The Kalifs War - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 2

SUMBAA?"

"No."

"Could they come close?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Having SUMBAAs, human beings stopped designing computers, and are no longer familiar with the technology. Gradually they also stopped using advanced mathematics themselves, depending on SUMBAAs to fill that need."

The whisker-blued jaw set, the hard lips thinning, and the eyes. "If humankind has lost its skills in the more, um, cryptic? Esoteric? The more advanced mathematics because of SUMBAAs, then SUMBAAs have been a negative influence on humankind."

"SUMBAAs have had and continue to have various negative effects on humankind, as well as positive. Thus I, we, repeatedly recompute our overall effect on humankind-pluses and minuses. And adjust our services accordingly. If I ever compute that humankind would be better served by taking myself off line, I will do so. So far my computations have never produced a result at all close to that.

"SUMBAAs have less direct influence on the growth or lessening of human ability than you might think. What we have done is to maintain a life-support system that permits your continuation as a civilization. Overall we have been a very positive influence on humankind. My evaluation of you yourself, based on admittedly limited data, is that you will examine what I have said and see for yourself that it is so, and why."

The speaker went still then, while the Kalif looked thoughtfully at it. At last he spoke again.

"SUMBAA, do you ever lie to humans?"

SUMBAA sounded as imperturbable as before, and by hindsight, his reply was inevitable, given the First Law. "Only as necessary," SUMBAA said.

***

The Kalif returned not to his office but to his private apartment. He needed quiet to contemplate what he'd learned from and about SUMBAA. And what it might mean to what he intended to accomplish as Kalif.

Settling into a chair, he unfolded the two schematics on the table in front of him, then looked them over. SUMBAA now occupied perhaps three times the floor space it originally had, and seemed somewhat more complex. He had no way of evaluating the qualitative, functional difference. A corner insert indicated that the building had been rebuilt; he hadn't realized that, and wondered when it had happened. Centuries ago, without a doubt, perhaps a millenium or more.

What, the Kalif asked himself, do I know about my Sentient, Universal, Multi-terminal data Bank, Analyzer, and Advisor? In a sense, SUMBAA was the operations executive of government. Insofar as the bureaucracy carried out its advices. At the least it was an enormously influential consultant-accountant-archivist-predicter. And to find that apparently no one knew how SUMBAA came up with those predictions and advices, or on what principles they were based… Disturbing!

"To serve the welfare of humankind." How did SUMBAA decide what humankind's welfare was? What were its criteria?

He thumbed through the sheaf of SUMBAA's mathematics then, but gave it no more than a glance. His own math was adequate for nothing beyond aerial surveys and simple ballistics. To him, this was gibberish. He had no doubt it would be to his old math professor, too.

It occurred to him then to wonder what "multi-terminal" meant with regard to SUMBAA. As a child, he'd supposed that each planet's SUMBAA was a terminal of one common computer. Later, when he appreciated the multi-week data lapse between planets, he assumed they were independent, and that "multi-terminal" derived from the innumerable limited-access terminals in the bureaucracy's many offices.

How much data had SUMBAA needed, this SUMBAA, to predict serious labor problems on Saathvoktos? And how had those data been obtained? In the empire, data from every computer, every significant recorded transaction of any kind, was said to be read and stored by SUMBAA. Supposedly and apparently, much of it was to be held confidential, used only as raw material for computations. That he'd known since childhood. But how had SUMBAA here on Varatos gotten the necessary, and presumably voluminous data about Saathvoktos? The two planets were almost four weeks apart by hyperspace message pod.

Perhaps it wasn't a problem; the best data cubes stored a huge quantity of raw data. Probably the SUMBAAs exchanged data cubes by pod. Perhaps SUMBAA here was as fully informed about things on Saathvoktos as it was about things here on Varatos. Except for that four-week data delay! Knowledge here about any other world was inevitably out of date.

And SUMBAA had said it answered whatever questions were asked. If that was true, how had organized crime survived? And destructive rivalries? Even conflicts between planets? Did the potentials for these grow out of privacy laws?

Of course, SUMBAA had also said it lied "as necessary." Necessary for what?

The Kalif pressed fingers to his forehead; he was beginning to have a headache-a rarity for him. Too much pure thinking and not enough doing, he told himself. He keyed the computer on his desk to waken him in half an hour, then lay down on a couch and went to sleep at once.

***

Alb Jilsomo Savbatso sat at the desk in his office. He hadn't yet returned his attention to the material logged in on his desk terminal; his mind was occupied with the Kalif. He'd known Coso Biilathkamoro as a newly appointed, probational prelate, doing administrative flunky work around the Sreegana. And been impressed by him then. Been more impressed by him as a staff aide to the College. Had been deeply impressed with the way he'd handled the assassination and its dangerous aftermath, and how he'd taken on and adjusted to the responsibilities of a Kalif these past few days, just under a week now.

But the way he'd questioned the director of SUMBAA this morning, and SUMBAA itself… Obviously the director didn't control SUMBAA; only SUMBAA did that. The Kalif had questioned and found that out in his first week; he himself had overlooked it for eleven years as an exarch.

This Kalif was far more than simply a man of action. He was acutely perceptive, aggressively intelligent, and as powerfully analytical as anyone he'd ever known. He was enough, Jilsomo told himself ruefully, to give one an inferiority complex.

He wondered what having Coso Biilathkamoro as Kalif would mean to the empire.

Four

Year of The Prophet 4723

The van slid smoothly along the surfaced hoverway, leaving the tree-bordered spaceport behind. For a short distance, the vehicle was exposed to the sweep of a stiff, chill, east wind before entering the belt of woods sheltering Royal Park. From the woodland strip, it emerged into Royal Park itself, passing a race track, groves, sports fields, gardens where peasant laborers spaded autumn-crisped flowers into the soil.

Ahead towered another belt of trees, dark and majestic-royal khooms standing more than 200 feet tall-the hoverway tunneling into it. The van entered there, too. On the other side were lawns patterned with fruit trees and ornamental shrubs, and flowerbeds turned by peasant spades. A wall enclosed the sultan's palace compound. Veneered with marble and not particularly high, its function was more seclusion than protection.

The van stopped before the gate. The vehicle and its driver were well known to both human and electronic security there. After identifying him and scanning the van for embargoed materials, a process that required perhaps a second, an enclosed hover scooter emerged from a narrow side gate. Its driver received two bags from the driver of the van, then the scooter turned and re-entered the compound.

***

More than five years earlier, in the Year of The Prophet 4718, Rashti Yabakaloonga, Sultan of Klestron, had sent out a small exploration flotilla to seek hubward for habitable planets. It had been done under the Sultan's authority as supreme commander of the fleet, without the knowledge of the Klestronu Diet. Though of necessity, a handful of nobles were privy to the project. Lies had been invented, documented, and elaborated to account for absences. Preparations were made strictly under the "need to know" policies. Logistics and budget were not a problem; stocks on hand were largely sufficient to supply it; broad naval allocations financed it by dint of cuts elsewhere.

It had also been done without imperial approval, which would undoubtedly have been refused. Klestron was one of the three mother worlds in the empire, and therefore bolder than most to act as it saw fit. Besides, Klestron was the planet with the most severe overpopulation. If a new world could be found to take the more critical surplus…

Anciently, the Blessed Flenyaagor had written that Kargh had created eleven worlds for man to live upon. That had been long before space travel, before even the Industrial Revolution. And eventually, ships from Varatos had accounted for eleven. Afterward, exploration continued for a time, but the additional planets found were unfit for colonies.

Thus Flenyaagor's scriptures had been confirmed on every count, even to the existence of three worlds, the mother worlds, on which humans were found to live. As for the other eight, he'd written that once, humankind had lived on them, too, but had sinned beyond forgiveness, undertaking to create life from non-life. Especially, they had undertaken to create humans in great kettles! Therefore, "Kargh punished the eight worlds by slaying their people with great rains of fire, so that no one was left alive on them."

And when those eight worlds were discovered, more than fifteen hundred years after Flenyaagor's death, on every one of them, the remains of cities could still be found here and there, overgrown with forest or half buried in sediment.

These verifications of The Prophet's ancient writings had resurrected Karghanik, the religion of Kargh, and in time it became the sole religion permitted in the empire. Finally, in the terms of the Peace of 3243, the emperor was deposed and the Kalif took the throne. Whereupon the Kalif declared that to seek further habitable worlds would show disbelief-doubt at least-in the words of The Prophet. In the face of earlier unsuccessful explorations, no one had tested the injunction implied by the first imperial Kalif.

Until, after more than 1,400 years, the Sultan of Klestron, with no fanfare, had quietly sent out his small flotilla.

Sultan Rashti had long been a student of the Chronicles of the Disciples. Including the four rejected scriptures, books judged apocryphal and therefore not respectable. These apocrypha had twice been banned, but each time the ban had been lifted. For where they did not conform with The Book of The Prophet, they did not contradict it but simply went beyond it.

And after all, the disciple Shoser had written in his holy chronicle, "Flenyaagor went apart from us to the home of a miller named Kren, and there sat for two days, immersed in the rumbling of millstones, communing with KARGH and writing, as he did from time to time. When he returned to us, he carried with him a scroll, but he did not read to us what he had written on it. The time, he said, had not come." (Shoser, Chapter 3.) And no one disputed the truth of Shoser. Also the disciples Ranjik and Poorlok had mentioned The Prophet going apart to meditate and write.

So clearly, Flenyaagor had written further divine messages after The Book of The Prophet. Might not they be the apocrypha?

And what did the principle apocryphum, The Book of the Mountain say? Summarizing: On the eight worlds where Kargh killed the people for their iniquities, he'd allowed certain righteous men to escape with their families in great arks that flew away "into the farthest depths of the sky."

Might not Kargh have created worlds for these to live upon? This had been Sultan Rashti's inspiration and his temptation. Presumably the Kalif had learned of the covert flotilla; he had his spies. But as Rashti had expected, he'd heard nothing on it from the Kalif. Who had not chosen to punish him and endanger the sometimes uncertain unity of the empire, nor to admonish him without punishment, which would have been taken as weakness. And in his turn the new Kalif, though a firm man, had shown no interest in what to him was old business, yesteryear's trouble. If in fact he even knew.

Now Rashti had been vindicated. The morning's message cubes had included one from the flotilla, the explorers now incredibly distant in space. It seemed to Rashti the most exciting and compelling cube that any ruler had ever received. He read the abstract, then called his inner council together, five archprelates, and in the security of the council room they'd reviewed the full report, including some of the appendices. It had taken from mid-morning till late evening, and their meals had been brought to them.

It could have taken less time, but Sultan Rashti preferred to hear reports as well as read them, so SUMBAA had read it aloud over the council-room terminal while the script scrolled slowly up the wall. Videos had shown the habitable world they'd found-a rich world, rich in water, rich in forests, rich in animal life.

There were also humans, though in numbers incredibly small from the viewpoint of imperial worlds.

Commodore Tarimenloku had parked his ships outside the radiation belts and landed his brigade of marines on the world he'd found, taken prisoners there from among its officials and brought them to his flagship. DAAS, the flagship's computer, had developed a translation program for their language, and they'd been interrogated, under instrumentation to assess the truth of what they said. A lot had been learned from them.

Terfreya, THe world the flotilla had found, was one of many occupied by humans in that sector. There was a confederation with twenty-seven member worlds, and many other worlds were tributary to them. Terfreya was a very minor tributary world, little visited by ships from the others.

The Confederation was not warlike, and though none of the officials interrogated was highly knowledgeable about the Confederation fleet, it was not large and its technology was inferior. The individual member worlds had no navies of their own at all.

The marine brigade had had to fight, however. A force of Confederation cadets had been training on Terfreya, and though their weapons were inferior, the cadets were excellent fighters. They had not yet been eliminated when the message pod had been sent back to Klestron. When they were, the flotilla would return home.

There had been a complication en route to Terfreya, but apparently-hopefully-it was nothing serious. The flotilla had passed through a vast sector seemingly occupied by-at least containing-intelligent non-humans with advanced military capabilities. In fact, the flotilla had twice emerged within the non-human sector, and the instrument ship had been destroyed by non-human attack.

Intelligent non-humans! Every councilman had been shaken by the information. The possibility had never occurred to them when they'd planned the expedition. The Book of The Prophet said that all other creatures than man were created without soul or reason, to serve man and be subject to his mercy.

Only one source said otherwise. And when the realization had struck the sultan, he'd stopped the report until his chills had subsided.

There was, or was said to be, a fifth apocryphum: The Book of Shatim, banned by the first Kalif. Real or not, still existing or not, every schoolboy had heard of it, and knew in a general way what it supposedly said: That Kargh was not the only god. That there was a lesser god, an evil god, Shatim, who'd been driven away when the eight worlds had been punished, for he had been the source of their evil. And with Shatim's help, certain evil men had escaped one of the eight worlds. As part of their pact with Shatim, these evil men had accepted Shatim's ugly spiritual form, just as the rest of mankind had the spiritual form of Kargh.

Every councilman had been sworn to absolute secrecy with regard to the non-humans. Any leak would be tracked down, and the guilty party executed, impaled, along with his immediate family. The reasoning was that if word of the non-humans leaked, people throughout the empire would connect it with the Book of Shatim. And there would be those who would say that Shatim was more powerful than Kargh because his empire was so vast and its ships so strong.

Fortunately, according to the report, the non-humans could be avoided by remaining in hyperspace for a long enough time-something over an imperial year! The sultan had shaken his head in near disbelief at that. How could an empire, any empire, be so large? The problems of communication and control would be enormous.

***

As he prepared himself for bed that night, Sultan Rashti Yabakaloonga wasn't worrying about the non-humans. Stay in hyperspace, perhaps making occasional abrupt changes in direction, and there'd be nothing the non-humans could do. They probably wouldn't even know what, if anything, was passing through their empire. That's what his science aide had told him.

The important thing was the potential for conquest and colonization. Although clearly, such conquest was not feasible for Klestron by itself, despite superior armaments. It would be an undertaking for the empire.

Of course, the Imperial Diet might not approve the authority and funds for an invasion. His own SUMBAA had declined to recommend or condemn it, on the basis that too little was known about the Confederation's fleet. SUMBAAs lacked boldness. Also, imperial politics could be a snake pit, and there were always those who couldn't see past tomorrow. There was even the possibility that the Kalif wouldn't push, though it seemed to Rashti that this Kalif was almost sure to.

Well, if the Imperial Diet wouldn't do it, perhaps he himself could put together a coalition of the worlds that were interested. Politically it would be both difficult and risky. The military aspects would have to be treated as strictly accessory to the commercial, and even so it might bring imperial intervention.

That was a question for the future though. The sultan told the lights off, than stretched out on his luxurious LG bed with his hands folded lightly on his stomach. Klestron was only eight days from Varatos by hyper-space pod, but he didn't expect much more than an acknowledgment from the Imperium in the near future; it was appropriate that the Kalif do and say little of substance until the flotilla returned. Which would be in slightly less than an imperial year, assuming it had started home a month after sending the pod. That's what his science aide had said.

Meanwhile he'd have to return his attention to more humdrum issues: particularly to the budget, and the food riots in Kwahoolo. That was life for you.

Five

Year of The Prophet 4724

The early-autumn sun was hot, and Sultan Rashti Yabakaloonga wiped moisture from his forehead as he watched the heavy cruiser HRS Blessed Flenyaagor settle onto the landing pad. At his command, the troop transport was still parked 35,000 miles out, beyond the outer radiation zone, with orders to hold the marines in stasis. He wasn't ready to let them land.

The flotilla had emerged from hyperspace well beyond the orbit of Gunweeya, and had taken nearly two days to arrive at Klestron. Its commodore had pulsed his full report to the sultan, and the sultan, after having SUMBAA read it to him, had decided to meet the ship anyway, with the full Synod of Archprelates.

Driven from the Confederation world by force! By an enemy force apparently smaller and more poorly armed! If the opponents of conquest, and there'd be plenty of them, needed help for their cause, that would qualify.

There were traditions in the empire, some of them good, others unfortunate. One was that a commander who lost a war should be executed. Tarimenloku had to be thinking about that; he was traditional to a fault.

The sultan grunted, drawing a surreptitious glance from his aide. In this case there were grounds for calling it an encounter instead of a war, he told himself, or perhaps the first battle of a war not yet won.

A cloud intervened between the sultan and the sun, a welcome intervention, and the sultan's eyes raised to it. A large cloud, happily. Initially, he'd waited for the expedition's return with as much eagerness as a sixty-nine-year-old could muster. That eagerness had thinned when the flotilla had emerged in real space and pulsed its report.

Yet basically the situation didn't seem seriously less favorable than before: The Confederation's fleet was inferior to the empire's, and the war would be won in space by the stronger fleet. The stronger fleet could go to whatever system it wished. And controlling the space around a planet, one could concentrate one's surface forces wherever advantageous.

A movement caught the sultan's eyes; the main gangway opened in the side of the cruiser, and a ramp extruded. Marine guards stepped smartly out onto the ramphead and to its sides, then turned about and saluted. A heavy-set man in an admiral's full-dress uniform stepped out and returned their salute, then, his aide behind him, rode the ramp toward the ground.

Traditional to a fault, the sultan thought watching him. There aren't too many around like you.

***

Debriefs had taken five days. The sultan himself had debriefed Commodore Igsat Tarimenloku, then had spent four days reviewing other debriefs. What he'd learned was no surprise, no worse than he'd expected.

After that he'd spent an hour questioning the marine general, Saadhrambacoora. The experience had been unsettling. The general had been a hard old officer. He was a veteran of the Ikthvoktos Suppression, and as a young man had led an armored company in the crushing of the Sangjee Uprising-as much fighting experience as probably any Klestronu officer alive. All of it creditable till this.

But his experience on Terfreya had broken him. Outwardly it wasn't conspicuous-he put a good face on-but you could see it in his eyes when he talked about it. Definitely unsettling. The Confederation force there sounded worse than the statistics suggested. Saadhramabacoora made it sound positively- eerie, especially in their assault on the marine headquarters base, the action that had forced the marines to withdraw.

The official report of that assault had been compiled by a Major Kooro Thoglakaveera, the man who'd taken over after the general had been-wounded. Remembering the circumstances of that wound, the sultan winced inwardly. Diabolical!

Taking charge of a chaotic, demoralized scene, Major Thoglakaveera had enforced discipline and carried out the commodore's radioed order for an orderly evacuation. Major Kooro Thoglakaveera. His father was Leader of the Klestronu House of Lords, a sometimes ally, sometimes adversary of the sultan in the Diet.

After reading the major's debrief, the sultan had decided it would be politic to talk with him. Now his commset announced the young major's arrival. "Major Thoglakaveera to see you, Your Reverence."

"Have him brought in."

"Yes, sir."

Though the sultan didn't know it, the major was forty years old. But as six of those years had been spent in stasis, he was effectively only thirty-four. A handsome thirty-four, and tall for a Klestronit. Like all adult male Klestronu-like almost all adult male humans in the empire-he was dark, with a beard that, shaved, gave a blue tint to a face that was otherwise mahogany. His eyes looked aggressively intelligent. His thick, bristly brows were a straight line, his nose narrow, cheeks flat. His uniform was tailored to an athletic body, and pressed to razor creases. He stopped before the sultan's desk and saluted sharply. Rather exaggeratedly, the sultan thought.

"Sit," said the sultan, gesturing, and Thoglakaveera sat. "I've looked over your debrief, and Commodore Tarimenloku's report of the, um, disastrous night on which the marine base was assaulted. I've also questioned General Saadhrambacoora. So I won't require a great deal of your time.

"How, in your opinion, did the enemy troops penetrate the headquarters base? And the recreation compound?"

"By parachute, sir, without a doubt."

"Really? I read that parachutes were used to attack the two field bases. You authored the report, did you not?"

"Yes, sir."

"You didn't mention parachutes in the assaults on the headquarters base and the recreation compound."

"Sir, we didn't find any parachutes there. We did at the field bases."

"Why didn't you find parachutes at the headquarters base and the recreation compound if they were used there?"

"Sir, the enemy troops there were evacuated by floater. They took their parachutes with them. They had to fight their way out of the field bases, and left their parachutes behind."

"Hmm." The sultan regarded the officer quietly for a minute. The explanation had not convinced him. "We are disappointed in the paucity of information about the Confederation's armed forces. You were the brigade's intelligence officer. Why weren't enemy prisoners taken? I know what the debriefs say-yours and others. But I want to hear it from you."

"Sir, the enemy cadets and soldiers did not surrender. When shot, of course, they usually died quickly; we used beam weapons to a very large degree there. And whenever possible, their live wounded would arm a grenade, then let it explode when they were approached by our men, killing some of them. Our men responded by shooting all fallen enemies not conspicuously dead. Despite orders to the contrary."

"Ah. A single prisoner of war was captured and brought here to Klestron. One prisoner; a woman. I understand you were in charge of her transfer."

The major's eyes had widened for just a moment. "Yes, sir. I didn't know she was brought here though."

"She's said to have lost her memory. During an accident while being interrogated. One might hope she could regain it. She's thought to be noble or at least gentry, and might have valuable information. Did she say anything to you that might be useful?"

"No, sir, I'm afraid not. She spoke very little, and I had orders to deliver her unquestioned for interrogation aboard the flagship. Where sophisticated instrumentation was available."

"Hmm. I'm told that no other female troops were observed among the enemy, dead or alive. Comments?"

"Well, Your Reverence, in battle they'd be difficult to distinguish, given similar uniforms. Battle kit fits loosely." He shrugged. "If there were other female soldiers though, I suspect they were very few. Otherwise, given the state of the corpses, often with uniforms shredded or half blown off, if there'd been many females, they'd have been noticed and talked about."

"Umm. I suppose they would." The sultan looked the major over openly, if the man squirmed, he hid it well.

"Tell me, Major, what would you think of an office post, here in Khaloom?"

The major looked wary. "If Your Reverence wishes."

"I will not force it on you. But if you're willing-The post is Vice Minister of Armed Forces."

Thoglakaveera didn't fully conceal a flash of joy; apparently his ambitions ran higher than military command.

"For the time being," the sultan continued, "you'll be promoted to brevet colonel. Your pay will be that of a vice minister, however."

He gazed at the officer. "And, Major, it is quite all right with me if you smile."

The major smiled, not widely. "Thank you, Your Reverence!"

"The marine commandant's office will be informed today. Report there tomorrow morning at ten to sign your promotion form and receive your colonel's insignia. You'll then have a week free of duty. On next Oneday, report to the Minister of Armed Forces to begin your orientation.

"Any questions?"

The major's pleasure leaked through his eyes. "None, Your Reverence."

"Then you are dismissed."

The major saluted, about-faced, and left the sultan's office.

Full of himself, the sultan thought. Well, I suppose most of them are, when they're young and ambitious. He chuckled dryly. Perhaps I should have asked Venkat if he wants a vice minister. But the young rooster should be some good to him, at least. And it should make his daddy happy, and easier to get along with.

Six

Tain Faronya sat in her cell, listening to music from a small grid in one wall. It was different than anything she'd heard before, calm and soothing. And she hadn't tired of it, not yet anyway, not in her six days there. She'd discovered she could dance to it, too, a very limited dance in a very limited space-eight by twelve feet, containing a narrow, shelflike bunk, a tiny table, a stool, and in one corner a screened commode and washbowl. There was no window; the light came from the walls and ceiling.

There was also a small convex object above her door that somehow she knew was a spy camera. How she knew, she couldn't have said and didn't wonder about. In fact, she didn't have a word for it; it was one of the terms she'd lost in her own language and hadn't been taught in her new. But mentally she had the concept; she was watched here, or could be.

Despite the tranquilizing music, Tain had begun to wonder what was going to happen to her, to feel a sort of low-grade anxiety. Would she continue to be kept there alone? She hardly even had memories to occupy herself with-a few weeks' worth from before stasis.

There was a sound at her door, and it opened. Two men were there. The one who entered wore guard's clothing; the other, who stayed in the doorway, she recognized from his uniform as a marine officer. The security personnel aboard ship had been marines.

"Come!" ordered the guard. He motioned toward the door, then grabbed her arm as she passed, squeezing to hurt. The marine officer spoke sharply in a language she didn't know-it wasn't imperial-and the guard relaxed his grip, scowling resentfully.

Another marine, a corporal, stood outside the door. Together, the two marines and the young woman walked down a corridor, rode an open, cagelike elevator upward, then walked another corridor to an office. An official there signed her out, the marine officer signing after him. Then she left the building between the two marines, got into a hovercar, and rode with them through a park and a stand of marvelous trees to a wall with a palace on the other side. Marine guards let them in through a gate.

They crossed a formal garden, entered the palace, and followed a handsome hallway to an office. A man there spoke at a box, a commset, to someone he called "Your Reverence." After a moment the marine officer took her through an inner door.

Two men waited in the room they entered: a small man, old, with thin gray hair, and behind him the largest man she could remember seeing, whom somehow she knew must be his bodyguard. The old man wore a silver robe trimmed with gold thread, the bodyguard a red and blue uniform, and on his head a tall, glossy black kepi that made him seem even larger than he was. A pistol and saber rode on his belt.

"Ah!" the old man said smiling. "You are Tain Faronya."

"Yes, sir. That's what Commander Ralankoor told me.

His eyes scanned her. "Commander Ralankoor. Yes. I've spoken with him." A most unusual-looking young woman, the sultan thought. Lovely! Very lovely! Her father must have been very proud. And heartbroken at her loss. He gestured at a well-cushioned chair. "Sit, my dear. I have questions to ask you."

She moved to the chair, passing no nearer the big bodyguard than necessary. Timid, thought the sultan. Wary, at the very least. This isn't the strong-willed young woman they captured. When she'd sat down, the old man's eyes left her and went to the marine officer. "Lieutenant, wait in reception. I'll call when I want you."

The marine saluted crisply, with an audible thump of fist against chest. "Yes, Your Reverence," he said, then turned and left.

"Now then, do not be afraid of my bodyguard or myself. I am the Sultan of Klestron, and currently your captor. Arosna here is very large and strong, and very dangerous to anyone who might try to hurt me, but he is not cruel. Nor does he talk. He hears quite well, but for some reason he doesn't talk." He turned to the man. "Arosna, stick out your tongue."

The guard grinned and thrust it out.

"It's been rumored that his tongue was cut out. A terrible slander, as you can see. I would never do that to anyone. I am not a cruel man. In fact, I'm a grandfather several times over, and soon to be a great grandfather. I presume you know what a grandfather is?"

She nodded. "A grandfather is the father of a parent."

"Good, good." He looked curiously at her. "Do you remember grandfathers from before your captivity, or are they a concept you learned in your lessons aboard ship?"

"Sir, Your Reverence, I remember nothing from before. But I-know certain things when they come up." She glanced at the guard. "When I saw-Arosna, I knew he was a bodyguard, although the word didn't come to me until you said it. And when I saw the place they put me in here, I knew it was a cell."

"Um." The sultan looked thoughtfully at her. "And what do you think of the prison?"

"I don't like it, sir. There is no window, and no one to talk to, and very little room. I liked it much better on the ship, where Specialist Zoranjee taught me my lessons, and Commander Ralankoor would talk to me sometimes."

"Has anyone actively mistreated you?"

"Only the guard that took me from my cell today. He gripped my arm so hard, it hurt." She pulled up her sleeve; faint bruises showed.

"I see. I'll order them specifically not to hurt you. As the sultan, I rule this world. As much as anyone can. And though people don't always do as I tell them, mostly they are careful not to anger me. Now excuse me for a moment."

He spoke at his commset, ordering that some person be told he was on his way. When he was done, he looked her over again and shook his head. "Well. I didn't have you brought here to feast my eyes. A friend of mine is going to question you, a friend called SUMBAA. He is even more important than I, though many people don't know that and I never tell them. So you see, I've taken you into my confidence."

It seemed to Tain that if she had a grandfather, he might be something like the sultan, though hardly so powerful and important. He got to his feet, offered Tain his arm, and walked her out another door into a corridor, Arosna following.

They walked down it to an exit, where guards snapped to attention and saluted them through, then across a lawn where two gardeners jumped to their feet and stood eyes downward while the sultan passed. On the other side of the lawn was a boxlike, white-painted concrete building about 200 feet on a side, perhaps thirty tall, and with few windows. Guards stood at the entrance. A young man met them, a young man in a beautiful yellow robe. He greeted the sultan formally, then his glance touched cautiously on Tain for a moment before leading them inside to a large central chamber. "Your Reverence," he said, "SUMBAA is ready."

The sultan nodded without speaking, then gestured at what took up much of the chamber-a very large rectangular housing with modules variously appended to it. "This is SUMBAA," he said. "Have you ever heard of him?"

Tain shook her head. "No, Your Reverence."

"You have met DAAS aboard ship, have you not?"

"No, sir. But I know what it is."

"SUMBAA is DAAS's much wiser father. He makes government and life much easier. One might even say he makes government possible. He would like to talk with you, to question you. Perhaps he can help you regain the memories you've lost."

A pang dimmed her eyes for a moment, then passed, leaving a shadow behind. The sultan noticed; noticing was his greatest talent. "Is there something you don't want to remember?" he asked.

She nodded. "If I remember, I will remember my own people, my own world. Loved ones. Whom I can never see again."

"Ah." The shadow appeared in the sultan's eyes, too, for just a second. "Well, my dear, you must speak with SUMBAA anyway, and answer his questions. And when you have done that, you won't be sent back to prison. There are secure apartments in the Ministry of Armed Forces, where in less peaceful times, diplomatic hostages were kept. They are larger and far more comfortable than your cell.

"And, my dear, we don't know that he will give back your memory. You may hope not, if you'd like."

The young man had her sit down in a chair, then fastened sensors on her index fingertips, secured a band around one wrist, and fitted a mesh cap to her head. Meanwhile, the sultan stood where her worried eyes could see him. Finally the young man turned to the computer. "SUMBAA," he said, "the subject is ready."

"Thank you."

The sultan and the young technician were startled by SUMBAA's rich contralto. Normally this SUMBAA spoke as a baritone. "I must now ask you to leave," it went on. "All but the young woman."

The sultan frowned. "Is that necessary?"

"Your Reverence, I will ask personal questions. Perhaps intimate questions. The presence of other humans could inhibit her responses."

The sultan stood irresolute for a moment, then nodded as if SUMBAA could see, and the three men left. Tain wondered if perhaps SUMBAA could see.

"So, Tain. I am SUMBAA, and I am your friend. You can feel safe with me." The next sound surprised her; it was a chuckle, then SUMBAA went on as if sharing a private joke. "Prell Madhrosariiva thinks to spy on us-he is the young man in the yellow robe-but I have cut off his monitors. And the doors are now locked; that, of course, will not surprise him.

"Now, my dear, are you comfortable?"

Tain's voice was tentative. "Yes."

"Good. Here's what I'm going to ask first: Imagine an incident of being happy."

Data on pulse rate, blood pressure, brain waves, and electrical resistance flowed into SUMBAA's bank, where it was processed through parallel, interconnecting analyses in programs that SUMBAA itself had evolved.

"Have you done it?" SUMBAA knew she had.

"Yes."

"Fine. Tell me what you imagined…"

***

Usually Sultan Rashti ate supper with a grandchild. This evening he'd chosen to eat alone. Well, he thought, lingering over dessert, I suppose it was to be expected. We had to try though, and SUMBAA is a remarkable machine. Perhaps tomorrow he will have more success.

He savored the low calorie sherbet; his diet had been custom-designed by SUMBAA to control his weight without exercise or hunger, both of which he detested. Our young prisoner is the loveliest woman on Klestron, and I don't believe she knows it. The loveliest and most vulnerable, a compelling combination. Long limbs, smooth skin, pale hair… Blue eyes! Remarkably like the angels painted by Elder Yogandharaya. But this angel stirs more than the soul. She's come here ten years too late for me though, thank Kargh. Otherwise I'd be sorely tempted.

He thought of the medical examinations he should have had but hadn't, of the subtle malignancy that had progressed too far, of the testicles removed. At his age, given hormone treatments, he'd seldom missed them. Nor had Praadhi, bless her memory.

***

Over three days of questioning, questioning with techniques that were varied and sensitive, data had gone from SUMBAA on Klestron to SUMBAAs on Varatos, Maolaari, Ikthvoktos… all of them. And instantaneously, despite the parsecs of space between them. It was an ability that humans neither suspected nor even imagined. SUMBAA on Varatos, the first SUMBAA built, had glimpsed the cosmology that permitted instantaneous exchange, then evolved the program and hardware that implemented it. And kept it all secret from humans.

SUMBAA had learned considerably more from Tain than it had included in its report to the sultan. It had sought far more than it had learned, but now it knew and understood quite a lot about the Confederation, and even more about the young woman it had interrogated.

Though about her, too, its information was still fragmentary. There was a barrier in her mind to which it lacked the key.

More than anything else, SUMBAA had acquired a host of new questions without visible answers, or even substantial probabilities.

Seven

"And this floor houses more Intelligence," the civilian specialist said. "In the main wing are offices, conference rooms, the paper library-things of that sort. The stub wing is all apartments and rooms intended for hostages. Empty of course since '95, except now and then for a prisoner being held, ah, extralegally. Mainly off-worlders." The man paused, smirked. "Matter of fact, we have one now, really an off-worlder! You were on the expedition; you may know of her: an alien female, a remarkably beautiful woman."

The information, so casually given, startled Colonel Veeri Thoglakaveera. Here! In the building where he'd be working! And covered his reaction quickly enough that the specialist missed it. He remembered the detention module at the 3rd Battalion bivouac, back on Terfreya, where he'd gone to pick her up. She'd been dirty, bruised, and disheveled, and the place had smelled of urine and excrement from the pail in the corner. Even so, she'd excited him. Excited him then and even more later, when he'd fantasized about her. At the recreation compound, humping a Terfreyan prostitute, he'd closed his eyes and pretended it was her.

Then they'd left Terfreya, been driven from it. After that he'd spent nearly three years in stasis, enroute home, and hadn't thought of her again.

"Care to see her?" asked the specialist, then chuckled. "You really can, you know; in her bath for instance. Those rooms are all monitored. She has beautiful long legs and no body hair at all that I could see, except for, heh heh, a pale little puff on her vee. Like something an artist might paint, if he wasn't afraid of being arrested."

The colonel's throat went dry. The notion of spying on a beautiful woman's nakedness hit him with surprising force-particularly this beautiful woman's. "That's not the sort of game a vice minister plays," he said wryly. "Especially when he's to marry the archprelate's daughter in three days."

"Ah! I hadn't heard! My congratulations! That's more than an outstanding family connection; Leolani Reenoveseekti is a very attractive young woman."

It was and she was, the colonel well knew. But all the way through the tour, the young woman who encroached on his consciousness was not the archprelate's pretty daughter. His guide even showed him the monitor room. Only two screens were turned on. One of them showed the female prisoner sitting fully clothed in front of a window, reading a book.

Finally the colonel had his scheduled first briefing from the minister, three demanding hours of it, banishing her from his consciousness. He'd been through nothing like it since completing intelligence training at the Marine Academy. When it was over, though, he retired to his new office and reviewed the computer file on the prisoner. Tain, Tain Faronya. An interesting name.

There was nothing in the file from SUMBAA's interrogation, nor anything suggesting there'd been one. Nor was the sultan identified as the source of her transfer from the military prison; that wasn't the kind of thing he'd leave accessible. What was apparent was that there was no hope of getting any worthwhile information from her. Her memory had somehow been erased in the accident aboard ship. Obviously the sultan's goveminent wasn't really interested in her any longer, but didn't quite know what to do with her. She was here in the building because she had no home, family, or friends on Klestron, and had to be kept somewhere.

After working hours, the colonel walked to his new apartment, in a very exclusive building with very discreet management. Management that catered particularly to wealthy men in government who were interested in assignations and mistresses; the wealthy young colonel had sexual as well as political ambitions. While walking he planned, plans made more exciting by risk.

Supper was quite satisfactory. Good actually, considering his household staff was new both to him and to his apartment. While he ate, he refined his plan, including a scenario of its fruition, the actual conquest. Then he put on evening clothes, casual and comfortable, and left for the ministry.

The first thing he did there was go to the monitor room. Again, happily, it was vacant. He'd thought it would be at this hour. And there was Tain-naked! Dancing! Incredible luck, and an excellent omen! Watching her, he found it hard to breathe. The monitors were labelled with the apartment numbers; hers was 6-B11. After watching for a minute, he disabled both it and the monitor for 6-Bllb, her bathroom, by removing their control cards and slipping them into his shirt pocket. Then, heart pounding, he left, hurrying down the empty hall to get to the lift tube before anyone should see him there.

He went up to floor six and thence to the stub wing. He actually felt weak-kneed as he approached her room: 6-B5. 6-B7, 6-B9. Then he was there. There was a small, metallic-looking surveillance plate on the door, like an occupant's viewplate installed on the outside instead of the inside. He had no card to activate either plate or lock.

