dn't realize till quite some time
later. I was going to look in the Classified Directory for "Hock
Shops." I didn't know any other name for them then.

Inside, it looked exactly like what I expected, and even the smell was
nothing to complain about. Camphor and dust and mustiness were strong
enough to cover most of the sweaty smell, and those were smells of a
kind I'd experienced before, in other places.

The whole procedure was reassuring, because it all went just the way
it was supposed to, and I knew how to behave. I'd seen it in a show,
and the man behind the grilled window even _looked_ like the man on
the screen, and talked the same way.

"What can we do for you, girlie?"

"I'd like to sell a diamond," I told him.

He didn't say anything at first, then he looked impatient. "You got it
with you?"

"Oh ... yes!" I opened my purse, and took out one of the little
packages, and unwrapped it, and handed it to him. He screwed the lens
into his eye, and walked back from the window and put it on a little
scale, and turned back and unscrewed the lens and looked at me.

"Where'd you get this, lady?" he asked me.

"It's mine," I said. I knew just how to do it. We'd gone over this
half a dozen times before I left, and he was behaving exactly the way
we'd expected.

"I don't know," he said. "Can't do much with an unset stone like
this...." He pursed his lips, tossed the diamond carelessly in his
hand, and then pushed it back at me across the counter. I had to keep
myself from smiling. It was just the way they'd said it would be. The
people here were still in the Mech Age, of course, and not nearly
conscious enough to communicate anything at all complex or abstract
any way except verbally. But there is nothing abstract about avarice,
and between what I'd been told to expect, and what I could feel
pouring out of him, I knew precisely what was going on in his mind.

"You mean you don't _want_ it?" I said. "I thought it was worth quite
a lot...."

"Might have been once." He shrugged. "You can't do much with a stone
like that any more. Where'd you get it, girlie?"

"My mother gave it to me. A long time ago. I wouldn't sell it,
except.... Look," I said, and didn't have to work hard to sound
desperate, because in a way I was. "Look, it must be worth
_some_thing?"

He picked it up again. "Well ... what do you want for it?"

That went on for quite a while. I knew what it was supposed to be
worth, of course, but I didn