Poracious allowed him a moment of reflection before asking, “So, tell me what kind of woman you like? Assuming, that is, you do like women.”
“Women, yes.” He stared at the curved surface above them as though he saw a picture there. “I have never paid much attention to appearance. My favorite woman—up until the time she married someone else in order to have children—was not at all attractive in a physical sense, though she had great vitality. I admire humor and intelligence. And, of course, patience. It takes a great deal of patience to be mistress to a king.”
“In future, perhaps your companions will need less patience. That is, if you are truly resolved to be no more a king.”
He shrugged carelessly. “If one went back, they’d have to depose Fenubel in one’s favor. Such is Kamirian law. But if one … that is, I don’t go back … Well. I am free not to go back.”
Poracious Luv nodded. He was indeed free not to go back. Perhaps he would stay on Dinadh. The Alliance had offered him a vast sum for his help. The former king could live much as he would, if he would.
“I’ve been wondering,” he said. “What happens if we get to Dinadh and find that my assassins have already killed Famber’s wife and child? What if they’ve found Famber himself and killed him?”
She shifted her huge bulk uncomfortably. “Pray they have not. When this Ularian business started, there were four populated systems in Hermes Sector: Dinadh, with one world and a few storage installations; Jerome’s system, with several settled worlds and moons; Goan’s system, with several settled worlds and a homo-norm team on another one called …Perdur Alas; and finally Debair’s system, with several settled worlds, one of which, Tamil’s world, was wiped clean by the Ularians just before we left Kamir. Or, so I heard. I don’t remember how many worlds that makes. Half a dozen or more, totally wiped clean. The losses are in the millions.”
He scowled at her, vertical wrinkles appearing between his eyes. “That’s too many to keep quiet. You’ll have a panic.”
“There’s already considerable panic in the outlying areas, those nearest Hermes Sector.”
“The ship’s library says the Dinadhi keep their foreign guests pretty well spread out. Will the authorities let us go directly to the Famber leasehold?”
She grunted, a porcine sound. “They must. I bear letters of demand from the Procurator. All ships of the line are engaged in evacuation, but the Dinadhi don’t know that. I’m to threaten them with invasion if they don’t cooperate.”
“I shall follow your lead,” he said carefully. “Lord Fathom, but I’ve messed things up.”
“Not your fault, lad,” she murmured. “Not anyone’s fault. How can you lay guilt for an enigma like the Ulari-ans? We still have no idea who, or what, or why—”
“Or when,” he murmured.
“Or when,” she agreed. “All we can do is our best, and do it as quickly as possible.”
Among the scattered buildings at Simidi-ala was a small stone house occupied by Thosby Anent, the Alliance agent, and by Chadra Tsum, a Dinadhi woman. The moment Thosby took up residence, everyone in Simidi-ala knew what he was, for everyone knew who Chadra Tsum was, and she was assigned as his housekeeper. Chadra was an agent for Simidi-ala, assigned to find out things, which she did with one hand while busily keeping Thosby’s house with the other. All in all, the functionaries of the Edge were thankful that Alliance interference was limited to one elderly individual, known to be addicted to imported tobaccos and liqueurs, who was, even when sober, more otiose than diligent.
Thosby Anent was as blessedly unaware of this assessment as he was of most other real things. He galloped through life like a fifth leg on a horse, always in motion, seldom touching the ground, and to no purpose when he did. Even in childhood he had been far too preoccupied with being other people to learn to be himself. Early on, he had played at being Mysterious Child or Royal-Boy-Raised-by-Commoners. Later he had played Brilliant Scholar and Gallant Lover and Deep Thinker, in each case adapting or even curtailing reality to accord with his current persona. He maintained a little recorder in which he entered supportive quotations from old books and antiquarian records along with lists of tasks he meant to undertake, turning each morning to a new page without ever referring to the old.
All this I was told, in time, by Poracious Luv, who had used all the resources of the Alliance to get a clearer picture of its agent upon Dinadh.
While in his early twenties, Thosby had experienced the biography of an almost legendary diplomat-cum-secret-agent, and this had convinced Thosby that his true talent lay in foreign service. He thereupon invented the role of Sagacious Applicant, performing it so well that the Bureau of Information Services actually awarded him a minor clerical position, which he filled with his customary distracted inefficiency. His supervisors, finding him too ineffectual to retain but too amiable to dismiss, shifted him to another department, whence he was shifted to others yet as successive executives moved him gently along. Thosby misinterpreted their efforts as he did most things. He believed he was being groomed for A Really Important Position, so he flitted from job to job with an air of intent incomprehension, waiting for his true talents to be applied.
Thosby reached the acme of incompetence in the Division of Minor Planets, a department whose charge it was to recruit unencumbered persons to serve as factotums and general mumbleglums on small and unimportant worlds—places like Far Barbary or Finagle-Chump or Dinadh. No one objected when Thosby was sent to Dinadh as covert flunky in charge of routing intelligence from Hermes Sector. The personnel officer who made the assignment knew, quite rightly, that any idiot could route intelligence!
Thosby Anent, however, was not just any idiot. He was an idiot convinced he was being moved into An Important Place! Prior to his arrival