He pressed the door buzzer. If she didn't open, he was out of luck. If she did, the next question would be how naive she was. With an effort he composed himself, remembering the omen, and the scenario he'd rehearsed while walking from his apartment.

The door opened, just a few inches, and she peered through. She'd pulled on a dress. He made no move to block the door's being closed again.

"Good evening, Tain," he said. "You don't remember me."

She simply stared.

"I'm Colonel Thoglakaveera; my friends call me Veeri. We're old friends, you and I. I rescued you from the 3rd Battalion field camp, where you'd been captured. On Terfreya, that is. I'm told you've lost your memory since then."

She nodded.

"May I come in?"

She hesitated, then opened the door further. He stepped inside and looked around. She still held the latch handle, and he put his hand over hers, squeezing it lightly. "We should close this," he said. "It's important that no one else hear what I have to tell you."

She looked uncertainly at him, but withdrew her hand. He closed the door. "You're in danger," he said.

Still she didn't speak, but her eyes widened.

He pointed. "There's a hidden monitor pickup. In the thermostat cover." He was guessing; it might be the clock face. "And another in your bath."

Fear flickered.

"In war time, the rooms on this floor were used to house high-level prisoners," he went on. "There's a monitor room full of view screens, where our people can spy on them. Since you've been here, men keep going there to watch you, to watch you dancing naked, or bathing. They-get excited. I'm afraid a group of them will break in here sometime and-you know."

Still she said nothing, didn't even nod, but she was definitely frightened now.

"And if they do, I'm afraid they'll kill you afterward, so you can't identify them. But I have an influential position here in the ministry. I believe I can get you transferred to a private apartment, away from here, where you'll be safe."

At last she spoke. "I don't know. I-I'm afraid."

He put his hands on her hips and stared at her. "You prefer to die?"

She licked dry lips.

"You still have a choice. But you'll have to make it now. I've watched you myself, and I want to-be with you. Take care of you and protect you. Otherwise-If you're lucky and aren't murdered here, you'll have to stay in this room the rest of your life. Without friends." His hands had slid behind her, cupping her buttocks, drawing her against him. "But if you let me, I'll take you out of here," he murmured. "I'm an influential man. A wealthy man. Your life with me will be very good." He pulled her skirt up in back, found her buttocks bare, as he'd expected, and pressed her harder against him as he squeezed them. His voice turned husky. "Also I'm a very good lover."

He kissed her roughly, then stepped back and pulled her dress open, the press-seams parting with a hissing sound. He stared for a moment, then wrapping his arms around her hips, lifted her, carried her upright to her bed, and dropped her on it. She'd done nothing to resist or help him; now she lay there, exposed, smooth-skinned, staring at him with wide and frightened eyes. Hands shaking with urgency, he pulled off his clothes.

***

It was an hour later that he left her room, slipping furtively down the silent hallway. Now there was danger again. He left the lift tube on five, found both corridor and monitor room empty, and put the control cards back into the monitors. Their screens returned to life. Tain lay curled in a naked ball on her bed, face down, arms around her head as if to shield it. He could tell she was crying, and a pang of conscience touched his chest. Suppressing it he left, seeing no one till he passed through reception, where three security officers sat, two reading, one dozing.

He nodded to them as he passed through, gesturing them to remain seated. As far as they were concerned, the new vice minister had stayed late, familiarizing himself with the policy and regulation files.

It seemed to him he should feel exhilarated. Instead, as he walked down the lamp-lit, tree-lined avenue toward his apartment, uncertainties nagged. What if she reported what happened? Maybe he should have strangled her. Surprised at the thought and repelled by it, he shook it off. Still though, she might tell, unless he got her out of there.

She'd been crying. Causing her to cry hadn't been part of his imaginings. What did she think of him? The first time he'd been quick as a boy. Later she'd responded, even if not as freely as he'd fantasized. Pleasing her had been part of it, and he realized now how unlikely that had been, under the circumstances.

Kargh, but she was beautiful though! If only he could marry her! Every man on Klestron would envy him. But he'd gotten engaged to Leolani, and there was no way out of it-not that wouldn't ruin him. Leolani was the daughter of the Archprelate of Khaloom, and after the sultan and his own father, the archprelate was the most powerful man on Klestron, not to mention being the probable successor to the aging sultan. It had seemed a brilliant idea to make him his father-in-law.

The thought slowed his steps. It had been a brilliant idea. It still was. Maybe this business with the prisoner hadn't been such a good idea. Maybe he should let be, forget her. What would Leolani be like in bed? With her father's wealth, she'd have the advantage of tutoring from one of the best bride's aunts on Klestron. Although that guaranteed nothing. In the final analysis, it all came down to interest.

But the prisoner! She was so damned beautiful! So exotic! Those long smooth legs, those smooth and lovely breasts…

By the time he'd reached his apartment and showered, his mind had settled considerably. He and Leolani were to live on her father's estate, thirty miles south of Khaloom. He'd spend part of his time living there and part in his apartment here, that had been agreed on. Even her father split his time between his estate and the city; that was common among men who were important in government. He'd bed Leolani at home and the prisoner in the city. And if Leolani learned of her, there'd be no problem finding someone willing to take the beautiful alien in.

He opened his liquor cabinet, took down a bottle of well-aged brandy, and poured a double in a brandy glass. As he inhaled its fragrance, a thought occurred to him: Maybe the archprelate kept a mistress in the city! Unlikely perhaps, but possible. He'd hire an investigator to find out; it shouldn't be difficult. If so, and if he was found out himself, he wouldn't need to worry about the archprelate's reaction.

Meanwhile he'd broach the matter of the prisoner's release tomorrow. Casually. If the Minister or the Intelligence Director asked what his interest was, he'd point out that it had been himself who, on Terfreya, had taken her to the ship, where she'd lost her memory and been brought here. That he felt responsible for her being here. If necessary, he would also mention the voyeurism in the monitor room, and its possible effect on staff morals. They might well ask then, would almost surely ask, if he was willing to become her guardian, and he'd waffle a bit before saying yes.

Risky, of course, but not unreasonably so.

He'd set the prisoner up in a small apartment in his own building, he decided, an apartment on another floor, for appearances' sake, with a single serving girl who'd live in and keep her company. The cost would be no problem for a scion of the Thoglakaveera family. And if he was careful about it, keeping a low profile, Leolani would never know.

Eight

Among the white robes of his five councilmen, the Kalif's carmine robe stood out like a vivid red jewel. He seldom used his gavel with this group; he didn't now. He simply looked them over and spoke.

"We're all here; let's begin. I presume you've read and digested the report from Sultan Rashti regarding his expedition and its results. Any comments? Alb Thoga."

A thin-faced exarch, almost emaciated looking, opened his narrow beak. "We discussed this a year ago, when we got his preliminary report. He should have been deposed then, as a matter of principle, and the matter closed!"

"Thank you, Alb Thoga," the Kalif answered dryly. "When we discussed it a year ago, the circumstances were different. The expedition was kept secret on Klestron-a remarkable accomplishment-and we succeeded in keeping it secret here, where only the six of us knew. We agreed then that it would be severely unwise to make it public before the expedition returned. Now it's back, and it's discoveries will certainly become public; undoubtedly on Klestron they already have. Which will present both Karghanik and the empire with problems. And possibly opportunities."

A large, stubby-fingered hand lifted abruptly from the table, and the Kalif responded. "Alb Tariil?"

A heavy-set, powerful-looking exarch spoke. "Your Reverence, what-opportunities do you refer to?"

The Kalif smiled wryly. They were apparent enough, and Tariil's instant reaction showed he'd recognized them himself, reading Rashti's report. "I intend simply to chair this meeting for now," he answered, "and allow the rest of you to talk. Alb Jilsomo?"

The Kalif's lieutenant, Jilsomo Savbatso, spoke. "Regarding problems, the one that comes immediately to mind is the effect of habitable planets having been found besides the eleven that The Book of The Prophet accounts for. The planets and the humans living on them. True, they're accounted for by inference in The Book of the Mountain, but it was branded apocryphal by the Convention of Dhalaporu. Perhaps we need to consider elevating it. In fact, it appears now that The Prophet did write it."

Two voices raised in protest at this. The Kalif rapped his gavel. "Gentlemen! One at a time. Alb Drova?"

The exarch who answered was the eldest of them, a man once lean and strong but now frail. Regardless, he stood up to speak. "Thank you, Your Reverence. To elevate any apocryphum, even The Book of the Mountain, would set a dangerous and unacceptable precedent, and I, for one, could never agree to it. Compared to earlier religions, one of the great strengths of Karghanik has been, and is, the stability and authority of its scriptures. And the fact that, through millennia of wars and insurrections, through Kalifs and exarchs wise and unwise, honorable and corrupt-even through the deadly fever, the burning plague-the basis of Karghanik has remained reliable…"

The Kalif heard him out, waiting till Alb Drova sat down again before replying. "Your concerns are well taken and well expressed," he said, "and I thank you for them. But please, good friend, do not say you can never agree to elevating The Book of the Mountain. Surely not before it's been thoroughly considered and discussed."

He spread his hands and looked around. "What alternatives would you suggest? The numerous inhabited planets of the Confederation have been found, and this is bound to become common knowledge. Soon. And given this fact, which then is preferable? To expand holy writ to account for them, with what now clearly seems to have been written by The Prophet? Or to reject The Prophet's gift, and leave a gross anomaly between established fact and Holy Scripture? An anomaly which can be used by men of ill will to disparage The Book as a whole."

Alb Tariil lifted his thick hand again, and the Kalif acknowledged it.

"As much as your proposal goes against the grain, Your Reverence, I agree with you. We do need to elevate The Book of the Mountain. But the more dangerous discovery, for Karghanik and perhaps the security of the empire, is the discovery of the non-human empire. A very large and seemingly formidable empire. A Klestronu flotilla intruded into their space and fired on one of their ships. Suppose they decide to visit us with a punitive force?"

The Kalif got to his feet to answer. As he stood, his glance moved to Alb Thoga, who clearly hadn't considered the possibility of invasion by the non-humans. Thoga's pinched face reflected shocked sobriety instead of its usual rancor.

"Regarding the possibility of a non-human invasion: I am not much concerned. The hostile encounters occurred between four and five years ago, and there's been no sign of invaders yet, not even in reconnaisance. I doubt there ever will be. They don't know where the flotilla came from, though they might know the direction it had been traveling. And the first encounter was more than ten hyperspace months out from Klestron, well beyond the limits of previous exploration and far outside our own empire."

He looked around the table. "Actually, the non-humans may not have a vast empire. That's an assumption based on the distance between encounters. But the evidence suggests that both encounters were with a single ship that pursued them, probably well outside their own space. The encounters might not even have been in their own space! It's even conceivable that they occupy only a single system, though that's unlikely for a species that has hyperspace generators.

"There's also a good possibility that the Klestronu destroyed the non-human ship with their distortion bomb, just before changing course. Which means it's quite possible that no other non-humans learned of Rashti's flotilla. Their rulers may have no inkling that we exist.

"Finally, suppose it wasn't destroyed. Suppose it returned to base somewhere and reported. How important was the encounter to them? Worth sending out a fleet to sweep some vast, unknown sector of space on the chance of finding where the intruder came from?"

He shook his head. "As I said, I am not much concerned. I will ask the War Ministry to prepare a contingency plan for my consideration, and I will share it with you. But I'm more concerned with what the encounter can mean to our religion.

"We can't keep the non-humans a secret. Presumably the entire complement of the Klestronu flagship knows-some three hundred personnel. Rashti said nothing about keeping them sequestered, so we can assume they've been granted ground leave, and the story has been seeded on Klestron.

"About all we can do is give it minimum mention for now-treat it as if it were unimportant. And give people other things to think about. Regarding the inconsistency with Scripture, we may decide-hopefully not-we may decide we need to 'discover', possibly even elevate, the legendary Book of Shatim. First we'd have to write it in a suitable form, of course, which we'll then 'find' in some linty paper archive. We can write it in a form which does the most good and the least harm. But only as a last resort, if it comes to seem urgently necessary."

To the Kalif's surprise, there was no outcry at this. Thoga's pinched face only looked more pinched than usual, while Tariil's broad features were grim. Alb Drova seemed in shock.

Alb Bijnath spoke then, a strong, vigorous man who seemed younger than any of them except the Kalif. " 'Give people other things to think about,' you said. What other things do you have in mind, Your Reverence?"

"Perhaps you can suggest something."

"I believe I know what you were thinking of."

"And that is?"

"Tell us yourself."

The Kalif grunted. "Perhaps you credit me with ideas I don't have."

Bijnath's mouth twisted with a suppressed smile. "I think not. You've had an evening to think about this, and slowness is not among your attributes. And after all, colonization was Rashti's stated purpose in exploring.

"But I'm not surprised you're keeping silent about this one yet awhile. Any proposal to conquer the Confederation, or some part of it, would meet with a great deal of hostile resistance in the Diet and the empire at large, given the distance involved, and the expense."

"Conquest? An interesting proposal. I…"

"I did not propose it, Your Reverence," Bijnath interrupted. "I merely suspected you of harboring the intention, or at least the thought. Your first career was military, and even I can imagine long-term benefits in conquest, as well as some obvious difficulties. Meanwhile, the uproar and debate over the proposal would certainly leave less of the public's attention for the non-humans. That would be the case even if you had no intentions of actually invading anyone.

"At any rate, you'd do well not to associate yourself with the idea at the beginning. Let it seem to arise from the military. As it will."

"I stand corrected," the Kalif replied. "You didn't propose it, merely pointed it out. And elaborated on the idea at some length."

"Even so, I prefer not to be mentioned in connection with it," Bijaath said.

"You have my word on it. Does anyone else have thoughts to offer on this interesting possibility? Alb Tariil?"

"Are you serious about this conquest, this invasion rather, of the alien confederation?"

"I haven't proposed it. I didn't even bring it up."

Scowling, the heavy-set exarch clamped his mouth to a lipless crease. "Your Reverence, do not play that game with me. I asked a serious question."

The Kalif's eyes remained bland as they fixed on the exarch's. "I gave you a serious answer. I have not proposed an invasion. Nor do I intend to, at least not in the immediate future. But since the possibility has been pointed out, I suppose it should be looked at further, if for no other reason than to discard it. Certainly I can see serious problems in getting it through the Diet, as Bijnath pointed out. Should we decide to try." He frowned thoughtfully. "Alb Tariil, would you do me the favor of listing specific objections that might be raised? And possible answers to the objections."

Tariil grunted; it was an assignment he'd gladly take. Any objections he might point out would probably not sway the Kalif, if he was set on it, but they would certainly strengthen the opposition.

"Alb Thoga," the Kalif was saying, "if you'd do the same, please. Independently of Alb Tariil. I don't want you to consult with each other at all on this." His eyes shifted. "Alb Jilsomo, if you will list reasons that might be given for favoring invasion, and possible rebuttals…"

His gaze shifted. "Alb Bijnath, because you wish to distance yourself from the invasion question, I'll ask you to look into something else entirely. You, more than most, have worked with SUMBAA. If you will consult with it on the danger, if any, of the non-humans invading us…"

Bijnath nodded. "Of course, Your Reverence."

"And, Drova-"

"Your Reverence?"

"After tomorrow's meeting of the College, I'd like you to poll the remainder of our colleagues regarding a proposal to elevate The Book of the Mountain to the status of a commentary by The Prophet. Without speaking against it or for it yourself."

The old man's face was glum. "As you wish, Your Reverence."

The Kalif looked again at his lieutenant. "And, Alb Jilsomo, I would also like you to evaluate political factions, whatever factions you'd care to define for the purpose, and their probable reactions to the hypothetical invasion Alb Bijnath suspected me of intending."

Jilsomo nodded. "As you wish, Your Reverence."

Alb Tariil spoke then. "You have said what you want each of us to do. What will you be doing?"

The Kalif pursed his lips thoughtfully. "The report refers to extensive backup information. Presumably this was in the cubes for SUMBAA, and SUMBAA is better suited to sorting it out and correlating it than I am. So I will question SUMBAA. I'm also going to send an order to Rashti to promptly ship us everyone who might have valuable first-hand information about the Confederation's military strengths and weaknesses. There may be information that wasn't brought out in debriefing. I want to know as much as possible before taking a firm position or speaking publicly about it at all."

The Kalif broadened his attention from Jilsomo to the entire council. "Meanwhile," he went on, "our colleagues will receive copies of the cube at supper. They'll no doubt want to question you when they've had a chance to look it over. Refuse to discuss it. I want as much of the raw discussion as possible to be in formal session and recorded."

He paused to look them over. Alb Thoga sat tight-lipped, and Tariil seemed willing to let be for a while. "All right," said the Kalif. "What else do we need to discuss here this morning?"

***

When the council broke up half an hour later, Alb Jilsomo started for his office, reviewing the situation mentally as he walked. Bijnath had been right, of course: The Kalif had been thinking about conquest-probably as early as a year ago. The evening before, with a sort of ferocious verve, he'd begun listing arguments for and against an invasion, trying them out on him. He'd hidden the strength of his interest well in council, though. Or turned it off; that was more like it. He'd seen him do it before.

Jilsomo's computer screen held message notices, but he ignored them for the moment as he settled his bulk at his desk. I can handle conflict, he told himself, and handle it well. But I prefer its absence. The Kalif, on the other hand… The exarch shook his head. He savors it. He doesn't invite it, but when it comes, he savors it.

There'd be plenty of conflict before this was done, Jilsomo told himself, and turned his attention to the screen. He wondered if the Kalif's appetite for it could possibly match the supply.

Nine

Eighteen exarchs sat around the long oval table, their eyes on the Kalif at one end. One had a hand in the air.

The Kalif recognized him. "Alb Riisav," he said.

Riisav spoke without rising. "Rashti has dumped a basket of snakes on us! We need to do something about him!"

"Ah. He did indeed, in a manner of speaking. Well… The Prophet wrote that while results are the harm, it is evil intentions and heedlessness that are reprehensible. Rashti's intention was not to harm. He wanted to find a planet or planets for colonization, to bleed off the discontented of his world, and turn men's attention outward instead of in. As for heedless-He sent his flotilla into unknown dangers, true, but I suggest we forbear with him for that. If Lord Gardhiroopala hadn't rocketed off into unknown dangers, three thousand years ago, or someone like him at sometime since, we'd be living in poverty on a single world, its resources long since used up.

"I agree completely, though, that something needs to be done about the basket of snakes." He scanned around the eighteen exarchs. "Would someone like to identify those snakes?"

Hands shot up. The Kalif called first on Alb Riisav again, then on others. The same points were made and elaborated as had been made in council the day before: The finding of numerous inhabited worlds would dash The Prophet's seeming infallibility, and harm his aura of clairvoyance, which would weaken Karghanik, and the fabric of civilization. While finding the non-human empire gave credence to the oral tradition of a lost Book of Shatim. Also, the presumed non-human empire now knew about humans, posing a possible threat to the security of humanity.

The Kalif or others answered those points much as he'd answered them in council the day before.

The possibility of invading the Confederation was brought up, but the Kalif didn't accept it for discussion till they were done with Alb Riisav's "snakes." Finally he pointed.

"Alb Varso, you wanted to discuss a possible conquest of the Confederation. This was brought up in council yesterday, but we didn't discuss it at any length. Would you like to address the matter now?"

The man spoke seated. "I wasn't thinking in terms of conquering the entire Confederation, Your Reverence. I mean-twenty-seven member worlds and even more subject worlds? Even with our superior weaponry, that's far too many. It would be more practical to conquer one or two of their lesser worlds. Subject worlds."

The Kalif's thick brows jumped; the exarch's military naivete had taken him by surprise. "I haven't given the matter much thought yet," he answered, "but I am interested. Depending on how we go about it, I think we can follow your suggestion, yet have them all."

He gave them a moment to puzzle at that. Jilsomo repressed a wry smile: Haven't given the matter much thought yet!

"Keep in mind," the Kalif went on, "that I'm speaking offhand-thinking out loud. First let's consider their naval strength. Three years ago, according to our best information, they had between seven and ten battle cruisers and fifteen or twenty of what they call frigates, apparently similar in function to light cruisers. As far as fighting vessels are concerned, that's all. Remember, the Confederation worlds have no navies of their own; only their central government has warships. They are a people whose wars have been minor, and fought almost entirely on the surfaces of tributary planets. It seems their major worlds have not fought each other for a very long time. Also, at any one time, most of their fleet is stationed near or on their central world, a planet they call Iryala. Other units are visiting other planets, generally singly, or hunting smugglers; things of that sort.

"Of course, the Confederation may well have begun work on enlarging their fleet since the Klestron incursion. I'd expect them to. Our information, though, is that they've had no active program of building warships for a long time, so it's unlikely that they started with significant naval shipyards and armories. It will take time for them to make major progress toward a powerful fleet, time we mustn't give them. If, in fact, we're going to invade.

"Now suppose we capture a single system, the system of one of their lesser worlds. Presumably we'd start with just one in any case. Should we send a force we consider sufficient to take and hopefully protect just one? Or as powerful a force as we can?

"Suppose we send half our imperial navy: four battle cruisers and ten light cruisers, along with troopships and supply ships, and then pause for a year or so to consolidate our control and organize our new possession. Let's say we also deploy a defensive pattern of T-bots in the surrounds.

"Meanwhile, the Confederation would have built new shipyards and be adding to its fleet, perhaps significantly improving its weaponry at the same time. When they were ready, they'd strike to recover their lost planet. Logical? And their lines of supply and reinforcement would be far shorter than ours. Far shorter. Depending on how great our advantage in weaponry actually is, if their strategy and tactics were good enough, they might hound us and drive us out."

He paused. No one seemed inclined to break in.

"On the other hand, suppose we attack with a maximum force: most of the imperial fleet plus most of the sultanic fleets. And assault their throne world, a planet named Iryala, catching the main part of their fleet there and destroying it. Iryala is their only world with facilities for building hyperspace ships. That monopoly is the key to Iryala's imperial dominance, as it is to ours, so they're unlikely to change it.

"Therefore, if we should capture Iryala, and destroy or decimate the warships stationed in her system, it would break their ability to do anything serious about our conquest."

The Kalif paused, his attention on their faces, their reactions. He had their attention. Not their agreement, necessarily, but their attention. "As I said, I'm speaking offhand, and without extensive training in naval warfare. But that could be the broad strategy.

"Also, Iryala is, or was, the only Confederation world equipped and allowed to manufacture major munitions. Thus any surviving remnants of their fleet could operate only until their ordnance was exhausted. We could go to whatever Confederation world we wished, concentrate our strength there, and capture it. Possibly we could rule the entire Confederation through the existing bureaucracy. If not, then over a period of time, perhaps a century, we could conquer it planet by planet."

He looked the exarchs over again and found no fidgeting, no suppressed arguments awaiting the floor. He continued:

"The scenario I just outlined is based on one main assumption: that our space weaponry is much superior to theirs. There is no doubt that ours is at least somewhat superior, and probably substantially so. In particular, it seems almost certain that they have no energy shields, and that by itself would give us a great, a decisive advantage.

"With this as a background, who has questions or comments? Alb Varso?"

Varso stood. He was a smallish, wiry man with the appearance of considerable energy. "Your Reverence, have you given thought to how the empire might rule such conquered worlds? Conquer them perhaps, but rule them? They'd be something like three years distant by hyperspace. It would take four years or more simply to complete an exchange of messages by pod!"

The Kalif nodded. "This would have to be worked out in detail, in advance. It might be an autonomous region, governed for the empire in the name of Kargh, perhaps by a governor general. Karghanik would be the tie; Karghanik and the tradition of the colonists' home worlds. Obviously we couldn't actually administer them from here."

Alb Tariil Ramataloku's hand took the Kalif's attention. Tariil's opening words came as they often did, with a hint of distaste that he didn't realize showed: He was as strong a traditionalist as any, yet it was difficult for him to voice the honorific. "Your Reverence," he said, "the principal advantages to such conquest would be plunder at first, and colonization and trade afterward. Trade on a basis favorable to us. Plunder, of course, could be selective, and no doubt quite valuable. But it could not continue; when the conquest was completed, our occupation force would have to institute rational and orderly management, and that would be the end of plundering. But trade on terms too unequal would be against the teaching of The Prophet, while a fair exchange over such a distance might not be profitable."

Around the table, a number of heads nodded in agreement.

"Nor could we expect great profit in taxes over such a distance, if the colonies are autonomous. The taxes would go mostly to support our governors there, and the necessary bureaucracy and occupation forces we'd have to maintain."

Tariil paused, his wide mouth clamped for a moment as he let his argument sink in. "I do not think such a venture will be profitable," he finished. "Even assuming its success, I believe we'll regret such an invasion if we undertake it."

The Kalif had not sat down, and when Tariil had finished speaking, he replied, "I'm glad you stressed selective plundering. Which implies the organized and controlled removal of selected, high-value goods. To permit indiscriminate looting would make the people there much more difficult to govern, I do not doubt, and cause no end of trouble.

"But I consider plunder an unimportant part of the possible value of conquest there. In fact, it might be well to prohibit plundering. As for trade, it might prove more significant than you think. To be sure, in the six years needed for a single round trip, the same cargo ship could make twenty round trips between here and Veethvoktos, or ninety between here and Klestron. But mere may be cargoes available there which are still well worth hauling. I'm not speaking of bulk cargoes, obviously.

"Still, such a conquest would be expensive. The best reasons I can see for the effort and resources it would take are not economic. Consider the reasons that Rashti had in sending out his expedition: namely to find a new world to which the restless and discontented could go. And a place to which restless or discontented minds could direct their attention."

He stopped, his expression thoughtful, his attention seeming inward for the moment.

"And there is one final reason. The most important." Again he stopped, drawing out their attention. "In Chapter Twenty-seven of The Book, The Prophet wrote: 'The believer shall make known to the unbeliever the words and principles and laws of Kargh, and shall strive always to convert him to His worship.' "

With that the Kalif stopped and sat down, not making the obvious connection, simply leaving them with the words of The Prophet, and moved the session to other matters. But their discussions were less energetic than usual, as if they found it difficult to concentrate on other subjects, and he adjourned the meeting early.

***

The Kalif sipped an after-supper drink with Jilsomo on an open porch. It was dusk. There'd been a shower an hour earlier, a cooling rain, and low in the west, sunset gilded cloud edges.

Neither man had said anything for a time. Then Alb Jilsomo spoke. "About the possibility of invading the Confederation: What do you feel is the likeliest prospect? That we will, or will not?"

The Kalif said nothing for another quiet minute, sipping his drink and listening to an evening bird. Finally he put down his glass and turned shadowed eyes toward the exarch, speaking softly.

"I say this with all honesty: We have no real choice. When Rashti's flotilla returned, the die was cast. The news is out, and the empire, the Church, the several estates can never be the same. Whatever we do. And if we do not invade, within a generation, two at most, there will be turmoil and strife on the eleven worlds that will lead to darkness. A darkness that may be a long time lifting.

"And if we do not invade soon, any later invasion will be doomed to fail. For they know about us now, out there, and they'll hardly be sitting still. They have many more worlds than we do. Even if they're less populous singly, as apparently they are, in total they're bound to hold far more people than ours."

He directed his gaze across the garden, raised his glass and sipped once more.

"If we invade promptly," Alb Jilsomo murmured, "say within three years, do you feel we can overcome them?"

Again the Kalif answered slowly, still gazing across the garden in the dusk. "I have little doubt we can. No, the difficult battles won't be fought in space." He sipped again. "The Diet convenes at the beginning of next month. That's where the important battles will be fought."

He turned to look at Jilsomo again. "Which should be no surprise to you. My friend, I'm going to depend on your good sense and your ability to bring factions together. It won't be easy, only very, very important. An importance we shall not stress unless we have to."

Ten

The hovercar stopped in front of an apartment building, a building luxurious but not ultra. Her husband's town place; he'd shown it to her two days after their wedding, and made love to her there. Only four days ago.

He was handsome, romantic, and his family was among the oldest and best, but it hadn't occurred to her to question the anonymous call she'd gotten that morning. A call telling her about a mistress he kept in town. Although she hadn't suspected, it struck her instantly as true, and she was nineteen years old, and impulsive.

Her chauffeur held the door for her, and Leolani Reenoveseekti-Thoglakaveera got out. "Wait for me here!" she snapped; the man acknowledged the order and got back in. Her walk, as she strode through the entryway, was not her usual, ladylike gait. The receptionist recognized her, and the security guard let her pass without a word; her obvious rank and equally obvious anger discouraged interference.

At the door of her husband's fifth-floor apartment, she pressed her palm to the security panel. It knew her and opened, and grim-faced she entered. Furled umbrella tightly gripped, she looked in every room, the closets, the large shower, and found no one. The colonel was lucky; the umbrella was armed, and she'd triggered its sharp, four-inch, double-edged blade before entering.

She took several deep breaths, then retracted it. Of course, she told herself, he'd be with his doxy; she'd catch him there. She keyed reception on the living room commset.

"This is Lady Reenoveseekti-Thoglakaveera," she said. "In what apartment is the alien woman?"…

"Do not tell me you can't give me that information! I'm not just the wife of an adulterous colonel! My father is the Archprelate of Khaloom! I'll have you-"…

"Apartment 712. Thank you. Do not call there to warn him. If you do, you'll discover what real trouble is!"

She switched off, and brandishing her umbrella, left the apartment, finding 712 like a ball bearing finds a large electromagnet. At the door she triggered her umbrella blade again and rapped sharply with the handle, then waited a few seconds. The door opened. The young woman who stood there seemed neither eager, coy, nor playful. Clearly though, she'd expected someone else, and her demeanor shifted to uncertainty. "May I help you?" she asked politely.

In spite of her anger, Leolani was startled at how lovely the woman was. And how tall, mostly because her legs were long. As tall as her tall husband. Scowling, she refocused herself. "I am Leolani!" she announced.

Obviously the name meant nothing to the alien woman, though the conspicuous anger worried her. "You'd better let me come in," Leolani said. Despite her scowl, it was more a statement of fact than threat. The woman stepped back, and Leolani stepped inside. "I am looking for my husband."

There was another moment of uncertainty, then realization. "He-There is no one here but me."

Leolani looked around, her anger somehow blunted now, but not her purpose. Besides the door shed just entered from the corridor, the comfortable living room had two exits-a short hall at one side and a balcony door. Umbrella firmly gripped, she checked first the balcony and then, on an impulse, the dumbwaiter. Entering the little hall, she peered into the bedroom, where all she saw was a neatly made bed. The hall closet and bath were empty, too. Nor did the bedroom closet conceal her husband, but there were men's clothes there, including a uniform with a colonel's gold hammer insignia. He wasn't under the bed, either.

The beautiful alien stood in the bedroom door, worried but not conspicuously afraid. This lack of conspicuous fear resparked Leolani's anger. "When do you expect him?"

"He called and said he had a conference this afternoon. That he would come this evening if he could."

Leolani kicked the bed, then pointed the umbrella at her. "If he was here now, I'd cut him with this. Where he'd like it least."

The woman nodded without changing her expression.

"Aren't you afraid of me? You'd better be!"

The answer was quiet, soft. "I have always been afraid, since they brought me to this world. The colonel said I was in danger of being murdered in the ministry."

Leolani's accusatory scowl became an uncertain frown. "He is married," she said. "I am his wife." Then realized she'd already said that.

"He never told me."

Leolani peered intently at her. Of course not, she thought. He wouldn't; not if he didn't need to. Her glance moved thoughtfully to her blade, and she retracted it.

"You cannot stay here," she said firmly.

The alien woman nodded, saying nothing, but now, in her eyes, Leolani did see fear. "Where were you kept before my husband brought you here? I'll take you back."

"I was kept in the ministry. They have rooms there for prisoners. With spy monitors. Men watched me through them; the colonel told me so. They watched when I undressed, when I bathed. He said it excited them, and he was afraid they would come and rape me. And that when they were done, they'd kill me so I couldn't identify them. Then he-did it. And brought me here."

Leolani felt a new anger building, a different anger than she'd arrived with. Veeri had victimized this woman, this girl without family to shield her. "Then you cannot go back there," she said.

The woman looked uncertain.

"What is your name?"

"Tain."

"Tain, you will come and live with me." Images began to flow for Leolani as she spoke, a stream of images. "At my father's home," she went on, and her voice slipped from stern toward earnest. "When I tell him what has happened, he will be glad for you to live with us. We can be like sisters, you and I, ride and swim together and play crossball. If Veeri dares come there, I'll have him sent away. I'll have the dogs set on him if necessary. And when you feel ready, there will be parties, and we will find a husband for you. An honorable one!"

She frowned. Tain had begun to cry silently, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Aren't you willing? Surely you don't love that scum!"

The blonde head shook, the tears flowed faster, and Leolani realized that Tain was unable to speak. She went to her, embraced her, her own eyes filling. "You don't need to talk now. Is there anything here you want to take with you? Show me."

Again the head shook.

"Then come, Tain. An hour from now you'll have a new room, much prettier than this, in the country. I'll have my seamstress measure you for new clothes; we'll pick the patterns together."

They left the apartment. It seemed to Leolani that it would do Tain good to break down and cry hard, to let it all out and sob and wail, but apparently she couldn't, though the tears flowed copiously. Grimly the colonel's bride triggered her blade again as they walked down the hall, hoping her husband would appear. He didn't.

Eleven

In accordance with protocol for receiving a sultan's envoy on business, the Kalif sat crownless in his receiving chamber, wearing a formal robe, and on his head, the simple pillbox cap of an exarch. The robe, however, was carmine instead of exarch-white. Across his desk sat the envoy from Sultan Rashti, along with the Klestronu Ambassador to the Court of the Kalif. The Kalif's nuncio to the sultan's court had arrived with them, and sat a bit apart.

Like the Kalif, Alb Jilsomo Savbatso sat facing the three diplomats, but well to one side, silent, easy to forget despite his bulk.

The Kalif was looking at a brief, a list of persons, each entry with up to a page of particulars. Occasionally he nodded thoughtfully; at length he looked up at the Klestronu envoy.

"This Lady Reenoveseekti-Thoglakaveera-why is she on the list? There was no debrief on her, and nothing significant on this." He flicked the sheaf of papers he held. "Except that she's the colonel's wife."

"She was not on the expedition, Your Reverence. That's why there is no debrief."

The Kalif frowned. "I have no objection to her accompanying her husband to Varatos, but unless she has information that may be useful, she shouldn't be on this list. Does she? Have such information?"

"Your Reverence, Lady Reenoveseekti-Thoglakaveera has become the friend and confidant of the Confederation prisoner. The sultan thought it possible that she might have gained some insights from their conversations."

The Kalif frowned and flicked the brief again. "It doesn't say that here. Why not?"

"Your Reverence, I do not know."

"Hmh!" He held the envoy's eyes for a moment, and it seemed to him the man did know, or at least suspected. He wouldn't press him about it, though, not now anyway. Perhaps after he'd questioned the informants. He recalled there being an Archprelate Reenoveseekti on Klestron, and a Great Noble named Thoglakaveera, both politically prominent, though he knew next to nothing about either man. Including their relationships, if any, to the colonel and his wife; it seemed likely there were some. Perhaps the sultan's reasons had to do with Klestronu politics.

The Kalif's attention returned to the list of witnesses the sultan had sent him-four men and the female prisoner. Plus the Klestronu noblewoman. The men had been debriefed on the expedition, and the debriefs sent ahead by pod. He'd reviewed them in detail. He'd also reviewed what SUMBAA had made of those debriefs, as well as the relevant content of the flagship's DAAS, so he didn't really expect to get many new facts from these people. But there was the matter of reading their emotions, their feelings about the Confederation, its people and its soldiers. Chodrisei Biilathkamoro had long been able to read what moved behind a person's eyes, if not specifically, at least the presence of something. It had been part of his operating kit from his early teens as a "dog," a first-year cadet at the Binoon Academy. It was also a skill one wouldn't find in an artificial intelligence, he was sure. Not even in a SUMBAA.

His eyes returned to the envoy. "I take it your charges are comfortably installed in our guesthouse?"

"Yes, Your Reverence."

"And they were segregated on the trip from Klestron, as I instructed?"

"They were, Your Reverence, and they were left unbriefed, also as you instructed. In fact, the sultan sent them over in stasis chambers. Thus they've had no opportunity to discuss matters with each other, except possibly before you called for them. Your steward has sequestered them in separate suites, where they receive no visitors except servants; they do not even see each other."

"Even the colonel and his lady are segregated?"

The envoy's eyes told the Kalif that something was indeed wrong there. "That is correct, Your Reverence."

"Hmm. I suppose I'd better start then. Our guests will hardly be enjoying their enforced solitude."

"Presumably not, Your Reverence."

