The Wizard of Karres

shuddered to think that even the best-intentioned vatch might teleport them into the distant past or future—or, what might be even worse, into the recent past where they already existed.

Probably not a good idea. He had a vague impression of being told—perhaps on Karres—that if you violated time and space by being two places at the same time, something very bad would happen to you. He made a mental note to ask Goth about it at some point when they weren't heavily involved in keeping their own skins intact. The captain had come to have a great deal of trust in the girl's judgment, and no longer undertook any major change in plans without consulting her.

In the meantime, it was moderately amusing to be watching their watchers.

'I'm sure they haven't yet decided if we're the ones they're looking for,' Hulik said, on the day that A Midsummer Night's Dream went into the repertory and they started rotating it with Romeo and Juliet.

That had made a welcome change for Hulik. She hadn't nearly the pressure on her as Third Romantic Lead that she had as First Romantic Lead. Helena was an easy part, really. 'Mostly confusion and hysteria,' she opined. 'And a cat-fight, of course.' There wasn't a 'cat-fight' in the original script, or at least, not the mud-wrestling match that Hulik and Meren Dall were required to perform. The cat-fight was Himbo Petey's idea. Sir Richard had put it in, but not without a fight of his own.

But like the extended sword fights, the public loved it.

'There's no fights in this thing, so you are going to have to have something in place of a melee!' Himbo had shouted. 'I say mud-wrestling, and mud-wrestling it is! Just because your precious Bird—Bart, whatever—didn't put in mud-wrestling in the first place, that doesn't mean he wouldn't have if he'd known there was such a thing! I mean! It even fits the script!'

'And I suppose you want me to put a Blythe gun battle in the Scottish Play?' Sir Richard had shouted back— and had then gone pale with horror at the speculative look on Himbo Petey's face. 'No! Forget I said that! You can have your wretched mud-wrestling, just do not ask me for one more change! Not one!'

Hulik didn't mind; she thought it was funny. And Meren was enough of a trouper that she would have mud- wrestled the entire female cast if that was what the part had called for.

'Why are you so sure they haven't spotted us?' Pausert asked. There were bits of what appeared to be the com strewn all over the floor in front of the unit, and he was pretending to repair it. Pretending, because the com was working just fine, and the bits were nothing more than the results of Vezzarn's scrounging, acting as camouflage, while the Leewit listened to chatter on headphones and Goth worked out whether the chatter was coming from inside the Petey B or was just the usual sorts of traffic outside of it.

'Because they're spreading themselves too thin,' Hulik said firmly. 'And I'll tell you something else—even if they have our descriptions, or some of us, anyway, that doesn't mean they're going to trust those descriptions. I wouldn't. Because I would know that any smart quarry would have already changed as much about himself as he could.'

'So they are basically looking at everyone.' Well, that was comforting. 'Hmm. So a really smart quarry wouldn't change himself at all?'

'Or would do exactly what we've done: put ourselves into a position where our appearances change constantly.' She nodded at him. Pausert was still wearing his Mercutio hair because it was perfectly comfortable to wear—quite natural-seeming, really, but a royal pain to take off and put on. Tomorrow the makeup specialist would take off the foxy hair and replace it with Bottom's unruly haystack, and he'd wear that all day, for the same reason. Rehearsals had just started for play number three, the Scottish Play, and as King Duncan he'd have gray hair that worked for both the part of the King and of the King's ghost.

Most of the other actors did the same. Only when they doubled a part, as Alton did with Romeo and the Prince of Verona, did they use true old-fashioned wigs that could be put on and taken off quickly, but were horrible and itchy to wear.

'Great Patham, we must be driving them mad!' he exclaimed gleefully.

Hulik nodded. 'We couldn't have picked a better place. Even if they're looking for two young Karres-witch girls, they can't be sure that they have the right girls, or even that they should be looking for girls at all. There are dozens of families here with children the right age. The little Wisdoms could be posing as boys, as midgets, or as even as something in the Freak Show.'

The 'little Wisdoms' were freakish enough as it was anyway, he thought. He didn't say it out loud, though.

'Well, good. I want them as confused as possible; that can only be to our benefit.' He thought of something else. 'So, how are they fitting in?'

It would be very awkward if these people were used to being with a showboat. The tall tales spun about every member of a showboat crew would not distract them too much, and once they got themselves oriented, it wouldn't be long before they got onto the truth—or figured out that if nothing else, sign-on dates and the identity of the ships welded to the frame would be found in Himbo Petey's own records.

'According to Pul, like desert-cats in a swamp. Which argues for them being ISS agents. I would think that the pirates would know better—or would have operatives that spent time on a showboat in the past.'

'The ISS isn't stupid—'

'No, but this far out in the hinterland, what you get are agents that were put out here because they weren't good enough to be entrusted with truly important postings, or were stupid enough to do something that made it necessary to transfer them where they couldn't do much harm. If they aren't ambitious, they're going to be unhappy because their comfortable paper-pushing existence has been interrupted by a tedious, possibly dangerous job. If they are ambitious, they're going to be blundering about doing plenty of wrong things, because they don't know that what they need to be good undercover agents won't be found in a book.' Hulik sighed. 'They get posted out to places like this because at least there's a smaller chance that they'll get themselves killed or do something to anger someone important.'

Pausert hesitated, then asked the question that had been lurking in the back of his mind ever since Hantis told them about the plague. 'Hulik, what are the odds, do you think, that someone high up in the ISS is infected by Hantis' Nanites?'

She leaned back in her chair, and licked her lips. 'You do know how to ask the nasty ones, don't you? Truth to be told, I think it's quite likely, odds of up to fifty percent. I've thought that ever since that ISS goon overrode your safe-conduct from the Empress.'

She began ticking things off on her fingers. 'Whoever it is knows about Karres witches, believes in them, and wants them. Whoever it is does not have the Empress' best interests at heart, and does not want whatever information it is that we carry to get to the Empress. Whoever it is knows about Hantis and Pul, and possibly wants them disposed of as well.' She shrugged. 'Now, that could cover both someone high up in court circles who has ambitions for becoming Emperor himself or working for someone who does—but it covers someone in the ISS infected by the plague equally well.'

Pausert's heart sank; but then he, too, shrugged. 'I suppose it doesn't make much difference at this point, does it?'

'No. Whoever is behind this is high enough up in ISS circles that if Hantis can't do anything, we're on our own for the moment.'

She looked pensively at a poster on the wall advertising romantic getaways on Beta Caeleen. Goth had been sticking them up to cover the paint splatters from the first appearance of the little silver-eyed vatch. It seemed an eternity ago.

'I used to like being a lone operative,' she said, sounding oddly plaintive. 'In fact, I used to like being an operative, period. I must be getting old. It isn't fun anymore. I find myself wishing I had a lot of people at my back, and that I was doing things using my brain rather than a gun, things with a lower chance of getting me killed. A desk has begun to look a lot more attractive than it used to.'

Pausert stared at her. 'You aren't actually thinking about settling down, are you?'

'It has its merits,' she said wistfully. Then she shook her head. 'No, not really. You know how it is. Everyone wants what they don't have, and then, if they get it, half the time they discover they don't want it after all.'