George put down his knife.

The figure outside paced back and forth, casting shadows under the door. Black bars chased each other across the slanting, sunset light. Why didn't she knock?

Aunt Agatha surged to her feet. "That'll be the Gondwanan. The Gondwanan." She looked around, as if seeing the laden table and the people seated at it for the first time. "And we're eating without her! What will she think of us?"

"She might think to apologize to us for interrupting our meal," George said.

Aunt Agatha leveled a finger at him. "If your mother, God rest her soul, was with us, I'd tell her what you said to me."

"And what," asked George, "have I said to you?"

Aunt Agatha tsked. "Bullying might work on your thug friends, but I'm not afraid of spanking your disrespectful bottom, John George Boatman."

Out with his men, George would have held his stare, but a sound distracted him.

It was a sniff. Joan had sniffed at him. George's sister said nothing, but her eyes glittered with ill-repressed glee. Their little brother Tommy started giggling. Even the baby in its high chair gurgled in a derisory sort of way.

George rose from his seat. He didn't need this. More money passed through his hands than anyone in this family would see in a year. He burned down houses.

"Will we let her in, or hold her outside, there, as punishment?"

"Oh, George!"

"Sit down," said Grandpa John. "I won't have this arguing at my table. Never argue at a table. Who raised you?"

"Go see who's at the door, George."

All eyes turned to Grandma Mary. Curly gray hair rustled as she jerked her chin at her oldest surviving grandson. "Go see the Gondwanan, if that's who it is. The rest of you, quiet now. Agatha, fetch another plate. John, feed the baby. It's hungry."

George pushed his chair back, turning away from the sounds of grumbling, giggling, and "What will she think of us? No. Put that spoon down, Tommy. Oh, you made a hole in your potatoes. Here, Joan will put some more on top so she doesn't think we were eating. We were just sitting down when she came in."

Lord Almighty. George did not curse, so that was a prayer. May the Lord grant me the dominance over my own table that I can exercise on surly teamsters at the docks.

Couldn't he beat Latin conjugation into the head of even the stupidest seminary student? Forge scared boys into the most respected and feared gang in southeast Shikaakwa? If he had the respect and obedience of his family, George would not find himself opening his home to dangerous strangers.

Strangers who might teach him a lesson on pride, perhaps?

Tommy's voice rose from the kitchen. "Stop putting mashed potatoes on my plate! I don't want that much."

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What had possessed his grandmother to agree to host this interloper? It was all Father Barnabas's idea, the old fool. Hadn't that fiasco with the fat spotted man from the university been bad enough?

"Stop shouting. The Gondwanan will hear you. Your brother is opening the door to her right now."

Actually, George was looking through the keyhole.

He saw no flashing lights, no police. His bike had a gas-powered field projector, so there was no draw on the Grid to lead them back here, but there was always the Ilinwa police might choose his house at random for their retaliation. If God were testing him anyway, why not expect the worst?

It was not too late to make a stand There was no good reason to allow one of those slothful, greasy, nothing-worshipping—

"George?" He jerked upright at the sound of his grandmother's voice from the kitchen. "Open the door, George."

George straightened. He would open the door, and then he would tell the spotted atheist on the other side to get the hell away from his home. He expanded his chest in preparation for a properly commanding voice and opened the door.

"How dare—"

She wasn't wearing any clothes.

George's mouth went slack. There was a thing like a bright orange porcupine wrapped around her wide hips. A belt at her waist bulged with pockets, and above that, a layer of glistening grease hid nothing whatsoever. The grease shone slickly on her round arms and shoulders, her soft, heavy breasts, pale skin dappled with mahogany blots like a jaguar's spots—George snapped his eyes away.

"Um. Aya?" the invader said in Ilinwa.

Hello, she meant, and wasn't that typical? Her first word to her hosts was in Ilinwa, the language of the pagan oppressors. George tried to regain his menacing glare.

"Tell her to come in," Grandma Mary shouted from the kitchen. The instruction was followed by frantic shushing from Aunt Agatha, complaining from Tommy, and Grandpa John's voice, demanding to know who had raised them. "Joan, you go see what's wrong."

His little sister rushed up behind him. "Piintikiilo." Joan said in Ilinwa, welcoming the shameless creature inside before George could object.

It was one thing to see Gondwanan clothes in videos and the occasional Ilinwa fashion victim, but the physical reality was just unacceptable. The way the light slid off her grease. The strange, mineral smell of the stuff, more like industrial lubricant than a woman, or even an animal. There was dried mud in her hair, pressed into patterns as if by a mold. The long groove down her spine, divided mirrored swirls of dark skin. They were irregular but perfectly symmetrical.

"Neewe," she thanked them and continued in Ilinwa. "Is this the Miil-ar household?"

"The what? Oh, 'Miller,' I see," said Joan. "Yes, our grandfather and father once ground corn."

"Huh?"

The girls blinked at each other in utter incomprehension.

God give him strength. "Yes," said George, then, sighing, in Ilinwa, "Iihia, this is the Miller household."

"Thank goodness," the Gondwanan smiled at him over her shoulder.

Her features were wide and heavy-boned; pink as a Christian's, but for the blots that stretched across the bridge of her tiny nose and over her deep-set gray eyes. Strange. Ugly. This intruder would be no sort of carnal temptation, even with breasts exposed.

She turned more fully toward him and George shut his eyes, "You cannot—you are not—dressed. "

"John George Boatman," said Grandma Mary shouted from the big room, "behave yourself!"

"Please come in," Joan repeated, "and sit down."

"Sit how?" Her voice receded as the foreigner walked further into the house, greased breasts jiggling. No, George didn't know what they were doing. He wasn't looking.