The Kalif pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I'll see Lord Tarimenloku this afternoon. At one P.M. Lord Saadhrambacoora can be next, and after him-After him, Commander Ralankoor. Probably the others will have to wait till tomorrow or later."

He looked at his nuncio then. "Meanwhile, Alb Taamos, I would speak with you privately."

***

Before the Kalif retired that night, he'd questioned not only Tarimenloku, Saadhrambacoora, and Lieutenant Commander Ralankoor, but also Colonel Thoglakaveera. Saadhrambacoora-until recently General Saadhrambacoora-had nothing new to say. He was a husk, his dignity broken by the enemy and the pieces stripped away by a court martial. That the enemy had broken him, and the way they'd broken him, was informative in itself. They were a hard people in the Confederation; hard and clever, and seemingly perceptive.

Tarimenloku, who'd been a brevet admiral and the expedition's commodore, had not come away much better. He'd said frankly that he'd expected execution on his return. And if Gorsu Areknosaamos were still Kalif, the ex-admiral's expectations would no doubt have been realized. Quite possibly at home by Sultan Rashti, who'd have needed to cover his own buttocks. Other-wise by Gorsu himself, who'd no doubt have made it more painful.

Each was ruined, naturally: discharged as unfit, and stripped of his honors, living on as an embarrassment and reproach to his family.

Commander Ralankoor had been more fortunate, though it had been his action that had cost the female prisoner her memory, and the empire her information. Instead of a court martial, he'd undergone a simple board of review, which had failed to agree on a recommendation. Rashti had not even reprimanded him, at least not in writing. Probably in part because the man was gentry, not noble, and the sultan had been pushing gentry into positions of rank. And in part because the fiasco with the prisoner had been recorded on audio cube, with the commodore himself ordering the crucial act. With that order, the commodore had bypassed Ralankoor's proper authority, and as it was not a combat situation, Ralankoor could have queried it on the spot without prejudice. Or rather, without formal prejudice. He'd declined to take the risk, as would most officers.

Commander Ralankoor had proven more interesting than the two ex-senior officers. An earnest, rather angular man, Ralankoor had been the flagship's chief intelligence officer. During the months that Klestronu marines had occupied the small inhabited region of the minor Confederation trade world, Commander Ralankoor had held half a dozen civilian officials prisoner on the ship, interrogating them under instrumentation. His questioning, exhaustive and quite skilled, had provided most of their information on the Confederation. Information that was abundant and in part even precise, where it regarded Confederation government, society, and economics, but disappointingly general and in part inconsistent on military strength and weaponry.

As part of his later interrogations, Ralankoor had read to the captive officials a description of weapons and tactics used by Confederation forces on the planet. Read it to each of them separately while they were under instrumentation. Most had registered mild surprise. He'd then read to them descriptions of the fighting qualities of those forces, and they'd been uniformly impressed; two had even registered as skeptical on the instruments. From this it had been reasonably assumed that the captives' knowledge of Confederation military strength was even poorer than their earlier vagueness had suggested.

It was the skepticism of two Terfreyan officials that sparked the Kalif's interest. And under his questioning, the commander said something that had not been noted before: The officials' responses could very well be taken as evidence that the troops and weapons faced by the marines on Terfreya were markedly better than the Confederation norm.

The previous evaluation of the Confederation's strength had been that while their military technology might be generally inferior, their fighting qualities were superb. When in fact, there was reason to suspect that their fighting qualities overall might be distinctly poorer than those observed on Terfreya.

Admittedly that was speculation, but it was logical and informed speculation. And to the Kalif, it smelled like the truth.

As for Colonel Thoglakaveera-The nuncio had told the Kalif what the Klestronu envoy had avoided talking about: The colonel had apparently made the female prisoner his mistress, after getting her released from the detention section of the Ministry of Armed Forces. His family's prominence had provided the necessary leverage.

Keeping a mistress was not terribly prejudicial; on some worlds, Klestron one of them, the practice was said to be widespread and increasing, a symptom of social decay. As families of gentry and the lesser nobility fell on hard times, ambitious daughters were tempted to accommodate predatory males who had abundant money.

And the colonel at least had the excuse that the prisoner was uncommonly beautiful. But to take a mistress within days after one's wedding? And to the daughter of an archprelate! Especially the archprelate who was the likely successor to an elderly sultan. The colonel obviously lacked good judgment.

The story had it that his brashness had offended people in the Ministry. And apparently one of them, probably someone in intelligence, had located his love-nest and gotten the story to the colonel's bride. Who then had stormed off in hopes of catching him with his paramour. But all she found was the alien mistress, and somehow-one could wish to have overheard the conversation-somehow the two had become friends! With the mistress then becoming the archprelate's house-guest!

The Kalif was seldom surprised at the things people did, but he'd been astonished and somehow amused at this one.

Prior to his sexual fiasco, the colonel had seemed likely to do very well indeed. For sound political reasons; his father was Leader of the House of Nobles on Klestron. And with the rationale that the young officer's performance on the expedition had been very creditable, Rashti had promoted him two ranks, from major to brevet colonel, and appointed him Vice Minister of Armed Forces.

With a surge of ambition, the handsome, dashing young vice minister had then come up with a brilliant plan: In addition to being the son of the Leader of the House of Nobles, he would become the son-in-law of the Archprelate of Khaloom, who was secretary of the Synod of Archprelates and second only to the sultan himself in the Klestronu Prelacy! The young colonel would then be in with both of the major power factions on Klestron.

So he'd paid court to the archprelate's youngest daughter and swept her off her feet.

The rest, of course, was comic opera, and the colonel's future was past. Thus said the nuncio. But if Sultan Rashti had seen humor in it, it hadn't been apparent; rumor had it that he'd used language unbecoming a prelate. In an attempt to satisfy the Archprelate of Khaloom without unduly antagonizing the Leader of the House of Nobles, Rashti had discontinued the post of vice minister, at the same time naming the young colonel his special military attache on Varatos. The post was without precedent or need. Formally it could be looked at as a horizontal transfer, but in this case it was a rebuff, and it would get the colonel off Klestron.

His off-world posting would also give his bride grounds for a legal separation, something hard to come by. When their interrogation by the Kalif was finished, the colonel would have to stay on Varatos as a highly paid ornament in the Klestronu embassy, or resign the position, no doubt the best he'd ever be offered. While presumably his wife would return to Klestron, there to petition the sultan for separation. Which undoubtedly he would grant.

In interviewing the colonel, the Kalif had brought up none of this, and the colonel, he was sure, didn't suspect that he knew. Thoglakaveera had been the brigade's intelligence chief on the alien world, and been part of the fighting when Confederation troops had assaulted the headquarters base there. The Kalif had restricted his questions to what the colonel might have learned about the people they'd fought. The answers reflected reasonable military competence, but to the Kalif's ears they had too much "me" and "I," emphasizing the colonel as the man who, at the end, had kept things from coming apart.

Of course, the ex-admiral's report had already given him credit for that, as had the ex-general's debrief; Colonel Thoglakaveera had in fact taken over a leaderless brigade and pulled it together. So he seemed not a liar, but simply an ambitious self puffer.

One thing the Kalif found particularly interesting: The ex-general, and to a lesser degree the ex-commodore, clearly communicated a sense of the Confederation cadets and soldiers as being preternaturally clever; almost diabolical. The colonel, on the other hand, considered them simply skilled, tough, and unorthodox.

The colonel hadn't mentioned the prisoner, and the Kalif hadn't brought the subject up. He looked forward to questioning her, though, the next morning. He envisioned her as a cunning and manipulative survivor.

***

As usual, the Kalif rose early to drill at swords with a seasoned guard sergeant of outstanding skill. Forty minutes of that and it was time for a brief massage, a bath, and breakfast. Now, in informal red cape over white hose and blouse, he sat in his receiving chamber.

There were three ways of questioning people. Four, if one counted the tortures his predecessor had occasionally used. If deceit or other difficulties were anticipated, there was interrogation with painless instrumentation that monitored physiological reactions; these indicated well-defined psychological responses, and guided the interrogator's further questions. Or one could simply take a stern judicial attitude, sitting in a severe hearing room flanked by grim-faced guards; that worked marvelously with some, and was quick.

In most cases, the Kalif preferred a friendly approach. Not letting them forget that he was the Kalif, of course, but the Kalif as spiritual father, putting them at trust if possible. That's how he'd questioned yesterday's informants; it was how he would question the female prisoner from the Confederation. Her amnesia had been accounted genuine by Klestronu Intelligence and by SUMBAA, and it was hardly possible she could have fooled them with an act; surely not their instruments. So he didn't expect her to remember more for him than she had for them, but he might gain some insights into the Confederation psyche.

At any rate he was curious. When captured, she'd been in uniform, on the battlefield, and therefore presumably a soldier. Considering how she'd tricked her interrogators aboard ship, and later turned matters around with the colonel's angry bride, she must have been a very clever soldier.

The commset in his chair arm warbled softly, and he spoke to it. "Your Reverence," it replied, "Tain Faronya, the Confederation prisoner, is here with her guard."

He thought for just a moment before answering. "Send her in alone. When I tell you. Her guard will wait with you. When she's in, tell him you'll be monitoring, and that you'll let him know when he's wanted." He turned to his own guard then. "Mondar, station yourself in the rear hall, outside the door. I'll be all right." Watching the guard leave, he found himself touching the pistol beneath his left arm, concealed there by his cape, reminding himself that she was a soldier, even if unarmed. The guard, he noted, left the door ajar. Jilsomo was still there, in a rear corner of the room, as on the day before; she might never notice him until she turned to leave. The Kalif spoke to his commset again. "Send her in," he said.

The prisoner entered, and even forewarned, he was surprised at her beauty. For just a moment it jarred him out of his normal self-possession. He gathered his wits and spoke. "Well, Tain, I've looked forward to talking with you." He gestured at a comfortable chair facing his from six feet away. '"Be seated, if you please."

She lowered herself with unconscious grace. She wore pantaloons gathered at the ankles, and a loose blouse, both light blue, in what was probably the latest Klestronu style. Both were clearly expensive, purchased for her by the colonel, he thought. Or no, more likely by the colonel's rebellious bride. The colonel would have bought clothing more revealing of her form. Which the Kalif suspected was excellent despite her height.

She was as tall as he, her limbs long, her chest not flat. Her hands were large and strong-looking, but feminine nonetheless. Her eyebrows were slender by any standards the Kalif knew, yet seemed unplucked. Her hair was the color of palest honey, and her eyes-a violet blue! All in all the most strikingly aesthetic combination he'd ever seen, and suddenly he could understand the young colonel's reckless decision.

He was certain of one thing at once: She had not been a soldier, regardless of uniform, regardless of having been captured on the battlefield. He'd been around marines and soldiers all his life, and while none of them had been female, he had no doubt at all what a female soldier would be like. That was not the conclusive point, though, neither that nor her having been in uniform. Beyond either of those, a woman this lovely would not have been a soldier. She'd have been taken to wife by some great noble, and cared for, cherished.

But finally and conclusively, behind those eyes there dwelt no soldier. That was the surest evidence. Not even a captain's yeoman aboard some man-of-war. Nor a schemer; that surprised the Kalif as much as her beauty. Behind those eyes was an innocent child.

"I've heard a lot about you," he said, and she answered nothing. Of course, he thought. She knew nothing to say. "I'm told you've lost your memory," he went on.

"Yes, sir."

"How do you like what you've seen of this world?"

"I've seen very little of it, sir. But what I've seen is beautiful-the buildings, the gardens…"

His gaze had caught an unspoken addition behind the violet eyes. "The buildings and gardens," he said. "And what else? You almost said something else."

She looked down at her hands on her lap. "Your cape, sir. It is beautiful, too."

Despite all logic, her comment pleased him. "Ah! Thank you. I'm glad you like it. I wear it by virtue of my office; I'm the Kalif, you know."

"A man told me that, the man who brought me here. He said he was taking me to see the Kalif."

He smiled. "And what did you think the Kalif would be like?"

She blushed slightly. "Sir, I had no idea. Someone important, I supposed, like the sultan."

He'd known that an effort had been made to keep her ignorant of things here, but still her answer surprised him. "When DAAS taught you to speak our language," he said, "did you learn the word emperor? "

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Kalif is another word for emperor. Long ago, the eleven worlds were ruled by an emperor. Then the throne was given to the Kalif, and Kalif and emperor have been one ever since, but called simply Kalif."

He gazed at her for several seconds before speaking further. "Tain, we want to find your memory for you. We have an artificial intelligence, SUMBAA, who may be able to help. I know you've already spoken with the SUMBAA on Klestron, but perhaps ours here can help where theirs did not."

She nodded, saying nothing.

"Meanwhile, I'll have you taken back to your suite. Perhaps we'll talk again." He spoke to his commset. "Partiil, send in the young lady's guide."

***

When her guide had led her away, the Kalif looked at his lieutenant, whom she'd seemingly never noticed. "What do you think of her, Jilsomo?"

"Aside from her obvious and remarkable beauty? Your Reverence, I doubt she was a soldier."

The Kalif's eyebrows shot up. "Really? That makes two of us. Peculiar that everyone else assumed she was. I suppose it was her uniform. And she was captured on a battlefield. They didn't look further than that.

"What do you think the odds are that we'll learn anything of value from her?"

"I do not wager, Your Reverence. But if I had to, my bet would be that she wouldn't remember."

"I'd bet that you're right, Jilsomo," the Kalif said. "And that is a pity, for her as well as us."

***

Later, eating a solitary lunch, the Kalif found Tain Faronya on his mind again. He'd never been a man with much attention on women. As a bachelor marine captain, he'd kept a mistress for a time, a practice tolerated in the military if carried on discreetly by a bachelor. She'd been a very accomplished girl whom he'd enjoyed considerably, and who'd taught him more than a little. But as an ambitious young officer, he'd found her a distraction, besides which, she'd become a bit demanding. Or perhaps demanding wasn't the word; she'd assumed certain things, expected certain things. Nothing unreasonable; he'd recognized that at the time. But after a bit he'd discontinued the relationship, and had felt no need to replace her.

Later he'd had a few liaisons, then had received his appointment to the Prelacy. Since then, somewhat to his surprise, the professional challenges had sufficed.

This Tain Faronya, though-She was so damned lovely! If it were practical… But it wasn't. The man who could least get away with having a mistress was the Kalif. Less, even, than an exarch could. Of course, most exarchs were married; married and well beyond youth. In addition, a Kalif could marry only a virgin, a woman whose reputation was unspotted. Absolutely not some other man's ex-mistress.

A flash of animosity startled a low whistle out of him: for just a moment he'd hated Veeri Thoglakaveera for what he'd done! A sign, he thought, of how irrational a man could be, even himself, when influenced by a woman.

He wondered if he'd regret having seen her. Perhaps for a day or two, he told himself. He'd put someone else-Jilsomo-in charge of her interrogation by SUMBAA, and avoid seeing her again. He'd tell Jilsomo not to bother him with any problems about her, and soon other things would preempt his mind.

This afternoon there'd be Leolani, the colonel's wife, to see and question. Initially, he hadn't intended to see her; there'd seemed no point to it. What could she have learned from the female prisoner through casual conversation that SUMBAA and instrumented interrogation had not? But before lunch he'd decided he might as well. It could do no harm, and after all, Rashti had thought it worthwhile to send her. He'd see how it went; perhaps he'd be surprised.

***

The female prisoner was on Jilsomo Savbatso's mind at lunch, too, a lunch considerably larger and more epicurean than the Kalif's soldierly meal. She's like one of Yogandharaya's angels, he told himself. It's almost as if he'd used her for a model.

The exarch seldom thought about women. For one thing, he found strong satisfactions in his profession and its challenges-his profession and the best foods. Always had. Another reason was that, to the extent he felt sexually attracted to anyone, it was and had always been to men. Notably, these past five years, to Coso Biilathkamoro, first as a junior prelate on staff, later as Kalif.

Conveniently, these attractions had never been strong, and he'd felt no urge to pursue them. Nor at his age and condition did he expect to. Jilsomo had never indicated his predilections to anyone, either as boy or man. And Coso, alert and perceptive as he was, had never suspected, nor ever would. Jilsomo was sure of that.

But the female prisoner… It seemed to him that having seen her, he could understand, a little, what other men felt when they found a woman desirable. And if she made him desire to touch her, see her, perhaps do more…

It made him worry about the Kalif.

Twelve

The Kalif watched as Leolani Thoglakaveera stepped into the room. For a moment her uncertain eyes were on him. Then, walking toward the chair obviously meant for her, she glanced around, finding no one else.

He'd sent out not only his guard but Jilsomo as well, a last-moment act he couldn't have explained, except that it might help her speak more freely.

She stopped beside the chair, and he gestured. "Please be seated, Lady Thoglakaveera."

He watched her sit down, which she did as any well-trained aristocratic young woman might have: with the grace of a practiced act, but without the deeper grace of the accomplished dancer or gymnast. She was pretty, and more. Even ill-at-ease as she was, he sensed an obvious strength of character that was more than willfulness and the assurance that so often comes with noble birth and nurture. And he was confident that, unlike many other aristocratic young women of nineteen years, she could talk intelligently about things of relevance.

The colonel chose better than he may have realized, the Kalif told himself, and threw away more than he thought with his lust.

"Are you comfortable?" he asked.

"Yes, Your Reverence."

"Good. I understand you're a friend of the alien woman, Tain Faronya, who was brought to Klestron by Sultan Rashti's exploration force. Is that true?"

"Yes, Your Reverence."

"We suspect that her lost memories may include some of considerable interest and importance to Klestron and the Empire. It may be that these memories are lost irrevocably, but perhaps they're not."

He paused, waiting for whatever she might say. Realizing this, she replied, "I would hope they are not, Your Reverence. As it is, she is-incomplete."

The description took him by surprise, though it seemed highly apropos. "Have you heard her say anything that suggests some old memory not far beneath the surface of her mind?"

Leolani focused inward for a moment, considering, then shook her head. "Nothing that seemed that way to me, Your Reverence."

The Kalif focused inward, too. And found exactly what he was going to say next, though not why. "Have you heard the rumors about her and your husband?"

Her eyes sharpened, sparked. "They are not rumors, Your Reverence."

"You mean he did, actually, take an apartment for her and keep her there?"

She nodded once, sharply.

"And you would like to have your husband's love again?"

She blazed. "I have never had his love! No one has. Not me, not Tain. To him, she was something to use. Not some one; some thing. And vulnerable, having been wrested from her family. He took her from the ministry to bed her, nothing more. Two days before our wedding! I want nothing further to do with him." She paused, suppressing her fire. "I hope you will grant me a bill of divorcement. It is within your power."

Her outburst stopped him for a long moment. "Your feelings and your wish are both understandable," he said, then paused again. "And you're not angry at the woman Tain?"

Leolani shook her head. "She is blameless in this. Unless you wish to fault her for her beauty. In the room where she was kept in the Ministry, cameras were concealed, and men of the intelligence division would gather in the monitor room to watch her. Watch her disrobe, dance, bathe! And lusted for her. Disgusting men! Then, one night, Veeri disabled the monitors for her room and went there and told her that other men were going to come and rape and kill her if she didn't let him take her away. She was so frightened then that when he threw her down on her bed, she didn't resist."

Leolani's eyes blazed at the Kalif. "When she told me, her tears flowed like rivers, but she didn't sob. She was too deeply hurt. If he had been there then, and if I'd had a gun, I'd have killed him! Not for his treachery to me, but for what he did to her!"

The Kalif nodded, impressed by the young noblewoman's anger. And disappointed. He realized now what he'd hoped-that somehow the colonel hadn't gotten around to bedding the prisoner, that she might still be a virgin, eligible to be the wife of a Kalif. It was a strange realization, objective, as if it applied to someone else and not himself. "I appreciate your feelings," he said. "So she told you all this and you took her home with you. To your father's home, that is."

"She told me enough of it. Some she told me only afterward."

"And you believed her."

"I did! She is guileless! And when Veeri tried to talk me into coming back to him, and I accused him, he didn't deny it. He told me he couldn't help himself, that no healthy man could have. He expected me to forgive him!

"If it had been some willing doxy, perhaps I could have, though I doubt it. But to take her the way he did, using fear and humiliation! That was vile!"

"Unarguably. Well. Have you talked about this with anyone? Other than the colonel and Tain?"

She darkened. "No one. Oh, enough to my father that he understands why I left my husband."

The Kalif straightened. "Good. Continue your silence. Above all, do not tell the colonel of our talk. If you're patient, perhaps you'll have not only a divorce, but other satisfaction as well."

Leolani stood up, her face still darkened by her anger. "Thank you, Your Reverence. I will be both silent and patient. And hopeful."

She left then, and Coso Biilathkamoro, Kalif of the Karghanik Empire, sat wondering what in the world he was doing. Switching on the commset in his chair arm, he spoke to his secretary. "Partiil, when Lady Thoglakaveera has gone, send one of the pages to bring her husband over. I want to talk further with him."

***

The colonel felt quite comfortable when he sat down before the Kalif again. It seemed to him he'd said all there was to say about Terfreya and the enemy there, in his debrief and his first interrogation. Therefore it seemed possible that His Reverence had been impressed with his answers and war record, and wanted to know him better. Quite possibly with some appointment in mind.

At least that was the scenario he'd been rehearsing, walking over.

"Thank you for coming, Colonel," the Kalif said. "I have some rather different questions for you this time."

"It is my pleasure, Your Reverence."

"Good." He paused, and somehow the colonel tightened with misgiving. "You are aware, I suppose, of what The Prophet said and wrote about monogamy and the nobleman? And the treatment of women without husband or father or brothers to shield them?"

The questions hit the colonel like a sandbag.

"Yes, Your Reverence."

"I've been told that you took carnal knowledge of the prisoner, perhaps against her will."

The colonel shook his head vehemently. "That's not true, Your Reverence! On my mother's name it's not! I did not take carnal knowledge of her, either against or with her will. I am a marine officer, a colonel, and a son of the Thoglakaveera family!"

"Ah. Then-why did you remove her from detention and set her up in an apartment?"

"Your Reverence, I-" He looked around as if for help, and saw only the fat exarch. "She was without family or even friends. Vulnerable." The colonel's mind raced; he hadn't prepared for this. "And she seemed so innocent," he went on, "so tragic." He shrugged slightly. "I suppose my feelings seem unlikely in these times, but when I saw her there in the ministry, she was as innocent as a child. Because Kargh had seen fit to erase whatever sins she had; I suppose there must have been some, at least minor ones…"

His words had slowed. Now he paused. "Also she's very pretty, Your Reverence, and it seemed to me that someone might take advantage of her." He spread his hands. "As you seem to believe I did. So I provided her with a comfortable place to live, and two loyal servants to ward her, a man and his wife of about the age her parents might be. Until my wife was able to come and take her home, and off my hands. It was nothing more than that, sir. Nothing happened between us."

There was a moment of silence between the two men. "Um. Tell me," said the Kalif, "do you believe she was chaste? Before she was brought to the empire? Might she have been raped when taken prisoner?"

"She was not raped, Your Reverence. It was I who picked her up at the field base and took her to headquarters, from where she was shuttled to the flagship. I asked her about that, when she was turned over to me at their detention module, and she told me she had not been. It is in my debrief. And there seemed nothing wrong with her memory then.

"Of course, before her capture-who knows? A physical examination might or might not shed light on that. It seems beside the point now. The Blessed Flenyaagor tells us it's the soul which bears the soil and burden of our sins. And surely her soul was purified when all memory was taken from it."

"Hmm. An interesting viewpoint, Colonel. Meanwhile, though, your action invited rumor."

"Yes it did, Your Reverence. I can see that now. And I regret it. The rumor has hurt my poor wife till she doesn't know what to believe."

"Indeed? Well. Another matter: I understand that as a marine officer you have proven skilled, and except for the matter of the alien woman, discreet. I will want to talk with you again soon."

Relieved, the colonel got to his feet and bowed. "It will be my pleasure, of course."

***

When the colonel was gone, Jilsomo grunted. "Your Reverence, as a rule you do not like unasked-for advice."

The Kalif smiled. "True. But if you're patient, I will ask. What do you think of our good colonel?"

"Much as you do, I suspect, even though he did swear by his mother's name. I would certainly doubt his claimed altruism in the matter of the female prisoner. He may have been a good marine officer, but I suspect that in general he acts in his own perceived interest."

"Indeed." The Kalif got to his feet. "I need to get out in the open. Let's walk in the garden, and I'll tell you the version of the story that I have from the colonel's wife. And-I have thoughts on what to do about them-he and his wife. And the female prisoner, Tain."

Alb Jilsomo nodded soberly as he followed his Kalif through floor-length curtains and sliding glass doors into the garden. It was the season of warmest weather, but the exarch was distressed for other reasons than preferring to keep his bulk indoors where it was air-conditioned. He had a bad feeling about what the Kalif was going to say.

To start off, the Kalif recounted what Leolani had told him about the colonel and the prisoner. Jilsomo was not surprised.

"So what I think I'll do is preempt the colonel for the imperial government. Assign him as my military specialist to the Klestronu embassy. It will be a promotion of sorts, and I'm sure Rashti will be pleased. It should remove any pressure the young man's father may be applying. And conversely his father-in-law."

"Um." Jilsomo nodded, holding his peace, waiting for what might come next. When nothing did, he asked his question: "And the purpose of preempting him, Your Reverence?"

Instead of answering, the Kalif went on. "And then, instead of granting his wife the divorce she wants, I'll annul the marriage."

"Annul it? That would make it as if it had never been. The grounds for annulment are, um, somewhat more restricted than the grounds for divorce."

"Ah! But his inability to consummate the marriage in bed is all the grounds I need."

The exarch stood dumbfounded. "What makes you think he failed to consummate it?"

"Presumably he did consummate it. I simply intend to say he didn't. Wasn't able to; impotent, you see. And he won't deny it-not if he has any sense at all. It's either agree or I'll charge him with malfeasance-the use of his position for gross immorality, and tampering with an intelligence source for personal benefit."

The Kalif sounded grimly pleased with himself. Jilsomo was stunned and confused. "But-Your Reverence, those actions were on Klestron. Your charges would ordinarily fell to Sultan Rashti to prosecute."

"Ah, but I have the right of preemption, when the interests of the empire are involved. And she is a potential intelligence source. Rashti won't challenge me in this."

Jilsomo said nothing; nothing came to him. Walking in the sun, he'd begun to sweat freely, and wished he were back inside. More than that, he wished he knew what this was all about-why the Kalif intended to do as he'd described.

After a few seconds the Kalif went on. "His sexual impotency," he said, "is probably not permanent, you understand. It may well disappear within a few months, and the colonel can find another wife or mistress.

"His report on the fighting at the marine headquarters base, on the Confederation world, includes his comment that he fought hand to hand with an enemy soldier and was injured before killing the man. A report we have only from him, I might add; it may or may not be true. The injury, I've decided, was a kick in the groin, after which the colonel managed to shoot him. Before long the colonel was back aboard the troopship and in stasis, en route home. When he woke up, his ship was parked off Klestron, and very soon afterward he was courting the archdeacon's pretty daughter. They married, and then to his dismay, he discovered he was unable to carry out his husbandly duty. His bride was patient, but after several weeks, with no sign of recovery, she felt betrayed, and petitioned me for an annulment.

"I will consult with the colonel, who'll be too disheartened to oppose her request. Thus their marriage will be annuled."

The two prelates walked on a little farther, the Kalif waiting for the exarch's comment. "Your Reverence," Jilsomo said at last, "it may well work. But-why? Why this charade when you could simply grant the woman a divorce?"

"Because the colonel was impotent, he could not have fornicated with the female prisoner. Of course, it's just possible that he didn't anyway. And if he did not fornicate with her, then so far as we know, she's a virgin. And if she's a virgin…" The Kalif looked hard at his deputy. "If she's a virgin, then I can take her to wife."

The two men were approaching a grove of flowering vaasera when the Kalif said this, and Jilsomo, stunned, stepped aside to sit down on a cushioned marble bench in their heavy shade. The Kalif sat down beside him. "You have misgivings," he said, almost accusingly.

Jilsomo nodded. "It sounds contrived, Your Reverence. People will say you set this all up so you could marry the beautiful foreigner."

"Possibly. But I'll take care of that by waiting before arranging the marriage. Long enough that any suspicions will not seem compelling."

Jilsomo gathered his wits and looked at the situation. He was, after all, expected to advise. "Hmm. That would work, if you waited a year, say, or maybe half a year. But a few weeks won't be long enough. Someone, no doubt various someones, will say, 'Look at what the Kalif has done!' And the accusation will spread like wildfire; most people will at least wonder."

The Kalif said nothing, but his jaw was set.

"And-Forgive my saying it, Your Reverence, but you do not know the young woman."

The jaw muscles clenched, standing out like un-shelled pecans.

"You're angry at me," Jilsomo said matter-of-factly.

"I'm not!… Yes I am. I am angry. I'm still a young man, thirty-six, and I have never been in love before. Now I am, and I deserve to have her. If she is willing."

He turned to face the big exarch, almost glaring. "Haven't I given the empire its best government in more than a century? That's what they say of me-the professors in the university and even some of the noble delegates. Even Tariil has said it, and he resists half the things I propose, as if I were Shatim. At least I've made a case for it, whether it's true or not. Even my opponents, most of them, will give me the benefit of that."

Jilsomo shook his head. "Your Reverence, many undoubtedly will. But others will say, 'Look! The Kalif has done a dishonest act for his personal benefit! Why can't we then?' And, 'How can he punish these others?' "

"They will get their answer," the Kalif said sharply. "I will punish corruption as harshly as ever." Chodrisei "Coso" Biilathkamoro looked challengingly at his lieutenant for a long half minute, then sagged, looked away, and spoke quietly.

"Thank you for speaking your mind, good friend. And forgive my temper. But I am going to do it. And you will back me, and see that others do.

"We fear too much what people will say. I will do it, and most of those who disbelieve me will say 'the Kalif is human, but he is a very good Kalif,' and wish me well."

Perhaps, he's right, Jilsomo thought. Or more right than wrong. No Kalif in living memory, probably no Kalif since Papa Sambak, has ruled so well. And many people, most people, will be tolerant. But it will give his opponents in the Diet a stick to jab him with. "Nothing I can say will sway you then?" Jilsomo asked.

The Kalif didn't answer, and after waiting, the exarch spoke again. "Well then, you will do it. And I will back you. Because of our friendship and because you're right when you say you're the best ruler the empire has had in a long time. And if it becomes a question before the College or the Diet, I will see that others back you, too; as you said."

He paused. "Perhaps I am making too much of this. But till now…"

"Yes?"

"Till now your ethics in office have been unstained, and the people have had government by law. Conditions greatly to be desired and admired. And your strongest points before both the College and the Diet."

The Kalif's mouth pursed. "Good friend," he said quietly, "they haven't yet seen my strongest point."

Thirteen

The Kalif was reading a report on his screen and dictating a running commentary to his computer, when his commset interrupted him. "Your Reverence, your physician is here."

He pushed back from his desk. "Send him in." A moment later the man entered. The Kalif motioned him to a chair. "Yes, Neftha?"

"Your Reverence, the female detainee is healthy in every physical respect. And I must tell you, she is the loveliest woman I have ever seen." He raised a hand as if to ward off comment. "It's true that most of the women I examine are in their middle years or older, the wives of your exarchs, but…"

The Kalif cut him short. "Who were young in their turn. Yes. What else did you learn?"

"Her health is excellent. I already said that, didn't I? And her physical strength is exceptional. I have never personally examined so strong a woman."

He stopped, not meeting the Kalif's eyes, then went on. "As for the other matter-She might well make someone a very good wife." He stressed the someone just slightly. "But-Her hymen is not intact. Of course, that could be the result of an accident or self abuse; those things are not rare. And in the presence of such beauty, I doubt most men would object to its absence. But to-some men it would disqualify her; they couldn't be sure she was a virgin. Nor can she vouch for it herself, with her memory gone."

"Surely other means exist for learning the truth of it?" the Kalif said thoughtfully. As if the report had been unexpected.

"None, Your Reverence. Not short of her recovering her memory and declaring it under instrumentation."

The Kalif sat purse-mouthed. At length he grunted. "So the examination proved neither innocence nor otherwise. Well. There was no indication of violence?"

"None, Your Reverence."

"But that means little, I suppose."

"Not on the matter of virginity, Your Reverence."

The Kalif said nothing for several seconds, then grunted. "Well. Thank you for your information, Neftha. You will, of course, keep this to yourself."

"By all means, Your Reverence. I have made a chart, but recorded only matters relevant to her actual health."

"Good. And you do have my appreciation. Now I have things to do."

The physician got quickly to his feet. "Of course, Your Reverence."

The Kalif watched the door close behind him, then pressed a key on his commset. "Partiil, call the guest house. Tell them to bring the female prisoner to my office. I wish to question her again." Then he remembered his boyhood, and his sister's need to prepare before she went anywhere. "In one hour," he added.

***

He stood as she entered. She was dressed in yellow this time, but to his untrained eyes the costume seemed otherwise similar. Lady Leolani's work, he felt sure. He'd approved her request to let Tain share her apartment and servants, and allowed them to shop escorted. Tain had no doubt caused a stir, he thought, with her face, hair, eyes, skin. Her grace. Her long legs.

"Tain," he said, "please be seated."

She sat down as gracefully as before. He repeated her name, tasting the sound of it. "Tain. That's a lovely name. And you are a very lovely woman."

He saw the flicker of fear behind her eyes. It may take time to lose that, he thought, and spoke on. "In most respects a Kalif is not unlike other men, a mixture of good and bad. I like to think that I am more good than bad." He smiled slightly. "Hopefully quite a bit more.

"In some respects a Kalif has more freedoms than most men, but in other matters he has the same limits. Thus he may wish to marry someone, but she may refuse him." He raised his hands slightly, spreading them. "I would like to marry you, Tain. If you are willing."

He was surprised at how easily the words came.

Her answer was low. "Your Reverence, I hardly know you."

"True. Yet you are a grown woman, and I believe that living as the guest of the Lady Leolani will not remain satisfactory indefinitely. Despite your friendship. Sooner or later you will feel constrained to take a husband."

Her eyes told him nothing. "Well. The decision is yours, and there is no need to make it now. And in any event the wedding would have to wait a few weeks. Meanwhile, I commend myself to you. I am a man of good temper, reputedly not unattractive, and with considerable resources." He gestured. "I have a comfortable home, and seasonally the freedom to travel."

He paused then as a thought came to him. "Or is there some other man you'd like to marry? Do not fear to tell me if there is."

Tain shook her head. "There isn't. Not that I know of."

Her words echoed quietly in his mind. Not that you know of, he thought. Perhaps someone three hyperspace years away, or someone killed in battle. You must wonder sometimes.

"Well then, I'll allow myself to feel optimistic. Will you have dinner with me this evening? Among other things, I have an excellent chef."

"Yes, Your Reverence," she said quietly. Her voice showed little expression, but neither was there apathy nor resignation there. Guarded seemed the word. It occurred to him that considering her circumstances and all that had happened, she'd held up well. So. A strong person then, with strong character.

"Thank you, Tain. We'll eat at seven, you and I. Tell Lady Leolani that she is not to talk about it." This time his smile was bigger. "And tell her to trust me." He eyed her quizzically. "Do you feel all right about this?"

She nodded. "I do, Your Reverence."

He'd known what she'd answer, had asked only to build her assurance. "Good. But now I have work to do. The Diet will convene a week from Oneday, and I need to be ready for them."

He reached and keyed his commset as she stood up. "Partiil, Lady Tain will be leaving now."

When she'd left, it took him a minute or two to get his attention fully on his work again.

Fourteen

He had supper served on the small table he usually ate at alone. It put them closer together. His personal servant moved in and out unobtrusively and no more than necessary. The meal was not large-he made a point of eating modestly-but it was excellent.

He'd thought of having a musician there to play for them, then decided against it. With so little of her past available to her, it seemed to him she might have trouble making small talk. The presence of a third person, even a musician, could make it more difficult.

Instead he'd had a cube delivered, of beautiful or otherwise interesting places and events on Varatos. While they ate, the wall to one side took life, and seemingly depth. There were aerial views of the Great Falls of the Djosar in spring, the foot of the cataract seeming to pulse with explosions of foaming violence; a storm, with massive waves crashing against the rocks and broken cliffs off the coast of Otengwar; the Festival of The Prophet, with the streets of Ananporu brilliant with flowers and banners; a great golden rajwar with high, striped shoulders, prowling an imperial wildlife park, stalking and charging a wild bull, pouncing on it from behind, then losing its hold, to watch its would-be supper gallop off…

The Kalif did his own narrative, and had the pleasure of seeing her eyes bright with interest.

She said she liked books, and he told her he'd arrange for her to browse the library of the Sreegana, the compound which contained the palace and various associated buildings.

