Malena scowled into her viewer. “My lord, you seem determined to pursue this man,” she said. “We have others to watch as well.”
“Of course. I would not criticize your decisions, my lady and my lords. But you must agree that certain players require more zealous monitoring than most. For the good of the game.”
“My lord, I do not feel that Mikel Belov is among them.”
Arkezhan shrugged. “Well, you may be right, my lady. You are old acquaintance with his family, are you not? Very close old acquaintance.”
Malena stiffened.
“If you please, my lord,” said Jon, ice in his voice.
Arkezhan raised his palms. “Oh, no, no! I would never imply, nor imagine for an instant, that my lady or either of my lords would heed any offer that any player’s father may have made.”
Wei snapped after air. The Regnant sat expressionless. The stewards could not respond, for the game was becoming ever more rapid and complex.
Suddenly Arkezhan raised his eyes from his own viewer and cried, “A foul, a foul!”
“What?” The stewards’ heads jerked about toward him.
“Did you miss it? When Mikel Belov met that Altairian Moon just now, he grabbed after the man’s groin.”
Wei’s knuckles whitened on the arms of his chair.
Malena forgot civility. “He did not.”
“Were you watching him, my lady?” Arkezhan replied. “You have the entire board to follow. I choose to focus on where my suspicions lie.”
Wei half rose. Ibram said hastily, “My lord the Supreme Steward probably missaw, as can happen to anyone. We will replay the encounter in slow motion if he insists.”
Arkezhan smiled. “No need, my lord. I will accept your judgment. Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps in the excitement I confused a tendency with an intent.”
Wei got to his feet. His face was blanched. “Sir,” he said word by word, “I trust that that remark was inadvertent and you will retract it and apologize.”
The stewards kept their gazes on the viewers, scanning to and fro, as duty required; but Malena blurted, “Your Radiance has heard—” She broke off, appalled at herself.
The Regnant sat unstirring.
Arkezhan smiled. “Why, I meant no harm, my lord, no basic fault to find. We are what we are. That boy has evidently chosen to do little or nothing about the characteristics he has inherited from, say, his mother.”
Wei stepped forward. He doubled his fist and struck. Arkezhan staggered back. The stewards gasped. As if it too had seen, the crowd howled.
Arkezhan recovered his stance. Blood trickled from his nose. He grinned.
4
The lands for which Clan Belov was responsible lay near the northern border of Tahalla. Beyond it continued the same Arabiyah, hills and valleys where the wind sent waves across tall grass, tossed fronds and soughed through leaves, where streams flowed into shining lakes, where great herds and their predators bounded and a flying flock often cast a shadow like a cloud’s—but the folk of Zayan had ways very different from the ways of Tahalla. So did all folk everywhere on Earth, and from each other.
Wei set his car down at the foot of a hill and climbed to the top. As he mounted he saw more and more widely. In the distance giraffes mingled with lyrehorns and a few cheirosaurs, ignoring a pride of lions stretched sleepy on a ridge. Impulsively, meaninglessly, he waved at them. Though the reintroduction of rare species, the rebirthing of many that had gone extinct, and creation of others that never evolved happened before his lifetime, he had experienced it so often in vir-tuality that he felt as if he had been there, helping—as if he had even played some part, however humanly insignificant, in staving off the Ice. It gave depth and passion to the day-by-day ecological management that was his main reality occupation.
He had found a lonely place. An unobtrusive upthrust on the western horizon was the dome of a food production center, purely robotic. Smoke rose, thin and quickly scattered, from a swale kilometers off, an excursionist campfire, but that belonged, recalling a Stone-Age his race had forgotten but his genes had not.
His muscles tautened, flexed, and tautened again, bearing him upward against gravity. Sunlight fell warm on his face, air passed warm through his nostrils. Earth bore no medicine for shame and grief, and he would not smother them together with his honor in drugs, but Earth itself was a balm.
He had chosen this hill because a eucalyptus grove stood on the crest, a screen across heaven. Should a survey satellite chance to pass overhead, he didn’t want it making any record of these next moments. The shade fell cool and dappled, pungencies swirled, leaves seemed to whisper his farewells for him.
He had said none when he left home today, only that he wanted to get away for a while. “I understand,” his lady answered. He suspected that she understood all too well, and her calm was her last gift.
I’m sorry, Lissa, Mikel, he thought. There is no better way to regain our pride. Is there? May you live gladly.
He drew his pistol. The single round in it was not a stun cartridge. Revival would be out of the question.
Carefully, he brought the muzzle to his temple. A cold kiss, he thought. Then: Don’t linger.
The shot crashed. A vulture high overhead started down in long, slow spirals.
5
Sesil Hance occupied a house on the outskirts of Rou-mek, an ornate thing of columned pillars and slender turrets, intended for a family larger than any nowadays but easily and variably adaptable for entertaining. Windows threw a soft glow into the night. Music played low, a piece the house had lately composed. From thirty meters away, its nearest neighbor joined in. Otherwise, the street lay quiet, empty except for a gardener robot at work in the flower strips.
The main door knew Mikel Belov and retracted for him. He stepped into an anteroom of mahogany panels, nacre ceiling, and live carpet. Two figures appeared in full-size holography, an older man and woman. Propriety forbade
