The big old houses on Main Street had long since decayed into a warren of ghettos. Azania didn’t maintain much of a navy these days and more than half the people of the town were unemployed, most of the rest having to commute into Cape Town itself to find work. The few who were lucky, or trusted, enough to get work as gemstone polishers in Topstones lived in their own arcology, far from their fellows down the hillside. There were too many empty eyes in the streets looking for people whose money might buy them a few hours of oblivion in some wretched indulgence or other.