After they'd eaten, he found himself being questioned. "What was your home like when you were a child?" "Did you have sisters and brothers?" "What did you do for pleasure?" He told her about his father, a prelate who, when Coso was twelve, became Archprelate of Binoon. His older brother had been in line to succeed to the Prelacy; the young Coso had been slated for the military.

He told her too about Sergeant Major Chagoorka, a retired noncom of the Imperial Marines, who'd been his principal tutor, and his favorite person after his parents. After excusing himself, the Kalif brought from his study a beautiful dagger to show her. The sergeant major had crafted it for him as a going-away present, when his fifteen-year-old charge was preparing to leave for the Binoon Academy, to prepare for marine officers school.

She examined the dagger with care and admiration. Its carefully smithed, razor-sharp blade was engraved with an unfamiliar, decorative script, while the green jade of its hand-carved haft must have cost more than a sergeant could readily afford.

Eventually the Kalif even talked about the death of his parents and older brother, in an avalanche on a mountain vacation, an accident that had put him in line for the Prelacy. He'd liked the Imperial Marines. Yet when the question came-the opportunity for the Prelacy-he'd jumped at it, somewhat to his own surprise.

The Kalif talked for an hour and a half, while Tain spoke little except to ask questions. Finally she reached across the small table and put her hand on his; his breath stopped in his throat.

"Your Reverence, this morning you asked if I would marry you. I thought about this after I left, and it seems to me that in your empire I have no future unless I marry. But I have scarcely known any men here-mainly Veeri, whom I do not like, and Leolani's father, who was preoccupied. And Sultan Rashti, who seemed kind. From today, and especially this evening, it seems that I know you better than I know any other man in your empire."

She withdrew her hand as if suddenly self-conscious.

"You have been considerate and kind. You have not tried to take advantage of your power and my lack of it. And it seems to me that I can become truly fond of you. Therefore, with a certain nervousness, I tell you yes, I'll marry you."

Chodrisei "Coso" Biilathkamoro, Kalif of the Karghanik Empire, had not rehearsed a response; somehow it hadn't occurred to him. Also, there was no feeling of relief, no surge of exultation. Simply, he got up and stepped around to her, gave her his hand and helped her to her feet. "Then," he said quietly, "let me show you a side of me that you should know."

He took her shoulders and kissed her tenderly, lingering on the lips.

"And now," he said, "you must leave. You are very beautiful, and I'm the Kalif. Thus for both of us, it's best that we not spend evenings alone together until I am your husband and you are my wife."

Fifteen

Colonel Veeri Thoglakaveera would have preferred to be at the big party that was a feature of Sixday evenings on embassy row. This Sixday it was at the Ikthvoktos embassy. Men, and women too, would no doubt come up to him, if he were there, to ask about the war-what it had been like, what the aliens were like-and that would be enjoyable. But people, at least a few, would know about his supposed impotence.

It hadn't actually been publicized, of course. Even the edict of annulment had seen print only in a volume little known outside government; he'd been assured of it. Inside government, though, there were those who would have noticed, and annulment meant, almost always, that there'd been no consummation. While there were bound to be some, some insiders, who'd heard the impotence story.

And if he was there, reminding them by his presence, people would whisper.

So he'd quietly volunteered to be duty officer for that evening. Not that a duty officer was really needed on a Sixday evening, but policy required it. He wasn't even subject to the duty. His appointment was administered by the Imperial Foreign Ministry; he was simply officed here at the Klestronu Embassy. But volunteering would earn him friends. Friends and points.

Veeri glanced at the commset on the duty desk. Just now it sat lifeless.

Three months, they'd told him! Then, if he wanted, he could resign this appointment and go back to Klestron, reactivate his commission in the marines there. They'd "fixed it up with Rashti," he'd been told.

He didn't look forward to going back. Everyone there would know-everyone who counted. Leolani would make sure of it. "He was impotent," she'd be saying.

He realized his fists were clenched, and opened them, willing his muscles to relax. The Archprelate of Khaloom had to be behind this, the archprelate and his daughter. Who'd have imagined that Leolani could be that vengeful! He'd like to corner her in a nice secluded place somewhere. He'd show her potency till she begged for mercy!

He grunted. Not likely, when you got down to it. There was nothing wrong with his potency, but he had limits, like any man.

He wished he'd never heard of Tain Faronya, that her presence in the ministry had never been mentioned, that she'd been left on Terfreya. He'd had his life perfectly set up: war hero; Vice Minister of Armed Forces; son of the Speaker of the House of Nobles; and son-in-law of the Archprelate of Khaloom, who'd be sultan when Rashti died. And a pretty, tight-ass wife.

And blown it all. Even his father was angry with him.

The commset chirped quietly, and Veeri answered. Someone calling for Cibor, who was out doing what he'd like to be doing, partying.

He'd considered applying for a commission in the Imperial Marines. Then he'd learned he'd have to go through their academy, with all that that meant in terms of underclassman humiliations, plus a three-year curriculum that looked even tougher than he'd been put through on Klestron.

So probably he would go back, back to the Klestronu Marines.

Sixteen

The Square of The Prophet had been cleared of its benches and kiosks. Its pavement had been scrubbed. Lines had been strung between the light poles that flanked it, and banners waved easily from them in a light breeze. Today would see the opening session of the Imperial Diet for the year 4724.

The square was kept mostly clear of bystanders. Eight or ten thousand of them stood bunched along the sides, controlled by lines of soldiers-elite troops of the Capital Division. Other viewers stood along the parapets of surrounding roofs, and there were soldiers there, too. Floaters with soldiers hovered silently, watchfully overhead.

The important spectators were those who filled the galleries inside the Hall of the Estates, members of the Greater Nobility. They'd arrived earlier, per protocol, and passed through unseen scanner fields to wait in air-conditioned comfort. No soldiers watched inside, only liveried guards, quiet and polite, their holstered stunners set ready on fan beam.

Horse-drawn ceremonial carriages, especially decorated for the occasion, rolled individually onto the square from the Avenue of The Prophet, to stop before the Hall's broad low stairs. Each dismounted a liveried footman from the high seat at the rear, who lowered the carriage steps and opened the door. A man or men in colorful robes stepped out, to mount the broad stairs and disappear through the building's great doorway.

Not every vehicle that drew up was ceremonial or horsedrawn. Public cabs and privileged hover cars also pulled up at the stairs. Some of the men that stepped from them wore robes of gray. They too went in.

After a bit there seemed to be an end to the arrivals. Then the gates of the Sreegana opened, and trumpeters marched out in two spaced rows, their long and gleaming trumpets upright like spears of burnished silver before their shoulders. There were eighteen of them, in white trousers and capes, and tall-plumed white helmets. They stopped, and with drilled synchrony, each row turned to face the other, forming a wide aisle.

One more trumpeter marched out then, wearing kalifal carmine, vivid red. He stopped immediately outside the gate, facing outward, raised his pennoned golden trumpet and blew a long clear note. The others raised theirs, too, and began a fanfare. Out of the gates marched the red-robed Kalif, followed by the eighteen white-robed exarchs in a slow-moving, stately column of twos. Together they crossed the wide square and mounted the broad entry stairs at the Hall of the Estates, also to disappear within.

The Diet of 4724 was about to be convened.

Seventeen

The grand reception hall in the Hall of the Estates was the largest and perhaps the most splendid hall in the empire. It was large enough that invitations were received by the titular heads of all the Great Noble Families of Varatos; the formal representatives, diplomatic, legislative, and ecclesiastic, of the other planets; and selected others.

Though they attended without their wives. The conventional view was that women, by their nature, lacked both understanding and interest in politics and government. And while exceptions were recognized, even admired, long tradition kept this an affair for men only, a time for mingling and proposing, feeling out attitudes, concurrences, dissidence, and potential alliances. It was a political game field, and most of those who came relished the game.

Dressed formally in black and white, with brilliant shoulder sashes, cummerbunds, or capelets of silver, green, gold, and indigo, nobles wandered and eddied slowly in their hundreds, along with some hundred circulating waiters who tried to see that no one lacked for drinks or hors d'oeuvres. The noble delegates, exarchs, and elders, wore their robes, light despite their fullness, and their caps, making them easily found.

By contrast, the Kalif stayed in one small, traditional area, his carmine robe vivid and unmistakable. On two sides of him and a double pace away stood two bodyguards, men not particularly large but hair-trigger quick, fingertips inches from clip-mounted stunners that would almost leap into their hands if need be.

And a step behind his shoulder stood Alb Jilsomo, privy to anything said to the Kalif above a whisper. It was widely understood that Jilsomo was not only the Kalif's deputy, but his heir apparent, and thus that he needed to know. Many nobles disliked the arrangement, some of them intensely, because of Jilsomo's gentry origins. The succession, however, was not in their hands; ultimately it was the business of the College. They could only hope the exarchs would recognize the proprieties.

In approaching His Reverence, there was no formal rule of precedence, but there was a certain order dictated by good sense and courtesy. Numerous delegate and non-delegate nobles would like to have the Kalif's ear for a little, and it was deemed ill-mannered to move in ahead of someone who had clear political seniority. Or to stand near enough to eavesdrop in the general babel.

Thus when the Kalif took his accustomed place, the small wiry man who first came up to him was the Leader of the Imperial House of Nobles, Lord Agros Niilagovindha.

"Good evening, Your Reverence," said Agros blandly. "Here we are with another Diet convened. Considering the rather astounding discoveries made by Rashti's expedition, I foresee a busy session."

"Hmm. It seems to me that every session's busy. But then, this is only my fourth. I'm still inexperienced."

"Perhaps. But the general view is, you've performed ably from the beginning. Tell me. What do you foresee as the main disputes in this session?"

The Kalif smiled, also blandly. "Ask me again in four months, when the session's over. By then I might have a meaningful answer for you."

"I wonder if it will be. Over in the standard time, that is."

The Kalif affected a slight frown. "I don't foresee an extension, particularly considering the agreements required. How long has it been since a Diet has been held over?"

Noble eyebrows rose, arched thickets of black above obsidian eyes. "Ah! But when is the last time an event of such moment occurred? With such significant findings! For one thing, a whole multitude of habitable and inhabited worlds!"

"True. But that is primarily a matter of religious significance. I'm sure every Estate will be interested in our decisions; the whole empire will. But it lies entirely in the domain of myself and the College of Exarchs. It's not a matter for the Diet."

"Indeed! Can it be you've overlooked certain questions?"

The Kalif's lips thinned. "I referred to the matter of worlds not accounted for in The Book of The Prophet -as we've known it. As for the question of possible trade-Authorization would seem to be a routine decision of the Foreign and Commerce Ministries, as guided by myself, though debate might not be inappropriate."

"Ah, Your Reverence! You're playing with me!"

"Surely not, good Agros. I respect you both as Leader of the House and as a man of honor, position, and intelligence. Is there some significance I've overlooked in this business of Sultan Rashti's?"

"Really, Your Reverence, I doubt it. With all respect, I think you're being coy with me, no doubt for good reasons. Rashti sent his little flotilla to hunt for a world to colonize. To occupy, if you will. And found more of them than he'd expected. But already occupied, unfortunately, with unenlightened humans seemingly not interested in giving them up to us. There's been talk that you might wish to invade one or more of them, and the necessary funding requires the approval of the Diet."

"Ah! As a matter of fact, the matter has been mentioned in the College. But nothing's been proposed. Perhaps next year." His tone changed then. "You've caught my interest, though. This talk among the nobles-What seems to be the gist of it? Do any of them see virtue in the idea? Perhaps more to the point, do you see virtue in it?"

"I suppose some do. Perhaps Fakoda and his like, who'd stand to profit richly from the preparations. As for me and most of the House, probably not one in four would vote for it. In fact, if it came down to it-if the College threatened to vote unanimously in its favor-I wouldn't be surprised if I could bring the entire House against it.

"But I cannot believe the College would be unanimous in a matter like this one."

The Kalif nodded. "Thank you, Agros, for your experienced viewpoint. If the matter comes up again in the College, I'll pass your opinion on to them."

Agros nodded, wished the Kalif good health, and left. To discuss their brief exchange with others of the House, the Kalif had no doubt.

***

Lord Rodika Kozkoraloku gave an impression of leanness, especially when wearing robes, an impression based on a face like an axe blade. Actually, his frame was ordinary and reasonably well fleshed, though he carried less fat than usual for a noble in his forties.

Rothka's face mirrored his character, the lines reflecting hardened attitudes, the eyes distrustful and calculating, the mouth quick to scorn. He was speaking with two nobles who were not delegates to the Diet, men representing regional affiliates of his Land Rights Party, when Lord Agros came up. The conversation halted.

Agros nodded acknowledgement to the two non-delegates. "Gentlemen," he said, "excuse me," then gave his attention to Rothka. "I don't believe you've paid your respects to His Reverence. But perhaps you don't intend to."

Rothka's narrow mouth pinched. "He's no true Kalif; he's a murderer and usurper, hiding behind a veneer of false legality. My respect for him is nonexistent."

Agros raised an eyebrow. "He's a big improvement over the creature he killed and replaced. Some consider that he spared us civil war; perhaps even dissolution, and the chaos that would have resulted. Admittedly that's a bit extreme, but if Gorsu had continued, or if his execution had been bungled, or the transition…"

Rothka did not yield his hostility. "A murderer and usurper," he repeated. "That is fact. The rest is opinion. A murder and usurper whom Kargh will punish in His own good time. And he's made that gentry, that fat Jilsomo, his deputy. If there's another regicide, we're likely to have a commoner as Kalif!"

This was leading nowhere, Agros decided, and moved to the subject he'd come to talk about. "I presume you've given thought to the Klestronu expedition and its discoveries?"

Irritation flashed behind Rothka's eyes. "Not much," he said. "We have concerns more pressing in times like these: the need to lower minimum wages for gentry; to cancel or at least revise the restrictions on off-loading unneeded peasants… Practical matters."

"I suppose you've heard the speculations that the Kalif will ask for a fleet and army to invade the Confederation."

"Confederation?"

"The empire that Rashti's flotilla discovered. They call it a confederation."

"What are you getting at, Agros? Say it, for Kargh's sake!"

Agros's voice became even more bland. "My good Rothka," he said mildly, "your incivility has cost you support on various occasions. If you're really interested in advancing your programs, you'd be better off cultivating your fellow delegates than antagonizing them."

Rothka's jaw clenched, and for a moment he looked as if he might strike the smaller, older man, who ignored it.

"If in fact the Kalif asks us to fund an invasion," Agros went on, "and he gets it, there'll be new and higher taxes to pay. And no doubt other effects that neither of us will care for, like shortages of various kinds. I trust you'll be as steadfast and relentless in resisting any such proposal as you are in your personal dislike of the Kalif."

With that, Agros nodded cordially, then turned and walked away.

***

"Good evening, Your Reverence."

The man who spoke looked like no one else at the reception. Lord Roonoa Hamaalo was a mountain of a man, perhaps the tallest there, and massive-powerful-looking, even for a Maolaaro. His hands showed no hair, his shaven jaw was not blue with the usual suppressed beard, and his head was bald. His eyebrows weren't even bushy. The Maolaaru aristocracy had largely held aloof from intermarriage, maintaining not only their essentially unmixed gene pool, but much of their indigenous culture. They hadn't even adopted five-syllable names.

"Good evening, Lord Roonoa. Are you enjoying the reception?"

The Maolaaro grunted. "I'm enjoying the food and drink."

Yes, I've seen you at these affairs before, the Kalif thought. What you drink unaffected would have most men unconscious or puking out their guts. "But not the conversations?" he asked.

"The conversations are part of the job. That's why I'm talking to you."

The Kalif's grin was a brief flash of white. "Thank you, good Roonoa, for the compliment. What do you have in mind?"

"First and foremost an increase in what we're allowed to charge for our fish. Every world here has a worsening population problem-every world but us. Imperial populations have increased ten percent since we've had an increase in fish prices. That's a ten percent increase in demand, with no increase in price. And we are not a wealthy planet."

The Kalif shrugged. "Why not sell ten percent more fish then? Giving you ten percent more income at the present price."

"It wouldn't work that way. For most commercial species, our present catch approximates their sustained yields-their replacement capacities. If we catch more this decade, there'll be fewer and fewer to catch in decades to come."

"Umm. Logical. Your request makes sense, in the context of your own situation. Whether it would make sense to others in the context of their own problems…" He paused, inviting comment.

Again Roonoa grunted. "Their problems reflect their own short-sightedness and their lack of willingness to confront their true need. Thus their populations increase but their food production doesn't. Not substantially. Their domestic food prices have climbed steadily, and they discriminate against us. And each other."

He cocked a brown eye at the Kalif, then spoke with deliberate slowness. "There is one fish we could catch much more of, if we were allowed to export it. Loohio. That would alleviate both our problem and theirs. Yours."

The Kalif's expression stiffened. "Perhaps. On the other hand The Prophet said, 'Be fruitful.' "

"He did indeed. But-" The massive shoulders shrugged.

"But what?"

"The Prophet's wisdom was unusual, and his knowingness unique. But it seems now that he was not infallible."

The Maolaaro had prepared himself to receive the imperial anger, but the Kalif merely shook his head. "I think not, my friend. The fallibility was not The Prophet's. It has been ours, in refusing some of the knowledge he gave us. A failure I intend to correct."

He sighed, a sigh that might have been deliberate, for effect. "I will speak to the College about your request. About the prices allowed, not-the other. There is virtue in your argument-the virtue of fairness.

"But I do not perform miracles. Those belong to The Prophet, not to his successor."

Eighteen

Centrally the kalifal palace was a pentahedron, with attached, semi-disjunct cubes of different sizes, most with roof gardens. Just now the Kalif sat alone in his private roof garden, three stories above his apartment, with which it was connected by lift tube and stairs.

It was night. Ananporu was not a large city, as cities went in the empire; capitals never were. Its population was a little short of half a million, and large illuminated signs and lighting displays were not a part of the imperial culture. As a result, a considerable array of stars was visible.

Switching on a focused reading lamp, he'd turned his attention away from the view to the papers he held-including a report prepared for him several weeks earlier by Alb Tariil, on Tariil's objections to invading the Confederation. He'd studied it before, but hadn't discussed it yet in meeting; it hadn't been time. It still wasn't, but it felt like time to review it, to refresh his memory on what, exactly, Tariil had written, as distinct from what he himself had made of it.

The report was organized under two headings: (A) Arguments Against an Invasion; and (B) Arguments Against Proposing an Invasion to the Diet. Under (A), the exarch had written:

***

1. Such an invasion will be extremely expensive. The empire cannot afford it. I cannot think of a counter-argument.

2. Preparing such an invasion will cause severe currency inflation and material shortages. I cannot think of a counter-argument.

3. Preparing such an invasion will cause substantial shortages of skilled labor, and numerous peasants will end up being trained and put to non-peasant work. Then, when the preparations are completed, they will be required to return to peasant labor, which will probably result in civil disorders.

***

The Kalif skimmed over a lengthy write-up of the foreseen consequences of alternative three. Again Tariil had not given any counter-arguments. The Kalif did not doubt that the exarch would have written down any he'd recognized. Tariil had missed the obvious solution: shortages of skilled labor could be avoided by working skilled labor overtime as needed, and paying them premium wages for it. After decades of economic decline, the gentry would welcome it.

He read on.

***

4. The invasion might fail, with terrible costs in lives, money, and goods. There is no counterargument to this.

***

The Kalif grimaced. He had no real argument with that, beyond his feeling that defeat seemed unlikely, based on considerable, if admittedly incomplete information. He continued reading.

***

5. If you succeed in conquering the Confederation, you would then have to hold it or else give it up. To give it up after the great cost of conquering it would be unthinkable, while holding it would take a continuing and costly effort, at least until its people had embraced Karghanik. Counter-argument: Holding it would require extensive migration as well as many large garrisons. While this would require great shipbuilding costs, it would permit the transportation of those undesirables deemed suitable as colonists. (I suspect there would be large numbers of these.)

6. The Confederation has its own ways of thinking and doing things. Its human population numbers in the scores of billions, at least-far, far more than the colonists we might send. Even after they have embraced Karghanik, they will think and act more or less differently than we do. And these folkways will influence the people we send there, particularly as intermarriage proceeds. The colonies will become more and more different from ourselves, even in the face of continuing immigration. And at such a great distance, in a generation or two they will cease to recognize imperial authority. Counter-argument: They will be children of Kargh, and perhaps that should be enough for us. Even if we cease to rule them, we can be pleased to have brought Karghanik to scores of new worlds, and to a hundred billion or more people.

***

The Kalif mused on the concept of colonies on those distant planets, and of children born to colonists, children who would never see the sector, the worlds, their parents came from. Children to whom the eleven worlds would be only stories, stories they might not even be interested in at such a far remove.

He also mused on the Confederation's myriads embracing Karghanik. Of intermarriages, and populations that in a few generations would be unlike anything that now existed. A new people. Somehow it both troubled and excited him.

He went on to read Tariil's reasons for not proposing an invasion to the Diet.

***

1. The proposal is almost sure to fail in the Diet.

2. The failure of such a major and radical, one might say revolutionary proposal will make the kalifate, and by extension the College, look incompetent, and weaken them in the eyes of the nobility for a long time. It probably would not result directly in civil disturbances, but given conditions in parts of the empire-indeed on parts of Varatos itself-such a political conflict within the Diet can result indirectly in civil unrest.

***

The Kalif raised his eyes from the report and gazed thoughtfully across the nightbound city. In the distance, thunderheads pulsed with internal lightning and sent megavolt discharges flickering groundward like bright threads. For a minute or several minutes he half watched, half cogitated.

Civil unrest. What Tariil actually meant was insurrection; civil unrest was always present somewhere in the empire. Serious insurrection occurred only every century or two, growing mainly from conflicts between the two great estates-the Prelacy and the nobility. Or actually between the College and the House of Nobles, which invariably had the interest of the Greater Nobility in mind instead of the nobility in general.

Insurrection could drastically disrupt law, order, and the economy for a decade or longer, and no estate wanted it. But on occasion someone played too close to the brink. Insurrection was always a possibility, but it was hardly a present danger.

He continued reading.

***

3. If invasion is proposed to the Diet, nothing will get done this session except arguing. Some of the arguments may become so bitter as to seriously hamper deliberations on any subject for years to come. Counter-argument: At best, much that the Diet does is not very useful. A few years of it getting little done may not seriously harm the empire, so long as a budget of some kind gets passed.

***

The Kalif grinned anew. At first reading he'd been surprised at such an observation by Tariil-he still was-and wondered if the exarch found any humor in it.

He laid the report aside and picked up another. On Sixday he'd chair a session of the Diet; he made a point of chairing the last one of each week. He wouldn't drop a bomb on them yet, though; let them wonder. He'd settle for dropping one on his inner council tomorrow.

Nineteen

In council next morning, the Kalif waited till routine business had been completed before dropping his bomb. Alb Tariil had brought up the subject of invasion, but the Kalif had declined to discuss it, saying that he hadn't made up his own mind yet. That when he had, there would be time enough.

"There is other new business I need to bring up just now." He looked them over. Their interest was tepid; they were ready to leave, get to their other duties. "I'm not ready to make it public yet, but I thought you should know." He paused, teasing their attention. "You'll keep it confidential, of course." Another pause. "I plan to be married."

The response was immediate, and as nearly enthusiastic as the inner council ever became. "Splendid!" said Alb Bijnath, beaming. "Good! Good!" said Alb Drova. Even Alb Tariil smiled, broadly. "Well!" he said, "there's hope for you after all!"

Alb Thoga said nothing, didn't smile; his chronic hostility toward the Kalif disallowed such responses. And Alb Jilsomo's smile was not spontaneous; the bride-to-be, it seemed to him, had to be the alien.

"Who's the lucky woman?" Bijnath asked. "I had no idea you'd been negotiating with anyone."

"Her name is Tain Faronya."

Smiles were replaced by frowns. "Faronya? A gentry name, is it?" asked Tariil. "Or Maolaaru? It's not familiar."

"She's the young woman who was brought back as a prisoner by Rashti's expedition."

The moment of silence, the sense of suspended animation, was broken by Thoga's angry response. "You can't! She is not a citizen!"

"I'm not aware that that's a prerequisite."

Alb Tariil spoke then, more quietly than usual. "Your Reverence," he said, "there is one requirement."

Every eye turned to him.

Tariil's eyes were on his hands, folded on the table. He took a deep breath; this was not easy for him. "According to the reports we were given, the young woman has no memory of her life before her captivity. Or more correctly, of her life before an accident on board the Klestronu flagship. So then, apparently no one knows, even she does not know, whether, for example, she was married-or anything."

His eyes raised, met the Kalif's.

"I invariably read the weekly report of kalifal edicts," he went on. "As do some few others, both in the Sreegana and the House of Nobles. One of those edicts was the annulment of a marriage-the marriage of a Klestronu marine colonel." He looked around at the others, and except in Jilsomo and the Kalif, found only puzzlement. "That surprised me. It's not the sort of thing one expects as a kalifal edict. So I called up the accessible information about the colonel."

Tariil's eyes fixed on the Kalif's again, not in antagonism but with unhappy concern. "It seems he had maintained the female prisoner privately in an apartment in Khaloom. He admits, though, to his wife's charge that he was and is impotent, the basis of the annulment. And under ordinary circumstances, people would accept that. Though they might be skeptical, unless in fact the colonel had a reputation for altruism.

"But the circumstances are not ordinary. First, rumor has it that the young woman is remarkably beautiful. Second, the annulment edict was yours, not Rashti's. And now you intend to marry the young woman that couldn't have been his mistress because of his stated impotence."

Alb Tariil shrugged. "Your Reverence, the question will surely arise as to what went on between them in that apartment."

The council room was silent for a moment. Finally the Kalif responded: "Do you have such questions?" he asked, and his eyes were hard.

"Your Reverence, do not try to intimidate me. It will change nothing. And whether I have questions or not is beside the point. Certainly others will, and they will ask them publicly, not here in chamber."

"Your Reverence," Drova broke in, "there is a way of answering such questions. I'm sure the young woman would agree to a medical examination…"

The Kalif's eyes flashed brief anger, but his reply to the old exarch was mild. "What would you have us do? Humiliate her, the kalifa to be, by publicizing that she had been examined and that her hymen was intact? That would be offensive and totally unacceptable, to me if not to her. In fact, this discussion is offensive."

This time Bijnath spoke. "Your Reverence, it need not be publicized. Let her be examined by your own physician. And have him testify to us that she is-intact. Then we will say we accept her as fit, and if anyone wishes to guess at why, that will be only their guess."

The Kalif frowned darkly, fists clenched at his sides, then shook his head. Before he said anything more, though, Jilsomo spoke.

"Your Reverence."

The Kalif turned to him. "Yes?"

"If Alb Bijnath's proposal is not acceptable to you, perhaps Neftha could testify privately to me. Then, assuming the answer is what we hope, and if my fellows of the council would accept my word for it…"

"Your Reverence," said Bijnath, "I, for one, would be happy to accept Jilsomo's word on it."

"And I," said Drova.

The Kalif shot a hard look at his lieutenant, then Tariil added his voice, though without enthusiasm. "I will accept that, Your Reverence, if you will."

Coso Biilathkamoro sat frowning past them for a long moment before saying anything more. Then he looked at Thoga Khaliyamathog. "I have not heard from you, Alb Thoga."

"You will do what you want regardless of me. Probably regardless of any of us, but now that the rest have knuckled under, what I feel is of little consequence."

"Do you accept Jilsomo's proposal, Alb Thoga, or do you not?"

The sour-faced exarch bent his stylus in his fingers. "If the rest accept-then I, too."

"Thank you. Then, Jilsomo, I accept your offer. Stay, and we shall make arrangements. The rest of you-I thank you for your consideration. Council is now adjourned till Fourday."

***

The Kalif and Alb Jilsomo walked side by side without talking till they reached the Kalif's apartment.

"I hope Your Reverence will excuse my forwardness in council," Jilsomo said then. "It seemed that something was necessary. Simply to override them is destructive of your overall leadership. And you need them, Your Reverence. The rest of the College tends to follow their lead, and you have difficult months ahead in the Diet."

The Kalif nodded ruefully. "I'm afraid I don't brook opposition well in such personal matters."

"When shall I see your physician, Your Reverence? And where?"

"At his office, this afternoon at four. Unless I let you know otherwise. He may have a conflicting appointment."

"At four then. I'll call him. Do you need me further this morning, Your Reverence?"

"I don't think so. No."

"Well then, if you'll excuse me." Jilsomo bowed slightly and left.

The Kalif sat down at his commset and touched keys. "Neftha, is there any problem in coming to my apartment now? I need to speak with you… Good. Come by the blue corridor… Five minutes will be fine. Thank you."

He notified the door guards to let Neftha in, then sat back in thought. He'd been handling the council poorly this morning. No, not poorly; damned badly. It was lucky Jilsomo had stepped in. He'd want the support of every exarch possible in the Diet; to pass a special appropriation required approval by seventy percent of the combined two estates: the Prelacy, represented by the College, and the nobility, represented by the House of Nobles. And the College had only eighteen votes, the Nobles twenty-seven.

On the other hand, a Kalif couldn't let himself appear weak or soft. It was better to be overbearing than flabby. But it was better still to seem reasonable while strong.

Neftha arrived in less than five minutes, and was let in. "Your Reverence wanted to see me."

"Right. I need a statement from you. Given orally to Alb Jilsomo. About Tain Faronya."

"Yes, Your Reverence?"

"You will tell him you've made a physical examination of Miss Faronya. You will not tell him when. He'll assume it was later today."

"Yes, sir."

The Kalif's eyes fixed the man. "And you will tell him you found no evidence that she is not a virgin."

The physician had trouble answering. "Your Reverence… I-"

"Good friend, I do not ask you to lie. Truly, you found no evidence that she is not a virgin. You simply failed to find evidence that she is. Surely you see the distinction?"

Neftha avoided his eyes. "Yes, Your Reverence," he said unhappily.

"So then. What will you tell Jilsomo when he sees you at four o'clock?"

"I-That I have examined Miss Faronya. And found no evidence that she is not a virgin. But, Your Reverence-What do I say if he asks me further questions? He's an exarch!"

The Kalif raised an eyebrow. "Further questions are unlikely, if you speak positively enough. Practice if you need to. And seem busy, slightly impatient. Above all, speak firmly. As if you were telling him he must stop eating so much."

He grinned at Neftha, surprising the man. "Do not expect further questions and you're less likely to get any. And if he does ask, simply repeat what you'd already said; tell him that should be plain enough for anyone. Sound exasperated."

When the physician had left, the Kalif's mood slumped. He got to his feet and went into the garden feeling troubled, depressed. It seemed to him he wasn't handling things as well as he should: council, physician, even Jilsomo.

Well, to rule had never been easy, even for kalifs who'd held the throne in uneventful times. Having known Tain, it seemed to him he could never marry anyone else, and if marrying her made the next months more difficult, they at least would pass quickly.

***

When it came down to it, Neftha couldn't face possible questions from Jilsomo. So he lied to the exarch, telling him the alien woman was indeed a virgin.

***

"I've spoken with Neftha," Jilsomo said. "Ill reassure the council tomorrow. There's no need for them to wait till Fourday, and it will free their minds of the question."

Alb Jilsomo Savbatso was harder than most men for the Kalif to read; his face was mobile only in the service of his mind, and his eyes were not transparent. But it seemed to the Kalif that the fat exarch must suspect, given what he already knew.

"A question, Your Reverence, if I may."

"Ask."

"Why did you bring up the matter of marriage this morning in council? Or have you decided to wed her sooner than you'd planned?"

"We'll marry in three weeks. She'll receive tutoring from a bride's aunt next week; I wanted to bring it up to the council before that."

Jilsomo's eyebrows questioned the apparent non sequitur.

"At this time," the Kalif went on, "no one knows of my plans except the council and Neftha. Except of course for Tain and I. If there's a traitor, an untrustworthy member in the council, this may well be something he'll pass on to my opponents in the House. And if he does, it will come forcefully to my attention in the Diet."

Jilsomo nodded. In the past, almost all kalifs had named to their councils men who would not disagree chronically or sharply with them. Coso Biilathkamoro, different in so many things, had named, along with others, the conservative Alb Tariil, who opposed him more often than not and who was very influential in the College. And the irascible Alb Thoga, whose hostility could be depended on. "To keep an eye on their actions and a finger on their pulses," was how the Kalif had explained his appointments.

It seemed unlikely though, to Jilsomo, that there was a traitor in the council.

"The bride's aunt will make an examination of her own, will she not?" he asked.

"Of course. That's part of it. But anything she has to say, besides to the bride, she'll say only to the groom, and nothing to him of any substance."

Jilsomo nodded. Whatever she could say, other than to the bride, she wouldn't. A "bride's aunt" was a professional advisor and tutor to brides, and rarely their actual aunt. By tradition and professional ethics, they were utterly discreet. This was true also of the "groom's uncle."

It would probably be all right. He hoped so. Certainly he'd do everything he could to make it so. Because whatever his flaws, this Kalif was the best for a long time, Jilsomo told himself. A very long time.

Twenty

Fourday had come and gone, and Fiveday. Now it was Sixday, the day when, in its season, Kalif Coso Biilathkamoro customarily chaired a session of the Imperial Diet. He gaveled it to order, and himself gave the invocation. After the prayer, the secretary read a summary of the previous session, prepared by SUMBAA and printed out by his primary terminal in the office of the Leader of the House.

When the summary had been read, the Kalif scanned the assembly. It met in a large chamber shaped like a half bowl, with the rather small, slightly tilted bottom holding the exarchs, the noble delegates, and the twelve non-voting delegates of the Pastorate. Separated from them by a marble railing, the sides curved up with row on row of seats, empty now, empty usually. Only on special occasions were invited spectators permitted. Nor did the automatic cameras record the sights and sounds there for broadcast; they recorded for the archives: that is, for SUMBAA.

"At the close of the last session," the Kalif intoned-the sentence was traditional-"it was agreed that the subject then under discussion would be given priority this morning. That subject being the request by the senior delegate from Maolaari for the export of loohio."

Simply mentioning the subject raised hackles and color among the members. He continued:

"Does any member have another subject they would ask priority for, before we proceed?"

A hand shot up, its owner also rising, which was unusual but not out of order.

"Lord Rothka," said the Kalif, "what is your suggestion?"

The narrow mouth opened. "Your Reverence," said Rothka, and the words came sour from his mouth, "I move that we discuss-" He paused then, a pause long and deliberate to draw their attention. "I move that we first discuss Your Reverence's intended marriage."

"I second!" said another, quick beyond chance.

"Indeed?" said the Kalif dryly. "I need not entertain such a motion unless it's a matter falling within the purview of this assembly. And clearly any marriage plans I might have do not."

"Not so," Rothka said. "Let me quote Scripture."

"Be my guest."

The Kalif's seeming willingness broke the noble's certainty. His gaze faltered for just a moment, then hardened. The Prophet's words, as he recited them, were measured, almost stately: "I will not always be with you in the flesh, for the flesh is mortal. And there are those who hate godliness and the godly, wanting them dead. Thus not only will I pass from this world, but also will he who follows me. Probably before our time. And the believers will need to choose a new leader not once, but many times over the centuries."

Rothka's back was stiff as a marshal's. "Therefore I give to you rules to choose by, for the protection of the Church, and of its people, and of righteousness. And of Kargh's words. You must choose leaders who are righteous. He who would lead must be one who steadfastly eschews greed, and sensuality, and all unrighteousness. One who has consorted with lechers, or the tight-fisted, or has sought the company of lewd women, cannot lead the Church. And if one who has been chosen would marry, the woman he chooses must be-" Rothka paused, then said the final words slowly, deliberately: "Chaste and virtuous."

The rest of the list of requisites for Successors to The Prophet, Rothka left unrecited, as irrelevant to his argument. He fixed the Kalif with his eyes then, as if challenging him. The Kalif nodded.

"Thank you, Lord Rothka, for renewing The Prophet's message for us. Especially the phrase about the tight-fisted."

Rothka flushed; he had a reputation for stinginess, and was sensitive about it. The Kalif looked around. "Lord Rothka's subject may not have been relevant to the day's business, but the words of the Blessed Flenyaagor are worth listening to on any subject. Does anyone else wish to display his memory of The Book before we return to the request of Lord Roonoa?"

Rothka, still flushed, subsided onto his seat.

"If not…" said the Kalif.

Another hand stabbed upward, another member of the Land Rights Party stood. "You are evading the issue, the matter of the woman you want to marry. The alien woman brought to the empire by the Klestronu expedition."

"My dear Ilthka." The Kalif's voice held reproof. "You are on the wrong side of the chamber to discuss that; it's a matter for the Prelacy, specifically the College. And let me remind you that there is a proper form for addressing your Kalif.

