Bidgrass stood up too, scowling darkly red.
"Not so fast, young fellow. I have copies of your early notes in which you call the piskies the critical limit factor in stomper extinction. Almost three hundred people were killed in that stomper attack, and you could easily have been one of them. If you had, I would naturally have reported it via the next Gorbals to Belconti and sent along your notes to date—do you follow me?"
"Yes. A threat."
"A counter-threat. Think it over for a few days, Mr. Cole."
Cole sat glumly in his room waiting for his dinner and wondering if it would be poisoned. When old Hawkins tapped, he pulled open the door, only to find Pia instead with a service for two. She was rosy and smiling in a low-cut, off-shoulder brown dress he had not seen before.
"May I eat dinner with you tonight, Flinter?" she asked.
"Please do," he said, startled. "Am I people now, or something?"
"Uncle Garth says now that you know—" She broke off, blushing still more.
"I don't like what I know," he said somberly, "but it's not you, Pia. Here, let me."