"There's an extra room upstairs you can sleep in, if you'd like," said Larry.

Rakkel looked up with a start. The whole bookstore, xe realized uncomfortably, had grown dark around xir, save for the aquarium lights and the occasional phosphorescent fish.

"Oh no," xe said, "is the bookstore closed?"

"It's been closed for a couple of hours," said Larry, cheerfully. "It's okay, you're welcome to stay here. I didn't want to disturb you. You seemed quite absorbed."

"It's confusing," xe said, waving the book. "And the writing is very dry. I'm having trouble making sense of it."

"Not what you hoped for?"

"The fact that it exists at all," xe said, "is more than I hoped for or expected. I'll buy it."

"Unfortunately, you'll have to buy it in the morning. I already shut down my terminal."

"Oh. Right."

"Like I said, you're welcome to spend the night in the room upstairs. It's unfinished, but there's a mattress, and I can bring some extra sheets up. I'm planning to rent it out. But nobody's renting it yet, so you're free to use it."

Rakkel shook xir head. "You know what? I'll do you one better: I'll rent it myself."

"Oh? Really? You haven't even seen it."

"The thing is, I need a place. I was on my way to check out the local hotels when I noticed your bookstore. But I think I'll be staying in this city for a while, so I should really have something more long-term, I think. And you seem like a good person. I like your bookshop," xe said. "It doesn't have to be a fancy room, anyway. I just need somewhere to sleep and take meals."

"Okay..." Larry looked pensive. "I generally prefer to do a background check before letting people rent it, though," she said. "Do you have any references?"

"Not really, I've only been in this city for a couple of- oh, you know what? I do. Doople would vouch for me."

"Who's Doople?"

"He runs a late-night meat bun stand. It's a ways south of here, just outside the market area."

"Does he know you well?"

Rakkel hesitated. "Nobody in this city knows me well yet," xe said, "but he knows me as well as anyone around here does. I spent my first night here in his apartment. He gave up his bunk so I'd have somewhere to sleep."

"Really? Hmm. Okay, tell you what," she said, "you can have the room tonight for free, like I said, and I'll check with this 'Doople' fellow in the morning. But I also need to know that you can afford it."

"Oh, yeah. I should probably ask how much it is," said Rakkel.

"I was surprised you didn't," said Larry. "You don't seem like the sort of person who can just rent rooms without worrying about the cost, if you'll forgive my saying so."

Rakkel shrugged. "Probably not," xe said. "To be honest, we don't really do the whole 'money' thing where I'm from. I'm still getting used to how it works."

"Really? You don't use money? What do you do instead?"

"We don't really do anything instead, I guess." Xe shrugged.

"Huh. Well, I was planning on charging 380 credits a month," said Larry.

"Okay," said Rakkel.

"You can afford that?"

"Yeah, no problem."

"For more than a month?"

"For several months. I never said that I didn't have any money, just that I'm not used to using it."

"I see," she said, scanning Rakkel's bones with xir vision.

"Someone's been giving me money," xe explained. "She's sort of my business partner, I guess."

"I see," said Larry again. "What business?"

Rakkel hesitated, not totally sure what the answer was xirself. "As of tomorrow," xe said, "we'll be selling market goods together."

Larry fiddled with the belt of her fish kimono. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but hesitated.

"You think I'm being taken advantage of," said Rakkel.

"That's one of the things I'm thinking," she said.

"The situation's a little complicated," said Rakkel, "but she's already put money in my account. So even if the business relationship doesn't work out, I'm still good for rent."

"Can I talk to her tomorrow?" asked Larry.

"I guess so," said Rakkel. "I'll introduce you to her and Doople both-" xe yawned as xe spoke. Xe had a habit of drawing back xir lips when yawning to show off xir fangies. Though the gesture was perhaps lost on Larry.

"We'll talk about it in the morning," said Larry, hurriedly. "You need sleep. Here, I'll show you where it is." She led Rakkel through the shelves to a door in the back.