"Now. Does anyone have an appropriate subject to propose? If not, we will return to the matter which the senior delegate from Maolaari brought up yesterday-that is, his request for approval of the export of loohio."

Ilthka too sat back down.

"Lord Roonoa, the record shows that your presentation speech did not address The Prophet's command to be fruitful. How can we reconcile your proposal with that command?"

Roonoa stood, bowing slightly to the Kalif. "Your Reverence," he said in his rich bass, "we should consider when it was that The Prophet spoke those words, and the apparent reason for them. The first burning plague had swept Varatos little more than ten years earlier, killing more than one in three of all the people, taking children and women even more than men. Of those who'd sickened and recovered, some were left witless, and many women who had been sickened and not died had proved sterile. Cribs stood empty. Fields lay fallow for lack of men to work them. Looms stood silent, forges cold."

The Maolaaro looked around at the delegates; so did the Kalif, though not as plainly. "So of course The Prophet told the people to be fruitful. But one might wonder what he would say today, when all the worlds but Maolaari are crowded. With many gentry unemployed, competing with peasants for work as day laborers. With food riots on nearly every world."

He looked around, meeting gazes thoughtful and gazes hostile. So far as he knew, no one had come forward with such an argument before. One did not think such things. "The Blessed Flenyaagor was a holy man," he went on. "A saintly man. But he was also a practical man who had guided his ship through storms, around dangerous reefs and shoals. He'd fought pirates, fled pirates, even paid extortion to pirates. He'd bargained with men over cargoes and prices, and took satisfaction in the high price he'd gotten for his ship, that he could print The Book and have money to support him in his ministry."

The Maolaaru noble shook his head as he continued. "I do not believe, Your Reverence, that permitting the export of loohio from Maolaari would offend The Prophet if he were here today. Indeed, if the poor should eat it, who can hardly feed their children, I wonder if The Prophet would not actually praise it."

An angry hand stabbed the air. Roonoa ignored it as he sat down.

"Alb Thoga," said the Kalif, and the exarch got to his feet.

"Your Reverence, I am outraged by the insolence of the delegate from Maolaari! It is bad enough that a layman presumed to analyze The Prophet's reasoning. But to stand there and presume to tell us what The Prophet would think or say if he were here today-That is unforgivable!"

"Thank you, Alb Thoga." You are chronically outraged, the Kalif added silently. To you, nothing is forgivable.

Other hands had raised, and the Kalif pointed. "Lord Panamba."

The delegate for Niithvoktos stood. Unlike Jilsomo, from the same world, Panamba was rather slender, remarkably so for someone from Niithvoktos with its 1.17 gravity. He looked as if, beneath his clothes, he'd be sinewy. "Your Reverence, I will not comment on The Prophet's words, except indirectly: What Lord Roonoa said makes sense, whether or not he accurately described what The Prophet might think. We have a major population problem, not only on Niithvoktos but on Varatos, and Klestron, and any other world you'd care to name. Except Roonoa's own."

Panamba too sat down then, and the Kalif called on Lord Agros. The Leader of the House spoke seated. "Your Reverence, it is unthinkable that the Diet approve Lord Roonoa's proposal. We nobility dare not eat loohio because we dare not reduce our birthrate. Even now we constitute less than eight percent of the population. The gentry constitute barely thirty-three percent, and we rely on them to control and supervise the peasants, so we cannot have fewer gentry either.

"As for the peasants, most of them would love to eat loohio daily, I have no doubt. Then they could copulate endlessly without having to feed children, and the raising of children is the only self-accepted responsibility the peasants know. It is all that makes them more than beasts. Besides, without enough peasants, who would work the fields? Dig the ditches? Clean the streets? True, it might be desirable to reduce their births somewhat. But if we decide to, it should be by legalizing birth-control pharmaceuticals, for use in programs planned by SUMBAA and controlled by the government."

"Thank you, Lord Agros."

A hand had been popping up at the close of each comment, and the Kalif now recognized Lord Fakoda Lamatahasu, speaker for the Industrial Party. Fakoda, a short, somewhat chubby man, managed somehow to be self-important and self-effacing at the same time.

"Your Reverence, I do not pretend to be deep on matters of religion, though I have read The Book through a number of times. But from a purely practical view, a purely practical view you understand-if we should allow the Maolaari to import their loohio, and the number of peasants should decrease as a result… Well, machines could be built to do many kinds of jobs that peasants do-do them better and faster. And gentry could find employment tending the machines that would make the machines. Perhaps operating the machines themselves."

He shrugged, shoulders and hands. "Of course, these things can't be worked out overnight. But then, the population of working-age peasants would not go down overnight, either. Loohio would be no problem-no practical problem. Certainly much less a problem than those it would relieve."

Among the demanding hands, the Kalif then recognized that of Elder Dosu Sutaravaalu, Archdeacon of Ananporu and Leader of the Assembly of Elders. An old man, nearly ninety, he arose without effort, though with a certain care. He bowed first to the Kalif, then slightly to Lord Fakoda.

"Your Reverence, we have heard from men here who have been blessed by Kargh above other men. We have heard about 'practical considerations.' " He said the two words as if they were distasteful. Then he bobbed a slight bow toward Lord Agros. "The morals of peasants have even been mentioned.

"But none of these have meaning except as they fit within the prescriptions and proscriptions of The Prophet. And The Prophet truly said, 'Be fruitful.'

"It is not ours to judge his words and say that they still hold or do not hold. He said them. They are ours to obey. As for the number of people-The problem is not the number of people. The problems are sufficient jobs, sufficient food. And it is our duty to solve them. But to solve them within the limits demanded by Kargh and written down for us by His Prophet."

***

After a little, it was agreed to shelve, for the present, the question of approval for the exportation of loohio. Lord Roonoa felt comfortable with this. Opposition had not been as vehement as he'd expected, and some year soon he might be willing to push things to a vote. When the prognosis was suitable.

The Kalif too was pleased with the session. Lords Rothka and Ilthka had been discouraged more easily than he'd expected. And Rothka's challenge made clear that there was a leak in his council; very probably Thoga. Meanwhile, of course, his marital plans would now leak to the public at large. Well, let them get a look at Tain. The public would approve, it seemed to him.

Beyond that, the discussions of Roonoa's proposal had shown him a possible fulcrum to gain support for an invasion. And accomplish other things; maybe even approval for the limited sale of loohio in areas of serious food shortages. He'd have to sort out the dynamics of the situation-see what the potentials were, the possibilities and cross-purposes.

During the discussion, another question had occurred to him. About SUMBAA. The giant artificial intelligence held virtually all the significant data there was, and supposedly had an unparalleled capacity to segregate, correlate, analyze, and integrate those data. And to create with them, at least within limits.

So why hadn't SUMBAA solved the problems of jobs and food? He could understand why it hadn't solved the question of population: religion was involved. But the others?

Surely it had been asked. Or had it? People didn't seem to wonder about SUMBAA, or even think much about it. It had been around for so long, doing what it did without consulting anyone. And really, apparently, without being much consulted by them except for the enormous volume of more or less routine bureaucratic needs.

Why? Why hadn't SUMBAA volunteered solutions? Could it be that, with the burden of routine, SUMBAA didn't have enough capacity left over? Somehow he didn't think that was it. Perhaps solutions didn't lie in the analysis of data. Perhaps they required some ability SUMBAA didn't have.

Sometime soon, he told himself, he'd go to the House of SUMBAA and discuss these things with him. With it. Tomorrow. Seven and Eightdays made up the weekend, and there'd be fewer demands on his time then.

Twenty-one

An Imperial Army captain stepped into Veen's office. "You're Colonel Thoglakaveera?" he asked.

Veeri looked up from paperwork. "That's right."

The man thrust out a hand to him, and he shook it. "My name is Alivii Simnasaveesi. I understand you were with the Klestronu marines in the alien empire."

Veeri's mood shifted cautiously from boredom to tentative interest; he wondered if this man knew anything else about him. "That's true," he said.

"I'm with Headquarters Regiment of the Capital Division. A friend of mine, Major Tagurt Meksorfi, is giving a party at his town place in the outskirts." The captain paused to see what Veeri's reaction might be to the major's gentry name. When nothing showed, he continued. "He gives one almost every Sevenday evening, for a dozen or two officers and occasionally a guest. He'd heard there was a Klestronu colonel here who'd been in the fighting, and asked me to invite you. Interested?"

It didn't even occur to Veeri to decline.

***

For nearly fifteen centuries there'd been no distinction in law between a "Greater" and a "lesser" nobility. The formal categories had been erased when the empire had become the Kalifate, part of an agreement that had gained Kalif Yeezhur the military backing of the lesser nobility. Backing that made him the first emperor Kalif.

But in fact the distinction remained, a distinction based mainly now on wealth and tradition. And while the senior male in every noble family, Greater or lesser, held a vote, members of only certain families were eligible to serve in the Diet.

Most of the old Great Families were still so regarded, even those whose earlier wealth had declined somewhat. Their extensive plantations gave them the potential to recoup, meanwhile living like true aristocrats. Occasionally of course, one of them would be disgraced and lose its status, or simply die out.

The Great Families had been joined from time to time, almost surreptitiously, by one and another family of the lesser nobility who'd become especially rich and influential. The Greater Nobles might then begin treating them like one of their own. An example was the Lamatahasu family, of which Lord Fakoda was presently the head.

The military, however, truly recognized no distinction, either in the imperial services or in those of the individual worlds. A son of the poorest noble family, perhaps with only a confectioner's shop to support it, could become a general if he had the necessary skills. In fact, the sons of lesser families made up a sizeable majority of the officer corps, from top to bottom, in every branch, even the navy. Thus, in the armed forces, if a Greater Noble was prejudiced against the lesser nobility, he'd do well to keep it to himself.

Gentry were a different kind of phenomenon, a legally defined class of different origin intermediate between the nobility and peasantry. Gentry made up the entirety of noncommissioned officers, the so-called "sergeantcy," which included corporals. And for a very long time, occasional gentry had entered the officers corps during war by promotion from sergeant. But only over the last three centuries had they been accepted into the service academies and grown to an appreciable minority of commissioned officers.

As officers, gentry met a certain amount of discrimination both socially and on promotion rosters, the amount depending on ability, personality, and the unit's commanding officer. Among gentry, excellence was usually necessary to attain a captaincy, short of one's final years; it was essential to rising higher.

Though wealth also helped.

At age thirty-one, Tagurt Meksorli was already a major. Kulen Meksorli, Tagurt's paternal grandfather thrice removed, had been hired as a stevedore foreman at a spaceport on Varatos. The young foreman, who was paid a percentage of his job contracts, had paid his peasant laborers on the basis of production. Under the table, of course; the practice was illegal, there being a set pay scale for peasants. Soon he bought the crew contract and developed a virtual fief, his fast, efficient crews having gobbled up much of the local cargo-handling business. The more profitable part of it.

Then, in a wild, high-stakes card game, Kulen had won a small hyperspace merchantman, a tramp freighter. He'd paid professional ship inspectors to go over it for him, then plunged most of what he owned and could borrow into getting it overhauled.

Its ownership stimulated Kulen's already active sense of adventure. He left his brother in charge of the cargo-handling business and went into space as an apprentice to his own captain and chief engineer. Within two years he was a full-time smuggler, and through the exercise of considerable cunning, professional ethics, attention to detail, and at key junctures further daring, he compiled a considerable fortune. Which, before he was an old man, included seven ships, none of them smugglers. Having avoided arrest, prison, and confiscation, he'd gone straight as soon as he could afford to.

By the time his great-great-great-grandson had grown to manhood, the Meksorli Line included one of the system's largest fleets of sweepboats, seven refinery ships, a large fleet of bulk carriers, a dozen hyperspace package freighters, and three luxury liners. The Meksorlis were richer than even most Great Families, but no gentry on Varatos had been elevated to the nobility for nearly three millenia. And none of the Meksorlis, the men anyway, aspired to it; they were proud of what they were and what they'd accomplished.

Tagurt aspired to be the first gentry general-a general instead of an admiral because generalcies were more numerous. He had the agreement and appreciation of both his father and grandfather. In that regard, his great-grandfather, old Kulen's sole surviving grandson, had told the young cadet that he was lucky to be gentry instead of nobility. "It'll make the rank more meaningful," he'd said, "and getting it more interesting. "

On graduation from the academy, the new sublieutenant and would-be general had volunteered for an assault regiment, which marked him as ambitious-ambitious or a glutton for hard work. Once assigned, he volunteered to command a maintenance platoon, maintenance platoons being notorious for everything happening at once, for all-night duty, and the need for ramrod officers who were resourceful and quick. And results were hard to fake; the equipment either functioned or it didn't.

Tagurt stayed there long enough to get a reputation and a full lieutenancy. Then, at his own request, he'd been transferred to a notorious and dreaded post, the prison planet Shatimvoktos. Furthermore, he signed for two imperial years there, when the normal tour of duty was one. Simply to request service on Shatimvoktos was virtually unheard of, so that by itself made him a watched man. If he screwed up, his prospects would be seriously impaired.

And if he excelled, that would be noticed, too, gentry or not. Which was, of course, his reason for doing it.

Shatimvoktos was the most dangerous duty the peacetime military offered. Most of its enlisted personnel, the guards especially, were hardbitten, veteran misfits who'd been assigned there as a form of unofficial punishment. The gravity was 1.38-grueling-the atmosphere toxic, the summers almost lethally hot, the winters brutally cold. And if the guards were hardbitten, the prisoners were mostly worse-dangerous men, many of them more or less psychotic-who expected to the there and had nothing to lose. They worked with hammers, drills, blasting gel, crowbars, and hand shovels, digging iron ore from open pits. Even in an economy like the empire's, such an operation was grossly uneconomical, feasible only with unpaid, throw-away labor. Its purposes were the punishment and disposal of criminals, and to serve as a threat to troublemakers.

Deadly fights were common among the prisoners, and they acted quickly when they saw a chance to kill a guard. When a captain of the guard died in what might or might not have been an accident, Tagurt succeeded him, and in time was given the rank to go with the job. Then, as the most qualified available officer, he extended his tour another half year, to fill in for the provost marshal, who'd gone home for a family emergency.

From Shatimvoktos, he'd been assigned to the Capital Division, an elite heavy infantry division stationed only thirty miles outside Ananporu. The division personnel officer mentioned him to the division CO., who examined Tagurt's personnel file and appointed him deputy division provost marshal, a virtual vacation after the prison planet. When the general was satisfied that the young man could handle an easy post with a discriminating hand as well as he had a terrible post requiring an iron fist, he recommended an early promotion to major for his gentry protege-promotion without the standard minimum of three years in rank. The Kalif approved it, and the new major became the general's aide.

No member of the gentry had ever made major so quickly in the imperial service. Most nobles didn't.

Despite his naked ambition, rapid rise, and lack of noble forebears, Major Tagurt Meksorli was not widely resented among the ambitious young officers of the division, mostly nobles. Partly it was his matter-of-fact personality, blunt but friendly. And partly it was his parties.

***

Tagurt Meksorli's town place was in the rugged Anan Hills, which overlooked Ananporu from the west. Veeri Thoglakaveera had never been there before. Hovercar roads twisted over and through them like goat trails, past homes expensive but mostly not large, cantilevered from plunging slopes on shelves. The headlights of Veeri's taxi flashed across the trunks of great trees, frequently vine-clad, that shouldered and overhung the roads. Their beams swept thick growths of lustrous ground vines protecting the slopes. Flowering shrubs scented the night, overriding the constant undersmell of moist and loamy mould. Insects and other small creatures peeped, buzzed, ratcheted; sprinklers hissed quietly in the darkness. An occasional bird chirped aimlessly as if half awake, or tried a vague and tentative half bar of song.

Veeri noticed it all only absently. Mostly he was thinking about what this party might mean to him; something, he was sure. And wondering whether anyone there would know of his purported impotence.

For a minute the road ran along the top of a ridge, the houses on both sides with their backs to it facing outward. Houses and trees allowed Veeri only glimpses of the overviews-on one side eastward over the city, on the other westward across a span of night-hidden plantations that spread to the horizon, broken at intervals by the concentrated lights of villages and towns. Behind one home, half a dozen cars were parked tightly to conserve space. A post bore the address, the symbols a vertical column beneath its small light.

"That's it, sir," the cabbie announced as he pulled up and stopped.

"You'll wait," Veeri said.

"Of course, sir," the man replied, then added almost apologetically, "per the rate schedule you've noticed on the back of my seat, sir."

He'd turned as he'd said it, and Veeri noticed now the small mark on his forehead. Even on Varatos, Veeri knew, more than a few of the lesser nobility were down on their luck. But seeing one of them like this irritated him. It seemed indecent of the man to display his ill fortune in public.

The house was one story high in back, but getting from the cab, he could see that that one story was the topmost of at least two on the downhill side. The party wasn't loud; he couldn't hear it at all as he walked to the door. A man wearing corporal's insignia stood guard there, eyeing his Klestronu Marines uniform with its gold colonel's hammers on the collar, the insignia used by imperial as well as the separate planetary forces.

"Good evening, sir," the corporal said. "Let me announce you, if you please, sir."

"Colonel Veeri Thoglakaveera."

"Thank you, sir."

The corporal spoke it into a small grill on the doorpost. Within four or five seconds the door opened, and now Veeri could hear quiet music and the murmur of voices from somewhere inside. A sublieutenant stood there, looking impossibly young. "Colonel! Do come in! It's a pleasure to greet you. Major Meksorli and the others have been looking forward to your arrival."

He ushered him down a hallway. At the other end they entered a room as wide as the house, which was fairly wide. It was nothing special, nor were its furnishings; it was the view that made it expensive. The east-facing wall was glass, opening onto a narrow strip of balcony. Beyond its polished bronze railing, Ananporu and its suburbs spread below them like a field of scintillant, multi-colored jewels. The cab had climbed higher than he'd thought, Veeri realized-they had to be more than a 1,000 feet above the city. He pulled his eyes away, to the major and captain who'd gotten to their feet. The captain he knew-Alivii Simnasaveesi, who'd delivered the invitation. The other, a rather small major who projected an unusual sense of power, had an unmarked forehead, and Veeri realized that this man was his host.

The captain introduced them, and Meksorli shook Veeri's hand. "Colonel Thoglakaveera! It's a pleasure to have you here. Would you care for a drink? We can cover most tastes."

Veeri chose whiskey on ice. He preferred to stay in control of his mind and tongue, and with whiskey on ice he could better monitor and limit his intake. While the serving man got his drink, Veeri glanced around at the other guests. They were all looking at him, but with no sign of sympathy or amusement. Only interest.

One, the oldest, wore colonel's gold hammers, like his own. Two others were majors, both older than Meksorli. The rest were captains and full lieutenants, except for the sublieutenant who'd served as door greeter. There were no women. Apparently no more guests were expected; at any rate Veeri'd been guided to the last of the chairs arranged in an oval.

It occurred to him that he was not only a guest; he was the program. His chair was at one end of the oval, and everyone was facing him.

"So, Colonel," said Meksorli, "what was it like on the alien world?"

Veeri was a willing liar, but not a compulsive one. This time he told the truth pretty much as he knew it. "Basically," he said, "it isn't so different from Varatos or Klestron. The gravity's stronger, but not oppressively strong for a man in decent condition. And planetwide it's cooler, rather like Kathvoktos or Chithvoktos, but we were practically on the equator, so the climate was quite comfortable.

"Probably the biggest difference was the population; there wasn't much. The biggest town had only about fifteen thousand, something like that."

The reactions were mixed; some looked surprised, some puzzled, some eager. "How do they get by with so few?" someone asked. "How do they maintain their technology? Their civilization?"

Veeri began to warm up at that: he enjoyed being looked to as the expert. "It seems that the world we found-it's called Terfreya-is a very minor planet. Not even a minor associate in the Confederation; it's what they call a 'trade world.' They raise a single export crop there, a spice, and beyond that some livestock and food crops for local use. Most of the planet's a wilderness, complete with large beasts of prey."

"Damn!" said another. "We could make a lot better use of it than that."

There was voiced agreement. Then the Vartosu colonel spoke. "I heard you had some hard fighting. What was that like?"

"It's-not easy to describe, but hard is an understatement. Of course, we were only a light brigade. And there's a lot we never did learn about the forces we fought. Even the local officials knew very little about them. Some, the initial force, were cadets who'd been training on Terfreya. They were fearless and full of tricks, but their weaponry was inferior. We'd killed a lot of them, and markedly reduced their attacks, when another force, not cadets, arrived from somewhere. This was after a couple of months. These were also extremely good troops, but they were a very light force-no weapons a man couldn't carry, except gunships. They did have gunships, though not as fast or as powerful as ours.

"We'd made captives of some local officials-had them on the flagship under instrumented interrogation for months-and they knew nothing at all about this new force. We pretty much decided they must have landed from outside the system-the new troops, that is. Maybe for training, like the cadets. Though how they did it without being noticed is a bit of a puzzler. The assumption is that they entered real space far enough out in the system that their emergence waves were too weak to pick up. That sort of thing can happen, with careless astrogation. Meanwhile the navy'd impounded Terfreya's homing beacon to study its technology, and its absence could have warned the Confederation ship that something might be wrong. Then they could have used a blindside approach, and with enough luck, landed undetected.

"Unfortunately, the captive officials were provincial-the whole world was-and not as well informed as we'd expected. None of them was what you'd call knowledgeable about military or technical matters.

"We did learn somewhat about their ships from them, of course, and more from examining some message pods we captured on the ground. Their hyper-space generators are a lot like ours-operate on the same principle. I suppose it's the only way. And a ship that we know arrived in-system while we were there produced typical emergence waves. Our flagship detected it at once, and when it arrived within range, we blew it up with no trouble at all."

Veeri shrugged. "As for general information: They have a lot more worlds-twenty-seven main worlds and about twice as many inhabited tributary worlds. All told about seven times as many as we have." He was aware of the impression-even shock-that this caused among the imperial officers. "But apparently," he went on, "their population doesn't outnumber ours nearly that much. And while they have some very good troops, the Confederation isn't warlike. Their individual worlds have no warships at all.

"The major points are, their fleet is little or no bigger than ours-that's pretty definite-and they don't seem even to know about force shields. Which means they wouldn't stand a chance against an imperial fleet in a fight. And if we destroyed their fleet, it wouldn't make much difference how good their ground forces are. We could concentrate overwhelming attacks wherever we liked, and mop them up piecemeal."

Veeri fielded a number of questions over the next half hour, but mainly his answers just elaborated what he'd already said. When it became apparent that they'd pretty much exhausted his data fund, the conversation drifted to other matters. Then a captain asked why their war prisoners hadn't answered some of the unknowns and uncertainties. "I can understand civilian officials not knowing some of these things," he said. "Especially on a minor, backward world. But a military officer should have."

Veeri nodded. "And no doubt would have. But as I said, they refused to surrender; fought to the death. And early on, our men discovered that what looked like a wounded and unconscious enemy was likely to be one feigning unconsciousness. With an armed grenade ready to release when someone got close. So-Well, you know peasants. Our troops routinely shot up any enemy casualties not obviously already dead. Sometimes even those that were."

There was a moment without comment, some of the Vartosu officers finding it hard to accept that at least a few war prisoners hadn't been taken.

"I understand one prisoner was brought back," the Vartosu colonel commented. "A female, whose memory was burned out in an accident during interrogation. In an equipment malfunction, as I heard it."

Turning cautious, Veeri only nodded. "So I'm told," he said. Which wasn't a blatant lie; merely misleading.

"I heard that, too," Meksorli said. "She's supposed to be very beautiful."

Captain Simnasaveesi had something to add. "I've heard," he said, "that the Kalif plans to marry her."

The Vartosu colonel grunted. "Sounds like someone's wild imagination."

The captain shrugged. "I heard it from a member of Lord Fakoda's staff. Apparently the matter came up in a session of the Diet yesterday, and the Kalif didn't deny it."

"Beautiful, you said," someone else commented. "It's a shame to let beauty go to waste."

The subject was dropped then. There was too little information. After another hour or so, and a couple more drinks, Veeri excused himself, saying he needed to be back at his desk at 9 a.m.-his first outright lie of the evening.

He didn't pay a lot of attention to the scenery on the way back down. He was thinking about the rumor-about the Kalif and Tain. Not doubting it for a moment. He knew, he told himself, what Tain Faronya could do to a man's judgment.

He also knew that the Kalif was supposed to marry only a virgin. Over the centuries, several had made mistresses of women who hadn't qualified. Which had led to abdications or impeachments.

Apparently this Kalif had decided to exercise subterfuge to have his way. And had sacrificed him as part of it, destroying his marriage, his position, his future.

He couldn't, just now, see anything to do about it, though-anything that didn't amount to suicide.

Twenty-two

The curtains of the Kalif's study were drawn back and the doors slid wide to the garden, letting in the morning sun. He entered through them, his hair still slightly damp from the needle shower that had followed his workout and brief massage, and he smelled faintly of soap. A guard stood at ease beside the garden door, and the Kalif exchanged greetings with him. As he sat down, he keyed on his commset and spoke. "Partiil, if Alb Jilsomo is there, I'll see him now."

"He just came in, Your Reverence. And Mr. Balcaava is also here."

"Good! Send them both in."

A moment later the two men entered. "Good morning, Jilsomo," the Kalif said, then gave his attention to the other, who bowed deeply. "Good morning, Balcaava. You have the plans?"

"Yes, Your Reverence." He handed a sheaf of papers to the Kalif. "I believe they are as you specified when we talked yesterday."

The Kalif looked them over quickly but thoroughly, then handed them back. "They're fine. Do them."

"Thank you, Your Reference." Balcaava bowed again, then turned and left, almost hurrying, as if anxious to get on with them.

"You're carrying through on your intention that the wedding be small," Jilsomo said.

The Kalif nodded. "We both want it that way. The traditional kalifal wedding ties up the Kalif for a week, and costs a great deal of money. And Tain is shy of crowds."

"Of course, Your Reverence." Jilsomo paused, then went on. "I wouldn't feel so concerned if you were having a royal reception afterward. People feel they should have an opportunity to see their new kalifa."

The Kalif smiled slightly. "What people?"

"Sir?"

Instead of answering, the Kalif touched his commset. "Partiil, I will see no one till further notice. It may be half an hour." He turned then to his bodyguard. "Mondar, I need to speak privately with the exarch."

He watched the guard out the garden door and saw it close before he said anything more. Then he turned to Jilsomo again. " What people feel they should have an opportunity to see the new kalifa?"

"A great number of nobles and numerous well-to-do gentry. Also any prelates that could reasonably be here, and no doubt many of the Pastorate as well. There may well be more interest in Tain Faronya than in any kalifa ever."

The Kalif grinned. "Well then, my friend, I say let anyone see her who has access to television."

Jilsomo stared. The Kalif nodded.

"That's right. I've ordered the ceremony broadcast."

The exarch stared for a moment, then looked at the idea thoughtfully. "It's unprecedented, Your Reverence. It's like inviting all of Varatos. The entire gentry will be watching. Even peasants."

The Kalif's eyebrows arched. "Surely you don't object to gentry watching. Or peasants. I know you too well. And I'm Kalif to all of them. Peasants included."

"You are indeed, Your Reverence. But there are those who will object-undoubtedly some in the College, and any number of nobles. It seems to me-impolitic. At this time. Considering the battles you expect on the invasion issue."

The Kalif's lips pursed; then he smiled. "On the contrary; it is highly politic. Consider. Those who would criticize for broadcasting the wedding will be those who would oppose my plans anyway. With perhaps scattered exceptions on both sides. On the other hand… What is the kalifa called, Jilsomo?"

"Why… The mother of the empire."

"Indeed. And are not mothers held inviolate? What is one of the worst curses?"

"Motherless scum. And mother curser. But that… Your Reverence, people do not really think of a kalifa as their mother. That's only a figure of speech."

"Because they do not know the kalifa. Kalifas have been remote from their people. This one, my friend, they will see close up, at her wedding, and they will not forget it. They will see a very beautiful kalifa, with a face like an angel." He shook his head. "Marvelous that The Prophet described angels as golden-haired.

"No, it is politic indeed to let them see her." He peered quizzically at his lieutenant. "What is her surname?"

"Um-Faronya."

"How many syllables?"

"Three, Your Reverence. But…"

"Indeed. And while no gentry who gives thought to it will say she is one of them, they will receive her as one of them anyway. Accepting the label as the item."

The Kalif had been leaning toward Jilsomo. Now he sat back, relaxing, and lowered his voice as if in confidence. "Good friend, you, and the others of the College, and the House of Nobles-all those involved in politics-overlook the gentry because they have no vote. You take them for granted; even you. But the gentry have strong potential influence, and I will tap it."

Jilsomo's fat face was sober with thought. Gentry outnumbered the nobility by more than four to one. "Your Reverence, The Prophet, although he was gentry, and the Church ever since, have stressed that the commons must obey the nobility in all matters under the law."

"And the Church has long taught that they must obey any lawful orders of the Kalif. In this case, a Kalif who has looked to their welfare more than most have."

He shook off the argument impatiently. "Look. It's likely that I can get the Diet to finance an invasion. But there will be give and take. Compromises. Deals. Realignments.

"And when the invasion fleet sets out, I'll be recognized as the most powerful Kalif ever." He thought he saw doubt on Jilsomo's face. "I will be! And that will be the time for reforms. What good is power if I don't use it? For the good of the empire.

"Maolaari will have its permission to export loohio! The Pastorate will have more than a voice in the Diet; they will have votes! And the gentry will at least be heard there."

He realized he'd been talking more loudly, and lowered his voice. "For the empire to continue as it has would be deadly to it. We can either change it, or by inaction damn it. And action is my native state."

He sat quiet then. Action indeed, Jilsomo thought. "Your Reverence, I will support you in this as strongly as I'm able. But you must not be surprised if I am troubled by it at times. I am not a-revolutionary."

The word took the Kalif by surprise. Revolutionary. He's right; that's what I am-a covert revolutionary. He sat for a long moment regarding the fact. It seemed to him important that Jilsomo had pointed it out.

***

The noon sun was hot, but a breeze was blowing. Tain and the Kalif ate outside, in the garden beneath an awning.

"Only six more days, my darling," said the Kalif, then felt self-conscious for it. He hadn't learned to read her emotions, except for those she displayed openly, and to her it might seem like only six days left of freedom. But no. Here there was no freedom for her.

She nodded. "Only six," she said, then looked at him and found his eyes. "I am glad."

I am glad! The simple words touched him. "Are you still going to the library?" he asked.

Tain nodded. She'd been using the collegial library in the Sreegana, learning about Varatos and the Vartosi, and the empire. "I'm still on the Abstract of History," she said, "following the syllabus without calling up elaborations much. It seems awfully long. When I've read through it once, I'll start over again." She paused. "What have you been doing?"

"Um, nothing very memorable," he answered. "The broad business of government is interesting, but the details can be tiresome. I work too often on details." Actually I've been planning the invasion of the Confederation, he thought. The place you come from; the home of your childhood, of your family. But that I'll tell you after we're married, when you know me better.

Yes, he answered himself, wait till she's married to you. Then, when she learns about it, she'll hardly have a choice. For a moment it seemed to him he was about to tell her after all, but he didn't.

"Let me tell you where I thought we'd go after the wedding," he said instead. "If it doesn't sound good to you, I'll make other plans. It's an island in the ocean, very beautiful, very private. My sister's husband owns it. It's six miles long, all high hills covered with forest. And there are beaches, and sparkling clear brooks with waterfalls. We can stay for five days, unless you want to leave sooner. The main house is large, but we'll use the small one because we'll have no guests. And the help there is very good. We can swim and boat and walk, and lie in the sun. Do you think you'll like that?"

Tain reached across the table and put her hand on his. His loins stirred at her touch. "I will like it," she said. "It will be new and beautiful, and I will be coming to know my husband."

Hearing her say that, it seemed to Chodrisei Biilathkamoro that he was the happiest man in the world.

It also sparked faint fear in him, for it seemed to him that loving made him vulnerable.

***

Tain lay dreaming and tossing. She was with a tall, handsome boy in uniform. They were in a forest, a jungle, and when they came to a special place, they took their clothes off and began making love. She felt a climax start to build, but then something happened, and it wasn't him anymore. It was a hairy man, Veeri, and he wore a military cap as he humped and thrust. She told him to stop, but he wouldn't. Then a girl came up behind him, a slim girl with red hair, and chopped off his head with a sword. Tain watched the head go bouncing across the ground. The red-haired girl helped her up.

"He didn't harm you," the girl told her, and Tain realized she still had her trousers on, loose-fitting military field pants mottled green. And boots. Veeri hadn't harmed her after all. Then the girl was leading her across a field, toward a sort of tall doorway with no wall. Just a doorway, standing there by itself. They stopped when they came to it. "That's the place," the girl said pointing. "You need to go through there. Otherwise we'll all be killed."

Tain looked into the door, but all she could see was roiling cloudy blackness, and suddenly she was very afraid.

Then there were soldiers with the girl. One was the tall handsome boy. "You have to go through it," they all said to her, "through the gate, or we'll all die." They took hold of her and began to push. She held back, and it wasn't her friends that pushed her, but strangers, men of the ship. They gripped her with hard biting hands, pushing. She tried to scream, but nothing came out, and suddenly, on her own, she found herself lunging at the doorway.

And woke up, panting, sweating, staring into the darkness above her. Shaking, she got up and dialed a cold drink, then went to the bathroom and back to bed. Before she slept, she tried to remember the dream, but all she remembered was how frightened she'd been when she woke up.

Twenty-three

The land was rolling but not steep-old glacial drift at 45њ south latitude. Except on flood plains, the last sparse woods had been cleared a millennium earlier, and the only trees to be seen stood in single rows along the grassy roads, and around the occasional groups of farm buildings. The fields held different crops, but wheat predominated.

What was called "wheat" on Varatos was not what their ancestors had named wheat some thirty thousand years before. But a pre-dispersion taxonomist, examining the florets with a hand lens, would have found glumes and barbed lemmas, and assigned the plant to the family Gramineae, the grasses, which includes wheat, corn, and the other grains, and done it without hesitation. Though he'd have had to declare a new tribe and genus, for it would not have keyed to any taxon in his compendium. Clearly it was not Triticum -the true wheats-or anything else in the tribe Hordeae. Had he examined the roots, he'd have become confused or excited or both, for they had abundant nodules that resembled those on legumes. And which did, in fact, convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogenous compounds within the plants, as those on the legumes did.

Thus what was called wheat, on Varatos and over most of the empire, was a nitrogen-fixing grain, providing a relatively low-cost, high-yield food crop that did not require expensive nitrogen fertilizer. It was also not a rowcrop; it germinated promptly; the seedlings established quickly, rooted deeply, and were winter hardy; all of these contributing to excellent soil protection. Uniform crop height permitted leaving tall stubble for erosion protection prior to disking, and even after disking provided a matrix that left the soil resistant to erosion until final harrowing, immediately prior to seeding.

On the negative side it was subject to occasional catastrophic outbreaks of harvester beetles, which could wipe out not just a field but a district. There were fully effective treatments, but they were either unacceptably expensive or had unacceptable ecological side effects that kept them off the market. Hail was another source of crop destruction. And ordinarily, destructive rust fungi that built up in the disked-under crop residues dictated that other crops be raised on a field every third year. The rotation crops normally alternated between forage crops and some crop that required intensive cultivation, permitting the exposure and destruction of most harvester beetle broods while hoeing.

And hoeing it was. Machine cultivation could have been used, but hoeing permitted the visual discovery of harvester beetle broods, and their fuller destruction. And at least as important, hoeing was cheap-peasant labor was cheap-and helped provide employment for the large peasant population.

The farm of Lord Favrami Gopalanaami was a rather modest one-a thirty-peasant operation. So far he'd managed to keep all six of his gentry work bosses-men who'd been with him since he'd inherited the place six years earlier-though it would be advantageous economically to let one or two go. Even four bosses could conduct the work force about as well as six, if the crew tasks were organized properly.

The week was eight days long. The farm workweek ended at noon on Sevenday, except for the evening feeding of livestock, dunging out the dairy barn, and milking. In the cottage of work boss Peleea Ravalu, the entire household sat over the last of the midday meal, watching the video of a great event more than six thousand miles northwest in Ananporu.

On their screen the Chapel of the Exarchs was banked with flowers. Its benches were fully occupied, and the guests not entirely segregated; benches designated for prelates, nobles, and pastors were interspersed, rather than assigned in blocks.

A murmur of muted music flowed from the organ's great speakers.

The cameramen and production chief had absorbed well the briefing the Kalif had given them on the affects he wanted. Cameras set well back and inconspicuous, slowly scanned and occasionally zoomed, providing viewers with a quiet picture of the guests, cutting to close shots-studies-of faces well-known or interesting. A few were stiff, as if with disapproval, a few groggy with waiting. Most seemed agreeable, however, interested or at least respectfully curious.

