“Your earrings,” he murmured. “Purchased here, perhaps?”

“No,” she said. “At home.”

Childan nodded. No contemporary American art; only the past could be represented here, in a store such as his. “You are here for long?” he asked. “To our San Francisco?”

“I’m stationed here indefinitely,” the man said. “With Standard of Living for Unfortunate Areas Planning Commission of Inquiry.” Pride showed on his face. Not the military. Not one of the gum-chewing boorish draftees with their greedy peasant faces, wandering up Market Street, gaping at the bawdy shows, the sex movies, the shooting galleries, the cheap nightclubs with photos of middle-aged blondes holding their nipples between their wrinkled fingers and leering… the honkytonk jazz slums that made up most of the flat part of San Francisco, rickety tin and board shacks that had sprung up from the ruins even before the last bomb fell. No—this man was of the elite. Cultured, educated, even more so than Mr. Tagomi, who was after all a high official with the ranking Trade Mission on the Pacific Coast. Tagomi was an old man. His attitudes had formed in the War Cabinet days.

“Had you wished American traditional ethnic art objects as a gift?” Childan asked. “Or to decorate perhaps a new apartment for your stay here?” If the latter… his heart picked up.

“An accurate guess,” the girl said. “We are starting to decorate. A bit undecided. Do you think you could inform us?”

“I could arrange to arrive at your apartment, yes,” Childan said. “Bringing several hand cases, I can suggest in context, at your leisure. This, of course, is our speciality.” He dropped his eyes so as to conceal his hope. There might be thousands of dollars involved. “I am getting in a New England table, maple, all wood-legged, no nails. Immense beauty and worth. And a mirror from the time of the 1812 War. And also the aboriginal art: a group of vegetable-dyed goat-hair rugs.”