff raised an eyebrow. "Where exactly are you going?"
    Ignoring his question, I asked, "Do any of our fabric suppliers have a connection to the blackmarket?"
    Pheff laughed. "I hope not!" He watched me sort through the things on the table. "Really, Tailor, where are you going?"
    "It's an excursion," I told him again. "Do me another favor. My first job in Seattlehama was with a man named Withor. He was a yarn jobber who got into thread thievery and some other nefarious things. There was a jobber named Pilla who ran a boutique. See if you can find either one of them."
    Pheff took a screen from his pocket. He asked me for a spelling and a company name. "No," he said as he thumbed the thing. "No listings in Seattlehama for either. None here in Ros Begas."
    "Try any of the cities."
    After a beat he shook his head. "Neg. There's something about Withor getting into trouble for importing illegal yarn, but it's from a couple of years back. I don't see anything about the woman."
    "What about a listing for the slubs?"
    Pheff glared at me. He was right: listings there were as porous as cutwork lace. I wasn't surprised I couldn't locate either of them. I assumed he-and maybe hoped he-was dead. As for her, I felt guilty for having left the way I did, but never had any desire to see her.
    I picked up the Mini-Air-Juki, a handheld sewing machine about the size of a thick MasterCut card. Picking up a swatch of muslin, I gave it a quick test. The Mini-Air-Juki's stitch looked tight from the top, but when I turned it over, I saw that it had left large clumps of the sewing thread below. It badly needed adjustment, but before I did that, I opened the container of yarn pulls.
    I hadn't used them in decades. They were small flesh-colored metal things the shape of fingernail clippings with a tiny cutter and jaw in the center. With a little glue, they fit under the nail and turned a finger into a yarn collection tool.
    I found several sharp ones and added them to my gear.
    "I