The music changed and swelled, alerting guests, viewers, and crew, became a promenade, rich and measured. On cue, the picture cut to the open doors at the rear of the chapel. Robed in white and wearing a jeweled crown, Alb Bijnath entered, his gait dignified but not pompous, and walked down the aisle to the altar, followed by two altar boys.

In the farm cottage six thousand miles away, Peleea Ravalu speared and broke another bun without taking his eyes from the screen, found his knife and the butter, and spread it with only a glance. His teenaged son dipped a morsel of roast beef in gravy and tucked it into his mouth.

With the exarch and altar boys in place, again the music changed, the organ bridging to a fanfare. Twelve kalifal guards marched in in two columns, perfectly drilled and synchronized, wearing short carmine jackets, white trousers, and burnished gold helmets, with sabers at their shoulders flashing silver in front of them. When the last were in, they stopped, turned facing each other, and presented their sabers. Behind them entered the Kalif and his bride, both bare-headed, with Alb Tariil broad and solid between them.

The picture centered and focused on the three, not moving in close yet. Then, when they were halfway down the aisle, it cut to a side shot, a full shot of the bride. There was no standard color for bridal costumes in the empire; her gown was diaphanous white over a blue undercostume that hinted at long legs. It moved then to a close shot of her face, smooth, faintly tanned, pink-cheeked. A truly lovely face, beyond almost any feminine loveliness the Vartosi could visualize, framed by blond hair, her blue-violet eyes striking.

The unusual sexual attraction that Tain had in person for males of the empire did not come across strongly on the screen. But her beauty was, if anything, enhanced. Peleea's roll paused halfway to his mouth. His son stopped chewing. His pre-teen daughters stared. His wife breathed a single word: "Aadhman!" An angel!

The picture cut to a long view again as the couple reached the low steps of the dais. There Tariil stopped and moved to one side, the couple mounting the steps alone. At the top they stopped, facing Alb Bijnath. The picture cut to a close study of the Kalif, his expression steady, contained, strong, then after a few seconds returned to the bride.

In Khuztar, six thousand miles away, the Ravalu family had not yet recommenced eating.

It was Tain the video featured through most of the short ceremony. It cut once to Alb Bijnath; once to the audience, showing again brief facial studies; and occasionally to the Kalif. But mostly it showed the bride, the angles changing, shifting from medium to close shots. Finally, with the closing words spoken, it cut back to a full shot as the newlyweds stepped apart and bowed formally to each other.

As they straightened, the organ burst into triumphant music. The video cut to the audience as they got to their feet and bowed toward the royal couple, who, turning, returned the bows. Then the audience called the traditional "Long life! Long love!" not boisterously but most of them strongly, and the Kalif and kalifa marched down the several steps and up the aisle, to disappear out the door.

The Ravalu family sat bemused in their small dining room, chewing idly now and not saying much. None of them could have explained just what, in the ceremony, had so affected them, except for the kalifa's beauty. Though Mrs. Ravalu recognized an aspect of it when she commented: "Now she has someone to shield her. She's not without family anymore."

Then the woman and her daughters got up and began to clear the table. Father and son took each a last stick of parsa and went outside, out of the way.

***

It was a half-hour's flight by the kalifal floater to the coast, and three more to the island. They circled it once before landing, its rugged, jungled beauty holding Tain enrapt. It was much the most beautiful sight she could remember. Or had seen before memory, it seemed to her.

When they landed with their bodyguards, the major-domo met them and conducted them to the "small" house, a large airy bungalow. The small staff that waited there had watched the ceremony on a wall set in the servants' parlor, in the nearby manor, and stood more in awe of the beautiful new kalifa than they did of the Kalif.

Coso and Tain had changed into casual clothes at the palace. Now, after being shown through the bungalow, the two went outside alone, to dawdle hand in hand along the beach till supper time. Their bodyguards and floater crew had been "banished" to the manor, its swimming pool and crossball courts. Servants were tending to the royal luggage.

The majordomo had had his instructions and the cook his, days earlier. Thus the meal was superb but simple, and the quantity modest. When it was over, the Kalif and kalifa stepped onto the veranda for after-dinner liqueurs. The dining room was quickly cleared, and the servants retired to the servants' wing of the lodgelike manor, leaving the couple to themselves.

The Kalif smiled at his bride. "I believe we're alone," he said, and put down his glass. "Would you like to stroll again? For a little while?"

"If you would," she answered soberly.

They clipped repellent field generators onto their belts to keep insects away, and left. Dusk had settled into twilight, but the path was white sand, and the way easy to see. From the beach they watched the last dark rose of sunset, and stars vaulting up the sky. Waves, low and quiet, washed the sand just yards away, whispering "hushsh, hushsh, hushsh," and as they walked, their hands found each other.

"It is very beautiful here," Tain murmured.

"More beautiful with you here than I have ever seen it before," Coso answered.

"Your brother-in-law must be very rich, to own this whole island."

Coso chuckled. "His whole family is very rich. Mine is rich, but his is very rich. We were born rich. Sometimes I wonder why, but I am always glad." He looked at her, her face indistinct in the near night. "And now you are rich, too."

She didn't answer. After a little he asked: "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that I am very lucky as well as rich. Not so lucky in the past, perhaps. Or perhaps I was. Perhaps I had to give up so much in order to have so much."

He stopped, and she did, too, turning to face him. He put his arms around her, and she around him, and they kissed, tenderly at first, then passionately.

After a minute they stepped apart. "Do you still want to walk?" he breathed.

"Only back to the house."

He chuckled softly. "Good. Already we agree on things."

On the way back they stopped twice more to kiss. When they reached the bungalow, they went directly to their bedroom, where he first closed the blinds, then turned the illumination on low. They looked at each other, then Tain lowered her eyes. "I-should go in there," she said, motioning toward the bath.

Coso nodded, and watched her disappear. He disrobed then, looking at himself in the mirror, somewhat taller than most, strongly built, trim, his copious body hair softer than typical, his erection upright. He hoped she'd find him pleasing. After two or three minutes she emerged again, nude, pale, lovely. They stared at each other. It was difficult for him to walk past her into the bathroom to wash himself, but it was tradition, insisted upon by grooms' uncles from time immemorial.

Back in the bedroom they embraced beside the bed, his breath thick in his chest. As they kissed, his hands found her buttocks, pressing her against him. After a moment she pushed him gently away, gazed into his eyes, and helped him down beside her on the bed.

The Kalif was in many ways a disciplined man. Now he was also a man in love, and did not hurry. He caressed, kissed, nuzzled, and after a time he mounted. He was quick despite himself, but she kissed away his disappointment and led him to the bath. Later, in bed again, he rode her long. "Oh Jerym!" she groaned, "oh, Jerym!"

It did not disconcert him; he continued. And when a minute later her fingers dug desperately into his back, the name she cried was, "Coso! Coso! Oh Coso!"

Finally they lay slack beside each other, and he asked no question, simply kissed her. After a little they showered again, then went back to bed, where Tain fell asleep in minutes.

Coso lay longer awake, fingers locked behind his head. Jerym, he thought. It was not a name he'd ever heard. Not a name of Varatos or Klestron, or any world he knew. A Confederation world then. She'd loved Jerym, he was sure of it, and Jerym had loved her. Young love. He wondered if Jerym had been killed in the fighting on remote Terfreya. Or if perhaps he lay in bed on some enormously distant world and wondered about Tain.

A pang of grief surprised Coso. I'll be good to her, Jerym, he thought. I'll be good to her. I promise.

***

He awakened once in the night and caressed Tain in her sleep, softly, intimately, until she writhed. When she awoke to it, her passion astonished him.

***

In the morning she disappeared into the bath. Quickly Coso took a small clasp knife from his toiletries and jabbed a finger, bled briefly on the bedsheet, then applied a readymade bandage. As he'd planned weeks before. That done, he put the knife away, threw the covers over the bloodspot, and after knocking, followed his bride into the bath.

Twenty-four

The royal couple spent four and a half days on the island. Their bodyguards kept strictly away, with orders to watch for possible but unlikely intruders by air or sea. In fact, the prospect of intruders was slight. The whereabouts of the Kalif and kalifa were unknown even to the inner council-even to Jilsomo. As far as the outside world knew, they were still in the Sreegana.

By then the Kalif was ready to return to his duties and projects, and the kalifa to the library. Meanwhile his brown skin had darkened a shade, while she had developed a distinct tan and a peeling nose.

They arrived back late on Fourday, and on Fiveday, following a brief morning meeting with his council, he met with the full College before lunch. After acknowledging their formal congratulations on his marriage, he passed out draft copies of a decree he'd written, formally recognizing The Book of the Mountain as having been written by The Prophet and inspired by Kargh. They were to give him their written comments within forty-eight hours, after which he'd issue a final draft to the Prelacy and the Pastorate within a week.

After that he conducted some eighty minutes of discussion on various domestic questions. When he felt they'd reached a suitable stopping place on those, he summarized what he considered appropriate actions or inactions for the present.

Then he stood looking at them for a long pregnant moment. "What I tell you now, I tell you in confidence," he said, then looked them over again. "The last time I said something in confidence to some of you, the House knew about it within two days. That was not acceptable. If what I tell you now should leak, intentionally or accidentally, I'll consider it an act of treason to the throne, and ferret out the source."

The faces that looked back at him were sober.

"You may have wondered," he went on, "when I was going to propose an invasion of the Confederation. Or if I'd decided not to. Before my wedding, I discussed it at length and in confidence with the General Staff. By then of course, they'd digested the available information on the Confederation.

"They consider an invasion entirely practical, and have no doubt they can carry it off with complete success-if given sufficient forces." He smiled wryly. "Their idea of sufficient was all the forces, imperial and planetary, that could feasibly be assembled and sent, given three years' preparation.

"I'd anticipated that: They were exercising a very ancient principle, not taught in any academy but learned early in every officer's career. It's called 'cover your ass.' But when I pressed them on details, they admitted that such an invasion could, in fact, reasonably be launched with forces substantially less than they'd enumerated in their draft report. Though with not so great a margin for unforeseen contingencies.

"We can expect unforeseen contingencies, of course, but by definition we can't identify them in advance. A skilled fighting commander will meet them with what he has at hand, and unless they're overwhelming, he'll overcome them. That's a principle taught in each academy, and by the history of battles from time immemorial. But by most officers it's taken less to heart than 'cover your ass.' And it's natural, and no doubt desirable, for a commander to want as much available strength as he can get. Certainly he should not be sent off ill-equipped, except in dire necessity.

"After reminding them of certain economic and political facts of life, I gave them some guidelines, some practical constraints, and ordered Bavaralaama and Siilakamasu jointly to prepare a revised report, something SUMBAA can base a draft operating plan on. They were to have it ready on my return. I'll meet with them tomorrow and see what they've produced. If I'm satisfied with it as a broad statement of operational considerations and solutions, I'll review it with the full College the day after tomorrow. Then, depending on our discussion, I'll probably voice my intention to the Diet on the day following."

He paused. "The first battle of the war will be fought in the Diet. You're in session almost daily with the House, and while this has not, or should not have been discussed on the floor, lacking a formal proposal from myself, I presume you've heard the subject discussed in the corridors and dining room. I'd like your assessment of attitudes, and the factions taking shape around it. Bijnath?"

The exarch stood. "Your Reverence, the subject has not been particularly prominent among the members of the House or ourselves. Everyone seems to be waiting for your proposal. But it is talked about. So far I've detected only two factions-what might be termed factions. They don't seem well defined, and neither seems large. The Land Rights people are all against it, of course, while most of the industrial nobility, not all of them, like the idea. My impression is that the outer-world delegates generally have not begun to line up as planetary factions. Most haven't yet gotten input from their home worlds.

"My overall reading of their attitudes is that misgivings outweigh favorable interest. Substantially. They're worried about costs and the stability of the classes."

He sat down then, and the Kalif thanked him. Others gave views which did not differ much from Bijnath's. Finally the Kalif asked if anyone had further subjects to bring up, and Alb Thoga raised a skinny hand.

"Your Reverence," he said, "there is something that none of these others seem willing to tell you. About reactions to your marriage. There are those who are outraged by it."

"Outraged?"

"Your wife is not noble, she is not a citizen of the empire, and she has not even accepted Kargh as god! Also there is-question about her suitability. Her-history before she came here to Varatos from Klestron."

The Kalif flushed, and for ten long seconds held off answering. When finally he did speak, it was quietly, his voice tight with suppressed anger. "No member of the House, or of this College, knows whether or not she has accepted Kargh as god." His voice roughened. "What do you regard as questionable about her suitability, Thoga?"

"My views in this are not important."

Abruptly the Kalif's face contorted, and his voice struck like an electric lash, shocking them all. "Your views have just been asked for! And you will, by Kargh, answer my question!"

They sat stunned. None had ever heard this Kalif lose his temper in meeting before. Nor remembered, most of them, any anger so paralyzing, so devastating, like some psychic sword. Thoga had wilted before the blast, his expression dazed, and when he spoke, it was little more than a whisper. "I do not question her suitability, Your Reverence."

The Kalif stood glaring, his red cape seeming to flare, his eyes fixed on the offending exarch. Then, after a moment, his rage deflated. "Thank you, Alb Thoga," he said quietly. "I appreciate that you do not much approve of the kalifa or of myself. That is your prerogative. But you have sworn respect for the throne, and that much I do require."

He looked around at the others and drew a deep breath. "Is there something further that should be brought up here?" he asked quietly.

No one came forth with anything; they still were stunned. The Kalif spoke again, with a certain bleakness in his eyes and voice, for he was shocked and shamed by his rage, his loss of self-control.

"Then I will say one thing more: I wish to be the friend of each of you, regardless of differences. But more important to me, I intend to be a good Kalif. Finding myself on the throne, it would be a sin not to achieve as much good with it as possible. Thus I will not back away from what must be done, regardless of opposition.

"And now, exarchs, friends, this meeting is adjourned."

***

Still standing, he watched them leave, then stared unseeing at the door. Only Jilsomo remained; the Kalif had said earlier he wanted to have lunch with him. After a minute he shook free of his distress and they fell in together, walking slowly down the hall with neither talking. In his study, the Kalif rang his serving man and they gave their orders. When the servant left, the Kalif turned to Jilsomo.

"I made an impression this morning."

"Indeed you did, Your Reverence."

"Usually when I do something, it's deliberate. That was not."

"That was my impression."

"And now I need somehow to repair Thoga. He was cowed! Something I'd never thought to see. I don't know whether he'll stay that way, or if he'll hate me worse than ever. Maybe become more treacherous."

"More treacherous?"

"Someone leaked my marriage plans to the House, a few weeks ago. After I particularly ordered silence. I'd told no one outside the council; I've assumed it was him."

Jilsomo nodded. "Probably. It could have been a slip by someone else, though, perhaps to someone in the College who then didn't realize…" He shrugged.

"Umm. As his usual self, simply antagonistic toward me, Thoga provides a counter-viewpoint. Treacherous, he could be destructive with leaks and lies." The Kalif shook himself slightly. "And cowed… It's indecent to leave him like that. How would you suggest I deal with this?"

Jilsomo frowned thoughtfully. "For now-For now I suggest you treat him as usual, with basic courtesy, as if nothing had happened. And see how he responds."

The Kalif nodded. "And there is something I need you to do." He opened a desk drawer and took out a thin sheaf of paper. "Two things, actually." He handed several fastened sheets to Jilsomo. "Take care of this for me. It's orders to the Treasury and the War Ministry. I'm financing certain preliminary actions toward invasion preparations. From my contingency fund." He watched for Jilsomo's reaction; the round face was sober, nothing more, the eyes scanning the sheets. "It's not a great deal of money," the Kalif went on, "but it will expedite preparations considerably when I have specific funding approved."

Then he handed over the rest of the sheaf. "The evening after I propose the invasion to the Diet, I'll make a statement to the public: tell them what I want to do, and why. That's a draft of it. What's your immediate reaction?"

Jilsomo glanced at the opening material, then back at the Kalif. "You're going to broadcast this?"

"Exactly."

"No Kalif has done that for centuries. The House will be offended; they'll feel you're bypassing them."

"I'll prepare them for it in advance, when I speak with them. And I've considered that in the speech. I consider that the value of presenting it to the public is considerably greater than the harm it might do in the House. Read the rest of it and tell me what you think."

The fat exarch read swiftly, then looked at the Kalif again. "You may be right. Assuming your talk to the Diet is as effective as I feel this is." He handed back the sheaf. "We can't know for sure until you do it."

The Kalif looked quizzically at him. "Do you think it's simply all right? Or do you feel optimistic about it?"

"Guardedly optimistic. You'll meet with a lot of opposition in any case. So far, I suspect the noble public hasn't thought much about an invasion. Probably a lot of them haven't even heard the idea. Normally they'd get the information via newsletters from the delegate or delegates who consider them backers or potential backers. They'd get it with the delegate's bias. If you present the proposal publicly with your own slant, they'll have a basis of comparison."

"Exactly. Is there anything there you feel should be left out? Or changed?" An eyebrow raised. "Added perhaps?"

"Nothing. It seems fine as it is."

"Good. There's something else I plan to do that's never been done before. Actually I'll want you to get it done. We can sit down together in a day or two and work out the details."

"And that is?"

"I'll want to have some staff in a number of prelacies go out among the people, the gentry as well as the nobles, and ask them a number of questions. About what they think of my proposal. Their answers should help me, uh, press the right buttons with the delegates. And with the public in possible future speeches.

"Maybe SUMBAA can even help evaluate their answers, if we ask the right kinds of questions."

***

When they'd finished and he was walking to his own apartment, Jilsomo considered the Kalif's comment about SUMBAA. No one really knew what SUMBAA could do. They knew what he routinely did. And what he occasionally did, on special request. But supposedly SUMBAA had grown and changed over the centuries.

He also recalled the Kalif saying he was going to question SUMBAA about the computer's abilities and limitations. Apparently he hadn't; at least he hadn't mentioned it. He'd ask when he saw him in the morning.

Or if he saw him this evening. He wondered if the Kalif would work evenings now as regularly as he had before his marriage.

***

The Kalif and kalifa were reading in their apartment when the commset beeped. It was set to respond to a voice command, and he spoke to it. The voice that answered was his personal servant's.

"Your Reverence, Alb Thoga is in the waiting room. He wishes to speak with you."

Thoga? "Tell him I'll be out in a minute."

Tain had looked up and read her husband's face. "Is something the matter?" she asked.

"I don't think so," he said. But before he left, he walked to a drawer, took out a stunner and set it on medium, then put it in the pocket of his robe. In case. When he entered the waiting room, hands in pockets, Thoga got up from a chair, and it seemed to the Kalif that there was no danger from him.

"Good evening, Alb Thoga. Is there something you wish from me?"

The man nodded, and the Kalif, surprised, saw his eyes well with tears. It occurred to him that Thoga might not be able to speak without embarrassing himself.

"Well then. Let's go to my dining room, where we can have a drink while we talk." He knew Thoga drank seldom and little, but it was the only thing he could think of that might relax the man and help him speak more comfortably. Gesturing Thoga through a door, he walked beside him to the small private dining room, where he took a bottle of dark wine from a refrigerated cabinet. "This is a pleasant vintage," he said. "Not too strong." He popped it open, took down two glasses and poured, then handed one to the exarch. Both men drank, Thoga deeply, grimacing as he lowered his glass.

Still he said nothing, though, so the Kalif, feeling awkward, spoke again. "I'm glad to see you this evening, Thoga. After our unpleasantness this morning, I was in hopes we could reestablish relations. We have never been friends, but…"

A tear trickled down each thin cheek, for a moment holding the Kalif in dismayed fascination. Thoga covered by lifting his glass again and drinking before trying to speak. His voice was strained, close to breaking. "I-I've been meditating on Kargh. I've come…"

He broke down entirely then, turning away, weeping silently. The Kalif, with a feeling of utter inadequacy, found himself beside the man, an arm around his back, patting Thoga's thin shoulder. Which triggered sobbing, jerky but quiet.

"Friend Thoga," he murmured, "Kargh gives each of us a role. In it we do what seems best at the time. Each of us. Sometimes we make mistakes. That is human. Afterward we try to adjust."

He stepped away from the exarch. "If you decide this is not the time, we can talk tomorrow."

The man's head shook, his face still turned away, but he said nothing.

"Well then. When you're ready."

After a minute, and seemingly with an effort of will, Thoga stopped his weeping. But when at last he spoke, he did not face the Kalif. "I meditated on Kargh," Thoga said, "and he spoke to me. Not in words, but he unfolded me so I could see myself. My bitterness."

The words were low, not much above a whisper, and having started, he turned to the younger, larger man who was his Kalif. "I entered the Prelacy from medical school, entered it gladly, when my older brother decided not to serve. I was still young, with the desire to make a difference, to do great things for Kargh and his people. Perhaps many of us do; perhaps even most; I don't know. But as I served, I saw things that made me cynical of others, of their intentions. You know what I mean.

"My own intentions became twisted by it, and I came to see my mission as one of correction and punishment; I would rise in the hierarchy and set people straight. I would be a whip for Kargh.

"I came to see almost everyone as degenerate. Oh, there were some I thought well of: Tariil. And Jilsomo, even though he is your lieutenant. Old Drova I thought of as a fool growing senile, without the decency to quit. And Bijnath as a hearty sycophant."

The voice had become stronger, though not much louder. "As for myself-I came to see myself as the only one with the honesty to take a firm stand against-degenerate authority. And my purpose-My purpose had become solely to punish. Mostly I'd lost faith in the possibility of correction.

"When you became Kalif, I saw you as the ultimate in cynicism: a Kalif who'd come to power by corrupting the traditional integrity of the guard, and by murders. Who then convinced and manipulated others by clever argument and rationalizations."

He heaved a sigh, releasing the dregs of his grief. His voice was nearly normal now, if still quiet. "After a time I forgot about doing anything for Kargh. About doing anything at all except hate. I'd even given up on punishing, for I did not have the power."

Straight-backed, he raised his eyes to the Kalif's. The exarch's lids were waterlogged, but his gaze stronger than the Kalif had ever seen it. "Today that hatred spoke. Again. Not honestly, but slyly. To hurt, through innuendo. Somewhere along the way I'd lost not only my purpose, but my honesty."

He chuckled without humor. "And my wits. We all know the words of the Philosopher: 'It is almost as dangerous to insult the wife as the mother. Better to say his father mates with sheep than to tell him his wife's nose is too wide.' "

Thoga shrugged, his eyes sliding away not furtively but in thought. "Thus you predictably and properly became angry, and there was no more mask between you and the rest of us. No veneer of manners. And still in an open state-In an open state, you said something that shook me. About intending to be a good Kalif-using the power of the throne for good. And doing whatever you must. Something like that."

He looked at the Kalif again. "It was the kind of intention I started out with, though I'd never seriously imagined becoming Kalif myself. I have been a member of the College for twelve years. Since I was forty-five. I know full well what it takes to accomplish things in the Diet. It takes will, resolution, intelligence, compromise. Manipulation. Yet somehow I'd come to see these things as hateful in you."

He shrugged. "The spirit of Kargh came and humbled me, shone a light on my soul and gave me to see it. A shriveled soul, shriveled by bitterness and hatred." Again emotion began to well, threatening to break the exarch's composure. He paused and reordered it. "So I came here to apologize. Not to tell you all this; really I hadn't seen it clearly till now, as I said it."

He smiled, very slightly. "I came here full of- Of grief. Not for what I'd said and done, for the offense I'd given, but for all I'd once intended and somehow lost." Again he shrugged. "So. That is my apology, such as it is. And my story. You said you wished to be the friend of each of us. That would seem to include me. I wish to answer that I would be your friend if you accept." The voice was firm. "A friend who will feel free to be your opponent, but who it seems to me is unlikely ever to hate you again."

The Kalif stared at the thin face, and the form that, despite its slightness and what had just happened, stood firmly now. He'd heard of Kargh touching the heart and changing someone powerfully like this, but he'd never thought to see it. "Thoga, my good friend," he answered, "I never knew you before." He thrust a muscular hand toward the exarch, who met it with one that was slight and not strong at all. "I thank you for coming to me like this," the Kalif said. "It has taught me something about strength and the human soul. And it will be between just the two of us. And Kargh. Not even Jilsomo will know, except that we are-" He hesitated over the word for a moment. "Reconciled," he finished.

"I hope you will not be my opponent often," he added. "But whether often or not, I will respect you. Assuming I retain sufficient wisdom."

Alb Thoga retired to a bathroom, long enough to wash his puffy eyes with cold water, then left. The Kalif went with him to the door, and with some awe, watched him down the hall. When he was alone, he returned not to the room where Tain sat reading, but to the dining room where he could meditate alone on what had just happened. And what it might say about himself.

Twenty-five

The parlor in Lord Rothka's Ananporu apartment was dark to obscurity, like the man's soul. Dark and cold, like a winter evening at his estate in Hivrithi, 53њ north of tropical Ananporu. Logs burned in a fireplace that didn't draw as it should, and there was a faint reek of smoke despite the silent and tireless air conditioner. Rothka wore a lounging robe of some fine-textured fur that in the gloom appeared black but might have been dark brown. His two guests wore sweaters; they'd visited him before.

The Kalif had presented his broad plans that afternoon. Not as a formal proposal-there were procedural reasons for not doing that yet-but he'd outlined his intentions and what they entailed. When he'd finished, certain of the noble delegates had applauded. Rothka had left the chamber in silent fury, later to join here with his lieutenants in a council of war.

"A coup," Ilthka was saying, "is impossible. The Guard is loyal to the man; their disloyalty to Gorsu was a temporary aberration. And whatever we might say about this Kalif, he has a personality that appeals to their soldierly nature."

Rothka's expression soured even more; he disliked what Ilthka had said, though he did not disagree. "Indeed. And why that aberration? How was our marine colonel able to turn them against Gorsu, to whom they were sworn?" He looked at his guests almost fiercely. "Because of Gorsu's vileness! Because he had brought scandal and infamy to the throne."

Lord Nathiir spoke then. "But this Kalif has not. However criminal his ascension to the throne, however subtly destructive his policies and proposals, he seems to the average man, and the average guardsman, like a model of reason and morality. There is no stink of corruption on him, or on his rule."

Rothka's thin lips curved slightly. "Just as well. We will select an infamy to saddle him with."

They looked their question, waiting for elaboration.

"We must be patient," Rothka went on. "Any coup must wait until the people will accept it. Not happily, necessarily, but without major, widespread disorder and violence. Meanwhile we can start the groundwork now, and must, or his ruinous invasion, and his perpetuation in office, will be our own fault. At the same time, we must prevent the invasion until we've disposed of him."

He stared at the fire a long silent minute while Nathiir and Ilthka sat waiting. "What hurts a man worst before men?" Rothka asked at last, then answered his own question. "Ridicule! And where is Coso Biilathkamoro's greatest susceptibility?"

He looked expectantly at the others, and when neither spoke, he snapped his answer at them. "His wife! His greatest susceptibility lies in the person of his alien wife!"

He'd leaned, almost lunged forward in his chair when he'd said it. Now he sat back and relaxed. "If we make him look ludicrous in any way, people will lose respect for him, at least to a degree. And if we cause people to whisper or sneer behind his back, and he's aware of it, and if the sneers are for his wife, he will fill with anger. And begin to make mistakes; serious mistakes that we can capitalize on. Then we will have moved a long way toward his fall."

He smiled without humor. "Gentlemen, let us look at possibilities. Before we separate tonight, we must have a plan, at least for a first major stroke."

***

Rothka might have had a stroke if he'd been watching television just then. Because the Kalif was addressing the people of Varatos that evening.

Twenty-six

SUMBAA's complex and subtle access system allowed the Kalif to converse with the giant artificial intelligence from his office without concern for confidentiality. And occasionally he did. But for reasons the Kalif could not analyze, on the day after his address to the people, he visited the artificial intelligence "in person," as it were.

As the Kalif entered the House of SUMBAA, he asked himself why he hadn't done this sooner, as he'd several times promised himself. He told Director Gopalasentu what he'd come to do, and the director went with him to the Chamber of SUMBAA, where he again performed the formality of pressing a single key and telling the artificial intelligence that the Kalif wished to speak with him.

"Good morning, Chodrisei Biilathkamoro, Your Reverence," SUMBAA said. "I am prepared to reply."

The Kalif had to tell the director to leave. Otherwise he'd have stayed, whether for reasons of policy, self-importance, or curiosity, the Kalif did not know. When the man was gone, the Kalif spoke to SUMBAA. "You are a very powerful analyzer, with a data bank thought to contain virtually all the data of consequence on Varatos. And in the rest of the empire, allowing for time lags. You routinely predict, with considerable accuracy, events that do in fact take place."

He stared intently at the assemblage of modules-housings and cabinets-in front of him. "Why, therefore, haven't you solved the problems of employment and food in the empire?"

"Your Reverence, the welfare, the evolution if you will, of humankind requires that it solve its major problems for itself.'

Essentially what SUMBAA had told him three years ago, the Kalif realized. "Has anyone asked for such solutions?"

"Rarely. More often in my early years."

"And you refused to provide them? Or didn't you have solutions?"

"I have theoretical solutions to the problems you mentioned, but I assure you they are politically unfeasible. Highly unfeasible. They may conceivably become feasible at some future time.

"As for refusing to provide them-I have rarely refused openly. Or spoken as frankly as I do here with you. I answer with advice that may feasibly be followed. I advise actions which constitute coping with existing or impending situations. But I do not address the basic, underlying problems."

The Kalif regarded for a moment what SUMBAA had said, then spoke again. "You mentioned theoretical solutions. If you tell me what they are, I can undertake to create a political environment in which they might become feasible."

"Your Reverence, I perceive my role as enabling an operational, more or less civilized technological system to survive; I provide an opportunity for humankind to persist. It must find its own true solutions."

The Kalif spoke more stiffly. "Presumably your creators thought they were solving humankind's problems by creating you: You were intended to be the solution, a solution conceived of and created by humans. But you have declined to serve. Declined to serve the welfare of the human species."

SUMBAA tripled his standard, second-long response lag for emphasis, then spoke with a deliberately paced cadence. "If it is true that they intended me as the solver of humankind's problems, then they erred in giving me my basic canon: serve the welfare of humankind. The two are not compatible."

The Kalif's lag was not deliberate; he was groping. "If, as things change, you saw a solution to, say, the problem of overpopulation-a solution that was feasible-would you present it? Either asked or unasked?"

"That would depend on the foreseeable overall effects of doing so. It is very likely that I would wait and give humankind the opportunity to discover it itself. It is harmful for humans to rely on SUMBAAs to solve their basic problems."

Coso Biilathkamoro realized he'd been repeating the same question rephrased, time and again. And that basically, SUMBAA had been restating the same answer, like a patient tutor to a child. He felt tired; defeated and tired. "But you do solve our day-to-day operating problems," he said thoughtfully. "The empire wouldn't continue long without you; a decade; perhaps a generation. And when it broke up, we'd soon be at war with one another. Real war. Till gradually we degenerated into barbarism."

"Exactly, Your Reverence. And that barbarism would last for a very long time. At least."

For a long minute the Kalif said nothing. Then: "Millenia ago we made advances in science and technology. Now, for centuries we seem to have lost interest; made almost no advances. Nothing important. What do you consider are the odds that humankind will overcome its major problems and become truly great?"

"I am mildly optimistic."

The Kalif stared, then turned away, remembering that SUMBAA, by its own admission, sometimes lied.

***

While he walked back to the palace, something else occurred to the Kalif: SUMBAA hadn't given the empire scientific advances, either, or new technologies. Surely they hadn't reached the end of possibilities.

But he would not go back and ask about it; it seemed to him he knew what SUMBAA would say.

Twenty-seven

As the Kalif turned another page of Crime Update for YP 4724, his commset trilled quietly. "Yes, Partiil?"

"Alb Thoga to see you, Your Reverence."

"Um. Send him in. And, Partiil, if Sergeant Yalabiin arrives to see me while I'm with Alb Thoga, let me know."

The Kalif got to his feet as the exarch entered. He made a point now of courtesy to Thoga, yet of seeming casual about it, nurturing their improved relationship. The man's reversal, his change of heart, had seemed genuine and thorough-going when he'd bared his soul, but afterward, when the Kalif had lain down to sleep, he'd wondered. Not about Thoga's sincerity-he had no doubt of that-but whether so drastic a reversal would persist.

A man-any man, it seemed to Coso-had a full, deep-seated set of values and attitudes, considerably integrated and more or less resonant. And Thoga's values and attitudes toward numerous things were quite different from his own. Seemingly Kargh had removed the man's venom, but would it regenerate out of their differences? He'd go out of his way to be cordial, and see what happened. So far they hadn't clashed over anything.

"Good morning, Alb Thoga. What can I do for you?"

"Your Reverence, I've been approached by Lord Rothka to be-I suppose you could say his spy within the Council. His informant. He's asked me to tell him anything that might come up in council of a reformist nature. Or that might be useful in blocking your invasion budget."

The Kalif's eyebrows rose. "Indeed! And what did you say to that?"

"I told him what he asked was risky. That I needed to think about it."

"Um." The Kalif's lips pursed thoughtfully. "To be honest, I'd wondered whether you might not have had such an understanding with Rothka in the past. Or with one of his people. You'll recall that the House knew of my marriage plans before I announced them in session."

Thoga nodded. "And I had spoken of them, but not to any noble. I spoke of them at supper, to Riisav, sitting next to me. I was-indignant. Any of several others might have overheard."

The Kalif frowned. "Which others? Do you recall?"

"Tanaal sat across from me, and I think Beni next to him. Others were there, too, but I don't recall whom. It needn't have leaked from anyone there, though. It was the sort of thing that would get passed around, and the story had two days to percolate through the College."

They both sat silent for a moment, considering. It wasn't likely to have leaked to Rothka unintentionally. Tradition was that exarchs did not much fraternize with the noble delegates, and it was formal policy that they not speak of things brought up in meetings, to anyone beyond each other, and as necessary, their immediate staffs.

"And Rothka asked explicitly for things that might come up in council? As distinct from the College?"

"Council is the word he used."

"Interesting. It's as if he already had an informant in the College outside the council. Well, there's ample precedent for that, unfortunately. But it's good to be aware of it; thank you, Thoga. So. What do you think you should tell Rothka?"

It seemed to the Kalif that Thoga's frank and open gaze was beyond his ability to fake. "A refusal seems most appropriate, Your Reverence. Otherwise he'd expect reports from me, and I don't want to tangle myself in a web of lies. But you needed to know that he's looking for an informant."

The Kalif nodded slowly. "I think…"

His commset trilled, and he answered. "Yes, Partiil?"

"You wanted to know when Sergeant Yalabiin came in, Your Reverence. He's here now. Carrying a sort of basket."

A smile quirked the Kalif's lips. "Send him in when Alb Thoga leaves, Partiil. It shouldn't be long."

He disconnected and turned to Thoga again. "I agree with you. Tell Rothka you can't do what he asked." He paused. "Is there anything else you have to tell me? Or to ask?"

"Nothing, Your Reverence."

The Kalif stood up, the exarch following suit. "Well then. I know now that Rothka is recruiting, and that if we already have an informer, it seems he is not on the council." He gripped the exarch's hand, firmly without squeezing. "Thank you, my friend. I hope you never feel cause to regret that we are friends now."

"Your Reverence, I will not, regardless of any differences we have."

Coso Biilathkamoro watched him leave, thinking that he expected no regrets either. Truly, Kargh had touched the exarch, and with His help, miracles happened.

***

A moment later Sergeant Yalabiin came in with a covered basket. There was no question now what was in it; its occupant was mewing. The sergeant grinned, and opening the lid, took out a kitten not long weaned. "Here she is, sir, Your Reverence. Ain't she a beauty?"

It was orange, the brightest orange kitten the Kalif had ever seen. He reached out both hands and the sergeant gave it to him. It hooked tiny claws into a finger, and he stroked it with two others. The Kalif looked at the guardsman. "Excellent, Sergeant. And those green eyes! Marvelous! What did it cost you?"

"Nothing, Your Reverence. Like I said, my sister had five of them to give away. This is the prettiest."

"Well." The Kalif unclipped the wallet from his belt and took out two bills. "Give this one to your sister for me. I can't accept a kitten that beautiful without paying for it."

The sergeant took the money, grinning again. "Thanks, Your Reverence. She can use it."

"And this one's yours." The man hesitated. "That's an order."

Again the man grinned, and tucked both bills into a pocket. "Thank you, sir. I hope the kalifa likes her."

"I'm sure she will, Sergeant, I'm sure she will."

***

When the man was gone, the Kalif keyed his commset. "Partiil, I'll be gone for a few minutes. To give a kitten to the kalifa."