Rakkel barely had time to take in xir surroundings before xe collapsed on the mattress. Xe woke up briefly a few minutes later so that Larry could put sheets on it.

Welton's holo demonstration went well, despite his suspicion that Fleric would knife him at any moment. Fleric watched it through an AR device that he held to his face like a pair of thin binoculars, while Welton monitored it through his own AR spectacles. He showed off the warp tunnel, the snake-fireworks, a segment of the monster maze, the selection of snippets he called his "potpourri", and to end it all, his trademark flying pigs.

In truth, it didn't take him very long to forget his worries about Fleric's potential status as a mass murderer. The man hadn't done anything actually threatening, after all. And on the other hand, Welton had wanted an opportunity like this for years. He'd done commission work before, but it was all just basic floating text and scrolling menus, with the occasional simple embellishment. He'd never gotten the chance to show off his real stuff. Not until now. This was the stuff he'd built in private, kept secret from his parents and his nosy siblings, using every last clever trick he could think of to bedazzle the viewer and push the art of holo-display to its very limits.

And Fleric appreciated it! He gasped, he cheered, he leaned back and forth when the warp tunnel twisted and turned, recoiled when the monsters jumped out of the maze. And then the pigs flew off into the sunset, and he put down his AR device and said, "brilliant! Splendid! The best I've ever seen!"

The best he'd ever seen! Welton felt like he might soar off into the sunset himself.

"I'm glad you like it," he said, as humbly as he could manage under the circumstances.

"You know, we put on holo-shows here sometimes," said Fleric. "That is to say, I do. Since we have so many holo projectors to help manage river traffic. I've downloaded everything available off the city's network, but there's nothing like what you just showed me."

"I saw the cubes around the lighthouse beams," said Welton.

"Yes, I keep a little something running at all times. To attract interest."

"What I thought," said Welton, "was that maybe you'd be interested in hiring me. Or if it's more convenient, I could work on commission. I'll produce holo-shows for the lighthouse, you pay me, everybody wins."

"Tempting," said Fleric. "Very tempting."

That wasn't a yes, Welton noticed.

"The problem," he said, "is that I don't have much of a budget these days."

"Oh? I thought you used to have lots of people working here."

"A few. But after they were all murdered, it became evident that they were superfluous. One man can run this thing all by himself."

"But the profits from the holo-shows-"

"They don't make very much profit," said Fleric. "The thing is, it's hard to charge people for watching something they can see for free anywhere along this part of the river."

"Ah," said Welton. "Yes."

"Still... how much would it cost for a simple one? Not a full-fledged show, just a simple looping animation for the beams. To replace what's currently running."

"One hundred and seventy credits?" hazarded Welton. It was a higher rate than he'd set for the few projects he'd taken on in the past. But he was more experienced now, he figured. And anyway, he needed it to be enough to live on for at least a little while.

"I probably couldn't afford more than a hundred and twenty five," said Fleric, with a tone of slightly theatrical sadness.

Of course, Welton reflected, if they were going to haggle over it, he should've started higher.

"I appreciate your budget is limited," he said. "But I'm a professional. I need to charge what my efforts are worth. I couldn't justify going lower than one hundred and fifty."

"That's still out of my range. It's the city, really. Town hall sets my budget. I could maybe make some cuts and free up a hundred and thirty, but no more than that."

"Deal," said Welton. Next time, he thought to himself, I'll go higher.

"Excellent. I'll write up a contract. I'm good at writing contracts," said Fleric. "Come back tomorrow and we can sign it. One hundred thirty credits for a holo-show to decorate the lighthouse beams. How long do you think it will take you, incidentally?"

"I can have it done in a week," he said. He probably could, couldn't he? If he focused. It normally took longer than that to make the sort of thing he had in mind, but he normally wasn't being paid for it. He figured that would help him avoid procrastination. Certainly, he'd learned his lesson from the last time. He wouldn't make those same mistakes again.

He turned and went for the door, then remembered something.

"I'll need some payment up front," he said.

