Kress offered her a hundred standards to forget all about him and his sandkings.
She asked. "Now I'll have to add attempted bribery to the charges against you."
Not until he raised the figure to two thousand standards was she willing to be persuaded. "It's not going to be easy, you know," she said. "There are forms to be altered, records to be wiped. And getting a forged license from the ecologists will be time-consuming. Not to mention dealing with the complainant. What if she calls again?"
"Leave her to me," Kress said. "Leave her to me."
He thought about it for a while. That night he made some calls.
First he got t'Etherane the Petseller. "I want to buy a dog," he said. "A puppy."
The round-faced merchant gawked at him. "A puppy? That is not like you, Simon. Why don't you come in? I have a lovely choice."
"I want a very specific kind of puppy," Kress said. "Take notes. I'll describe to you what it must look like."
Afterwards he punched for Idi Noreddian.- . "Idi," he said, "I want you out here tonight with your holo equipment. I have a notion to record a sandking battle. A present for one of my friends."
The night after they made the recording, Kress stayed up late. He absorbed a controversial new drama in his sensorium, fixed himself a small snack, smoked a couple of joy sticks, and broke out a bottle of wine. Feeling very happy with himself, he wandered into the living room, glass in hand.
The lights were out. The red glow of the terrarium made the shadows look flushed and feverish. Kress walked over to survey his domain, curious as to how the blacks were doing in the repairs of their castle. The puppy had left it in ruins.
The restoration went well. But as Kress inspected the work through his magnifiers, he chanced to glance close at the face on the sandcastle wall. It startled him.