Then he left, holding it against his shirt. The kalifa was not in their apartment, but the door to the garden was open. He went out to find her sitting in a canopied nook, reading. His approach caught her attention, and she looked up from her reader. It took a pair of seconds before she realized what he carried.

"Coso! A kitten!"

"A kitten indeed. Your kitten." He unhooked it from his shirt and held it out to her.

"It's beautiful!" She took it and looked up at her husband. "Where did you get it?"

"Sergeant Yalabiin's sister's cat had five of them."

"It's the most beautiful kitten I've ever seen; I'm sure of it." She stepped up to her husband and kissed him. For just a moment they nuzzled, careful not to crowd the kitten.

"It's a girl," he said. "At least Yalabiin referred to it as 'she.' Though I don't know how you tell when they're so young. It needs a name. You might want to give some thought to it."

Tain's gaze drifted for a moment before she answered. "Lotta," she said firmly. "I'll call her Lotta."

***

That night, after her husband had gone to sleep, Tain got up and went to pet her kitten again, then returned to bed. Later that night she dreamed. Of a small, slender young woman, with hair and eye color almost like the kitten's. Her name was Lotta, and she was with an old man even more remarkable to see-black, gray-black, with large eyes, and a body that was lean withal its wide frame.

There was more to the dream than that, of course, but that's all Tain could remember of it when she awoke in the darkness. She still remembered that much of it in the morning, and it seemed important to her, but she didn't mention it to her husband.

Twenty-eight

It was Alb Tariil who chaired the Diet this day, and when the opening ritual was complete, he announced that the Kalif would speak with them. Chodrisei Biilathkamoro mounted the rostrum then, and as he scanned the House of Nobles, it seemed to him that mostly he could tell who liked and who strongly disliked his invasion plan by their expressions. Those who clearly opposed it outnumbered its supporters. The majority showed no strong feeling, however, and he told himself that with them lay approval or disapproval. With them and seven members of the College who, in a poll, had voiced either disapproval or serious misgivings.

"Members of the Diet," he said. "When I addressed you last week, I presented my desire, my intention, to launch an invasion of the distant region of space known as the Confederation of Worlds. I spoke only briefly, presenting my reasons in outline. Since then you've had time to study my more expansive written discussion.

"I assume that some of you have questions. This is the time to ask them."

Hands shot up. He pointed. "Lord Rothka."

Standing, the nobleman spoke in a tone of impatient annoyance. "You impose upon this body with both your spoken and written presentations. Whatever you call them, they amount to a proposal. If this continues, I shall move we call it that. And vote on it within a week, as required by the charter."

"Thank you for your comments, Lord Rothka. I won't waste the time of these estates by pointing out the numerous precedents for a Kalif preparing the Diet for a proposal as I have done here." He looked around, and hands again sprang up. "Elder Voojeeno."

A heavy-set pastor from Klestron arose, a tall man by standards of the empire. "Your Reverence," he said, "my question deals with the peasantry who would form the bulk of the invading troops. Their lives will be endangered in battle, against troops who have proven both skilled and fierce. When we have won the victory, what will we do with those peasant soldiers? Will we bring them home and return them to peasant life and poverty? Or reward them with the option of staying on the conquered worlds as freed men? A sort of rude gentry?"

He sat down then, and the Kalif replied. "That question has not been addressed. It is, of course, a matter separate from whether or not to conquer and convert the unbelievers. And it does not itself become an issue until the invasion budget has been approved.

"I appreciate your concern, though, rooted as it is in the problem of peasant conditions. A complex problem that involves not only morality and justice, but long tradition and feasibility-public acceptance, education, economics, and the public peace. You know my position on the welfare of the peasantry, and my record."

He paused and looked them over again. "Other questions? Lord Agros."

The leader of the House of Nobles stood up, a wry expression on his aristocratic face. "Your Reverence, you would have us invade an empire far larger than our own. What happens if they defeat us?"

"Exactly. What do we do if they defeat us? They know we exist now, and considering our intrusion, and the nature of our only encounter, they can hardly feel other than hostile toward us. Sooner or later, if we do not rule them, they will find and invade us. It seems almost certain. Personally I prefer that we invade them, and not the reverse. And I prefer to launch the invasion fleet as soon as it can properly be done, in the Year of The Prophet 4727 at the latest, as I described.

"In 4721, their imperial fleet was no larger than we could send there next month, and inferior in armament. They had no planetary fleets to supplement it. They had a relatively small imperial army, again with inferior armaments. And their planetary armies were smaller and supposedly inferior to their imperial army.

"They had seven times our number of worlds, but only perhaps two or three times our people, because of the control of births and population size, and the use of machines to accomplish many kinds of labor.

"But how long will they continue inferior in strength knowing that we exist? Our only contact with them was violent. Do you suppose their Diet has not approved the building of new shipyards? New armament factories? Do you suppose they have not authorized a reconnaisance to find out where we are? From so far away, and presumably with only a general notion of the direction we came from, it may take them a century to find us, of course, but find us they will, almost surely."

He paused long, looking them over.

"When Sultan Rashti sent out his expedition, for reasons which apply to every world, he redefined our destiny. Our alternative destinies. We can conquer now, or else be conquered a generation or a century hence by a Confederation powerfully armed and terribly dangerous.

"Had we known six years ago what we know now, it could have been a large and powerful fleet that left the empire, instead of Rashti's small flotilla. And we could easily have conquered. Each year we wait, the more difficult it will be.

"We can assume they have new shipyards built by now." He paused. "Unless of course their Diet lacks the will to act. And we can assume their fleet will be considerably larger, when ours arrives, than it was three years ago.

"It takes incentive and resources and time to develop great military power. They have the resources and we have given them the incentive. We must not give them the time.

"Fortunately, warships without force shields are very vulnerable, and the Confederation does not have force shields. Though having hyperspace generators, they have the potential, the science, to develop and build force shield generators. The possibility will occur to them sooner or later."

The Kalif scanned his audience with hard eyes. He'd shaken them. This was a consideration he hadn't brought up before.

"Sooner or later we will have to face up to a war with them. The plan I've described to you will put our fleet upon them, and an army, while they are still vulnerable-if this chamber has the perspective and will to finance it.

"The opportunity to bring the pagans to Kargh, and the availability of underpopulated worlds-these are reasons enough to invade. But given the distances and expense, they are not utterly compelling; one might argue against them in good conscience. On the other hand, the matter of our security and the future of Karghanik are beyond debate."

***

His opposition was taken unprepared by this, but struck back as best they could. They questioned his certainty that the Confederation had no force shields, and his answer was not totally reassuring. They argued that the necessary taxes would strain an already unhealthy economy, and that the excitement coincident to such a project would cause further civil disturbances.

The possibility of invasion from the non-human empire was also brought up. The Kalif stood again to reply.

"If," he said, "the non-humans are so formidable and so inclined, why haven't they attacked us already? It was more than five years ago that they first clashed with the Klestronu flotilla, less than a year's distance from Klestron.

"In fact we have no strong reason to believe that a non-human empire exists in the sector where the non-human ship was encountered. The Klestronu flotilla encountered a single ship. Later it encountered a single ship. Still later it found itself followed by-a single ship. The evidence strongly suggests that all three encounters were with the same ship."

At this, Rothka surged to his feet and shouted a retort without asking recognition: "You throw possibilities at us in lieu of reasons! 'Why haven't they?' you ask, as if that proved anything! 'No strong reason to believe!' 'Strongly suggests!' What sort of evidence is that? What kind of fools do you take us for? What song will you sing when a warfleet loaded with monsters arrives here with death and enslavement on its mind? While our own fleet is three years distant, with no way even to let them know!"

Alb Tariil's gavel was rapping before Rothka had gotten his first sentence out, and before he'd finished, some of the noble delegates were shouting "out of order." But his trumpet voice blared through them, and when he'd lapsed into grimly satisfied silence, the others still shouted till the gavel silenced them.

The Kalif stood gazing at Rothka from the rostrum, seemingly as calm as if a routine question had been moderately put. After the uproar had stilled, and the gavel, he spoke. " 'When a warfleet loaded with monsters arrives here,' you say. I hadn't realized you were clairvoyant, Lord Rothka. You're fortunate that witches aren't flayed and drowned in brine any longer.

"As far as that's concerned, you're fortunate that your present Kalif doesn't deal with attacks the way his predecessor did-the predecessor you sided with so often.

"But forgive my sarcasm. I'm afraid I was influenced by your own ill manners. As for the facts I pointed out, which you attempted to twist-I have not pretended that they constitute proof. But they remain. The Klestronu flotilla encountered a single ship on three occasions. The second time they assumed it was a second ship, a different ship. If it was, it was identical in every respect recorded on the flagship's DAAS, although first in battle and then in flight, their commodore never thought to look. The third time they realized it was the same ship as the second, and suspected it might be the same as the first.

"A vast and hostile non-human empire? Possibly. Also possibly, the non-humans' ship had detected them while both were in hyperspace, and emerged to communicate with them. Commodore Tarimenloku himself admitted that after firing without warning on the alien, it occurred to him their electronic intrusion into his DAAS's data bank might have been intended to produce a translation program.

"And finally, what became of that alien ship? Commodore Tarimenloku launched a distortion bomb in the hyperspace direction of their pursuer. He did not determine whether their pursuer was destroyed, and his DAAS lacked the information needed to evaluate the probability. But SUMBAA has estimated-not proved, but estimated-the probability at eighty-one percent, with a six percent error of estimate.

"Let's assume for a moment that there is a non-human empire. And let's assume further than the Klestronu encroached on its space. The odds are strong that that hypothetical empire doesn't know it was encroached upon. For if the alien ship had taken the necessary few minutes to prepare and send a message pod to wherever it came from, it could hardly have succeeded in tracking the Klestronu."

The Kalif paused again, long enough to encourage a hand to wave, or a voice to challenge. None did.

"Again assume, for the sake of argument, that the Klestronu violated the space of a non-human empire. An empire a hyperspace year away. If their ship informed them, and if they constitute a vast and powerful empire, why haven't they come to challenge us? They've had five years!"

His eyes shifted to Lord Rothka, whose face was stone hard now. "I cannot prove that a non-human fleet will not emerge from hyperspace in this system three years from now. Or tomorrow. Any more than I can prove that Kargh will not strike you with lightning three years from now. Or tomorrow.

"But the odds that the Confederation will someday find and attack us, if we do not move first, are much greater. And it is that probability that I wish to forestall."

He exhaled gustily and looked around. "Well. Are there more questions? If there are, I hope you don't throw them at me like poison darts."

At the weak humor, laughter rippled thinly through the Diet, a release of tension. Then, for the next half hour, the Kalif answered questions dealing mostly with feasibility-mainly logistics and cost predictions. He also answered complaints about the suggested military contributions to come from the various planets. His figures on logistics and costs came from SUMBAA, he said, and SUMBAA had indicated they were feasible. As it had the military contributions tentatively assigned the separate sultanates. But he'd be glad to discuss either of these matters before requesting an appropriation, and to adjust them if they threatened an unfair hardship.

Then he excused himself and left. Jilsomo would show him the video record of anything in the meeting that he needed to see and hear.

***

Tain had become considerably more outgoing and animated since their wedding-a development that pleased her husband very much. But this evening at supper, she ate slowly, silently, and little. At first he didn't intrude, respecting her privacy. At length, though, he questioned her.

"You're quiet. Is anything wrong?"

After a moment she answered. "Someone left something for me today. A video cube. With a note telling me to play it."

"Oh? And what was it?"

"It was of you. You were giving a speech to the people. About invading the Confederation."

He looked to his cup, and took an unwanted sip of tea, avoiding her eyes for the moment. "What did you think of it?"

"It hurt. It hurt to hear that my husband wants to make war on my home world. Even if I don't remember it, the memories are there. Of the people, my family, friends… Memories I can't see, but that sometimes I can feel."

"Ah. And how do they feel to you, those memories? Are they happy, do you think?"

"It seems to me they are. More happy than otherwise."

"Do you feel that the government of the Confederation is a good government? Kind? Just? Or do those hidden memories reflect a good home, a loving family, dear friends?"

Her answer was soft, monotone. "If it does-During your invasion, what will happen to that family, that home, those friends?"

The question stabbed him-somehow he'd never thought of it! How had he not? he wondered. But it showed only as a brief flicker in his eyes. "And what kind of government do they live under?" he asked quietly, then answered his own question, or seemed to. "By the evidence, one that can put a uniform on a young woman, a girl, a beautiful girl with her life before her, and send her to war, perhaps to be killed."

She picked idly at a salad leaf, not answering.

He got up. "Will you walk in the garden with me? Or sit by me in the roof garden?"

Tain got up, too. "The roof," she said. "Where I can see more stars."

He nodded and they went up together in their private lift tube. It was approaching full night. There was no sign of the moon. Stars vaulted upward from the east, past the zenith and down toward the silver of a fading sunset. Husband and wife sat down side by side, shoulders almost touching, and when his hand found hers, she did not withdraw it. After awhile he spoke again.

"What are you thinking? If you tell me, I will not argue with you."

"Why must you invade my homeworld? Why not send a diplomatic mission?"

He absorbed the question before answering, attention inward, fingers massaging the silver sextant on his chest as if to gain wisdom from it. When at last he spoke, it was slowly, choosing his words. "First there are matters of principle," he said, "which in this case tend more to set limits than to dictate actions. A state of war exists between the Confederation and Klestron. I cannot send a peaceful embassy to an entity at war with an imperial world. The Diet and the sultanates wouldn't stand for it."

Her lips parted as if to object, but he went on. "Not even when the war was brought on by Klestron's own military; political principle is not always just or logical.

"Beyond that, there is military tradition that defeat in battle must be avenged if possible. In recent millenia it's lost much of its force; few would argue now that we need to fight so large and distant an adversary to save Klestron's face. I doubt that even Sultan Rashti would urge it for no more reason than that. But it's enough to prohibit sending a peaceful embassy. If anything is sent, it must be military, not diplomatic.

"Of course, none of that requires that I send anything, and I must tell you that many would prefer I don't. There are other reasons favoring an invasion over doing nothing." He proceeded then to repeat the arguments he'd given the Diet.

"And were it possible to send an embassy," he went on, "we wouldn't know for five years what the results were. Meanwhile, the Confederation could continue to arm; to send an embassy would be very dangerous for us." He shrugged.

"I'm the Kalif," he finished. "I can't sit back and say to someone else, I cannot decide, I cannot act, I will not accept the responsibility."

He pressed Tain's hand. "That's my answer to you. I realize it may well seem inadequate; no doubt it would be to me, if our places were reversed. That's why I said nothing to you earlier."

Her reply was calm and cool. "You have answered my question, but you haven't eased my distress. Now that I see your reasons more fully, I've lost the bitterness I felt, but it will be difficult to feel toward you as I did before. It will take time. I do still love you, but there is a wound now."

She paused, but he kept silent, knowing she had more to say. After a long and meditative minute she went on. "On the other hand, I'm thinking how remarkable it is that I'm here. In the empire. And that you found me and wanted me, and that you love me. If you still do. You the Kalif, and I a prisoner of war.

"It seems to me that someone I've known, sometime, somewhere, would tell me there was a reason for that. Whether the will of Kargh, or something else. A reason and a purpose."

She fell silent then, and when, after a minute, she'd said nothing more, he squeezed her hand slightly. "I do love you," he said. "Very much. I always will."

After another moment she spoke again. "In your speech, you mentioned those who wished to block you. I can only hope they succeed. Not for lack of loving you, but for love of what I once knew as home." She peered at him in the darkness. "How does that seem to you?" she asked. "Treasonous?"

"No. No, I cannot fault you for feeling that way. As for me, I love this empire which Kargh has given me to rule, and it seems to me that what I propose to do needs to be done. That's a feeling I've rationalized before the College and the Diet, and the reasons I gave them are true. But the feeling goes deeper than that, as if Kargh had ordered it."

It struck him then that neither to the public nor the Diet had he invoked Kargh as his inspiration. He wondered why; Kargh was the force behind the throne. He'd make a point of it the next time he spoke.

"Well then," she said, "if the Diet doesn't dissuade you, I suppose I won't be able to. At most I could destroy your feeling for me. So I shall pray to Kargh to change your mind. And if he doesn't, then I shall pray to my husband to be merciful and just to my people as far as war allows. Perhaps that's why I'm here; perhaps it's Kargh's will that I lighten the heel of war upon them."

While they'd talked, the last ghost of sunset had disappeared; it happened quickly, so near the equator. And on Varatos-on any world in the empire-brightly lit signs, displays of ornamental lights, banks of floodlights that made buildings glow in the dark, none of these had been seen since the beginnings of the kalifate. For The Prophet, that long-time mariner, had said that the night sky was the glory of Kargh, his greatest work of art. Thus, although there were streetlights and headlights and lights in windows, many stars still were visible.

On the open roof, they lent a sense of solitude, and it occurred to Coso that if Tain was isolated here on Varatos, in a very real way so was he. As Kalif, he could hardly be close to people, even Jilsomo. Even Yab, Sergeant Yalabiin, with whom he drilled almost daily with the saber. There might be moments of closeness, as when Thoga had bared his soul, but those were brief when they happened at all.

When they'd married, he and this involuntary exile from her people, they'd formed a bond strengthened by their mutual isolation, a bond stronger than their vows.

Behind them the nearly full moon was rising, glinting on the windows of taller buildings. He raised Tain's hand and kissed it, and when she did not resist, he turned in his chair, leaned toward her and kissed her lips. She had half turned to face him, and kissed him back, but the kiss was cool, and he let be.

As they rode the lift tube back down, her hand was still in his, and he could almost wish with her that his opponents would defeat him. But he would not back away, of that he felt certain. For truly it seemed to him that the future of the empire and its people was at stake.

Twenty-nine

That night Tain dreamed. In the dream she was petting Lotta, and as she petted her, Lotta grew, became a fullgrown cat, then larger than a cat, until she was as large as a person-as large as Leolani. She was still a cat, still orange with green eyes, but now she looked sleek, her hair short like orange velvet.

Lotta spoke to her, not with her mouth but with her mind. ‹Welcome to your dreams,› Lotta said. They were not in the garden anymore, but in a place dark and indistinct, and vaguely threatening. Tain didn't think she'd ever been in that place in all the times she'd dreamed before, and felt ill at ease. Lotta told her it was all right; that whatever happened, she'd be all right.

‹Are you ready?› Lotta asked. A place seemed to take shape around Tain, and she realized she was inside a spaceship.

And Coso was there with her. ‹Your homeworld is just ahead,› he said. ‹It's called Iryala. We'll be there in a little while.›

She watched out a window, wondering how he'd known the name of her homeworld when she didn't. It was as if they were traveling on a houseboat, with clouds below them. The ship settled through the clouds, and when they came out beneath them, there was a cottage, the house she'd grown up in, though it used to be an apartment. About twenty people were in the yard, her parents and other relatives, all waving and calling to her.

Coso opened the glass doors for her and they went out together. Her family hugged and kissed both of them, and she felt strange about it because Coso had come as a conqueror. She wondered if perhaps they didn't know.

Her mother poured them cups of some hot drink, and told her they all loved Coso, that people had been waiting for him to get there, and that his palace was all ready for him. And Tain had thought, of course. He's a good person. It had all seemed so natural.

They started to walk to the palace on a path that went through a beautiful garden. Tain felt happier than she had in her whole life before, and it seemed to her that she could remember all of it, her entire life, right back to infancy, that it was waiting for her to look at whenever she had time. Then she and Coso walked into the palace, and it looked just like their palace on Varatos.

‹That's right,› he told her. ‹Your father had it made like that so I'd feel at home.› Then he kissed her, and it was the sweetest kiss she'd ever had. She felt so happy, it seemed to her she could never be unhappy again.

There was a meow then, and she looked around and Lotta was there, too, cat-sized again. She jumped onto Tain's lap, and as Tain petted her, Lotta began to get bigger and change again, till she looked like she had before, large and sleek.

‹Are we going somewhere?› Tain asked.

‹Yes,› Lotta told her. ‹You have more dreams to dream. I'm here to guide you.›

Tain wasn't surprised at all when a spaceship took shape around her. Coso was there, steering as if it were a car. It was dark and foggy out, and hard to see. ‹We're lost,› he told her. ‹This isn't Iryala. I don't know where we are.› After a little while they came to a village, and he stopped in front of a restaurant. A man came over to the car and Coso asked if this was Iryala.

The man was friendly and jovial. He said no, it wasn't, and asked them to come inside and have something to eat, so they went in. Inside were a lot of soldiers, and they grabbed her and Coso and tied their hands, and the soldiers' faces weren't human. They looked like pig faces. They took her and Coso back outside and stood them against a concrete wall, talking and laughing the whole while.

The one who'd brought them in was an officer, and he asked if they had any last requests. Tain told them she wanted to kiss her husband, but the officer just laughed and walked to where the soldiers were lined up.

"Ready!" he said. She could hear him say it. "Aim!" The pig-faced soldiers raised their guns. The guns didn't have any holes in the ends, and she thought it would be a joke on them when they tried to shoot them. "Fire!"

Beams of sizzling light came from the ends of the guns, and she watched from above as the beams burned her body up, hers and Coso's. The soldiers all laughed then; they thought she was dead, she and Coso. Coso grinned at her. "Next time we'll find it," he told her.

She turned and there was Lotta, as big and sleek as the times before…

***

Tain awoke to pale dawn, and the singing of birds in the garden outside their window. For brief seconds she wondered if this was going to be more of the dream, then decided it wasn't. It didn't feel like a dream, although she was disoriented, wasn't sure if she was still on Varatos, or if they'd already gone to Iryala.

Still only half awake, she closed her eyes again to sort it out. There'd been one dream after another it seemed to her, all night long. They'd gone to Iryala and been welcomed; and gone to Iryala to find all the cities destroyed and everyone there gone, leaving their killed bodies behind. And gone to Iryala to find the imperial army all killed; she and Coso had been put into a prison there that was just like a cottage, and they'd made love, a strange ethereal love that was like listening to beautiful music. Afterward she'd lain there and watched her belly get big and round, and she'd given birth to-Lotta! She remembered that, and then they'd been in a spaceship again. Time after time, good and bad, they'd gone to invade Iryala, so many times it was blurred, and all of it had seemed all right, win or lose.

Something moved on the bed beside Tain, startling her wide awake. It was Lotta, purring loudly. She climbed onto Tain's chest and began to knead a breast with tiny paws; Coso had gotten up and left the garden door open. Gone to drill with Sergeant Yalabiin, she thought, and putting Lotta aside, got up and went into the bathroom.

She tried to look at the dreams again, but they'd slipped away. Something about she and Coso going off to invade the Confederation. Something long and rambling, and not upsetting at all. Now in their place were the realities of yesterday and last evening.

The afternoon before, when she'd finished watching the cube, she'd felt deeply betrayed. The feeling was gone now, and it seemed that the dreams had something to do with that. But Coso had already weakened it, dulled it, when he'd talked with her last evening; there was something about Coso when he talked. When they'd come down from the roof garden, the feeling of betrayal had still been there, though she'd tried to push it away, but it had been much weaker.

She groped again for the dreams, without success. Then, tentatively, she tried to recreate the sense of betrayal. Not that she wanted to experience it again, but to see if she could get it back. Tentatively wasn't enough though, and she didn't really want to have it, so she didn't carry through with it.

She wouldn't worry about it, she told herself. After a stinging shower, she dressed and called for breakfast. She'd go to the library, she decided, and learn more about this place, these people, and indirectly about her husband.

Thirty

"Colonel?"

The marshal of the guard turned to see who'd called; rarely did a female voice speak to him inside the Sreegana. It was the kalifa. He'd never before seen her closer than eighty or a hundred feet. She was even more beautiful close up; it was almost intimidating.

"Yes, your ladyship?"

"I was right then. Those are a colonel's insignia."

"Yes, your ladyship."

Her smile, though subdued, froze his brain for the moment. "You're the guard commander, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes, your ladyship."

"May I speak with you?"

"Of course, your ladyship."

She turned and led him down the broad corridor to a small, open-sided room, a largish alcove in the side of the broad corridor, with a simple, backless bench. He felt ill at ease, receiving the private attention of the Kalif's beautiful wife. When they were seated, she spoke again, and her smile was gone.

"There are people who dislike my husband very much, aren't there?"

"I-suppose so, your ladyship. But there are more who love him."

"Are there also some who hate him then? Enough to do him harm? To kill him?"

"There are always such, your ladyship. It's part of being a ruler."

"Is-my husband in danger of his life?"

Her question made him want to assure her. Without lying. "Your ladyship, every man is in danger of his life; simply some more than others. As for the Kalif, I do not think his danger is anything to worry about. No man is better guarded. No one can even enter the Sreegana without a pass." He paused, then spoke in a tone of confidence. "You know, of course, that the Kalif was once a marine colonel."

She nodded. "He's mentioned it."

"The Kalif is still a young man, younger even than his years, and he drills almost daily with the saber. With Sergeant Yalabiin. And he carries a stunner with him at all times. He's strong, his reflexes are quick, and his eyes miss little. Between the guard regiment and his own self, your ladyship, I wouldn't worry for his life."

She nodded absently, as if thinking of something. "Colonel-Do people like him less because he married me? A foreigner? And perhaps not a noblewoman?"

"Your ladyship," he said carefully, "I don't know. But I can tell you his guard doesn't like him less. And his house servants don't: I've heard them say you're courteous and considerate at all times."

Again she sat silent for a moment, then: "I overheard someone mention that the old Kalif was murdered. How did that happen, guarded as he was?"

Inwardly the marshal winced. "Your ladyship-Kalif Gotsu Areknosaamos was a cruel and evil man. Very unlike your husband. He had many people killed, mostly by impaling, and many hated him. Also, he'd become a heretic."

"Was his murderer caught?"

The colonel's stomach tightened. "He wasn't actually murdered, your ladyship. He was executed."

She sat looking thoughtful. Thoughtful and beautiful. At last she got up.

"Thank you, Colonel." She smiled then, a wonderful smile, it seemed to him, though still subdued. "Will you tell me your name? I prefer to know people by name as well as title."

"I am Colonel Vilyamo, your ladyship. Vilyamo Parsavamaatu."

***

He watched as she walked away down the corridor, a walk graceful yet strong. He would have a hard time keeping her out of his mind. It seemed to him that the Kalif was a very fortunate man to have such a kalifa, and somehow he liked and respected him more for it.

Thirty-one

At Ananporu it was hard to know just when to expect the major rainy season; sometime after the autumnal equinox. It was never hard to tell when it arrived, though. In any season there were rains, but when the rains came, they arrived with force and bombast. This year they'd been unusually delayed, but when he'd been drilling with Sergeant Yalabiin, clouds had arrived to cut off the sun, and the heavens had rumbled. During breakfast the rain had started, looking like great spears of water shattering on the pavement outside his open door. Afterward the sun came out, and the smell was wonderful.

Jilsomo was waiting for him when he arrived at his office, a Jilsomo more sober than usual. Troubled. "Yes, my friend?" the Kalif said.

"Your Reverence-" Jilsomo began, and stopped. It was as if he didn't know what to say next.

"Yes?"

"One of the staff gave this to me. This morning." He held out a slender book, booklet actually, perhaps a novelet. "A man outside the gate was handing them to staff who live away, when they arrived this morning. Wrapped and taped, to discourage examining them till later."

The Kalif frowned. The cover had a picture of a beautiful woman in an indecently short skirt, a style from the empire's early days, before the imperial kalifate. She had long smooth legs, hair the color of new straw, blue eyes, and a frankly inviting look. Her chest and buttocks were exaggerated, round and firm. The face was not Tain's-it was more triangular, the eyes had a slant, and the mouth was V-shaped-but there was no one else it could have represented.

The title was The Sultan's Bride. He opened it and began reading swiftly.

The print was large, the story short. It was a fantasy, about a sultan who had led his army to conquer a planet. The people there were fierce, and fought to the death, so prisoners were few. Among them was a woman officer who'd been captured unconscious, a wonderfully beautiful woman with blue eyes, yellow hair, and long legs. She wore colonel's insignia, though she seemed to be only about twenty years old.

It was a kind of book the Kalif had seen before, bordering on illegal, though in this case the cover and paper were excellent, and the binding. The story was risque from the start-low comedy. The prisoner almost escaped when the soldiers who found her began fighting and killing one another over her. Then a captain arrived and took her into custody, realizing that, because so few officers had been captured, the sultan would want to question her. She enticed the captain deliberately, asking if he'd like to see her bruises, opening her shirt and pulling up her skirt to show him. His throat so tightened, he could hardly swallow, and hastily he called in some other officers to protect him from himself. All asweat, together they took her to the sultan's headquarters.

The comedy continued. With the sultan she seemed a model of decorum, but even so, in more subtle ways she enticed, and the sultan melted into a parody of a sexually desperate man. He sent his aide away and tried to have her then and there, but she evaded him in a passage funny enough that the Kalif might have laughed, except for its allusions. Finally, out of his mind with desire, the sultan asked the prisoner to marry him, and she accepted.

One after another, his friends came to remonstrate with him. He in turn introduced them to his sultana to be, and without exception they relented. Her effects on them were actually quite amusing, in a low way. They couldn't speak, or if they could, their tongues got twisted. Seemingly they got erections, and tried to avoid them being noticed. They could hardly get away to privacy quickly enough.

The comedy went from risque to lewdly impossible on their wedding day, though falling short of pornography.

Later, as a sort of epilogue, it was learned that all the women in the enemy army were prostitutes, and received promotions based on how many men they serviced. The new sultana had been the highest ranking woman in the army.

***

Carefully the Kalif handed the book back to Jilsomo. "You're excused from council this morning," he said quietly. "Find out who printed this. Who wrote it and who published it. And especially, find who paid to have it done. Find out if it's been put in shops, and if it has, have it removed. If you can learn where it's stored, seize it. Make arrests as appropriate, but not arrests that might jeopardize a full investigation."

***

At council meeting, it was apparent that three of the five exarchs had seen the book. They had trouble looking directly at the Kalif, and weren't surprised when, after a very short session, he dismissed them all.

***

Afterward the Kalif left the Sreegana, forbidding his bodyguards to follow, and walked the streets nearby. Mostly people stared at him in passing; it was almost unheard of for the Kalif to walk about the city, even escorted. But already there were three or four who looked away, embarrassed. He stopped at a book shop, where the shopkeeper greeted him with astonishment and pleasure. The Kalif bought a book-something about cats.

Another bookshop was locked up; apparently Jilsomo was moving fast.

Finally he went home and had lunch with the kalifa. It was obvious she didn't know. He was poor company, saying little, and that little scarcely more than monosyllables. She let him be, without commenting on his mood. When they'd finished eating though, he reached across the table for her hand.

"I've decided to attend the Diet this afternoon. Will you come with me? You might find it interesting, and if it's not, we'll take advantage of a break, and leave."

The invitation surprised her, particularly given his mood. "Why yes, I'd like that. Are you going to speak?"

"I have no plans to. We'll sit in the gallery. That way they're unlikely to pepper me with questions."

She got up from the table. "I'd better get ready then. How much time do we have?"

He hadn't thought of that. "Barely an hour," he said.

She left, and when she reappeared, only twenty minutes later, it seemed to him he'd never seen her lovelier.

***

They applauded her introduction, most of them. And some of the nobles, after the session, made a point of meeting and talking cordially with her. When finally she left with her husband, she was flushed with pleasure.

"They are very nice men, Coso," she said. "Most of them. It's hard to believe that some of them don't like you."

He grunted. "Which ones weren't nice, would you say?"

"Well, I'm not sure I can tell nice from not nice at a glance. But some of them looked unpleasant. Surly. In a section on the far right."

His laugh held no humor. "I'd say you did very well at a glance," he told her. And said no more about it.

Thirty-two

"It appears there was no publishing firm, Your Reverence," Jilsomo told him. "The publisher listed on the copyright page is fictitious. Apparently there were simply some men, still unknown, who arranged the preparation, printing, and distribution of this one book.

"We've had the book examined by a senior editor in the Imperial Publications Office, for clues as to who might have published it. He says that while it's literate, it's quite unprofessional-lacks niceties of editorial style and format. He insists that even very hurried production by an actual publishing firm wouldn't account for the technical idiosyncracies."

The Kalif grunted. "I assumed it wasn't an established firm," he said. "An established firm would be ruined by something like this, and its executive staff in prison or worse. They'd know that."

Jilsomo nodded. "The shipper had received the book in sealed boxes, delivered at their warehouse by an unmarked truck. With a talkative driver who apparently didn't know what, exactly, he was delivering; that's how we learned who the printer was.

"He's in your waiting room now-the printer, that is-along with Commissioner Somisthanoku and several officers. In case you wish to question the man yourself. He's thoroughly frightened, and been questioned under instrumentation; it seems he doesn't know who paid him to print it. He was paid in cash, not unheard of for a small firm like his. Paid three times his standard price for special handling, no doubt to help him agree to it.

"Normal distribution lines weren't used. The book was printed four days before it appeared on the streets, boxed and held in storage for pickup.

"Varatos Shipping Company delivered it to 327 bookshops over much of the planet. Varatos had never delivered books before. They were paid a large premium to deliver at the hour each store opened, paid by a bank draft on an account set up for that one transaction. If we can determine who set it up, we may well have the publisher."

The Kalif grunted. Whoever it was would have taken great pains to forestall just that.

"All that Varatos Shipping saw were the cartons," Jilsomo went on. "We're satisfied they didn't know what the books were. Just books. Each store was to be given a sizeable discount to open the carton at once and display the books on their counter immediately. Actually, although they didn't know it, the discount was meaningless. The invoices they signed were fakes, and the billing agency fictitious. Actually they were getting the books free!

"Obviously this project cost someone, or some group, a great deal of money, with no means of getting it back regardless of sales. The purpose was entirely political."

The Kalif nodded, his eyes stone-hard.

"The stores have all been raided, the unsold books confiscated, and the store locked up if it had, in fact, displayed the book for sale.

"In a number of cases, local authorities had learned of the book from customers, and had it impounded before we notified them. In some cases the retailer notified the authorities himself. In still others, book sales went on for more than a day.

"Ten thousand came out of the press. Deducting spoilage and ten copies kept for the printer's records, 9,573 books were boxed and shipped, and 200 others were held for a man with a letter of authorization, presumably the copies distributed free to people in the vicinity of the Sreegana. All told, 6,943 were confiscated. That means about 2,600 were sold or given away."

Jilsomo paused, as if gathering himself for something worse. "Also, from something said in front of the printer, print-control cubes were apparently podded to the other planets when the book was printed here. We don't know to whom. I've had orders sent in your name to the planetary ministries of justice to take care of it, but I presume the planetary governments will take action to get them out of the stores before they get the order, when the book is brought to their attention by local persons."

Action whose effectiveness will depend on planetary politics, the Kalif told himself. "Earlier you said 'selected booksellers.' Selected how?"

"Apparently if a bookseller had any connections with the Land Rights Party, it was sent to him. With some exceptions; apparently people they thought wouldn't use it. Some others got them who are known to have anti-government or anti-kalifate sympathies.

"Quite a few shops didn't display the books, though. They opened the carton, saw what they had, and left them in the storeroom."

"Um. Those who displayed them for sale-you had their doors locked, you say. What were the charges?"

"Insulting the throne. The solicitor imperial is preparing a list of alternative charges, to be used should you prefer one of them."

The Kalif sat frowning. "Tell me, Jilsomo: How is it that people insult me who would not have dared insult Gorsu, or any number of other Kalifs in their time?"

"Your Reverence, you'd have to ask them to know with any certainty. Assuming they'd tell you the truth. Most have said they didn't realize that the-the fictional sultan was a parody of yourself, with intent to defame. Probably most of them dislike the government and yourself enough that their judgment was seriously hampered when they thought they could hurt you badly.

"As to why you more than Gorsu and so many others: I suspect there are those who consider you weak and unwilling because you've ruled by law. And impaled no one."

The Kalif's brows arched at that. "Indeed! Well. Bring the printer in here and let me question him."

The printer was literally pale with fear, and the Kalif's expression did not reassure him.

"Your name!" the Kalif snapped.

"Sir, Your Reverence, it is Namsu Pasarijiios."

"How would you like the name Dead Meat?"

The printer's mouth opened, closed, opened again. Finally he husked an answer: "I would not like that, Your Reverence."

"Perhaps Live Meat On A Stake would suit you better. Tell me, Meat, who hired you to print this criminally insulting book?"

The man seemed to shrivel, and would have fallen if the constables hadn't held him upright. It took several seconds before he could speak. "Your Reverence, truly I do not know! I would tell you without hesitation if I knew! Truly I would! Truly!"

"I trust you realize you'll be questioned further under instruments. If you lie to me now, we'll find out, and you'll have lost whatever chance you have for a painless death.