"Oh? I'll have that ready for you tomorrow as well, then. How much?"

"Er... I was hoping I could walk out of here with the credits, actually."

"That's not likely to happen, I'm afraid. There's paperwork."

"Then how about I borrow some money from you? Look, the thing is, I'm new around here, and my situation's kind of precarious. My, er, funds are tied up at the moment. And I don't have a place to stay."

"I'm not a moneylender," said Fleric. "I'm a lighthouse keeper."

"But the city's financial software can automatically-"

"No, I'm sorry, it's just not something I'm willing to do," he said. "There are moneylenders in the marketplace, of course."

Welton's parents had a lot to say about usury, none of it positive. They reserved most of their scorn for the borrowers, too, who obviously deserved to be taken advantage of by cleverer sorts. Still, that was their perspective. They had plenty of money. He doubted they'd once in their lives faced the prospect of sleeping out in the street.

Besides, he'd already decided to make it a general policy of his to do the opposite of whatever they expected of him. He'd vowed it to himself when he left home.

"Fine," he said. "That's fine. I'll go to them, then."

Anyway, he had work now. He'd make the money back right away. He only needed to borrow enough to get a roof over his head for tonight.

As he made his way into the marketplace, the sky was a collage of sunset red, and orange clouds.

He stopped to buy a bowl of noodle soup at a table just outside one of the tube entrances. It was served in one of those cheap, biodegradable mycelium bowls, he noticed. The kind that didn't last more than a day outside of its packaging. He couldn't tell if the mushroomy taste came from the bowl, or if the soup was supposed to be that way. It didn't taste bad, regardless.

On his way here from the lighthouse, he'd begun to have second thoughts about his plan to take out a loan on the spur of the moment from some random, shady moneylender. He'd begun to suspect it resembled his plan from the previous night to get stinking drunk, in that his best reason for doing it - not his only reason, but his favorite one, the one he found most compelling - was that his parents had told him not to.

It'd be different if he had other reasons for doing it, and the fact that his parents had told him not to was just a delicious bonus. But he had to admit to himself that if it came to it, spending the night in a park somewhere, sleeping on the grass, would be very tolerable on a warm night like tonight. Whereas he'd heard horror stories about what loan sharks did to people who couldn't pay off their debts.

But there was no way that'd actually happen to him. Those stories were exaggerated, right? The common case had to be that people took out a loan, used the money sparingly for something they needed, then paid it back with the required interest as soon as they could, and that was the end of it. Right?

In any case, this was all part of experiencing the parts of life he'd so far been sheltered from. These sorts of exciting complications were what he wanted, right? Problems to solve, a chance to prove himself, all of that.

The problem, he supposed, with getting drunk the way he had, was that he'd done too much all at once. If he'd only gotten a little drunk, maybe he could have worked his way up. So maybe he should learn from his mistakes. Take out a small loan and work his way up, sort of thing.

A thought struck him: What if he borrowed money from someone he actually knew? Just because Fleric wouldn't do it didn't mean nobody else would.

The only friends he had in the city, he realized, were Doople and Rakkel. The former wasn't having anything to do with him anymore, and the latter probably didn't have enough money of her own (he paused for a moment on "her," not knowing why his own thoughts felt a bit off to him, then moved on) to lend him any.

No, wait, that wasn't quite true. He had Salmidon, too.

Was Salmidon really his friend?

Okay, no, not really, but they were acquaintances at least.

Would Salmidon lend him money?

Probably not.

He slurped up another snoutful of noodles and chewed them thoughtfully.

Would it hurt to ask Salmidon to lend him money? Also probably not. And if Salmidon refused, he could still go find one of the many, many moneylenders around the marketplace.

In fact, maybe Salmidon even knew of a reputable one. Maybe Salmidon could point him in the direction of the trustworthy moneylenders, with the low interest rates. That sounded reasonable.

Feeling better about his plan, he gulped the last of the broth from the bowl, complimented the cook (which was something else his parents would never do,) and threw the bowl in the gutter.