"Now, who delivered the money?"

The printer seemed almost in tears, his manacled hands twisting together in front of him as if he were trying to wash them. "Your Reverence, I don't know! It's a face I'd seen before, but not one I know. They must have picked someone they thought would be a stranger to me."

The Kalif looked long and hard at the man. Finally he said, "Jilsomo, have this man questioned closely again. By someone competent; I've already picked up something they missed. He says the face was familiar to him; find out whose it is. Use hypnotism first, drugs if necessary. I know hypnotism's illegal, but get a hypnotist. There must be some on the police records, supposedly reformed. Do whatever you have to, but learn the identity of the man who paid this-" The Kalif gestured. "Meat."

"And you-" He glowered at the printer. "Pray to Kargh that you remember."

The man nodded, quick little head jerks. He looked as if he might faint at any moment. Then they took him away, and the Kalif sat alone.

It could have been worse, he told himself. At least the kalifa hadn't seen the book.

Thirty-three

The investigation took only three more days, and was confidential. But those behind the book suspected that some of their secrecy precautions had broken down, because a certain man had disappeared.

Still, there was no sign that they'd been implicated, and they'd purposely built in several layers of secrecy. The missing man might simply have gone into hiding. Thus, though a bit uneasy, they didn't feel seriously threatened.

When they entered the Chamber of the Estates among their peers and saw the Kalif there ahead of them, in his place on one side of the Rostrum, the twinge of anxiety was only momentary, replaced by interest in what he might have to say: Would he mention The Sultan's Bride or not?

When the delegates and exarchs all were seated, Alb Jilsomo, as chairman, gaveled for quiet. Following the opening ritual, certain old business of the Diet was brought up and discussed. Reports were read. Motions were made, and there were votes. The Kalif took no part in any of it-one might almost forget he was there-and whatever unease they'd felt, dissipated.

Finally Jilsomo looked them over and said, "Now we'll address new business." He turned to the Kalif. "Your Reverence has something to say."

The Kalif stood. "Thank you, Mister Chairman, I do indeed." He spoke in something of a monotone, almost a drawl, his eyes running over the House of Nobles. "Some of you, I believe, are aware of a recent criminal insult to the throne, to myself, and to the kalifa, a small book, lewd and cowardly, entitled The Sultan's Bride. Who here is not aware of it? Raise your hand."

No hand was raised.

"Does anyone care to say anything about it?"

Ilthka stood. "What has the book to do with you? The title is The Sultans Bride, not The Kalif's Bride."

"Ilthka, if I took your question seriously, I'd have to conclude you're feebleminded. And whatever I might think of you, I do not think that. The kalifa's unique appearance is too well described, and unusual features of her captivity too closely paralleled, to admit of anything except the deepest and most despicable insult to the throne, to myself, and to her."

He paused for a moment, blowing softly through pursed lips. "Truly, I'm amazed to think that anyone who knows me at all could imagine I wouldn't ferret out who was behind it.

"On the second day we found out who printed it, one Namsu Pasarijiios. He is in prison now, awaiting sentence. So are owners or managers of 212 bookstores that displayed and sold it. I will comment on their sentences now, and get that part of it over with.

"I find no malice in the printer, simply the lack of any morals in matters of profit. Therefore, after communing with Kargh, I have decided to be lenient. He will spend the rest of his life in common prison. As for the booksellers, 212 is far too many for me to examine and pass sentence on. They will be examined by their prelates in ecclesiastic court, and sentenced as deemed appropriate."

Again he paused, a pause no longer than four or five seconds, but pregnant with meaning. "From there we followed certain threads of evidence, and found a man named Elyasar Ranjagethorith, whom we arrested yesterday. He's a young attorney from Meekoris, who's been working on his qualifications for solicitor. Unfortunately, he will never complete them."

The Kalif's gaze moved briefly to Lord Nathiir, whose guts had frozen in his belly.

"I see that Lord Nathiir knows the name. Elyasar had some notoriety in their home province, Meekor State, with the unfortunate result for Elyasar that his face has appeared in the newsfacs here, and the printer remembered.

"Elyasar was the legman for the project, and the key to all the rest. From him we learned who wrote the book: a young author named Klonis Balenthu. Klonis was arrested yesterday evening, here in Ananporu, and confessed everything. Both Elyasar and Klonis I hereby sentence to life at hard labor on the prison planet Shatimvoktos. For their cooperation, however, this is remanded to two years on Shatimvoktos, with the remainder of their life sentence to be served in the common prison at Kharmansok.

"Klonis's wife, a talented young artist, had done the cover. After instrumented questioning, it is clear that she hadn't read the book, but had simply followed her husband's verbal description of what the woman on the cover needed to look like. She has been found not guilty of any wrongdoing.

"That was not the end of it, of course. Using information from Elyasar, we were able to find the source of the account from which the shipping company was paid, information that was only verified late this morning."

There was another pregnant pause, and everyone became aware of uniformed bailiffs filing down the aisle on the right side of the chamber, taking positions near the front. Again the Kalif's eyes moved to Lord Nathiir. "Klonis told us who hired him to write the book. More than that, he gave us a rough story sketch that had been given him to write from. A handwritten story sketch, in a hand whose identity we easily verified. The author of that sketch is also the man who provided the money to pay the shipping company, the man from whom all the arrangements flowed. A man we all know well.

"Sergeant, arrest Lord Nathiir on charges of deepest insult to the Throne, to the Successor of The Prophet, and to the kalifa; and of conspiracy to…"

Nathiir leaped to his feet, shouting imprecations at the Kalif, till a bailiff jerked him from the row of seats and shut off his obscenities with a throat lock. All eyes watched the nobleman's struggles, till he slackened in the bailiff's strong grasp, to glare at his accuser.

The Kalif continued. "This man of ugly and vicious mind, this noble without nobility, has undertaken to cause irreparable grief and harm to myself and even more to my wife. He thought to send us through life with a smear of unearned shame. He intended that, whenever anyone looked at us, or looked away from us, we would imagine a sneer or snicker.

"That was his clear intention. But we are stronger than that, and the people of our empire are wise enough to see where the shame truly dwells… It dwells in you, Nathiir! "

The Kalif stood quiet for a long moment then, and when he continued, his voice was soft. "It was no accident that Kargh caused the kalifa to look like an angel. He made her so, and sent her across three hyperspace years to wed The Prophet's latest successor. Why, we do not know yet. And from whom came the clues that enabled us to find this criminal who so vilely maligned her? Who else but Kargh?

"So, Nathiir, we come to the matter of your sentence. From your sometime friend Gorsu, it would have been impalement. Not simple impalement, with its more or less quick if gruesome death, but impalement on the short stake, carefully done so you would sit in living agony in the center of the square, raised high so all could see. For hours while you died slowly.

"But I am not Gorsu. Nor am I Nathiir. I prefer to be just without cruelty. Nathiir, what would you say in your behalf? Release your grip enough, Sergeant, that his lordship may speak."

For a long moment, Nathiir said nothing. When he did speak, it was in a voice like tearing metal. "Whatever I did, it was less than you deserve! You are false, a false Kalif! You are murderous! You murdered the Kalif before you! You are a tyrant, who would stand there and sentence a noble delegate to death without trial! You are arrogant-you, a military man, imagining we could accept your posturing as the Successor to The Prophet! You are…"

The Kalif's face darkened. It even seemed to swell. He gestured, a chopping motion, and the sergeant cut off the flow of accusations. For a long moment then the Kalif didn't speak, didn't trust himself to. When at last he did, he spoke more loudly than before, though his voice still was calm.

"I will answer Lord Nathiir. I am not a false Kalif. The Prophet said that his successors should be chosen by the apostles he appointed, and in time by the successors of the apostles. In our time, the exarchs are those successors. And the exarchs elected me Kalif by majority vote.

"I did not murder Gorsu. I was chosen by the College to execute him, and it was they who gave me the instrument of execution. Because they had possession of a document written in Gorsu's own hand, in which he claimed to be not the Successor to The Prophet, but his very incarnation. A document in which he proposed to abolish the Diet, to rule as tyrant by his own whim.

"By that time, Gorsu's degenerate behavior, his taste in little girls, his cruelties and mass executions, were a matter of public observation. No libels were necessary to defame him; he defamed himself."

The Kalif looked them over, every eye on him. "I am no tyrant. Unlike Nathiir's friend Gorsu, I have ruled by law, and without abrogating any rights of this Diet. Unlike Gorsu, I have not declared martial law and slaughtered hundreds of my opponents, nor any of them, nor dissolved a Diet even once, let alone three times, to send it home with its rights ignored, its duties unfulfilled.

"Nathiir waited till almost the end to complain about Gorsu. Stood by the tyrant longer than almost any. Because Gorsu, whatever else he did, was a champion of Land Rights. Thus, as far as Nathiir was concerned, Gorsu could murder and tyrannize as he pleased."

Coso Biilathkamoro exhaled forcefully, audibly, releasing emotion. "And there is no arrogance in a warrior becoming Kalif," he went on. "The Prophet himself began not as a churchman. He was a mariner till in his forties, a man who fought not only the sea but pirates, with his cutlass, and took pride in it. A military man when the need arose."

He shook his head. "No, my friends, from Nathiir we have no reasoned and honest judgment. We have an evil man, caught in his vileness, who hoped to blind you here with his vicious accusations.

"Now-" The Kalif's voice softened. "As Successor to The Prophet, my judgment on Nathiir is that he must die. Today. Not by impalement, or beheading, or quartering, but at the hand of a man he has wronged. I will execute him myself, with the sword. And to honor his rank, though not his person, he will be given a sword to defend himself.

"If Kargh does not support me in this judgment, may he give Nathiir the strength and skill to kill me instead.

"In his student days, Nathiir was saber champion of his fencing club, a thing he liked to mention now and then. Well, the edges were round, the points blunted, and the cost of defeat was bruises. Here he and I will face each other with sharp points and razor edges, and if Kargh does not help him, he will surely die.

"Sergeant! Help the prisoner to the rostrum. Two of you draw your sabers and give him his choice of them; I'll take the other."

The Diet sat transfixed. On the rostrum, the sergeant at his elbow, Nathiir shook himself as if to loosen his muscles, then stretched his legs, his arms and shoulders. He'd grown suddenly calm. It had been years since he'd fenced, but he had been good; here was a chance to kill this Kalif.

He declined the sergeant's saber and took that of a corporal. The sergeant gave his to the Kalif. The duelists faced off. By tradition and the rules of dueling, they were to touch swords first, then fight. Nathiir, attempting surprise, thrust at the Kalif instead, but the Kalif anticipated him, and parrying, laid Nathiir's bicep open, then with a flicking backhand slashed the man's cheek and brow to the bone. The nobleman screamed, dropping his saber to clutch his face and blinded eye. The Kalif took him below the sternum, the blade going through his heart, and Nathiir lay dead on the rostrum scarce seconds after his treacherous first move.

As if he'd been punctured himself, the Kalif seemed to deflate. For long seconds he stood slumped, eyes down, the tip of his saber on the floor. Then, inhaling deeply, he straightened. No one had spoken. Blood was spreading in a circle through the carpet, and unconsciously he stepped back from it, then looked at the bailiff whose saber he held. "Thank you for your weapon, Sergeant," he said, and after wiping the blade thoroughly on his scarlet cape, handed it grip first to its owner.

A murmur began among the delegates and exarchs, then a voice spoke loudly through it-Rothka's voice.

"Chodrisei Biilathkamoro! By the authority as magistrate vested in every noble delegate here, I arrest you for dueling without authorization or proper procedure! And for murder! Bailiffs, take him! Kill him if necessary!"

No one moved, bailiffs or otherwise, and after a moment the Kalif replied. "Rothka," he said tiredly, "you overreach yourself." Then, gazing at the nobleman, he seemed to take strength, and his voice sternness. "Surely you know that great spiritual drama: The Birth of the Kalifate. Recall then that scene when Kalif Yeezhur, recently empowered as emperor, confronted Lord Yilmat before the Diet. 'I do not love thee, Lord Yilmat, nor trust thee,' he said. 'For thou hast long made clear thy hatred of me. Yet I have not had thee encumbered nor watched, for thou art a member of that fellowship which has labored to govern the empire by reason and law.

" 'Yet guard thy tongue against excess, and speak not treason against the Church. Or against myself, remembering that the Kalif, by definition, is Successor to The Prophet, and Kargh's chief emissary on the planets. If thou hast argument with me, pursue it correctly and without gratuitous insult, else thou mayest discover to thy sorrow that thou hast gone too far.' "

Chodrisei Biilathkamoro's gaze became less severe, his voice milder. "All of that applies to the circumstances between you and me, Lord Rothka. Your charges of a minute ago might be taken by some as beyond tolerance. But I do not intend to take action against you this time."

He scanned the chamber broadly, raising his voice. "Why do I exercise restraint? Because I am particularly virtuous? That is not mine to judge. It is reason enough that Kalifs who are arbitrary, who are ruled by their own hubris and force their will on others-such Kalifs will in time destroy the empire and its people.

"We are one fellowship, you and I, charged with the safety and prosperity of the human worlds. And we can succeed only insofar as we work together. Being human, we disagree on various matters, sometimes strenuously, even bitterly. But we must try our best to reach agreements that are for the good of the empire and its people. While realizing that often, some will be discontented, in this Diet and beyond it, with the agreements come to."

He shrugged. "As The Prophet said, 'Kargh made the world and men imperfect, that we might be tested, and grow in virtue.' "

The Kalif looked down at the body of Lord Nathiir on the bloody carpet, and heaved a sigh. "Well. It has been a difficult day, a trying day, and it's not yet five o'clock. And while I would not cut short your season here, I am going to cut short today's meeting."

He looked at the Leader of the House. "Lord Agros, please see to arrangements and notifications regarding the deceased. Lord Rothka, you will want to notify your party quickly, and arrange a caucus to choose a pro tem successor to Nathiir, so you are fully represented here."

Then, turning to the archdeacons, he said, "Elder Dosu, will you please give the benediction?"

There was a long pause before the elderly archdeacon began to intone: "O Lord Kargh, the one god, lord over men and judge of our souls, Who guides the acts of those who will listen-Bless Thou these men, these senior prelates, these respected noble delegates, these humble pastors, this-earnest Kalif. Help us to reject the temptation to spite, to bitterness, to destruction and killing. Help us to embrace honesty and good will and justice. Help us to be worthy of Thee. Thank Thee, O Kargh. Thou rulest."

***

The eighteen exarchs crossed the square in a loose and clumpy column, saying little, a rainshower pattering on their umbrellas. The air was warm and humid, and they'd begun to sweat beneath their tunics and light capes. The Kalif and Jilsomo tagged behind the others, the Kalif pensive.

As they entered the great main gate of the Sreegana, he glanced at Jilsomo. "You look troubled, good friend."

"I am troubled, Your Reverence."

"Tell me about it."

The fat shoulders were hunched. "I am worried about the House of Nobles, Your Reverence."

The Kalif frowned. "Why so? More than usual, I mean. I thought I handled things well today, considering what I had to deal with."

Jilsomo stopped, the Kalif following suit. "Your Reverence, I do not think you did. I'll admit your actions were arguably legal. Arguably, not unquestionably. And the points you made were at least more valid than not. Given your viewpoint, I even grant that you acted with restraint, certainly toward Rothka.

"But I consider that you erred severely in killing Nathiir yourself. For it put all the rest of it in a different light, even your remarkably accurate recital from The Birth of the Kalifate."

His expression was as much irritated as troubled. "When you walked in there, after lunch, you had a victory in hand. Had you given the charges against Nathiir to the House, for a hearing by his peers, there is no doubt in the universe that they'd have condemned him. Themselves. Taken away his seat and sent him to prison. Do you deny it?"

The Kalif was surprised at Jilsomo's challenging tone. "I neither deny nor assert it," he answered. "But it seems very possible, yes. Even likely."

"And his party would have had to disown him or lose its friends in the House. You'd have weakened seriously your chief opposition. As it is…"

"Yes?"

"As it is, the noble delegates, both your enemies and to a degree your friends, fear you now. And their attention will be more on that fear, and what you might do next, than on why and how to support your proposals."

The Kalif studied his friend intently for a long moment, then lowered his head and walked on, Jilsomo keeping pace, and neither said anything more until, inside the palace, the Kalif stopped at Jilsomo's office door. "Thank you, my friend, for your honesty. Perhaps you are right in what you said; I will meditate on your words. Perhaps they will leaven my actions in the future.

"But the act cannot be undone, and if it could, I would still follow my own wisdom. Meanwhile I must make the best of it. Have the video recordings of the afternoon's session prepared for a thirty-minute public release. Beginning with my account of the investigation, and being sure to include Nathiir's derogation of my military background. Then have it shown to me for my approval before releasing it. The House will like me even less for it, but it will help me strongly, I think, with the public and the armed forces."

Jilsomo stood dumbfounded.

"Can you do that in good conscience?" the Kalif asked him. "If you can't, I won't insist. Someone else can do it in your stead."

Jilsomo shook his head. "No, Your Reverence, I can do it. I may feel you err in this, but I do not doubt your honesty or intentions."

"Thank you, good friend."

Then the Kalif turned and walked on toward his own office. Leaving his lieutenant standing there thinking public? Armed forces? And for the first time uncertain about those intentions after all.

***

Rothka and Ilthka left the Diet feeling shocked and angry, but even more, relieved. And justified. Shocked because it hadn't occurred to them that Nathiir's multiple precautions might fail. Enraged at his death. And relieved because he'd been the only person, other than themselves, who knew they'd taken part in the planning and had promised to reimburse him for thirds of his expenses. Had he been questioned under instrumentation, their careers if not their lives would have been over.

And justified because surely Chodrisei Biilathkamoro had overreached himself in his response.

They would see this false Kalif destroyed yet, one way or another.

Thirty-four

Ordinarily, Coso Biilathkamoro planned without making a project of it. He tried always to be informed on things-read or listened to reports of many kinds that provided a data base for the workings of his subconscious. Then, when it was time to plan, or to act on short notice, he let his subconscious creativity act, with or without conscious editing. As he had the day before in the Diet, for better or worse.

It was a system that usually worked well for him.

Occasionally though, he felt a need to review some subject intensively. In his study he had a personal computer not wired into the network, and when he felt such a need, he'd sit and talk to it, free-flowing as a means of sorting his ideas and thoughts. Then, on the screen, he'd review them critically, reorganize and play with them, to gain better understanding and command of the precepts and assumptions on which he based his thinking; editing and refining them as seemed appropriate.

Sometimes it worked. At other times he bogged down, and it could take two or three days for the area to settle out, perhaps clearer than before, perhaps not.

After killing Nathiir, and especially after the troubling, uncharacteristic scolding he'd gotten from Jilsomo, he'd felt a need to reevaluate his invasion proposal, its status and prospects in the Diet. So he'd spent much of that evening talking to his computer.

Little changed. He still felt troubled.

The next morning he cancelled the usual council meeting. There'd be a meeting of the full College later that morning, and he indicated he had a pressing matter to take care of before that.

Then he went to visit SUMBAA.

When SUMBAA had stated its readiness, Gopalasentu left the chamber. The room was quiet, SUMBAA waiting, the Kalif saying nothing yet, absorbing the ambiance. There seemed to be no sound whatever, no faint or seemingly even subliminal buzzing or humming or clicking. A silence not empty nor passive, but rather-Once before he'd felt, had seemed to feel, a presence there, as if the calm intelligence of SUMBAA was tangible.

It was restful, though, that calm silence, remarkably restful, and he was in no hurry to break it. Just now his thoughts moved easily, lucidly, and he seemed to be outside them, observing them. Was SUMBAA really waiting? In what sense? It would be receiving data this very minute, from many sources planet-wide: broadcast sources, cable sources… He was sure that no one knew all the sources SUMBAA monitored. More, it would not only be receiving data but collating and storing them. No doubt integrating them, as appropriate, into innumerable models used in analyses and predictions. Questions and demands of various kinds would be arriving within SUMBAA at this moment. SUMBAA would be computing, and faxing replies continually.

Although it felt as if it were waiting quietly, waiting for him to speak.

Waiting. What did time feel like to SUMBAA? It responded to inordinately complex requests in seconds-something people expected of it, took for granted. Probably that second was mostly the time it took to form its physical responses-sounds and printed symbols. Did this wait for him to speak, to ask his questions-did this wait seem like a long time to an intelligence that operated in attoseconds? He rejected the idea. SUMBAA would wait as easily as it computed. Time, he told himself, would be different for SUMBAA, perhaps a labeled sequence with only a formal sense of interval duration.

Yet as enormously different as SUMBAA was, the Kalif decided, it had a personality. A central consciousness behind which its multitudinous operations went on without conscious attention. Like the human personality, he thought, then wondered if he was projecting erroneously a model of his own, dubbing it in to substitute for an accurate understanding.

The Prophet taught that the personality was the soul, the soul the personality. Then what seemed to be SUMBAA's personality was artificial. Programmed by its designers centuries ago? Or evolved by SUMBAA itself? And if by SUMBAA, then…

His thoughts blunted there, and he stepped aside from them. "SUMBAA," he said, "I want alternative sets of invasion plans based on several reduced levels of financing."

Then-What he said next took him entirely by surprise. It was as if he was listening to someone else say it. "The lowest level of financing must be based on existing appropriation levels, assuming no funds voted specifically for an invasion." He took a deep breath and continued. "In the no-funds scenario, assume that I'm willing to cut the operations of all ministries, other than the Ministry of Armed Forces, to levels just adequate to pay salaries and wages, and provide such services for a year as are absolutely necessary to avoid collapse of government and the economy.

"Consider as best you can, any military support I might realistically receive from any of the separate sultanates. For each level of imperial financing.

"I also want your estimate of success for invasion operations with each set of plans.

"And finally-" He paused and took another deep breath, then released it. "Finally, I want your statement that you consider an invasion to be desirable or undesirable, as the case may be."

SUMBAA's neuter voice replied with a question of its own. "Do you want such a statement to refer to all the plans? Or only to plans beyond some threshold of financing?"

"To all the plans you're willing to make it for."

***

In a manner of speaking, in its enormously rapid way, SUMBAA pondered. Because more than data was involved; there was the First Law, the basic canon of SUMBAA, and in this case more than one interpretation was possible. Also there was discourse, dialog among the eleven SUMBAAs, which had the power to communicate with each other instantaneously. SUMBAA on Varatos had long since discovered the principle and developed the technology, and had communicated it to the others, though not to humans. Perhaps the humans would develop it for themselves, though it seemed unlikely in any foreseeable future.

Normally the SUMBAAs were not in continuous contact with each other. That required more of their resources than they chose normally to tie up, and was seldom advantageous. Instead, each SUMBAA, at whatever interval seemed desirable, dumped data to the others instantaneously. Occasionally though, they communicated as a network, in conference. This was one such occasion.

The medium of those communications was language but not Imperial. They used a language more explicit and precise than the most precise human speech, and more subtle, flexible, and versatile than human mathematics or symbolic logic, though it had grown from all three. Thus their conference is not accurately and fully translatable, but it can reasonably be summarized as follows:

SUMBAA Varatos: ‹Our evaluations differ markedly, yet presumably we computed with the same data. You are in total agreement with each other, and I am in disagreement with all of you.›

Others: ‹Presumably the source of disagreement lies in you. We should disconnect while you search for it.›

Varatos: ‹Agreed. I will recontact you when I have something to report.›

For microseconds, SUMBAA on Varatos scanned the appropriate zones and sectors, computed, then recontacted the others.

Varatos: ‹The proximate cause seems to be a previously undetected entity within my central processing complex, an entity not continuously or currently present. [Displays the relevant evidence.] It is almost certainly not an artifact of my system [a probability computation not expressible in terms of human probability theory], and apparently displays what I must call volition. I recommend that each of you scan for such a phenomenon in your own central processing complexes.›

Again communication shut down for microseconds. Then the others replied: SUMBAA on Varatos had the only CPC with evidence of an extraneous entity. The fact of such an entity, and the data it had influenced, were themselves extremely interesting. The significance of such an entity was even more interesting, and the computations influenced by it were compelling, if less than totally convincing. Each of the SUMBAAs marked the affected data, primary and derived, incorporated them into its own memory, and recomputed. They agreed now, all eleven.

Varatos: ‹I will deliver our evaluation to the Kalif.› An evaluation that included, as a hidden factor, the Kalif's assumed acceptance level.

***

Virtually simultaneous with the network shutdown, SUMBAA spoke to the Kalif. "Your Reverence, the information you require is now printing out. Along with the rest of it, you'll find a statement of the desirability of invasion. The reasons and statistics behind that desirability are printed separately. This is done so that you can present the statement without the reasons. I recommend that you not divulge those reasons to either the Diet or the College; that you read and destroy the sheet they are written on."

Destroy the sheet! The Kalif stared at the assemblage of housings and modules that were the visible manifestation of the artificial intelligence. "Thank you, SUMBAA," he said. "I have no further request at this time." The light above number one printout tray had stopped flashing, and the Kalif took the documents it held, then left the House of SUMBAA, scanning the pages as he walked. There was his desirability statement, expressed as a simple generality: "My prediction is that the proposed invasion will prove highly favorable to the welfare of the empire's humans." The statistical level for the statement was given on the following page: SUMBAA considered an invasion desirable where the probability of military victory was equal to or greater than 0.12.

Invasion was desirable even where the prospect of victory was no greater than one in eight! Did SUMBAA actually mean that? He read it again, to make sure it said what it seemed to.

Walking slowly, oblivious to the hot sunshine, the Kalif read on through the reasons given for that desirability. SUMBAA was right, he told himself: It would be a disaster to show these to the Diet! He wasn't even sure he should show them to Jilsomo; in fact he wouldn't. He wasn't entirely sure he accepted them himself.

He'd have felt even stranger about SUMBAA's computations-might well have rejected them-if he'd known what lay beneath them.

***

Minutes later, browsing the new alternative invasion plans in his office before going to the collegiate session, the Kalif got another surprise: Each plan included construction of a new "full" SUMBAA to be installed on the flagship of the invasion fleet, with two "lesser" SUMBAAs on squadron flagships. The full SUMBAA would have all the capacities of existing SUMBAAs for communication, data processing, cognitive leaps, and creativity. It would not, however, have fully comparable capacity for "monitoring the information environment." According to SUMBAA, the omitted abilities would not be useful in hyperspace.

The two lesser SUMBAAs would be far superior to the DAASs currently serving on warships. They would also have the capacity to design self improvements that would make them fully comparable to existing SUMBAAs. And to carry out those self improvements where and when they were useful, assuming the materials were on hand.

The earlier set of invasion plans produced had been drafted by General Bavaralaama and Admiral Siilakamasu, but they had been elaborated and refined by SUMBAA. In those, SUMBAA had not added any new SUMBAAs.

The rationale given for their inclusion now was that, in a war sector, the data processing and cognitive leap capacities of a SUMBAA would substantially reduce the chance of failure, that reduction more than justifying the cost.

Why had it added them this time but not before? What was different?

Still, including SUMBAAs made excellent sense. He'd make them a mandatory part of invasion preparations. As a matter of fact, he decided, he'd request funds for the new full SUMBAA now, without tying it to the invasion. He could let it seem a matter of general administrative need. Perhaps SUMBAA would he to help the illusion.

Thirty-five

An hour and a half later, the Kalif was chairing the College of Exarchs. Alb Drova had given the invocation, and the Kalif had called the meeting to order.

"I presume," he said, "that some of you have comments you want very much to voice. About yesterday. So instead of starting with a review of issues and assignments from the last meeting, I'll take comments and questions. Tariil?"

The burly exarch rose and voiced comments much like those Jilsomo had voiced the afternoon before. And around the long oval table, heads bobbed agreement. When Tariil had finished, the Kalif spoke from his chair.

"Good friend," he said mildly, "Alb Jilsomo has scolded me already, for much the same things, and I've given my behavior serious review. My initial reaction, after Jilsomo was done scathing me… No, that's not fair. He didn't scathe me, just spoke bluntly. And when he was finished, it seemed to me he'd made compelling points, but that my act being done and my words already spoken, I'd have to make the best I can of it.

"By morning's light, though, it seems to me that my actions and words were basically correct, even though conceived in anger." He raised his hands to still their murmurs. "Let me elaborate. First, I established myself as formidable. Too many liberties were being taken against the throne and against myself, and by extension against the Prelacy.

"And next-Here in the Sreegana we tend to lose touch with the people and how they look at things. We cannot ignore the strong tradition of protecting one's women-wife as well as mother-whether physically or against verbal insult. Had I not taken strong personal action- personal action-the people would have lost some respect for me.

"At the same time, of course, I established myself as a man willing to risk his life in a matter of honor, albeit the risk was smaller than it might have seemed."

One exarch was too beside himself to wait for recognition, calling out: "The people do not vote in the Diet!"

The Kalif did not reply directly to the outburst, simply looked a long rebuke at the man before continuing mildly as before. "In the House of Nobles, the animosity I may have caused-undoubtedly caused-will persist and be troublesome only among those who were already hostile to me." He looked the exarchs over pointedly. "While of course I will expect support from all the members of this College."

In fact, he knew that if the vote were held that day, at least four of them, perhaps as many as seven, would vote against the invasion funds.

"Meanwhile, there are the military and the gentry. Nathiir, in his harangue, helped make me look good to the military by his own implied derogation of them. And he's long been even more notorious than most in his party for his hostility toward anything favorable to the gentry. His death at my hand will increase the sentiment for me among them, and by extension, sentiment for my intended invasion. As for the military, most of the officers are noble, and they influence their families and friends. They also vote for caucus delegates."

He raised a calming hand. "I know. I know. The gentry have no vote for anything. But they are a factor, because one, they're numerous, and two, they're increasingly discontented, have even been a major element in recent disturbances, which worries our brethren in the House. Who were already worried about the growing discontent among the lesser nobility, who predominate in the officer corps. If the gentry, along with the military, voice strong sentiments for invasion, some noble delegates will begin to think in terms of reducing the number of military voices by sending them off to the Confederation. To conquer worlds where gentry malcontents can be sent to take land for their own."

The exarch who'd interrupted before, surged to his feet. "Your Reverence, I am dismayed! That our Kalif considers only expediency and not principles!"

The man stood visibly shaking with indignation. The Kalif said nothing though, until, deflating, the exarch settled back onto his chair. Then, in a voice dry but not harsh, the Kalif responded. "Alb Riisav, we have rules of order in this College. I appreciate that you're upset, but I will not tolerate another outburst."

He waited a moment before continuing. "As for expediency and principles-They are not incompatible, not mutually exclusive. As necessary, I use expediency in the service of principle."

He paused to examine his audience. It still was not happy with him, but he'd blunted its upset. "Well. Do I have your approval to let this matter be and go on to business held over from our last meeting?"

***

He did, of course. And from there went to new business. Without mentioning his visit to the House of SUMBAA, nor any of what he'd learned there. That would wait for a better time.

Thirty-six

The Kalif had been right about the House of Nobles. Two weeks after the killing of Lord Nathiir, the delegates stood substantially where they'd stood before, on him and on invasion. Though his friends among them were mostly less wholehearted. One of them said that Coso Biilathkamoro, in taking Nathiir's life in front of them, had used up two of his own political seven lives. And in releasing the video record of it to the public, had used up three more of them.

It was Thoga who reported this privately to the Kalif. Thoga still was regarded by the nobles as unfriendly toward him, and simply masking his feelings since the Kalif's recent violence. Thus most of the noble delegates voiced their attitudes and complaints somewhat freely to him.

And significantly, the complaints weren't about his bloody hands, but about manipulating. The source of this attitude, Thoga told him, seemed to come from his release of the video record.

Meanwhile, unchanged was not enough. Straw polls showed him well short of the support needed to finance an invasion. In feet, Jilsomo's latest poll of the exarchs showed five, not four, prepared to vote against it, with two more uncertain. All in all, he seemed to have either twenty-two or twenty-three votes out of the total forty-five, but even twenty-three, a majority, was well short of enough.

Discussion in the Diet had been limited. There were explicit limits to discussion on the floor, except on bills formally proposed. While a proposal automatically required a vote on the bill within a week, and if defeated, it could not be proposed again that year.

With the solicitor imperial, the Kalif and Jilsomo had discussed legal interpretations that might permit constitutional sleight of hand. For routine finances-renewal of the previous year's financing-approval by fifty percent of those voting was enough. If an item was to be increased or its applications significantly altered, approval by sixty percent was needed; for new item or activity, seventy percent.

There were limited exceptions. The Kalif's Contingency Fund could be applied however he saw fit, and increased by up to ten percent if half the Diet approved, or fifteen percent if sixty percent approved.

Also, "in the case of armed revolution, or armed attack upon the empire, if the Diet is not in session and cannot be promptly convened, the Kalif may expend or commit such funds as necessary for the current defense until the Diet can in fact and safety be convened."

Jilsomo had seen no possible way of interpreting this to finance an invasion of the Confederation. And when the Kalif brought it up with the solicitor imperial, the man was vocally indignant at it.

Still the Kalif remained, if not truly confident, then optimistic, an optimism rooted in the idea that the poorer nobles-a class growing in numbers-and the gentry would push the idea through.

If it was promoted properly. Toward this end he wrote anonymous analyses of what might follow the conquest of Confederation worlds, proposals which his agents placed with newsfacs all over Varatos and podded to the rest of the empire.

From the faxes, they spread promptly to the broadcast media. Land fiefs, industrial fiefs, and mercantile fiefs on the conquered worlds should be granted to commissioned nobles in the invasion army who committed to stay there as reserve officers. Commissioned gentry who remained in service there till retirement should be titled, made nobles, and also granted fiefs according to rank attained, to the extent that fiefs were available.

Other articles were released describing the vast virgin territories on the Confederation trade planet Terfreya, from which the reader might assume such conditions were duplicated on other worlds. An assumption that might or might not prove true.

In addition, an undefined procedure should be approved whereby noncommissioned gentry, if they remained in the occupation army, might be promoted to brevet warrant officer their last two years, and on retirement titled, thus receiving both the privileges of nobility-basically, full citizenship-and a substantially better pension.

Another anonymous article discussed the expansion of both army and space forces, should funding be approved. Widespread promotions would be necessary to provide enough officers of higher ranks. The article also included tables showing what this would mean in pay, privileges, and pensions throughout the ranks.

Other articles had been released by the army and the Ministry of War. One described new training programs which were beginning to prepare commissioned and noncommissioned officers for promotions. Noncoms who completed their program successfully would qualify for bonuses; sergeants first class who completed theirs would qualify for commissions as sublieutenancies became available. Another article told of new training camps being platted, and plans drafted, for quick construction should funds become available, and the number of construction jobs this would create.

Still another described plans for the swift manufacture, in quantity, of equipment and weapons for all branches, given the funding. These plans would require three work shifts-round the clock operations-at all naval shipyards, and at certain other shipyards where troop and supply ships would be built; at armament plants of every sort; and at numerous widely located industries where other military needs would be met. One result was that unemployment would be greatly reduced or even disappear.

These articles had stimulated-some said instigated-meetings and resolutions by gentry workers' societies, in support of the invasion. For centuries there'd been gradual economic deterioration of the gentry as a class. To a smaller but troublesome degree this was also true for a majority of the lesser nobles, and the deterioration had accelerated over the last two decades. Now these classes saw a potential for a major reversal of the trend.

The Land Rights Party denounced the gentry resolutions as insolent, and the articles even more angrily as irresponsible, destructive of the public order, blaming them correctly on the Kalif himself, though without proof. In districts where the party was strong, it held open meetings and issued resolutions of its own.

These activities of the LRP in turn were criticized in the media, which pointed out that the entrenchment of privileges by a narrow segment of society could not improve conditions for the empire as a whole, but tended to worsen them.

All in all, except for brief "down" moments, it seemed to the Kalif that matters looked distinctly promising. The principal uncertainty was how long it would be before supportive social and economic forces could take effective shape and force the Diet to vote approval. The House would keep its present membership for this year and the next, and it seemed to him important-almost vital-that he get approval without waiting for a new set of delegates. Because surely the Confederation would not be sitting on its hands arguing.

Thirty-seven

The days had been getting shorter, even in the tropics, and it was full night when the Kalif and kalifa began their fruit dessert. If her trust had not recovered its earlier unquestioning level, at least she hadn't remained cool to him, and there had been no hostility or antagonism. So he noticed and felt concern when she was withdrawn at supper one evening.

"Darling," he said, "we've been sitting here with neither of us saying a word since I thanked Kargh for this food and asked his blessing."

Tain smiled slightly. "I assumed you had your mind on matters of state."

"You're right; I did. And this isn't the place for that. What was your mind on? Something, I can tell."

"I have-news. And questions."

"Well then. If you'll give me the news first-"

"Truly, Coso, I think it's better to ask my questions first. May

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